Something Strange about the Weather

It is no longer unbearable over here. I can't tell if it got ever so slightly cooler, or if the humidity dropped, but something changed. I woke up this morning with that feeling. Apparently, so did the Japanese, because whatever happened has signaled the arrival of fall (or AUTUMN, if you live in the tundra and have to be picky about it...).
Today I got a bike. It was used, the frame's a little large, and it takes some handling, but it only cost $70, so I'm not complaining. That's about 9~10 days commuting fare, so it pays itself off really fast. You have got to buy one if you live over here without a car.
The dogs still bark when I show up, but after a minute they are all over me. Musashi wants to jump on and off my lap over and over, and Kojiro tries to make love to my sock. Let me make this clear-not my foot, not even me in particular, but my sock. It is a dog with a sock fetish.
Tomorrow is the second exam. If I pass it, I don't have to move down a level. But it covers two chapters, that I never studied, so I spent all day and most of the evening doing the practice pages from the workbook. For any prospective exchange students, the class setup looks like this:
A-H 1- Genki I ch. 1 through 9
A-H 2- Genki I and II ch. 10 through 17
A-H 3- Genki II ch. 18 through 23
Yamamoto-sensei only goes up to ch. 15 at the end of the Advanced classes, so anyone from that level, like me, will have to study a little.
I remember thinking that I would adapt to Japanese food even if it killed me. Well, it's not going to be that difficult, really. Even the food that I don't like (except takoyaki and mayonnaise, so far) isn't difficult to handle. I still don't like it, but I can eat it. Some of my homestay meals really surprise me. Like tonight, we had boiled/grilled chicken (the chicken here doesn't taste a thing like in the U.S.) in some tomato sauce that was like marinara with cheese on top, a hot fruit soup with melon and something resembling banana but hard and, like always, rice :) Finally, a foreign food custom I don't have to shy away from.