my house is dry now

it was damp from the crazy amounts of rain, but it is dry now. i have had enough of this heat. go away, sun.

blast to the past

and it's official; i have requested to be sent back home on the 26th of august. second choice is the 27th. whichever way it goes, i should get back on the same day i leave, even if i leave at 11:59pm because i'll be going backwards in time-- which is to say across the dateline back to -9 where i belong.

Was That a Fart My Brain Just Expelled?

You know, I thought I had mentioned what I was forgetting when I talked about the Australians and the bar. No. No, no, no. I really, honestly remember it now. The thing that has been nagging at the back of my head like a flea wriggling its way into a dog's skin under its collar.

I bought a bike a few weeks ago.

I held off on buying a bike that long because well hell, only a couple of months till going home. But with how often I was going to the other college, I sat and figured up the amount of time it would take to get there if I only walked, versus the cost of taking the bus one-way (we finish drama club after the busses stop running, so I would still have to walk one way) and walking the other way. Just walking was too time consuming; the amount of time I have left in Japan is small enough as-is, and that doesn't help. Taking the bus one-way all the time would cost half as much as a used bike. And a bike has many uses, just like the sheep in Black & White.

So I bought one. It was 9800 yen, plus a 500 yen fee to register the bike with the government. There are far more bikes in Japan than cars, and as such stealing a bike is just as heavy a crime. There are more bike parking lots than car parking lots around here. In fact, you have to prove you have a place to park your car off the street before you can even buy one. Even so, some of the "driveways" people put their cars in really drive home just why their cars are so tiny.

Having not ridden a bike for some 10-11 years now, I expected my leg muscles to complain a lot for the first few days. That actually wasn't a problem. It was my hand muscles, my knees, and my tailbone. On the other hand, I had forgotten just how much I love having the wind in my face. I am probably gonna get a bike at the beginning of next summer.

I have also been listening to System of a Down on the way to and from drama club for the past few days. It's really good biking music. The songs' beats are good for pedaling too, and vary some so that you get a fun work out. It's also fun to veer around and do tricks to the music. Unfortunately, I still have the urge to veer and do tricks to the music when it's raining and I have taken my glasses off because they are useless anyway. That part kinda sucks.

The issue with Haruki has been taken care of. I finally got someone to listen to the fact that I don't do well with people breathing down my neck, and I think he talked to Haruki about it. I have exchanged only the barest amount of words with him since, but I no longer have problems getting my job done. Huzzah!

anthill

it's the first anthill i have ever seen. it's unimaginably tempting to go step on it.

all i can do is shake my head

so like, haruki has really been pissing me off lately. he pretty much treats me like a retard, and now it is leaking over to other people. this pisses me off more and then i start making mistakes that make them think more retard treatment is warranted. hirokawa is almost never talking to me directly anymore, so i am not picking up the words he uses. it's a mess. and with only a week until the play opens (i said two yesterday'but was actually thinking of the last performance), i get pissed at myself when i make a mistake.

blue skies

it's actually sunny! been a long time since that was true here.

so like, hirokawa is a guy that i would get along with rather well if we had a chance to actually sit down and talk about our interests. however, what we have is two weeks before the play opens. i think hiro is discovering that directing a play involes juggling a large number of concerns and details -- the hard way. he seems pretty stressed sometimes during rehearsals, and since he has a fairly impressive presence from acting and usually talks faster than i can umderstand when giving me notes, he can get imtimidating.

oh well. all i can do is try not to mess up so i don't get yelled at.

ugh

they want to start rehearsal at nine in the morning tomorrow. i don't think the japanese understand the meaning of sleeping in.

is for root

i think i forgot to mention this, but if the title of a blog post sounds like engrish i picked up somewhere then it probably is.

it has been one of those fortnights where i start off on the wrong foot and get wronger. late for things, skipping classes, etc. i am having more language barrier issues in drama club, too... and since the play draws neareq and i am doing the voice of the mirror, i am reluctant to take an ultimate day off from everything like i need to do. i'll probably arrange one for wednesday, though, as i think it will be beneficial in the long run.

realizations of the period

1) part of me still doesn't want to go home. a growing part of me is looking forward to my return.
2) sometimes, all you can do is go through with what you've!started.

This is a Test of the Emergency (Or Not) Blogcast System

if this goes according to plan, not only will this show up on my blog, but it will mean i can make bored posts from classes and stuff. no capital letters because typing on a phone sucks as it is. no pictures because blogger doesn't like people outside the united states.

Edit from computer: Can I get a "Hell yeah!"?

Oh, Yeah...

I totally forgot to mention something in yesterday's blog post. Specifically, the reason I was at ひげ (the aforementioned bar with who's owner is the guy with the beard).

Last Monday night, Australia faced Japan in the world soccer finals. It's Australia's first time making it to the finals in 32 years, and Thomas and Matt started talking shit with everyone in the dorm about how Australia was gonna kick Japan's ass a month before the day. They didn't want to actually be in the dorm for it (just not in the mood, I think), so they and I went to ひげ to watch the game there while getting drunk.

Fairly early in the game, Japan scored a goal. Soccer is like a 90-minute game, and it wasn't until minute 86 that Australia got a goal, so Japan was leading 1-0 for the bulk of the game. Then boom, boom, boom -- I dunno why it went over 90 minutes, but in under 6 minutes Australia slaughtered Japan with an ending score of 3-1.

Ouch.

The Japanese players on TV looked so depressed, man, as did the news anchors. They got off the soccer game right quick, too. It was bad. And like, Thomas and Matt were like, "WOO! WE WON!" for a few minutes, then stopped and went, "O.o We won. Man, Thomas's roommate is gonna be so depressed." Said roommate, whose name I forget, is a huge soccer nut. He bought a special offical Japan jersey to support the team, even. To be really cliche:

- Walking into a bar to find the bartender asleep with his face plowed in the table: 0 Yen (Approximately $0 US -- bet you would never have guessed)
- Bottle of scrumptious Japanese alcohol to share with your friends: 3,000 Yen (Approximately $27 US)
- Official Japanese Soccer Jersey 23,000 Yen (Approximately $200 US)
- The following picture: Priceless (Approximately... wait...)



Left is Thomas, middle his roommate, right is Matt. Thomas had the shirt he's wearing sent up from Australia to poke fun at the soccer junkies here. Matt always wears the garish yellow jacket. (I know I don't really have room to talk with my bright pants, but the jacket really is garish.) It's funny, because the Aussies would have been happy with a tie... the massacre at the end there was just rude.

Anyway, moving on. I bought FFVII Dirge of Cerberus for the PS2 about 6 weeks ago, but then my free time took a vacation, so I didn't start playing it until a couple of days ago. What I have seen of the story so far has been kind of interesting -- more of Vincent's backstory plus some generic "Oh noes! Shinra remnants again!" stuff. I'm not actually too far, as I suck at action/shooting kinds of games, and this is one. It's not a completely hardcore shooter, mind, or I would be totally screwed, as it uses PS2 controller. There are controls for keyboard and mouse, too, but I don't want to unhook my mouse from my computer to hook it to the PS2, and even if I did, I would want a trackball.

Anyway, FFVII stuff completely aside, the game itself is fun and decent, with me liking the control scheme except for the camera controls. That's not surprising, as camera controls is almost always a flaw in console games, so whatever. If we plug the FFVII-related stuff back in, they do an excellent job of making Vincent look epic/like a badass, and making you feel epic. "Was that a point blank rocket? Two? And an exploding barrel? Oh, I still have over 400 hit points. Potion!" Unfortunately, in spite of the fact that Barret and Cid are clearly shown in the pre-start-screen movie, the only FFVII PC's I have encountered so far are Cait Sith and Yuffie. At least I got to play as Cait Sith for a bit.

Also, the Japanese apparently can't pronounce Cerberus. We pronounce it with a soft C sound. The Japanese? Keruberosu. This gave me an idea that, unfortunately, resulted in the crappiest photoshop job I have ever done because I don't have time to do it properly. I suppose I could have put in a wee bit more effort, but I figured if I was gonna half-ass it, I may as well no-ass it, as it would still get the point across.



Not that that is anything like how the Japanese would pronounce Care Bears, but hey.

In drama club, we have one more day to use the stage before the play opens. The day the play opens, we don't get to use the stage. So... the first day's performance (Performances? I still don't have a clue whether we are doing one or two per day. What a mess.) is going to be in the large classroom we have been using for rehearsal in the other school. And I thought we were badly off with three lights and no spot before. Shoot me now.

Realizations of the Period

1) If an English speaker were going to shorten Cinderella to a nickname, it would likely be something like Cindy. Cinderella is pretty easy to say, though, so we're not likely to do that. It's harder to say in Japanese pronunciation, though, because the beginning of her name doesn't roll off the tongue. シンデレラ [Shinderera]. So she's been dubbed デレラ [Derera].

Unlimited of Cement

Well, ikebana is even more fun than I could have guessed. The idea is to take the plants (combination of leaves [ranging in size from tiny to gigantic], grass, flowers, and/or tree branches, depending on what you're doing), find the best side of them, and display all to their best advantage. This fits right along with the way my brain works. I have always been good at seeing what tweaks a picture needs to make it better, but never had the patience to train my hands to draw well. The funny thing is that ikebana actually reminds me of how much fun I had bagging groceries as a cashier when someone asked for double paper as full as I could make them.

There was an ikebana convention (small convention) at the international center last weekend, but I messed up and went to the wrong place. I didn't realize this until the next day, because the place I went to had another flower thing that I mistook for what I was actually looking for. I was slightly confused by the presence of bonsai (Paul, I am unbelievably sorry I forgot my camera. I really, really, really, really, [823 reallies cut for space and reasonability], really wanted to take pictures for you. *hangs her head in shame*), but there were a number of flowers in pots arranged for show, so it didn't occur to me that I had gone to the wrong place. I still got to see some interesting flower arrangements (one looked really cool from all sides), and a guy was showing off his tree and talking some about raising it. I couldn't really understand what he was saying, but the tree was about 15 years old in all its 10-inch glory.

Something that the teachers for both sadoubu and ikebana club have indicated is that they intend to gift me with some of the necessary tools for practicing their arts, since they assume I will have trouble obtaining them in the states (a pretty good assumption; I have seen some of the tea ceremony stuff on eBay, but not everything and often with insane shipping charges because they'll only ship FedEx Air Mail to Alaska or some crap like that). This, while awesome, was not something I expected, and I get a weird feeling up my spine when I wonder how much they're spending on this.

In drama club... well, whoever was supposed to reserve the small hall for us to use didn't do a very good job. Given the plan last I knew it, we have two chances to use it before we perform. Two. And two only. It's ugly. But I found out that we DO, in fact, have a searing light, which makes it possible to effectively spotlight someone center stage. The reason no one mentioned it until I was like, "OK, I need to go to the hall and see what all we have to work with or we can't get anything else done with lights," was that since the running lights are broken, they have been using it to light the actors' faces from the front -- it's that or have the actors only use the back half of the stage, which makes sense, but I'm pretty sure that with some tricky handling on the operator's part that the light can serve both functions.

My Laws of Harmony class is friggin' awesome in every way, shape, and form. The stuff is hard, but the more I do it, the more automatic it becomes and the better I get at spotting the usual mistakes I make. Huzzah!

Realizations of the Period

1) There's not enough Engrish in my blog.
2) Some of the best alcohol in the world comes out of Japan. What do the Japanese drink? Beer.
2b) I don't know what makes me sadder -- the fact that they chose such a horrible alcohol, or the fact that that's a metaphor for their entire society.
3) I have seen three beards since coming to Japan. One is on an Australian. One was on a guy playing a criminal in a play, and I am guessing he grew it for the play. The third is on the [awesome] owner and bartender of a small bar named ひげ [Hige], which is Japanese for beard.

The Butterfly, The Spider, and Three Lights

There's a little butterfly inside my head. I couldn't tell you what color it is, because when it comes to play it flits by so fast I can't see the color. But it leaves whispers in its wake.

"Holy shit, Lena -- you understand what they're saying!"

Yeah, that's right. A thought that floats through at completely random intervals and occasionally makes me lose track of the whole conversation.

Bloglight Japan: Hanami

The word hanami literally means "flower viewing". Every spring the sakura bloom and their petals fall, and the Japanese go out in droves to have picnics for the occasion. Family picnics, company picnics, club picnics, picnics with their fellows in the same major in college, etc. Special spring-themed candies are made and everyone has a good time.

The official hanami holiday is May 1. However, the sakura seem to be somewhat sensitive to the weather; the earliest-blooming sakura (in the southern part of Japan) bloom in late April, while Hokkaido get their sakura blooming near the end of March. The Japanese keep track of when the sakura bloom where every year, and there has been a trend towards it blooming later and later. (Global warming says what, now?)

The sakura petals only stay on the tree for maybe a week. I didn't expect them to fall that swiftly, and didn't get any pictures taken. :'( The petals are a very pale pink -- paler than I expected. I think the petals darkened a bit when they fell of the trees, though, but I couldn't say for sure.

{End Bloglight}

Thursday was the anniversary of the school's founding, so it was an in-service day. As such, a number of the groups in school were having hanami picnics in the nearby parks. The Gaiken was no exception, though by that time the petals had all fallen off the trees and there were no flowers to see. It was a lot of fun, regardless. At first, it was the third years and me... somehow we all still thought it started at noon when everyone else thought it started at 1 PM.

It clouded up a bit later, but at first it was very sunny and quite warm. One guy ran to the store and got us all ice cream. We had a rock-paper-scissors- fest to see who picked their ice cream first from the pile of random ice creams. I was fifth or something, and got an orange cream thingy. While I was eating it, a spider dropped from the tree above us onto the edge of my ice cream.

Anyone who's known me for a while knows that when I suddenly find a spider right next to me or on my person, I have a SHAKE IT OFF panic attack accompanied by a long string of profanity. Most of the people that were there are studying English, so they knew what I was saying. That was interesting. No one seemed to really mind per se, but I think I surprised them.

When we got everyone together and got started, I found out why summer festivals in Japan always include fans. The Japanese have apparently not considered putting lighter fluid on charcoal to make it catch fire faster, so everyone sits around fanning the tinder madly trying to make the coal catch. That was kind of fun, but what was even more fun was putting griddles over the coals once they were going well enough, then cooking the food. They had bought pre-prepared meat from a meat store (sliced to chopstick-edible size, marinated, and split into a number of packages corresponding to the number of griddles), so once they took out the chucks of lard (yes, lard) and greased the griddles down, we started tossing massive amounts of marinated meat, vegetables, and noodles on the grill. Man, oh, man, was that tasty.

Even though it was midafternoon, there was beer and other minor alcoholic drinks to go around with the juices and tea. I drank a bit (didn't even feel it much), but Asa got drunk. He was like, "How about that rematch?" He was already ruddy-faced when he suggested it, and since that's not really a fair match I used the convenient excuse of having a meeting later that day to put it off.

The meeting in question was regarding the play for drama club. Specifically, the lighting. I didn't get a part, so I am on lighting duty. It's one of the few jobs that my limited command of Japanese is good for. Unfortunately for us, however, most of the lights on the stage here no longer work. Yuuji thinks it could be as simple as a popped breaker, but years of begging the student council to do something about the lights has proven ineffective. The breakers (since they are the breakers) are behind locked doors, and for some reason no one has gone to look. If the lights are actually broken, I don't even want to know how much trouble that might be.

In short, we have three lights. Three plain ol' yellow suspension lights. We can't even control all three separately, as there are only two lighting switches. So. We are gonna see if we can't achieve a spotlight-ish effect by having the central light on one switch and the lights on the sides on the other switch. Here's hoping.

Realizations of the Period

1) I am never gonna get used to cars stopping at crosswalks when I am not even halfway across the street or am not even in the street yet. For crying out loud, people, you have plenty of time to get through without hitting me!
2) If you take music classes, those classes will be about western music for the most part. This is true in most countries, and Japan is no exception. Part of the reason I wanted to take music classes here is because I knew this and wanted to learn the vocabulary as well as continue my music studies. Well, last semester, the music class I took had nothing to do with western music. This semester, I mentioned that I got a crash course in reading music -- being able to look at a note and identifying it as A, B, C, D, E, F, or G -- because I didn't have enough of a grasp on the Do-Re-Mi in a scale to use that in understanding what the teacher said. Well... it turns out the Japanese don't call them A-G like we do. They call the notes Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, and Ti exclusively, with Do being C. OMG.