Bright Green Gaijin Pants

TTSRHW

2006-08-24T08:51:00.000+09:00

Tokyo. Train System. Rush Hour. Wow.

2006-08-22T13:38:00.000+09:00

the museum exhibit was excellent, though pictures were not allowed. the reason for this was the spiffy limited edition artbook. i wanted it, but wanted neither to spend the money on it or to carry it home. i got some clearfiles and postcards instead.

now i stand inside the sapporo tv tower. if it isn't the tallest building in town, it can only be eclipsed by like two buildings. i wanted to come up here during the snow festival, but didn't have the money at the time. now, i wish it were a sunny day. even with clouds and rain that can't decide if it wants to fall or not, the view is great. it really underlines the fact that the japanese all seem to have black, silver, or white cars, though.

generating futures

2006-08-22T08:17:00.000+09:00

the thing i have planned for today is a visit to a particular art exhibit. details on the nature of the exhibit will come later when i wrap up the blog because i want to try to take pictures of it for a friend. for now, let us just say that i got here with a decent amount of ease, but am here an hour and a half before the exhibit opens. oops.

bus noriba

2006-08-21T23:02:00.000+09:00

i sit at the kushiro moo building, still unsure what its name means or what its primary purpose is. the night bus to sapporo leaves from here, though, and it is that bus which i await. this is my last blog post from kushiro. i am about to set out on the first trip i have completely planned on my own (and successfully executed, rather) on my own in japan. i have one thing planned for sapporo tomorrow; it won't take all day, so i am gonna have to find something else to do with the rest of it. that doesn't bother me at all.

oh boy

2006-08-20T13:40:00.000+09:00

the train station i got off at does not have a machine for purchasing tickets. it does, however, have a schedule for return to kushiro eki. if i fail to find mariko i still win exploration.

2006-08-20T12:53:00.000+09:00

i sit at a train station, my english degrading further as i wait for a train that will take me to the general vicinity of a park where i can supposedly meet mariko one more time before i leave. i say supposedly because google maps makes the park look big, and i don't actually know anything about why she is there except that it has something to do with her work.

2006-08-15T09:46:00.000+09:00

i wait at the bus stop for the bus that will take me to my last tea ceremony lesson with ikushima sensei. i was gonna wear my kimono today, but i got to the point of putting on the belt and realized it would be just too hot. winter kimono, summer day? no thanks.

Instant Camp / Firework Show to End ALL

2006-08-14T14:39:00.000+09:00

Got off the bus with the drama club on Wednesday only to find out that the bus stop was a decent walk away from the place were were going, Yamahana Autocamp. Having done the walk, I would guess about a mile. (I'm no GPS system, though, so don't take my word for it.) The walk was uphill part of the way and downhill part of the way, and plagued with bugs the WHOLE way. Wasps, bees, mosquitoes, butterflies, and cicaidas, to name the ones I know where there. Man, cicaidas are loud. I was the only one surprised by them.

When we got to Yamahana, we were a bit early for check in so we goofed off by the main lodge. Played a variation on the Japanese version of the kids' game Red Light, Green Light that involved a lot of silly poses and explanations for how, exactly, that silly pose had something to do with fireworks or whatever had been called out. Good times.

After we went to our cabin, three of the girls started making dinner (curry rice, and man was that tasty). Most people went to the hot springs while dinner was cooking, but Haruki was feeling a bit ill, Shirakawa was watching the food, and I was damned if I was gonna go to a hot spring in that heat, so we stayed behind. I slept. Haruki Slept. Shirakawa did something in one corner. It was a nice, lazy afternoon. We had dinner, then did stuff with fireworks. It was pretty much all sparklers, since anything with a decent chance of catching the grass on fire was forbidden. There were these tiny fireworks that did neato sparkly things in your hand that I actually liked way better than the sparklers.

Then we all went up to the second floor (which had been off-limits to all but a few until then) to find it set up for ye olde drinking party. They surprised me by starting off with some stuff for me -- a plaque that everyone had written a bit on, including one guy's mini Suzumiya Haruhi fanart for me, some pictures that one guy had printed out for me because I ended up not having my camera with me when we were doing group pictures after the play, and (from the people at my school, specifically) two Japanese scripts with English translations in them. All of these things were bloody awesome.

It was followed by a round of self-introductions, which I've become convinced is one of maybe four drinking games the Japanese have. The second drinking game they have is to use the superlative votes everyone came up with and have the winners drink. The fourth is to have everyone take guesses at fairly random questions and have the losers drink. I leave room for a fourth drinking game because I'm sure there is one, but until the trip with the drama club, I had only ever seen self-introduction as a drinking game.

After that, people pretty much drank, munched, and eventually fell asleep. I ended up watching an anime on TV (yeah, the place had a TV) with Hirokawa at some point before sleeping on the tiny couch. That couch was really comfortable in spite of being tiny.

In the morning, we packed up, cleaned up, and left. Another hellacious walk back through the bugs later, we hit the bus stop and went back home. All in all, it was a great deal of fun.

Yesterday, Yuuji, Arima, and I went to Obihiro. Obihiro is a bit south of Kushiro, and is Yuuji's hometown. It's also home to a fireworks show every August that is famous throughout the country. Yuuji said it's about the 4th biggest yearly fireworks display in Japan. One of the newspapers siphons money towards the budget for it all year, and it's a multi-billion yen (multi tens of millions in US dollars) operation.

It looked it.

It was the most impressive fireworks display I've ever seen in my life. There was a local radio DJ MCing and about half the time was taken up by the MC and advertizing, but the other half of the 70-minute show was all fireworks. Thousands of fireworks. Big fireworks. Holy cow fireworks. It rocked.

Yuuji had wanted to drive me and Arima around town (which is why we left Kushiro at like 10 in the morning), but his car's alternator died when he stopped to go to the bathroom about 3/4 of the way to Obihiro. Luckily, it stopped just down the road from a car service/gas station, so they got his car running long enough to get us to Obihiro, but between that and the annual visit to the family grave he went to with his family the tour didn't really happen. We did get to see Yuuji's old high school on the walk to the fireworks viewing grounds, but apparently there were a lot of things he didn't get to show us. Our return to Kushiro happened in his older sister's car, who's apparently psychotic about keeping the inner car clean. There was a tray on the floor in the back seat to put my shoes in when I entered the car.

well then

2006-08-09T13:09:00.000+09:00

so i am cramped on a japanese bus for a long ride. heading to an instant cabin place with the drama club. they handed out pieces of paper with superlatives on them to be done on the bus ride. i had to ask the meaning of most of them. the most interesting part, however, was writing in kanji on a bus.

Flight and Vexation

2006-08-04T12:26:00.000+09:00

Apparently (probably because they waited so long to make the reservation), they couldn't get me a seat on a flight out on the 26th. So I'm leaving the 27th.

Depart Tokyo: 8/27/06 at 15:35 via Northwest Arilines
Arrive Seattle: 8/27/06 at 08:35 (Gotta love worm holes!)

Depart Seattle: 8/27/06 at 10:20 (Here's to praying I make the flight in time)
Arrive Anchorage: 8/27/07 at 12:53 via Alaska Airlines

And to top it all off, I am pretty much screwed on finding a cash advance in this town.

So

2006-08-02T15:58:00.000+09:00

So I fail at blogging. I just don't always keep up with it.

Anyway, last post was about how the teacher gave me the kimono I thought I was buying. The kimono is gorgeous. I would show you a picture, but I am on a school computer so I don't have it to upload. It's dark green with a gold-colored sakura pattern all over it. I love it. I'm still flabbergasted that Ikushima sensei just... gave it to me. I don't think I can pay the woman back for everything she's done for me.

The play is also over. Has been since a few days after my last blog post. I screwed up the lighting again, much to my dismay. Since then drama club has been an on-and-off thing, and mostly not the big combined deal. Just random theatre games and whatnot. I taught some of the guys here at my college the warmups from back home, and they thought the Chairman Mau excercises rocked. :D There's also a plan in the works for the combined club to go to a cheap group trip resort type place. We rent a cabin, hop in some hot springs, and generally have fun. Looking forward to that, though we are looking at fitting in about twice as many people as the cabin was made for. I think that makes it more fun.

The history class test went better than I expected. The reason for this is that the teacher made a separate test for the exchange students (as four of us were taking the class). First question was what did we learn in the class and the second was which of the art pieces he showed us did we like most and why. YAY! When he walked in with these double-size pieces of paper covered in just LINES, Matt and I looked at each other horror-stricken -- but it turned out not so bad after all.

Shortly after that, we the exchange students were informed that we were expected to participate in "International Night", a party that the school traditionally throws every year. As the teacher explained the party further, I realized that it was gonna be like the one they held for the Okinawans last semester, only less interesting. However, this is the first thing that I've been asked to do here that I absolutely didn't want to do. It's also not a big deal, really, so I didn't try to squirm my way out of it or anything.

It turned out more interesting than I expected, with them showing us how to make okonomiyaki and having tasty food. The Australians and I dressed up for the event because we felt like it, even though we knew no one else would. Matt fully dressed up in a suit, and Thomas wearing a suit with a T-shirt and no tie. Me in my kimono. Turned out Yuuji and Arima from Gaiken also went to the international night, a fact that didn't surprise me. :D They were like "DUDE, sweet kimono!" It was awesome. I also had a teacher from last semester fail to recognize me in the kimono. That was also awesome.

Monday night, Gaiken had an end-of-semester let's-all-go-to-the-all-you-can-eat-yakiniku-place deal. The place is a decent clip from the school, so they chartered a bus for the event. The bus was small and the people were many, and there was much conversation. A girl who went to UAF shortly before I came here and just got back recently brought a guy with her from UAF who seems to be her boyfriend, from the looks of things. He's a fire science major who's just here for the summer and has limited Japanese -- just enough to make silly jokes and keep up minimal conversation. I've never met him, but it seems from talking to him that the only real thing I have in common with him is that I get along with fire fighters rather well.

During the bus ride, I was at one point engaged in conversation with some of my Gaiken friends about a topic which I currently don't recall. During this conversation, I used the Japanese rough equivalent of, "But yeah...", at which point my friends all went O.O *GASP*. I instantly got a little freaked out, and asked if I used it wrong. They said no, that it was just the opposite -- that I had used it so perfectly it sounded completely natural.

(I win Xmas.)

Earlier in the day on Monday I had called my ISP about cutting off my internet around the 18th of this month, but apparently my options were end of July and end of August, after I had already left Japan. So. I now now longer have my own internet connection. Crappy school internet, ahoy!

I have made a great deal of progress towards uploading photos to the internet. They are, in fact, mostly zipped up and uploaded. I just don't remember the URLs at the moment, or I would list them. I want to set up a photo gallery somewhere at some point, but not yet. Blarg.

Realizations of the Period

1) You cannot use credit cards at the Japanese Postal Service.
1b) It's gonna be interesting sending stuff home.
2) Part of me really wants to go home. I figured out why. Everyone treats me like a girl here. I am so used to being one of the guys that it's been really getting on my nerves.

holy shit

2006-07-07T12:43:00.000+09:00

so like since i really wanted a kimono and the tea club teacher wears them all the time i asked her about where would be a good place to get one. she said she would talk to the person who tailors hers and she did and i just got it and it's absolutely gorgeous and made thick so it'll withstand alaskan winter and she is giving it to me. not letting me pay for it giving it to me. these are expensive, and i am flabbergasted.

july

2006-07-05T21:17:00.000+09:00

i have a thrice-blasted cold. at least it should be pretty much gone by my birthday.

speaking of my birthday, the current plan is to go drinking @ ひげ with the aussies because the barman shares my birthday. actually, i think tom is going on hiruta's mountain trip, so just me and matt. either way, i have decided that there will be fireworks as well. you can buy them just about anywhere for tanabata at the moment (japanese holiday whose significance i forget, july 7), and by mar's beard, it's actually dark enough to see the bloody things.

one of the actors in the drama club play had no acting experiec of any kind before this. to be quite honest, he sucked at first. now, however, you can easily see a difference between his main part and the two sub parts that go with it. he's improved a lot in a very short time, and it shows.

my house is dry now

2006-06-30T15:55:00.000+09:00

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

2006-06-29T15:24:00.000+09:00

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?

2006-06-28T22:24:00.000+09:00

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

2006-06-25T12:41:00.000+09:00

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

2006-06-25T12:31:00.000+09:00

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

2006-06-24T12:56:00.000+09:00

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

2006-06-24T00:47:00.000+09:00

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

2006-06-23T16:01:00.000+09:00

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

2006-06-18T22:49:00.000+09:00

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...

2006-06-17T22:45:00.000+09:00

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

2006-06-16T10:43:00.000+09:00

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

2006-06-04T12:50:00.000+09:00

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.

I Wish I Had a Moose

2006-05-30T12:19:00.000+09:00

Two weeks, no posting. Sorry. Been busy.

My Japanese is good enough now that I am doing some actual translating for the manga scanslation group now. :D Huzzah! Between my busy schedule and the other translator's busy schedule, we're each doing part of the chapters at this point.

Drama club is a very time-consuming experience. We meet 5-6 days a week. Hako has been put off until the student festival, which makes me sad as I won't get to see it. We have picked the play we are putting on. Hirokawa wrote it, but the title wasn't finalized until like two days ago -- The Princesses, with the title actually being in English. Cinderella and Snow White get pulled into "The Place Where Stories are Born" because the story spirit in charge of making sure their tales come off without a hitch screwed up and there is actually only one prince to dish out to their two stories.

I didn't get a part in the play, but the auditioning was fun and interesting. Emphasis on interesting. (Kanji are hard.)

I have also joined the kadoubu (ikebana [Japanese traditional flower arranging] club). That's once a week, Thursday morning, and expensive. High-quality flowers grown for ikebana purposes. >< But I'm picking it up fast and enjoying every moment. I have some cell phone pictures of the two I have done so far.

Speaking of pictures, I have decided that I am gonna have to just put them all in zip files for downloading until I can get PHP on my web site or something.

Yesterday, for the Exchange Student Seminar class, I gave a report on Alaska. Woo. All the reports people have been giving for this class have been fairly boring (none of us really care about any of this), and mine wasn't much of an exception, though the Australians assure me it was nowhere near as boring as the report on the native peoples of the Russian province Tolia and Olga are from. Moose weren't originally in my report, but they came up in the discussion afterward (they can be over 6 feet taller than a speeding bullet, eat trees more powerfully than a locomotive, and leap the tallest 6-foot fences in a single bound). That was when one of the Australians (can't remember which) said, "I wish I had a moose." Apparently they are planning to make a book of all the funny things they say here this year, which I think is a great idea, and that is going in it.

I've taken to hanging out in the exchange students room more often now that Tom and Matt are around. There's no internet at the dorms, so they spend a lot of time there. I had forgotten just how much it rocks to have sracastic English-speakers to hang out with. :D

There are a few classes just for the exchange students. The last of those to have its time slot decided was Abe-sensei's reading comprehension class. Hiruta-sensei compiled all our class schedules onto one piece of paper and gave it to Abe-sensei so he could pick a slot for the class. The slot he originally picked overlapped with sadoubu, which made me sad, as I had told Hirutasensei that I had club then. As such, when Olga asked if we could switch it to Tuesday morning, I was all for that, and no one else objected, so we did.

Now, however, several weeks into semester, she wants to change the Japanese language class to Wednesday morning. Even if I was up for changing the schedule this late in the game (and I am not), if we change it to Wednesday morning I will have no day of the week that I can sleep in on. I am currently having to get up early on Saturday and Sunday for club activities. I overslept this morning, and realized that last time I got to actually sleep in was like two weeks ago. My body doesn't like going to bed at midnight and getting up at 7:30, even though that is plenty of sleep. So... Olga's gonna have to deal with the current schedule.

Realizations of the Period

1) I think that next time someone rephrases what they said into over-simple words when I just ask them to repeat something so I could catch it, I might blow up. If not next time, then sometime soon. :S
2) I hate credit cards.

What's "Donburi"?

2006-05-14T23:13:00.000+09:00

Yesterday and today, the drama club did a lot of deliberating over what script to go with for the play we want to put on at the end of the semester. We convened in the morning and went on into early evening on both days, so naturally there was a break for lunch each day. Both times, some of us went down to Seicomart for pre-made lunch goodness. Today, when we got back, Hirokawa and I had a conversation including the following snippet.

H: Do they have donburi in America?
L: Donburi?
H: Yeah.
L: Um... is that like, pre-made food you can buy for lunch?
H: Huh?
L: What's "donburi"?
H: {Indignantly} "What's donburi?!" It's [whatever]-don. Pork cutlet-don. Hamburger-don.

From which, based on what we had bought, I figured out that "don" means "over rice". While this story isn't funny or anything like that, it was great for me because Hirokawa's tone on that last line was something I hadn't heard directed at me since coming to Japan. It was full of momentary, "What are you, stupid?!" It felt kind of like I had broken through a wall. I mean, I've made quite a number of friends since coming here, but most of the people I have talked to have either been more polite with me than others, understanding of me not knowing words, or just not been the kind of people to say stuff like that. It was just a good feeling.

I also went with a bunch of people from Drama club to see a play today. It was called 思い出のグリーン•グラス, or The Green Glass of Memories. I didn't catch the things they said that explained the title of the play, but I could tell what was going on and what the internal and external conflicts of the characters were.

At the beginning of the play, the main character, Aizen, is coming into his first day on the job as a prison guard. He meets the prison warden, one of his co-workers, and the first prisoner coming into his charge. It's a character driven story; as the play goes on, you learn a bit about the prison warden and his co-worker (Nomura) and why they are there. Nomura turns out to be a bit of a nutcase, from which stems a good deal of the conflict. Nomura's parents were killed in front of him when he was a child, causing him to want all criminals dead. I didn't catch what was up with the prison warden exactly -- only that his inner voice was telling him that he was supposed to be like Nomura, liking seeing criminals die. Aizen, on the other hand, ends up becoming friends of a sort with the prisoner under his care; he doesn't like Nomura's view of the prisoners at all, which wears on him as the play goes on.

The best part of the play was Nomura. His actor did such a wonderful job. He made the character come off as being just freaky nutso crazy so well. And the pace of his insanity bubbling out into the open over the course of the play was fantastic. The fact that the guy had a slight lisp somehow enhanced the character's insanity, too.

It was the last performance, and I don't know exactly how my drama club had been supporting the production of this, but it had. As a result, I was one of four of us (Hirokawa, Yuuji, and Daisuke were the other three) who helped strike set. That was about when I realized that although I've gotten over a good deal of my shyness when talking in Japanese, it still bubbles to the surface when in the middle of a group of people I don't know and don't have a good stock of vocabulary for talking to them with.

I tried talking to Nomura's actor at the beginning, but I was shy and he was shy and we got pulled off to do set striking stuff. I didn't figure out that he was shy, too, untill later, when I finally just walked up and told him that I thought he did an excellent job. (Hooray for getting fed up with my own lack of guts!) Turns out he's only part way through high school; he's planning to go to a drama school in Tokyo when he graduates, then go to America to study further at some point. I think his prospects are good. I am also glad that I have little patience with my own shyness; it should be easier for me to up and talk to people after this.

Today has been a really good day.

The Illiterate

2006-05-10T22:13:00.000+09:00

Have you ever wondered what it is like to be illiterate? I have. Especially since I met a guy last summer who was. What kinds of pain in the ass problems does it cause? Jealousy? Frustration?

Well, it's really not so bad.

I'm not really literate in Japanese. My reading level is somewhere in the mid-elementary-school range. This has become so painfully obvious since I joined the drama club because we're reading a bunch of different scripts in preparation for picking a play to show this semester. I must say, there's a reason so many peasants never learned to read -- it's very useful, but not absolutely necessary. If you really need to know something, someone can tell you.

I'm getting a lot of literacy studying in this way though. :D

The kendo class I signed up for turned out to be a class on martial arts in general, and their place as sports and in education. I misread the kanji. It IS taught by a guy who does kendo, though, so much of the examples given use it as a base. It's really a very interesting class. And yesterday we got to see a litter of foxes playing under their mother's supervision through the window.

Harmonics class is friggin' awesome. I never realized figuring out chord progressions could be such a pain in the ass, though. We have only had homework once, which was last week, due this past monday. He gave us eight bars of a base line to turn into a harmonic chord progression. It was like the excercises he gives us in class, only longer and a bit more complex.

There were a couple of spots in there that didn't fit how I thought it was supposed to work; I spent a grand total of 5-6 hours pouring over it over the course of three days, then checking my work for mistakes, then trying to figure out how to make it work the way I wanted to. I learned a lot in my experimenting, and when I took it to class I was one of a few people who had no mistakes. YAY! The rest of the class was him giving us problems of similar complexity (I seriously think he makes these up as he goes) and checking over our work. I had no mistakes on any of those either. The 6 hours of hmm-ing over 8 bars of music really paid off.

I'm pretty sure I am screwed in the history class. But I'm gonna keep trying anyway.

While I have nothing in common with the Russian exchange students, I am gonna get along with the Australians just fine. Thomas is a gaming/computer/anime/sci-fi nerd who (like me) misses having two monitors and a trackball. Matt isn't a huge nerd like Thomas and I, but it's obvious he gets along just fine with huge nerds. Both guys like Family Guy and the like, too. :D I got to sit down and actually chat with them this afternoon. ( :O Like, wow, man!)

Taste-O-Meter!

Takoyaki: 5
Chopped up octopus mixed in with other ingredients that are kind of like turkey stuffing (only with a taste more suited to octopus) and fried into the shape of a ball. I got to see these being made, and it was crazy. They had a grill that looked like a mancala board without the big end holes, and guys were sitting there poking piles of food into perfect spheres with only a pair of what looked like woodworking picks for tools. It was insane. And tasty.

Realizations of the Period

1) There is an anime called The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi. You must watch it. It's brilliant (and has good animation, a rare combo). They managed to make a sci-fi/comedy that excels at both and is FAR from generic, in spite of its deceiving start. Even if you don't want to watch the whole series, you should watch the first episode, as it stands on its own as great entertainment, being made like a crappy (possibly the crappiest) student film ever. Bit torrent file can be found here. If you don't like BT (*cough*Kenneth! */cough*), then I am very, very sorry for you. See if you can get it some other way, because this is quite possibly the best anime (and vying for best cartoon on either side of the ocean) I have ever seen. [STEALTH EDIT: Someone else who doesn't like BT pointed me to this site with direct downloads for Haruhi. Get it! Get it now! You have no excuse.]
2) You would think midi files of classical arias would be easy to find online. WRONG! Damn them all to hell.

We Are Strong / Engekibu

2006-04-29T22:11:00.000+09:00

Some days are good. Yesterday and today both qualify.

Yesterday, I had the first Japanese Language class of the semester. Now that my ability to hear what exactly people are saying has improved, Kitamei-sensei's accent isn't as impossible and I can fully enjoy the fact that he's a really nice old man. I have also learned a lot more in the way of kanji and vocabulary over break than I first thought, I think. I got to meet the second Australian exchange student, Tom, and actually spend a few minutes talking to the first, Matt. It seems like every time I see Matt around, I am rushing off to a class.

After that was sadoubu; with the death of Ikushima-sensei's mother last weekend, she did not join us this week. I ended up helping both Yumi (the first-year whose mother was in sadoubu when she came to this college) and Tolia with their tea ceremony-ing. :P There were a lot of jokes about me being a sensei. I'm proud of how well I did with explaining things in Japanese, though.

After sadoubu, there was a Gaiken party. Let's go drinking and get to know the first years! The basic format (one party at Aquaveil with a stage and microphones that are great for presenting people and everyone getting lubricated enough to relax, one party at Umi E [E is pronounced eh; means To The Sea] where everyone is hanging out and doing lots of drinking and snacks on some good food for drinking with, one party at a karaoke place) was the same as the post-gakusai one, but this time the Aquaveil party was less "Yay! That's over and done with! Good job guys!" and more "Tell us about yourselves, O first years, and let us introduce ourselves as well." The first years (Lina agreed with me on this one) were pretty boring. However, I figure that by the time they hit third year they'll liven up, given their company in the department.

I was glad I got to go to the karaoke this time... it was a lot of fun. By that time, it was down to a little under 20 people, including three members of the soft rock club, so there was a good mix of fun singing and downright good singing, and most of the people who made it to the karaoke place were the people I like most in the department. I also looked at the people I have gotten closest to and realized that we either started talking more because we find the same kind of differences between our two cultures and languages interesting (Kana, Jack, etc) or because we have similar senses of humor (Arima, Yuuj, etc). Somehow, the guys whose sense of humor fall in line with mine are all smokers. This normally doesn't bother me at all, but the smoke got fairly thick in the karaoke place by the time we left at 3 AM, and since I haven't been around a lot of smoking in a long time, it bothered my eyes. But oh well.

Also, Asa challenged me to a drinking contest last night at Umi E. *shakes head* I dunno what he was thinking, but with the way he presented the challenge, I had no choice but to accept even though I knew he was doomed. Since he goes drinking a lot more than I do, we actually threw up after the same amount of alcohol. (We finished off five 1-litre bottles of beer and three pitchers of a kalua mixed drink in one hour, with our drinking toast being "We are strong!" in English.) Thing is, my body is smart enough to be like, "OK, bitch, you've drunk too much, too fast, with no water. Go throw up now," so after I threw up, I was fine. I never even had any motor control loss. Asa, however, had a rather ruddy complexion, passed out for a bit, and still felt sick after he woke up. I was regarded the victor by Asa, as well as several spectators.

And Asa wants a rematch.

Moving on to today...

Today, I joined the drama club -- engekibu in Japanese. Yuuji of the Gaiken is also in it, which is how I came to find out about its existence. I am soooooo glad I did. :D Except for the Renn fair last summer and a student film in my first or second year of college, I haven't been part of an acting group in a long time -- and those two exceptions were both a getting together whenever we had time to practice thing, then showing the final project. Not much in the way of theatre games and just excercising the physical and mental muscles that go into acting.

So today was fun. We spent some time just excercising our bodies, then moved on to games. One game was about pretending to pass a ball. That was interesting for me because Japanese onomatopoeia was involved... and I don't actually know much of that. I learned some very quickly, though, and I already know the sound effect for something rolling (from sadoubu, how about that?), so it worked out pretty well. We also did the Mirror, Mirror game I grew up playing, though Yuuji didn't give it a name when he explained it. It's an excercise in working in concert with a partner; you face each other and try to move in mirrored movements with neither person leading or following. It's always been one of my favorite excercises, actually.

We also did some Japanese tongue twisters. That was awesome. I taught a couple of English ones to Yuuji, too, but we didn't do those as a group -- doesn't make sense to, really, since the other four guys don't really speak any English. Yuuji thought "The sixth shiek's sixth sheep is sick," was a particularly horrible one. Anyway, have some Japanese tongue twisters (and here is a link to a guide on pronouncing Japanese, in case you don't know how):

赤巻き紙
青巻き紙
黄巻き紙

Aka maki gami
Ao maki gami
Ki maki gami

Red roll of paper
Blue roll of paper
Yellow roll of paper

(Interesting note about this one; in English, blue and red are one syllable to yellow's two; in Japanese, it's the exact opposite. When I was trying to say this earlier, the fact that the word for yellow is one syllable kept throwing me off.)

生麦
生米
生卵

Nama mugi
Nama gome
Nama tamago

Raw barley
Raw rice
Raw egg

京都来たなら一度はおいで
姉三六角蛸錦

Kyouto kita nara ichi do ha oide
Nee-san-rok-kaku-tako-nishiki

If you came to Kyouto, once you went outside,
Nee-san-rok-kaku-tako-nishiki

(This one is a song that describes the order of the streets you cross as you head away from the Kyouto train station. The kanji on the second line are the first kanji in each road's name.)

After that, Hirokawa and Higasiyama had to leave. Yuuji went for a smoke break, and after he came back, I got to sit through a run-through of what has so far been written of a one-man play that the club is gonna put on at the end of June. Yuuji is the actor. (I guess one-man is a bit misleading as used here; he's the only one on stage, but there is also a voice that interacts with him after a certain point.) I was given a script to read over while it went on. :D Joyous me, I could not only read the better part of it on my own, but was able to still follow along with the parts I couldn't read on my own. HUZZAH! And happy happy joy joy for me picking up slang really well -- I didn't have any problems with the slangy grammar. The play is also quite funny.

The play is called Hako. Hako is japanese for box. The play starts, and Yuuji's first line is (translated), "I'm home! ... No one to hear that, though." It's about a guy who lives alone, has no real friends, and has nothing to occupy his time at home. He's bored off his ass, and looking for something to do (in a very humorously dramatic fashion), and remembers that he has an unopened box. He's monologuing about this box and what could possibly be in it ("Maybe it's gas. Gas? POISON GAS! And there's a hole in the box!" *falls over strangling*). He eventually decides to try sleeping for a second time, only to have the box start talking to him.

The play is written as far as him accepting the talking box (which has a great personality; it talks in clipped phrases that make it sound cynical in a funny way). Why he has an unopened box, I didn't catch exactly. This was partly due to me going off in gales of laughter over a specific line. Before the box starts talking to him, he tries making food, but that only takes up so much time. He tries singing and dancing to some music, but gets tired of it quickly. He tries sleeping, but can't. When he gives up on sleeping, he starts going on about how it's boring and he has nothing to do -- boringboringboringBORING! Nothing to DO! ARGH! ARGH! Is there NOTHING interesting?! *pulling at his own hair* No crying children?! *reach for the sky* WINE VINEGAR! *pose* Blizzaga! *bigger pose* Thundaga!! *yet bigger pose* FIRAGA!!!

...

I'm sure it's not nearly as funny written here as it is in my memory.

Realizations of the Period

1) I'm able to crtically analyze a play in another language. Not to the extent that I can do with an English one, but still... I feel like a crazy mofo.
2) While it's fun to be a laughing drunk, it's about three times as fun to be so if you have another laughing drunk to laugh with. :D

Kids' Shows

2006-04-25T10:52:00.000+09:00

So for the past couple of days I've been in the mood to turn my TV on in the mornings, with the best stuff on being kids shows. Since kids' shows are designed to impart language and cultural stuff into kids' brains and everyone talks slowly and clearly, they are great for me to watch.

Yesterday, I got to see a short, claymation cartoon. After a chicken fell down the chimney of one of three houses on the screen, it was revealed that it was about these housnails -- snails with houses on their backs instead of shells. I never cought the main character's name, but he appears to be about 8-9 in terms of maturity, and the show is about him and his parents and stuff going on with them.

There was a tiny housnail, too, named Pipe (pee-peh). He was apparently a stray they picked up somewhere along the way, because they came across his grandpa, and then there was some sad farewellage, since the family and Pipe had gotten to like each other a lot. In the middle of the sad farewellage, a bird came along and took Pipe (which was how he had gotten separated from his grandpa in the first place). The grandpa housnail apparently has an oil drilling platform on his back instead of a house (How awesome is that?) and was working when Pipe got stolen the first time, so there was nothing he could do. This time, he fired a cannon at the bird, making him pretty well officially the coolest old man in a kids' cartoon ever -- or at least up there.

EDIT: I guess the housnail cartoon's main character's name is Jam. Since this is available on DVD, I may end up having to get it. It's tempting.

This morning, I got to see a kids show where they were introducing the concept of a part-time job through a guy in a big-butted bear costume and a juice shop. Naturally, when the bear was going through training he was taught how to make the juices. The store sells pineapple, orange, grape, strawberry, melon, and some other juice I have already forgotten. Whatever, doesn't matter -- they were teaching the kids fraud. They were making the juices by mixing combinations of yellow, dark pink, blue, and white to make the different juices. I know they were illustrating color mixing, but you don't do it by saying that mixing pink with milk and adding water makes strawberry juice.

My classes are also finalized. Here's the list:

Japanese History
Harmonics
Martial Arts (Not a practice class; I think it's history and way of thinking and stuff)
Choir
Group Voice Lessons
Japanese Language
Japanese Conversation

The history class... is gonna be a pain. Watch videos in class, write reports. Well, the videos are generic educational videos that have a lot of big words and show you like pieces of art and pottery that are only halfway related to the subject in question. Not easy for me to follow. The martial arts class will also be a bit difficult, but when I was talking to the teacher yesterday, he said that while he couldn't give me much in the way of special attention in class that after class I was welcome to ask him any questions I had to make things clearer. :D Yay!

I am looking forward to this semester.

Realizations of the Period

1) One thing I wasn't thinking about when packing for coming to Japan was the possibility of being invited to a funeral. I now really, really wish I had brought a black formal shirt. (Japanese funerals are naturally different than American ones, with definite emphasis on comforting the family -- respecting the dead is also involved, but that is more the responsibility of the family. Ikushima-sensei's [tea ceremony teacher] mother died a couple of days ago. I was invited to the wake, but there ended up not being room for another person in the car. Wake was a long ways off from here. Still, I wouldn't have had really appropriate clothes to wear.)

8000 Yen

2006-04-22T18:16:00.000+09:00

Yesterday I went to the Friday Gaiken meeting. Found out at that time that the fourth years were having a party to welcome Lina (the "Japanese evil twin" of mine I mentioned some time ago) back from Australia. Being a fellow fourth year, they invited me along and I went.

It was a great deal of fun. I actually got a decent amount of conversing in (a feat I wouldn't have been able to accomplish not too long ago). Eventually, I ended up also having conversations in English to help the studiers of English with their English conversation skills. There were a number of mixed-language conversations, too, some of which turned out really funny.

The main joke of the evening was that Katuu's rug had cost 8000 yen, so if anyone spilled anything on it, they would have to pay for the rug. Naturally, this turned into a chorus of "8000 yen! 8000 yen!" any time any minor spill happened anywhere.

Good stuff. Good times. And the more drunk Lina gets, the more English she speaks.

A World Full of Music

2006-04-20T18:14:00.000+09:00

I found out from Hiruta-sensei yesterday that there will be two special classes for exchange students this semester: Japanese Language with Kitamei-sensei and Japanese Comprehension with Abe-sensei. These are two classes I was taking last semsester. The former is going to be at the same time slot in the week, Fridays at 1 PM. The latter will be decided when we all know what classes we are taking.

Right now, the classes I know I am taking are those two, Japanese History, Harmonics, Choir, and Voice Lessons. :D I got approval for all three music classes, which makes me very happy (and prompted the blog post's title). That's a total of six, so I need one more; I think I am gonna spring for Kendo.

Yesterday at sadoubu we had three new members. One already seems to know quite a bit about sadou; one knows absolutely nothing; and the third is a girl whose mother also came to this school and was in sadoubu in her day. The one who knows absolutely nothing is a guy (and a guy who's face reminds me very much of Paul's -- like how Paul might look if he were Japanese) who recently moved into the same boarding house as Tolia. Looks like Tolia told him about sadoubu. It also looks like Tolia will be able to come to sadoubu more regularly, but... I dunno.

Anyway, Ikushima-sensei spent about 20 minutes instructing us on the traditional ways to move around (sit, stand, walk, open and close doors) in a tatami room (which was nice, because I've been bumbling through that stuff with very little instruction so far). Tatami, in case I've not mentioned this before, are the mats in tradtional Japanese-style rooms. Most Japanese rooms don't even have carpet, much less tatami. That, combined with the fact that young Japanese folk no longer live near their grandparents, has resulted in most young Japanese folk not knowing this stuff, either.

Ikushima-sensei actually talked at length to the assembled club members about that. This was at the end, so a few people who had had to leave early were already gone, but she talked about how the traditional Japanese stuff -- sadou, kadou (aka ikebana aka traditional flower arranging), tatami rooms, kimono wearing -- is being learned by fewer and fewer Japanese youngsters these days. There's no going back to the old ways, she said; all that can be done is to teach it to those who will learn to try to keep it alive. She also talked about how even though most Japanese people don't know this stuff anymore, this is still how the outside world views Japan. And it's true. It seems sometimes like foreigners know more about traditional Japan than Japan as a whole does.

(I'll tell you what, though, some of the misconceptions I had before coming here... I dunno what I was smoking. Some of them were just retarded. Some of them were so retarded that I can't even remember what they were. Anyway.)

So yeah. I have voice lessons in the morning and a long walk in the dreary weather today has made my voice scratchy. Oops. But I have more fruit now. Oranges that are good enough for candying and bananas that are still a bit green. I bought some cheap honey, and it's so cheap that I now need to find something to cook it intp because it's so cheap it doesn't taste good.

Anyway, off to homework. Gotta get that done before tomorrow so I can get a photoshop done tomorrow so I can play FFXI the day after that -- new expansion that adds Blue Mage and Pirate (they call it Corsair, but I know better!) to the mix, as well as a Puppetmaster job and new areas and new PvP combat and new Player vs. Beastmen combat and just a whole SLEW of really awesome-looking stuff. I think everyone is most looking forward to the Blue Mage job, though. Bad Breath? 1000 Needles? Oh, hell yeah. Hell-bloody-yeah.

Classes, Classes, Everywhere...

2006-04-17T13:16:00.000+09:00

And not only can I read most of their names (I ask, again, can I get a HELL YEAH?), but I have picked out the ones I want to take, with a couple of backups. Ishida-sensei, as far as I know, is seeing about Japanese language class(es) for me, but the other ones I am looking at are as follows (as listed in the schedule starting early on Monday):

Wants:
Japanese History I
Kendo
Harmonics
Sewing (I think that is what it is; something to do with sewing, for sure)
Choir II (there is no I)
Group Voice Lessons

Backups:
Music Culture
Dance

I am typing this from the Gaiken room. I have been to two teachers offices and looked up and down for a third without finding it. In short, I haven't been able to find any of these teachers to ask if I can take their classes. It's a class period right now, and I know at least one of the teachers is currently teaching, but I figured she would have taken lunch in her office. Oh well.

I also can't find Hiruta-sensei or Ishida-sensei to ask for help finding these other teachers' offices. I know Ishida-sensei is busy this week because he is going to Sapporo in a couple of days, but I had heard from Tolia that Hiruta-sensei would be available this afternoon... so I dunno. The teacher whose office I hung out in front of until this class period started is the one that runs the class I wanna take next period, so I will just ask her when I get to the class. I had wanted to give her a bit more warning than that, but it worked for Kunizawa-sensei with the koto lesson class last semester, so... *shrug*

Realizations of the Period

1) I find myself having a lot more stamina now that I have lost weight. :P Less bulk to propel around.

Ahh, Kanji.

2006-04-16T11:06:00.000+09:00

I finally have the info I need to pick classes. Huzzah! It's all in kanji, however. I can read about half of it, and I get to dig through this stuff later today. I'm not sure what I am gonna take. I thought about taking German, but it occurred to me that I'm not completely solid on grammar vocabulary in Japanese... making that not necessarily the best idea. So. Maybe I'll take a bunch of classes having to do with foreign interaction -- economics and the like.

In short, I dunno what I am doing.

Also, turns out that having the "tutor" to help me out was a one-semester deal, to help me get settled in Japan. This doesn't surprise me and doesn't really bother me. I didn't, after all, ask Sayaka for much help along those lines, anyway. I'll still get to see her around, since we are both foreign language majors. I am sure I can get help from Yuuko, too, if I need it. So. S'all good.

In sadoubu, I have started learning the upper-level stuff now. :O The order for doing everything is completely different. And since I'm now using chaire (cha-ee-re) instead of natsume to hold the tea before I make it... the way to clean it off is completely different. A lot of the motions are the same, though, so I didn't do completely terrible the one time I have done it so far. Next time I do it will be under Ikushima-sensei's tutelage. :S Oyoy.

Also, when I was watching Blood+ (an anime) yesterday on TV, I was able to cook at the same time and still catch everything. Well, everything I had the vocabulary to catch. There are some technical words that would be laden with kanji I don't know in every episode that I never catch, but I can understand the main and important parts of the story. And yesterday, I did it while mildly distracted. :D Can I get a HELL YEAH?

And I know it has been a while, but with the return to sadoubu and the advent of a new season...

Taste-O-Meter!

Sanyo: 4
A Japanese sweet. It's beige in color. I don't know what is in it, but the outside has a powder, and it's made from some kind of bean. It's Ikushima-sensei's favorite type of sweet, apparently.

Kintsuba: 5
This was an interesting sweet. The inside of it is adzuki (the sweet anko paste that makes its way into a lot of Japanese sweets). However, outside is a non-crunchy shell of something transparent. I couldn't place a taste for it, so I don't know what it is, but this stuff was tasty. The sweet was molded, somehow -- I dunno if it was stamped or what, but the shell and innards had indents in the top that formed the name of the candy maker.

It's Official; I've Driven to Fairbanks WAY Too Often.

2006-04-09T22:38:00.000+09:00

I went to help the Alaska/English study group I've been aiding (have I mentioned that in the blog yet? I think so... bunch of Education majors who want to visit Alaska) today, and it turned out that today was slated for a slideshow of pictures taken by a group of students who went to Alaska in October. The slideshow started with pictures of the Glenn and Parks Highways, since they had been lucky enough to have a perfectly clear day for the drive from Anchorage to Fairbanks.

I knew exactly where EVERY SINGLE ONE of those pictures had been taken.

Hey, that's just past the Boniface exit. And that's around the bend from Fort Richardson. Oh, they're about to see the South Peter's Creek sign. And that is about five minutes before Healy.

This, combined with the pictures of UAF's Japan-Alaska Club's happenings (whose direct photo-ees included Ben, Ben, Linda, Tom, Steven, and Ed) made me a bit homesick. :'( It also stiffened my resolve to make sure I can attend the club meetings this year; in the past they have always occurred when I am working.

Yesterday after posting in the blog, I also had the unexpected chance to see a play for free. It was a four-man play, about 40 minutes long, and an advertizement for the drama club I didn't know existed. And all their rehearsals happen in the evenings. Like, after classes and sadoubu. So I can probably do it, too. :D YES!

:( I had a Realization of the Period I wanted to do today, and I can't for the life of me remem... OH YEAH!

Realizations of the Period

1) In America, people tend to carry debit and credit cards to pay for things because they feel it isn't safe to carry cash. In Japan, it's not just a matter of theft not happening as often that makes people not want to use credit cards. They actually think using credit cards is unsafe -- you don't know how many people will see your information. So they don't want to use them at all. (This explains why Amazon.co.jp has the oh-so-convenient COD method listed first in their checkout for domestic orders.)

Eggs!

2006-04-08T11:13:00.000+09:00

My life revolves around eggs at the moment, it seems. While that's an eggxageration, lots going on with eggs.

I got some eggs a few days ago from the convenience store. They're tasty, they're cheap, they satisfy my need for protein, and I don't have to walk 20 minutes to get to a store that sells them (unlike sausages, chicken, and other meats). I got home, was taking my shoes off, and dropped the carton. :'( One egg was completely FUBAR. Four were fully intact (if needing to have egg yolk cleaned off of them) and five were cracked. So I decided to scramble the cracked ones. I have since found that having a container of eggs pre-scrambled in the fridge is very convenient, as eggs mix right into rice really, really well. I'm loving it.

And yes, a full carton of eggs in Japan has ten eggs. You can also buy by the half-dozen, but a carton of eggs is ten here.

Other egg news has to do with FFXI's easter event. You talk to the moogle once per game day and get a letter egg. Certain letter combinations get you certain special items. There are huge crowds around the festival moogles, and eggs are easily going 10-30k gil a pop. It's insane. I wonder, sometimes, if I am the only person willing to talk to moogles at random and trade other people for eggs... since we DO have TWO WEEKS before the event moogles go home to whatever rock they hide under when not on the job. But anyway.

School starts up again on monday, and I haven't heard ANYTHING about registering for classes. :S I am gonna pop into the school later today and check out the international students room and see if there is anything posted. Sayaka doesn't know anything about what I need to do, either. This is mildly disturbing. But then, I actually got here on like the second day of classes for last semester, so... whatever, I guess.

-_- Addendum

2006-04-03T13:38:00.000+09:00

Or it can have gotten too dangerous out for me to like the idea of walking far enough to do the second errand. I'll try that one again tomorrow. :S

-_-

2006-04-03T11:54:00.000+09:00

So I wake up this morning and look at the window, and I'm all like, "Yay! It's sunny. Perfect, since I have errands to run." Get up, get dressed, etc, and open the curtains to discover that it is a delightfully bright day with asstons (yes, asstons, after there was almost NONE for the past two days) of snow on the ground, with more falling and wind blowing.

Naturally, these errands are ones I can't put off, being financial in nature. So... I grabbed my umbrella, the form I need for one errand, and my trash, and headed out. Lo! lots of snow drifts, thanks to the wind. The stairs from my floor to the ground were completely drifted over, which meant I was trying to carry a folder, a bag of trash, and an umbrella while holding a handrail and trying not to fall on my ass.

I survived that, got the trash in the trash shed, and headed for school. I had to walk in the road at points, because of drifts covering the sidewalk. Then I got to a point where I had to face it -- too many cars to walk in the road, so my feet were gonna just have to get wet. I plunged through snow drifts, fighting the wind with my umbrella and hoping it wouldn't break (since this is the first use of this umbrella since buying it), get to the school... and the guy I need to talk to had just gone to lunch.

...

Here I am at home, planning to just do both errands later. I'm gonna put that folder in my bookbag, though, because I need both hands to fight the wind with my umbrella.

Also, on a completely unrelated note, once I publish this post, I am changing the blog name to something more creative. Huzzah!

So Many Possibilities

2006-04-01T22:15:00.000+09:00

There are so many things I could put here for April Fool's Jokes, but I can't think of any that wouldn't actually worry people, so I won't. I refer you, instead, to YTMND.

Weather finally cleared up today. Hooray! I've actually gotten quite a bit done. Opened the window while I paid the rent this afternoon, which was preceded by an Expeditionary Force in FFXI (got a party together to go kick ass for the glory of my country, Windurst), which was preceded by me calling the PFD office and the UAF Financial Aid office and getting good news both times. Huzzah! They were short calls, too, which means good mojo for my phone bill. I also made more headway on my new scanslation chapter. Good day. :D

I also got myself a Secondary Awesome Chair. I weep in sorrow that it was not available in green. Here is why:

Lena and the Beastly Weather

2006-03-29T13:01:00.000+09:00

It was shaping up sooooo nicely, and then it had to get to doing snow and rain at the same time alternately with snow that's just really, really, really wet. :'( No walks for the Lena. Put some crimps in my shopping plans, but there was one day that was good enough to shop (my shoes are getting rather ragged, and I don't want to go for hours in wet feet, really).

I discovered that a tiny rice cooker that cooks only about as much as my pot on the stove runs some 50 dollars or more. I have decided that it is effectively not worth the money for a few more months of stay. I have also found that I can't seem to find VCRs. Maybe I am not looking in the right places.

The bookstore in Posful, however, did have all the Elfin Lied manga in stock. :D HUZZAH! I also got books for a couple of other people, and an idea for a book to get for someone else. Muhaha!

Katamari PSP

2006-03-24T19:35:00.000+09:00

Went shopping yesterday, for food and to get Nacilik some books (which they are still out of, the rats). On a whim, I decided to see what I could find for PSP, and lo! Boku no Watashi no Katamari Damacy. Huzzah!

They emulated the control scheme of the PS2 games by having it still be a tank drive system that uses the buttons on the right and the d-pad on the left. My left hand's lack of skill at life causes me to have occasional moments of oops, but overall it is very nearly as smooth to use as the PS2 version. All your beloved wackiness is back, and this time you start levels by flying from a giant slingshot into the King's purple spandex-covered groin.

Not really, but very close.

I also have meat now, which makes me happy. Go meat!

Today I was gonna go to the Posful area and do some more shopping for various good things like those books for Nacilik and a rice cooker, but the weather was not good for keeping dry the socks of a walker with dying shoes, so... I didn't. Let's see how the weather goes tomorrow.

Computer Software of the Gods

2006-03-21T13:28:00.000+09:00

Photoshop.

It's great. I fall more in love with it the more I use it. And I found out that I can set it to automatically open, resize, optimize for web, save, and close a whole folder full of files. Hallelujah! I still need to set the web site up myself (since FrontPage is the the Computer Software of the Devil), but that makes my life so, so much easier. Hallelujah!

Also, I went to buy breakfast this morning because I really wanted some curry, and there was an old man (I'd say 55ish or so) at the edge of the parking lot for the apartment building who was pissing in the grass. Not even hiding in a corner or anything. It was at the end of the fence, so he was visible from all directions. It was kinda weird.

What Do We Need?

2006-03-19T00:04:00.000+09:00

More pictures!

...

T_T K, don't need 'em. But that is what we got. I finally figured out a way to get my pictures from cell phone to internet. Here are two:

Very cool Jak II box art (if a bit glared over) and the coolest pair of flip flops I have ever seen. Wasn't gonna pay 4500 yen (about $40) for them, though. Both of these pictures were taken in November in a shopping district far, far away.

Realizations of the Period

1) I don't look forward to resizing and resaving all the pictures taken with my camera. I just don't.

A Road to Trudge

2006-03-18T01:51:00.000+09:00

:( Last night wasn't like the night before. It was cloudy and windy and cold. Today I really wanted to level my Bard in FFXI, so I didn't check.

On the plus side, I have finished the second draft of the scanslation chapter and should soon be starting in on redoing all of my pictures for re-upload to my web site and display. :'( OMG. So many pictures.

Helped Yuuko and the other people who want to go to Alaska with their English again today. We have played fun games the last few times. :D They are more comfortable around me, too. Today's lesson was about saying what time it is. I never realized just how many acceptable ways there are to say 2:15. Two fifteen, quarter after two, quarter past two. Then there is combining stuff like that with AM and PM and noon and midnight and...

Have you ever stopped to think about how crazy it is that we understand languages at all?

Victory and Doughnuts

2006-03-15T23:13:00.000+09:00

The Victory: I got the first draft of the scanslations edit done. Huzzah!

The Doughnuts: So I wanted some victory doughnuts. I live pretty much right in between the two nearest doughnut shops, judging by the fact that it takes about twenty minutes either way. I usually go to the one over by Coach & Four because it's a prettier route. And that is the way I went.

I'll tell you what, I am so sorry I didn't have my camera.

The full moon and the stars are out, the temperature is perfect for a walk (just cold enough to see your breath), there was almost no wind, and the lake right across the road from the mini shopping district where the doughnut shop is is glazed over with ice still. Since it has been warm of late, the ice is reflective and was displaying a lot of color from the shopping district. So I ate my doughnuts by the lake instead of coming home to eat them while gaming.

I hope tomorrow is like tonight, so I can go take pictures. :'(

/Sigh

2006-03-14T12:18:00.000+09:00

After playing around a bit with the web site and putting photos up... I realized I am gonna have to bite it and resave all of the pictures with thumbnails. It just ain't gonna work otherwise. Which means picture upload time is gonna take a while. >< I'm sorry. And I can't get to it yet because I am crunching on the scanslation project.

Blarg.

TV会議 / Ash

2006-03-11T16:12:00.000+09:00

会議 == Conference.

This is, to say, that I got up early yesterday and went to Kashiwagi Elementary School for their last webcam (making the term "TV" misleading, but whatever) conference with Bennett Elementary School in Virginia. I thought I was gonna be helping with stuff, but I ended up as an audience member.

It was actually fairly interesting to watch. The two schools have been doing a pair project involving investigating the plant and animal life around their schools and reporting their findings to the other school. They took turns, each side doing 5-ish reports at a time.

The Japanese kids stood up in singles, pairs, or triples, had no materials, and recited memorized reports about the trees around the school and Lake Hattori. A Japanese guy in a business suit (who wasn't on camera; none of the adults in the room were, until the end) then read aloud a (sometimes slightly broken) English translation. His pronounciation was pretty good. Then the American students stood up one at a time and read their reports off a piece of paper and showed the Japanese students a picture of their tree via the webcam. A woman off view of the webcam then translated what they said into Japanese. This went back and forth.

I thought it was interesting to note the differences in each side. Memorized vs. not, pictures vs. none. Kashiwagi's webcam was superior to that of Bennett. Kashiwagi's was good enough to stand on a tripod and show all the kids in the room with a nice, clear picture while Bennett's was about the same quality as that of Nacilik -- decently clear if you have it at arms length or so and are showing 1-3 people. It was good enough to get a decent look at the tree pictures they showed us.

At the end, the students of Kashiwagi sang the Japanese version of the Do Re Mi Song from The sound of Music for the students at Bennett. The Bennett students were supposed to join in and sing the English version for the second verse with everyone singing both versions the third time around, but I am thinking they either couldn't hear the keyboard or the time lag was pretty bad, because they weren't in time. I ended up just singing the English with them the third time through. I was sitting behind the keyboard and could clearly see the music, but since I go to this school (every now and then, recently started) to help the kids learn English and learn about American culture, I just sang the version I grew up with.

Speaking of the Japanese version, Do is the "do" in "doughnuts"; Re is the "re" in "remon" [lemon]; Mi is the "mi" in "minna" [everyone]; Fa is the "fa" in "faito" [fight, as in "Yeah, you can do it! FIGHT!" not an actual fight]; So is the "so" in "aoi sora" [blue sky]. (I was gonna type out La and Ti as well, but have forgotten what they were.) One thing that was interesting to me was that Ti was pronounced "Shi". :O That one was a bit surprising. I would have guessed they would use "Chi".

Then the principals and vice-principals and coordinators on both sides said a little bit about how much everyone had loved the project and how they looked forward to doing it again and such. Then the thing was over, the 2nd graders went back to their classroom (more on that later), and the 5th graders got to taking down the webcam equipment and putting the desks and chairs and everything that belonged in the room back in place.

I talked to the guy who had read the kids' reports of in English. His name is Tetsuya, and he looked so familiar to me because I had actually seen him before. He's a friend of Mariko-san, and was at the School Festival Chakai that Sadoubu put on. He got to see me make tea. :D I hope I get to see him around some more; he's interesting to talk to.

After that I had to get home; I had received a piece of paper from the gas company the day before that I couldn't completely read (though I am getting way better at the reading of things; hallelujah! :D), and it had yesterday's date written on it, so I felt that I should go back home for whatever the gas thing was. :P Turned out that it was just the person coming by to tell me what my gas bill is for the month. The lady who comes around with the printer has to look at the meter just inside the door to verify that the bill is correct, apparently -- a fact I appreciate, to tell you the truth.

My Dear Friend Ash

So I was talking to Ash the other night and told him I was updating the blog again. He asked me to put something in the blog about how much I miss him next time I updated. I agreed. I was pondering what to write, exactly, and came up with this poem.

Special note to Ash: Reading this aloud and with drama makes it that much more fun.

Ash

I miss Ash
like I miss my Left Leg.

My Left Leg is still connected,
but back in 'Nam
I often wondered,
"Will we always be so?"

Were my Left Leg ripped from my hip
by a three-legged Ol' Bitty,
a thin tendril of bloody gristle
would retain our connection.

Ash and I are tight,
like me and my Left Leg.
I feel the tug of proverbial gristle --
stretched across the Pacific Ocean
in a gruesome display of friendship --
wishing Ash was by my side.

Realizations of the Period

1) For the record, Ash, I only come up with shit like this when you are involved.
2) OMG! I forgot to redo all the img tags on the early blog posts when I moved all my pictures to my web site. :'( Damn it, Chuck, why didn't you tell me?!

Casshern

2006-03-08T22:44:00.000+09:00

My friend Mike comes back from the dead (which is to say he disappeared for four years, and with the last anyone had heard being that he decided to go for an extended walk Forrest Gump-style, we had all come to figure he might have died), and he recommends to me this movie, Casshern. Says it's like Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow, only good. I still haven't seen Sky Captain, though I would like to, but everything he's ever recommended to me has been to my liking, and this is no exception.

It's a Japanese movie (that is supposedly going to hit American theatres this year). This sci-fi story takes place in the wake of a nasty, 50-year, devastating war that starts in the near future. The environment is totally whacked now, and anything too far from civilization seems to face oddball mutation problems which range from going blind over the course of years to having strange growths. This eventually culminates in death, naturally. There's a scientist whose wife has been afflicted, and so he ends up getting funding for his research on a cure. Zoom ahead in time a bit, and lightning does some strange things with his experiment, launching the story into the real meat.

I'm pretty sure the plot has a few holes in it, but honestly, I was too busy being awed by the movie to be able to really analyze the plot. The combination of sound, acting, computer graphics, directing, cinematography, and costumes (color was a huge part of the visual impact) all combined to form some incredibly strong images. Many of them were a bit abstract, but I felt the abstraction added to the experience, especially in one scene between the main character and his girlfriend.

Between touching moments, silly moments, and shiny fight scenes, this movie is definitely one to watch if you have any interest in direction or cinematography. If you don't, you should still check it out; I don't think it's a move everyone will dig, necessarily, but it's certainly an interesting experience. After all, how many music video directors get to make their own movie?

Now I am gonna do some manga chapter editing. Whee!

Victory Calls My Name

2006-03-06T13:24:00.000+09:00

And she knows that I cannot resist the insistence of her pull.

Which is to say that I have figured out how I am gonna put pictures up on my web site. With unabashed use of copy and paste, there will soon be a plethora of pictures available for browsing, with a great many of them having captions. Huzzah!

However, while the pictures and their captions will tell you about a good number of the interesting things I have been doing in the two months of not updating the blog, I don't have pictures for everything. Either I didn't have my camera, or I felt like I would look more touristy than I wanted to deal with, or whatever. So I will posthumously recount what I have been up to, starting with...

First Chakai of the Year

The kanji 会 is pronounced kai. It can be tagged onto any number of things to give the meaning "convention" or "meeting or "get-together." A chakai is a tea ceremony get-together.

The first chakai of the year is linked to the general Japanese thinking of the new year. When the new year opens, it is time to put the past behind you and look to the future. The first chakai of the year is thus the first chakai of a new round of life, and something to be treasured.

Through Ikushima-sensei (the tea ceremony club teacher), the club got five tickets to a beginning of the year chakai. I like going to these special chakai because I get to see varied methods and utensils for performing tea ceremony, so I chocked up (how do you spell that, anyway?) the 1000 yen for a ticket and met with Ryoko, Keina, Mariko-san, and another girl whose name I can never remember to walk to the Manabotto (the same building in which I had been to a prveious chakai and a shodou exhibit) together.

We got there about fifteen minutes after the chakai started; too late to participate in the first round of tea and first to arrive for the second round. Generally, for these chakai, there is a 4-6 hour span of time in which you come and get to enjoy the ceremony once per setup -- one traditional tatami room setup and one where everyone is sitting in chairs at tables, including the person making the tea. So we settled down to wait. A little bit of time passed, more people showed up, and I realized that although I had come in my best clothes (since Mariko-san had told me to make sure and wear a skirt) and the other girls had come in nice clothes, too... we were the only ones not wearing kimonos.

This didn't surprise me too much. Last time I had gone to one of these chakai, there had been few other women not wearing kimonos. This time, though, when we got into the tatami room where the ceremony was actually to take place, people were like, "Oh, you're students? With a foreigner? Sit over there, in almost the most-honored place, so you can see better." We really had almost the best seats in the room for watching what was going on. Being able to see what was going on well, I realized that not only were they all wearing kimonos, but they were all wearing expensive ones. The guys who had come weren't wearing kimonos, but their suits were obviously in the multi-hundred-dollar range. One woman showed up in a multi-hundred-dollar dress suit, at which point I knew for certain that my friends and I were horribly, horribly outclassed.

The people in the positions of honor asked a bit about me; where was I from, why had I come to the ceremony? I was in the tea club? Spiffy.

Then the tea ceremony started. It was a method I hadn't seen before. It involved an exceptionally large shelf, wider and taller than normal. There was also a container in which the water ladle (hishaku) sat, along with a pair of long-handled chopsticks that seemed to serve little purpose. It was interesting to watch, though. The equipment was all perfectly matched. Black was the base color for everything (except the hishaku, made of bamboo). Coming up from the bottom was a design of bright blue with gold inlays that looked like fish scales. It was really nifty stuff.

When the tea ceremony was most of the way done (most of the 30ish people had had sweets and drunk tea, and the tea-maker performing the ceremony was starting to clean the bowl), the two guys in the most honored position stood up to leave. This struck me as incredibly weird. And I was right. The first guy came over to say hi to me. Turns out it was the mayor of Kushiro.

Holy handgranade. :O

Did you know that Seward, Alaska and Kushiro, Japan are sister ports? I didn't. Not until he told me. Then he left. I assume the guy is a busy man, so it makes sense, but it left a small hole in the ceremony. Earlier, I had seen that the first two guys (which I now knew was the mayor and some kind of attendant) didn't really know what they were doing. They obviously hadn't studied tea ceremony. It had made me feel a bit better about the "horribly, horribly outclassed" sense flitting about my brain. But now, at the cleaning stage of the ceremony, the person in the position of honor was supposed to say some things, interact with the tea maker a bit. The lady who had been third place ended up taking care of that after a short apology for taking over with the two guys gone.

The rest of it went as normal, really. After the ceremony was done, everyone got up to go take a closer look at the decorations and equipment used (hot damn, there is some beautiful pottery and painting in some of the tea ceremony equipment). Then we went down two floors to a room with a chairs-and-tables setup and had more tea. That ceremony wasn't nearly as interesting to recount, though, so I'll just say that the tea was good and the cold water holder (mizusashi) for the ceremony looked like a bright blue bucket. It was rather cool.

After that, three of the girls went home, but I needed a kobukusa, a piece of tea equipment in the form of a special, decorated cloth about the size of an average piece of origami paper for the new method I had been learning. So Ryoko (who needed to go to the public library anyway) showed me where the tea stuff shop I had heard about was. When we got there, I realized that I had never been able to find it (and I had looked a couple of times) because the kanji were so expertly (meaning convolutedly) written that I couldn't read them at all. I got myself a nifty-looking, yet inexpensive, kobukusa, then headed home while Ryoko went to the library.

That was on the last Saturday in January. Stay tuned for more stuff as I get to it!

Realizations of the Period

1) I love Photoshop. It's such a good feeling to look at something you've edited in it and say to yourself, "I did that. ... Muhahahahahaha!"
2) I am looking forward to summer. It's gonna be both dark and warm enough for me to sit outside and enjoy the night for hours. Add to that the fact that I have a PSP with Lumines now? Hallelujah! Hallelujah.
3) Rice is tasty, filling, and nutritious. I can see why the Japanese people eat so much of it. I've started eating a lot more of it, too -- it's also easy and fast to cook. Toss something tasty in with it, mix, and you have dinner.
4) I am such a college student.
5) I went to Seicomart to get a new bag of rice, since I was running out, right? They sell like three kinds of rice. The packages are different colors, with different names, and the bags are transparent so you can see the rice in the same places. Looking at the rice itself inside the bags... they all look exactly the same. WTH?

So Much Seafood

2006-03-04T21:24:00.000+09:00

So I have a PSP now. It's white, shiny, sexy, and is sitting next to the Suikoden I & II compilation and Lumines, and I have no time to play it, really. You would think that with it being spring break, I would have plenty of time. But I signed up with Goddess Miyaku Team around Christmas, and have a chapter to edit.

I have played a little bit (really, you can only work on photoshop edits for six hours straight or so before you need a break). Lumines is trippy as always. Almost everything in the menus is in English, which kind of surprised me. I forget, though: in the NA version, when you get a high score, do the bars on the side say "High Score?" or "Rank In"? If they don't say "Rank In," that is unfortunate, because the Japanese version does.

As for the Suikoden compilation, I am lazy, and just going to copy and paste the information I put up on the AllRPG forums:

I am not Ryan, but I bought a PSP and the Suikoden compilation (and Lumines, but that is off-topic) a few days ago. Haven't played with it as much as I would like due to other things needing doing, but here's what I have for you:

The main menu allows you to choose between S1, S2, and a gallery. I haven't really unlocked anything in the gallery, but the options are Sound Mode, Movies, Event Viewer, Endings, and Staff Roll. The first is listening to music, the last is credits. Those seem completely unlocked from the get-go.

Suikoden I's start screen movie has been revamped to be a lot more like that of Suikoden II instead of a run-through of parts of the game. The game itself seems to be exactly like the original. They adapted for the larger screen pretty well; if the map you are on is one that filled the screen (like the McDohl house), then they added tiles to the side to fill up space. In other places, you sometimes find your main character a little to the side of center screen in places where he was centered before, but it isn't bad in any way. Portraits are now to the side of the text instead of above it.

Suikoden II I haven't played (I assume you can load data :D), but the intro is exactly the same as before.

All in all, it's shiny, loveable, nostalgic, portable, and cheaper than buying either of the games for PSX on eBay.

EDIT: It is also still playable left-handed, for the most part, though with select too far away now, you need your right hand to go into the menu. I assume you will need your right hand to run, too, due to the fact that there is only one shoulder button on each side, but since I don't have a running rune yet, I can't say for sure. You can also use the joystick to move, but since you can't talk to people or activate anything from a diagonal direction, I find that more of a pain than it is worth.

After one guy posted something, I replied with this:

Have a couple of pictures, by the way. First one is my glorious, just-arrived-in-the-mail, unopened copy of the game, and the second is a picture of the UMD itself. I really like the UMD design.

It may be a ho-hum port, but I don't object to them doing that. If they port it to another system, I am guaranteed a chance to buy it if I either don't have it or in case my existing copy/copies get lost or broken or what have you. In this case, I don't mind the whole I-can-take-it-with-me part of the equation.

I also did a bit of shopping today. I am wondering if the bookstore is ever gonna have volumes 2-5 of Elfin Lied in stock so I can get them for Nacilik. While I was there, I looked at cookbooks. I found a beginning Japanese-style cookbook, which looked like a really good one. They also have a crazy selection of books aimed at being snacky-type food for drinking parties.

I have been trying to find stuff for Shannon & Bob in regards to rice, but it looks like the Japanese mainly just have plain old rice on the side with everything. That and have it in sushi. While browsing the cookbooks, though, I found some recipes that were made for rice cookers in a book on cooking for one person. Some of them involved adding stuff with the rice at the beginning, so that the taste of whatever soaks into all the rice. Some of these recipes had stuff like vegetables, others had ketchup. (o_O I have heard of ketchup rice before, but the idea never fails to weird me out a bit. I was thinking to get a rice cooker anyway, but now I really want one. Morbid curiosity says, "Try the ketchup rice!")

There were also recipes involving taking meat or fish and seasoning it (usually with a sauce), then wrapping the fish/meat in wax paper (with the ends twisted) or putting it in a ziploc bag on top of the rice to cook while the rice was cooking. It looks like you can do this with any kind of meat you want. I think the recipes were for making rice and fish and whatnot that go together.

Taste-O-Meter!

Tonkatsu Curry: 5
Breaded pork cutlet over rice with delectable Japanese curry sauce? Yes, please. More, please. More. More. MORE! MORE THAN THAT!!! ;_; Oh god! I'm ADDICTED!

Realizations of the Period

1) Do not judge a movie by its opening credits. I got Good Will Hunting to watch, then went o_O when I saw that it was written by Matt Damon and Ben Afflek. It was a really good movie. If you haven't seen it, do so.
2) No Japanese people my age seem to know how to make rice without a rice cooker. When I told Mika I don't have one, her face became so filled with "You DON'T?!" that it bordered on true horror. While eliciting that reaction was fun, it made me realize that there are rice cookers everywhere here.
3) It is cool to see the Japanese actors from Last Samurai on random stuff on TV here.

Life is Good.

2006-03-02T22:29:00.000+09:00

I know that sounds like bull, but it's true. It's amazing what getting to talk to an old friend you haven't heard any news about in years can do for your mood. I was so full of energy when I found out he was still alive that I couldn't focus on my scanslation work. While that last bit was bad, I think it's a fine trade-off.

When I woke up this morning, I turned on the PS2 to do a bit of FFXI playing, then dragged the final folder of pictures into FrontPage to start uploading to my web site. Six or seven hours later, it finally finished. That is what I get for taking hundreds of pictures. I still don't know how I am gonna fit them on my web site, as it turns out that the way I handled the wallpapers I made back in the day was to have thumbnails, then link directly to the pictures.

And the more I look at those wallpapers, the more I want to cry about my utter lack of skill at putting them together. A couple of them are really nicely composed, but suffer from the fact that I just didn't know how to use Photoshop. ;_;

Pangalactic Gargleblaster! GAH!

So yeah. I am gonna do some scanslating now and work on the web site tomorrow. No FFXI distraction, since the problems with the credit cards mean that the credit card company refused to pay the fee for this month. Oh goody. :P But oh well.

Hail of Photographs

2006-03-02T01:30:00.000+09:00

I have so many pictures. I have been uploading like mad, and I am almost done... but not quite. So. I paused a moment to DeviantArt-ify one photo and a digitally altered version of it. But that is only one of hundreds of pictures. How I am going to display them on my site is as yet unknown. The pictures are rather large, and won't fit into the normal layout I have for the web pages. (o_o)a Need to go brush up on what I did for the wallpapers I made aeons ago.

No PSP yet. Didn't really expect it, but I couldn't help a bit of hoping. *sigh*

Paid my rent today. My landlord is married, and usually his wife is the one I make payments to. Not today, though... dunno if she wasn't there or what. Paying him meant no chit-chat. :( I like my conversations with her. Nothing important, but always enjoyable.

Realizations of the Period

1) You know how sometimes a kid will take something and hit themselves over the head with it and go, "Ow," repeatedly? Japanese kids do that, too.
2) In losing weight, my butt has shrunk. I find myself stepping on pant hems even when the waist of the pants are properly seated.

Blarg!

2006-02-28T14:35:00.000+09:00

Okay. It has been WAY too long since I updated this. Lots of things happened all at once, and I didn't feel like posting, and things have been piling up.

I am working on getting the hundreds of pictures I have taken on my web site; I will put captions with those that tell a lot of what happened. Other things I will outline here in retrospect.

Right now, however, I am organizing MP3s so I can burn some to CD and delete those that I want to keep but don't want taking up space on my hard drive. I will do what I can to get the pictures up tomorrow because the day after that, I should have a shiny, white PSP in my grubby little digits. With the Suikoden I & II compilation. :D Glory is mine! (Though if the games are playable one-handed like the originals I should be able to work on pictures while playing. Yay!)

More on Japanese TV

2005-12-31T11:56:00.000+09:00

So like, there hasn't been much interesting going on. I have played a lot of FFXI. I wanted to update, though, so have a Bloglight Japan.

Bloglight Japan: TV

In America, Japanese television is known for being crazy and goofy and just plain silly. Most of the time, this is not the case, though there is still certainly a decent chunk of that. Commercials certainly tend to be that way. And, for the most part, Japanese dramas are more along the lines of what Americans would call melodramas (see 1 Litre of Tears for an excellent exception).

If you watch TV in America, you'll notice that certain kinds of shows tend to come on at certain times of day. During the day on weekdays, you have shows devoted to womens' interests, young children, and cooking. Afternoon gives way to cartoons before moving on to news, then you have prime-time dramas, comedic and commentary shows, movies, game shows, and the like. Weekends have cartoons in the morning and news and movies and other stuff later on. Late night/early morning TV on any day of the week becomes music shows and infomercials and some weird stuff they don't put on during the day.

This same sort of schedule generally holds true for Japanese television, though there are some differences. Cooking shows are more spread out, showing up at all times of day. Weekday cartoons don't start until later in the afternoon than American ones (probably because many kids have clubs and/or cram schools to go to). The post-news stuff includes a lot more game/quiz shows than American television. Dramas actually start showing before cartoons on some channels, and even the prime-time ones are less about sci-fi or science or politics than about human interaction... and have a good deal more silly scenes than their American counterparts.

There are also a number of shows intended to help watchers learn English. Of the ones I have caught so far, my favorite is this one show with a pirate theme (that's not the only reason why -- it's just the reason it caught my attention long enough to really watch it). The show has two hosts, an American man and a Japanese woman. The guy's Japanese is excellent, and he does most of the explaining. They both repeat examples, so that Japanese folk can hear it with an American accent, as well as in the Japanese accent they are more likely to be able to emulate.

What makes this show really good, though, is that each episode focuses on a different word which, when combined with other words, has a variety of meanings. They have two Americans with a travelling theme go around to different places and have good, commonplace conversations that use all of the key word's different meanings without seeming contrived. The show's watchers get to see the conversation twice, both with English subs. Between viewings the English is explained so that the viewers can go over it again and understand more of it.

An example of what sort of stuff they cover is as follows:

Keyword: on
Combinations: go on, come on, get on [with it], get on [a bus or something]

It's quality, language-learning TV.

Japanese game/quiz shows are what have given Japanese TV its crazy reputation in the states. And crazy they are. Some of the weird stuff I have gotten to see: guys in velcro suits trying to see how far up a wall they can stick after a trampoline bounce; people paired up with someone they can't see and, given a category (red fruit, christmas, etc.) having to write the same thing as their partner or be electrocuted for a good 30 seconds; and a show in which people in fruit and vegetable costumes were trying to overcome obstacles, with the punishment for failure being a humiliating fall into... flour.

There is also a Japanese version of Who Wants to Be a Millionare. The guy who plays the host is about as much like the American guy as you could find in Japan. They also have some questions on English in there -- stuff like, "Which of these words isn't really from English?" with the answers being four words in katakana, one of which is derived from English words, but not a real English word. The Japanese also say "final answer" in English for this show.

So this morning (New Year's Eve, here), I got up and turned my TV on and logged my FFXI mule (he'd been selling stuff all night) out of the game and turned to actual TV. Joy! Special holiday programming. A musical! I only caught like the last 10 minutes of it, but it was one of a string of short musicals being broadcast from a concert hall belonging to NHK, the TV station I was (and am, actually, as I write this) watching. Very much like American and British musicals.

Now, I am watching a kabuki performance. I can't understand a word they are saying (strike that -- I just caught a word). but I have been curious to see a kabuki performance for a while, so it is good. Kabuki is the Japanese style of play wherein all the actors are guys and everyone has white faces. Well, everyone except the "invisible" guys. They are all dressed in black, and perform duties like changing sets and costumes on stage in front of everyone.

One last note about Japanese TV: in America, everything runs in half-hour blocks. Here, a show can start at any ten-minute mark. Ten and twenty minute shows are not uncommon. I have noticed that most hour-long shows and anime start on the hour or the half-hour, though.

Realizations of the Period

1) The reason alcohol is present at all Japanese parties is because most Japanese people can't loosen up and forget about appearances long enough to just have fun without it.

雪大好き！(I Love Snow!)

2005-12-14T14:33:00.000+09:00

Oh yay! ^^ The Japanese blizzard is the normal snowfall for an Alaskan. I hear tell that Kushiro doesn't usually get snow until after New Year's, but here we are with 6-8 inches in three days. Today has warmed up considerably, though, and I'm pretty sure there will be ice tomorrow. I don't think it's likely that the snow will completely disappear, though.

Yesterday I joined Sato and a couple of the other Okinawans for dinner. :D While Sato and Rei were cooking (it was at their house), Dai and I played Momotarou Densetsu X. It's an awesome game. The graphics are nothing special, but they don't need to be; for what the game is, it's just fine. We didn't bother with the story stuff, and Dai explained the things I couldn't read to me.

Basically, you start out rich and try to get richer. You're riding around on a train (though you can switch to airplane or ship at appropriate spots. You ride around Japan investing money, losing money, getting money, getting cards with varying effects, and trying not to go broke while trying to reach a goalpoint. The goalpoints are randomly decided at the beginning and after one has been reached. If you reach a goalpoint, you get insane amounts of money. The game lasts a set number of years (with each round being one month) determined at the start of the game.

The game got cut short by dinner.

Taste-O-Meter!

Nikuimo: 5
Beef-flavored potato slices with noodles and carrots. :D Oh yeah.

Sanma in some really tasty sauce: 5
I pretty much summed it up in red.

After that, we got into a four-player game of Momotarou Densetsu X. :D That one got finished, but Sato dropped out early on to join her neighbors in making a snow cave (called kamakura in Japan). I got third place out of four in spite of reaching the first goalpoint, and then we went outside to help with the kamakura.

They didn't have it big enough to start, so we ended up starting to carve out the inside while using the carved out snow, some fresh snow, and several buckets of water to pretty much double the size of the kamakura. It was a lot of fun. :D They were utterly shocked when I threw off my cloak in annoyance to work in a T-shirt, but unless a nasty gust of wind came along (which did happen a couple of times) the constant movement kept me fine.

I helped with that until 2:30 AM, at which point I was like, "I should go home... I have class in the morning." So I did. But just before I left I was invited to their Christmas party, for which I will likely make some grilled cheese sandwiches. Somehow, with all the weird things they have come up with for food, that's something that really intrigues Japanese people.

Other Than That

I have also been doing a little bit of experimentation with food. Manju is awesome stuff. Manju is a hot, juicy dumpling whose innards are filled with something tasty. The ones I have seen thus far have anko, pizza (pepperoni and tomato sauce), or spiced beef and onion in the middle. ^^ Manju has just come up, but it's already going on the list for no more Taste-O-Meter! entries because manju is good if you like what is inside of it.

Realizations of the Period

1) If I spend more time at school, my heater spends less time on and my gas bill goes down.
2) If I spend more time at school so that my heater spends less time on and my gas bill goes down, my apartment doesn't generally stay as warm and getting up in the morning can suck.

Woe / Japanese TV

2005-12-10T16:28:00.000+09:00

It has been a long time since I updated. Some days have been interesting, some boring.

Last Friday, we (Olga, Tolia, Sasha, Wu, Tomoki, Jyun, Utsuki, and I) had a drinking party after sadoubu (during which I had found out that it's actually supposed to be pronounced chadoubu and that even most Japanese people have it wrong). It was originally supposed to be at Tomoki's place, but there ended up being too many people to fit, so we had it at my place. There was a wide variety of alcohol and food.

Taste-O-Meter!

Brinni: 5
Russian pancakes. Not as sweet as American pancakes, and eaten with sour cream instead of syrup.

Russian Salad: 5
No lettuce here! Potatoes, onions, carrots, eggs, and mayonnaise and a couple of other things to hold it together. So tasty.

Sausages and Potatoes seasoned with Chicken Broth: 5
Tomoki started cooking the sausages around the time that Olga finished the salad. There were a couple of potatoes left over, and Sasha jumped up to slice them and cook them with the sausages. I didn't have any salt, so... chicken broth powder. If you've ever eaten that stuff raw, you'll know that it's more salty than chicken-y, so it worked just fine.

Shrimp Senbei: 4
Shrimp senbei is very different from the plainer senbei I had at chadoubu the one time. Same sort of thing -- a small, crunchy, rice-based buscuit -- but the flavor is very different.

Peanut Butter and Honey Flavored Snack: 5
This stuff had the texture of cheese doodles with none of the cheese. Good stuff.

Squid Jerky: 4
Nacilik was right about this stuff being good, though I personally still prefer beef jerky.

Jack Daniels Mixed with Plum Wine: 4
I don't like Jack Daniels much, but with the plum wine it was pretty good.

Jack Daniels Mixed with Pepsi Twist: 2
Don't like either of these drinks much. Together, they weren't good.

We generally chatted a lot. At one point, Sasha had my frying pan lid and was goofing off with it. Its handle is on the edge instead of in the middle; the middle is given over to a clear window so that you can see inside, unlike the outer edges. So he had it over his face and was looking out. I also found out that there's a Russian superstition about putting empty bottles on the table; supposedly, if you do, no food will come to that table again.

Woe is Alcohol

This being my third drunkening ever, I still didn't know my limits well, and drank too much. :( The part about this that makes me saddest is that I lost all the good food I had eaten. I remember everything up until throwing up the second (and last time). I am also fairly certain that I will know when to stop drinking after this.

The next day was bad. No hangover in the usual sense (headache and OMG my eyes), but I couldn't stand or sit up for more than like 20 seconds without my stomach clamoring badness until like 5 PM. I managed during that time to make myself some soup when I got hungry, and drank a lot of water. I also played FFXI, as I could do it laying down.

Once I was able to actually get up and do stuff, I did laundry and took stock of my apartment. More trash than normal, but all of it in trashbags; my guests had stayed for a while after I passed out (which I hadn't minded), and then cleaned up after themselves quite nicely. They also put the leftover food on the shlack (if not needing refrigeration) or in the windows. For those of you who've never lived in a cold place, once you hit a certain point of year double windows (or even single windows with a wide windowsill and some vanetian blinds if it's REALLY cold) can be used as a refigeration device.

However, the next day I realized that the leftover sausages had been left in the window that gets direct sunlight all day. Oops! A quick trip to the store to get flour and some pepper, and I was soon using the leftover sausages, milk, and onions to make gravy. :D It was a tasty dinner.

Other than that, there's not really been much blog-note worthy until day before yesterday. That, combined with me being lazy and playing a lot of FFXI, has led to the extremely long distance in blog updates.

Woe is Inability to Read Paperwork

I got offline to take a bath, came back, and discovered that my internet had stopped working. Specifically, the internet provider was no longer accepting my username/password combo for some reason. I tried calling the support number, but ended up on hold for 20 minutes. Called Bflets in the morning, and they sent a guy to help me.

Turns out that although I am currently not being charged for my internet as part of a promotion they are doing, one of the pieces of the paper they sent me was not, as I had thought, an example of a payment form, but a form for letting them know how I intended to pay. Without it, I get no service. Oops. So the guy helped me make sure I had the form filled out properly, then spent like 45 minutes on the phone trying to find out how long it'd take me to get internet again, since I had arranged the day before to go on a key hunt in FFXI with my friend Sean today. Turns out that after they receive the form in Tokyo, it'll take four days to reconnect the service. Grand total, approximately a week. Ouch.

Japanese TV

So I turned on the TV and worked on other stuff that I hadn't gotten around to doing. One of the television shows I had going was daytime housewife stuff -- cooking, arts and crafts, etc. At one point, my attention was drawn away from my computer by FFVII's "Song of the Ancients". Same show, but they were talking about fossils for some reason, and the background music of the moment was "Song of the Ancients". Another show I watched later used the theme from The Incredibles (side note: the Japanese title for that is Mr. Incredible). It still kinda surprises me, sometimes, what music the Japanese people will use where.

I have also seen the best video game commercial ever. Before I tell you about it, I need to explain about a piece of Japanese culture. The Japanese don't generally go to each others houses/apartments. If they do, they usually stand in the foyer to conduct whatever business they have, then leave. If they do, in fact, go into your residence itself, they always say "Ojama shimasu." I can't remember what it means, but not saying it is just totally impolite. If you're at someone's residence and someone else who lives there comes home, you say, "Ojama shiteimasu," which is the same thing only in the present tense. It lets them know that there is a visitor in their house.

You see two guys dressed as Mario and Luigi, who say "Hot Mario!" You're then taken to a Christmas-y living room where people are playing gamecube together -- two people to a pad, one old and one child. They show you some gameplay. I thought it was for Mario Party 6, but it turned out to be for Mario Party 7 (Whose mini-games look good, BTW). The commercial ended with the guys dressed as Mario and Luigi saying "Mario Party 7" together while crouched under the couch in the Christmas-y scene, causing everyone in the scene to start. Looking kind of sheepish, Mario and Luigi say, "Ojama shiteimasu..." at the same time.

I dunno if this is new or not, but the good old game Operation is currently being advertized on Japanese TV. It has a different name (Buzz! Dr. Game), but it's good old-fashioned Operation.

I had intended to not play FFXI yesterday anyway, in the interest of getting caught up on homework and the like, so it wasn't a big deal, but I lost all my plants in FFXI. Grr! Two of them would have been blooming yesterday, too. :(

And here I am, posting from the library again. That's what I get for not making damn sure I knew what I was doing.

Oh! It snowed yesterday. The snow will stick, making it officially winter now.

Realizations of the Period

1) Microsoft is using the power button symbol to plug the Xbox 360 on commercials. WTF?
2) If I get to the point where I can no longer stand not having an oven, I can go find myself a convection oven. Yay!
3) I need a brain.
4) I can't find oatmeal.
4b) You can substitute flour for oatmeal in a no-bake cookie recipe, but it's a 3 parts oatmeal, 1 part flour ratio instead of the 3-2 ratio I had figured for. :P And that's the way the cookie crumbles (quite literally).
5) People need common sense reminders in Japan, too, apparently. Watching a cooking show, and these messages keep flashing at the bottom. Finally read the first one. It's "Don't put saibashi [long, wooden chopsticks made for cooking] near the flame." Well, duh.
6) Japanese weather forecasts represent snowfall to come with angry-looking snowmen. Really heavy, driving snow is represented as an unhappy snowman trying to get out of the way of pelting snow. It's pretty funny.
7) Some Japanese commercials are entirely in English.
7b) Some Japanese commercials are entirely in Engrish.
7c) Some Japanese commercials are dubbed. (Herbal Escences commercails aren't any less weird in Japanese dub format.)
8) Since English-speaking newscasters all speak clearly, the Japanese assume that all English-speakers speak clearly. They're gonna have fun with my friend Nekram when he comes over to teach English.
9) Japanese TV is good during the day and in the middle of the night, but I do not like prime time stuff much.

A Song of Ice and Snow

2005-11-29T12:29:00.000+09:00

Saturday was a nice, sunny day. That evening, I was to go to Olga's boarding house for dinner. However, I had more time that day, so I headed for the Posful area.

I got to Posful and went to the game store. They, too, didn't have FFXI. The guy I talked to said they could order it, but it'd take a couple of weeks to get here. He then suggested that I try to order online. I had already been thinking about that option sadly, so I just nodded my head and wandered off. I did pause to grab some really cool-looking advertizements for upcoming games, then realized I had another question for the guy: where can I buy a keyboard? Playing any MMORPG tends to involve some chatting, and I was pretty sure I didn't want to be using the software keyboard with a controller. He directed me to a store called 100-Man Volts ("Man" being written in kanji and meaning 100,000,000), about as far away from the big Geo store as Posful was, though in another direction. Since the network of cross-walks in this busy section of town was a little weird, I decided to hit 100-Man Volts before Homac (where I intended to buy a coaxle cable).

100-Man Volts is clearly the place for electronics in Kushiro. They had TV's, computers, cell phones, washing machines (don't picture an American washing machine; these are about two feet wide, three feet long, and two feet tall, designed to go on a countertop), and a whole bunch of other stuff. I found the computer accessories department, netting myself: a webcam w/ microphone and cheapy headphones; a mouse for my computer (since touchpads suck); a USB keyboard for the PS2; a router so that both PS2 and laptop could be online at the same time; and (after getting help in finding them) a coaxle cable for the TV. Score!

I left the store and paused to put most of the stuff in my bookbag. At that point, I realized that my router hadn't left the store with me. I vaguely recalled one of the two guys handling my order at the cash register (there were two people at every register) had said something about the router and "outside", then circled it with a red pen on the receipt. So I grabbed the attention of one of the store's traffic monitors, and with his help I discovered that some items were received through a second part of the store that is accessed from an outside door. So I went there, gave 'em my receipt, took a number, and after a few minutes was given my router. Yay!

After that, I had no reason to go to Homac, so I headed home. At one point, I was waiting for the light to turn at an intersection so I could cross the road, and figured that if I turned left, I would be able to make my way home, so... I tried it. It turned out that that that was not the case. About the time I realized that I wasn't gonna be able to meet with Olga in time if I backtracked, I came across a large Co-op on a large hill and realized that although I had ended up on the right side of the Kushirogawa, I had been somehow travelling away from the college and my apartment. I got some help from the workers at a nearby gas station in calling a cab (I hadn't thought to learn any cab numbers) and took the cab home.

I had about half an hour before I needed to leave, so I figured I'd set up the TV and the mouse. Mouse went fine -- its scroll wheel even lights up! However, although the TV was set up with a coaxle attachment, the wall has something else. That struck me as explaining why there were like three kinds of TV cables at the store.

So I ordered FFXI via Amazon.co.jp and went to meet Olga. Se walked up to her boarding house, where I met a couple of the other people living there and discovered that they're all students at my school. Tomoki (the guy whose name I had thought started with Tama, and who paid for the eating/drinking the previous Sunday) was also invited to dinner that evening. We ate and talked, and it was good. After dinner, we kept talking, and in fact talked until after Chie's husband came home, right up to about 11:30 PM. It was a lot of fun. ^^

Back to 100-Man Volts

Turned out that Olga also needed to go to 100-Man Volts. Her grandmother has an American diabetes machine that goes on her wrist and uses AAAA batteries. You can't get AAAA batteries in Russia, so she wanted to see if she could get some here. So we walked to 100-Man Volts on Sunday. It was nice having company. However, none of my pants were dry, so I was wearing a skirt and unfortunately for me, it was the first day with snow around here. There was also wind, so my legs got really cold.

When we got to 100-Man Volts, I exchanged my cables and we went looking for the batteries she needed. That was where the fact that the Japanese have a different naming system for the same batteries turned out to be really, really bad. Neither Olga nor I knew what exactly an AAAA battery looked like. She ended up buying what I thought was correct, with me promising to check the internet when I got home. We then took a bus towards the train station, figuring that that was closer to our domiciles than the shopping district and thus a much shorter walk home.

Buses in Japan work differently from American ones; you don't pay a flat fee when you get on and then go however far. You get on at the back of the bus and take note of the electric sign at the front. It's got a list of numbers, 1-something (24 on the buses here), and under each number is another number. The first number represents what stop you boarded on; the second number is how much you can expect to pay for how long you've ridden. There's a minimum price, and after a while the tab goes up, depending on how far you've gone. You pay as you get off. In case you don't have change, 1,000 yen bills can be exchanged for coins automatically at the front of the bus, from which you pay the correct amount.

Olga and I split near the school, headed for our respective domiciles. When I got home, I looked up those batteries and found out that they were indeed the wrong kind. I then hooked up my TV and started cleaning in preparation for the next day. Somewhere in the middle of cleaning, I went looking at tables at Mega Outlet (nearby furniture store) and discovered that they were more expensive than I wanted to pay.

Monday... and Posful AGAIN. Blarg.

Hiroko came over yesterday morning so that I could help her find out the course request numbers and times for the classes she wanted to take at UAF. We did that, and then (as suggested by the above title) I went back to Posful. On Saturday, I had seen that one of the stores there was selling tables like what I was looking for for 1,980 yen -- a much better deal than the tables at Mega Outlet.

This time, I decided to go by bus. The snow that had fallen on Sunday had been about as wet as snow can get and still be snow, and a combination of weather patterns had led to massive amounts of ice -- as I had suspected would happen. So I went towards downtown and made my way to the bus stop Olga and I had gotten off at the day before. We hadn't actually gone as far as the station, because we didn't need to. I located the bus stop across the street and affirmed with a couple of other ladies waiting for the bus that it did, indeed, pass by Posful. Yay!

Took the bus to Posful, got the table, got a couple of folders to use for holding stuff like receipts and bills, and went back to the bus stop to go home. I was glad I was taking the bus; I had thought the table top was plastic, but it turned out to be wood. That's good, because it means the table is sturdier, but that makes it heavier, too.

I spent yesterday evening goofing off instead of doing kanji homework like I should have. Yay!

Japanese Town-Building

So today I had two classes, geography and traditional music. Traditional music was about like it always is (though I feel like I'm becoming more proficient with the koto). This week, because of the weather (it rained and hailed today on top of the ice), we didn't go anywhere. The teacher told us about Kyoto.

Kyoto, in case you don't know, was the capitol of Japan before Tokyo was. It wasn't the first capitol of Japan, either. For some reason, Japan has a history of moving its capitol around. And when the Japanese choose a location for a capitol, they base it on Feng Shui (pronounced fuusui by the Japanese). We got a lesson in the basics of fuusui today, as well as a description of how it came into play with the building of Kyoto. We then watched a cheesy, informative video on it.

I came home between the two classes instead of going to the Gaiken room, because Amazon indicated that my FFXI would get here between today and Thursday. Even if I hadn't arranged it to be COD, I don't think they'd have left it in the mailbox, so I'd like to be here when the package gets here. ^^ That way I can get it and start installing ASAP.

Now that it's past the time when they'll deliver mail, it's time for me to go get more food supplies.

Realizations of the Period

1) Japanese dramas are more like what we'd call melodramas.
2) Japanese kids' shows are pretty much the same as American kids' shows, but sometimes they get a little scary. To be fair, the same could be said of some American kids' shows.
3) I need taller shoes, like hiking boots or something, if I am gonna walk around in snow.
4) Japanese cheesy, informative videos also include cheesy, brightly colored 3D renders they use to give you a virtual walkthru of whatever the topic is, just like American ones.

Thanksgiving == Christmas?

2005-11-26T03:23:00.000+09:00

Wednesday was a Japanese holiday. I had a class in the morning, but my sleep schedule is currently bunk, so I overslept. Got up in time for the Gaiken first and third years' konpa. A konpa is a let's-get-to-know-each-other-better party. We all got together in a room in the dormitory and sat in a circle for it, with the first years ending up on one side, the third years on the other, and the guys and girls grouped together as well (I'm still not sure if that was purposeful or not). There was no alcohol because the person organizing it didn't know what the first years would want, which suited me... it started at noon, which is considerably earlier than I'm interested in drinking. There was food, though; a hearty potato and vegetable soup with konkyaku in it and curry udon.

Taste-O-Meter!

Konkyaku: 3
I'm not sure what this is. The texture was fine, with the hardness of a cooked vegetable, but none of a vegetable's texture. It was slick, but not slimy, so I had no problem with the texture. I can't really describe the taste. I asked what it was in English, and the question travelled halfway around the circle before Yuuji said he though it was just konkyaku.

Curry Udon: 5
In addition to the taste of udon not going as well with tuna as somen, it turns out that udon is intended to be cooked for a long time in a sauce, soaking up lots of moisture and taste. Result: Mm, mm, better. (Udon noodles in potato soup sauce still makes a good meal, though.)

Once everyone had food and a toast had been made there was enough time given for people to get through most or all of that first serving (there was a lot of food, everyone got more). Then started the jiko shoukai (self introductions). They started with the first years, then moved to me, then the third years. Person introduces self, people get to ask some questions. The third years' introductions were more fun, because they all know each other a lot better. I also knew them better, having talked to many of them at the post-gakusai party.

One question that got asked often was "What kind of guys/girls do you like?" with guys/girls being the opposite gender of the person in question. The first question asked of one of the third years, Hiroshi, was what kind of guys he liked. He managed to delicately evade the question by saying he liked guys like Jack (nickname of one of the others), only to have someone else ask what kind of girls he liked... at which point the guy (whose name I have completely forgotten) who asked what kind of guys he likes interrupted with "Manly ones, yes?" It was good, laughter-inducing fun.

After the introductions were done, people dug into more food, drank more tea and juice, and divided into random groups for chatting. A group formed around me, which mostly ended up being a discussion of some cultural differences and a lot of linguistic differences. I was asked what order I was taught different elements of Japanese grammar in and answered as best as I could from memory. I then offered to show them the textbooks I'd brought with me from America sometime. I have my third-year Japanese textbook and the book from my first kanji class. Which reminds me... I need to go stuff those in my bookbag...

Anyway, I'd been told by Keina that we had sadoubu that day, but I am thinking she thought I meant Friday instead of Wednesday, 'cause the room where sadoubu is held was dark and locked when I got there. *sigh*

Thanksgiving

I completely forgot about Thanksgiving. Maybe it's the lack of eggnog in stores (which makes me rather sad... it's great stuff to dip Pocky in). Yesterday, however, I was contemplating my pocketbooks and my phone and gas bills. The gas bill was about 2400 yen, which is fine, except that the guy had come along to collect before I expected. I didn't have any cash on hand when he showed up on Tuesday, and I haven't seen him since. Regardless, I had come to the conclusion that I had just enough money to pay that and still have enough in my account for the automatic withdrawal of my phone bill with a few hundred yen left over.

So I went to the bank and pulled a couple of thousand yen out of the savings account there to put into the post office account. I was five minutes too late for the bank's hours (the banks close at 3PM on weekdays), so I had to use the ATM, which meant I couldn't get out the amount I wanted (I wanted 3400 yen, but you can only get multiples of 1000) and would have to come back the next day to pull out the amount I needed for the gas bill without going below 0 on the account. I then walked next door to the post office and used the post office ATM to deposit the money in the post office account. I looked at the passbook (any transaction at an ATM or at the counter that alters your money is automatically entered into the passbook via computer) to verify that there was enough in the account.

That was when I discovered that my scholarship came in on Tuesday.

Hooray!

I decided that it was time to go blow some money on myself and get a PS2 and everything I needed to play FFXI. I got a PS2 at the recycle shop called Hard Off over by Coach and Four (the book store). I also checked out their supply of games, finding some nifty stuff but not buying any since I mainly wanted FFXI. I then walked to Coach and Four because they had a section that sold games, but they didn't have either hard drives (which in Japan, at least, is called the BB Unit) or FFXI. Urk. On the plus side, I found out that the first few models of the PS2 in Japan didn't have expansion bays, and that in Japan the bios number (starting with SCPH) is a good thing to know about your PS2. Everywhere I've seen PS2's around here, there's been a piece of paper taped to it announcing the bios number. Mine is SCPH-50000.

So... I walked the 20-minute walk back to my place, dropped the PS2, and headed to the area of Posful -- a 45-minute walk in another direction. I got myself a Teriyaki McBurger at Posful (after running into Ryoko and bragging about having bought a PS2), then went to Geo, a "media store" (read: games, CD's, DVD's, the like). I looked at their selection of games for a bit, not seeing FFXI, but seeing the hard drive. Went to the desk and asked them about it. According to their inventory, they had neither FFXI nor hard drive. I bought the hard drive that was on the shelf after being all o.O and taking the guy to it, but was still FFXI-less.

So I went to Homac and got me a TV. It's a 14" TV (which I know for a fact because somehow, despite the fact that this country runs on centimeters, is written in English on the front) with good old-fashioned CRT technology. I had no intention of carrying it home. I went to the taxi stop outside of Posful and hopped a taxi home.

The taxi driver was fairly awesome; just like American taxi drivers, he was talkative. He was impressed with my Japanese pronounciation skills. He didn't know exactly where my apartment was, but I was able to give him directions. Muahahaha! Anyway, got inside the house and sat down with my loot. TV and PS2 both powered on fine, though I discovered that TV is apparently not broadcast through the air here; I need a coaxle cable to get television, for which I'll have to go back to Homac, 'cause no stores around here sell those. Also, although I couldn't really read the directions, I quickly realized that there was no way to connect the PS2 hard drive to the PS2 without a network adapter... which I had forgotten to get.

So there I was. Brand-new TV, not-so-brand-new PS2, and a PS2 hard drive. No video games. No TV channels. No way to plug the hard drive in.

How lame is that?

Not much I could do about it, though. Hard Off was closed, and I didn't want to pay the money for a new game at Coach and Four. I didn't think the nearby Geo, a much smaller outlet on the other side of the Kushiro river, would be open at10:30-ish. So I did stuff at home, deciding that Friday would be a good day to pull out some more money to pay rent and do more shopping with, for me if I could find what I needed, and to try to finish getting stuff for Nacilik after that.

Friday

It started out like a normal Friday. My screwy sleep schedule continued, and I woke up around 11:30. Did random cleany-stuff and some other things before grabbing a 7-11 Bacon-Mayo Roll breakfast and heading to the library for a bit of pre-class kanji studying. Then I went to Japanese class. I have trouble understanding this teacher's accent for some reason, but he's a very nice guy, and I'm learning quickly from him in spite of only understanding like half of what he says.

Class got out and sadoubu was to start at 4, though I knew that Keina or Ryoko would be there earlier, getting things set up so that when Ikajima-sensei arrived we could just go to work, so I took that opportunity to go to the post office. I also went to the bank to get some information I needed to finish setting up a Japanese-based Paypal account for transferring money to and from people in the states. When I got back to the school, I ran into Sato and chatted with her for a few, then headed to the tatami room.

Lo! Sensei was already there, and it wasn't even 3:30. I got to have some more of the thick tea (not as thick as the stuff made for 5 people, but thicker than the stuff I've been taught to make thus far). It's so delicious. I helped Keina in putting a lot of the equipment away after I had my go at the ceremony, then realized we were putting stuff up early. More entrance exams tomorrow, apparently... no wonder sensei was early. Gar!

So, as I had planned and dressed for before leaving the house that morning, I headed immediately for Hard Off. Maybe I can't have FFXI yet, but I can have something! I bought two games, Fantavision and Tales of Destiny, for about 500 yen each, and a PS1 memory card with a spiffy cactaur sticker for about 800 yen. I also hit the nearby grocery store for some snacks and some necessities and came home. I followed that up with a trip to the nearby Geo store, which did not have FFXI, but did have the PS2 network adapter. Yay!

So now I have two games, a PS1 game w/ a memory card and a PS2 game w/o a memory card. Luckily, the non-memory card game is a puzzler. I also have installed the PS2 hard drive (whose software made the PS2 menu even spiffier-looking than it started and improved the music playback feature). It's 5 AM on Saturday; now I sleep, and after I wake, I am going to the game store in Posful to see if they have FFXI and to Homac for a coaxle cable.

I'm reconsidering purchasing a bike.

Farewell.

Realizations of the Period

1) DUH! The Japanese are trendy people... with the new slimline PS2's out, no one wants a bloody PS2 hard drive or any game that requires it. God damnit! The nearest place I know for sure sells FFXI is Sapporo!

Foreigners

2005-11-22T19:33:00.000+09:00

Day before yesterday, I went with Olga and her boarding house Mom (Chie) to the International center (where we met Sasha, Tolia, and Jyun). They were having a "beginning of winter" party for the foreigners in town. (Quotations used because there's still a severe lack of snow here.) I found out that I'm one of like 4 Americans, including a guy who's lived here with his Japanese wife for over 15 years. I got "business cards" from like 10 middle school kids in exchange for talking English with them for a few minutes. I also met a woman named Julia from Hong Kong.

She was awesome; she, a girl from Romania who works at the local 7-11, and I started off the dancing when the rock band started playing in the corner. We tried to get a snake going, but it didn't work so well. We managed to get the middle school boys dancing, and one of 'em turned out to have some really nice moves including a couple of Russian things I know how to do and can't, thanks to my acting lessons of so long ago.

The rest of the time was spent talking to random people and snacking on sushi, sandwiches, and candy set out on all the tables. It turned out that there were a boat load of people from other Asian countries. A big boat, too. We of non-Asian countenances were few and far between.

As the event wound down around 2:30 (it had started at noon), Tolia, Olga, Jyun, another Japanese guy whose name I don't quite remember, and I decided to take our time and go for a walk. Chie, Olga's boarding house Mom, drove herself home, not wanting to deal with the weather. The rest of us ended up spending like an hour and a half sitting and chatting in the nearby MOO building's indoor park/greenhouse place before we decided to go drinking. I told them I was gonna have to head home due to lack of moneyage, but the guy whose name I don't quite remember offered to pay, so... I went.

It turned out that we were a bit early for the drinking places to open. The one we headed to opened at 5 PM, but we got there like 25 minutes early. We walked back past the international center to the one guy's car, which we rode to a parking garage across the street from the place we intended to go drinking at. The parking garage was awesome. Narrow, just like every parking lot I have seen in Japan, but when we got to the machine that gives you the tickets, it had an electric board showing which levels of the garage were full. How useful is that? :D

The place was called Wara Wara, which consisted, in Japanese, of the kanji for laughter twice. It was a nice place, with the table sunk into the floor like the yakiniku place I went to with the sadou girls after the gakusai. Olga didn't want to drink too much because Chie hates alcohol, so she, Jyun, and I started out sharing a bottle of sake. The one guy (who I'm gonna call Taka from here because I know his name started with Taka) had a cocktail, and Tolia had orange juice. I asked if he didn't like Alcohol, but got a vague, "I've drunk alcohol before," for an answer before Olga declared that she was "ashamed of him as a Russian." It was good fun; talk and food abounded.

Taste-O-Meter!

Tako: 4
At first, when Jyun asked me if I like tako I thought he meant the good old-fashioned Mexican taco. Tako is octopus, chopped up into little bits and marinated in something. The texture was ok, and the taste was a teensy bit reminiscent of like the food that "tasted a little bit like Hell" in Sapporo. Olga and Tolia didn't want any, but Jyun, Taka, and I chowed down.

Gyojya: 5
This was pretty much the Japanese version of a potsticker.

Deep Fried Chicken Cartilage: 5
Way tastier than it should have been. I never realized you could eat cartilage before; just goes to show what I know. I definitely need to try chicken skin on a stick.

The other stuff we ate was stuff like vegetables and sushi. Olga and I ate a lot of sushi, actually. There ended up being a second round of drinks as well; Olga refrained so that her breath wouldn't end up smelling of alcohol and Tolia had more orange juice. Taka said he wanted to "see me drunk" so he bought me a glass of whiskey; Jyun ordered a nice big bottle of warm sake, from which I also partook some. I didn't end up drunk, though.

From there I went home; I ended up playing board games online with Ozymandius, until I realized that it was time for me to take a bath and get to bed... so I did.

Skip Yesterday, it Was Boring. Here's Today.

Got up late this morning. Again. My sleep schedule is running about two hours late at the moment. I've been trying to fix it by getting up on time early, but I'm having alarm clock problems. So I got up just in time for a new class.

I had thought the Nihon Jijou schedule was being switched around for some reason, but it was actually a geography class. I showed up late because I'd been told it was in room 401, when it was really in 401A (meaning a different building altogether). When I got there, the teacher had copied maps of Kushiro to paper for us. He told us a little bit about Kushiro and its economics: Kushiro is the last place in Hokkaido with an undepleted coal mine; at one time, Kushiro brought in more fish than any other port in Japan, and it's still the best in Hokkaido but is now third in Japan; there are a crapload of paper mills; there are two ports, one on either side of the river mouth, with the north one being newer and bigger; Kushiro gets a lot of imports from New Orleans (oh snap, hurricane).

After that, he took us for a drive around town to show us some of the stuff he'd pointed out, officially making this the coolest Geography class ever. During the course of my explorations of Kushiro, I've found a couple of the spots mentioned for tourism; the first place we went to on the drive was another one, a short lighthouse overlooking the ocean. We went there because it was the best view of the port in town, not because it was a tourist spot. We could see both ports, a great deal of ocean, a great deal of town, and the breakers out in the bay. It was awesome, if cold and windy.

After that, we stayed in the car. He showed us a number of things, including a house in the oldest part of town that's been standing for like 100 years -- impressive with typhoons and earthquakes and all. We also saw a jinjya (Shinto shrine) that was dedicated to the gods of the sea. We then made our way to and all around both ports. We got to see some rather large piles of coal and wood chips. The former was awaiting shipment to Yokohama by boat, the latter to a paper plant to be turned into paper. The fishing boats had the kind of fish they go out for written in large letters on the sides of their cabins, and all around the fishing boats were the biggest seagulls I have ever seen. They're 2-3 times the size of Alaskan ones.

After we got back to the school, we discussed going to other places to check out other things in the future. Olga had a preference as to where to go, but I'm cool with going anywhere. We then broke off to go wherever; I went to the Gaiken room to do some kanji studying, then went to the koto class, then came home and wrote this. Yay!

Realizations of the Period

1) I think I'm gonna have to rotate my sleep schedule forward to fix it. Bah!
2) I really need a table.

Agh, Kanji! ><

2005-11-18T23:17:00.000+09:00

I woke up late this morning (which is to say around noon) due to a dream I liked and can't remember. I went to my 1 o'clock class, in which I was given yet more kanji to study. Yay! The teacher is settling down into a routine now, and I'm learning quite a bit. The class focuses on learning kanji and improving our reading and writing skills.

The title of this post comes from the fact that we've had an average of 100 kanji a week thrown at us thus far. I'm now to the point where I seriously need to study them every day. I like kanji, but dear god, that's a lot to get at once. I am prificient with about a third of the kanji we've been handed so far, and vaguely recognize some of the others. I'm currently in the process of going through my kanji dictionary and pinning down the meaning of each of these kanji to make sure I know what I am looking at; today I spent 158 yen to get a kanji practice book, and once I'm done pinning down meanings, I'm gonna start practicing in earnest, then using the graph paper that came with me from America to make random sentences. Woo! (Read: Oh god, this is hard. And time comsuming. Why did I come to a total immersion school, again?)

Had sadoubu today. I learned another setup. It's another shelf setup, but this shelf has one more... uh... shelf than the kind I learned about last time. It's a bit different, but I'm starting to pick up the general change in the pattern of the ceremony that comes with using a shelf.

I've also decided that there's a list of things that no longer get Taste-O-Meter! ratings; it can be assumed they are all along similar lines and rate about the same. Pretz, korokke, and tea ceremony candy are currently on the list.

Also, before I went to class, I hopped by 7-11 to grab some breakfast. They were out of bacon-mayo rolls, so I got...

Taste-O-Meter!

Sausage Donut: 4
I don't know what image that name pulled up in your head, but I'm pretty sure you got it wrong. It was a sausage which looked like a hot dog in the middle of a piece of bread about the size of a fist cut in half long-way. (Hot dog style?) The bread wasn't as sweet as you think of with the word "donut", but the texture of the bread was very donut-y.

Realizations of the Period

1) Beer and pretzels go very well together, even if the beer isn't all that tasty.
2) I can get Sky Blue here, if I'm willing to walk 20 minutes to get it. I didn't see any cases/six packs, though, and I found a Japanese beer I like anyway... which I can get at the local convenience stores.
3) I've been looking for Milky Way bars for like a week now. I've found M&M's, Kit Kats, and Snikers, but no Milky Way. Gar!

Places of Learning

2005-11-17T19:40:00.000+09:00

I've decided that if I'm gonna spend a couple of hours bent over a few pieces of paper working on learning kanji, I need a table. Since I can't afford one at the moment, that means finding a place to practice that comes with its own table. I've done a bit at the donut shop and in the library, but today I decided that I would do so in the Gaiken's room. There's a room for international students to study in, but since there are a few reasons behind my choice:

1) There are only like six international students, total. If I go to the Gaiken room, there's generally a steady flow of people, and since they're all native Japanese speakers, I get listening practice.
2) I'm more comfortable using my broken Japanese around native Japanese people who know what it's like to learn a foreign language than I am around the other foreign exchange students. (I don't know why. It's not as if they don't know what it's like to be learning a foreign language. I am definitely the worst speaker of Japanese among us, though).
3) The international students' room has a lot of stuff that's really good for learning Japanese with, but it's all low- to mid-level textbooks. I find that at the point I'm at, those don't help much anymore. The Gaiken room has a number of books covering various things about linguistics and languages in both English and Japanese, as well as a huge stack of Shonen Jump magazines in the corner.

It's a good place to work, and I intend to do more there in the future. ^^ I like my fellow foreign language majors here.

Speaking of fellow foreign language majors... the Gaiken's other Lena (same pronounciation, though if you transliterated from Japanese kana to English it'd be spelled Rina) is also a third-year, also in sadoubu, and lived in the apartment building I now live in before she went on exchange to Australia. I've almost decided she's my Japanese Evil Twin, and if it turns out she lived in the same exact apartment, I'll be sure of it.

Last time I went food shopping, I picked up some soup mix. It's instant powdered cream of potato soup -- add boiling water and let it sit for a minute. Well, when I opened the box, I found out that it contained three small single-serving packets instead of the one family serving I'd expected. If I'm gonna have soup for dinner, I want a family size serving, since it's fairly insubstantial stuff. Since I also had three portions of udon noodles remaining uncooked, I decided to try making the potato soup with about half as much water as suggested and using it as a sauce for udon noodles.

Taste-O-Meter!

Udon in Cream of Potato Soup Sauce: 5
This is really tasty stuff. I'm glad I tried it. Even when I can afford more expensive stuff, I think this will still be something I eat fairly regularly. I am still looking forward to having money to buy random stuff whose labels I can't read off the shelf to cook with, though.

I also sent off a package to Nacilik today. Shipping wasn't as bad as I thought -- 16 manga books, about 3500 yen. Granted, it's the cheapest shipping I could get and with the Christmas shipping going on he's not getting the package for a while. But it's shipped.

I've found the most awesome on-computer d20 character sheet ever. It was originally created for D&D multi-classing, but the way this guy has put it together, you should be able to use it for just about any d20 game setting with some tweaking. It's an Excel spreadsheet that does most of the calculating for you, making it perfect for game masters making NPCs, as well as people who just have trouble with the game mechanics. You can define your own classes in the sheet, too, allowing you to use non-standard or tweaked classes. The down side is that it doesn't work with OpenOffice. I can't afford Microsoft Office right now; even if I could, I probably can't use the Japanese version with the English OS, and I am not paying for the shipping on getting the English version. Another downside for the college student gamer is that the sheet itself is shareware. It's $20 Canadian, so I think it's well worth it, but... you know, lack of money.

Realizations of the Period

1) Apparently a lot of random ad banner services on the 'net use your location to determine what ads to toss at you instead of what language the site you're viewing is in.

The Annals of Stupid Foreigner Mistakes

2005-11-15T20:33:00.000+09:00

When I was putting together yesterday's blog post, I completely forgot something which is funny enough that I must correct my error.

I glanced around the arcade yesterday at Posful and found a nifty litte drumming game I wanted to try out. It was a lot more simple than the Konami one, so I figured, "Why not? I'll play it once." Well, game starts, and a name entry screen pops up. It took me a moment to figure out what it was, but when I did, I was like, "Oh, OK," and tried to put my name in. I messed up on the controls for that and ended up putting in を as the first character of my name -- a character which you never, ever see in names.

I was gonna try to fix it, but decided not to bother after trying to navigate the Japanese alphabet and just hit enter three times on the character I landed on. The result was をっっっ. Not, for those of you who can read this, をつつつ, but をっっっ. For those of you who can't read this, all I can tell you is that this is about the most ridiculous thing I could put in for a name. It doesn't even have a real pronunciation; the closest I could come would be an exceptionally crappy kung-fu yell.

I then accidentally picked beginner mode and proceeded to rape the top score. I almost doubled it, subsequently earning をっっっ a place on that arcade machine for a long, long time, if not forever.

Carrying on to today, I elected to spend some time this afternoon watching 24. The DVD players were as badly off as I recalled, and I didn't feel like moving to the big TV, so I ended up watching broadcast television. I didn't know I could access that in the library until today, when I turned the TV on and realized I needed to hit the TV/Video button to see the DVD. When I first started watching TV, it was all commercials, being right around the change of the hour. I eventually settled on a random station and kept working on some NPCs for my D&D world (as I'd been doing during my failed attempt to watch 24).

The TV show ended up being coverage of someone's post-wedding interview. Boring, I thought, and went to change the channel. The next channel had the same exact thing. As did the next. And the next. Only one channel wasn't covering this wedding, and that had a sumo tournament. I was tempted to watch the sumo tourney, but decided that since this wedding was on every channel, I may as well try to figure out what was up with it. Turns out that it was the Japanese princess's wedding. Oho. After the live broadcast of the interview was over, the different channels turned to discussing various things related to the princess and/or her wedding. Some of them talked about various gifts she received, including a [beautiful] set of 5 cups costing a total of 100,000 yen. I also got to see some footage of her from when she was around middle-school age; she had glasses and acne. Proof positive that royalty are still people.

The random channel I'd settled on resolved to some womens' show before I left. They had a guest who had discovered a way to make food that wasn't gyoza, but amazingly tasted like gyoza. I don't know why it was so amazing, but for some reason her way of making a food that tasted like gyoza without being gyoza was awesome.

After that I got off to koto class. ^^ I'm getting much better at reading the music (all in kanji) and the lyrics (hiragana and katakana) at the same time than I used to be. Makes me happy. Unfortunately, the range of the instrument doesn't fit the range of my voice very well; the top two strings are a little to high if I sing in my upper range, and I can't sing in my lower range as unthinkingly as I can my upper range. Bah! Humbug.

Anyway, off to watch some Firefly. Woooo-hoo!

Rearranging the Room / Advent Ah-Don't-Think-So

2005-11-15T00:48:00.000+09:00

Yesterday morning I woke up and decided to rearrange my room. Since getting internet, my computer has been pretty much in the exact center of the apartment, hooked to the internet on one end and the power on the other. So I decided to move the power strip to the same outlet that was powering the modem. As a result, I now also get to sit right in front of the heater, saving myself a bit of money on gas (since I can just reach over and turn it off if I'm warm). Yay!

I downloaded Advent Children a couple of days ago. I watched it with subtitles once, and have since then listened to it 1-1.5 times a day behind whatever else I've been doing for the Japanese listening practice. I'm in love with the soundtrack. The rocked-out version of One-Winged Angel is pretty much to die for, as are a couple of the other variant versions of songs on the soundtrack. The story... I like it more as I watch it more, but I don't think it was presented well. Overall, though, it was a fun romp back to the good old days of FFVII. However... we want a remake. This does not count.

I've also decided I need more things to watch. The library has a bunch of DVDs, but I can't check them out to bring home (even if I could use my laptop to watch DVDs from another region) and I can't access the internet from the room the DVDs are in. I'll likely end up spending some kanji practice time there with Mr. Incredible and the Phantom of the Opera.

Yesterday I had an idea for a photoshopped image (which isn't done yet) which required a picture of the Turks from FFVII. Since Advent Children had such nice renders available, I ended up grabbing one of those pictures, and in the process discovering that you can buy a replica of Cloud's earring from the movie. It's a pretty spiffy-looking earring, all told. The price is a bit high (a little over $50), which is a bit much, but I like the look of it, so I was almost willing to buy it (given a time frame in which I had money). However, I then discovered that it's a bloody clip-on. I'll be damned if I'm paying more than $5 for a clip-on earring. If I'm paying more than that, I want assurance that the earring won't come off, and that means that it has a post that goes through an 11-year-old hole in my ear. I mean, sure, selling a clip-on version makes sense, since most of their customers will be cosplaying fanboys who don't want to seem gay in society's eyes (...?), but it also makes sense to sell a posted version, especially at that price. (Note: I was looking for a picture of the clip on to put in here after I finished writing the blog post and found out that some enterprising cosply stuff seller has made a posted version which sells for $20. That's more like it.)

I spent today's early afternoon helping my friend Hiroko look at classes to take at UAF. The schedule for spring semester won't be out until tuesday, so we can't figure out exactly what she's gonna take, but I helped her decipher the silly descriptions in the course catalog, as well as figure out that some of the classes she'll want to take are offered every other spring, with the next offering being the semester after she leaves. I also explained the coolness that is the recreation classes and recommended a couple of other classes I thought she'd like. We also looked up Psychology prefessors at the UAF section of Rate My Professors and determined that it should be easy to find a Psychology class she'd enjoy. ^^ I'm really looking forward to seeing her again when I return to Alaska, to see what she'll have thought of Alaska and exchange by the time I return.

The rest of the afternoon I spent shopping. I got the rest of the Shannon shopping done. (Side note primarily aimed at Ash: At the moment I'm pretty much strapped for cash, so until my bills have stopped piling up so suddenly as a result of the way my scholarship works, I'll be able to get stuff for people who haven't given me money to buy stuff for them with. Patience, yo.) That was fun. I also discovered that in the maze that is Posful I missed a couple of shops the first time around.

I found this one shoe store with the most awesome flip-flops ever. So 4000+ yen awesome that I wasn't about to buy them. If you were to take a piece of white foam, cut it in the shape of a storm trooper's head, paint it like a storm trooper's head, then cut flip-flops out of it, you'd get these. It was a storm trooper's face that you could step on, take apart, and restore. I want it.

Realizations of the Period

1) Eating is expensive.

EBay is Good, But Sadou is Expensive

2005-11-12T21:48:00.000+09:00

Spent part of today looking up the cost of sadou equipment (in the interest of possibly buying some of my own when I get back to the states). It looks like it'll take 3-6 hundred dollars depending on luck. The bulk of that is the kama (kettle for boiling water) and the furo on which it rests to be heated up. :P Gar. About what I expected, but... gar.

Day before yesterday, I had shodou class. We're quickly moving through strokes for kanji. I think the teacher plans to start on hiragana soon. I have heard from various co-students that hiragana and katakana are harder than kanji. That doesn't surprise me, but since shodou is harder than it looks, I think it'll prove to be interesting.

Yesterday I had Japanese Language class. The teacher is rapidly throwing more and more kanji at us. I care more about how my kanji look than the other exchange students, so I write slower, which is making class interesting. It also means that the time I spend outside of class on kanji is longer, as well. I need to find more stuff I can do outside of class while simultaneously working on kanji. Traditionally, I've done some video watching, but since the school library's DVD players are really in need of a lens cleaning and my laptop is set up for USA encoding... dunno. *sigh* I'll figure something out.

Yesterday was also sadoubu. Normally sadoubu runs until about 8 PM (including general club stuff after Ikajima-sensei has left), but since today was the entrance exams for potential new students to the school, the school building became off-limits at 6PM yesterday. Sadoubu started at 3 instead of 4, but only me, two other students, and Ikajima-sensei showed that early. On the plus side, I got to learn to do a new sadou setup, using a shelf. It's called Tana no Ousu. Tana = shelf; I dunno about ousu. There was also a new sweet.

Taste-O-Meter!

Nagoya no Uiro: 4
It was okay, but I've been spoiled by youkan and mochi, which are much better. It was yellowish in color, with a texture similar to mochi, though it came apart from itself much more easily.

In other news, my friend Nekram is trying to get into the JET Programme this summer. His only roadblock is that although he'll have met all the graduation requirements by that time, he won't have made them in time for graduation. He's trying to see if they'll take a letter from the school saying he's golden in lieu of their requirement of a degree. If it works, then he'll be in Japan before I leave. It'd be awesome to meet up with him in Japan, in addition to Conrad and his group. :D

Mormons

OK, so like a week after I got here some mormon missionaries showed up at my door looking for someone else. They were guys, and one of 'em was an American who's been in Japan for almost a year now. They were interesting to talk to, but the mormon missionaries have a rule agains two guy missionaries entering a house containing a lone female, so they sent some female missionaries my way.

I like the guy missionaries better, so I decided to see how many times I could set up appointments with these girl missionaries and miss them on purpose before they stopped trying. Today was the second time, but they waited for over an hour out in the cold for my return. They're determined! Agh! Now I am trying to think of good ways to offend them without seemingly trying. Any ideas?

Realizations of the Period

1) I'm perfectly fine subsisting on somen with tuna for now. Until I get more money, this allows me to save a lot on food.
2) Shipping is expensive. By expensive, I mean really friggin' expensive.

Blind People Have the Best Ears Ever

2005-11-10T00:21:00.000+09:00

So I tried playing that shooter for blind people. I suck at it. I need to play the tutorial several more times. I've never been all that great at matching pitches at different octaves, but it looks like I'm about to get some hardcore practice. On a side note, there are no graphics -- the program brings up a window that's white with a black square border, and that's it.

Speaking of hearing, at my brother's suggestion I have switched from Winamp to iTunes. Hooray for programs that take less resources! I also like the interface better for the most part. I need to get used to avoiding the buttons that take you to the iTunes store, though.

I was late for class today. Only by a couple of minutes, but still... I need to time myself on exactly how long it takes for me to get to the school from my apartment, now that I have internet. ^^' Bloody Neopets. Too absorbing. Originally intended to occupy time for college students, it works. How about that? I wish the Plushie Tycoon prices would go where I need them -- which is LOW. Grr.

After that, I had sadoubu. I spent a lot of my time in sadoubu translating part of the sadou textbook's introduction. Yay! I could already read more of it than I expected, and there were some words for which I could read the kanji but had no clue what the meaning of the word was. That's why I had a dictionary. I didn't get very far, 'cause I also performed the tea ceremony and participated in someone else's. Eventually I decided to save it for later and went to work on a celtic knot that I had started earlier during class. It still isn't done; I'm trying to make it take up a whole page by putting random intersections on the paper and then fitting them together.

Something I haven't mentioned (didn't want to worry people) is that about a week and a half after I got here, a weird lump formed under the skin of my right shin. It didn't affect my movement any, but it did hurt if pressed on it. My lotion quest was a result of realizing that the skin over it was about as dried out as my skin has gotten. Once I got my hands on some lotion, applying it for a few days took care of the lump hurting. Yesterday morning, I realized I had had no milk whatsoever since coming to Japan and had some with breakfast. I noticed last night right after my bath and before bed that the lump was reduced in size; I had more milk this morning and it's shrunk even more. Dunno what's up with that, but it's getting better and I'm glad.

There are a number of things I've mentioned that I would like to go over in greater detail. As such, I present yet another new blog feature. There will be no more than one of these per day, and some days may not have one. (This is taking longer to write than I expected, heh. I picked a doozy to start with.) I present to you:

Bloglight Japan: Feudal Clothing

The basic staple of Japanese feudal clothing is the kimono. The kimono is still worn today for special occasions, though some people do wear them regularly as normal clothing. What most people don't realize is that the kimono is really an entire outfit, with many parts that you don't see. Guys' kimono tend to be less flashy than womens', but all kimono are put together such that the kimono is one color and everything else the person wears with it accents it in a contrasting fashion. For summer festivals and in hotels, yukata are worn. Yukata is a casual kimono made of cotton that has less layers.

To start with, you oughta take a look at JP NET Kimono Hypertext. The History of Kimono section shows the dress of varying periods (the Heian period is probably the most interesting, but I wonder how much of a pain some of that was to move around in). The other three sections are about modern kimonos and show the differences in styles, but the Kimono Encaeclopedia does a better job of showing styles for womens' kimonos and has a bigger gallery of random kimono shots.

The undermost layer is called hadajuban. The hadajuban comes in two pieces and is made of the same sort of material that slips are made of. The first part goes over your head and is pretty much a full-dress slip like you'd buy in the states. The second part is a wraparound, tie-on skirt. At this stage, one can also add padding around the waist or wherever to ensure that one's obi will work right. I don't need that, having hips and bust to spare. :P But it's doable.

The second layer is the nagajyuban. This is one piece, is made of thicker material than the hadajuban, and is pretty much identical in shape to a kimono. Female ones seem to all be pink and white; the only guy one I have seen was green and white. It's put on in the same fashion as a kimono, which is much more easily explained with visuals. I direct you to the Kimono Encaeclopedia's How to Wear a Kimono page. Their description uses a yukata, but the way it works is the same, minus the very last step with the obi-shaping thing.

On top of that comes the kimono. The kimono is put on the same way as the nagajuban. By the time you're done to that point, you've got five pieces of clothing held on with the help of 3-4 sashes.

Then comes the obi (the belt). The cardboard obi-shaping thing gets tucked into the folded-over obi (they come twice as wide as necessary). Its purpose is to prevent unsightly wrinkles from forming due to people having waists. The obi itself goes over that. The obi is tied behind one's back in one of many varied and wonderful ways (though sometimes people will tie it in front and turn it around if they have no help). I bought the kimono book in Sapporo because it had some really, really pretty ways to tie obi. I can't find any place online with a set of really good pictures, but the place I mentioned for kimono history shows a few different ties.

Some of the ties require the help of one or more obi makura (pillows) and/or some cording, but I've only seen cording on really elaborate ones. All kimono setups include another sash called the koshihimo. This is tied around the kimono above the obi, and is tucked into the obi along the top in front, but is still visible. There are some elaborate ways to tie this, too, but those are optional. The last thing that goes over the obi is the obijime, a braided cord that comes in varying colors and styles that are all about half an inch in diameter. There are really only a few ways to tie these, as each tie has a significance relating to the occasion -- a certain way for weddings, a certain way for funerals, that sort of thing.

That's putting the kimono itself on. In addition to that, it's unseemly to have long hair down when wearing a kimono, because it hides some of the grace of the kimono. Some people put a great deal of thought into how their hair is done when wearing a kimono. Accessories are also chosen to match (when I was talking to Mika and Ryoko about the gakusai and kimonos, we were joking about being all decked out in kimonos and carrying AU bags, AU being a cell phone company), including the shoes.

The shoes come in two basic types, geta and zoori. Zoori have a flat bottom; geta refers to any kind that have a separate heel, including the wooden ones that guys always wear. Both types have varieties, but all varieties of both types bear a resemblance to flip-flops. As such, the special socks that go with kimono, called tabi, have two separate toe sections; the big toe gets its own section and the other four get the other.

Now, guys' kimonos, as I mentioned, are less flashy than girls'. They tend to be a solid color, for one thing. The guys (though you occasionally see girls, most notably Shinto shrine maidens, wearing these), however, get hakama. Hakama are the really cool-looking pleated pants. A hakama goes on over a kimono, and is used mainly for really formal occasions and when participating in traditional Japanese cultural stuff like sadou and kyuudou (traditional archery). When a hakama is to be worn, the obi is tied in a bow using a specific tying method. The hakama has straps attached to the front and back of the pants that tie on in a certain way and the result covers the bow up, though you can still see the obi's color. There's a special jacket called the haori which is used for ultra-formal occasions, as well.

And that, boys and girls, is a lesson on kimono. I still want one really badly. TTFN!

Realizations of the Period

1) Someone has told me that guys' shoes in Japan get up to about 28 centimeters in length. Apparently I haven't seen any of those. I may be in luck.
2) Mormons are really good at discovering the most inconvenient times to drop by. Either I've just added noodles to boiling water or I've gotten about halfway through a several minute flash movie with no pause button.
3) There's nothing quite like dancing in your underwear when your headphones cord is barely long enough to let the headphones reach your ears when plugged into your computer on the floor.
4) A thing I've thought of; if we look at bible and evolution and try to imagine them together... if God created us in His image, does God look like a monkey?
5) I can almost sit in seiza (Japanese kneeling position) for the entire duration of a sadou performance. YES! Big improvement over the two minute-ish time frame I started with.

Catching up on Gaming

2005-11-08T22:40:00.000+09:00

I started off the morning by trying to finally get completely caught up on the unread e-mails in my inbox -- most of which are Gamasutra newsletters. I didn't get all the way done 'cause... I didn't. I had koto class at 4:20, then went food shopping. Came back, sat down, and some mormons came by. Tenacious, they are.

After that, I started poking around the Photoshop Phriday archives on Something Awful. There are some really good ones recently (as if they weren't good all the time). You should all definitely check out the most recent one, Honest Game Titles.

So yeah, today wasn't very exciting for people who are interested in reading all about what I am doing in Japan. I did discover that the local grocery store has a small selection of youkan. And I beat Ozymandius twice at Tolouse on the Asobrain website. Tolouse is an online version of a board game called Carcasonne. The site also hosts online Settlers of Catan, as well as Set and some other game I've never played.

So, if you care, here's...

My Take on Slightly Out-of-Date Gaming News

As games get more popular, scientists find more ways to study them. Recently, there seems to have been a boom on studies of games such as DDR and their value as a form of excercise. If you've ever played it yourself, you already know that it has exercise value. I've also seen videos of some of the DDR exhibitions and tournaments that have taken place around the country, in which you'll see people doing 2-player co-op and occasionally doing things like having one guy leap over the other so they can switch pads. I've also personally seen a 9-year old in a Pokemon T-shirt take on the hardest song on a machine on the hardest setting... I don't know how he moved his feet that fast. However, you don't have to be a DDR master to get excercise out of DDR, and Konami is starting to really push the exercise aspect of the game.

Some time ago, someone told me (Kyle, maybe?) about a project to create a first-person shooter game for blind people, in which everything is based on sound. I later heard something that made me think the project had been abandoned. I don't know if it's the same project or not, but it looks like there's an early version of such a shooter right here. Another site, Audiogames, has a whole list of games made for blind people. I dunno if they have graphical interfaces or not, but I intend to try to play this stuff without looking.

Someone comes up with the latest good idea in virtual reality technology, and the military gets to use it first. Go figure. Side note: I want one.

WotC is taking a new tack with D&D advertizements. I like this because it also pokes indirectly at people who try to argue D&D as a bad thing for promoting anti-social natures. It also happens to be kinda funny.

There are a lot of people out there who don't pay much attention to news. Some of those people are not paying attention to the news because they're too busy playing video games. I present Kuma\War, a really good idea. These guys have made a completely free first-person shooter that gets new missions on a monthly basis, and every mission is based on something that actually happened recently. I don't see myself playing the game, but it's still an excellent idea, and I'd be willing to bet that the general concept of turning current events into video games could easily be broadened to include other areas of news and other genres of games.

Ever heard of Project Entropia? It's an MMORPG that is free to download and has been around for like 10 years. It's based around the idea of buying in-game money with real cash. However, you can also turn money gained in-game back into real cash. Some insane maniac recently spent $100,000 of real money to buy a space-station in the game. Sure, he has spaces to rent out to other people, potentially being able to make his money back, but damn. I mean, just damn.

My next bit can be summed up in a single sentence: "LOL, Vin Diesel is going to star in a Hitman movie." (However, a search to find a link to the Hitman web site brought this petition up on Google.)

Do you like good old-fashioned text adventures games, also sometimes called interactive fiction? They arose from D&D, and from them rose the point-and-click adventure games (like the Monkey Island series) and RPG video games. Well, someone's decided that the history of these old fashioned games is really interesting, because he's making a documentary called Get Lamp. It's something I look forward to, actually.

Realizations of the Period

1) It's fun to riddle a blog post with links.
2) I'm so gonna miss having a washing machine in my bedroom. It's one of the most convenient things ever. When your laundry hamper is full, just add soap and pick a wash cycle.

The Roof is on Fire... And so is My Internet!

2005-11-08T00:09:00.000+09:00

I have internet again! I have stepped onto the yellow brick road that will eventually lead me back to Vana'diel, and which is such a nice place to browse in at all hours of the day besides. Hurrah!

Got up this morning knowing the guys who set up internet are supposed to show up sometime today. I don't think we ever established a set time during phone conversations, so I got to sit at home until it happened, then go shopping for Shannon and Greg in the evening. Figured I'd do a combination of homework, reading D&D material, and playing video games during the waiting portion of the day, and I started with D&D material.

Some of the D&D stuff I have on my computer is new classes and prestige classes, some is web enhancements, and some is old books from first and second edition that you can't really buy anymore. This includes the old Monstrous Compendium. I hadn't looked at the file before today, but I'm glad I finally got around to it. It was really awesome to find the Agony Beetle (an encounter I remember well from childhood, but that's another story) listed. I also looked at the old entry for the Owlbear and compared it to the current Monster Manual's version. The game statistics are very different, but some of the informational stuff is taken almost word-for-word. That was both cool and saddening; it turns out that there's a lot more information in the old Monstrous Compendium about the habitat and temperament of creatures than in the Monster Manual.

So the internet setup guy came along about the time that I was starting to work on homework. It didn't take very long, but I discovered that the setup software disk I had received before won't work with my computer -- the operating system language differences were a hurdle the CD couldn't handle. So the guy showed me how to set up an internet connection that has nothing to do with a network (I've never had to set one up before). And now, I have internet.

I spent most of the day taking advantage of the internet to finally make some ruddy headway on the current Neopets plot. >< On to Useless Crystal III, now! I also filled out some postcards, and in the evening I went to the bookstore to do some shopping. Got some stuff for Nacilik. I was gonna get stuff for Shannon, too, but I realized quickly that I had to carry stuff home and had forgotten to bring my bookbag. I had my umbrella with me, and Nacilik's books were heavy, so... I'll go back for stuff for Shannon tomorrow. *rolls eyes* Shannon is so easy to shop for, and 200 dollars of random shopping money will go along way, I think, especially when I get to dishes. As Mugendai pointed out to me, there are a LOT of Japanese-y looking dishes at the 100 yen shops.

Realizations of the Period

1) You can use a 10,000 yen note just about anywhere. The guy who came to my door today to collect on last month's gas bill for like 500 yen easily had change in his bag. It's kinda crazy.
2) The network cable that hooks me to the internet doesn't stretch to my futon. I now need a place to sit that isn't my futon.
3) I'm gonna have so much fun shopping for Shannon, and I'm not gonna tell her what I'm getting her. Hahahahah! With new year coming up, there's lots of great stuff for her. ^^

Whoo... Uh... Oops?

2005-11-06T16:30:00.000+09:00

Yeah... I misread my clock this morning, and thought it was an hour later than it was. Got some money for breakfast from the bank, got some food, and got to the library half an hour before it opened. I had brought nothing to do, so I went up to the music department. There are some piano practice rooms up there, which is where I usually go if I need to waste some time but don't want to leave the school/use the library or whatever.

Usually, I work on songs I already know, but today (for the second time) I grabbed one of the random music books off the shelf and rifled through it. I found a really delightful Beethoven song whose name I always forget but really want to learn, so I started working on it. Another girl came along shortly to grab a few things from the practice room, and asked me to play what I had been working on for her. ^^' Turns out the books belong, not to the school as I had thought, but to students, and I was using her book. That was kind of embarassing, but she told me I could go ahead and continue to use her books, which was awesome. I still don't know her name.

When I was typing about Sapporo, I forgot something. After leaving the Esta department store and before going back to the station, I spent some time watching people at an intersection. The sidewalks were fairly busy with people out drinking, and going home, and stuff. The intersection I chose was one of the ones where either cars or going or people are; all the crosswalks go green at once. It was interesting to see how many people went caddy-corner across the intersection to get where they were going. There were a couple of people who had to wait for the next turn of the light because they followed the crosswalks instead.

There was also, at one point, a blind guy. He was walking along by himself, tap-tap-tap with his stick. He reached the edge of the curb and knocked his stick against a taxi at first, then found the appropriate spot and waited. When the cars started moving parallel to the direction he wanted to go, he started walking across the street, not realizing that it was a free-for-all crosswalk. He was on the other side of the intersection from me, or I'd have stopped him. Fortunately, a couple of young people who had just finished crossing notice and pulled him back, then waited with him until it was safe to cross. It was kind of interesting to watch, as I had had a feeling that that was the sort of thing that would happen.

I also forgot to mention that since I had some money, I walked to Kushiro's major shopping district on Monday. It was mostly a mission to see what the Posful department store had to offer, but I also wanted to hit the 100 yen store nearby to grab some more dishes and some miscellanea. I hit Posful first for two reasons. One is that I encounered it first. The other is that it had a McDonald's.

Taste-O-Meter!

McDonald's Teriyaki Chicken Burger: 5
Only available in Japan, my friend Nacilik recommended that I try it. It's the best thing to ever come out of a McDonald's, ever. I don't normally like mayonnaise, but on a bun with hot, saucy teriyakai chicken... oh man, you've gotta try it.

I also didn't expect the smell of french fries to be quite that alluring. One thing I absolutely love about the Japanese McDonald's is that you can get orange juice instead of soda with a meal without getting this tiny cup. It's a regular soft drink there.

The rest of posful mostly had clothes, but there was one store that had a wide variety of nifty hair ornaments. There was also a Claire's. Some stores on the second floor had nifty trinkets and school supplies and stuff. In one store I found this awesome character and a whole bunch of stuff related to it. The character is called O-Chan.

There are also a couple of others called Obaa-chan and the like, but the basic idea here is that it's a pun. Most if not all of you who read this should know that the Japanese have suffixes that they apply to names, one of which is -chan. The Japanese word for tea is cha, and since they like tea so much they often put O in front of it as an honorific.

Do you see where this is going?

The result: A guy who pretty much lives in a variety of tea cups (by live I mean that you see a tea cup with a head and sometimes an arm or two sticking out). There were so many variations, including different tea cups and O-chan holding a variety of things. The aforementioned Obaa-chan also lives in a tea cup, but the Japanese word for grandmother is obaasan, which is often pronounced by kids and girls as obaachan.

After that I hit the 100 yen store. I only bought a couple of dishes, but I bought a variety of other useful things, like extra chopsticks in case I have company, a bigger seive, that sort of thing. I also found lotion that wasn't ￥3500 yen a bottle. Woo! Japanese lotion isn't a cream, though, it's a liquid. I like this; it's not oily. This stuff also says on the bottle that it contains sake. It smells like it, too, so I'm inclined to believe it, but since I've always thought alcohol dehydrates... ? Weird. But hey.

Realizations of the Period

1) Sitting in a chair for 7 hours straight is hard on your tailbone.

Sapporo / Gakusai

2005-11-05T16:19:00.000+09:00

Ah, this past week has been interesting. Yes... last Thursday and Friday I was in Sapporo having fun with other exchange students to Hokkaido. Saturday and Sunday were the student festival. It's been a lot of fun. I took about 300 pictures over the course of those four days. I can't find lithium batteries, however, so I have been going through alkaline ones like a stick of dynamite goes through fuse. Thank goodness for the 100 yen shops. On with the tale!

Wednesday Night

Even though the school provided us all with funds for the trip (￥25,000), we wanted to have as much to spend in Sapporo as possible, so we took the night bus. I met Jyun, Tolia, Olga, and Wu (Sasha took the train) at the bus terminal at 10:30 PM, and we all dished out about ￥5,000 for tickets. Olga had brought nigiri for everyone (in fact over the course of the trip she proved to be far better prepared food-wise than the rest of us). After we ate the nigiri, everyone but Olga went to the nearby Seicomart to get food for the bus ride. And for the first time (I'd been looking for a week), I found orange soda!

Taste-O-Meter!

Seicomart Brand Orange Soda: 5
Slightly different from American orange soda, but only by about as different as Crush is from orange Slice. Tasty! Satisfies orange soda craving well.

When we boarded, I was somewhat surprised; this bus was made for overnight trips, so it was kind of like an airplane on the inside. We settled in, and the bus left. Jyun and I had books to read 'cause we didn't plan to sleep soon -- I the D&D DMG 3.5 (I'm finally reading the adventuring chapter) and Jyun a Japanese-Russian phrase book. They had lights on for like ten minutes, then turned them off. That was ok, though, since there was a light on the back of the seat in front of me that I could turn on.

O SNAP -- It didn't turn on.

Baaaaah. Jyun had the same problem, but he had a window seat, so he tried to use city lights to read by, but quickly gave that up. I pulled out my cell phone and ran the batteries down a bit by using it as a flashlight for like an hour. I had a flashlight in my bookbag, but the bookbag was underneath us, in the luggage compartment only accessible from outside the bus. Fortunately, Japanese cell phones have amazing battery life.

When I started getting sick from trying to read under those conditions, I gave up and tried to sleep. Unfortunately for me, although the seats are actually quite comfortable when you're sitting up, reclining in them sucks. I kept sliding forward, which wasn't too bad except for the fact that my back is really particular about how I sleep. I slept, but poorly, and in two-hour spurts.

Hora? Sapporo!

6 AM. Woo! We're to meet with everyone else at the main college campus in Sapporo. At noon. So... breakfast! No Taste-O-Meter! here, though... we went to a Seicomart, and I had salad Pretz and Aka/Ao Apple Juice. I tried to take some pictures on the way, but this is where I discovered that my ruddy camera batteries had run out of juice. ARG!

With five and a half hours left to go, we walked to Odoori park and ate breakfast. There were a crazy number of pidgeons there, including two albino ones. I took a couple of pictures with my cell phone, but they kept coming out really blurry so I gave up.

After that, we went looking around. The old government building was spiffy (and I figured out the problem with my cell phone camera), but it was like 8 AM at that point and the place didn't open to tourists until 8:45. So we went to Kinokunia. But that didn't open until 10. Back to the old governmnet building, and it was open. Yay!

It was built in the Meiji Era (same time frame as Last Samurai), so it's a very Western-culture-looking place. There were some nice art pieces in there, and the red they used in there was a really nice color. There were some spiffy fossils, too. I had one problem with the place, and that problem was the stairs. They creaked and shifted quite noticeably under my weight. Those of you who know me well know that I don't handle such things well. I almost had a panic attack coming down the stairs.

After that, we went to Kinokuniya. For those of you who don't know, it's a major Japanese book store chain. The first time I heard of Kinokuniya was when I found out in high school that there's a big one in Seattle, though I think the Seattle one also sells other Japanese goods. Either way, Kinokunia was excellent. Two floors of a variety of books, with the sections labeled in both Japanese and English.

They had, among other things, a world literature section. I recognized a lot of the books, either because their titles were in English, I could read the katakana, or because the picture was the same. A display case showed off some spiffy Lord of the Rings sets. I've also come to the conclusion that I can't get away from The DaVinci Code, even though I have no intention of reading it.

I found a spifftastic kimono book over by the sadou books -- the back part has instructions for putting a kimono on properly. The rest of it shows off a variety of kimono/obi (the belt)/accessory combinations (excellent pictures for a scrapbook or collage or something) as well has having a variety of beautiful ways to tie the obi on. I tried like three times to put the book away, but I ended up losing to its appeal and bought it. I also got a pack of postcards, since I finally found some having pictures of Japan. The ones I'd seen up to then were all either Harry Potter, Winnie the Pooh, or kittens.

It Starts

After that, we hopped a train across town to the university. When we got there, the others had lunch; I've taken to skipping lunch, so I just had some water and browsed my kimono book. Then we met up with Hiruta-sensei and Sasha, and headed to the room where we were to meet up with everyone.

They had assigned everyone to mixed groups to keep everyone from just sticking with people they already knew. (Completely unrelated side note; I almost typed that sentence in Japanese. Hahahahaha!) My group actually included a guy I know somewhat from UAF named Aemon. There were six groups of about 10 people each; a huge number of them were Chinese, four from UAF (including myself and Aemon), at least one from Mongol, two Brits, one Canadian, at least two people from Norway, and some Koreans. I don't know if there was anyone from any other countries, but I do know that that wasn't all the exchange students in Hokkaido; at least one from this university didn't go, and I'm sure such was true at the other universities, as well.

So, from there we went to a Jinja (Shinto shrine). That was really cool. The old man priest that explained how things went to us knew some English, which was nice. The ceremony itself was short, but interesting. It involved some praying, some blessing, and a traditional song played on flute with a drum accompaniment while a shrine girl danced with a short sword. It was spiffy. After that, we had the opportunity to drink some of the shrine's sake (after which we were given a bottle of the stuff).

(At this point, I'd like to mention that Sasha's a hoot and a holler. He tried to get them to give him two cups of the sake, using the fact that it was his birthday as a reason. He's generally fun to be around.)

We then got a short lesson in the history of Shinto and then were given an opportunity to obtain Omamori. That's the pieces of paper detailing your luck. I didn't have ￥200 in coins on me, though, so I got another piece of paper costing ￥100 that I haven't gotten around to reading yet due to being busy. ^^'

From there we went to a museum. I thought that the only camera requirements were no flashes allowed, but it turned out that cell phones were also not allowed. So I only got pictures of the stuff on the first floor. I got even more irritated with my camera's lack of batteries on the second floor. There were some really nice pieces of glasswork up on the second floor, too, which made me even more vexed with my camera. After that, we went to the hotel.

Hotel

When I found out that I had three roommates at the hotel, I was kind of saddened. From my understanding, most Japanese hotels offer few if any rooms with two beds, so I had been entertaining the hope that in spite of the cost they must be expending on this trip, I'd get my own room. However, all my unhappiness at having roommates disappeared when I got to my room.

They were putting us up in a ryokan.

The ryokan tend to be the most expensive hotels in Japan. Every bedroom is a tatami room; when you arrive, tea and candy are waiting for you. While you are enjoying a really nice, all-traditional-Japanese-foods meal with the rest of your party in a large communal tatami room, maids come into your room to set up fluffy futons for you. Most ryokan are built on top of hot springs, and this one was no exception.

We had some time before dinner. I could have gone swimming in the pool in the basement, but I elected to explore instead. The lobbies and carpets were wonderful, and I was drawn to the Super Famicom Box area of the main lobby. (Read: TV's hooked to paid "Super Famicom Boxes" that were loaded with Super Mario Kart and Star Fox, among other things.) I managaed to avoid playing the SNES boxes until I was bored the next morning, though.

One side of the main lobby was given over to a large gift store. I bought some milk chocolate cookies and some of the sweets that had been available in our room. I planned to offer those sweets as omiyage (souvenier) to the sadoubu. I wish I'd gotten two boxes of those, so I'd have one to myself 'cause they were really tasty, but... oh well. It was the hotel specialty.

There were two basement floors. The first had a pizza/beer restaurant, an arcade, and a zen rock garden. The second had the pool and one of the bath areas. (The other bath area was on the roof.)

After that came dinner. I've had some people complain about the fact that they didn't think I'd tried any "real" Japanese food. How about Nigiri? :P This, however, was "real" Japanese food at it's "real"-est. Before I dive into the Taste-O-Meter! I must define sashimi: raw fish. Sushi is rice, sashimi is raw fish.

Taste-O-Meter!

Shrimp Sashimi: 1
I love shrimp. I really, really do. Shrimp sashimi doesn't have a very good taste, but by itself, that only rates a 3. Combined with the texture... it made me want to throw up. That made me rather sad.

Three Other Kinds of Sashimi: 3
Didn't like the texture so much, but they tasted fine.

Daikon Radish: 4
Tasty, as vegetables go. It's a variety of radish, so if you like radishes, you'll probably dig it.

Egg Pudding Stuff: 3
I call it egg pudding 'cause it was quite obviously an egg dish, but it had the consistency of pudding.

Rice with Chicken and Some Kind of Japanese Mushroom: 5
I've never had that kind of mushroom before, but it was tasty. I ended up not finishing the rice, because there was really a lot of food on the table and I got full. That made me kind of sad.

Seaweed in [What I Think was] Egg Whites: 2
This stuff didn't taste too bad, but I couldn't really chew it... it slid down my throat in a rather disgusting way.

Squid in Some Red Sauce: 3
Before we got started, the Brit in my group, Drew, was telling me and Aemon about this stuff. He'd been to Japan and to a ryokan before. He informed us (in a British accent, making it rather funny), that this stuff tasted "a little bit like Hell." I don't agree with him, but it was a funny opinion and I could see why it's not something most would like. He also told us that it tasted kind of like metal, which was true. Coppery. Maybe the sauce was made from some kind of blood?

Soup with Potstickers and Tofu and Corn: 4
I didn't like the tofu, but the rest was fine. I just kind of avoided the corn.

During dinner, they had everyone go up by group and introduce themselves. That was rather irritating, since I was in group one, and they started as soon as there had been a toast. We were all hungry, and it took a while because they had a list of things they insisted each person address. By the time all six groups were done, most people had finished eating and they started some games. They were the sort of games actors play and some of 'em turned out really funny, but I'm not going to go into details here 'cause I don't feel like it. Maybe later.

After dinner, just about everyone went to the baths. There were, of course, baths in the hotel rooms, but communal bathing is fun, so most people took part. My roommates and I went to the baths on the roof. That was good. Not as good as going to a hot spring when it's -30 F out, but still good. Then I did a bit more exploring and picture-taking before bed. My Chinese roommate went with me and we got some pictures of each other. The top floor of the hotel was obviously suites and the like; there was more art there and stuff.

The Next Day

Everyone had breakfast vouchers for the hotel's breakfast buffet. My stomach wasn't very happy with the choices I saw -- I listed the shrimp sashimi first on the Taste-O-Meter! but it was actually one of the last things I ate, and I didn't want to start the day off badly, so I had rice and sausage. It took me a while to find the water dispenser -- there were two small dispensers on a table at about waist height under a sign with the kanji for water on the wall, and it was hard to find 'cause of how crowded it was.

After that was grab-stuff-and-meet-in-the-lobby time. Did so, and was a bit early, so I spent 20 minutes playing Star Fox (and discovered that my skills have rusted so badly). Then we all hopped on the buses again and went to a museum of Ainu culture. The Ainu were the natives of Hokkaido before the Japanese came along. I've never been huge on spending lots of time at museums, and it was a guided tour, so I got bored rather fast. I got some super spiffy pictures, though.

After that, the people going back to the university hopped one bus and the rest of us hopped the other. The guy in charge of the whole thing was on our bus, and ended up asking us (from my university) how we got to Sapporo. He was shocked. A lot of people were, actually. It was kind of funny. Anyway, we got off at the station, grabbed some convenience store lunch, then proceeded to go do karaoke. Sasha left early to catch his train, but the rest of us were at it until like 6 o'clock.

(By the way, a very tall Russian singing Smells Like Teen Spirit at the top of his lungs is pretty awesome.)

After that, the rest of us went food hunting. Sapporo is apparently famous for Ramen, so Wu and Jyun wanted to go to a ramen shop. We found several at the station, and picked one. Olga doesn't like ramen, so she had rice-something. After that... we didn't really know what to do. I wanted to go window shopping, the others didn't. We ended up splitting until 10, which was fine with me, as I prefer to not be tied to a large group of people.

I browsed the wares in the hall outside a kimono shop under the station, as well as looking through a jewelry store. I didn't buy anything from the kimono shop because the stuff I could afford at the time would need to be color matched to a kimono I don't yet own, though I am thinking that I would like a bright blue one. I also checked out the two department stores connected to the station, but they were nothing but clothes... and I can't really wear Japanese clothes due to size difference.

So I opted to hit one of the department stores across the street. It's called Loft, and had a wonderful array of household goods. It also closed about 15 minutes after I got there, so I didn't get to see much... I did, however, find some stuff I'd have liked to have gotten for people if I'd had the money. It was a pretty awesome place, overall. Lots of nifty stuff I'll have to browse again when I go back to Sapporo.

I had not expected it to close so early, being right close to the biggest train station in the biggest city on the northern island of Japan. As such, I decided to immediately hit the next department store over, Esta. Esta had Namco written in big letters on the side, so I decided to check the place out. I got in there and discovered that it was a department store we'd wandered through the day before. I didn't see any stairs, so I decided to take the elevator to the top and work my way down. Inside the elevator was a written description of what was on each floor. The top floor was a food court, and 9th floor said Namco in katakana. Ahaha!

Getting off the elevator landed me in an arcade. Most of the games had Namco written on them, though some had no names. I looked for the seated Mario Kart Double Dash games I have heard about, but didn't see them. Then I discovered that the arcade wasn't the only thing on this floor. There was a shop full of nifty trinkets... and a geek store.

Comics, video game and anime paraphernalia, video game and anime soundtracks (oh, the collection they had!), and a wall of CCG cards. They even had tables in the back for people to play card games on, and I saw Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic games in progress.

Then I got pissed off. If I had gotten my scholarship on Wednesday like I'd been told to expect, I could have gotten all of Nacilik's shopping done in like five minutes. I had actually checked my post office account that afternoon to see if it had come in, too.

Nothing I could do about it, and I was running out of time, so I worked my way down the building. The closer I got to ground level, the less cool it was; the other 8 stories of the 10-story building were full of electronics stuff, and there's really only so much of that in the world. Impressively, one floor was almost entirely storage media -- burnable CD's and jump drives and the like. It was pretty crazy.

The only other thing of note that I got to see was another building in Sapporo -- it wasn't probably only like 6 stories, but the whole building was pachinko and slot machines. Yowza.

So I met up with everyone and we went to a convenience store to get food for the bus, then went to the bus station, yadda yadda yadda. Got home Saturday morning. I slept for like 4 hours, then got up to go help with the gakusai (school festival).

Gakusai, Day 1 (Or Mmmm, Potatoes)

The school has a gakusai once a year. It's pretty much a food-eating, hanging-out, fund-raiser fest. Students from given departments have booths, clubs have booths. The first day I spent mostly in a classroom on the ground floor helping prepare food to be cooked at the booth of the Gaikokugo Kenkyuusei (meaning foreign language majors, and hereafter referred to as the Gaiken).

I started out peeling potatoes, and discovered two things. One is that Japanese potato peelers are configured differently than American ones; American ones are set up so that the length of the blade runs the same direction as the length of the handle, while Japanese ones run perpendicular. I was not proficient in use of the Japanese-style potato peeler. It was when I got fed up with the potato peeler and asked for a knife that I discovered there were no knives small enough for peeling potatoes -- and that I don't even think I've seen a knive small enough for peeling potatoes that wasn't either a butter knife or a youji (tiny tea ceremony knife intended for cutting sweets and not sharp enough to peel potatoes anywho).

After peeling potatoes, I helped prepare karikari cheese. That would have been simple if they hadn't insisted I wear over-large disposable gloves. It was pretty much like making eggrolls, so I had practice with the basic motions, and that helped a lot. While helping make the karikari cheese, I got to try the food we were working on. I also took a break in there to check out the rest of the festival and got to try the food at the Ongaku Kenkyuusei (music majors') booth for free, since I knew like half the people there from koto class.

Taste-O-Meter!

Imodango (Potato cakes): 5
They were good without the sauce, but the sauce made them better. I need to find out what's in the sauce. I know how to make the cakes themselves, but I need to find out if that's something my friend Bob can eat -- there are three ingredients: water, mashed potatoes, and katakuri powder... but no one could tell me what katakuri is.

Karikari Cheese: 5
Take a circular, three-inch diameter eggroll wrap and wrap it around a piece of cheese, then deep fry it. Yeah, it's tasty.

Kimuchi: 4
This is a kind of soup that I tried at the music majors' booth. Good stuff, but a little spicy.

After that we of the Gaiken cleaned up the room we had been using. The president/secretary (haven't figured out what Takashi's title is, but she seems to keep track of the paperwork) reported the profits and everyone but me discussed how to improve them, because I couldn't understand everything they said. After that, most of us went back to Sayaka's apartment building (which also happens to be the building that the Gaiken's Shiba, Ayaka, and Mina live in, though I dunno about anyone else) to prepare food for the next day ahead of time.

I ended up at Mina's place. We first peeled and mashed potatoes for more imodango. Then we got chicken and started making gyozangi. I never got to taste the finished product because it's another thing you're supposed to deep fry, but take those same eggroll wraps from the karikari cheese and fold 'em like potstickers over chicken that's been cooked in a soy and ginger sauce and it tastes good even without being fried properly. We ended up having way more chicken than eggroll wraps, so we got to eat quite a bit of chicken.

I had to leave about the time that was done, as I had some things to do before going to bed and needed to get up early on Sunday for gakusai day 2 with the sadoubu.

Gakusai, Day 2 (Or Trials and Kimonos)

I overslept. Not by much, but by enough that everyone who'd had to show up at 6:30 to start putting kimonos on couldn't make use of my spiffy kimono book's obi-tying methods. I also found out that not only was the school's back door (the one closest to both my place and the tatami room) was not open. After going all the way around the school and all the way through school to the tatami room... I discovered I had forgotten my fukusa basami. (Fukusa is the cloth used in sadou. I don't know what basami means, since I'm under the impression that "bag" is "fukuro", but it's a small pouch in which one puts one's sadou stuff. On a side note, the word for "hand" is "te", and gloves are te + fukuro = tebukuro.)

By the time I got my fukusa basami and got back to the tatami room, I was a little early still, but sensei had already gotten there. She was providing kimonos for all of the exchange students (including the one from Okinawa, who also had no kimono) to wear. Olga looked absolutely gorgeous in the maroon one. Tolia got a blue one, which was made of a different material and had a hakama (old-style Japanese pants). Mini had a white one with a pretty pattern, but the knot in her obi kept wanting to go crooked all day.

The kimono I got had been modified. It was an old one of sensei's, and she's much smaller than I am, so... it didn't fit. ^^' I'm just too big around. It was also orange, which isn't really my color. I was still grateful for getting to borrow it, though, and it made me want my own kimono even more. I really do love feudal clothing.

Anyway... once we were all dressed, we hightailed it (as fast as possible in zoori, the kimono shoes) over to the lobby beneath the library entrance. Benches, an umbrella, and a table for doing tea ceremony were already set up, as was a table for taking admission fees and a screen behind which we could work our tea-magic. If the person performing the ceremony made tea for everyone, it could take a very long time, so as soon as the person starts actually mixing the tea, people behind the screen start whipping up bowls for everyone else in the audience. When the first guest has received their bowl and started to drink, a small army of kimono-wearing foo's comes out bring tea to everyone. It's awesome. :D

I was the only one exchange student who got to perform the tea ceremony. I'm the only one who's practiced enough to be able to just do it. However, I wasn't quite ready the first of the two times that I did it in front of guests... I pretty much bungled the first time, as well as having problems with my kimono coming open while I sat on the stool. I'm pretty sure that even if I never get to be in another play ever again, the amount of acting training I've had will always find ways to do me well. No embarrasment, though I was a little bit angry with myself for a couple of the things I forgot to do. I spent a good portion of the time before my next turn going over the ceremony in my head, and the second time went fine. Other than that, I helped carry and retrieve bowls and sweets. I also stopped by the Gaiken booth at some point to show them me in a kimono.

Real quick: apologies to people, I forgot my camera and so have no pictures of me in a kimono. *dodges a tomato* I'll make sure to get plenty when I have my own, which should be next mont- *gets hit in the face with a tomato*

Anyway, sadou got done around 3 o'clock, after which I changed out of my kimono in the tatami room and then went back to help pack stuff up before meeting the Gaiken for a post-gakusai party. Woo!

The Gaiken's Post-Gakusai Party (In Which Many People Besides Me Get Drunk)

The gaiken, as well as having food, had the first-year students do a show. It was pretty much souped-up karaoke -- with lots and lots of confetti. They had like six boxes of confetti, and they weren't afraid to use it. There was a 2-3 minute period in between each song where a couple of other people stood on the stage in front of the curtain to entertain the audience while you could hear brooms shoving confetti back into boxes.

The partying started off with a special edition of the show. It was a little more rowdy, in good old-fashioned cast party tradition, as well as having everyone from the previous songs dancing on stage with the people for the new songs instead of staying off stage like for the previous performances. After every song, the people for that song introduced themselves, starting with thier student number and their name. There were bottles of water and juice all over the stage, and there was a lot of chugging from them. I discovered that the Japanese clap in rhythm and say "Hai-hai!" where Americans would just shout, "Chug!

After all that was over, there was a drinking contest. First-years vs. Second vs. Third vs. Fourth-years. I'm a junior, and therefore a third-year. I discovered that most of the people I'd made friends with, including Sayaka, were second years. The way the contest worked was that there were four giant bottles of alcohol, each about two feet tall and 7-8 inches in diameter below the neck. Every person on a team had to drink from the bottle at least once, and the goal was to finish first. I was last in line, and didn't quite understand the rules, so... I could have just slugged down the last third of the bottle that was given to me, but I thought I had to pass it on and didn't. If I had just slugged it down, we might have won, but we lost to the fourth-years. Now I know for a potential next time.

The first-years lost and got to finish the cleanup we'd all started before the drinking contest. Everyone else started heading toward Aquaveil, a building in town. We went to like the third floor and entered a room made for dinners such as this one. There were several tables with food and bottles of beer (large ones, since Japanese tradition is to pour alcohol for other people). The seats were all numbered, and they had us draw numbers. They were trying to make sure that cliques didn't form.

There was some talking that I don't remember very well, punctuated with drinking as excuses for it came up. It was a lot of fun. Eventually, people started milling around. The songs from the show were played again, with almost everybody going up on stage to dance and sing. A couple of people sought me out to ask a bit about Alaska and America.

I got called up on stage at one point to introduce myself -- that was fun. There was an unspoken rule that to be onstage one must have a glass of beer in one hand so that if people called for you to drink you could do so. I started off by saying that I was the no-student-number-exchange-student Lena, in fun imitation of the introductions from earlier. I also surprised Sayaka by publicly thanking her for helping me get used to Japan.

After that, most of us hopped off to another place. This place exists for big groups of people to go drinking at. Instead of chairs and tables, the place was full of modular tatami rooms (they could change the sizes to accomodate different-sized groups of people), so we dropped our shoes off in lockers at the door and went in. There were other parties going on around us, but I didn't venture far. I learned a lot of names at this party. It was fun. I never got more than buzzed. After that, I could have gone to karaoke with some people if I'd had money, but I didn't. That sucked.

Taste-O-Meter!

Sapporo Beer: 3
Not a bad beer, but I don't like beer much.

Asahi Beer: ?
By the time I got to the Asahi beer at the second place, I'd had enough beer that beer tasted OK.

Plum Wine: 5
That was some really good stuff, which I totally didn't expect.

Some Kind of Bread with Meat in the Middle: 3
The meat reminded me of vienna sausages, but it was a really good idea.

I don't really remember what I ate other than that, except for karokke, but I've already covered that. So.

During the Week

Since the weekend, it's been pretty much business as normal. Thursday was a holiday, so I took advantage of the day to clean and use the internet. Didn't get as much done on the 'net as I would have liked for chatting, but hey -- you win some you lose some. (And sometimes, you win half. ;) )

Yesterday was Friday, so there was sadoubu. I'm no loger working on the table setup that I was studying before; since winter is upon us (it feels weird saying that when there's no snow anywhere), it's time to switch to the type that's set into the floor. There's always been a weird little square in the tatami mats on the floor of the damashitsu (tatami room), and I found out that that square lifts out to reveal a hole for sadou. The textbook that Ikajima-sensei (sadoubu teacher) gave me during the gakusai is the lower level one and doesn't include this setup, but I got to run over it once on Wednesday and am more familiar with the ceremony in general, so Ikajima-sensei was able to focus more on showing me how to do the motions properly.

A now-graduate, past-member of the club has been visiting this week, and she got to show us some upper-level sadou-ness. The normal tea we create is called usacha; what Chiyaki did is called koicha. The order in which she performed each task was different, and instead of one bowl being tea for one person, the one bowl was tea enough for five people.

Taste-O-Meter!

Koicha: 5
There was so much tea-powder in this that it was really more like a sludge than a drink. I loved it.

Omochi in Anko Sauce: 5
Today's main sweet. The omochi was stiff before immersion in the sauce; after immesion in the sauce, it didn't want to be separated into chunks by either chiopsticks or teeth. But it was soooooo good.

Meika: 4
A traditional sweet much like youkan. I didn't like the texture quite as much, but it tastes just as good.

After sadoubu, I went to the library to check on a couple of things on the internet, then went back to the damashitu. We were all going to a yakiniku place. When we got there, I discovered that yakiniku is pretty much like robata, except a little more restauranty and a little less free-for-all. The selection of food was also more along the lines of meat and less along the lines of fish and seafood. I had trouble reading the menu (mostly 'cause I was just slow at it), but I eventually figured it out. I'm not gonna Taste-O-Meter chicken and beef, but a couple of things get it.

Taste-O-Meter!

Choregi Ceasar Salad: 5
I am not sure what choregi means, but they told me it's a Korean word. It had lettuce, small croutons, salad dressing, and cheese. Tasty. I'm getting to like salad dressing, as long as the salad isn't drenched in it.

Ebisu Beer: 4
This one is actually not half-bad. Maybe I'm getting acclimated to beer? *wrinkles nose* The name of this was written Ebisu in katakana, but the roomaji (Japanese language written in English letters) on the glass I got was Yebisu.

So yeah. It was a much more reserved post-gakusai party than the Gaiken one had been, but no less fun in its own way.

Realizations of the Period

1) I really do love feudal clothing, both western and asian. I love the look of it, and the feel of wearing it.
2) Never, ever, ever turn a camera off at a cast party. Ever.
3) I have a much higher tolerance for alcohol than Japanese people do.
4) My right shoe's sole is coming off the rest of the shoe. My feet are about half a centimeter bigger than the biggest shoe size you can get here. I'm in trouble.
5) I need to find out where to buy youkan.
6) Really, if I try to show all the pictures I take on the blog... insanity. Inserting them into the blog takes longer than I expected it to. So. Here's the gallery where all the pictures are. >.> Sorry, folks. More pictures need uploading, too, but this library connection really is horrible.

Pretz Fever

2005-10-26T20:55:00.000+09:00

Aaaaaaaagh, I'm addicted to Pretz! Flavored pretzels, in a variety of flavors!

Taste-O-Meter!

Tomato Pretz: 4
Not as good as salad, but still an excellent snack.

Hokkaido Butter Pretz: 4
So buttery. It's the essence of the good taste of butter in pretzel form. It's salty and sweet at the same time. I'd give it a five, except that it's a little rich -- I got tired of it fairly quickly.

Kumadango Hanpen: 2
Not Pretz. Dumpling of some kind. Nothing inside it, and it tasted fine, but the texture was weird. It looked a lot more substantial than it felt. It felt, in fact, like it ought to melt when I put it in my mouth, but it came with a bit of hot soup, and was pretty much impervious to melting. Imagine trying to eat a sponge, only the sponge gives way to your teeth very easily.

I have managed to buy a shirt that fits me! Hahahahaha! It's XXL, but in America I'm pretty sure it'd be somewhere between L and XL. Just my size. It's also got the English initials of the school on it. Ultimate souvenier shirt, yo.

Sooooo... school festival Saturday and Sunday. Sadoubu is only performing on Sunday. The girls who have their own kimonos get to show up at 6:30 AM to work on putting them on. I don't envy them. I don't have to get there that early because the teacher is lending me a kimono, and she won't show up until 9. I'll probably show up between 7 and 8, though.

My Nihon Jijou class is pretty awesome. Not the European Union today; Hokkaido agriculture. I got to draw a picture of the USA and point out which places have a lot of agriculture and which don't (and explain why -- east coast has too many cities, Alaska's too cold, this region is mountainous, yadda yadda). I'm the only person in the class who isn't either a Korean teacher on exchange or a student on the way to becoming a teacher. Eek!

I got some money today. :D It's intended to cover expenses in Sapporo and the trip to and from Sapporo. I haven't gotten the scholarship yet, but at least I have more than 2000 yen again. Woo! Speaking of the trip to Sapporo, I may not be able to get online there, so I might not be updating the blog until like Monday. I don't see myself having time on Saturday or Sunday to hit the library.

Today at sadoubu, a lot of the girls were practicing putting on kimonos. I want one sooooo badly! But I realized just how many pieces a full kimono outfit has. That doesn't stop me from wanting a kimono of my own, though. They also practiced doing sadou in their kimonos. I took pictures, but I don't have time to upload them right now. (Taking the bus to Sapporo tonight.)

Realizations of the Period

1) Aagh! I haven't been posting pictures! I even have a bunch uploaded that I just haven't put up on the blog yet!
2) Many Japanese people have non-silk (usually polyester, I think) kimonos. Wave of the future?
3) The convenience store across the street from the school has shut down. That explains why their selection has been crappy the last couple of times I've gone in there.
4) The now-nearest convenience store (a Seicomart) sells salad Pretz cheaper than 7-11. It's just as close to my house.

Let's try to fix the pictures problem, then. I begin with the Buddhist monument up the hill from my apartment:

It's got different pictures on each face of the monument, but at the time the sun was angled poorly for taking pictures of them. Here's a nifty fresco I saw on my way to a recycle shop with Sayaka:

There's another fresco in the completely opposite direction that I've yet to go by during the day. So no pictures of it, yet. I go that way often, though. That's where the book store that I've done a lot of window shopping is at, as well as a good place to buy food.

I can't get the bloody site where the photos are hosted to cooperate, so I'll have to stop here for now. TTFN!

Ho-Hum, Monday

2005-10-24T10:41:00.000+09:00

Mondays are going to end up being my free day of the week, I think. After this week, I should have some money again, so it'll become my shopping day. Homac, Posful (department store from yesterday), and the large 100 Yen Plaza that I went to when I first got here are in the middle of a nice shopping district. Said shopping district is easy to get to, but probably an hour or so walk. Today, having only about 2500 yen to my name, I use the internet. Let's start with a gaming commentary, shall we?

I present information on an awesome contest that's already past. It's for level designers and the like... awesome civic/public/democratic space creation. You know, city halls and courthouses and other such government-related necessary buildings. They had Harvard architects and the like on the judging panel. I think that's a huge step, both for games and for 3D artistry in general. Having professors from Ivy-league colleges acknowledge the merit of this stuff is exciting.

I've also finally caught up to the news on the Revolution controller. My initial reaction was horror. A TV remote?! I hate remotes so, so much. But I read more (from a couple of sources; I'm just linking one), and realized something. Light guns are awesome, but they've never been popular for anything but Duck Hunt. Why is that? It's because they never came with the system. Nobody wanted to make games for which people had to buy special controllers (with a few notable exceptions). Now, we have our primary controller having the ability to function as a gun. Nintendo's really going all out on innovation this generation, between the Revolution and the DS. I must say that I actually quite like it. You know there'll quickly be third-party controllers that go back to the traditional style, so it shouldn't be a problem for long, if at all.

Earlier today, I was explaining a bit about D&D to my friend biggestg121. I was slightly taken aback when he asked what 3d6 meant, as I had forgotten that most people don't actually know what it means. When I explained the lingo to him, I also mentioned the other dice to him -- twelve and twenty siders and the like -- and was shocked when I found out he didn't know they existed. It was pretty weird.

My 100 yen umbrella was taken yesterday. I had it in the umbrella rack outside the library like everyone else, and when I left, there were no white umbrellas at all. Drat! Drat on the world! >< I shall have to get me another 100 yen umbrella.

Realizations of the Period

1) The library's DVD players really need to have their lenses cleaned.
2) In America, I have to blow my nose a lot in the morning -- it usually takes like an hour to clear my sinuses of the mucus that builds up in them. I have no such problem here. What am I allergic to?

I understand "potato"... What does that have to do with pizza?

2005-10-23T16:06:00.000+09:00

My own words, translated.

Taste-O-Meter!

Potato Pizza: 4
Doesn't rate five, 'cause I don't generally go for pizza. It's good pizza, though.

Kuri: 5
It's a type of cake. It had a little bit of chocolate, but it put me most in mind of spice cake.

Youkan in general: 5
I've tried several types of youkan now at various sadou things, and I've liked every one of them. Youkan no longer gets its own Taste-O-Meter! slot unless there's something in it that makes it worth less than 5.

These Nifty Anko-Filled Sweets that Looked Like Cranes (and Whose Name I Have Forgotten): 5
They were quite pretty. It was kind of a shame to take them apart and eat them, but they were really good. I'm quickly coming to like wagashi (Japanese candy).

So I spent the late morning going with Riyoko and Mika to various shops, though I didn't buy anything... I'm down to a little over 2000 yen at the moment. ^^ Good thing my scholarship comes in soon. The afternoon was spent in various sadou events.

We first went to the same event I went to on Thursday. Things were arranged a bit differently, and I noticed that some of the pieces that were there before were gone -- most likely sold, since the ones that were missing were some of the prettiest pieces. I'm glad I got to go to it earlier. We went to that one because Mika and Riyoko hadn't yet seen it.

After that, we went to another building. This building seemed to be a building devoted to holding events. It was ten floors tall, and from the upper floors you could see all the way to the ocean. We first went to the fourth floor, where we participated in an ultra-traditional tea ceremony; we went from one tatami room into another going in on our knees in traditional old-style. My poor ankles hated me; I spent quite a bit of time sitting in seiza style.

The second was on the 7th floor, and was a more modern style. Everyone sat at tables, including the person making the tea. That wasn't a tatami room; since the department store show and this place both had a traditional-looking umbrella with a scroll and a flower hanging from it, I figured out that that must be the non-tatami-room concession allowing for the presence of traditional scrolls and flowers.

I said earlier that there were at least three sadou setups; I am thinking now that there are six or seven. One where the kama (hot water kettle) is set into the floor, one where it's on the floor, one where it's on the floor and there's a shelf next to it, one where it's on a long table, one where it's on an L-shaped table, and one where you have a tea kettle instead of a kama (and it's on the floor). More than that I have not seen.

Also, at the seventh floor ceremony, I saw the first guy I've seen involved with all this (besides one of the russian exchange students). I don't know if it's 'cause he's a guy, but he performed the ceremony very differently than I have been taught. It could very well simply be a different school, though.

I've gotten to see some very pretty natsume (a kind of tea powder holder; the other kind is called a chaire, and can only have enough tea in it for one bowl). The department store had one appearing to be made of solid gold, with a pretty scene carved into it. On the lid were mountain tops and clouds; on the bowl were the mountains continuing down to overlook some fields. The fourth floor ceremony in the other building had a plain black one with kanji on top in gold filigree, and rice grains on the tips of stalks filigreed on the bottom of the lid. The seventh floor ceremony had a natsume that had rice stalks carved into the outside. Good stuff.

A lot of the tea bowls were really pretty, too. One of the ones I got to drink from was a light blue color. The pictures painted on it were of traditional Japanese scenes; a farmer by a house, guys on horses, and the like. They were painted in dark blue, and over that was a gold paint that just highlighted things now and again. Very awesome.

Oh, last night, I had a midnight snack, and a couple of days ago, I bought a couple of cheap candies.

Taste-O-Meter!

Stars of the Night Sky: 3
That's the translated name of the candy. I can understand the meaning of the kanji, but I don't know how to read it, exactly. There were a variety of flavors, one of which I didn't like. The others didn't stand out much.

Marukatsu Orange Marble-Fuusen Gum: 4
Orange flavered gum. I picked candy at complete random, and this wasn't candy. Good, though.

Milky: 4
This has a weird smell that reminds me of spoiled milk, but the candy itself tastes fine. I popped it into my mouth, then noticed the smell. But I like this stuff.

Salad Pretz: 5
I got Pretz for a midnight snack, then got home and realized it was salad-flavored. Pretz is kind of like pocky, except that instead of a sweet-coated biscuit, it's a pretzel stick. Somehow, a salad-flavored pretzel stick works so well. I didn't intend to eat all of them, but I had to.

Realizations of the Period

1) I didn't quite know what to expect when we went out today; I knew it had to do with sadou, but that was it. I should have taken my sadou equipment. On top of that, I was the only girl who wasn't wearing a kimono or a skirt (except for the russian female-exchange student). On top of that, even, I am wearing my bright green pants and a fishnet shirt today. Ack. I looked very much the gaijin.

Iroirona Iro

2005-10-22T16:31:00.000+09:00

Which is to say, "various colors."

You know how a bright orange pair of pants stands out like on a bright orange pair of pants can? That's even more true in Japan. The Japanese tend to wear dark and pastel colors. When they do wear something bright, they have one bright article of clothing. I don't have many clothes with me that aren't bright. Interesting to note.

The school festival is next weekend. On Sunday, the sadoubu is performing the tea ceremony for the other students. Sensei is looking for a kimono I can borrow so that I can participate. ^^ I really want my own kimono, though.

I've watched the first three episodes of 24's first season in Japanese. I'm starting with first season 'cause it's been a while and 'cause I already know the story, so I can do homework at the same time and still know what's going on. They did an excellent job finding voice actors for the dub. They did especially well with Palmer; the guy they found has a voice so much like that of the American actor that I honestly had a fleeting moment of wondering if the American actor didn't know Japanese. They did change some things for culture, though. The following short dialogue in episode one of the American version:

Kim: Good night, Dad.
Jack: I love you.

became:

Kim: Oyasumi (g'night).
Jack: Oyasumi.

Not a big change, but I noticed it.

Yesterday evening, some of my friends from sadoubu and I had dinner at Mika's place. Mika made yakisoba and a Japanese egg soup; I made grilled cheese sandwiches. They went fairly well together -- meaning they didn't clash. My intestines weren't very happy this morning, though. Speaking of this morning, I got up late, and when I went to 7-11, they didn't have much in the way of breads (cleaned out by the lunch crowd :'( ), so I had tuna nigiri instead.

Taste-O-Meter!

Yakisoba: 4
Noodles, spices and cabbage. Yarr!

Japanese Egg and Onion Soup: 5
I like eggs, onion, and soup. Haha!

7-11 (Blue-Labeled) Tuna Nigiri: 5
Tasty tuna goodness. With rice and seaweed. Warm. Yummy.

Bad news: for some reason, my last credit card payment before leaving the country didn't make it through from my bank account before I liquidated it. I now owe like 175 dollars for my next credit card payment. >< Curses! I found out this afternoon when I went to the Bank of America web site to change my address and stuff.

Realizations of the Period

1) I stand out. A lot.
2) It's already been like three weeks since I left. :'( I'm gonna have to leave waaaaay too soon.
3) Reading is one of the best ways to learn a language. I'm already starting to be able to infer the meanings of words from their contexts. Yahoo!

Pieces of Yo~ou!

2005-10-20T12:39:00.000+09:00

I brought some pieces of Shannon with me to Japan. :D

Which is to say that some of her hair got trapped on one of my shirts somehow. But it's true! :D

Anywaaaaay... for the first time in my life, I am finding myself wishing that I had a good sense of smell. For those of you who may not know, I generally can't smell much. Case in point: one time my friend and I were out 4x4ing in his car. It was a hot day, but since his window was broken, mine was the only one rolled down. He, not I, smelled the very dead, very rotting corpse we drove past.

Yeah, my sense of smell is that bad.

Some things reach my nose fairly easily, like cinnamon and nutmeg. I also smell better when the air is humid, such as during/right before/right after rain. Other than that I tend to not smell things unless there's a sudden change in smell, as when you open a door to someone's dorm room and their trash really needs to be changed and the smell wafts into the hall. Even then, it's momentary, and I'm lucky if I can regonize the smell before it goes away.

One thing my sense of smell is good for -- besides saving me from the bad smells that plague other people -- is recognizing atmospheres. I went to Chugiak High to visit a couple of teachers before coming to Japan and knew as soon as I walked in that it still smells pretty much like it always did. Granted, I don't know what that smell is, but I know it's the same.

When I was in shodou (Japanese calligraphy) class today, I knew that it smelled different from every other classroom I've been in here, and that got me thinking. My laundry soap smells like laundry soap (only a little different, of course), my trash smells like trash, and the music practice rooms and classrooms smell like music rooms (only a little different, of course). I know Japan smells different than America, but I can't tell how and it bugs me. :(

Sadoubu yesterday. More sweets to try.

Taste-O-Meter!

Ogiyoukan: 5
The type of candy is called youkan; ogi refers to the place in which it was made. Ryoko (whose name I misspelled as Rioko before) got it on a trip to somewhere. I don't know what it's made of, but it came in a block. Its color was a purple dark enough to be almost black. The texture... it was more solid than gelatin, but similar. Kind of like gumdrops, only bigger and tasty instead of untasty.

Soukasenbei: 4
These are a kind of cracker. Souka refers to the flavor; senbei is the kind of snack. I've had a different kind of senbei in America, thanks to Yoko-sensei.

Kabocha no tane: 5
A Japanese kind of pumpkin cookie, and I love pumkin cookies.

Rokka no Tsuyu: 5
I don't know what the name means, though the first word means 6, but these were awesome. They were a thin, hard candy shell wrapped around sake. ^^ The candy perfectly offset the harsh sake. (And I like sake in the first place. Ahahaha!)

Somen by itself: 5
This stuff cooks fast, and is tasty. Not eaten at sadoubu, by the way; that was dinner.

So yeah. My class schedule is set, and I am happy with the classes I have... though I need to study up on a lot of vocabulary. ^^ My Nihon Jijou (Japan's Circumstances, best as I can figure for a translation) class is about politics and governments, and I don't know much in regards to that vocabulary. I have had a growing interest in politics for a while, but I didn't know where to jump in. Might as well start with comparing the ruling bodies of Japan, America, Korea (Kim is taking this class as well), and the European Union. Ahoy! Anyway, this paragraph started as an introduction to me putting up my schedule:

Monday
- No classes
Tuesday
- 4:20 PM Nihon no Dentou Ongaku (Japanese Traditional Music, aka koto lessons)Wednesday
- 10:40 AM Nihon Jijou (Japan's Circumstances?)
- 1:00 PM Nihon Kaiwa (Japanese Conversation)
- Sadoubu in the afternoon/evening
Thursday
- 10:40 AM Nihon Bunka B (Japanese Culture B, aka shodou lessons)
Friday
- 1:00 PM Nihongo B (Japanese Language B)
- Sadoubu in the afternoon/evening
Saturday
- 10:30 AM Nihon Jijou (Not required, but the teacher invited me to the extra session, and I think it'd be a good idea to go, so I am. w00t!)

They're taking blood donations today. Sayaka asked if I was going to donate, so I told her about the fact that when I tried to do so in Alaska, I was told that because I lived in Germany when I did, I may have Mad Cow Disease (MOO!) and therefore cannot give blood. When I mentioned that it's a shame, since I have type O blood and O is rare, she told me that O is common in Japan. No wonder it's rare everywhere else in the world; the Japanese are keeping the O-blood for themselves! :O

I also got to go to a sadou show today. There was a display of various, pretty, expensive pieces. Vases (often one or more flowers are present at the tea ceremony), ochawan (the bowls you drink from), futaoki (a small, cylindrical piece of equipment on which one places the hot lid [the futa] of the kama [kettle]), obon (dishes from which sweets are offered to guests), some other dishes whose name I don't know but which replace kaeshi (paper on which an individual places their sweets), and incense holders. There were some really nice pieces of pottery there, but some of them were over $3000 a pop.

The show was in a department store. Japanese department stores are their equivalent of malls. It's a lot like the co-op I described before, though. For the most part, the only real delineation from store to store was that you could tell where, say, the kimono goods ended and the dishes began. It was pretty cool, and man-oh-man those kimono were gorgeous. I want one.

Realizations of the Period

1) Taking small classes is good. I was in one large class on accident at first, but that one session of class is enough for me to know that when you can't understand everything the teacher is saying, small classes are good. If you're not getting it, the teacher has a chance to notice that you're not getting it. There's also a lot more demonstration involved, I'm finding. I'm soooo glad I have small classes. So glad.
2) I'm making grilled cheese sandwiches for people tomorrow evening, but I have no place to put stuff like butter and chees before preparing the food. Ack! If it were winter, I could use the windows; there's actually two sets of windows, one on top of the other, so it'll be perfect for storing things come winter time, but winter is not now. Aiee!

Are the Japanese 7-11 Rice Balls Really All That?

2005-10-18T15:06:00.000+09:00

Neopets is a free service. They stay that way through a few methods; there's a line of Neopets merchandise, a Neopets TCG, and a video game coming out, among other things. Those other things include some advertizements around the site itself (though they are in no way annoying). There are also a number of sponsored games (usually requiring little to no skill, but some of 'em are a real pain) and a couple of sponsored areas of the site.

Advertizements vary depending on which language you are viewing the site in. There are 11 possible languages, including Japanese. On the Japanese version of the site, there is a 7-11 sponsored area, at which you can get free rice balls with which to feed your pets.

So this prompted Ruonna to ask me if the Japanese 7-11 rice balls are really all that. (I'm the co-guildmaster for my Neopets guild, so I told everyone that I was going to be out of touch for an indefinite period of time because of going to Japan.) I've been so busy eating bacon mayo rolls that I hadn't even thought to try.

Taste-O-Meter!

Robata Nigiri (Nigiri = Rice Balls): 4
These are the rice balls I had at the robata the other night. They were simple, and flavored with soy sauce.

7-11 Teriyaki Chicken Nigiri: 5
They really are all that. The orange-labeled ones, anyway. I have tried the green, red, or yellow labeled ones yet. The orange-labeled ones have a tasty bit of teriyaki chicken in the middle.

I'm still trying to figure out why nigiri is translated as rice balls, since most of the ones I've seen are not shaped like balls. The ones at the robata came in a variety of shapes including hearts, and the 7-11 ones are triangle-shaped.

In other news, I have my alien registration card now. It's shiny. I have to carry it with me at all times; if I don't, and a policeman asks to see it... jail. AGH!

My friend Haruko is going to UAF in January. She's gonna be there for a year, so she'll still be there when I get back. :D I've been helping her with her English a bit, and telling her a lot about Alaska and Fairbanks in particular. Today I covered some slang. "Dunno" and " 'Sup?" and "I'd've" and the like. "I'd've" about gave her a heart attack; at first she couldn't really tell what I was saying, then once I wrote it out and she could hear it, she couldn't say it very well. She's going to hate the weather, unfortunately. She comes from southern Japan, which (weather-wise) is a lot like southern California. Heh. But she has warning!

There's an exchange student event in Sapporo at the end of the month. I get to go. :D I have to pay for the transport and the hotel, but the school will reimburse me. Yay! It's gonna be fun; lots of cultural stuff going on.

Realizations of the Period

1) I broke my last 10,000 yen note to buy breakfast. >< Where has my money gone?
2) The school library has the first three seasons of 24 on DVD. I can now watch season three.

On the less Japanese-side of things, I've been starting to catch up on my video game news. Somehow I manage to stay almost completely ignorant unless I'm keeping up with my e-mail.

On one hand, it's nice to know that there are sponsored first-person shooter clans that are entirely composed of girls. On the other hand, it's a bunch of girls, and their audition requirements are stupid. Color photographs? Sounds to me like they're discriminating based on looks, and that's not cool. It should be all about skill and/or attitude.

Two pieces of good news from one article: Katamari goes handheld (booyaka!) and the guy behind Luminez strikes again. Glory! Katamari Damacy is a great game to be able to take around with you, especially if they throw in Wi-Fi multiplayer support. Can they make Katamari a 4-player game? That would be crazy. As for Luminez... I want a PSP so badly. *cries* Luminez is a beautiful game. A sequel would make me so happy. Especially if I owned it.

The other piece of news that I saved the link to for reference is this one. The whole madhouse that has been coverage of GTA: San Andreas and its hidden sex thing has made me very sad. Rockstar has taken so much heat for being the forerunner of... shall we call them over-mature games? Parents and politicians blaming Rockstar for crimes went so far as some organization (can't remember which, offhand) demanding that Rockstar not release Bully and set up a fund for folks who've been hijacked.

When are people going to get it through their heads that the problem is a parenting issue? Changing the ESRB rating regulations can only do so much. The rating systems only work if parents use it. You can't blame the game companies because parents aren't paying attention until it's too late. If your kid is too impressionable, don't let them buy the game.

Yah. Anyway, there's my discourse for now.

Gone!

2005-10-17T21:51:00.000+09:00

Pre-script: I didn't get a chance to post this for a while, so it's really long. As such, I've inserted some subheadings so that people who don't want to read it all at once can figure out where they were more easily. You can probably also use the pictures scattered throughout as landmarks. Speaking of the pictures, I've forced them into a smaller size for sake of blog layout. If you right-click and view image, you should be able to get the full-size picture. On with the show.

So. I am in Japan. Last time I posted on the blog, I had just landed in San Fransisco. After I left the Internet kiosk, I proceeded to seek out the US customs office to register my laptop and digital camera. I never found them. I got a set of directions from an information desk that led me to Alien Registration. They gave me another set of instructions that I had trouble following. I was running out of time (since my search had taken me to the other end of the airport and I had to go back through security to get to my gate), so I had to give up. I hope I don't have to pay taxes on them later. :s

After that, I had fun trying to find my gate. I worked my way back to the other end of the airport, realizing as I carted my too heavy carry-ons that I should have just sucked it up and packed two suitcases. Who would ever have guessed that a laptop bag full of socks would be so heavy? Either way, I got back to the far end of the airport only to discover that my gate -- 100 -- was not there. It ended at gate 90. So I found the nearest information desk. It turned out that gate 100 was over near the Alien Registration office. Hobaggery. Luckily, I didn't need to make the 20-minute walk again, as my boarding pass rated me a seat on a shuttle near the information desk.

This was a very good thing, as in the hour that I spent wandering around I realized that 80-some degrees is very hot when you're used to weather more along the lines of 40 degrees and can't take the time to sit down and rest. I was over-heated and under-watered, and really wanted some Gatorade. Unfortunately for me, while wine shops had been in abundance, I didn't find any place that even sold water, much less Gatorade. Fortunately for me, the shop nearest to my gate sold both. Woo! I got a bottle of each and proceeded to sip the Gatorade as I went down the escalator to my gate. Victory!

Shortly after I took this picture, I realized that I was the only one there, and that boarding should be starting soon, if it hadn't already. I went to a courtesy phone and tolerated the United airlines phone service long enough to find out that the gate had changed and the flight was delayed by 20 minutes. I went about 200 feet down the hall to the new gate, and found that boarding had, indeed, already started. I finished my Gatorade and waited my turn.

The flight was pretty miserable. I slept for a good deal of it, but when I awoke it was to an aching bum, a sore throat from the mistreatment of my body (read: lack of water), and the knowledge that Japan was soooo far away. The food was good, but because I hadn't eaten in far too long, my body wanted to reject it. I forced myself to eat everything in front of me (except the melon slices; those are icky), though it took me a while. I also fed myself a variety of drinks over the course of the flight -- green tea (which helped settle my stomach when accompanied by food), water, milk, apple juice, orange juice. I thought about getting a screwdriver to help me sleep, since alcohol is free on international flights, but I didn't think the added dehydration would help at all. The in-flight movies that I recall seeing snippets of around sleep were Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Moulin Rouge. The one I stayed awake for was Batman Begins. I dunno if they played more than that; it was a ten-hour flight, so it would make sense to have four movies, but they had trouble with the video system at the start of the flight.

The Arrival

Then I landed at the Narita airport in Tokyo. I looked out the window as we landed and saw that it pretty much looked like any other airport I have ever been to. The airline names on the planes were different, and the workers had the bright uniforms customary to the Japanese, but everything else was the same. Unfortunately, the weather in Tokyo is very comparable to that of San Fransisco. I was well-served by forcing myself to intake sustenance on the plane.

Once I got off the plane and headed further into the airport, I sought a bathroom. The first bathroom I came to was very nice. When I opened the stall, I encountered a Japanese-style toilet. For those who don't know, it's little more than a fancy hole in the floor that flushes. I had been told at some point to not be surprised if I encountered such even in international airports, so that didn't surprise me. What did surprise me is that it was about 2/3 the size I expected. Compare to my shoes.

This, combined with the fact that the few camping excursions I have been on were not enough experience for me to have found a good way to keep pee off my pants when crouching, made me a little uncomfortable. I managed to not get any pee on either my pants or the floor, but I came to the conclusion that I need to make sure and practice or something.

I took some pictures of the sinks and the "Air Towel" hand dryers, too.

I wish I'd gotten pictures of the conveyor belts. The first thing I thought when I saw them was, "In case you'd forgotten that the Japanese drive on the left..." There were signs up reminding people to stand on the left and walk on the right, as well as green footprints painted on the left-hand side.

When I got to the Alien Registration point, there was a very long line. It was indicated that it'd take an hour or so to get through it, but I think it only took about 40 minutes. There were windows on one side of the room which were laser-etched on the bottom 3/4, and the only thing of interest that I saw through the top part was this ad, of which I got a picture later.

"For watching movies, Viera." (For everything else there's MasterCard?)

Once I got out of there, I needed to pick up my baggage. When I got to the baggage carousel, I did not see my bag. When I asked the United airlines people about it, a 5-minute computer search told us that it had not been put on my plane, and would be put on a later flight. The good humor toward United that had been fueled by my earlier dealings at the Anchorage airport wilted. Before leaving, I tried to pack a change of clothes in my carry-on, but I didn't quite succeed. Including the clothes I was wearing, I had three bras, two pairs of panties, two shirts, one pair of pants, no skirts, and all of my socks.

The lady was helpful, writing up the baggage report and then seeing me through the customs station with directions to the bus ticketing station. My connecting flight to Kushiro was to leave from the Haneda airport -- also in Tokyo, but a bus ride away. (Ha, in Anchorage I was told that I would need to switch terminals. They neglected to mention that the second terminal was in another part of town.) So I went to get a ticket. It was about 16:10 here at that time. When I got a ticket to Haneda airport, it cost 3,000 yen and was for the bus leaving at 16:50. So I sat around at the bus station for a while, noting that Japanese flies are just as irritating as American ones (if a bit smaller than I am used to in Alaska).

When I finally got on the bus, I took a seat near the middle. I took the following picture of the people outside waiting for other buses before switching seats with a guy near the front so he could sit with the girl next to me.

I then took a picture of what was out the front window.

At this point I would like to mention that the bus service is called "Friendly Airport Limousine." Very Japanese.

The ride to Haneda airport took a little over an hour. During the ride, I noted some things about Japanese roads. First, somewhere around 4/5 of the cars I saw were either silver, black, or white, and in that order of popularity. Other colors tended to be dark (navy blue, hunter green, etc.) or very pale. I saw one red car and one brownish-orange convertible, but even the orange of the convertible wasn't that bold. The next thing I noticed was that all of their speed limits were painted on the roads as well as being visible on red and blue signs. The driving on the left only really seemed strange when making right turns at intersections.

I know I dozed a bit, but I woke up as were getting into Tokyo proper. I took the following pictures; the first is blurry, which makes me sad, but I intend to keep it anyway 'cause it was a good view.

When we pulled in to Haneda airport, I looked at the clock. 18:09. Crap. My plane left at 17:55. (It is here that my total dislike of United was sealed forever.) Good thing I had already completely missed my plane, because it just so happened that I got off the bus on the exact opposite side of the airport from Japan Airlines. It took me about five minutes to get there, at which point I explained my plight in broken Japanese to one of the JAL desk women.

She was awesome. She got me on the next flight to Kushiro with little fuss. Turns out that said flight was to leave at 7:50 the next day. She then took me all over the terminal, to first the currency exchange, then to the hotel reservations desk, then to the bus station on the other side of the street from the airport where I could catch a free shuttle to my hotel. It was about the best customer service I had ever had, especially since she knew less English than I do Japanese. There she left me, with a time and place of arrival for the shuttle as well a promise that the airline would call the university and tell them about my delayed flight.

I sat down on the sidewalk to wait, noticing that the sidewalk there is really awesome. The picture I took is a bit blurry, but since I zoomed it in all the way you can still see that it's not cement. It's a whole bunch of tiny stones glued together into a sidewalk somehow.

When the bus came, the driver stowed my bags for me. When I got to the hotel, I found myself impressed on so many levels. I paid 9900 yen to stay there (I didn't want to pay that much, but there weren't any nearby capsule hotels and I didn't think I could stay awake all night at the airport); it made me realize just how bad a deal the Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge is.

The Hotel

One thing which is just flippin' awesome is the key card I received. American hotel key cards each have a magnetic strip, which is somehow swiped in the door to unlock it. This key card did not have a magnetic strip. The door did not have a place to swipe it. what it did have was a shiny black dot about an inch in diameter above the door handle. When I moved the key card in front of said dot, the door unlocked.

What's even cooler is that just inside the door was a little fixture on the wall that said, "Please insert card. When I did, the lights turned on.

Sweet-tastic. So I plopped my stuff on the bed and looked around. Let's start with the bathroom.

It's a nice bathroom. Removable shower head, like just about every Japanese bathroom has. Sink, toilet -- dude, the toilet!

It's one of the high-tech toilets, complete with bum-washing mechanism. Well, I needed to go to the bathroom anyway. When I sat down, the toilet beeped and the standby indicator started flashing. I'll tell you what, the idea of a spray of water coming from the toilet to wash your bum is weird, but it works. The water is warm, so there's no discomfort. The blue setting was aimed too high, but the pink setting (does anyone know what bidet means?) was practically perfect in every way.

OK, toilet aside. Bring on the desk!

The left side is your average hotel desk stuff. Lamp, tissues, memo paper, phone. It's made much niftier by the lift up mirror with compartment. The right side, however, is a treasure. That's one sweet TV. The left-hand remote is for that. The right-hand remote is for a heater or something in the corner -- I'm not sure what exactly it does, honestly, because the middle remote was for the air conditioning. Hallelujah!

Embedded in the wall over the bed was the clock/alarm clock and some light switches.

There was also a trouser press.

At this point, I made a choice. A bath (so longed for), or food and a bit of exploration? Well, I needed food. There was a cafe downstairs, and vending machines on all floors, and I wanted a picture of the fountain across the street... bath would make me sleepy, so exploration.
Pictures! This is what I had seen upon first exiting the elevator on my floor.

And the vending machine on my floor.

Hmm. Drinks only. Floor 2 is supposed to have a vending room instead of a vending corner. I'll have to check that out. But first... those fountains!

Pretty awesome. I think the building they (there were actually two of these green fountains) were in front of was another hotel, but I wouldn't swear by that. I took this next picture of my hotel's foyer on the way back in:

Both sets of doors slide open; the second set has bars. On the right-hand side of the foyer is an intercom for use between 2:00 and 7:00 for the purpose of obtaining entry. On the left is an umbrella rack.

It's a coin-operated, lock-the-umbrella-in-place umbrella rack. One of the foreign exchange students had told me that the thing that struck her as most weird in Alaska is that no one uses umbrellas. I think I'm gonna find out, on the first rainy day I encounter, that I'll be surprised by how many people have umbrellas, even though I have warning.

The last leg of my jaunt, the second floor vending room.

Excellent, there's food, too. After some deliberation, I decide to grab a random instant noodle bowl -- but not before taking a couple of pictures of other things in the room. Like the laundry machines.

And what is (I think) related to fire safety. I saw very similar fixtures at the Narita and Haneda airports.

So I returned to my room and contemplated my food.

I hoped, since there was no microwave in evidence, that the directions I had no intention of translating stated that I just needed to add hot water. So I added hot water and prepared, otherwise, for a bath. I turned on the TV at this point, too, watching first a movie (which had a character named Benkei -- maybe had a connection to the Tale of the Genji?) then a wacky variety show going over some guy's best pranks, dating back to at least 1980.

I also discovered that I was having an interesting time with the whole slippers thing. In case you are unaware, the Japanese take their shoes off at the door, donning in their place a pair of slippers. These are worn around the house, unless one needs to use the toilet. At that point, one switches into toilet slippers. That way you don't go tracking things from the bathroom floor into the rest of the house. Pretty ingenious, actually. (If there's a room with tatami mat floors, you take your slippers off at the entrance and walk in your socks, but this hotel is a modern hotel with no tatami.) The hotel included free slippers for the room, but I kept accidentally wearing them into the bathroom or slipping them off in the middle of the room for no apparent reason. Oops.

I recalled my food when I went into the bathroom and saw it sitting on the counter. It was not so hot anymore, but the noodles were soft and pliable. I looked at the flavor packet. It had two sections. I poured in the contents of the big section. Then I opened the small section and started pouring that on, but O SNAP! It was schechwan stuff. Didn't put all of that in there.

It's at this point that I wish to instate the Taste-O-Meter. It works on a scale of 1-5, as follows:

1 = OMFG, get this out of my mouth!
2 = Somewhat untasty, but edible in a pinch.
3 = It's food.
4 = Hey, this is pretty good stuff.
5 = I think I shall actively seek this out from now on.

Taste-O-Meter!

Random Green Instant Noodle Bowl: 2
It had some sort of bread on top that complimented the flavor nicely and was easy to eat after soaking up some of the water. The noodles were odd; they didn't even taste like rice noodles in the states do, so I'm not really sure what they were made of. But it was edible, and I was hungry.

After that I tried to go Japanese style and shower, then take a bath... however, I was so drowsy by the end of the shower that I was afraid I'd fall asleep in the bath and drown (though I'd have at least done so in Japan! :D) so I just went to bed. The bed was harder than I'm used to, obviously made to emulate a futon on a floor. Fortunately for me, I like that. It was shortly after 21:00 at this point. I set the alarm for 4:30 and laid down to sleep. Initially I planned to have the TV on all night, but for once the noise was distracting, so I regretfully turned it off.

On to Kushiro

When the alarm went off, I reset it for 4:35. When it went off again, I reset it for 4:40. Then I got up. I did morning things, then went down to the lobby. Before checking out, I got on line and checked some Neopets stuff, as well as sending an e-mail to everyone to say, "Yo, I am alive." It seemed like my contacts on gmail did not include someone, and it wasn't until I got to the part about the hotel key card in writing this that I realized that for some reason, Zeal was totally not on there. Sorry, Zeal. m(_ _)m Did Gokuiroth tell you? :s

Anyway, I checked out in time to catch the 5:40 AM shuttle to the airport. No lateness again for me! Everything happened smoothly. The young woman at the ticketing counter seemed to be in training, but there was no slowdown of services. Even if there had been, I would have been fine with it. I usually am fine with new trainees, but even if I wasn't, the service I had received the day before was so good that I'd have been patient anyway. At one point they informed me that there was a flight change charge. It didn't surprise me, so I was like, *sigh* "Hai." Then they told me the charge was 100 yen.

What do they charge you for stuff like that in America? I doubt it's as low as like 90 cents. That's a rough equivalent of how much I paid. Delight!

So anyway, I got through that with a pink airline ticket and a Yokoso Japan! ticket envelope. I went straight to my gate -- skipping food because I wasn't all that hungry and I was damned if I was gonna miss this flight -- and sat down. I was at the lower domestic gates. And very early.

While waiting for boarding time, I took this picture of a TV that was playing ads for those who waited. In retrospect, I wish the picture I had gotten was of the segment boldly labeled "Space Station TV", but by the time it came around again I was heavily enmeshed in starting this blog post in notepad.

The Japanese domestic boarding seems both less organized and more efficient to me than its American counterpart. See the picture below for how close the "gates" are to one another.

This is, indeed, where boarding passes were collected. But they didn't start taking people until 15 minutes before the plane's scheduled departure. When I got through the gate, I got onto another Friendly Airport Limousine. The bus left for the plane 10 minutes before the scheduled departure, completely full of people.

That took us straight to the plane, a trip of about 2 minutes. There were two doors open on the plane, and thus, two staircases. Somehow, a plane big enough to have three seat sections filled up with everyone stashing their bags with plenty of time to leave on schedule 8 minutes later. None of this, "Now boarding section 3," crap. Just pure, unadulterated, "All aboard!"

It was a short plane trip, 1 hour and 20 minutes. I'm pretty sure the seats on that Japanese plane were wider than the seats on its American counterparts, since my hips didn't feel squished for once. No leg room, but it's Japan, so I expected that. Got work on the blog post in up to... some point. I was gonna remember exactly where so I could tell you, but I've forgotten.

Haha! Finally in Kushiro!

So anyway, when we landed I was sadly reminded of my lack of baggage. I went past the baggage claim and out to where you meet people and started looking for a piece of paper with my name on it. Before I saw it, I heard "Lena-san!" from my left. Lo! It was Utsuki-san! She lived in my dorm building at UAF last school year, though my shy-ness with the Japanese language meant that I didn't talk to her nearly as much as I should have. Still, seeing a familiar face was so much more awesome than I could have imagined, even if I'd put two and two together and thought that maybe Utsuki might be there to meet me at the airport.

Utsuki-san wasn't the only one, of course. There were Hiruta-sensei, a biology teacher, and Sayaka-san, a second year English major who is to be my tutor while I'm here. The fact that all three knew some English helped at first, 'cause my brain wasn't exactly working very well. I have forgotten basic words and some grammatical structures (though I am picking them up again very quickly).

As Hiruta-sensei drove us from the airport to the college, we talked about the sort of things people chat about when going from airport to wherever. Where did I stay last night? What did I know about Kushiro? Hey, what bird is that? General stuff. I also found out that an apartment was not already found for me, and that that was the goal of the day. They found out that I hadn't had breakfast.

So we got to the college. Hiruta-sensei went to his office while Sayaka-san and Utsuki-san took me to a room for students of English and foreign students -- a place where I could drop off my stuff temporarily. We then crossed the street from the college to go to the convenience store right across the street (how convenient!) and I got breakfast. There were some things that looked like doughnut holes that I grabbed, along with some apple juice. 210 yen total, 105 yen each. We took it back to the room where we dropped my stuff off so I could eat.

Taste-O-Meter!

Japanese Sunkist Apple Juice: 4
It's not like American apple juice, though. I don't know if it's a lack of preservatives or what, but the apple juice itself is not quite clear, and actually tastes more like apple flesh than its American counterpart.

Japanese Doughnut Holes: 4
They actually turned out to taste like cake doughnut holes, which rate a 4 at home, too.

Operation: Find Lena A Home, Yo

After that, we went to talk to Hiruta-sensei in his office. We went over the fact that I wasn't too particular about where I live as long as I have room to sleep and the fact that I can cook. Turns out that Sayaka's landlord owns multiple buildings, and had a couple of places open in a building about two blocks from the college. We hoofed it over to Parkside Q to check the places out. One room was on the second floor, the other on the third; generally I prefer to be lower to the ground because I'm a lazy bastard who doesn't like steps, but the third floor room was nicer. It was almost identical, really, but it came with a shelf/rack thing on wheels (hereafter referred to as the shlack) and the second window faces out with a nice view instead of looking at the stairs on the building. The apartments are both the same size, and both bigger than I expected. A bit bigger than I need, perhaps, but not unwelcome. (Haha! A place for Conrad, Jordan, and their friends to sleep when they visit!)

Once I'd decided on that, we headed back to the school, then past it, to the landlord's office -- which I think was actually in his home. I wouldn't swear by that, though, as I didn't try to poke my nose around and we were taken to an office right off the entryway. As a foreigner, I needed a guarantor. My sponsoring teacher is to be one Hideo Ishida-sensei, I have been told, but I was not to meet him until the next day. Hiruta sensei arranged to sign for him somehow (legal lingo in Japanese -- I didn't really understand it), and we fill out paperwork.

My monthly fee is to be 29,000 yen for the room, plus 3,000 yen for water, plus whatever I work up in gas and electricity. Better than I expected; I figured it'd be about 10,000 yen higher than that. I was given a key and instructed to take my payment to that office once a month. The landlord also called someone in my building, a Korean named Kim. At the time, I thought she was calling someone in charge of the building, but I have since met a Korean named Kim who's another exchange student at the school and also lives in my building so... I dunno. Either way, she told the Kim person that I only understand basic Japanese.

:'( I'm just out of practice! There are so many words I've encountered that I just need to recall, and I've noticed that any time I say, "Please say that again," the person I am talking to assumes that the way they said it was too complicated, rather than that my brain is just not used to processing Japanese and I didn't actually quite pick up what they were saying. That'll change soon, I figure, but for now I may as well just let them think that. It'll certainly help impress them if I perform above expectations.

Anyway, after that we returned to the University. Back in Hiruta-sensei's office, I was told that information on classes and the scholarship and such would come the next day, when I met Ishida-sensei. Sayaka-san used her cell phone to call United about my baggage, and I found out it'd get here in two days. I am to meet again with Hiruta-sensei, Utsuki-san, and Sayaka-san in Hiruta-sensei's office at 9:00. Given that, Utsuki-san, Sayaka-san and I left. The three of us went to the cafeteria; I didn't eat anything, but they had lunch. Then Sayaka-san left us to go to class. I asked Utsuki-san about dropping my baggage off at my new place (get this heavy stuff off my back!), and she said that she had a friend coming.

Operation: Lena Needs Stuff

So I met Nei-san. Nei-san is a fourth-year biology student, with a car. She took us to my apartment to drop my stuff off, then the three of us went shopping. We got a lot of things to get me started here, general necessities I was without either because I had no intention of bringing it or because my baggage didn't make it. Stuff like a futon to sleep on, food, dishes, and soap.

We went to three stores; the first was a "home center". It's full of good fun stuff like mini-fridges, vacuums, towels, washing machines, alarm clocks -- good old fashioned home necessities. I didn't get a mini-fridge or a washing machine because with the futon there wasn't going to be enough room in Nei-san's car, but I did note that suitable but cheap ones would be about 28,000 yen in total.

The next place we went was called "100 Yen Plaza". It's what a dollar store should be and isn't, at least in Alaska. In Alaska, dollar stores rarely sell anything that's actually for a dollar, and it's all cheap, useless crap. This 100 yen store is chock-full of useful stuff, and (for those who understand this reference) about as big as the old Fred Meyer used to be in Fairbanks. It carried dishes, cooking utensils, measuring spoons and cups, dish soap, laundry detergent, notebooks, binders, small storage and organizational stuff, sushi mats, umbrellas, and a whole lot of other stuff I didn't even look at. When I got to the register, the cashier started counting, then multiplied the number by 105 (100 yen plus tax). It was great!

The third place we went to had food. I didn't get too much, 'cause I live near a convenience store and don't yet have a fridge. This was a place to buy eating food, not gift food, so the fruit wasn't of the ungodly expensive variety, but it was still more expensive than we'd expect to pay in Alaska. Four or five bananas each came in a bag at a flat cost of 198 yen. But I didn't see a bad banana in any bunch. There was plenty of non-fruit, too. Whole fish, fish pieces, fish eggs, shrimp, other seafood, bread, more bread, crackers, snacks, cup ramen, cup other noodles, eggs, drinks, and a whole lot more.

Now, the place that we got the food from was actually a store inside of what was kind of a mall. The Japanese don't call it a mall; Nei-san told me it isn't big enough. It's called a Co-op. Like I said, it's kind of like a one-floor mall as we think of it, but no mall I've ever seen seemed to have no truly secure way to close the shops off for the night. These stores also spilled out into the hall, sometimes almost halfway into the walkway. You could still tell where once place ended and the next began, but it was interesting. The only two stores that I saw which didn't spill into the hall was another, smaller 100 Yen Plaza and the media store.

I wish I'd gotten to go into the media store. Over the low wall around it, I saw manga and anime and CD's. The low wall itself advertised PlayStation 2 and Xbox and Gamecube, and the TV's on either side of the entrance were all about the new Katamari game. But that wasn't why I was at the co-op.

Yay, I Have Stuff Now!

So after that, Nei-san drove us back to my apartment. We pulled up to unload my loot and discovered that a guy had shown up to turn on the gas. We took all but the futon upstairs and let the guy in to do that. There was a lot (and I mean a lot) of dust inside the heater until it was turned on. :P After the gas guy and the girls showed me how to work the stove, heater, and water heater (You have to open and close the valves to each before using it, and the water heater works so fast that you don't have to turn the power on until you want to use it), the gas guy left and we brought the futon upstairs. At this point, Utsuki-san and Nei-san took their leave to allow me to rest/set up the place, with my thanks for their help. ^^

This is the first time since I got to Kushiro that I had taken any pictures. I could have gotten pictures of the stores, but didn't really want to while I was doing heavy shopping. So here's my apartment, empty.

I put the curtains up before taking the pictures. As you can see, I accidentally put the one set up backwards in my desperation to get the sun out of my house and away from my migraine. The heater in the corner is gas powered and came with a Doraemon sticker on it. Seen in the kitchen is the shlack, the water heater (which also heats the water to your exactly specified celsius temperature -- boilers seem so stupid now), my little gas range (no oven, but a place to broil fish), cabinets, and a sink.

The bathroom has a shower and a bath, in good old-fashioned Japanese style. Well, not old-fashioned; the Japanese have really gotten to prefer the removable shower head over the bucket for rinsing off. I forgot to buy a stool to sit on when cleaning -- traditional Japanese bathing involves washing your self meticulously, then rinsing off and soaking for a while in hot water. It feels quite nice, actually. But the bathroom door is very skinny, and interesting to get through.

Toilet gets its own room. You can't see it in this picture, but it's one of the toilets with a big and small flush.

A place to put a washing machine. Yay! I need one of those.

I'll try putting my futon over here.

And the entryway, concrete ending where the floor begins. No shoes inside the house! Hooray for living in a culture that echoes what you were raised doing.

This looks like an ordinary light, but I assure you that it's actually special. It has three "on" settings -- both fluorescent bulbs on, one florescent bulb on, and one weak yellow light on. There are two of these in the apartment, one of which is also connected to a power switch near the laundry machine spot.

So there's my apartment. Let's evaluate the day's loot, shall we?

Not bad for 22,150 yen. And zoom in a bit...

Featured here are a plate, a cup, a bowl, three random instant noodle packages, one random package of bread, a bread chosen after asking Utsuki-san what she likes, bananas, Nabisco saltine crackers ("America's long seller cracker" according to the box), a random yet tasty-looking rice dish with shrimp and wasabi, some cucumber rolls (I've already eaten two; I was hungry), a bread knife, a straight-edged cooking knife, and a cutting board.

Taste-O-Meter!

Cucumber Rolls: 5
Just like American ones, if you buy them at a place that does decent sushi in America.

Skillet with lid, sieve, tea kettle, saucepan, spatula, ladle, spoon with holes, whisk, 1-cup measuring cup (the only non-metric measure I found, and the only one I need).

Towel, various cleaning sponges, shampoo, conditioner, body wash, toilet paper, laundry detergent, lemon dish washing liquid.

Futon set, covers for the futon pieces, an alarm clock almost identical to the one that won't get here for two days because it's with my baggage, and a power strip that will let me plug my laptop into the wall.

Ultimate riches, yes?

Time to put them away. Yarr!

I should probably put some of these in the cupboards, especially since I am likely to be hanging clothes on the rack to dry from here on out, but for now, this will do. Time to put my futon together.

Japanese-style futons aren't quite like American futons, and not just because American futons come with racks that make them function just fine as couches. The futon was originally designed to be modular -- you pick it up when you get up in the morning and you can air it out or fold it up and put it away. So a futon has three parts plus covers for them (sheets, essentially, only they zip up around the whole thing). The shikibuton is the bottom part, on which you sleep. The kakebuton is the part that goes over you. It's like a really thick comforter. Then there's the makura, which is a pillow.

Let's do this.

Success! The shikibuton fits the alcove exactly. Time to put on its cover.

The futon has now been covered up. O SNAP! The reason the cover seemed way to big is that it was actually for the kakebuton. Let's try that again.

Much better. Now, the kakebuton...

Almost there. Makura! I don't know what they put inside this pillow, but it rattles on one side. Very interesting.

Victory is mine! ... Wait... something is missing. Oh, I know what it is!

Ultimate victory!

Now What?

At this point, I was tired. But it was only like 15:00! So I decided to work on this blog post. I did that until I got to my recollection of waking up in the hotel room. Then I realized if I was to hand-wash my clothes with time for them to dry, I needed to do that. I'll tell you what: hand-washing your clothes in a kitchen sink with no drain plug is interesting, especially if you're using cold water 'cause you don't want to use the gas to heat the water and are not wearing much 'cause you're washing most of your clothes.

After that, I headed for the bathroom. Since I hadn't thought to buy any real house-cleaning soap, I used dish washing liquid to clean the bathroom. Took a shower, then settled down for a bath. I discovered that 42 C is lower than I like for a bath. Note for next time. Still a decent temperature, though. Soaked away some of my traveling aches.

After that, I hit the sack. It was only like 20:45, but with my headache and my traveling aches and me needing to adjust my internal clock, I figured I should go to bed early and sleep as late as possible.

After waking at like 4:30, I started working on this again, pausing when I hit the price of bananas to look up the exact price of the bananas, get some water, and feast on the tasty-looking rice dish with shrimp.

Taste-O-Meter!

Tasty-Looking Rice Dish with Shrimp: 5
It's pretty much rice with bits of egg and celery, small pieces of shrimp, and wasabi on the side. Mmm, breakfast.

So there I was, at about 7:00. I was told yesterday that I can access the Internet from the college during the day, so hopefully I will get to post this today. For now, I am leaving pictures and text file on my computer.

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Addendum

O SNAP X2!

I forgot the feature I intended to add at the end of every blog post from here on out. So I'll add a bit of my doings this morning as well. I did some arranging at my apartment, eventually leaving around 8:10 with wet pants on. I walked and took some pictures of the neighborhood. However, when I got to the school I discovered that my alarm clock was an hour fast. Heh. It was 7:30.

So I went for a walk. Figured out which direction the Kushiro River is in, as well as discovering that there's a game store just on the other side. I didn't go in, 'cause I want Internet first, but still. Walked back, and came into the school to eat some Japanese beef jerky (with its gold seal of "Good Taste & Happy Feeling" on the front).

Taste-O-Meter!

Japanese Beef Jerky: 5
Spiced different, but tastes just as good. Very expensive, though.

While I was sitting in a communal area, I heard a band playing songs and went to investigate. There are club rooms in the basement, and as I type this, a band (a good rock band) is blaring loud music in club room 7, ten feet or so to my left and across the hall. In fact, that dictated my choice of seating for writing this.

On to the new feature!

Realizations of the Period

1) An airport is an airport is an airport.
2) People have told me that the Japanese speak quickly. I don't think so. I think we just process Japanese slowly. I know that that's my problem. I've found that I understand better if I take in what they're saying by the sentence than by the word.
3) Going to another country and writing a blog about it is a good way to practice writing. (Special note to Chuck: That was aimed at you. Alternatively, you can take my escapades and re-write them as a cheesy adventure story. I think that could be really cool. "When Lena got off the bus at the Haneda airport, she had a feeling something was wrong. A flicker at the corner of her eye made her turn just in time to dodge the swift blade of a pirate's cutlass. Knowing that she was running out of time she quickly vanquished the pirate and his squad of ninjas, but by the time her enemies were finally laid fast upon the concrete, the nearby clock read 18:09. She was too late; her flight had already left." If you want to try, feel free. :D)
4) Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge is pretty, but it really isn't a good hotel at all, especially for the prices.
5) When travelling in a country where the populace speaks a foreign language, never underestimate the power of hand gestures/mime and onomatopoeia. Ever. If you can get the idea across, they'll tell you the word for it.

-----
New Addendum

OK, still no way to get this bugger on the Internet. Bah! I'm gonna keep just adding stuff to the bottom, then. However, It's not going to be nearly as blow-by-blow. That takes too long, and as I settle in a bit more, that gets less interesting. Some parts will still be elaborate, but not all.

So anyway, when I got done with the Realizations of the Period, I put my laptop away and did some logic puzzles before going off to meet Hiruta-sensei. Hiruta-sensei was escorting the last two exchange students (out of four; three Russian, one me). Tolia and I got to sit around for a while, waiting for our sponsoring teachers to arrive, so we got to know each other a bit. He's double-majoring in English and Japanese, and wants to take a class in Shodou. His mentioning Shodou, combined with me finding out there's a Shodou class, made me want to take it, too. (Shodou = Japanese calligraphy. Sho = writing, dou = way)

After a great while, Ishida-sensei arrived. He made mention of classes, asked what I was interested in, and showed me a class schedule. At that point, Sayaka-san needed to go to class, so she and I agreed to meet in the central lobby later. I spent a bit of time in the library on the Internet (which is how I found out that I still have no way to get this post on the Internet), where I did some stuff on Neopets and checked my e-mail. After that, I decided I was hungry, so I headed to the shokudou (cafeteria).

The menu was visual; there was a glass case outside the doors with the day's dishes made up for you to see and choose from. I picked tonkatsu [insert compound word I don't recall here] udon. Essentially, it was pork cutlet over rice and lettuce with a sauce on top.

Taste-O-Meter!

Tonkatsu over Lettuce and Rice: 5
Who likes pork? I do. Who likes lettuce? Me. Who likes rice? Over half the population of the planet. And the sauce was tasty.

After that, I went home and took a nap. Jisabokke (jet lag) has never been a problem for me until now. I've been getting tired around 20:00 and been unable to sleep later than like 4:30. Haah. Suck. So, nap.

When I went to meet with Sayaka-san and Ishida-sensei again, Sayaka-san introduced me to Mina-san and Orie-san. I didn't talk much to Orie-san because she left for class, but Mina-san stayed with us for a while. She likes to read. :D I doubt she and I have read many of the same books, though.

The meeting that followed was when Araoka-san (who I had corresponded with via the Internet over the summer) explained to myself and Sayaka-san the official-isms and whatnot that I had to go through. I say he explained to us both, but the truth is that he was pretty much telling her what needed to be done because I couldn't understand what he was saying fast enough and he knew it. As it turned out, some of it was stuff that I knew already, but didn't know the vocabulary for.

City Hall

Ishida-sensei gave Sayaka-san money for a cab, since there was only an hour until her second (and last) class of the day. We first hoofed it to a place to get some pictures of me taken (I've gotten my picture taken more times in the last three months than in the preceding year, by the way), then took a cab to the city hall.

Japanese cabs are funny-looking. Like American cabs, they have lit-up signs on top. However, they also have antanne (often v-shaped) symmetrically placed on top. The drivers all wear gloves, though there's no standard glove type. One thing that's really awesome about them is the fact that the driver can open the passenger door at the puch of a button.

We got some alien registration stuff done, then went back the the school. Sayaka-san had her class, and I got to go to my first class. I had indicated an interest in music, and there was a traditional Japanese music class at the same time as Sayaka's English class, so I went there. It sounded interesting; history, studying the forms, appreciation.

PSYCH!

How about, "Let's play the koto?"

It was so awesome, especially since I didn't see it coming. I got to the class, asked if I could join, and was heartily welcomed. I helped get some more equipment from storage rooms, and as we pulled things out of boxes I saw that it would be some kind of practical class, since these were obviously stands of some kind that we were putting together. When I saw the finger picks for the koto, I finally realized that this class was going to be WAY more awesome than I had thought. Score!

So after that, Sayaka-san and I went back into town on foot to get me a cell phone. The cell phone company had a brochure on rates in English, which helped quite a bit, as well as some phones for sale that were bilingual. Yay! But because I don't have an account at the post office, I couldn't get the phone yet. Alas. The next day, then, since the post office was closed.

But to get an account at the post office, I needed an inkan. The Japanese don't actually use signatures, but stamps. The stamp itself is called a hanko, and the thing that does the stamping is the inkan. Up to this point, I had been using my fingerprint.

We sought a store that Sayaka-san thought made inkans. Turns out that they had stopped offering that service, and that it'd take a week or so to get one personally made, anyway. We kinda needed it faster than that. So we went to the nearby 100 yen store, which had common-name inkans just inside the door. I obviously don't have a common Japanese name, so Sayaka-san asked what kanji I like. I ended up with an inkan carrying the name Mizuki. 水木。

After that, she showed me a decent-sized store near the college where I can get food and such, then we parted ways. I wasn't tired necessarily, but I knew I would be soon, and my brain was starting to reject Japanese. I went home for the night.

Finishing Up the Official Stuff

I met Sayaka-san the next day after her first class. We went to City Hall again (by foot this time since there was no rush) and got me a piece of paper that will serve me as a substitute alien registration card until I get the actual card later this month.

With that, I was able to get a post office account and a bank account. These are both savings accounts. This is probably one of the weirdest things I've seen here. I couldn't get a cell phone without a savings account at the post office, but I can only pay my bills to the city government through the bank. What??? I like how the latter works, since it streamlines your bill paying to the one office. The former really boggled my mind until I looked at the ATM books I got and realized that the post office one looked a little more formal, considering the fact that the post office had officially sealed my hanko into the book.

So yeah, I got a cell phone. It's green and shiny. My cell phone ringer is a J-pop song, because it's the best thing that came on the phone. Cell phones in Japan also come out of the box with sub par ring tones. One thing that was interesting to me about it though is that two of the pre-loaded ring tones have a visual component. Not impressive visuals, but I'm sure impressive ones could be made.

The last thing we did was sign me up for a student card. I need to take that to the cell phone company so that they have something official to base my 50% off month fees on. Hooray for student discounts.

After that, I started exploring. I went for a while on a random road away from the school. I found a lot of houses and a second way to the food store Sayaka-san had showed me the day before. I then went toward downtown to actually look through all the stores there.

I found a lot of different things. I went into the game store, but didn't see any actual game systems for sale, and didn't want to ask 'cause I didn't intend to buy just yet. I also didn't see Minna Daisuki Katamari Damacy. :( Ah well. It can wait. I found a ramen shop, an art gallery, a sewing shop (that was lucky, 'cause I need a needle and thread to fix the clasp on my cloak; the old man who ran it was really nice, too), what appeared to be a used book store (it had Harry Potter OotP, but it was the British version), an arcade (Haha! Right within walking distance of my house!), a pachinko parlor, and a karaoke place.

I went inside the karaoke place to do some karaoke for an hour and get a feel for how it works and how much they have in terms of English music. I had always been told that there are English songs in the back of the karaoke books, and I was not disappointed. In fact, I was surprised. The karaoke books were actual books, not binders like you find in America. These books were also the size of phone books. As for English songs, you can find almost anything in there. I even found a Blind Guardian song. The only things I looked for and didn't see were System of a Down songs and the song "The Dolphins Cry" by Live. There were other songs by Live, though. I also tried a couple of songs I know in Japanese. Woot!

After that, I headed home. I've been battling a headache since I got to Japan, and sitting in a karaoke box... well, it didn't help. I wasn't doing too bad with the headache until I got halfway up the stairs to my apartment. Blarg.

I ate some different foods in this day that didn't come up in the non-blow-by blow version.

Taste-O-Meter!

Melon Pan (Pan is Japanese for bread): 4
This is what Utsuki recommended to me. It doesn't really taste like melon, which is good 'cause I don't like melon. It's got some kind of glaze on top that reminds me of sugar cookies.

Wantanmen (a random instant noodle from the loot pile earlier): 3
It was noodles with vegetables. It had cute little pig heads made out of what tasted like pork floating it, though.

Special Sweet Bread: 5
It looks kind of like cinnamon rolls, but I could tell before I bought it that it wasn't. It is, as it claims, a sweet bread. I'm noticing that the Japanese are fond of sweet breads, which I am finding is really quite spiffy. While I ate it, I read the label, and realized at once that the label must be shared.

Aquarius, The Sports Drink: 3
I had to try it. The name intrigued me. This would rate a 4 if I liked grapefruit, but I don't.

Sprite: 4
It's different from its American counterpart, but still good. Reminds me of ramune -- a Japanese drink that I have not had the opportunity to try yet in Japan.

Realizations of the Period

1) "Conrad" is very difficult to say in Japanese. I'm shortening his name to Con (pronounced more like "cone") any time I mention him to Japanese people. Con-kun.
2) I have blisters on my left foot from walking around so much. :(
3) Since the one class is all about playing the koto, I have one guaranteed easy class. Yes!
4) I need to pull a Ted and set up an image gallery online. I'm taking way too many pictures for a blog.
5) I pasted this into OpenOffice to spellcheck it, and it's 20 pages long.

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More News

It's been a week since I updated this... o.O Holy handgrenade, it HAS been a week. Well. Let's start with...

Taste-O-Meter!

Natto: 3
Ever since I got to UAF, I've heard about natto. It's slightly fermented soy beans. Generally, foreigners come to Japan can't stand the stuff. I've heard horror stories about how the first thing people wanted to do after putting it in their mouths is to spit it out. I did not have that problem. Maybe it's my faulty nose making my taste buds think the wrong thing, but I just found the taste to be... interesting. I don't really want to eat more natto, but I'm sure that if I had to eat it every day it would quickly become palatable, then tasty. Foreigners who'll eat natto is a rare thing, so Sayaka wanted a picture.

Korokke: 4
I'm not sure what, exactly, korokke is, but I like it. I grabbed it 'cause I wasn't poying attention and thought it was tonkatsu.

Aka Ringo, Ao Ringo Apple Juice: 5
The Sunkist apple juice pales in comparison. This is more like the apple juice you get in America yet still more apple-y, in the Japanese Sunkist apple juice style. Aka means red, Ao means blue. Blue here means green; the Japanese word for green is a pretty new thing in their language, so they still use blue to mean green as often as not.

Other Apple Juice: 4
I forget the name of this one, but it comes in a black box. Better than Sunkist, not as good as Aka/Ao.

Bacon Mayo Roll: 5
I don't really like mayonnaise, though I do like it cooked into things at times. Deviled eggs, potato salad, and the like are actually some of my favorite foods. The bacon mayo roll (which I have so far only found at 7-11 stores [which are kind of cool to see again after so many years, coincidentally]) has enough of a mayo taste to be noticeable, but the main flavor is still bread and bacon. I woke up this morning and wanted one, but I went to Sunkus (another convenience store) and discovered they don't have it.

Pork Winter Roll: 5
This is a lot like the bacon mayo roll. It was, in fact, my breakfast today, since I couldn't find a bacon mayo roll at Sunkus. It's got the same kind of bread as the bacon mayo roll, but instead of bacon and mayo, it has a hot dog and some kind of cheese sauce. Yum!

Mister Donuts Vanilla Shake: 5
It's a good shake. But it's tiny compared to the servings you get of milkshakes in America. This thing was only about 8 ounces. For 200 yen... kind of expensive. The donuts at the shop were good, too. (They don't get their own Taste-O-Meter entry because, as usual, I got glazed. A glazed doughnut is a glazed doughnut.)

Anko-Filled Rolls: 3
Anko is a sweet bean paste. Not generally something I look for inside a bread, but it doesn't taste bad.

Japanese Nabisco Saltines: 5
These get their own Taste-O-Meter entry for two reasons: first, they're less salty than their American counterparts (which is actually pretty nice); second, when I opened the box expecting two packages of crackers, I actually found nine. There were like 6 crackers to a package. It was convenient, but made the crackers even more expensive than they already were.

Random Blue Cup Noodle: 3
It had some kind of fish in it for meat. Didn't taste bad, but wasn't really good either. Noodles.

Random Green Cup Noodle: 4
Pork. Mmm.

Pork Ramen: 5
Real ramen is better than instant ramen, and the portions are big, too. Hallelujah. There's also large chunks of pork and some vegetables in it. Woot! (I still think Harlan should do a ramen cook-off as a dorm program, btw.)

So there's the Taste-O-Meter for the past week. Eating isn't all I've done... in fact, I'm skimping on food a bit to save money. Not going hungry, but making damned sure not to overeat and eating cheaply. My morning bacon roll or whatever and a box of apple juice is about 200 yen. For the evening, I have spaghetti. It's like 125 yen for a kg of spaghetti, and I only need about an eighth of that to make a meal. :D

I am indebted to Nacilik; he gave me 200 dollars before I left Japan so I could buy him some manga. Without it, I would be in trouble. m(_ _)m I find myself having to borrow from his cash, since it turns out that my scholarship gets disbursed at month's end. That's good to know. I found out because I was like, hey... I need to pay my rent somehow. Fortunately for me, my landlord is willing to take my rent at the end of the month, along with next month's rent. >.> I'll be poor again for another month, but then it'll be smooth sailing.

I've bought myself a Japanese crossword magazine. I suck at Japanese crosswords. I need a kanji dictionary just to read the clues. Thankfully, all the answers are written in katakana. Not all of the puzzles in the book are traditional crosswords, though; some are the kind of puzzle where you have a word list and a blank grid and have to figure out how to place the words. Those I can do. I would like to get better at this for two reasons: one is mastery of the language. The only answer I've gotten so far (I haven't bothered with the kanji dictionary ^^') is Cairo, being the capital of Egypt. However, all throughout the magazine there is talk of "presents" which somehow relates to the completion of the puzzles. Among the presents are a DS and a PSP, as well as various spiffy-looking household goods, so... I need to get that translated as well.

I have done a lot more exploring. There are ramen shops all over the place. I've found or been shown a furniture store, two more karaoke places, two "recycle shops" (used stuff store), a sushi bar, a big book store (which is likely where I'll find the manga Nacilik wants, as well as the stuff I want), two kimono shops, a large clothing store, a couple of more places to buy food, several convenience stores (they're more everywhere you want to be than Visa around here), and some other stuff I'll probably remember next time I need to think about them. Woot! Good stuff.

I've also joined the Sadou (Japanese tea ceremony) club. Sadou is awesome, on many levels. It's very relaxing, for one. It's all about hospitality and getting good at it. The constant presence of boiling water makes the place warm, too. It's also interesting to watch (and perform -- I've learned the basics) the exact movements required. It's got an all-around meditative air to it. And I'll tell you what: real, honest-to-goodness Japanese green tea is so much better than the kind of "green tea" that you can buy in American stores that I can't believe I ever liked the latter. The foods that go with the tea ceremony are also traditional, and complement the taste of the tea so well I don't think I can give it words. Glory! I wonder if I can get tea ceremony equipment in America. This is already something I'm interested in continuing after I go home.

Yeah. So.

Realizations of the Period

1) I don't read kanji as well as I thought I did -- though thankfully, part of that is rust.
2) Japanese sounds really cool with a heavy Russian accent, even if it is a bit more interesting to understand.
3) I can get to a lot of places when I walk for an hour. It's an odd feeling.
4) I've been asked by multiple people what sort of sports I like. The only good answer I have for them? Curling. I really must take that up when I get back.
5) True green tea is the bomb-diggity.

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Small Victories

I have successfully explained binary and how to count in binary on your fingers to a Japanese person who has no computer programming experience using the Japanese language. You have no idea how awesome that felt. I can feel the power of the Japanese language growing within me daily. Soon, I shall conquer the universe.

...

I mean, be fluent.

Anyway. The other day, Sato introduced me to a large group of her fellow Okinawans, and we went to a robata. A robata is a restaraunt where the table is a grill with boards around it on which you can set your plate. You pick a table, then go up and pay for the food you want (Actually, you paid at the register for vouchers that you could then take to the food counters to exchange for the tasties arranged before you, but whatever), then take it back to your table and cook it. They have small portions of some things on sticks, some whole fish, some whole shellfish, a few things that come in a tin so you can cook them together for flavor, some plain ol' vegetables, squid -- all kinds of stuff. So.

Taste-O-Meter!

Ika (Squid): 3
It tastes fine, but the texture is a bit rubbery, making chewing and swallowing take a bit more time.

Tama, Sanma, and Hokke (each a kind of fish): 3
I'm not so fond of fish.

Hokke bones: 4
Once a fish had been divested of flesh, the Okinawans placed it back on the grill. Later, I saw Sato chowing down on Sanma skeleton, and went o.O . Then, one of the guys (I never found out his name, though I talked to him a bit) offered me the opportunity to try some of his Hokke skeleton. It's tastier than the fish, and since it was well cooked, the bones were brittle and not dangerous.

Kaki (a shellfish): 3
I prefer oyster, but this is pretty good, too. Bigger than oysters are. The meat of the kaki is bigger than an oyster in its shell.

Aspara-Bacon (Pieces of asparagus wrapped in bacon): 5
Hot diggety-damn. I don't know who came up with this idea, but it was a good one. This is some tasty, tasty stuff.

Hitsuji (Lamb) and Sprouts: 4
This actually came in a pan. When we told the person behind the counter that we'd have that, she added some sort of oriental-flavored sauce to it. It was good, but I still prefer my baby sheep meat on pita bread.

Toriniku (Chicken): 5
Chicken on a stick. Speaks for itself, I think.

Butaniku (Pork): 4
Three pieces of pork on a stick, with some kind of vegetable (from the onion family, maybe) in between the pieces. The vegetable is an excellent choice to go with the pork.

I didn't try the chicken skins on a stick (Though I will next time, I think). Between what I paid for and the massive amounts of food that got shared later I ended up trying almost everything the store had. At the end, everyone was full, so I ended up with the leftover vouchers. They had to be used by Saturday if they were gonna get used, but I forgot until it was raining pretty hard saturday evening. The robata is in a nice spot on the riverfront, but it's a 15-20 minute walk, and I didn't want to go there in the rain with no umbrella.

I've never been much of an umbrella-user, but now that I'm walking everywhere I'm starting to see the appeal. It's sunny today, so I'll probably see if the nearby 100 yen store has any. I know that the first 100 yen store I went to had a bunch. If nothing else, I know they sell them at the Co-op, though it's a bit more expensive there.

Friday, I got my own supplies for sadou club. ^^ It was a lot of fun; I got to run through the whole tea ceremony three times. There are multiple tea ceremony set-ups (at least three). I got to do the one with a good old-fashioned tea kettle twice, and the one with a kama (the kind you usually see in pictures; it's an iron kettle with a small lid that you have to dip water out of with a scoop called hishaku) that is set into a table.

Taste-O-Meter!

Kusadango (a candy eaten with green tea): 5
They tasted a little weird at first, but I quickly fell in love with them.

After that, I headed home. Two of the other girls in sadoubu live in my apartment building, and one other lives up towards the buddhist tower just up the hill from me. Rioko is one of the girls who lives in this building, and she invited the other three of us to her house for dinner. When we got into her apartment, I discovered and I really don't have a lot of stuff. I'm pretty sure that if I were in America with all my stuff in an apartment this size, it'd look pretty similar, but at the moment, I have like nothing. (On the plus side, when Conrad, Jordan, and their friends come to Japan, there'll be room for them to sleep at my place when they come to Kushiro.)

Rioko has a Gamecube. :D The first person I've socialized with in Japan to play video games is a girl with the exact same color Gamecube I've got. That was pretty awesome. It may not sound like much, but there are more Gamecube colors available in Japan, reducing the chances of the same color. While cooking was getting started, we talked about games in America and Japan. I ended up listing some game franchises in America; the only ones that got really spiffy reactions out of the other girls (all three of these knew something about games) were Mario (eternal), Suikoden, and Katamari Damacy. I also found out that Jak & Daxter have made it over here, but aren't very popular. Didn't surprise me at all.

Conversation moved on to other things, too, as conversations, do. The other long-standing conversations was how much pizza and beer North Americans down. One of the girls went to Canada on exchange, and her host mother wasn't much of a cooker, so they had lots of ravioli and pizza. Then the food was done and ready to eat. There was kabocha (pumpkin), which was dished out in equal portions on small plates. In the center of everyone was a plate that had somen (a kind of noodle) and tuna.

Taste-O-Meter!

Somen with tuna: 4
Somen is a pretty tasty noodle. It's got a milder flavor than ramen or pasta, but it went really well with the tuna. Originally, Rioko was going to use pasta with the tuna, but she didn't have any sauce. She had a zillion packages of udon, though, it turns out, but I guess udon doesn't go well with tuna, 'cause as soon as she found the somen, everyone but me was like, "Aha!"

I didn't catch the other girls' names, but next Friday we're to have dinner together at the apartment of the other girl in my building, then mine. I'm planning to make grilled cheese sandwiches. Yum.

Realizations of the Period

1) Joining a club has proven the best way for me to immerse my ears in Japanese so that I can get my brain more used to processing it. There's a lot of friendly conversation going on during and after sadoubu.
2) Sato and the other Okinawans all transfered here for this semester, so they know just as little of Kushiro as I do, though they're obviously far better versed in the Japanese language and customs.
3) This stupid blog post is done. DONE! AHAHAHAHAHA!

Ahahahahaha!

2005-10-15T13:11:00.000+09:00

I found a computer that will allow me to reach blogger. Now I need picture repository on the 'net somewhere (the computer doesn't have Frontpage). Gigantimous blog post soon.

Going, Going...

2005-10-02T01:35:00.000+09:00

But not quite gone. I am in the San Fransisco airport right now (wishing I had some gatorade). On the first leg of my trip (to Seattle), I was seated next to a lady with an adorable 1.5 year old daughter. Talked to them when we weren't sleeping. For the second leg, I had an exit seat (Yay! Leg room!) with plenty of room -- it was an aisle seat, and there was a guy at the window but no on in between us. I just slept on that flight. I leave here for Tokyo at 11:10 AM Pacific time.

I had some trouble getting on my first plane -- I missed boarding by (literally) about 30 seconds. Got transferred to an Alaska Air flight, but lukily for me, my baggage made it to the original plane, so there is no problem there.

Anyway, out of internet time. Talk to you from Japan! :D

Decadent Decade / Jim Breen's Dictionary

2005-09-30T03:08:00.000+09:00

I saw an episode of America's Next Top Model yesterday. I was eating and moving through the living room at a time when the TV had been left on whatever channel it was on, and it caught my attention. Reality TV shows (especially contest/competition/elimination ones) are ridiculous. Granted, when I heard American Idol was going to be holding auditions in Alaska, I was all for trying out -- for all the stupidity of the backstage dramatizations, it IS still a unique opportunity. The fact that they're taking a unique opportunity like that and twisting it so that most of the "entertainment" comes from listening to the entrants talk about the other entrants and the like is just horrible. I'd rather watch reruns of star search; the entertainment there is good clean fun as you realize just how many celebrities got started there when they were six years old.

What really, truly bothers me about reality TV, though, is this: every decade has its hallmarks, a few things that people always think of when they look at it. The 80s had rubiks cubes and hair bands, the 60s had woodstock and 'Nam, the 90s had unbuttoned, plaid, flannel shirts. One of the defining features of this decade will be reality TV. Everyone in society should feel ashamed.

Jim Breen's online Japanese-English dictionary is awesome. It's a fact I've known for a while now. You can go to the world lookup and type a Japanese or English word in either romanji or Japanese characters and get a translation. Today I actually tried the text translation feature 'cause I was feeling lazy, and lo and behold -- unlike babelfish, it rocks. Babelfish tries to give you a translation of its own, generally outputting highly amusing gibberish that gives you a gist of the text. Other times it's just horribly wrong. Jim Breen's dictionary, though, doesn't actually translate the text. It recognizes and pulls out the words in the text and gives you their definitions as listed in the dictionary, leaving you to actually translate the senctence. I feel extremely silly for not using this feature before; I don't really want to know how much time I have wasted trying to look up idividual words when I wasn't exactly sure where one word ended and the next began.

Tickets / FFXI

2005-09-27T13:16:00.000+09:00

So I still don't know when exactly I leave for Japan. Should be Saturday, but... the Japanese government is buying the ticket and still hasn't told me when I am going. I called my Japanese teacher today, and she said that UAF's scholarship winner last year didn't get his ticket info until the day before. >_< Hoo hah. It doesn't feel real that I'm so close to leaving anyway, and this just isn't helping any. I have just about everything I should need, though. Just gotta get off my ass and finish packing. Ack.

I like FFXI. I also like it when my friends take it up, too. Especially since the friends who are taking it up will likely play at times when I can catch them online even from Japan. :D It's good stuff. I keep missing Raikei online, though. :'( We need to get our clocks from the adventurer recruitment program.

Lack of Internet / Top

2005-09-25T05:40:00.000+09:00

*sigh* I dislike being without internet. Especially when I am waiting for an e-mail from Japan to tell me when I am catching a plane. But now there is internet again, and a couple friends of mine are getting FFXI. Joy! More people to play it with. ^^

Last Monday I went to Chugiak High to visit some teachers around lunch time. Unfortunately, the school has changed its policies such that you can only visit teachers after school hours. Fortunately, one of the guys at work is in JROTC and told me about the back door to the range, so I got to see Top at least.

I don't actually remember Top's actual name. He's the drill sergeant for the NJROTC at Chugiak and the adult responsible for the rifle team. He's also the only one of the three ROTC instructors from my time there that remain now. He's got more gray in his hair than I recall, and even though he recently lost one of his old students to war in Iraq, it's obvious he still cares about every kid who walks through his door.

I know that he's lost two students in the last six years; how many don't I know about? And how many more might he end up losing, especially when so many of the ROTC students go into the military? It was good seeing Top again, but he's got more gray in his hair than he did when I graduated. I am not looking forward to the days when great men like him and Shane Mitchell (one of my acting teachers), men who care so much about young people that they'll devote their own lives to helping turn young people into great adults, must eventually kick the bucket.

:(

But hopefully such days are a long way off. I am going to work now.

:( Missing People Already / Sewing Bonanza

2005-09-13T16:51:00.000+09:00

I went to Fairbanks for four days from Wednesday to Saturday. It was a great deal of fun. ^^ I got to see everybody, and was even dogpiled for hugs at the entrance to Nerland hall. The first night I was there, we got a game of Lupus in Tabula going. Interesting game, but one for which you need people of like mind to play -- and in quantity. Requires a minimum of nine players. I recommend it, though.

Getting to hang out with people made it really hit home that I won't get to see them for a year. :'( Saddening, but... Japan! ^^' Thank goodness for instant messenger and online board games. Thank goodness for the internet (which, coincidentally, is for porn).

Now that I am done with Robin Hobb's Farseer and Tawny Man books, I will have time to sit down and sew. I think I'm gonna try to get some audio books from the library to listen to while I sew. I'm gonna buy Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders series for the incredibly long flight to Japan. Preliminary looks at Yahoo! Travel indicate 16 hours between here and Japan. That should be enough time to get at least decently far in the Liveship books.

Back to the sewing, though, I have cloth for one more skirt and cloth for lots of rennaissance bodices. ^^ I think I'm gonna get cloth for at least one flannel skirt, too, but not until I finish these and the Jedi cloak.

Customs / National Talk Like a Pirate Day

2005-08-27T18:30:00.000+09:00

My brother wants me to bring him a square watermelon upon my return from Japan. So I had to look into customs regulations for Japan and the USA. There's nothing on the Japanese web site that forbids it, but the USA site pretty much says to check on it when I come back. Due to various plant diseases and the like, ability to bring fruit into the country changes fairly often.

It didn't bother me, having to look into customs regulations. I'd been meaning to do that, anyway. I must say, the Japanese customs web site is so much better organized than the USA one. Now I am down to the point where I must decide what to take, and what needs buying. I seriously doubt it's going to be easy to find things in my size in Japan, so I need to have a year's supply of underwear, socks, and clothes. Add to that the facts that I have been often recommended (by multiple sources) to take deodorant and that I'm kind of particular about my toothpaste... and I have some shopping needs doing. Not much, but essential.

On a completely unrelated side note, National Talk Like a Pirate Day is fast approaching. Mark your calendars and join the celebration!

The Jedi

2005-08-24T16:17:00.000+09:00

I love Star Wars. I love the Jedi outfits -- simple, practical, and cool. I recently acquired a good Jedi outfit sewing pattern. It's not perfect, but it is close enough that I can make the necessary modifications. It's a new pattern from Simplicity this year, number 4450. Their old Jedi pattern was crap, so I was ecstatic when I discovered this new pattern -- especially since it includes the Jedi cloak. I don't think I'll make a full outfit before going to Japan, but I'll certainly be making myself the cloak.

Finding this pattern got me curious about the Jedi religion, such that it is. I discovered that the census issue in New Zealand and Australia started out as a practical joke of sorts. Although this doesn't surprise me, I find myself wondering how many people actually try to follow the Jedi code. It doesn't seem like a bad idea, but it does seem more like a way of life than a religion.

I also found an interesting analysis of the Jedi philosophies and how they relate to multiple philosophies found in the real world. It goes into how these real-world philosophies relate to and contradict each other. The analysis seems to be taking a critical and disaproving look at the flaws of the Jedi religion (and with reason), but these flaws only makes the Star Wars story more dear to me. The flaws make the Jedi religion more realistic, as well as making it more important to the story. Does religion need to be followed to the letter all the time, or is it more of a loose guideline for how we should live our lives? It's also interesting to see how people have drawn from the Jedi philosophies to enhance their own religions.

All in all, even though George Lucas keeps refusing to rerelease the original Star Wars trilogy, no one can deny that he's created something that will impact generations to come. Whether or not you care about the Jedi code and its religious implications, Star Wars is an example of damned good storytelling.

Also, I have decided that given the narrowing time between me and my departure to Japan, the little bits of practice translating my blog to Japanese gives me is not worth the time I spend doing it. I'll get plenty of practice in Japan, and right now I would rather focus on getting prepared for departure, finishing our D&D campaign, reading a few more books, and finishing sewing the mad piles of cloth I have amassed over the summer (not necessarily in that order). On the plus side, this means I'll be updating the blog more often -- there have been times that I didn't update simply because I didn't feel like translating the blog into Japanese.

Scholarship! / Tonkori / Batman Begins

2005-08-10T14:26:00.000+09:00

Official word! I have been accepted to HUEK in Japan and will receive the Japanese government's Monbugaku scholarship! I am so excited! :D Now I need a camera for my trip to Japan.

Check out this news article:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fm20050622a1.htm
This guy is awesome. I don't think I would have the strength of will to actively piece together old tunes on a traditional instrument. Learn to play and build it, yes, but... this guy is awesome.

I saw Batman Begins last Tuesday. It was awesome! Batman is the ninja who is feared by all other ninja. They got such a good actor for Batman. "It's not who I am underneath but my actions which define who I am." ^^ Hooray for my favorite superhero and his butler, the ever-awesome Alfred.

No Japanese today... I know it's been a while since I posted anything, but I need to go to bed. ^^'

Life is Good

2005-07-13T16:44:00.000+09:00

It's good to be living with friends. Eiram Rae's child is three, and about as cute as children his age get. I have a job, now, too -- Wal-Mart cashier. I think it'll be more fun working here than I had anticipated.

Bought Psychonauts for the Xbox the other day. It was on sale for 30 bucks at Fred Meyer. It's got a wonderful sense of humor, but playing it reminds me that I still need to finish The Chronicles of Riddick. >< Ruddy stealth mission.

I've also started work on the first cross-stitch piece I intend to sell. It's an image of Eliwood, a character from Fire Emblem. :D

To top it all off, I turned 21 on Saturday. It'll be nice to occasionally drink a Mike's Hard Lemonade.

Also, I'd like to extend my thanks to Butik for her support after my last post. ^^

The same thing in Japanese:

友達と住んでいるのはいい。Eiram Raeの子供は３歳で、彼より誰も方がかわいくない。　とにかく、今仕事があります。Wal-Martのレジです。先に楽しくないと思ってたけど、今楽しいになると思っています。

最近、XboxのPsychonautsを買った。Fred Meyerで３０ドルの発売中でした。Psychonautsはいいユーモアのセンスがあるけど、それをしてる時The Chronicles of Riddickをするの方がいいと思い出します。＞＜ステルスのとくめいのバカ。

初めの売るつもりちどりがけを作って始めました。ファィアーエムブレムのエリウードのえです。　：D

トッピングは来週の土曜日に２１歳になりました。Mike's Hard Lemonadeを時々飲んでいい。

そして、下のポストの「がんばって」って言ったから、Butikさんに「ありがとう」と言いたい。＾＾

I'm Gonna Go Crazy

2005-06-26T16:53:00.000+09:00

Still having trouble finding jobs. If this one doesn't work out, I'm just heading for Quizno's or Subway. I'm sick of looking for a job, I'm sick of not having work, and I'm sick of playing video games all the frickin' time.

I was supposed to get a call from the Glacier Brewhouse today about a potential third interview, but I didn't. I am, subsequently, too stressed to feel like translating this into Japanese. :'(

On the plus side, I have multiple witnesses who tell me that I sing in my sleep. That does make me happy.

;_; No Job Yet / Do You Want a Snake?

2005-06-09T14:08:00.000+09:00

As indicated by the title, I am still looking for a job. No one wants to hire someone who's only around for the summer, it seems. :(

I have a corn snake that's about 1.5 years old. I don't really have the ability to give it the attention it needs. If you live within two hours of Anchorage, Alaska and want a free corn snake with accessories, e-mail me at crowbeak@gmail.com .

For a look at a corn snake: http://www.serpenco.com/pics/normal.jpg
For more information on corn snakes: http://www.kingsnake.com/rockymountain/RMHPages/RMHnewpage11.htm

The same thing in Japanese (beware of dog):

タイトルによると、まだ仕事をさがしています。会社は夏だけはたらえる人をようしたくないみたい。　：（

１．５歳こくもつのへびがいます。ぴしっとおせわにできないし、アラスカ州のアンカレッジ市から２時間まで住んでいてこくもつのへびとアクセサリ～をもらいたかったら、電子メ～ルして下さい。

こくもつのへびのえ：　http://www.serpenco.com/pics/normal.jpg
こくもつのへびの説明：　http://www.kingsnake.com/rockymountain/RMHPages/RMHnewpage11.htm

Settled In? / FFXI

2005-06-01T16:37:00.000+09:00

Well, I'm now in the place I'll be living at until I go to Japan. It's the house of an old friend of mine. It's really great to be able to hang out with her so much again, and her son is rather cute. He actually reminds me of his mother's little sister at that age.

On a side note, my soul no longer exists. I'm gonna go check on my plant in Final Fantasy XI now. The last one died because I didn't go look at it often enough.

; ;

The Same Thing in Japanese (pickles!)：

今、日本に行くまでいえに住んでいます。子供の時の友達のいえです。会えるのが好きで、彼女の息子はよっぽどかわいいです。彼はお母さんの同じ年の妹みたいです。

とにかく、私のせいこんはもうありません。ファイナル•ファンタシーXIで花を見に行きます。最後のは私があまり見なかったから死んでしまった。

；；

Evil Genius

2005-05-17T09:56:00.000+09:00

Evil Genius is the latest game I've picked up. I think it's made by the same people who made Dungeon Keeper 2. In Evil Genius you play a Bond-style evil genius whose goal is world domination. You recruit henchmen and minions, then use them them to steal things like money, priceless treasures, and technoloｇy. You also use them to bring crime lords under your influence and otherwise wreak havoc on the world. As you become more infamous, secret agents are sent against you, so you have to build traps and jail cells and interrogation devices.

The game has an excellent sense of humor. I highly recommend it to everyone.

最後の勝ったゲームはEvil Geniusです。Dungeon Keeper 2が作った会社はこのゲームを作りました。Evil Geniusで世界制覇の目的があるボンドがたのじゃあくのきさいです。こぶんとミニオンをリクルートして、こぶんとミニオンをリクルートをお金や重宝やテクを盗み出しに行かせます。こぶんとミニオンをリクルートはやくざをみかたにならせるとかせかいにさんがいをします。あくみょうたかいになるとともにまわしものはアジとに来るから、わなとひとやと審問のせつびを作らなくちゃいけません。

このゲームはとても面白いです。かうことをすすめます。