Winter Vacation.

Tonight is the first night of winter vacation and I find myself sitting at home, alone.  I'm not sure how I feel about it.  On the one hand, it seems like I should feel depressed.  On the other hand, I don't feel depressed so maybe I shouldn't dwell on it. 

I've spent the last several weeks engulfed in apathy and dripping with frustration.  I'm reasonably sure that it's a direct result of one of the lower elbows of the culture shock 'W' I was told about, but I can't be sure.  I'm made to believe that I am going to make a lot of friends, but things don't seem to be heading that way with anyone.  I can't get Japanese people to talk to me and the other exchange students like me sometimes, but then don't like me other times.  I'm reasonably sure that we're all riding the same ride and when we are dipping into the bottom of our respective 'W's, it's hard to want to talk to the new people.  Sometimes you see the new people as your only lifeline and sometimes they are part of everything that is frustrating you.

I genuinely feel bad for not writing in this thing as much as I was, but as you can probably tell, I just haven't had as many life changing experiences.  My time has been spent avoiding schoolwork and trying to cling to what little Japanese I can as we rush through chapter after chapter.  It's definitely not a bad experience, but things are just so busy and exhausting that it's hard to want to keep going.  I'm really glad that we have the next two weeks off so I can maybe spin down my engine a bit and try to get excited about Japanese again.

I hope that I have more awesome things to write about next time.

The tortoise.

I wanted to write a blog post about turning 30 in Japan and it keeps sounding depressing so I keep deleting it.  Suffice to say that I'm not all that depressed and turning 30 is kind of refreshing:  I can close the boring and pointless book that was my 20s and start writing this one.  I hope the story progresses more in the 30s than the 20s.  The 20s was full of filler and almost no fan-service.  There wasn't even any real good exposition.

I hope the art gets better, too.

For class.

I wrote the following short story for class.  I don't know how to feel about it.  I am incapable of thinking positive things about my writing, so I will leave the cultivation of my ego to the internet.  Putting it that way makes it sound like a bad idea.  I just figured that I haven't written anything on here in a while and maybe I should post something.

Hobbies

                It no longer feels strange when I wake up in the morning.  At first, all of the similarities to home brought upon a sense of familiarity that was both comforting and disorienting.  The sun is the same and the air is the same, but the people are different; or so I thought.  As it turns out, the people here are like people anywhere else, struggling to get by and find happiness wherever they can find it.  That fact sort of blends in with the confusion I still occasionally feel.  I’ll still occasionally walk around and lapse into a vague sort of calm contentedness only to have it interrupted by the realization that things are moving too fast, that all of the colors are beginning to blur together and that if I don’t slow down I won’t experience enough.  I suppose that is when I started killing.

            It began as things have a tendency to begin, with an accident.  I was standing at a crowded intersection and someone behind me got pushed forward by someone who was behind them, almost like a set of human dominoes and I was brushed by a fast moving car.  It only left a bruise on my skin, but beneath that bruise it left an idea:  What would happen if someone actually did make their way into the path of an oncoming vehicle, speeding so it wouldn’t miss a light?  Would the authorities arrest everyone on the corner?  Would anyone on the corner even be there when the authorities arrived?  We are all very busy and we all have places to be, so it seems like an experience worth having, even if it only serves to break the monotony of everyday life.

            The first experiment was a failure.  It wasn’t a complete failure or I may have ended up in jail, but things definitely didn’t go as they were supposed to.  I spent the week after my idea waiting for the right moment.  I would line up in front of an intersection like people do, but I would insure that I was on the second layer of people.  I would then wait for the light to change and watch for fast moving cars.  That was the first problem.  I had to develop patience, a trait that I have never been known to possess.  If I jumped the gun and no one actually ran the light, it may appear obvious what I was attempting to do.  Likewise, if I acted when there weren’t many people at an intersection it would be very obvious what I was intending to do.  I needed to wait for the right moment.

           Luckily, my problem presented itself as a faulty technique and did not manifest in my patience.  There I was, like any other day, waiting at a light just behind this woman carrying groceries.  Everything seemed different, though.  The air was electric; it felt like everyone was connected on some sort of high powered circuit, like somehow the moment became self aware, donning  its tailcoat and wielding its baton.  The people around me were all having idiotic conversations about the weather and where they needed to be and how late they were running, but I felt like I was on stage.  Time slowed down.  I watched as the crosswalk sign for the other street started blinking.  Slower and slower it blinked.  The turn lane lights clicked on and they were set so my lane was still open. Everything was falling into place.  It was like final crescendo in an orchestra performance and the conductor had his baton raised, pointed at me and ready to give my cue to hit the high note and end the song.  I don’t know if the moment grew to be too huge in my mind or if I just wasn’t ready, but at the very last second, just as the baton started to fall, I hesitated.  I had practiced this moment in my head a thousand times.  I knew that I didn’t want to just push; I needed to put some weight behind it.  At the last second though, I realized that I hadn’t actually explored the mechanical aspects behind pushing someone and both insuring that it wasn’t an obvious push and that my target was made to move forward.  In any event, my push was fumbled and awkward and I was left with a slightly annoyed woman who only dropped her bag and smashed her eggs.

            Still, the attempt was not a complete failure.  I felt like I had learned a lot and it had only cost me the price of some eggs.  I decided that I would not let this setback deter me and I would instead learn from it.  I spent the next several hours using the adrenaline that was still flowing through my body thinking about ways to push without pushing and practicing them on some clothes I had hanged on my door in my room.  It probably would have looked ridiculous to any onlookers, but that’s what doors and locks are for.

            The next two weeks were torture, but I could not let my weak sense of patience get the best of me or all of my plans and testing would have been for naught.  I knew the conductor was just playing through the boring part of the song and my cue would come soon.  Still, I found myself wandering around the city during rush hours every day, trying to find that moment.  Every intersection I came to had a crescendo, but the baton was not tipped my way.

            It wasn’t until the third week, when I was on my way to school, that I felt the electricity in the air again.  It had been three weeks and the memory of time lapsing had begun to fade, but at this one instant I felt it and remembered.  This time, perhaps because I had experienced it before, I heard some of the other players:  there was a child riding a bicycle, ringing a bell, there were two men having an argument across the street.  I could smell bread wafting over from the bakery behind me and the scent of the cars and the people around me was strong, but I refused to concentrate on any of that.  I had a solo I was about to play, amidst all of this accompaniment and I wasn’t about to miss my cue this time.  The crosswalk light blinked slower and slower, finally stopping.  The light on my side popped on with a turn signal for the oncoming lane.  The boy standing in front of me, looking neat in his school uniform, shifted his weight from his right leg to his left.  The light blinked to red, but there was a man driving a supply van who didn’t notice or didn’t care.  He just drove through, one hand on the steering wheel and the other clutching the microphone to his radio.  At the last second, I felt the baton drop and shifted my weight forward as I’d practiced so many times before in my room.  I shoved my left knee into his thigh and collapse the leg which had all of his weight on it, causing him to fall forward into the path of the oncoming van. 

            This is where things did not go as planned, however.  Instead of tripping forward and getting hit by the van, the kid lost his legs altogether and fell down onto his hands and knees.  I think it was at that moment that the kid realized he was part of the orchestra.  It was only for a moment that he enjoyed that realization, because with that realization came the bumper of a van, followed immediately by the front tire.  I half expected the child’s head to pop like a grape, but it managed to keep its structural integrity.  The sight was no less gruesome with the lack of brains on the pavement.  There was still most of a face. 

            From there came the obvious repercussions of such a horrendous event.  There was a not insignificant amount of people who had better things to do and left, but those who stayed –me included- stood around completely shocked that such an accident could happen.  I was elated.  Not only had my plans come to fruition, but it had worked out the way I’d hoped:  almost everyone had left the scene and those who remained had convinced themselves that this was an accident.  Maybe some of them had an inkling that this wasn’t an accident, but people are weak and most of them don’t want to believe that someone could push someone else in front of a van.  They would much rather continue to live their lives in the quiet comfort of ignorance and denial. 

            For fear of drawing attention to myself, I stayed and let myself be questioned by the police.  They especially wanted to talk to me because they knew that I had been the one standing behind the boy.  It wasn’t difficult to get through the interview.  Along with my elation, came a catharsis so strong that I could easily feign shock.  I related the events leading up to the climax, adding in that I felt some pressure on my back to step forward but also adding that everything came as a blur and that I could not be sure.  This caused the man who was standing behind me to fight the man who was standing behind him, thereby adding more thickness to my growing smoke screen.  I am made to believe that the police will contact me upon the resolution of this matter, but I won’t hold my breath.

            It has been six months since that time at the intersection.  I have not stopped my excursions.  I have, however, expanded into subways and viewing rooms in tall towers.  Every day offers opportunities and it is important to take these opportunities, lest life become a hollow existence comprised of a meaningless series of events.  I wonder if I will be able to continue my habits at home, where people are much less crowded.

Long weekends.

This weekend was an entire five days long.  I'm told that this is because our school had a festival on Monday and Tuesday and then there was a holiday on Wednesday, but I'm really not completely sure.  Whatever the reason, it was nice to have a break.  It gave me the opportunity to sleep a little bit and to catch up on some conversations with some people at home.  I may or may not have spent a bit of time playing video games.

I believe that we have midterms coming up really soon and I have to say that I'm a little bit worried.  I think that I'm good enough at what I've learned to get a good grade, but being as how we've not had a single test up to this point, it is hard to say.  I really don't know what the test composition is going to be.  The teachers made it sound like it's going to be something like our homework has been, so I've done a fair bit of looking over old homework assignments.  I hope that what I'm doing is enough and I demolish that test.  I'm sure I'll do well, whatever the case: I am pretty incredible after all.

Another thing that my long weekend has afforded me is the opportunity to become friends with one of the other exchange students.  I've spoken with just about everyone at this point and I even know almost everyone's names, but I've yet to have really made many friends.  There's really not many people here that I feel like have my back and I'm not sure how many backs I have, either.  Maybe I'm just jaded, but it takes me a long time to really like someone enough to call them a friend.  I mean, it takes at least 2-3 months for someone to prove to me they're real and not a figment of my imagination.

But, I digress.

I spent a lot of time bothering Jasmine during the long weekend and, as it turns out, we have very similar interests and things worth talking about.  I mean, she likes Nick and I like Nick, she likes video games and I like video games, she hates the hill next to the dorm and I hate the hill next to our dorm.  She doesn't play MMOs, but that's probably a good thing.  She, starting today, has began helping me go on walks; which is to say, making me go on walks.  I'm hoping that the whole exercise thing speeds up my becoming less hunormous.  It should.  I really do need a track suit and athletic shoes, though.  Need.

Beef bowls and banans.

I think that it's about time that I end my love affair with curry rice.  It was awesome while it lasted, but all things must come to an end.  Our disembarkment does not have to be full of woe and agony, though; we can celebrate all of the good times we enjoyed together and cherish all of the fond moments stolen from other fine cuisines.  I will truly miss my mildly spicy, robustly flavored mistress and I will think of her often.  Our memories together will live on in song:

Oh sweet curry
so full of meat
not just for lunch
an anytime treat

Your awesome meals
I've loved them all
even though sometimes
my colon would bawl

I don't blame you,
so full of love,
you wouldn't harm me
you're pure, like a dove

'Tis I who's weak
eat you too much
my ass dost grow,
toes, my eyes can't touch

I will miss you
everyday 'noon
I will miss too,
eating with a spoon

Real and how things become it.

Things are starting to become much more difficult in classes.  It's been kind of interesting watching people's relative levels sort of begin to match.  It's like watching one of those needle thingers at a toy store cover a person's hand or face or whatever.  As the class increases in intensity and difficulty, it is hitting every individual's knowledge level.  First, it started hitting grammar and words that most of had used infrequently and I think it's soon going to start hitting things that we haven't seen at all.  The class has already started introducing verbs and nouns that I've never heard.  I can now say things pertaining to saving and deleting files on a computer.  I can ask someone to rescue me from a fire.  I can instruct someone on ad hoc contraception.  I'm really looking forward to hitting new grammar points though.  I'm sure that there are things that I can say that I haven't figured out how to say with what I know now, but it would still be nice to be able to make some slightly more interesting sentences.  I suppose we're probably moving about as fast as we can, though.

With the speed of the class, I'm having to invent new ways to remember words.  No longer am I able to just look at flash cards a zillion times.  Oh sure, that works but I am usually left with just a two dimensional memory of a word and not any actual idea of the application of said word.  I still use the flashcards, but I also try to make sentences with every verb and use every grammar point that I know as often as I can in conversations with the natives.  I find myself making a lot of comparison sentences lately because of the whole "no hou ga" pattern being clunky in my head.  If I didn't hear Japanese people using it all the time, I would just abandon the task but think about it: how many times per day do you describe something by comparing it to something else?  I know I do it all the time and, as it turns out, our not so distant neighbors do it as well.

I've come to the conclusion that I need to start studying a bunch of kanji.  For whatever reason, I placed in the low level of kanji class and it is insanely easy.  I don't mind as much because I'm mostly interested in my speaking and grammar and less interested in kanji, but we are going at a ludicrously slow pace.  At this rate, it won't be until the end of the semester that we get to the part of the book where I feel less comfortable, never mind getting to part of the book that I haven't done.  I'm still feeling pretty self conscious about getting myself moved to J2 language, so I probably won't make any big deal about the kanji situation.  I just think it's funny that the kanji level 2 class is doing easy beginner kanji, as well.  I'll probably just enjoy the lack of stress from being in J1 kanji and go at my own pace.  I mean, Iino sensei is amazing and I don't get him ever in J2, so it's cool that I have a chance to have him teach me.

Iino sensei.  That guy is so awesome.  He has the most incredible way of making things just seem easy.  My other teachers don't exactly make me feel uncomfortable, but when I speak with Iino sensei, even when I'm bumbling my words a bit, he just laughs and I don't feel uncomfortable at all.  I still mess up, but I don't feel embarrassed about it.  Best of all, is the way he carries himself.  He's almost like "the mysterious and powerful silly old man" character that you find in anime sometimes.  He kind of acts silly and laughs a lot, but you know that inside of him, possibly just beneath the surface lies a ninja waiting to strike.  By day, he is an unassuming Japanese instructor and by night he is a crime fighting ninja-robot making the streets of Tokyo safe for all of us. 

I hope to one day become a human robot hybrid ninja crime fighter.

Sleep is for suckers.

I once again managed to stay up until almost 2:00 a.m.  Not for any really good reason, either.  I was just screwing around on facebook.  This time, I didn't have any trouble throughout the day.  I did all my school stuff alright.  I answered questions.  I even figured out how to say that I loved to bring death to my enemies in Japanese:  死ぬことを敵に持ってくるのが大好きだ。　　I was told my my friend Ryota that the sentence is technically correct but doesn't make sense, but that's fine with me.  I'm all about trying to find ludicrous ways to make sentences work.  I don't work for Japanese; Japanese works for me, as they say.

I'm made to believe that we have a test over particles tomorrow.  We took a pretest about it today and I got all of the easy ones right.  I'm hoping that I can improve my record by tomorrow, so I don't look completely stupid.  I will say that I noticed that for all the ones I missed, I heard sighs and eraser noises from everyone else, as well.  I don't usually measure myself using the status quo as a standard, but I feel like it's alright in this situation.  I am, after all, still somewhat of an intruder in their class.  I hope that as the semester progresses, I will feel less and less like an intruder and more accepted.  Maybe if I completely destroy on this test, I can feel like I am at least on par with the others.  I really need to regain some confidence so I can go back to setting my own standards instead of using those of my classmates.

I have decided that I am going to keep all of the flashcard rings that I make throughout the semester and turn them into a sort of grotesque trophy necklace which the headhunters in some, probably imaginary, tribe might wear.  If the next vocabulary lists are anything like the passed few vocabulary lists that I have gotten, I can imagine this trophy necklace will be more of a belt or maybe Christmas tree decoration.  Maybe I can get it enchanted and use it to tether some sort of rogue diety after I have bested him in battle.  I suppose that I should also be saving my eraser shavings, as well.  I'll need them as ingredients for the enchantment.

There is currently a rumor going around that we are getting our books(finally) tomorrow.  I can't say whether or not this rumor is true because I am the one that started it and I was actually told that we were supposed to go back and ask about our books tomorrow and not made any guarantees.  I just felt like that news was boring, so I spruced it up a bit and took my name off of it.  It just seemed like the thing to do at the time.

I can't remember what I wrote about last time and I am currently lacking the will to read over it, but I'm assuming it was something about being frustrated about my lack of communication skills at Theo's party. I have decided that, in order to remedy this situation, I will drink no less than one half of one bottle of hard liquor at the next social gathering.  Since I am apparently incapable of conquering my social awkwardness through willpower, I am going to drink a little bit of liquid courage and maybe that will get things rolling.  I'm convinced that I just need a little bit of social momentum and I'll be golden. I've already gotten to where I am fairly comfortable around several of the people in the building, so surely, if my social situation is properly lubricated, I will be able to become a dynamo.

I need to learn how to say "Dynamo" in Japanese.

Rhymes with "crustacean."

Maybe not all the way, but mostly.  I think that if Eminem was trying to create a song about how he's still too clumsy and awkward to speak with crabs and lobsters and whatnot, he would rhyme "crustacean" with "frustration."  Maybe not.  I don't suppose Eminem would ever have any problems socializing.  He seems like a fairly social person whose social skills fully developed.  He probably hasn't ever had to create invisible barriers with his sense of humor to distance himself from having to actually connect with people.  Maybe he has.  It's not right for me to judge him.  Not everyone who is rich and successful is able to hold conversations with exoskeletoned creatures from the sea.

I feel like my metaphor is getting silly.

What I'm trying to say is that my sense of humor doesn't work on Japanese at all and I am having trouble lightening the mood enough to where I feel comfortable speaking with them.  In Japanese.  I can speak with them in English, but my vernacular does not match up with what most of them can understand, and I am apparently incapable of making even the smallest changes to my speech.  I'm sure I'll start doing well soon. 

I just need to keep at it and grow some balls.  On Tuesday, I'm meeting my LEP who talks to me occasionally for lunch.  He messaged me earlier today to tell me that he purchased a pair of chopsticks for me and he wanted to meet with me.  I counter-invited him to eat lunch with me and the other exchange students after we finish class.  Satoshi-san is a really cool guy, so I'm hoping that I can start seeing him somewhat regularly and really get some practice in.  I'm not sure what to do about the present though.  I'm pretty sure that in Japanese culture, it is customary to write a thank you note within 2-3 days after receiving a gift but I don't really know how to go about doing this.  Maybe it'll be ok to do it on facebook.

As some of you may have noticed, I did not post a blog post last night.  Since I have been here, it is the first night I have missed.  I didn't get around to being at my desk until very late and I was tired, so I decided that rather than writing some short little blurb about how tired I was, I would just write something more substantial the next day.  In any event, I'm not sure how I feel about skipping writing days, so maybe I'll just not do that again.  I'm just afraid that if I make it ok for me to skip days, I'll stop writing altogether.

I do not have much confidence in my ability to do things that I don't have to do.

Flash Cards.

We got a new vocabulary list today and I decided it was time to make flash cards.  So far, I'd done alright just seeing the words and using them a few times, but this new list has all kinds of obscure words that I can't ever see myself using.  I'm not sure if I've ever really used the word mayor.  There was the time that Kyle was involved with all the mayor drama, but that was a pretty isolated incident.  I'm reasonably sure that I won't be talking about mayors here.  I'm not saying that I don't want to learn obscure words.  I'm trying to say that it's going to be difficult because I have little to no context or opportunity in which to use them.

In the last day or so, my computer has started making this neat noise like it's trying to juice a carrot.  I'm reasonably sure that it's not actually juicing anything, but the sound is pretty convincing, so I have been keeping a cup on hand just in case it is juicing, so I can avoid a mess.  I despise cleaning up carrot juice.  I'm hoping that the noise is going to go away on its own because I have absolutely no way to fix it and no way to obtain another laptop should this one die.  I may be able to find a cheap one somewhere, but I'd rather not spend any money on it.  As it is, I'm afraid I won't have the money I will need, so I would rather my computer doesn't exacerbate my already looming money problems.

I found out that I can work 28 hours per week on a student visa, but I am currently incapable of getting a job because of the language barrier.  I'm hoping that I can try to get a job at a coffee shop or something after the first semester.  That would be tremendous practice and I would really enjoy the extra cash.  I'm just not sure how easy or difficult it is to get a job.  I've heard that it's not super difficult, but we are required to speak a decent amount of Japanese.  Apparently, speaking English is a huge bonus though.

Maybe I can get a job at a maid cafe.

Suprafunctionalization.

I spent the better part of today completely exhausted and woefully incoherent in so far as my Japanese language abilities are concerned.  I did manage to order some coffee without looking too stupid, but that was the crowning achievement of may language use for the day.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's from spending vast hours of my day playing Civilization instead of studying and then going to bed and only getting six or seven hours of sleep.  That very well could be the case.  Either way, I have decided that I won't be playing Civ as much throughout the week.  I've beaten several campaigns now, so my urge to play is waning.  My most recent conquest was a cultural victory as Ghandi where I had my win before the 50s.  Not too shabby, in my opinion.

I decided not to play any video games today and to see what that did to my productivity.  At the end of the day, I managed to catch up on all of my homework, exercise, go to the Bunkyo ward office and get my alien card(which is sweet, btw), and study.  I am even writing in my blog before midnight.  My day was so productive that I decided to invent an awesome corporate buzz word for it: Suprafunctionalization.  I normally don't change my colors and bold things, but I feel that a word like Suprafunctionalization deserves color and boldness.  I feel like I can now accomplish my goal of working as a bigwig in a company.  Maybe I can get a sick job at Pizza Hut.  They could and have done a lot worse than me as a corporate bigwig.

Oh.  My card.  It's really neat.  It's pretty much just and I.D. card like any other, but it's really super awesome because it's Japanese.  I feel all citizeny.  I mean, it clearly says that I'm an alien.  Maybe I can get adopted by the Tanners.  I guess it would have to be the Japanese equivalent to the Tanners.  I don't know why I have it in my head that there is a Japanese equivalent to everything.  It could be that the only way the human brain can cope with living in a strange place is by seeing it as a mirror image of where they're from, but that sounds like voodoo witch magic craft lies to me.  I'm probably just insane.

I need to go to the International Student Office and drop my Saturday class.  I just don't want them to be hating on me for dropping a class for no reason other than I don't want to go to class on Saturday.  It could be an ice cream eating class held at a strip club where all of the tables are made of money and the chairs are giant marshmallows and I still wouldn't want to go because it's on Saturday.  I don't know about you, but where I come from, Saturday school is a punishment for people who skip class all the time.

I guess it's time for sleep and bed.

Suprafunctionalization.

A month.

So, it's almost been a month.  It feels like it's been so much longer.  I feel like I've just seen the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.  My relative excitement level has dropped, but my fear has gone with it.  When I walk around the streets of Tokyo, I do it with my head held high, unafraid of any spontaneous conversations that might arise.  I don't think I'll necessarily do well in the conversations, but I am unafraid of having them.  I feel like that's a big step for me.  I really can't have a big post tonight, since I put off doing it until after midnight, so I just want to talk about one thing.

We ate at this decent beef bowl place down the street today.  The food was not awful, but it was served with a raw egg that, as I was informed by a very awesome gentleman sitting a couple seats away, was to be mixed into our food once it arrived.  Seemed like a fairly good idea, so I did just that.  As it turned out, the food wasn't as hot as it needed to be to cook the egg and I ended up getting a mouthful of raw yolk for one of my bites.  I'll not be mixing my egg in again.  Certainly not there, maybe not ever.  Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about.  I wanted to talk about the man who was sitting a couple seats down.  He was a very old Japanese man who spoke flawless English.  He was really neat.  He had all sorts of opinions about American politics that I found interesting.  He doesn't seem to like any of our presidents, which I found interesting.  I didn't ask him about Japanese politics, but I'd wager that I wouldn't be able to keep up with that conversation.  At one point, while discussing what was in the soup, he started talking about how Japanese people were healthier than American people.  It's funny.  When these conversations happen, I always feel like I'm some sort of silent example of poor health in America.  Well this time, he pointed to me and said that there were a lot of fat people in America like me.  It was pretty sweet.  So nonchalant.  As it happened, I had prepared myself for this cultural peculiarity and was neither offended or shocked.  I just thought it was funny and interesting.

Also, miso soup is starting to grow on me.  Go figure.  I have a long time to go, so I better start liking it, right?  Maybe I'll start liking ramen soon.

Groove.

I thought about trying to write about dancing, but I decided I couldn't make it sound convincing and it's late and I'm tired, so I'll just write about what I need to write about.

I feel like I'm already starting to settle into my daily school pattern.  Wake up.  Eat an egg and a banana.  Look over my notes.  Try not to get mad at my room mate.  Walk to school.  Try not to look stupid in class.  Eat lunch with class mates.  Walk home.  Play a video game and procrastinate on my homework.  Start my homework late.  Get so tired while doing it that I can't think anymore.  Continue being too tired to think and then write an awful blog post.  Go to bed.

Rinse.

Repeat.

I genuinely hope that's not going to be the groove I'm in.  I suppose that it's only the first week still, so I should be able to change habits without much trouble.  I'm just exhausted and I need to not be exhausted.  If I go to sleep in half an hour, I still get a full eight hours, so I'm good but I am still going to worry.  That sort of what I do. 

I think that I will try to get my homework done earlier tomorrow.  Maybe I can do it with friends.

Mmmbop.

I thought it would be cool to make a blog title that was the name of an annoying song.  I mean, I had to get the song stuck in my head in order to get it stuck into yours, so I don't really feel bad about it.  Although, as soon as I had the idea, the song got stuck in my head so it wasn't like I could not post it, then.  Otherwise, I would have gotten the song stuck in my head for nothing.  I'm just glad I can still annoy people, even if I don't get to enjoy the aftereffects.  I'll just have to know deep down inside that sometime, somewhere you are humming this song for a minute and then realizing it and then being angry and then happy because you know that annoying moment was a present from me.  Free shipping.

So, today I resisted the outdoors for a good long time, but was eventually thwarted.  I realized that I needed bananas or I wasn't going to get to eat breakfast tomorrow.  I also had no more coffee milk and that has become a staple for my morning meal: 1 egg, 1 banana, 1 bunch of coffee milk.  That is the breakfast of champions.  If Rocky had been to Japan, he would have been eating my breakfast instead of his awful uncooked eggs.  If I had a blender, I would make a protein shake with my egg-banana-coffee-milk combination.  It would be amazing.  Unfortunately, like almost other kitchen tools I am without, the blender lives only in my imagination.  Oh what a world it would be if this world included more than one burner.  Every time I try to think of food to make, I realize that if I wanted to make a halfway decent meal, it would take four times as long as it would with even one more burner.  I don't even have a decent sized pot to cook noodles in or a colander to strain them in once they are done.  I guess I'll just have to keep eating sushi.

About half the time I speak with Japanese people, they don't understand me.  I'm starting to think that it's more that they won't understand me.  Not on purpose.  I'm sure they'd rather understand what I'm saying immediately, but I think that since they're expecting incomprehensible gibberish, they don't understand my Japanese.  It just seems like enough people do understand me that it's hard to understand why the few people that don't, don't.  I will say that half of the learning I've been doing is learning which word is the right word.  For instance, when I ordered coffee the first time, they asked what size I wanted.  I, of course, said "ookii," which means "big" or "large."  The girl at the register looked at me like I was a 5 year old.  As it turns out, the three sizes here are "esu, emu, elu," as in, "S, M, L."  Now that I know that, I can order pretty much anything with a size without a problem, but I've had other people do it the other way where they want the actual adjectives.  The thing is, if there are places which do it either way, why would it be confusing if they had one person order wrong in the wrong instance?  Maybe no one who's worked at a coffee shop has also worked at a McDonald's. 

I'm really looking forward for the time that I'm done making silly blunders.  At least for the time that the frequency of those blunders is lessened.

I need a hero.

It's starting to be difficult to write in here every day.  I'm starting to wonder if I should just go ahead and only write when I have time to write something provocative or hilarious.  Probably not.  I'm afraid that if I stop writing every day, I'll stop writing at all and that wouldn't be good.  If I had my iphone, I could just write in that throughout the day and then send it.  That would be pretty neat, but those capabilities are far beyond my current skill set.  I could carry a little notebook and then keep track of what I want to say and then type it up when I get home, but that's more analog than I think I'm comfortable with.  Notebooks don't have touch screens.

I spent a great deal of time in Akihabara today.  I love that place.  So many lights and video games and girls in awesome outfits.  I know that last is a sentence fragment, but I'm trying to keep this conversational and this is definitely a sentence I would use.  I went with Billy, Christine, and Sarah.  We stayed until around eight, so it was dark when we left.  As we were nearing the subway station, we heard what sounded like J pop coming from this parking lot.  That happens a lot in Akihabara.  This time though, the J pop was being performed live by a bunch of girls dressed as maids wearing samurai swords.  They were on this huge dual layer stage singing this adorable song and doing a cute little dance together.  It was pretty incredible.  I couldn't understand all of it, but the song was about how people come to Akihabara to see the maids and the samurai.  The next girl sang this song, except Japanese.  It was epic.  I teared up a little.  I had actually made a Johnny 5 joke earlier and so I thought it doubly awesome that someone should sing a Japanese version of this song so soon after.

Anyway, I'm going to sleep.  Maybe I'll type something before I'm so tired that I am only keeping one eye open while I type tomorrow.

Friday.

This is my first weekend since school started and I needed it.  With all of the level swapping and everything, this was a very stressful week.  Also, I have something like nine pages of vocabulary to memorize and quite a bit of homework, as well.  It's what I wanted, so I'm not complaining.  I'm just impressed at how much stuff we're getting at a time.  I've never had a class like this one.  It's pretty exciting, though.  Already, when I'm walking around or in stores and whatnot, I am now starting to hope people talk to me instead of fear it.  It's a strange metamorphosis, but I'm glad it finally happened.

Tomorrow is another trip to Akihabara.  That place never gets old.  I'm not even sure if we have a reason to go, this time.  I think we just wanted to hang out with some of the LEPs and Nao.  Sounds good enough to me.  This is short, but I need to sleep or I'm going to fall over.

So sleepy.

It's impressive how different things became in the span of three days.  In the first three weeks of my being here, my biggest problem was trying to find inexpensive food to bring home.  Now, I'm trying to do that and socialize and play video games while still doing all of my homework.  My free time is dead.  It's awesome though.  Every minute that I'm in class, I can see improvement in my listening and recognition and every minute I'm doing homework or looking over vocabulary and kanji, I am making new connections.  The whole process is exhilarating.  I can see how someone might grow to become addicted to this.

At this point, it is likely that one might infer that I moved up into the level 2 Japanese language class.  For those who are still wondering: I did.  It is not without a little bit of shame that I accept this promotion, as those who were already there gained their status through the use of their wits and will, while I gained my status by begging and pleading.  I genuinely do feel as though the testing system is inadequate, but it did split the exchange students up into almost accurate groups.  There really aren't that many outliers.  Also, no test is perfect.

I love giant robots, but I've never gotten into watching Gundam and I have recently been regretting my choice to leave it alone.  After all, I made the choice back when I thought it was cool not to watch things that people like for the sake of going against conformity.  Now I recognize the fact that, while there are times where people will like things that aren't awesome(American Idol), there are also times where people form a consensus for something that is actually good(chocolate covered bananas).  It is important to make your own choices, but it is also important that you not discount choices based on public opinion, whether that opinion is overtly positive or negative. 

I'm having to squint to read the letters on the screen.  I dislike being this tired.  Maybe I should just type with my eyes closed and then go back and correct everything all at once, after I'm done.  I'm reasonably sure that I won't be proofreading tonight, though.  Not that I proofread most nights.  I should hire an editor. 

Oh, remind me to post pictures of the delicious Baked Apple Honey Burger I ate today at the burger place across the street.  NTB.

Roller Coasters.

I love roller coasters.  The speed and the rush can be exhilarating.  They do have a drawback:  once they are finished I am left reeling, less sure of my ups and downs.  The whole of the roller coaster experience can generally be summed up as a positive one.  The ups are full of excitement, building potential that eventually leads to the rush of expending that potential screeching towards the earth in a downhill dive.  Even the crazy amount of disorientation can be fun in the aftermath of a fun coaster.  There are exceptions in the weak stomached, but for most people, the experience is positive and enjoyable.

It is for this reason that I question the use of roller coasters as a metaphor for life.  Life has its ups and downs but, unlike a roller coaster, life's downs are awful.  I'm sure that should we be given the chance, we will get back in like to ride the roller coaster again, regardless of how terrible the downs are, but the fact remains that if life's downs were as fun as a roller coaster's downs, we would never get off.  It is for this reason that I have decided to revoke the roller coaster's rights as a metaphor for life.

I think that life is more like peeling wallpaper off of a wall.  Sometimes, when you are peeling the paper, it comes off in awesome sheets and it seems really easy, but sometimes, no matter how hard you try and even if you use one of those nifty misty thingers, the paper sticks and you just have to keep chipping.  Most of the time, once you get passed the rough part, things become maybe not easier, but you learn how better to handle how it is sticking and make better progress.  It is important that you not try to force the paper, or you can chip the drywall and ruin it.  It is sometimes difficult to get the right drywall to replace existing drywall, once it has been destroyed.

My last couple days have been a lot like peeling wallpaper off of a wall.  I went through the testing fairly confused because of a lack of direction by my teachers and finished with a placement into the beginner level of Japanese class.  I was very frustrated, but I thought that maybe they knew what they were doing, so I went to my first class.  I found out that it was precisely as I'd feared and they were indeed starting me completely over from scratch.  I managed to keep my temper and went home to ask some of the intermediate students what their material was like.  I found out that it was also below where I was, but it moved really fast and was closer so I asked if I could move up to intermediate.  They told me that all I had to do was talk to my teacher tomorrow, so I copied all of the notes and homework from a friend in intermediate, did the homework and studied for the quiz for tomorrow.  With any luck, this whole frustrating week will end with me exactly where I need to be.

Also, I think we're all going to Tokyo Disneyland in a couple weeks.  I hope I can ride the roller coasters.

The Bright Side.

It may be a negative way to look at it, but I've always thought that the phrase, "look on the bright side," really didn't make anything better.  To me, the whole concept has a twisted way of making people ok with under-achieving and overall mediocrity.  Oh sure, there are times when disaster strikes and you can use the phrase to make things not seem so bad, but it seems like most of the time the phrase is used to rationalize short-comings and mistakes.

"I slipped and destroyed my ankle, but at least I got some Vicadin."
(Don't try to take shortcuts.  Think before you act.)

"I failed out of college, but at least I get to play video games."
(Too obvious.)

"I only tested into Level 1 Japanese, but at least I don't have to try as hard."
(I guess.)

The problem is that I was looking forward to the challenge.  So far, since returning to academia, I have not been challenged.  There have been a few deadlines that were taxing, but not really challenging.  Also, since returning, there has been nothing that I've felt any real passion for.  There have been things that were fun, but nothing I was actually been trying to accomplish.  Until now, I felt like I was taking small steps up a very long stairway.  That stairway ultimately lead me to this point, where I feel like instead of just taking a small step, I would be making a leap.  I still feel as though there will be a leap, but I no longer believe that the leap will be far enough for me to do what I wanted to do with my language skills.

Instead of accomplishing my goals, I'm left to "look on the bright side," and make the best of what I've been given.  I mean, I'm still in freaking Tokyo and I'm still getting to learn to speak Japanese(however inadequately).  I'm going to try my best to learn as much as I can, but I've been told by one of the people in charge that there is rarely any vertical movement in the Japanese classes.  Rarely doesn't mean none, so maybe I can pull something off.  Either way, all that's left to me now is to do my best and to have as much fun as I can.  I also would like to go to the beach.

Beer.

I have recently discovered that beer is delicious in Japan.  I've mostly been drinking Asahi, but today I purchased what appeared to be some sort of seasonal brew of Sapporo and it was awesome.  It's no Guinness, but it's also not as strong or imposing a flavor as Guinness.  What I mean is, it's not so strong that you can drink it with only certain flavors or by itself.  It isn't imposing.  I'm not really a connoisseur of beer, but I know I like the beer here.  I don't know why I feel so self conscious expressing an opinion on beer.

We did our kanji test today and it was less than awesome.  Our previous placement test had a significant amount of what I would call "basic Japanese" in it.  So much so that when I finished the test, even though I had to leave the last two sections essentially blank, I still felt good about myself.  I did a decent job remembering things.  The kanji test, however, did not have any real "basic kanji."  Instead, it had maybe a dozen that were recognizable and aside from those, gobbledy gook.  It was humbling leaving so much of the page empty.

The sakubun test was a little bit less terrible, but still pretty awful.  They basically handed us two very large pieces of paper with squares on them like a chess board and told us that we had 50 minutes to write an essay either about our city or our hobbies.  I proceeded to spend most of my time talking about Springfield.  I talked about how we had a lot of trees and how the dangerous weather in the winter destroyed them.  I talked about how Brad Pitt is from Springfield and how I'd never actually met him.  For whatever reason, this was all I could thing to write, so I stopped after filling in about 3/4 of the first sheet.  It wasn't until after I'd left the room that I thought of a bazillion things to write.  It was not my proudest moment.

I think it's finally sinking in that I'm in Tokyo and that I'm not leaving for a long time.  I'm starting to miss things.  Some of them predictable, like Ryu and some of them not really predictable, like rude people.  In Springfield, if I was having a bad day or week, it was a sure bet that sometime someone would do something to piss me off and I'd have a way to vent.  It's really not that big of a deal if someone blows their nose at a table, but it's a reason for me to let off some steam from the day.  Since everyone is polite, I just bottle up my aggression here and spend a fair amount of time angry at random people for things that are either perfectly reasonable or not worth brooding over.  Surely I'm not the only one feeling this way, and yet no one warned me of it before I came.  I suppose people aren't necessarily nice everywhere else that students go to study.

We have our interviews tomorrow morning and then I guess we're going to start into the meat of our classes.  I'm very excited for things to get going.  I feel like a bowling ball that someone picked up from the shoot thinger, put their fingers into my holes and then got ready to throw me and then didn't.  I don't think they meant to tease me, but it's good for the ball to acclimate to the climate of the bowling alley before you throw it down the lane.  If you don't take care, you won't make a strike or, worse still, it's a gutter ball.  I'm just sayin;  if I start classes too early, I'll end up in the gutter.  I'm not sure where the gutter is in Japan, but it's probably not as awesome as whatever a strike is in Japan.

Almost ready.

I'm starting to get really antsy from no classes or work or anything.  I've had a lot of adjusting to do, but it still has amounted to a lot more free time than I'm used to.  I have looked forward to studying Japanese here for a very long time, but I think that now I'm looking forward to it more than ever.  I'm just really anxious to start my journey towards fluency.  I just hate the fact that we have so many placement tests before we start.  I understand the process, but I hate it still.  I very much dislike having to study for tests that I really don't know how to study for. 

I completely blew off studying for the kanji and composition tests for tomorrow.  Partly because I really needed to take over the world as Ramsess the II and partly because I don't think I'll be able to learn enough kanji to place me high in the classes and I don't think studying the ones I know is going to get me anywhere, either.  I know most of the readings for most of the kanji that I know fairly well.  I don't know all of the compounds that I could know, but I also am at a loss as to how I come up with more without someone telling me.  Somebody should invent a machine whose sole purpose is to take a list of kanji and spit out every possible compound combination.  Someone call Steve Jobs.

I met Billy's host mother today.  She was really cool.  Very patient.  I feel a little bit bad because I couldn't contribute as much to conversations as I would have liked, but I think she understood.  It was funny listening to her and Billy speak to each other about me, though.  My listening is significantly better than my speaking at the moment, so I can understand a lot more than anyone realizes.  They didn't say anything mean, but it was still kind of funny.  I'm getting pretty decent at using context clues to identify unknown words.  I didn't think I would be able to gain that skill in Japanese, but I suppose it makes sense that I would.  I didn't ever think about it much before, but that's probably a necessary skill in any kind of language acquisition.

I was going to blow off my blog tonight, but then I didn't(obviously).  I feel like it would be setting a bad precedent letting video games keep me up so late that I don't do what I should do.

Fear and Blendy.

Today was our welcoming party at school.  We all got together at the Sky Hall, which is at the top of the tallest building on our campus, 16 stories.  It's not incredibly tall, but the hall has wide open windows all the way around it so you can see an incredible view of Tokyo.  You can also see a mountain that I was told was not Mt. Fuji.  It's apparently way smaller than Fuji, but it's huge still.  Seeing Mt. Fuji is definitely on my list of "things to do." 

Our party was really cool, but it did have an awkward part where all of the exchange students had to do self introductions.  By this time, we've gotten pretty used to it.  It's sort of a ritual that you are taught first semester.

Hajimemashite.  (Nice to meet you.)
Boku no namae ha(pronounced 'wa') Dustyn Covert desu.
Douzo yoroshiku onegaishimasu. (lit. Please treat me well.)

So far, that iteration is about as formal a presentation as I've seen.  There are shorter ways for less formal meetings.  You can leave out words here and there, but it all amounts to roughly the same thing.  In any event, I somehow ended up almost last so quite a bit of tension had built to me.  Usually I take the lesson I learned from the band-aid all those years ago and just get it over with, but by the time I saw what was going on, I ended up at the end.  Anyway, because of all the tension, I deviated from the original plan of just following the script and what I said came out more like this:

(Awkward wave.) Hi.
Boku no namae ha Dustyn desu.
Just Dustyn.  I don't really do the whole last name thing.
Etoooo.(Umm...)
I am afraid of all of you, so I might act like I don't like you, but I don't not like you:  I'm just scared.

I was afraid I was going to offend them, but I think it came out alright.  Some people told me I said what everyone was thinking, maybe the same things that Japanese were thinking, too.  Either way, I spent the rest of the day working with my language exchange partners and that fixed a lot of my fears.  I'm still not entirely comfortable speaking, but I know the words are in my head; I just need to find a way to get them out without sounding so stilted.

Oh man, placementing.

As it turns out, placement tests are not fun at all.  I mean, most tests aren't really fun, but placement tests are even not fun in so far as tests go.  There's nothing quite like going into a test with little or no information for the formatting or weight of grade knowing that the sole purpose of the test is to judge you and determine what your next year is going to be like and how much you will learn.  From what I learned from talking to the other exchange students, most anyone who knew any Japanese coming in, made it through the third part of the test without much trouble.  The fourth part was nigh indecipherable and the fifth and final part was gobbledy-gook.  It may as well have been written in a foreign language.  I obviously don't know what my score is for the parts that I finished, but I am fairly confident that I didn't miss too many.  I just want to get into the second group.

After the awful test, I had my first class and it seems really good.  It's about contemporary media in Japan.  The class is taught by three separate teachers in three separate sections.  Sort of like taking three single credit classes, but all in the same block.  They call it "omnibus" format and it's the first I've heard of it.  The first teacher is teaching us about Japanese newspaper.  He seems like a pretty cool guy.  He made a few jokes and his English seems to be pretty incredible.  All in all, I think it should be pretty fun.

I got to start a game of Civilization 5 today and it seems really good.  I really like the hex system and the new way they handle combat is really nice.  Funny watching anyone with guns mow down everyone else.  I really like the way ranged works, too.  Never made sense that archers got into melee range before.  I look forward to schooling some friends in it, but I fear that I will be unable to find a block of time that matches with one of their schedules.  Oh well, I'll have to try anyway.

Boo for Studying.

I strongly dislike studying.  I won't say "hate."  I feel like "strongly dislike" carries about as much weight as I feel on the subject.  In almost all situations, if my brain can find a use for something, it doesn't get rid of it: it just ties it to whatever can use it and then when I need it, it comes out.  For some reason, with my Japanese, it's not working like it should.  I mean, sometimes I have it but sometimes I don't.  Also, I managed to forget a million words over the summer.  I'm sure that I'll do fine here, but I just hate having to test into a class.  It's especially frustrating because I know there are going to be things that I know that they won't ask and things they ask that I don't know.  There is no reasonable way for me to prepare for the test.  I just don't want to end up in the beginner's class.

It rained crazy hard all day today and we finished the day with the temperature the lowest I've seen it here.  I think it's just below 70 degrees and it feels way colder than it should.  My stomach has hurt all day and at first I thought it was just too much curry, but now I'm thinking maybe it's some sort of flu.  That would explain the feeling cold when it's not really cold and the stomach pains.  Then again, with all of this stress from the placement test, maybe I'm just tired.  That's probably it.

Crab battle.

So, I was up until nearly two o'clock in the morning trying to get Final Fantasy XIV working.  About a month ago, well before I'd left for Tokyo, I wrote Square-Enix and asked them if it would matter if I bought a Japanese version of their game.  I wanted to know if I would be able to activate a Japanese CD key on an American account.  They informed me that, no, this would not be a problem and that I should go ahead with my plan. Well.  As it turned out, their system will not allow you to activate a Japanese game on an American account.  Further, they will not allow you to use an American credit card to pay for their service.  Even furtherer than that, they won't let you use American currency to purchase their ghetto online currency for a Japanese account, either.  That is why I got to spend nearly four hours today translating a Japanese account menu system for FFXIV and wandering back and forth from 7/11 attempting to purchase Crysta currency in order to activate my account.

Probably none of you will have to worry about this, so I'm going to tell you about it so you'll know how awesome the FFXIV account set up is in Japanese.  First of all to set a baseline, the English account set up isn't much better:  Square doesn't want to handle foreign currencies, so they have contracted the use of a couple different third party companies.  The main one that you would set up automatic monthly cash withdrawals for is Clickandbuy.  Clickandbuy is famously bad.  They are known for charging customers extra money and then hoping no one catches it so they can keep it.  They are very easy to work with when trying to get this money back, but if you don't catch it, they don't say anything.  They work more or less like a crooked paypal.  You have the option of either allowing Clickandbuy to pay your account, or you can use Clickandbuy or Paypal to purchase Crysta which you can use to pay your account.  It's not super hard to figure out, but it is a whole lot more of a pain than World of Warcraft or Eve or ...anything at all.

The Japanese system allows you to set up a direct credit card charge for your account, but if you don't have a Japanese cash card(I don't get mine until Saturday) it doesn't really do you any good.  They also allow you the option of using paycards or Docomo points(I believe you get these for shopping, but I'm not 100% sure).  The paycards are the best option for an American living in Japan, but the trick is acquiring them.  You can probably get them from a video game store, but I didn't want to go to Akiba just for a paycard, so I chose the (seemingly) easier path of using the machine at 7/11.  Well.  I went to 7/11 once and couldn't figure it out.  From what I could tell, the machine had to be built into the ATM machine, but it appeared to only work on getting money from existing cards, but not adding money to cards or selling cards.  I wandered around the store looking for cards, but couldn't find anything.  I then went back to my dorm and looked online to see if there were directions online and there weren't, so I went back to 7/11 and figured out that you use the copy machine, yes the copy machine, to purchase online currency.  Apparently, those things can sell you a million things and be used to do almost anything.  Pretty impressive.

So, I took my new currency back to my game, figured out how to deposit it into my account which turned out to be fairly easy.  I then tried to log onto the game and, after it said that the servers were congested for about a half hour, followed by another 15 minutes of claiming some kind of maintenance that wasn't reflected in the server availability list, I learned that even though I had deposited the Crysta onto my account I still hadn't activated the automatic billing for the Crysta.  Well, "this seems like an easy problem to fix," I thought to myself.  Not at all.  I went to the button that I had google translated to be the monthly bill pay button and it just said that I hadn't set it up.  I went to all of the other buttons on the "Pay your Bill" section and nothing worked.  After another hour of translating pages, I found out that for whatever reason, after you deposit the Crysta, you have to go to the account menus which previously had nothing to do with billing and, unless you're paying with Crysta, continue to have nothing to do with billing to tell it to pay my bill once a month.  The best part of all this is:  your first month is free!  You just have to assure them that you will be able to pay, should you still want to play after messing with their idiotic system.

Well, I feel like a very long rant about Square-Enix and their very frustrating menu systems isn't what most people want to read, and I apologize.  I considered deleting it and writing something else, but it's almost eleven and I'm exhausted.  I also think it's funny that I wrote Square an email asking them if I had alternatives last night and have yet to get a response.  I'm glad I figured it out on my own.

In other news, my pants no longer fit and it's frustrating.

Lethal Weapon.

I look back on my life and I wonder how much time I've spent waiting in line at midnight releases and how much time I've presided over midnight releases and I am elated.  I wonder if maybe that's the wrong feeling.  Should I feel shame for all of the time wasted?  Maybe I should feel guilt for the money I have spent on all of these limited edition games I just had to buy on release morning.  I'm not sure if I am being selfish or if maybe I should move on to more important things.  I mean, I'm where I've wanted to be since I played Super Mario Bros. on Christmas day in 1986.  I may not have realized where I wanted to be as I sat there excitedly clutching my controller, experimenting with the best way to hold this device that, while it was so foreign to me then, would soon become almost an extension of my will, extending into this new electronic fantasy world allowing me to take control where previously I had little. 

So, being as how video games are what brought me here, is it wrong that I still cling to them?  Maybe I still crave the control and the fantasy.  Maybe this part of my life I am experiencing now isn't what I'd hoped and I still crave the fantastical and the magical.  Maybe I have spent so much of my life steeped in fantasy that I've become a junky and I need to find some sort of video game methadone clinic to help me break my addiction?  I could be looking at this too closely.  This could be me trying to form justifications where the simple answer of, "I just like playing video games," would suffice.  After all, who do I really have to answer to?  Ultimately, who am I accountable to other than myself?  If I am happy spending time and money playing games, do I need another reason?

I feel like these are all good questions for me to contemplate, but I'm about to start patching, which means my game will be finished installing soon and then I'll start playing and my questions will disappear.  Maybe not completely, but they will certainly disappear until the next midnight launch I go to and realize how much more tired I am than the last midnight launch I went to.

Manga FTW.

I made my first purchase of manga, today.  It's hard to believe that I had advanced so far in my nerdhood having acquired no manga.  I don't think that the acquisition of manga is necessary for the proper growth as a nerd, but I feel like if I were to be likened to that of a physically malformed creature, I would have one leg longer than the other or a missing toe or two.  I'm essentially an eight toed nerd right now, and now I need to read vast amounts of manga in order to grow my last two toes.  I've not read much of the manga that I purchased, but from what little I've read, this should be the funnest toe growing I've ever been a part of.

I also posted on a forum for the first time today.  Well, posted something that was a legitimate topic and not trolling or trying to win a contest.  I'm full of landmarks today.  Maybe I should put on pants and go fight crime in Tokyo tonight.  There aren't really any violent criminals here, so it's probably the safest place to break into the world of vigilante justice.  Also, if I want to be judge, jury, and executioner of my vigilante laws, I won't have to worry about making any hard decisions.  If I catch someone j-walking, I'll only have to club em a little or something.  No hangings or crossburnings.  Well, maybe one.  Just to set an example for further minor law infractors.

I feel like no one is really reading this, so I'm going to say some offensive things and see if anyone complains.  Maybe if I say some offensive things, I will get reprimanded by the scholarship board and they will revoke my dollah dollah bills yall.  Maybe I should just ramble for a while and then change the subject back to something cool like chocolate chip melon bread and curry and sushi.

I love chocolate chip melon bread, curry, and sushi.  Not all together in some sort of paste.  Not to eat, anyway.  I mean, I wouldn't eat the paste, but I would eat the items individually.  If it was a paste, I would use it to exfoliate my face and make my self look and feel younger.  An individual items, I would eat the curry for lunch and then the bread as a snack and the sushi for an early dinner.  I'm reasonably sure that my writing today is making so little sense that if anyone is reading it, they won't anymore.  I promise that I will come up with something awesome tomorrow.  Or, I will try to make my ramblings make more sense and possibly be entertaining.

大海原。

I got to see the ocean for the first time today.  I mean, it was pretty incredible, but I saw it while zooming by on a train so it's not like I really experienced it.  I didn't go for a walk on the beach and I didn't build a sand castle.  I definitely didn't get to go surfing, but I'm afraid of surfing anyway.  My initial impressions, though:  big and wet.  It was definitely big and most assuredly wet.  I really wanted to swim in it, but I'm reasonably sure that there aren't any swimming beaches near here.  In any event, I liked the ocean and would like to experience more of it.

The train also passed Tokyo Disneyland.  That seems like a fun place.  I didn't see any rides, but there were a lot of buildings in the way.  One of the buildings was a giant one that had "Cirque du Soleil" written on it.  If they have Cirque du Soleil performances on some sort of regular schedule at Tokyo Disneyland, then I definitely must make a trip.  I've never seen Cirque live, but I've seen quite a bit of it on tv and DVD and I would love to see it in real life.  Maybe if I wear my silly shorts, they'll let me get on stage.

So, as it turns out, the subway maps in the cars here can't be trusted.  Me and Billy spent a great deal of time on the subway trying to get out to Tokyo Game Show, which was in Chiba.  What should have been a roughly forty-five minute trip turned into something like a two-three hour trek.  There were no stars and we didn't have to battle Sauron at the end, but it was definitely a trek.  Of course, calling the trip a trek implies a lengthy voyage in a single direction and this probably means that spending an hour riding trains in circles disqualifies our trip from having "trek" status.  Suffice to say that we spent more time lost than we spent actually at the show, which was awesome by the way.

Being in a giant room surrounded by video games and booth babes, inundated with the sounds of jpop and the smells of nerds was an almost religious experience.  If Tokyo Game Show was my church, then the Square-Enix booth was my altar.  The first thing we did was elbow and claw our way to the giant T.V. set up like some sort of nerd catching bug zapper, but instead of zapping, it filled your head with awesome and filled your heart full of expectation, making you hungry with anticipation.  From there, we mostly just wandered around, trying not to look creepy while we oggled the booth babes.

This was my first experience with booth babes.  There was a time where I would have considered the argument that jobs like this only serve to objectify women and denigrate society and all of that.  But, after actually witnessing booth babes in action, I was more than a little impressed.  For one, these lovely young women are getting to come to work and dance and play video games.  If they hated dancing and video games, I could maybe see a drawback, but they were clearly having more fun than they had any right to have for how much they were getting payed.  I will say that their clothes could not be comfortable, but most of them were wearing flats, so not too bad.  The other thing is, these girls aren't really being objectified by most everyone around.  The people at TGS put them on such a high pedestal, that they had to feel like princesses or some sort of gentry.  I mean, it's not like an ego boost or something simple like that.  It was just something I noticed when I looked at them.  They didn't have the look of a prostitute out peddling herself for money or the defeated look of a stripper, so far beyond the self defeat and shock of turning to stripping that all pride is dead.  They had this mix of pride and joy that is rare in someone in a regular job, never mind someone peddling games in sexy clothes.

Also, I think that Gamestop would be more popular if they used the Xbox booth babe uniforms for everyone. 

OMG drums.

For the better part of today, everywhere I went, I could hear drums and flutes and bells.  I'm not 100% sure what the festival was, but there were a lot of people with a lot of portable shrines stomping around town.  I listened for them all day in my room, hoping they would come close enough for me to get some cool pictures from above, but none did.  It was really neat, though.  When I was out walking, if I got out of earshot of one troop of partyers, I would wander invariably into the presence of another group. 

I got to witness my first domestic disturbance, today.  Normally Japanese people seem to be very composed, concealing their emotions behind a facade of manners and politeness.  The two people I saw were not concealing any emotions.  I think the guy may have been, but I couldn't be sure.  It all started when the woman starting yelling at the man a lot.  She grabbed the younger girl, presumably their daughter, and walked off ahead of the guy.  The guy, still attempting to salvage what was to become a very emotional situation, kept talking to the woman, but she was beyond discussion and leaving with the girl.  The guy then threw down his cigarette, grabbed the girl and started off in the opposite direction.  What I found interesting was that after he threw the cigarette down, the little girl stomped on it to put it out.  Interesting that there would be that kind of wherewithal in the middle of such a stressful event. Anyway, the fight just seemed like it was between who was going to get the little girl.  After a while, they just all left together, so maybe they decided that they should go somewhere else and settle their dispute, rather than airing their dirty laundry, so to speak, while walking down a crowded street.

I managed to get my classes registered today.  That was pretty incredible.  My assigned adviser is currently living in Australia(I think), so I had to go to an interim adviser with one of the other exchange students, Kaitlin.  We left this morning with an hour to get there because we were afraid we'd get lost.  As it turns out, we walked straight to the building with fairly little effort and then spent 20 minutes wandering the halls of the second campus looking for our adviser's room.  We went to all of the places that the room should have logically appeared, but to no avail.  We eventually decided we should look at the maps on the walls and cross reference them with the posted arrows pointing to ranges of room numbers and found out that for whatever reason, rooms weren't arranged in any sort of logical pattern.  It wasn't as though the numbers were fed through a wood chipper and wherever they landed, a room was built, but the rooms were definitely not layed out in a pattern I was accustomed to seeing.

Once we found the room, we finally were able to decide what classes we would take.  She took a few random Asian studies classes and I took the block of language that I'm required to take and then added a Saturday culture class and a Friday seminar class about Japanese media.  The Saturday class seems like it will be awesome because most weeks we go on field trips around Tokyo and see things that I probably wouldn't have seen otherwise.  We have to write something like six papers, but that's no big deal at all.  The seminar class seems really neat, because it's taught in four sections and each section has a separate expert teaching it.  It seems like it will be really difficult, but it should still be fun.  I think I start classes at the end of this week, so I'm pretty excited.