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.