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.