Starshine

Quickie.
I'm alive. Somewhat. I think so. Last time I checked. Anyway, sorry to have neglected this journal. Started up a Livejournal back at the beginning of the month, do feel free to look. I haven't been too bad about updating. It's here. Enjoy.

Thursday, November 14, 2002,07:49 p.m.

That's right, today's a holiday...
Happy Halloween everybody! ^_^ Hope everyone's having a good one, and that you feel better soon, Harl. You wouldn't know it was Halloween over here. No scary movies, no Halloween-themed commercials, no nothing. :/ The Halloween party on Saturday was fun, though. We all had a good time helping out with the party for the kids and at our own party. Some of the costumes were really cool. There was a boy dressed like Harry Potter, and if Harry had been Japanese, I think he would have looked like that kid. O.o Eric dressed up as a mummy (very impressive) and Todd dressed up as Kaonashi, but we also had a monkey, sniper, gypsy, ninja, Juunanago, fairy, Alice in Wonderland, and farmer in the costume contest. Handing out the treats for the kids was great, especially hearing them try to say "Trick or Treat" in English. One of my teachers brought her kid, but said child was unfortunately in a bad mood that night. :( All the others seemed to enjoy the haunted house,face painting, games, and pinata that we'd set up.

No test tomorrow. ^_^ Instead we go to teach English to elementary schoolers (Friday Project) and tour the Kirin plant (Econ. class field trip). Some of the guys in my class are looking forward to possibly getting their paws on some alchohol at the Kirin place. I'm just looking foward to getting away from this place for a day and no test.

Thursday, October 31, 2002,07:18 p.m.

Uwaa~
Where did the week go? Oh yeah, lost somewhere in a whirlwind of emotions and trying to get things done and stressing about various things. Which I shall not go into here. Suffice to say I am somewhat more relaxed now, and getting into genki mode once again. Chocolate is a very good medicine in cases like this.

Have an ear infection. >_< Not too bad, as I thought to ask the nice lady in charge of us students to take me to the doctor before the pain was unbearable. It's annoying to have to remember the eardrops, though. However, as that is the only major annoyance at the moment, I shall complain no further.

Halloween party on Saturday. :) First for the kids in the area, then for us. I get to hand out candy when the kid's go "Trick or Treating". For some reason this makes me exceptionally happy.

Thursday, October 24, 2002,08:26 p.m.

Manic Monday indeed
Today was kind of an up and down day. As was every day of the weekend. Got some things I wanted to get done, other things didn't get done, which was the reason I was not in such a good mood this morning. Things got better in the afternoon when I found out I did well on last week's Japanese test and got an email from my "little" cousin Brian. Tomorrow we get our midterm grades there and have a midterm in the Japanese culture class. Not fun, but I'll muddle through.

*baps AIM* Stupid thing only letting me talk to some of my friends that are online. Harl, sorry, but there appears to be an issue with either AIM or the net where I get your messages but can't respond. :/ Sorry.

So now I settle down to write a paper. Wish me luck. Oh, and to the people at Li-chan's blog: Be nice, or I'll be forced to send an SB or two of mine over there.

Monday, October 21, 2002,07:28 p.m.

Just what I needed...
A thunderstorm after a long day. Not a bad one, necessarily, just long. Days when I have Japanese plus another class are usually like that. But the culture class was fun today. I like the format of watching movies and discussing how they reflect on the culture instead of just a three hour long lecture/discussion.

I'll be very glad when October is over. I'll be over the midway part of the semester, and will have handed in my proposal for my Individual Cultural Research Project (ICRP), aka what I'm doing between winter vacation and when I get back to the U.S. I'll finally get some relaxation time before finals.

Anyway, back to the storm. It's been raining on and off since five, sometimes with some thunder and lightning. It's the closest we get to a thunderstorm here in Japan. It was nice to watch the rain and I even ran out into for a second. I think a character in some manga said that being drawn to water is a sign of stress. If that's so, probably all of us would have been out there.

Tuesday, October 15, 2002,07:55 p.m.

Where's my samurai?
*snickers* A line from one of the songs on the Dance Dance Revolution mix I tried out last night. Todd and Kit seemed to quite enjoy it and it has a catchy tune. It was fun to finally get to play some DDR. However that was not the highlight of the day. So I'll start from the beginning.

First off, we had NO TEST. Our typcial Friday test was cancelled, I imagine to give us plenty of time on our Friday Project: The field trip to Kyoto. We left at 8:30, which is earlier than our classes usually begin and most of us were tired. Except for the (then, and somewhat now) mecha-hyper-genki Kei-chan. What can I say, I'd actually made sure to get enough sleep. Plus I was happy about no test and the trip.

Of the four temples we visited, I'd been to three. Ginkakuji was pretty, but you couldn't go inside. Ran into some other Americans there, though, that was pretty nice. Ryouanji was fun because we got to look around in it and it had a nice rock garden. Kyomizudera remains my favorite of the temples in Kyoto so far. Very peaceful and I love looking out at the scenery from the deck. Ginkakuji was the only one I hadn't been to before, and it was kind of a disappointment, possibly because I'd already seen three temples.

The field trip ended after Ginkakuji, and a lot of people went on back to the center on the bus. Some of us stuck around in Kyoto, however, and I ended up running around with Eve, Kit, and Todd. First we went to Kyoto station to get our bearings and get some food. Let me tell you right now, Kyoto Station is huge. An 11-floor mall-like building and a theater large enough to be playing Phantom of the Opera are only the beginning. Anyway, we got food, then headed over to Maruzen, a huge bookstore with a great foreign book section. I had to forcibly drag myself, with Eve's help, away from the Harry Potter books in different languages. I consoled myself by buying a book I've read the English translation of and like and the Gravitation novel. ^_^ So what if Kit says Gravi is "weird people stuff", it's good.

We ended up getting out of Maruzen too late to go an electronics store for Todd, which annoyed him to no end. So he made sure we found an arcade where we could play Dance Dance, the other thing he really wanted to do. I waited until he and Kit finished then tried it. Not too bad for a first timer. XD Will play again sometime.

Not much to report after that. Got back, slept. Spent much of today hanging out, relaxing. Want to go back to Kyoto on my own sometime.

Li-chan, we get to celebrate Halloween at the center. We have a party for neighborhood kids, then there's one for us. Not a major thing, but at least we get to do something. And I'm doing okay, really. Things just hit me like a ton of bricks for a while there. Plus, like I said before, I've been in kind of a quiet mode.

Saturday, October 12, 2002,09:24 p.m.

*rises from the grave*
Okay, since people have started joking about me being dead since I've been talking so little I'll write an actual entry. Things haven't been going badly, I've just been in a really quiet mood.

So far this has been a good week. I got two packages yesterday, thanks to the package I sent ahead of myself arriving on the same day as another care package from my mom. Yay for having at least a small supply of American food. :) Found out that I got a 91 on last week's test. How I do so well on tests but so poorly on quizes is beyond me. I'm so glad we don't have a test this Friday and, as it turns out, we have a long weekend. I also get to see Bridget this weekend, after not having gotten to visit with her much since she graduated. ^_^ Very much looking forward to that.

Class has been fun mostly because we've been learning idioms and, as is usual, the mental images created by their literal meanings are very funny. Not to mention the fact that we've been dicussing school life and talking about clubs always leads to interesting discussions. Yesterday one of our activities was to pair off, make up a club, and try to get someone to join said club. Todd and I managed to get Dan to join our anime club, even though he seemed disappointed that we wouldn't be watching any 'ero' anime (hentai). I'm not sure whether or not he was totally joking. Unfortunately he and Eric couldn't get many of us to join their 'Kansai Ben' club because it was a very thinly disguised bar-hopping club. Too bad it was only a class activity, because it would be nice to not have to go through Shiga University for stuff like that. The chapter we're on now focuses on restaurants and isn't so much fun.

Tuesday, October 8, 2002,08:56 p.m.

Title, what means this title?
The good part about weekends: No class
The bad part about weekends: They go by too quickly

Been doing the usual weekend stuff. Recuperating from the week, grocery shopping, trying to have some fun. Went to karaoke again last night. :) Would have gone to an art fair with some people today had I not severely needed the down time.

Bleah, I am boring. Go spend your internet time reading more interesting things. ^_~

Sunday, October 6, 2002,04:18 p.m.

Weekend.
Well, 'tis Friday once again and I must soon hie me off to a Japanese test, but after that I get to go learn about the koto and shamisen.^^ And next Friday we have no test due to a field trip to Kyoto. *does happy dance* Plus, it's the weekend. No class until Monday. XD

Li-chan, many hugs and hopes that things work out okay.

Friday, October 4, 2002,08:33 a.m.

RFLE ahead
"RFLE" meaning Really Fucking Long Entry. Since I haven't written for a long time. I will try to do better in the future. To those I owe letters, postcards, whatever: I am relying on your infinite patience. I will try to get to them tonight after I finish this and the evil known as homework.

This weekend has probably been the best weekend I've had since arriving here. Nothing major planned, and even though some of things I had planned didn't work out, it was cool. Friday night I ended up going to the restaurant on the ground floor of the academic building with some people I don't usually hang out with: Omar and Brandon from my Japanese class, and Emily, my buddy Sarah's roommate. We had a good time, just hanging out. Then Liana and I started cleaning up our room (it needed it badly), finishing up on Saturday. Saturday I also got to spend a lot of time on the 'net, something I don't often get to do, aside from watching Mallrats (we have the video in the lounge here) and reading more of Chamber of Secrets in Japanese. Got a little homework done, but not all of it. Lots of other people were watching Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi/Spirited Away, but as I'd already seen it twice I did other stuff.

Today I went downtown to buy a kimono at a used kimono store. ^_^ Happy Katie. Even happier because I made it downtown riding a bicycle. Since I barely knew how to ride one when I got here, this is a major accomplishment. Not that I'm really good by any means. I just manage to avoid killing myself. Anayway, since I went with Sarah, who likes looking at stores that have old-fashioned Japanese stuff in them, today included a lot of what my cousin Annie would call "toodling": wandering around aimlessly and looking at stores and such. 'Twas very relaxing, and just what I needed.

So yeah, I had a very fun, relaxing weekend and am therefore in mecha genki mode. Please don't kill me too much for being annoyingly genki and happy. I haven't been in this good of a mood for a long time.

Sunday, September 29, 2002,06:35 p.m.