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So she sayeth...
Wednesday, August 22, 2001 07:51 p.m.
Well, since AnimeIowa is just a few short days away, I guess plans are indeed in order. Well, I'm the closest one to the con, I'll be getting their on my own with my own transportation. Anyone needing rides around Cedar Rapids/Marion, ask me. My house is only about 15 minutes from the hotel, so I'll probably be going home for any long term sleeping. We'll see how things go though. o.o; I'm assuming, judging by last year's schedule, that dealer's room is probably--at least scheduled :p--to open at 4 p.m., so I'll probably show up between 3 and 4 so I can get in line early. BTW, to anyone who knows them Stephanie and Val will be there too. Remember them? They both apparently got into anime right after we graduated. ^_^; And check out their artshow entries! Stephanie's are quite keen.
Well, tomorrow is my dad's birthday so I should be doing some sort of present giving, cake-eating, etc. tomorrow evening. We'll see how it goes though. He's not thrilled about the idea of having anyone acknowledge his birthday (a state of mind which I fail to understand--he even refused to go out to eat with just us to celebrate), but we're going to attempt a tiny "party" at home. If I had spider sense, it'd be tingling... ¬_¬ Friday my brother leaves for college--he's going to UNI. Then in a strange turn of events I'll have my parents all to myself. For the past three years, of course, it's been my brother alone with them because I'm at school and hardly ever come home. Now for two weeks I'll be alone in the house with them. It's kind of a scary thought since my mom will probably go into full blown empty nest syndrome. ^_^; Well, probably not since she just started a new job, so she's doing stuff with that. But, hey, one needs to be prepared.
Hmm. I wish I had some fangirlish thing to talk about, but alas, I really don't. ^^ Just been playing games I've played before. I kinda have been putting off FF5 because I'm saved right at a time-limited thing, and haven't had the gumption to try it again. And silly me, I was really over-confident playing FF6 yesterday. I hadn't saved in awhile and was just trying to get to Zozo when I was utterly destroyed by this one attack (Stone, which whupped me with an attack that took off four times my max HP X_X;) by a relativly weak monster in a random battle on the way. O_o; I had totally forgotten that those things could even DO that. Well, so that set me back an hour. Baka na.
Random Celestial Thought OTD: "Geez, don't say that! You make it sound like she died! You know, kicked the bucket, bought the farm, met the owl."
Sunday, August 19, 2001 08:30 p.m.
*sparkle sparkle* Okay, maybe this season won't be so bad after all. ^_^;
Well, yeah, so I haven't updated in a week. Bad, bad me. I had hoped to have a new design before I blogged next, but it hasn't happened yet. I'm working on a picture, but I was having trouble deciding on the background. And THEN I got side-tracked playing video games and such. ^^; I started FF6 along with my other game of FF5. I forgot truly how much I enjoy that game. It also astonishes me that as many times as I've played it, I keep finding bits of new stuff that I never noticed before. For example, in at least the first couple of towns, if you search the boxes and barrels on the street you can find things. ^^; Now, yeah, that make gain be a big, fat "DUH!" from many a person, but I will respond with "Hey! That was my first console game, and, it goes without saying, my first FF game. I had no clue you could get stuff from the barrels. :P" The only reason I found all those elixirs was because Karen told me. ^^;
So yeah, I'm at the fire castle in FF5--the fire crystal just shattered. And I'm heading off to find Terra after the decisive battle in Narsh in FF6. I'm waiting for more FMV of Locke. *_* You only get to see the back of his head in the opening one, and there are two to go, so hopefully we'll get to see more. There are also secrets that you can get as shown in the opening menu, which I am playing the game to get. I have done really nothing else of bloggable importance. Now I remember why I didn't like summer vacation last year. No one's around to do anything. o_o;
I don't know why, but I've been pretty tired lately. Actually just the past couple of days. I'm fine during the day, but I fell asleep a little before 10 last night and then slept until 8 this morning. And now I'm ready to go to bed right now. o_o; It's wierd. I haven't even been doing anything out of the ordinary either. Just the routine I've had for the past couple of weeks--which isn't exactly physcially demanding.
Hmm. Boring today. ^^;
Random Celestial Thought OTD: "...'n some bread too!"
Monday, August 13, 2001 09:11 p.m.
Happy anniversary/birthday, blog. It's been one year today since Karen dropped by and informed me of the tasty goodness of pitas.
Still alive. Just lazy about updating. I guess I feel like there's not much to report as compared to the past two months, so I kinda haven't. o.o Now it's back to my normal boring life. Well, not too normal. I guess normal is at school, and that's not for a few weeks yet. Anyway, so I've done stuffs since I got back. I went over to Karen's house last week and we watched Trigun's to (almost) our heart's content. Almost meaning it was only up through the 5th DVD and not the 8th. ^^ Boo. I'm an official addict now. On Friday and Saturday my mom and I saw Rush Hour 2 and Dr. Doolittle 2. Funny, but not as good as the first ones. I've also done a lot of lounging around the house, basically because I've been really tired since I got back and my sleeping schedule has been turned upside down and generally yucked up. I've slept as little as 5 hours in one night and up to 15 hours another night, and both of those were because my body slept that much when left to its own. But I think I'm finally re-adjusting. I wasn't very tired today at all.
Today I went down to the Amana Colonies with my mom and grandma to have lunch and do a little shopping. Most of the shopping ended up being at the bakery and Chocolate Haus. ^^ But we went mainly so I could buy a gift thanking my host family for not making me pay for the tatami mat incident. I got T-shirts. Woo. Well, they're nice T-shirts with "Amana Colonies" and such on them, so I hope they like them. I really feel like I spent a little too much (I bought three shirts because one didn't seem like enough and two seemed like I was just screwing one of the family members, so it came to three), especially considering I don't feel incredibly indebted to them (but really maybe I should...). Still, at the same time I'm still lost on what's an appropriate price for gifts and the like in Japan. Oh well, they're not gonna know how much I spent, now are they? :]
As to my fangirlish/gaming doings, I started regaining everything I lost when my memory card died last spring. I've regathered a bunch of the hidden characters in Bust a Groove 2, and I also restarted playing FF5. It gives me a warm, nostalgic feeling. ^^ Visually, it looks so much like a cross between FF4 and FF6 (which makes obvious sense :P) and it's pretty fun. It's nice to get back to games sometimes. For example, the Chrono Trigger and FF4 rereleases. I heard they came out while I was gone. I'm probably going to buy them because how can one honestly live a fulfilled life without Chrono Trigger. XD And AnimeIowa is just two short weeks away. Aie. I hope I have a little money to spend there--I spent quite a bit on myself in Japan. I'm not planning on spending much, but one never knows. I'm planning on getting the rest of Cowboy Bebop at some point and the Utena movie when it comes out. I'm also debating whether or not I want to buy the EVA series on DVD. They're selling it for pretty cheap at buy.com. So, with that in mind, I'm going to AI. ^^;
Random Celestial Thought OTD: "What's a schnitzel?"
Tuesday, August 7, 2001 11:03 p.m.
Today was a day of good news and bad news.
Good News: I'm back from Japan! :D
Bad News: I'm back from Japan. ._.
Good News: There was little waiting between flights and the flights themselves seemed to go much faster than last time. Time, I might even dare to say, flew.
Bad News: This little time between flights caused the airline to lose my luggage between Chicago and Moline.
Good News: They found it a few hours later and it was delivered to my house by 7 p.m.
I do already miss Japan. Being surrounded by English again is really wierd. I and some other JCMU students kept saying "sumimasen" and "gomen nasai" when we got out of the international terminal and accidently bumped into people. ^^; One odd thing did happen to me today. On my flight to Moline I randomly met one of Knox's deans. He was taking the same flight and heading back to Knox. ^^ So we talked and such about my trip and the state of the school this summer which apparently is pretty chaotic. Our president stepped down in June and they had to elect an interim president plus there are still budget concerns and reorganizing of the academic policies going on too. My body seems to be readjusting to CST pretty well, (although it's having a lot of trouble with the American style keyboards. O.o;). I did take a four hour nap after I got home, but I'm tired again now, so I'm probably going to have to go back to bed now. Good night.
Random Celestial Thought OTD: "Sword-chucks. YO!" -- 8-bit Theatre
Monday, August 6, 2001 02:48 p.m.
Well, this is officially my last day at JCMU. Tomorrow at 5:30 a.m. I board the bus to Nagoya to catch my flight to the U.S. I'm going back the same way I came: Nagoya, Narita, Chicago, Moline. My flight lands in Moline at 11:15 a.m. Tuesday CDT which will make me almost dead tired, as I guess opposed to just dead. o.o I'm not looking forward to the flight. Can you tell? So for the past few days I've just been hanging out with everyone else. We watched a bunch of movies including Escaflowne, Escape from L.A., Run Lola Run (in the original German with Japanese subtitles), Very Bad Things, and Tombstone.
Today I went out from some last minute shopping. I found this odd FFVII gag doujinshi and to my surprise it came with a Cloud kiss doll. XD The rest of the day will be filled with other last minute things such as taking pictures, packing my remaining junk, and just generally chilling (or at least trying to in this heat). Actually, the heat has toned itself down since yesterday. It was actually cool enough last night for blankets.
Well, I guess that's it. Japan has been a blast and I know I'm gonna miss it when I wake up on Wednesday and my mom says Good Morning instead of Ohayou and I see that all the signs are in English and I want to go to Lawsons but can't and wonder where all the vending machines are and I can actually understand background conversations. o.o I guess this blog will be going back to it's otherwise boringness since I'll be at home for the next month. ^^; I have tons of stuff that I need to do and have in mind to do, including hanging at Karen's house. XD wai! Anyway, I'll probably have more commentary (or bitching about the flight ^^!) on Wednesday or what ever day I manage to get up. So! Itte kimasu. ^_^
Random Celestial Thought OTD: "That's just wrong in so many ways." -- a JCMU student
Saturday, August 4, 2001 05:26 p.m.
Woo! HTK, your pic is awesome. *_*
Katherine: Ok, what`s the kanji mean besides owl of such and such? o.o And THANK YOU! I`ve been looking for the owl kanji for weeks now, but every dictionary I looked in only had it written in kana. I`ve seen fukurou written about three different ways here (hiragana, katakana, and three kanji the first one being fu as in `bad`) but never with one kanji. Truth be told there is ton of owl merchandise here in the Japan, at least the Kansai area. Most of them are really cute owls though, not menacing any such apocalyptic owls. o.o
Well. I`m DONE! XD But that`s kinda sad too since everyone is going to slowly trickle away over the next two days. ._. They`re all such great people! Oh, and I`m gonna miss my senseis too! Whaaa, it`s so sad. I know I`m going to be so depressed about leaving when I get back. Anyway, I went far far west yesterday--a two hour express train ride--to Himeji with a couple of friends. We braved the horrible heat and walked through Himeji, did a bit of shopping and went to see Himeji Castle. It`s SO wonderful. :D It`s one of the best sights I`ve visited in Japan. I took so many pictures. Almost a whole roll, but that was probably because one of my friends was pretty camera happy herself. So we toured the castle for awhile, and then we took the train home and made a stop in Kyoto. We basically stayed in Kyoto station for a few hours which is huge and has tons of stuff to do for a couple hours. There`s 11 floors of fun goodness. So we ate in the food court. (I`m so going to miss Japanese food and Japanese styled food.) And then we watched part of a concert or something that was going on in the upper part of the station. I`m still not sure what it was. o.o Then we walked outside to take some pictures of the Kyoto tower and the station at night. ^^ And then we headed home.
When I got back I forced myself to write my speech. ^^: It took a long time for the short speech I ended up with, but much of the time was spent staring at the screen thinking of something presentable. I ended up talking about my memory of talking to a shopkeeper in Nagahama because she actually talked to us in straight Japanese and asked us stuff and showed us around her shop. ^^ It was a really nice experience, considering many Japanese shopkeepers will not do such things. We`ve had experiences here where when buying things, people will just punch up the price on a calculator and without a word show us the price.
So this morning I just putzed around and finished up my speech and showed it to my sensei. After some more putzing around I got spiffied up and went to closing ceremonies. It was nice and short. For that fact alone, best graduation I will probably ever go to. I gave my speech with the other level representatives. Then afterward we partied down JCMU style. Basically we had funky Japanese pizzas, cake, and beverages while hanging out and taking pictures of each other. There were some performances too. One guy played on his sax, one girl sang a song with her host dad. One guy sang a song he wrote about Al Plaza. ^^ The first years had the funniest performance where they illustrated a day in the life of a JCMU first year where they immitated their professors and themselves as they act in class. ^^ It was really funny.
Since then I`ve been hanging out with people in the computer lab. It`s become a hub of social activity as well as gaming and online goings on. The reason for this is of course the Internet, but another fine reason is because of the air conditioning. I`m still actually amazed at how many other students here are interested in anime/manga/computers/gaming. Even the people who you would look at and think `Nah. That person wouldn`t like anime.` They just might. Hang out in the computer lab. You`ll find `em. ^^ I had an interesting thing for dinner which people mocked me for, but it was darn tasty: a yakisoba roll. Yes, basically it`s just a hunk of yakisoba in a bun, which I would normally not eat, but I thought, hey, I only have three days left in Japan, might as well! ^^ Anyway, that`s all from me.
Random Celestial Thought OTD: `Did you not go to the mountain? Do you not know the monkey`s wrath?!` -- JCMU student
Thursday, August 2, 2001 05:30 p.m.
>.> mou. I`m not happy right now. I`m just tired for one thing. I spent a ton of money shipping things back to the US. Basically there are three options for shipping by mail. Air mail, this thing called SAL, and surface mail. They`re that fast in that order. However, shipping is REALLY expensive, especially airmail. Surface mail isn`t that bad, but I honestly don`t want my things I paid good money for sitting on a boat and who knows where for a month or more. I took the SAL and hopefully I`ll get my stuff in two weeks. ^^ It`ll be just like Christmas. Or something. I hate the idea of things like customs because I`m always afraid I`ll make some stupid mistake and get in trouble. I`m very good at making stupid mistakes that get me in trouble. Anyway, many important events have occured since the last blog. But at the same time the last few days have been a real blur of stuff and studying, I`m not sure what I did. oh right! Tuesday was my shopping spree. Well, I didn`t buy a ton. Oh, wait, I did, but it was for other people. Damn my niceness. >.< Ok, I bought stuff for me too, which I really love. ^^ I got another Engrish T-shirt. But not only does it have English on it, but it has romanized bad Japanese too! XD I also bought a yukata. And it very nearly fits. ^^; I had to pay extra for shoes though, but they weren`t bad price for a pair of shoes in the U.S. so I wasn`t too upset. And the fit my feet of all things! The average shoe sizes are 22 through 24.5 cm. When I told my host mom my shoe size (27 cm) she laughed at me and said I`d never find ANY shoes that fit me in Japan. So, let this be a lesson, don`t let anyone tell you that you can`t find yukata/kimono for tall people. They don`t know what they`re talking about. You can find them. You just gotta search a little more and then pay a little more. o.o;
Anyway, the other highlights were: I got my project score back. It was good. I went to see fireworks over Biwako last night. They were very awesome. I`ve never seen fireworks done in shapes before. They had sunglasses and planet shapes. Very cool. I went with my conversation partner, but we parted company right after we went (we had eaten dinner together and with two of her friends) because her other conversation partner showed up and the two of us aren`t very compatible personality types, it seems. So I sat with other JCMU folk. During this time I was blowing off not only going home (although my host family knew I`d be gone) but blowing of studying for the FINAL EXAM that was today. ^^ But that`s ok because I took the test, it wasn`t that bad, and now I`m DONE.
But done is a relative term. I moved back into the dorm today so no more host family. I`m done with shipping stuff back and school, but I still have to re-pack to make sure everything fits all right and such. Oh, and a packing tip, make sure you take only what you need. O.o And leave some room in your packs for stuff you buy. Oh, I also have to write my speech tonight. Grr. I`m not looking forward to that. I don`t know what to say and I`m at that point where I could care less about school-type work. Gotta do it tomorrow though because closing ceremony is Saturday and I`m going to see Himeji Castle tomorrow with some people. That will be an all day thing.
*snerk* I am an enabler! XD I got a bunch of JCMU students hooked on webcomics this week (RPGWorld, 8-bit, and Adventurers!). Hoo, on that note, I think that`s it for today. I may have done other things, but well, I don`t remember them right now. ^^;
Random Celestial Thought OTD: `So, did you get a scholarship?`
Monday, July 30, 2001 03:19 p.m.
KAREN! Shitteru? :D From ANN: `I'm Going to Be an Angel! on DVD (2001-07-25 23:21:42) Synch point has announced that they are preparing to release I'm Going to be an Angel! (Tenshi ni Narumon!) on DVD, the title is already available on VHS. Speculation is that the DVD will not be released before late 2001, early 2002.`
Yo. Well, someday I`ll update my side bars, but now I have mucho stuff to do and I`m lazy. ^^ I will link you soonly. Well, my weekend was...interesting, to say the least. Friday I didn`t do much. Just my homework and such in preparation for Saturday and Sunday. I actually got all of it done, which I`m proud of because I just knew that I wasn`t going to find any other time to do it. And I didn`t.
Saturday I bolted out of the house early in the morning to go to Nagahama for the day with a friend. After finally meeting (we miscommunicated where we were meeting >.>;;) we headed in a direction on JR that we had never headed before! Usually when I go places via the train, it`s always toward Kyoto, but never in the other direction past Hikone, so it was a little adventure because all the place names and train schedule designs were unfamiliar. Plus we had to get off in a rather large station to switch trains too, but we got there and back no problem. So, we went not really having a plan, but we ended up wandered into the same shopping district that I went to with my host mom earlier in the month. We shopped, had pizza and soft cream ^^!, and were very touristy I guess. We talked at length with this shopkeeper in Japanese. It was a great feeling to be able to do that.
After that we went to Nagahama Castle, an ancient site that was built in 1983. ^^; Well, it was originally constructed in the 1700s (?) but it was torn down and used to build Hikone Castle and then reconstructed as a museum in 1983 at the request of the townspeople. From there we went to a park and then back home so I could go to my host family`s festival. The festival was very interesting and although everyone continued to not pay attention to me, I still had fun. There was Bingo (yeah, Bingo), hot dogs, yakisoba, shaved ice, karaoke, cute kids running around in yukata, etc. ^^ I met the junior high school teacher that tried to talk to me in English two months ago at my host family`s sushi party again. It was a short meeting of saying hi, but still, I was amused. ^^
Sunday I tried to buy a yukata, but it didn`t quite work out. >.< My host mom kept trying to tell me that A: I couldn`t find a yukata for less than $200 and B: that I couldn`t find one in my size and C: if I wanted one in my size, I would have to order one. So I tried to set her straight to what was all right for my yukata, but it wasn`t working, so I gave up and decided that I`d buy one by myself this week. Which I will be doing tomorrow. Hopefully. I asked some of the senseis if it was possible for me to find one and they all said yes. I specifically seeked out the tallest female sensei, who is my height, and she even said that I could find one. Anyway, there was rampant not speaking going on yesterday between me and the host family. I`m frankly getting peeved about that. Granted, I don`t talk much anyway and while living with a relativly unfamiliar family who doesn`t speak my native language makes me speak even less, there are basic communications that are just not happening on the part of my host family. For example, telling me when we were leaving for the mall (I waited 2 hours while my host mom left the house and then came back and took a nap right in front of me). And little things like when we walking into the mall, my host mom said something that I only half caught to my host dad and not to me so it was not in Japanese I could fully understand, and then walked off without a word while my host dad started to walk off in the other direction and only as an after thought told me that I should go wait in the middle of the mall. Grr. But now I have a host family evaluation form. ¬.¬
Anyway. Enough bitching. I`m distracted by fun conversations in the computer lab as it is, so I`m gone. ^^ See ya.
Random Celestial Thought OTD: `Yes, come have a cultural experience with us. We`re watching Army of Darkness!`
Friday, July 27, 2001 04:28 p.m.
Sorry about the blank screen yesterday. Internet went down right after I archived and typed up my blog but right before I could post. O.o;
Katherine: Um, not to seem picky or anything because I agree with your ficing before playing rant, but FFX was released in Japan on the 19th. ^^;
Okie, yeah, well, not really much yesterday. It was hot. I had class. I wrote 80% of my presentation for today yesterday afternoon because I had a meeting with sensei about it that I wasn`t expecting. O.o I gave said presenation today. It went well. It was only a 5-10 minute presenation, but it did have to be written all in Japanese, so that was a little bit harder of course. I don`t like giving speeches in the first place so doing it in another language is yet another reason for me not to be amused by it. And speaking of speeches. X_x Guess who got roped into being the representative speaker for the level three Japanese class at closing ceremonies next week? Uh huh. That`s right. No one in my class was at *all* willing to do so, and I was the least opposed, so I was volunteered by default. ^^ So I get to give a three minute speech about whatever I want in Japanese. I have no idea what I`m going to talk about. I hate thinking up topics for papers and speeches because it always takes me forever. Sigh. Well, forever is going to have to be by next week, probably early in the week since our final is Thursday. I found out today that it`s NOT cummulative. Thank god. XD You know it took me about 10 minutes to remember the word `cummulative`? My English vocabulary is in such a sad state right now. :P
Today after the speech I went out to eat with my class and sensei at a local food shop. I had yummy katsudon. After that I came back to JCMU to participate in the how to wear a kimono class. ^^ I got to wear this awesome navy blue yukata with pastel butterflies on it. It was gorgeous and I really wanted to keep it, but of course I couldn`t. ^^ Sometime this week I`m going out with my host mom to buy myself a nice, pretty, cheap one. That will probably be Sunday since tomorrow is the neighborhood festival my host family has been helping to plan and such for the past month. They`re going to be working at that the whole day despite the fact that it doesn`t officially open until about 5 p.m. So, I`m gonna go off with people for the day and then come back and go to the festival.
The rest of the afternoon today I`ve been hanging out in the library and watching the Birdman contest that`s taking place out on the Lake Biwa beach just down the road. Basically, the idea of the contest is that you build your own flying device and then while riding in it, jump off a 50 foot platform that was built over the lake just for the event and then see how long you can stay in the air. It`s pretty cool, but slow going. I sat there for two hours and only about 6 planes have taken off; most of them went straight into the lake. One went backwards because the wind was too strong and the plane was too light. ^^ Poor guys who built that one. One went really far, almost to right in front of JCMU. We were cheering loud for that one.
Random Celestial Thought OTD: `If you threaten me with that squid, I`ll smack you with my beef.` -- fellow student at lunch yesterday
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