Japanamania!

I'm watching Little Women in Japanese. It just doesn't have the same feeling. The voice actors are kind of annoying. (Random thought: How did girls go to the bathroom in giant dresses? )

The Japanese dub of Mad Men, on the hand, isn't too bad. Some of the voices are so close that it's distracting. Same with Lost.

Anyway, I really need to get back to studying... >o

I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but I'll be coming back to the states for Christmas. I know I just went home, but a) I didn't think I really had enough time to organize trips around Asia (plus most of my friends are going home as well), b) if I go home this Christmas, I can get a lot of Christmas-related stuff and use them next Christmas as teaching materials and c) I really miss Christmas at home. Next year I'll probably go to Thailand and Vietnam and Cambodia and such.

I had more to write, but now I'm tired, so I'll continue this some other time. :)

T minus 5 days until JLPT D:

It's getting cold.

I hate winter. And I hate when winter firsts come and you feel so sluggish and you don't have the appropriate outfits to wear and... pretty much everything. I stayed home today. I'm not sure if I actually have an illness or if it's just the weather. I feel so tired and restless and bleh. I have to study, but it's hard to concentrate on that. It's hard to sit around inside but it's so cold out that I don't want to leave either D: I hate you winter!!! Suffocating, dreary, depressing, immobilizing season. Your virtues are few and far between. DX

I love Mad Men. That show is amazing.

I'm tired. Must study... So many sentences, so little fun. I should probably disconnect my internet.

I wish  I had a giant bowl of calorie-less munchies.

I ordered an exercise bike. Yay for Amazon Japan being okay with COD. Can anyone even do COD in America anymore? Japan's so trusting. Anyway, I might actually get some exercise done if I don't have to go anywhere to do it.

Had a fun weekend. Maybe too fun on Friday. A pissed-off neighbor filled my friend's lock with glue the next morning (she was the hostess). They had never even bothered to say something during the party of course. Yesterday went to my friends' apartment, had some mulled wine and terrible shots of Campari (the worst alcohol in the world) and played "Shops"  which I was terrible at.

But now I have to study... I just want to sleeeeeeep.

Random note: For indie fans, Shugo Tokumaru is a really cool Japanese artist. "Parachute"  is a good song to check out (he has a Myspace which a few more songs on it as well)

Right now I'm sitting in my English room at school. It's midterm time so I don't have any classes. I was supposed to go to one of the local elementaries today, but early this morning a big typhoon blew past, and the weather advisory lasted just long enough to cancel elementary schools (but not junior high schools). Just perfect :D It felt like a snow day. All teachers have to come to school even in inclement weather, but my trip to school wasn't bad at all. Not so for many people in the eastern part of Japan today, I'm sure, as that typhoon is still making its way through the country.

The typhoon was pretty loud though, so it and an ill-advised evening coffee meant my sleep was rather delayed. Sometime around 2 am, my kitchen drain started to make loud noises with the wind. It didn't overflow or anything thankfully, but it did smell this morning. I'm really tired...

However, no sleep. I have to study. At the request of a fellow JET, I have decided to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test in early December. I'm taking level 2, the second hardest. I have to know 1000 kanji, which means a few thousand vocabulary words, and lately, I've been remiss in my studies, so now I have to work double-time to get it all in my head by December 6th. Fun :D

Luckily, I have a system. (Boring explanation ahead) I'm using Anki, a flashcard program that decides when you study each card based on how well you do on it each time (spaced repetition system). I type in sentences from Kanji in Context (such a wonderful book series) and a Level 2 grammar book and practice reading and writing and understanding each sentence. Everyday I'm doing 100 new sentences, as well as all the old ones that are due for review. It's several hours a day (plus more on weekends to add new cards), but they're purely productive hours, nothing wasted. It makes studying much more palatable than say sitting reading a grammar book and hoping it stays in your memory.

Anyway, that's my exciting life for now. Sometimes it's nice to be boring, but hard-working for a bit.

I feel like I'm in limbo.

Japanese limbo.
Career limbo.
Friendship limbo.
Dream limbo.
Self-discovery limbo.

Just life limbo.

I guess this is what they call a quarter-life crisis. There appears to be no chance for resolution in the near future.

So, I'm back in the states at the moment. I've been home for a week and a half and I leave in 2 and a half weeks.

So far I've gorged myself on various foods that aren't so readily available in Japan (and now I need to go on a diet) and visited a lot of family.

Two days ago my brother and I went to New York. A friend who got into the JET program had his predeparture orientation, so we met up with him and another dude I knew from Japan for a bit. Afterwards we went to the Museum of Modern Art, which was really cool since it had loads of famous paintings (Starry Night, Persistence of Memory, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and a bunch more). It was like revisiting my Modern Art History class. Then we tried to walk to Chinatown, but gave up halfway because we didn't have time and then went and ate at Chipotle. Finally I bought a knock-off Coach bag. It's not one of those ones with a G instead of C; it's a genuine New York-quality knock-off that has all the same Coach details, just not the quality.

Yesterday, then, Eli and his girlfriend came to Philly. We ate some Vietnamese in Chinatown, which was delicious, and then headed to the Franklin Institute. They had a Star Trek exhibit. I'm not a trekkie by any means, but I did watch a couple of the series growing up, so it was pretty cool.

Other than that, I'll be seeing more family, maybe visiting D.C., seeing some friends (I hope!) and visiting the beach (yay! :D).

A bunch of us Kobe JETs are doing an art show that starts this Sunday. My submission involves 6 fake purikura made by collaging photos on postcard-size paper and decorating them with stickers, nail polish and other tacky but fun things. I'll post a picture when I'm done. I'm really excited to see everyone else's submissions :D

I booked my tickets home. I'll be arriving on July 16th and leaving on August 13th. Depending on my sister's plans, I may be taking a trip down to New Orleans for a bit as well, but I'm not sure. Julie -> I will be dead the first weekend I'm home, so it may not be the best time to come up, not that you aren't always welcome :D

I've been watching a lot of Boston Legal lately (I stumbled upon it on Fox Japan and decided to take a reality-vacation and watched a lot of it). What a satisfying bromance. I like bromance (not the word though). I think maybe because they tend to be the best friendships on TV, and TV friendships are the most stable relationships on TV, so they're just nice to watch. And maybe I've always put the friendship kinda love on a higher esteem over romantic love.

Been listening to The Back Horn lately. They're a Japanese band, with a sort of 90's alternative feel (with some shouting every now and then). Doesn't feel nearly as cheesy as Japanese music tends to. I really like their melodies. My favorites by them are "Ame," "Sunny" and "Hitorigoto."

That's about it for now. :)

Took this from Julie...

Ask me a question... any question. Personal, public, something about my day to day life or spiritual musings or how I feel about mountains. Something you're genuinely curious about and that you think will deepen our connection or help you learn more about me.

Then post this in your journal so I can ask -you- a question. :) (optional)

My kitchen sink smells like death.

I know I need to do those dishes, but... DX  There are too many of them! And they're disgusting... And my drying racks aren't big enough. 面倒くさい！

I'm seriously thinking about throwing the majority of them away and just buying new ones.

Anyway.

The swine flu has hit Japan, specifically Osaka and Hyougo Prefectures (Kobe's in the second one of those). The first domestic case was some high schoolers on a volleyball team.

Therefore, all classes (and club activities) are cancelled this week in Kobe! (Obviously, right?)

But that's only classes and club activities. Work isn't cancelled (though, for the average teacher it's almost like a vacation because, shock!, they get to go home while the sun is still shining...). Most of the teachers seem to be making up arbitrary work for themselves that involves visiting students at their homes for some reason. Teachers are definitely much more involved in the students' lives here than they are back home. It's a bit big brother-y. However, one teacher did make a pretty cool slideshow from our overnight field trip (which was really fun :D I'd show you pictures but I think it's illegal).

I've been spending my time sitting in the staffroom studying (with lots of coffee/mahjongg/spider solitaire breaks). It's actually been really productive... though I should probably do some actual lesson-planning tomorrow.

In other news, I'm going to be buying my plane tickets to America pretty soon hopefully. I'll be coming home mid-July for a few weeks. I'm letting you know now so you all arrange your trips out to Philly to see me (JULIE! YOU LIVE CLOSE NOW!!!) ;)

No longer angry at aforementioned TV show. In fact, now I think it's just a little amazing.

I'm really angry.

Because of a TV show. DX

My tummy hurts :(  It's either too much spicy food over the past few days, or I maybe caught something from Michi cause he wasn't feeling too hot yesterday either.

Just got back from Seoul. I was expecting it to be like Japan with Korean written everywhere, but instead it felt a lot more like some American city with Korean everywhere. Considering we got there on Christmas, it was a bit nice to walk around/look out the window and pretend that I was in America at times (near my house back home there's plenty of Korean stores and stuff too after all). It was surprising to see what they had that Japan barely has any of, like Outback Steakhouses, Dunkin' Donuts and Krispy Kreme's. I even ate at Burger King at one point, lol (which was next to a Quizno's and which looked like someone had just taken it out of Pittsburgh or something).

But besides the American-y things, Seoul also had a lot of good food and cheap shopping. There were street vendors all over the place. And since it was also freezing, I bought some cute winter-y stuff. The food was also declcious (thought I don't want to think about food right now...) . You order something and they bring out a billion dishes full of little vegetable things (and kimchi) and such. It was very good.

I'd like to go again when it's warmer. The cold is so tiring so we didn't really live it up as much as we could have I think (watched a couple of movies... though they were related since we bought them for less than 2 dollars each by a bootlegger).

Anyway, pretty cool town, especially when you're homesick in Japan but don't have the money to go all the way back home :D