Sweet Glory Lordy Almighty

Apparently studying can be useful towards learning things. Somebody inform the presses.

On that note, even though I'm doing better in classes now that I'm actually attending them, Japanese still is increasingly unbearable. These things happen, being in Japan and all.

Apparently I had some photos on my iPhone. Let's look at those.

First up:



Look at this shirt. Look. at. this. shirt.

Is that not the worst shirt you've ever seen? I'm pretty sure the thing at the bottom is a pun using a kid's name, so this was made by a mother or grandmother I'd assume. Gifts are supposed to be an act of love. This was clearly part of a machiavellan scheme to get the kid to be so ostracised by the world that he'd never leave his mother's side. Pure evil genius.




This was just a cool car. Photo might be a bit blurred because the guy was walking up to it while I was taking the shot. This was right after checking Kumamoto prices, which are something like 35 dollars roundtrip if I checked right...hopefully.



This is McDonald's in Japanese. Double Quarter pounder, fries, and a coke. English writing galore. You can't see it in this photo, but the fries actually say "Golden Crispy Fries. We love to see you smile." There is virtually no difference between the layout except the fine print being in Japanese. Oh, also it tastes better here. I'll sort of miss food this cheap being this tasty.


Obligatory Pac-man shot

This was the best thing to happen to me all week. I bought this pizza on the assumption that it'd be better than the other pizzas I've bought form the store on the assumption that it didn't have corn or mayonnaise on it (dammit, Japan). I opted to bake it (we can do that apparently! There are tiny oven...things built into the stovetops. Almost nothing fits in them.) and this chose to be the best option available. This pizza wasn't quite delicious, but it was adequate. All other pizza that I've ingested here tastes like bile, so this was a very nice change of pace. Will by again, although it is sort of expensive. Maybe I'll make my own tiny pizza? Who knows.

Blog might be late tomorrow. Possibly non-existent. Going downtown to celebrate a friend's birthday, so I'll be back late.

Mexican Radio

I am so sick of that song. It keeps coming up on my playlist. I used to like it, but come on. Enough is enough.

So, today I was supposed to go down to the post office. Like I've been meaning to do for the past two weeks. And I'm sure you're all expecting me to say that I slept in and I missed it and I just stayed on campus lounging around instead.

That'd be funnier, but for once it isn't true. Ha! I went to a different, CLOSER post office that apparently is open even later, but I still got there early enough to have gone to the other one, so I was on top of things this time. Was a nice change of pace.

So, I talked to the lady, and I had prepared some words for this. I had the word for "shipping by sea" and I asked if they were able to do that. Mel had told me that I'm probably being too cautious and that I could've probably just used ship and boat and been fine, but I wanted to do it right. So the woman looked at me confused for a moment and then I asked her if they could ship by boat, to which she went "Ah, Sea Mail!" Yeah... Sea Mail. So much for learning Japanese.

She gave me a chart for pricing for air, surface, and sea shipping. Shipping by sea is 3 times less than air mail. That is RIDICULOUS. Even so, 20 kilos is still a good 100 dollars. So I should probably try to keep it under that. Also, their predetermined box sizes are sort of small, so it'll probably cost an extra ten dollars to ship an irregular sized box. Even more reason to keep it lighter! But I need to get rid of all/most of my books/comics/toys/winter clothes and old luggage before I leave. Don't want all that crap hangin around when I need to get on the plane, no siree.

I also went to go to the hobby shop that I used to go to frequently but haven't made it to in months, at least since before the winter break. Turns out that they were closed today for inventory.

The odds....

Got me some KFC which has also been a while, and was going to get some ramen but I ended up going grocery shopping instead. Got some actual tasty looking pizza for once, we'll see how well that holds out, and some more hash browns. Also some instant ramen, Japanese style. It has a dip in it that you're supposed to cook an egg in? While the noodle block is boiling? We'll see how that works. The noodles are really thin though, and flat, and the flavour packet came pre-mixed so couldn't make them dry like I wanted to. Dang. Ah well, still tasty.

All in all, a good day. Although I did wake up late and I'm still finishing my homework. Yeah....

Sometimes a parrot talks!

You know what Japan has a lot of? No, not crappy food. Okay, yes that, but not the answer I'm looking for. They have plenty of HUMIDITY.

It's so humid that my sweat is sweating. There is vague circulation in my room via the cracks in the door, but I can't keep the door open and listen to music so screw that noise. I'm debating if SCIENCE can help my by turning on the bathroom fan and trying to use that as circulation. I wish they'd just turn on the air conditioning already, don't want my laptop to crash again or anything.

Speaking of my music, check out this awesomely nerdy Winamp skin:



If anyone's interested, you can pick it up here at the official site.

Was exhausted from not sleeping last night (I hate the heat. SO. MUCH.) so I crashed after classes. It was very relaxing, but it also ensured that nothing got done. No classes tomorrow, so at least I'll have that to compensate, but I should probably do some tonight so I don't fall too far behind.

If I don't oversleep then tomorrow I will FINALLY make it to the post office. The event that I've been speaking of for two weeks now. Cause I'm on top of things.

Speaking of being on top of things, I forgot to transfer money into my checking account when I bought my plane ticket so it was overdrawn by 380 dollars. Only 60 of that is overdraft fees, but it's pretty much my own stupidity there so... what're ya gonna do. Ah well, I still got enough to survive the rest of the time here.

But feel free to send me bags of money, especially the kind with dollar signs printed right on them.

Good news, Everybody!

Bad news!

Wait, no, it is good news. I found out that the one class that I've missed a whole bunch of classes in hasn't actually been taking attendance, so it's like I was actually there! Also, all the reading, films, and tests are online, so I really haven't missed anything if you get down to it. Also my nihongonese teacher is letting me do make up for the homework I missed there, so, also good.

And I had a kebab! That's not really out of the ordinary, but it's tasty and I figured I'd mention it.

Also made plans to watch some cartoons with Fanxing ('e wants to watch some Family Guy and Simpsons so I figured I'd download/ stream a couple episodes and we could do that) so that should be fun. Also, party this friday (::noisemakers::) so that'll be cool.

Have a friend knocking on my door tomorrow morning to make sure that I'm awake, so that's covered. I really need a bed that retracts into the wall when I wake up. Do they make those? They should. Best idea ever.

The air conditioning isn't on. They came through the dorms and tested them all to make sure they worked the other day, but then turned them off again for some reason. I supposed it's not that hot out (especially when I realize that I don't need to wear slippers anymore) but my laptop overheated earlier today, so that's upsetting. There is a slight possibility that this is due more to the fans in it being clogged with dust than to the actual heat, and the fact that it was extremely hot to an almost melting point in the fan area that went away almost instantly once I took my compressed air to it, but I feel like blaming the school for stuff and also I want my air conditioning, dangit.

I also found a toy in my bookshelf. Completely forgot about it.

I might go photographing this weekend, on account that the party will cost a lot of money (30 bucks? Augh) which is excusable for the unlimited food and drink they're offering (hard to come by here. Normal buffets are 15 bucks+ as is, and this one offers alcohol, so apparently that makes it cost more) so I need to find fun for the rest of the weekend that doesn't cost money.

And I haven't been to the lil waterfall area in a while, so should be fun.

Redundant Blog Title

I was going to open with a joke that according to my auto-complete I have already used before. I have been at this gig so long that I'm running out of material.

Hoo-boy.


Today was another hang out on campus day, As I'm saving my bus tickets til Tuesday on account that going to the post office while it'd open is a good move.

You'd think that my plans to just hang around all day and do nothing had no chance of being ruined, but you'd somehow be wrong. That's how much the universe enjoys kicking me in the spleen.

Essentially, I had homework to do, and being an American and thus highly likely to be a procrastinator, I wait til the last possible moment to do my work. For that rare occasion, I waited til the day before instead of right before class like I normally do, and I went to log into blackboard to do the assignment (hurray online work!). For some reason, the site was down, and has been down all day, and is down right now! Luckily the teacher sent out an e-mail saying she was aware of it, but still, the one time I decided to do something right and I can't. Go figure.

Also I had cookies for dinner. I really need to go shopping.

And because I feel like reminding you of how long ago everything was, guess what you're getting?

200 Sbemails!

I mean, 200 blog posts.

Man it has been a wild ride. To think that I update this almost every day, even if I don't have anything to say in it! And that at least a handful of you are here every day whether I update or not in order to read about my mundanity. That's super, that really is. Touching, would be a word.

At the 100 mark I photoshopped MS Painted a picture of Godzilla wearing a party hat with explosions.

At the 200 mark, I've created a second blog.

"Oh. Shit." you probably just said to yourself. "Now he'll never update on time ever again."

You're probably right about that, but it has little to nothing to do with having a second blog, and much more to do with the fact that I am lazy and easily distracted. Besides, the other blog will only update Tuesdays and Fridays for now. It's a review site (in a sense) so it shouldn't be stealing any of the lack of content from here, and most likely will be a better read.

If you only visit there and avoid this blog, I'll understand. I won't forgive you, no, but I'll understand.

To actually put some relevant content down in here, I did go downtown today, but not until about 6. Now, the ATMs on campus clase at 5:30, and the ones in the convenience stores tend to close umm.... later. I didn't know an exact time. But apparently the time is right before I show up, because they closed at that exact time. I literally walked in as the bank attendant was locking it up for the night. So that sort of put a damper on the evening.

I did get excited to see that the shoe store was opened, on account that I need new shoes. Unfortunately, they don't have any in my size, and on top of that the cheapest shoes they offer are about 80 dollars. Boy do I love having comically large feet. I tried the mall again and no luck there either, so I think that I've resigned myself to ordering some shoes online. Probably Japanese Amazon, so that I don't need to pay more than slightly exorbitant shipping fees.

I did look into the Kumamoto tickets while I was out, and if I managed to converse properly with the guy, then they'e about 12 dollars each way, which is surprisingly cheaper than I thought it would be, so that's good at least. Going to double check that sometime soon, and maybe it'll even be lower! Wouldn't that be nice.

I also need to get back into cooking. I was given a lovely potato recipe in an old comments section (did I mention this already?) so I gotta try that out, and I still need to try the other recipes I've got written down. I went out and bought a pot, so that should be helpful and I totally won't just use it to cook ramen noodles.

Totally...

Professional Nothing Doer

That sounds like a pretty sweet gig, methinks. It may possibly be my dream job, but I know that that position will always be held by "Chick Sexer" (not what it sounds like. They're the people who check the gender of baby chickens for 'distribution' and then toss them down chutes into other piles of baby chicks. Totally awesome).

That's basically explaining today (exciting, I know). Was going to head downtown, but time got away from me as it is oft to do. I ended up eating in the Pacific Cafe and being waited on in English which is a rarity there, considering the only two people I've ever seen working there are these nice middle aged Japanese women. It was possibly a result of my being white, but not in the way that is directly because I'm white. I was asked what drink I wanted, and for some reason was drawing a blank so I glanced over at the beverage list, and must have looked like a slack jawed foreigner as I stared blankly at a list of roughly 4 drinks because the question was repeated in English, and that furthered the rest of the order in the language.

Luckily, this guy was a student, and not like some of the less intelligible conversationalists from downtown.

I hate the word intelligible. It seems negativised already, but then you get unintelligible. Telligible should be the positive form. Then again, I guess we'd have telligent, and you'd sound pretty unsmart thanks to that.

Not sure if the post office is open on Saturdays, but here's hopin. I'll just try to get down there early, and then the rest of the day should follow accordingly.