I'd like to call this one "Striped Sweater"

I pretty much forgot about my blog today. I've been doing research and studying and got kinda distracted.

No, I'm not lying. So maybe I'm not studying Japanese like I should be, but I'm studying THINGS, so that's like it's important.

I enjoy Japanese currency. I'm not sure why. Especially the coins with the holes in them. Also the 5 dollar bill is a coin, and this amuses me for some reason. I guess it feels me with a sense of security that if someone steal my wallet I still have enough fair to get home. Of course, then I don't have my ID, my alien registration card, my debit card, the 80 dollars that were in the wallet, and various other valuable things.

Oh, also my student ID that I'd need to get INSIDE the dorm. That could be a problem.

Because I don't have anything else to add, here are some amusing pictures:





That's right.

I'm a princess.

Fergalicious

I should just start naming my blogs after what song I'm listening to at the time.

Err...title unrelated. Of course. Yeah.

On a related note though, I am d to the e to the l-i-c-i-o-u-s.

Classes went reverse of how I had expected. I was dreading the advent of first period thinking that, judging by it being about languages primarily, my early bird class is the one I'm keeping.

Ha ha. No. No, it's not.

The teacher has a very...odd grading system. And she divides the class into tiers. Also, it's not related to languages at all. Judging by the syllabus at least, it's primarily about economics...for some reason.

The other extra class though, I walked in and there was this scruffy looking, unkempt, unshaven, long hair pulled back, wearing baggy pants and a loose dirty sweater professor standing there.

Oh god, he's so awesome. He seems to know absolutely everything about the subject and he managed to talk practically without pause for the full two hours. Which actually made the class seem longer for some reason. I honestly felt like I was sitting there for four hours.

Got some good notes though.


Pic related. It's everything I learned about Peoples and Religions of Eastern Asia.

Either way though, one class is getting dropped, and on top of that I don't have Wednesday classes. So I expect to be a lot more productive, or at the very least start sleeping for decent amounts of time.

Also, my theory that Febreeze can kill anything has been proven correct yet again. Cockroaches will live for for days without a head, but one spray of Febreeze just makes them curl up and die instantaneously. Which is good, because I've been at war with this thing for a good week now. The only thing I have edible in my room is my rice... and I hope to god he didn't get in there, cause it's a good ten kilo bag that I've touched ONCE. He always seemed to be in my trash can though, so I think that's a good sign. I had a lot of partially eaten sweets in there, and I think that's preferable to a dried grain. I don't know anything about cockroach biology though. Maybe they feed on human fear for all I can tell you.

Fanxing is very studious. We watched xXx today and the move was paused periodically for me to tell him the meaning of a word and write down an example sentence. Afterwards we did the same thing with a book he'd been reading. Some things that are sickeningly obvious to English speakers are apparently not immediately comprehensible, and thus are VERY difficult to explain.

But hey, I gave him the gift of sarcasm. So that's a thing.

Not saying much though. Apparently it already exists in a limited amount in Chinese. Japanese speakers don't understand it though. It's just taken as a lie at face value. Sarcasm literally translates to lie in their dictionaries.

Sad, really.

I'm in Japan....really!

Holy Christ. Adsense is worthless. Honestly, it is. I know I don't beg you guys to click the links in the ads, and by all rights I don't expect you to or even think you should. But suffice it to say I get enough page views where I think I should have earned more than 6 cents in the past two months. I might add some more ads to the site in other relatively inobstructive locations, but if you guys are against my whoring out let me know and I'll uh..not...do...that.

I've become insomniac. I got 45 minutes of sleep last night, then struggled through classes today. Then napped for 2 hours after classes. Which was a stupid move, cause my body usually registers me one sleeping period in 24 hours, so I probably won't get to sleep tonight. Ah well.... It's not like I have 4 classes in a row tomorrow.

Oh wait..... But that's the only time that's happening again. I'm going to all the classes tomorrow so that I can determine which ones to drop on Monday. Hell, I might drop all my non-language ones. I shouldn't, but I'm still WELL over the minimum credits for the whole semester. So I can do what I want. It's like I'm abusing the Japanese school system! Which the Japanese themselves do, incidentally. Most of the time the grades don't actually matter as much as the name of the college you went to. So it's kinda like name dropping except with your academic career. And it WORKS. That's also sick and wrong.

For anyone that hasn't caught on yet, I pretty much leave my away message on 24 hours now. Unless I'm doing stuff like tweaking my computer. Then I tend to take it off or just log offline. So for anyone curious just...message me. And if I'm around then I'll get back. I'm usually on between 9am-1pm EST, so go for that. But I pop on in between classes, so you might win the Roshi lotto and luck out.

Anyways, in the vein that I also serve to entertain, I'm going to start adding actual CONTENT to the blog instead of just ranting about things. Oh, there will still be plenty of ranting, don't you worry. Possibly some rambling as well. A couple of anecdotes even. But I've got some stuff that I've been thinking about adding, and I'm thinking of starting a project up to start redoing an old comic I used to do that I'll possibly post here. Probably on Wednesdays. We'll see.

Along that train of thought though, here's a Youtube link. Alouette as sang by the Boycezone, a Welsh Max Boyce tribute band that plays in honor of their local rugby team. For some reason this video amuses me immensely. For those of you who don't know, the song alouette is about kids pulling apart a lark and naming the body parts as they do so.

We here at Abroad or Two Blogspot and Operandi do not condone violence against animals.

We do however find animal violence hilarious when set to epic music. As evidenced by this ferocious ninja rabbit battle. It's so adorable that you'll laugh til you bleed.

Wait... that doesn't make sense...

Ah hell.

On another note, if you've ever been interested in drawing in an anime style, or any style at all really, do not ever pick up this book. It's been agreed in group discussion that this is the sole worst thing that could ever happen to someone who wants to learn to draw. A notable review:

If your children are in any way serious about being good at drawing manga - or drawing, period - this is NOT the book to buy for them. I can only assume books like this come about because some clueless publisher has a 13 year old daughter who "draws anime", because this is not up to what any sane person would consider publishable "how-to-draw" book standards. Anatomy? Not important here, not even stylized anatomy. Proportions? What are these "pro-por-ti-ons" you speak of? This book sure doesn't know. It disturbs me that so many how-to-draw manga books are illustrated by people who, frankly, need one of these books themselves. Don't doom your children to hours of failure and frustration.

This book is absolutely awful. Look elsewhere.

If that doesn't scream "Buy this book" then I don't think anything will.

I'm off to fight crime now. Mountain crime. Yeah...

Huh. Whaddaya know

Weirded isn't a word. As in "Weirded out". I've been using something not a word for years. Thanks Firefox auto spell check!

So, today was lame. I did nothing I set out to do. I wanted to wake up and do my laundry. I DID do that. But then I realized I left one of my towels at the Onsen yesterday, so I couldn't shower yet. So I had to wait to take a shower. So I figured I'd take like an hour long nap waiting for the laundry to get done.

So I woke up at 6:30 pm. This is generally why I don't take naps. Grabbed my laundry from the "YOU TOOK TOO LONG" pile next to the side of the machine, and went to get some breakfast/lunch/dinner.

Then I turned off my computer as a means of not getting distracted from my homework.

And proceeded to play with my digital camera for a good hour and a half. Buh?

Yeah, I'm honestly not aware of how it happened. I think I might have ADD. Nobody can get that much fun out of a camera on purpose.

I decided that I get less distracted WITH the computer on, so I turned it on, and got distracted for about 4 hours because the damned thing wasn't working right and also wouldn't connect to the internet.

So there's that.

Basically, I didn't finish my homework.

I'm still working on it but I don't PLAN to finish it all. Screw that. It's four worksheets. But at this school, the worksheets are two pages long. And double sided. So it's essentially 16 pages of work. And in addition to that there are 5 chapters online that we were supposed to do over the legitimately 4 day break.

I decided way early on in this assignment to just say "fukital" to all the work.

Bunky Prewster

Haha. So I was reading random TV Tropes articles (Don't go there by the way. It'll consume your life) and I started reading an article called "Punk Punk". Right as I started reading it, the song on my playlist changed to "Punk" by the Gorillaz. Talk about a crazy random happenstance.

Anyways, I went to Yufuin today! It was awesome. First time in a car since I got to Japan, so that was cool too. Still weirded out by driving on the wrong side of the road though. You don't notice it as much in a bus. Also, in some parts of Japan apparently one way streets are two way streets. What I mean by this is the road is wide enough for one car to go down. BARELY. But for some reason it's two ways, and they just have a traffic operator every 60 feet or so point at cars and having them pull over so another one can go through. It's all quite stupid.

But look, a kitty!



D'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW. There are tons of outdoor cats in Japan, I love it.

But yeah, first thing we did when we got to Yufuin was get lunch, which is a good thing because I was starving. I opted with the group that went to the cafe, and we sat on the deck to get served. It had a great view of the lake in Yufuin (Kinchoumizu? Something like that. I forgot to write down the name). I took a bunch of pictures of it and they're all up in the photobucket dump site, so check them out. There was a huge koi swimming around, and a bunch of giant ducks. Seriously. The lake was really pretty though and the food was good.



Being a manly man I picked the first thing on the menu that had meat in it. Turned out to be this. So, miso soup and a rice bowl with a bunch of pork and green leafy things in it. Turned out to be pretty good, and there was this...stuff on it that tasted sort of good, and I made a mental note to not ask anybody what it was, because I probably would've broke down vomiting if I knew. I'm like that.

Anyways, here's the lake. I managed to get the reflection sparkles in a shot, and that startled me for some reason, so I'm excited.:




Mmm. Sparkly.

So after food time, onsen time came. Sort of. The main goal was to come there for an interview, which being that I speak too little Japanese to do an interview, involved me sitting there trying to pick up on what everyone was saying for an hour. But hey, at least it got us free admission to the hot springs, which was nice cause it was a 5 dollar spring if I overheard correctly. That's really expensive for hot springs, as they're normally 50 to 100 yen. So yeah. Really nice. Had complementary towels, actual shower heads, shaving razors, combs, etcetera. Took a comb and a razor as self proclaimed auto-omiyage (omiyage is an important word in Japanese. souvenirs are lifeblood). In the process apparently I taught a Japanese man how to steal, because he took one of the towels. Granted they are complementary, but the razors and combs and stuff were intended to be taken, what with the disposable packaging and all. The towels had umm...a dirty towel basket. So that they can clean them.

Well then....

Anyways, this hot spring was outdoors which is sort of what I expected from all of them. When we were all significantly less naked I went back and took a photo. A poor photo, but this is all you get dammit. So here:



Afterwards we went to a place that I aspire to own one day that was essentially a mix between a pub and a cafe. The owner was outside watering flowers in his kickass bartender outfit and goatee and oh god it smelled pretty. The...the flowers. Shut up.

But yeah, inside looked like this:



That's a good thing, I promise.

It had that sort of "sophisticate" feel to it and the guy was REALLY friendly and told us stories (haha...in Japanese. Dammit) and mixed the drinks well. The capuccinos looked awesome, and apparently my friend's Irish coffee was the best thing ever. And one of the drinks had a story about it involving a rainbow of flavor. I'm serious. That's about all I could pick up from the story, so be thankful you get that. Sure, you'd probably like context, but you know what? I really don't have any.

Anyways, I got an apple juice because I'm boring and didn't feel like trying to figure out the menu, especially cause I was lied to when I was told it was all just coffee. Blargh. NEXT TIME...

I would LOVE to own a type of gentleman's club (not that kind) like that though. Just a nice garden outside, fancy new world knick knacks, weird items hung everywhere, serving drinks and snacks to people. I think that'd be kinda cool. I wanted to be a bartender when I was younger thanks to bad detective stories and westerns. This guy proved to me that those characters actually EXIST, so I don't see why I couldn't do it.

Ah well. Que sera sera.

I came back with the early group (the other group stuck around to go eat more and go drinking) which was for the dual purpose of my being exhausted from not sleeping the night before, and for the fact that Tuesdays ARE YAKITORI DAY YEAH! Unfortunately, Yakitori-san wasn't here today. This depressed, saddened, and filled me with grief. So as a result, tomorrow I'll have to go to You Me town and get a whole bunch of half price yakitori to make up for it.

Also to try dangerous experiments. I'll tell Fanxing to blog for me in case I die ass a result. You're all invited to the funeral. Punch will be served.

Oh yes, the trip to Oita is called off for tomorrow. I'd be more upset but I can now use the day to finish my homework/study for my test on Thursday. So there's that.

I need to end these on more witty sentences like I used to.

Edit: I'm not sure how many people notice this, but I tend to edit this things once or twice. I post it with the full size pictures because it stopped auto-resizing them, then I go through and resize them myself. Then I view the blog and make sure all the pictures are right and fix the spelling errors I catch. Seriously. I work hard at this, you jerks.

Edit edit: Against my better judgement, I'm putting a picture of myself in the blog for once. I tend not to take these, but the Japanese refuse to let you get away with it. I'm putting it up just to show the humor of the size difference. I feel like I look like a different species next to them. The size difference isn't quite as noticeable from my perspective when I'm WITH them, but you notice it in the way things are designed. I'm too tall for most of the chairs and desks here so that gets irritating.

Bloggin' a blog

Man do I suck.

You know those times when you have to get into a concert, or you get a discount off of admission for some place if you bring a canned good in?

I've never brought in anything that wasn't canned green beans from the bottom of my pantry.

How many of you HONESTLY can say that you have?

Man. Next time I'm gonna go out and but a can of potatoes or spaghettios. Something I'd actually want to eat. And if the homeless guy who gets it doesn't like potatoes or spaghettios, then I guess he can move his damn commie ass back to Russia now, can't he?

Didn't do much today. Came up with an idea for a book, but of course I am way too damned lazy to ever write it. That won't stop me from not posting a synopsis here for paranoia of theft. HA! TAKE THAT! Suffice it to say it's Discworld inspired because I feel like being unoriginal, and here is a paint-copy of my sketch:



Yeah. How bout that.

Tomorrow I go to Yufuin! No I have no idea where that is. Yuan says it's something like an hour away. That... that doesn't really help me. But you know, whatever, that's fine. I'm also supposed to fill out a form saying I'm leaving the Oita prefecture, but I really don't care enough. I think it's long term anyways. But suffice it to say, if my next blog has a note about how evicted I am, then you'll know I was wrong.

My "project" is almost complete. I give it another week and a half. Although as far as photographs show I haven't been very secretive about it. Ah well. You'll see the full thing when it's done.

Cheers.

Edit: Haha! Reading TV Tropes! Yes I'm an addict. Anyways, was reading the least of "So Bad it's HORRIBLE" anime, and one example that I always use was on there. The series is called "Pilot's Candidate" in America, and "Candidate for Goddess" in Japan. I'm using this as more or less proof that anybody who told me it didn't suck is a goddamned liar.

That is all.

Ach Blech Blaugh

A word from the wise:

If you come to Japan, do NOT, I repeat. DO NOT. EAT. BEEF. JERKY.

At the very least not from a vending machine. God. Slim Jims taste better than this crap. Oh god.

So vile. But I'm out of food so I'm searching vending machines for stuff. All the oreos are gone. Muy triste.

Ah well.

Today was pretty sweet. I didn't really do much, but I hung out with Fanxing and he made curry and it was DELICIOUS OH GOD. I really gotta get him to teach me to cook or something. Watched two more episodes of the OC. Sandy Cohen is the coolest guy ever. Seriously. He's the only person on the show who's never given me an opportunity to go "What the hell is wrong with you?" On top of that he's the only person on the show who hasn't kissed a different person than he's supposed to. So basically the island of no drama. I could relate to a guy like that. If I was like a billion times more awesome. Seriously, so cool.

God I probably shouldn't like the OC as much as I do. Maybe I should go wrestle some ravens or something.

Speaking of which: Ravens are as smart as humans.

I'm serious here. I spent like 8 hours the other day reading wikipedia articles and the articles that they link to and the academic journals THEY link to. Anyways, look it up. Ravens have long term memories, problem solving skills, logical comprehension, speech abilities. Hell, they CRAFT AND USE TOOLS. It's insane. If you ever catch a black bird eyeing you up like it's trying to figure out exactly how useful you could be to it, THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT IT IS DOING. Crows are similarly smart, and to top that off THEY travel in flocks. Murders, if you will.

So how safe do you feel, knowing that there are intelligent flying murders roaming the skies, watching and judging you/

Yeah, though so.

In the mean time, there is a site called the Terrible Crossover Fanfiction Generator. Give it a shot. Hit refresh for new options. It's been around for a long time but I tended to just ignore it until recently. So I clicked it and got this:



Yeah, how could I pass THAT up?

So I'm gonna work on that. If I get enough people wanting me to, I'll post it here or at least a link TO it when it's finished. Should be fun.

I'm going back to my starvation now. Enjoy your first world countries.