Not so According to Plan

So, woke up this morning when I got a series of IM's and I had forgotten to turn the volume down before I went to bed. So I was drowsy and slow moving for a good while after that. Decided after a bit of that to call off my Yufuin trip for today, on account that the two remaining people that were willing to go decided they didn't want to anymore.

And hell, I wanted to see Star Trek anyways!

So on with that!

Went through the trouble of looking up a theater, finding a map, writing down the showtimes, everything. Was gonna make it out to the 6:40 showing, and I left at about 3:30 so I should have had plenty of time. The theater was right near the station after all, so I could go there whenever the need suited me!

Because I had so much time beforehand, I decided that I should eat for the first time today and stopped in at a McDonald's. After wasting enough time there I decided to head to the theater and at least grab the movie tickets. The website said it was on the 3rd floor of the Tokiwa building near the McDonald's, so I figured I'd head there.

I feel the need to point out here that Tokiwa are about as popular as Starbucks. There are two on every block. And they are department store/mall outlet type buildings, so that is a weird thing to have so many of. Anyways, I went to the right one as I recalled from the map, went to the third floor and... promptly began wandering confused through a bunch of bridal shops. A confused foreigner isn't too out of place in Japan, so nobody seemed to mind aside from myself, but I hurried out of there and went back to the station to talk to the Information lady and cry until I got my way.

And of course the information booth was closed for some reason. Aren't those things supposed to be open as late as the trains?

Anyways, thank God my phone has that GPS thing. so I searched for 映画館 and it brought up all the theaters in the area. Oh hey, there were THREE. I found Cineflex which was the one I was trying to get to, and headed back there. Turns out it was a building a block over and across the street from the Tokiwa I went to. Ah... okay, these things happen. Google Maps isn't the most reliable thing in the world.

So I headed over there. And looked at the "Now playing" posters in the display. And... all Japanese movies. All drama movies. And a Yakuza film. What? Where's Star Trek? Or at least an American movie. Checked my notepad against the theater info again and... turns out I was at Cineflex 5. I wanted 11. Well... crap. I had no idea how to get there, so I wandered around trying to hit the other 2 theaters. One more Japanese only drama theater, and another one playing some American movies but nothing I wanted to see (although Terminator 4 is headed there, yay). Time to hit the cell phone again (hurray phoneternet!)

There are two intermediate stops on the way to Oita Station. 東別府(East Beppu) and 西大分(West Oita). I've always been under the assumption that these are primarily for people that live in or near the edge of town, and that they are relatively void of any value outside of that.

I turns out that Cineflex 11 is about a 10 minute walk to the 3rd floor of the Tokiwa near the West Oita stop. Which made it about an hour bus ride from where I was at the time, or a half an hour wait for a train, a 5 minute train ride, and then a 10 minute walk to the theater. Either way, it was over the time that the movie began, and chances are it'd take me even longer to find the place. So I decided to just make the best out of being in Oita and began to wander around.

Found a bunch of bookstores (none had what I'm looking for) and various other stores in the shopping strips, but nothing worth looking at really. And I still can't find cheap/not ugly shoes in my size. So that's unfortunate. I hung out at the pirate ship for a bit, wandered through some of the public gardens, ate at a Yoshinoya, watched some anime that was set up in some store's lounge, and then headed back to Beppu and campus.

Oh, and I bought a mug.

Also worth noting, is that two Japanese girls asked me for help on the train, which I had just asked three attendants for help on to make sure that I was doing it right. So it's good to know that not only foreigners don't get these horrible setups. I think I now have at least a vague understanding of how the local train system is scheduled, but eventually somebody is going to need to explain to me why I leave from a different track every time.

Church is tomorrow. Should be... interesting. Apparently the Sunday mass is in English, so I suppose I'll have to confess. I'll be sure to commit the sin of gluttony by talking JM into going to Ku-ta Ramen and engorging ourselves afterward.

You know, just to be on the safe side.

Cruel Procedures

The Japanese midterms finished up today. I will never understand why speaking for a speaking test is suddenly more difficult than going downtown and speaking with people. I guess it's just the atmosphere, but really, it's annoying that it's the case. The listening test apparently started 10 minutes earlier than I thought (which was 10 minutes earlier than class starts) so I didn't realize this until about the time class started and I walked in, noticed things were going on, and then checked my testing sheet. Thankfully the teacher had just been talking about procedure and not actually administering the test, so the fish sandwich I hastily choked down could rest easily knowing that it didn't cost me a grade.

The tests went pretty well I think, or better than I'd hoped at least. Everybody in the class was freaking out a bit, and you could tell by us all describing how catatonic we would be when our turn came about. I'm not sure if anybody else followed through with their stories but me, but if I'm anything I'm truthful. One of the questions on the speaking test was "At what times do you become nervous?" and
I answered with "Now".

I celebrated by buying my ferry ticket (finally!) and then going downtown. The ferry ticket is from Tuesday night until Tuesday Morning. Meaning I leave Tuesday night and arrive in Kansai Wednesday morning, and leave Monday night and arrive Tuesday morning. Yes, I'm skipping Monday classes, and no, I very do not care. I'm bitter about having a Tuesday exam still, so I'm taking a personal day.

Downtown I bought some more random series to look into: Eatman, Zetman, and Ubelblatt. I've heard of the first two before but never read, and the third one has pretty art and I judge plenty of books by their covers. I'm so excited to be starting so many series that I'll never be able to keep up with when I return to the states. Seems like a great movie, really.

I also went to CoCo Curry house for the first time in forever. I forgot how good non-campus curry was, as I haven't had any since I went to Osaka. Oh man. SO good. The first bite was pure heaven. I don't know why I don't eat there more often. Curry costs about the same as ramen, and both are less than McDonald's. I'm some kind of crazy fool.

I also picked up more in this capsule toy series I've been collecting. Hunting trophy figures. I'm not really into hunting, but these are really cool high detail animal mount figures and I just sorta like them. Except today I found out that there are rare ones that are just the skulls of the animals. Kinda.... creepy.

Tomorrow I go to Yufuin! Probably by myself. Out of everyone I asked, only three people were interested, and all of them have cancelled, or "blocked" as it's come to be called here. Which sucks so hard. But I really want to go, so I'm going. I'll take pictures, and hopefully I can get someone to come along last minute. But if not poo on them, it's awesome Roshi time.

Also have plans to go to church on Sunday. I don't know if anyone is aware of this, but I'm technically Roman Catholic, and at the very best generally Christian, but I don't do much about it. For some reason I have a hankerin' to go to church, which is weird cause I haven't been in 3 years. Maybe I'm going to die soon? Who knows. But it should be an experience.

The church. Not the dying.

Stuck in the 90's Again

I've been listening to a crapload of 90's music lately. If there's anything that you think I've probably forgotten about, lemme know.

Midterms going pretty well so far. Japanese part 1 was today, and part 2 is tomorrow which includes the speaking test. Final Anthropology test was today as well which was decent, and the final exam is Tuesday.

Star Trek comes out this Friday, and I want to go to Yufuin on Saturday. Going to try to get people along for both events, but dagnabbit I'm going whether anyone else wants to or not.

I also finally found something on TV worth watching here. There's a show called Boss, which is more or less CSI but in Japanese and with better music, and a female lead. I don't actually watch CSI so maybe that matches the show as well, but the only reason I'm watching this is because it's better than pretty much everything else I've seen on TV here. Honestly, immediately following the program was one of those terrible game/talk shows where for some reason a bunch of Japanese guys were crawling around on the set and making cat noises. It was even more annoying than it sounds.

Anyways, if anyone is interested in reading up more or watching an episode of the show, Boss can be found here, so have fun with that.

Two more things:

If you haven't seen it, the new Sherlock Holmes movie trailer is out, and it looks awesome. I'm all for skipping Christmas to go see it.

Also, if you've ever heard of it, I remembered the internet animated series "Tomorrow's Nobodies" earlier today. Apparently they did a series of shorts called "David Forgets" and some of them are entertaining. Here's one of the better ones: David Forgets

On a related note, apparently Tootsie Roll has a contest going on for 50,000 dollars. I need to get myself a tootsie pop so I can attempt it and answer, but you can enter yourself. If you're not an avid Tootsie Pop fan that already knows about the contest, here's the link to guess how many licks it takes to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop.

MIdterms Thursday and Friday

So if I don't update don't be surprised. Gonna be studyin me arse off.

Today/Yesterday was good. Class sucked, but I had good food and played some TF2 with JM. And then I walked to the highway bus station and ran into a bunch of people that I knew which was cool. And they were out of potatoe croquettes, so that was upsetting. But it turns out that chocolate bread is pretty good, so that was a nice replacement.

I need to buy my ferry ticket either today or tomorrow, so I should probably get on that.

I got nothin else for now, sorry. Midterms and my anthropology final are heavy on my mind.

Watch a funny clip with Patrick Stewart.

Surprisingly Good

Today was a really good day and I'm not quite sure why. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. I woke up feeling good, I made a good breakfast (in my opinion hash browns are always good), I even had fun in class. I hate class; I think I've made that quite evident.

Was so weird. I'm afraid that it'll happen again and I'll be genuinely cheerful, and that would be truly frightening.

One thing I need to mention. In less cheerful news, it turns out that I have an exam next week Tuesday. Which means that I can't leave for Kyoto this Friday like I intended, and my vacation is also cut down effectively by that many days. This blows. Quite royally, in fact. So I'm thinking of taking advantage of the fact that I'm stuck here this weekend to maybe take the train to Yufuin for an afternoon, and go to Oita and FIND THE MOVIE THEATER ALREADY SERIOUSLY NOW. Everything worth going to in Oita is located entirely on the opposite side of town, and since I'm unfamiliar with most of the city it's not so easy to navigate.

On another note, I just got done hanging out with Fanxing in the first time since umm... well, since before the semester break started. Him and I have been alternately busy whenever we've wanted to hang out together, so it just didn't happen. He showed me some pics from his trip to Beijing with his dad and we watched a movie. Never Back Down. It was entertaining, but not really that great. Somebody needs to provide me proof that there are highschools out there where everybody looks in their early 20's and all the kids are fight club enthusiasts.

Because that is the highschool that I should've gone to.

A Broken Chain

You know how you can be having a pretty good day, where things are going well, just not that exciting? Everything sort of chains together throughout the day as just happening, not bad, but not fantastic, but at least all in the positive. Then something comes along and all of a sudden the whole day, and everything else after it, just seem broken? Yeah, this was like that.

Slept in late for the first time in a week, which was nice. It was really really really windy out today and my window was rattling, so that was irritating, but at least that means that it isn't hot. Got to the cafeteria and the donburi counter was out of service so I got some nice chicken tonkatsu no tamago toji, which is always good. And I decided to eat at the window, because I keep forgetting that the view from where I live is beautiful and I need to learn to appreciate it a bit more. I think I'm starting to do crap like that because I'm consciously aware of how close I am to coming home. Half the time it's a feeling of anxious joy, and the other half it's regret for not having time to do more.

Another thing in my mind is making sure my money doesn't burn out. I'm trying to cook for myself more to save money on food, and I decided to see if the internet in the lobby is fast enough to play games so I don't need to go downtown anymore. It is, actually, at certain intervals. Early in the day when everyone is in class it's at a good speed, and then again late at night when everyone's going to sleep. I was out there a bit earlier today, and I don't think I'm ever doing that again.

There are professors on campus that use the fact that it's international as a means of making their students do tons of research work by asking random students questions. I don't mind this, if I'm doing something that my attention can be taken off of, or if I'm just eating or walking around or something. But if you come up to me while I'm playing an online game, fast paced with guns ablaze, with my headphones on in addition to that, and you approach me from behind so you can see all of this occuring beforehand, and you interrupt me to do a math problem because you heard that Americans can't do math, at the very least have the common decency to present it in the form of a question instead of stating your facts and then tossing the paper on my keyboard. And if you do do it that way, don't be surprised if I pick up the closest object and shank you as hard as my spindly little girl strength will let me.

And if you don't have the language skills to perform the simple task of asking a favor, then please just leave me the hell alone.

Christ.

Tickets to Osaka will be bought tomorrow for my trip to Kyoto on the cheap. Arrangements have been worked out with Jason, and he is fretting like my grandmother over my sleeping arrangements and travel costs. Overall this trip should be much cheaper than last time on multiple accords. First being that I'm not staying in a hostel for more than a day (I wanna go back to the one in Osaka for a night while I'm in the area). Second, I'm not going to Tokyo this time, so that's an automatic 80 dollar ticket deducted from the price. Third, I bought a CRAPLOAD of junk last time, and I have an emulator for my DS now so I don't need to buy any games anymore either, so unless I see something that I really REALLY need to have, I shouldn't be buying all that much this time around. So most of the costs will go toward travel and food, and overall the trip should be nice and cheap. Just the way I like it.

Good People

Today was a good people day. As in, I kept seeing good people everywhere. Old people on campus were helping each other, I saw some schoolkids helping each other with stuff, I went to the hobbyshop I normally go to where the guy was chatting up his regular customer, and I ate at Mos Burger where a mom was excited to be with her kids and do I Spy books with them. Which yes, the restaurant had Japanese I Spy and Where's Waldo? books. How awesome is that?

So yes, I went downtown, expressly to play me some video games because I am a nerd. Also picked up some more manga. I figured I'd be elitist for once and try to pick up something that nobody else knows of. One of those worked, I got some book called Puzzle that didn't turn up anything on Google. Then the other one I got, Dragon Sister, didn't turn up anything good. Apparently after the first volume it just plummets in quality, so I guess don't buy any more of this series.

In other news, I crashed my iPod. That's about the only way I can describe it. The system crashed and stopped working. It's working now because I'm awesome and I fixed it, but this just made me realize that putting all your tech in one device may not always be the best solution to moving toward the future, especially when said device doubles as a phone and a camera, which I was left without until I could get back to my computer. Also, my iPhone has 4 gigs of secret space being used on it, so if anyone knows what THAT is about, please tell me.

I got some more pizza from the store, different brand this time. Hopefully it's at least as average as the last one, though I have my doubts.

Also, tired, but I managed to blog on time. Go me.