Let me begin my Pros and Cons list by bragging, and making Kim and Elise appropriately jealous.
Tsubasa Album de Reproductions, brand new and with clear file. And then CLAMP no Kiseki volumes 2-7.
OH. OH. WHAT NOW.
PROS & CONS
+ My Japanese is becoming more and more grammatically correct!
- But five-year-olds still speak better than me.
+ CAKE SHOPS EVERYWHAREZ.
- CAKE SHOPS EVERYWHAREZ.
- I have kendo practice every day and my free time is nonexistent.
+ If I did have free time, I would probably spend it vacuuming/washing/cooking/other unfun chores.
+ No homework.
- ...Oh, who am I kidding. There is no con to not having homework.
- I do not have awesome Asian hair.
+ But, until today, all my classmates apparently thought I dyed it, and having to explain that no one in their right mind would dye their hair brown just about made my life.
+ I can buy Japanese CDs at normal prices.
- So, as a result, I am teh uberpoor.
+ Every weekend, Book Off merchandise goes on sale 20%!!
- So, as a result, I am teh uberpoor.
+ I met the mayor of Obihiro today.
- In a trend established a year or so ago when I met the mayor of Randolph wearing a Curious George suit and danced with him, I told the mayor of Obihiro that my dream was to visit every cake shop in Obihiro while referring to myself in the third-person. (Sara-san no atarashii yume wa zenbu no Obihiro no keeki no mise ni ikimasu! Ichinen dake ga arimasu, dakara... dakara, ganbaremasu, Sara-san!!)
+ When I say I like Perfume, very few people think that I am talking about cologne.
- When I say I like The Fray, however, most people think I'm talking about furries.
+ GOLDEN WEEK. And TOKYO DISNEYLAND.
- ...Uhh, is there a con to this??? Because I can't think of any. Except maybe It's A Small World in Japanese, but that can be easily evaded with a well-timed stomachache.
And the best/worst of the lot?
+ THERE ARE SEVEN ELEVEN COMMERCIALS.
+ AND THESE SEVEN ELEVEN COMMERCIALS TALK ABOUT ONIGIRI SALES.
- ...So, as a result, I am teh uberpoor.
And let me conclude my Pros and Cons list by bragging, and making everyone with a decent set of tastebuds appropriately jealous.
I... have just eaten... the BEST CAKE OF MY LIFE. (Think vanilla. Then think vanilla flan, and think of it inside chocolate mousse, and then think of that liberally doused in chocolate and topped with edible silver gilt beads and chocolate flakes. YES. BE JEALOUS.)
Friday, April 25, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
TOFURKEY FTW
Yeah, yeah, okay, I haven't updated in a while. I know. Sorry. But things are really busy now, and the only time I have on the computer is when I have a free period during school, and then it's a choice between updating this thing and reading Meitantei Conan online. (...You can easily guess which one I pick most of the time.)
So. School. It's cool. Kinda. The administration has purposely kept my courses involving lecturing and intelligent thinking to a bare minimum, assuming (correctly) that I would be totally unable to follow, and, as a result, I am now taking calligraphy, art, and music. My schedule is different every day, but I usually have at least one (sometimes two) free periods in the library, where I am surrounded by books I cannot read (yes, my soul does die a little inside every time, thank you). I have math and geography about once a week each and English at least five times a week, either with my homeroom class or with third-years. Unfortunately, this time is rarely spent learning more about my native language: instead, my perfect accent is exploited for the greater good, and I end up going up the front of the class to read aloud some elementary-level story about the Machigenga people of Peru or the popularity of tofurkey in the US market. (My first week, I must have had about eight of my classmates ask me if I had ever eaten tofurkey. I remained mystified about their strangely coincidental curiosity up until yesterday, where I myself read about tofurkey in the English textbook. Good heavens.) I am also in an English reading class, though I consider it half about English and half about environmentalism. I still don't know why all our lessons are centered around global warming and CO2 emission rates, actually, but apparently next class we will be watching An Inconvenient Truth in English, which is something to look forward to. (Not the Al Gore bit - the English! Hallelujah!) (Ah, that reminds me - if I were you, I'd watch what I post on the Internet from now on. It might end up being used in the English class of a random Japanese high school. Last class, we had the distinct pleasure of translating the muddled remarks of some twenty British twelve-year-olds into Japanese and then analyzing them to see if they were 'for or against' global warming - whatever that means. All I know is that anyone who uses the phrase "top clever people" is not to be listened to, and that no one has used the word "reckon" outside of Louisiana. I greatly pitied, however, the group that had to interpret some young British do-gooder's caps-locked 'INSTEAD OF PUTTING ALL OUR MONEY INTO THE WARS WHY DON'T WE USE IT FOR RESEARCH INTO GLOBAL WARMING??')
Then there is kendo, which is my club. Needless to say, I'm terrible at it, but it is quite involving, and the other kids are very nice about the whole INCOMPETENT FOREIGNER IN UR DOJO, SWINGIN' UR SHINAI thing. A big problem is that most of the force behind the shinai lies in the left arm, and my own left arm is rather weak in comparison to my right. Mostly I just work on the basics by myself, though sometimes a boy will end up sacrificing his practice time to help me out. There's practice every day, by the way, even on Saturdays and Sundays, though Monday was a rare yasumi (break). As a result, my left arm is constantly sore. I also recently got into a bicycle accident on Pisa, so my right hand is covered in scrapes and I can't sit seiza style (something of a blessing, actually) during practice. (Pisa, by the way, is the name of my bike. It's short for 'Piece of Crap', because that is what it is. Pisa is held together solely on spit and a prayer, and the only reason I do not loathe it outright is because it is painted a rather charming cherry color. Instead, I reserve for it the passive-aggressive affection with which I usually treat my more temperamental electronics and my departed rabbit. While the good news is that, because Pisa is old, it will never be stolen, the bad news is that because Pisa is old, it will never be stolen. I understand that something called 'bicycle trading' - where, should you return to find your bike mysteriously absent, you merely take some other nearby bike in trade - is actually quite common in these parts, and it shows that same odd sense of totally Japanese practicality in its idea that if someone's got to walk, it may as well not be you.)
...Ah, and there's the bell. Next time: talking more about classes, English language books, shopping, and how earthquakes used to be things that happened to other people. Until then - ja ne!
So. School. It's cool. Kinda. The administration has purposely kept my courses involving lecturing and intelligent thinking to a bare minimum, assuming (correctly) that I would be totally unable to follow, and, as a result, I am now taking calligraphy, art, and music. My schedule is different every day, but I usually have at least one (sometimes two) free periods in the library, where I am surrounded by books I cannot read (yes, my soul does die a little inside every time, thank you). I have math and geography about once a week each and English at least five times a week, either with my homeroom class or with third-years. Unfortunately, this time is rarely spent learning more about my native language: instead, my perfect accent is exploited for the greater good, and I end up going up the front of the class to read aloud some elementary-level story about the Machigenga people of Peru or the popularity of tofurkey in the US market. (My first week, I must have had about eight of my classmates ask me if I had ever eaten tofurkey. I remained mystified about their strangely coincidental curiosity up until yesterday, where I myself read about tofurkey in the English textbook. Good heavens.) I am also in an English reading class, though I consider it half about English and half about environmentalism. I still don't know why all our lessons are centered around global warming and CO2 emission rates, actually, but apparently next class we will be watching An Inconvenient Truth in English, which is something to look forward to. (Not the Al Gore bit - the English! Hallelujah!) (Ah, that reminds me - if I were you, I'd watch what I post on the Internet from now on. It might end up being used in the English class of a random Japanese high school. Last class, we had the distinct pleasure of translating the muddled remarks of some twenty British twelve-year-olds into Japanese and then analyzing them to see if they were 'for or against' global warming - whatever that means. All I know is that anyone who uses the phrase "top clever people" is not to be listened to, and that no one has used the word "reckon" outside of Louisiana. I greatly pitied, however, the group that had to interpret some young British do-gooder's caps-locked 'INSTEAD OF PUTTING ALL OUR MONEY INTO THE WARS WHY DON'T WE USE IT FOR RESEARCH INTO GLOBAL WARMING??')
Then there is kendo, which is my club. Needless to say, I'm terrible at it, but it is quite involving, and the other kids are very nice about the whole INCOMPETENT FOREIGNER IN UR DOJO, SWINGIN' UR SHINAI thing. A big problem is that most of the force behind the shinai lies in the left arm, and my own left arm is rather weak in comparison to my right. Mostly I just work on the basics by myself, though sometimes a boy will end up sacrificing his practice time to help me out. There's practice every day, by the way, even on Saturdays and Sundays, though Monday was a rare yasumi (break). As a result, my left arm is constantly sore. I also recently got into a bicycle accident on Pisa, so my right hand is covered in scrapes and I can't sit seiza style (something of a blessing, actually) during practice. (Pisa, by the way, is the name of my bike. It's short for 'Piece of Crap', because that is what it is. Pisa is held together solely on spit and a prayer, and the only reason I do not loathe it outright is because it is painted a rather charming cherry color. Instead, I reserve for it the passive-aggressive affection with which I usually treat my more temperamental electronics and my departed rabbit. While the good news is that, because Pisa is old, it will never be stolen, the bad news is that because Pisa is old, it will never be stolen. I understand that something called 'bicycle trading' - where, should you return to find your bike mysteriously absent, you merely take some other nearby bike in trade - is actually quite common in these parts, and it shows that same odd sense of totally Japanese practicality in its idea that if someone's got to walk, it may as well not be you.)
...Ah, and there's the bell. Next time: talking more about classes, English language books, shopping, and how earthquakes used to be things that happened to other people. Until then - ja ne!
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Okane ga Nai (...tee hee)
I seriously need to stop spending money. I mean, I think I've bought more CDs in the past two weeks than I have in the past two years. I'm flat broke, what with the CLAMP no Kiseki sets for 600 yen apiece (I showed rare restraint today by only buying one) and the Angela Aki albums and the artbooks (oh Lord the artbooks). I clearly need to find some way to make money, because shopping here is like living in a dealer's room at a con and everything is half price. At this rate I'm not going to be able to afford so much as a hot coffee from a vending machine (I gotta say, it is ubercool to be able to get hot coffee out of a vending machine).
Oh, and school. Well, the important thing to remember is that it could have gone a hell of a lot worse. I came off as friendly, if a bit spazztastic, I'm sure, and I'm probably going to take kendo as a sport (there's no judo club, which saddens me greatly), though I'm thinking about joining two, since grades and studying are not an issue. No, I absolutely will not be joining the anime club. The library club, maybe, but absolutely no anime club for me. And that's all I'm saying about that.
So, in closing, I would like to gloat about a recent purchase. Thus:
BLANC ET NOIR, BITCHES. 3450 YEN FOR A BRAND FUCKING NEW COPY OF BLANC ET NOIR. It is gorgeous. GORGEOUS. It would be the crown jewel of my collection if I didn't have Iris (and I was less of a Yubinbasya whore), let me tell you that. Gaahhhh. Whatever I did in a previous life to deserve this, it wasn't nearly enough. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that it wasn't a Death Note book but an Obata Takeshi book, which means - you guessed it - Hikaru no Go! Suuuggoooiiii!
Oh, and school. Well, the important thing to remember is that it could have gone a hell of a lot worse. I came off as friendly, if a bit spazztastic, I'm sure, and I'm probably going to take kendo as a sport (there's no judo club, which saddens me greatly), though I'm thinking about joining two, since grades and studying are not an issue. No, I absolutely will not be joining the anime club. The library club, maybe, but absolutely no anime club for me. And that's all I'm saying about that.
So, in closing, I would like to gloat about a recent purchase. Thus:
BLANC ET NOIR, BITCHES. 3450 YEN FOR A BRAND FUCKING NEW COPY OF BLANC ET NOIR. It is gorgeous. GORGEOUS. It would be the crown jewel of my collection if I didn't have Iris (and I was less of a Yubinbasya whore), let me tell you that. Gaahhhh. Whatever I did in a previous life to deserve this, it wasn't nearly enough. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that it wasn't a Death Note book but an Obata Takeshi book, which means - you guessed it - Hikaru no Go! Suuuggoooiiii!
Friday, April 4, 2008
Becoming the Schoolgirl
Okay! Quite a bit has happened in the last couple of days, so let me start from when I visited my school for the first time - Wednesday, I think. Yeah, Wednesday.
Anyway. School. Everyone calls it Nansho, even though its full title is something impossibly long (...Obihiro Minami Shogyou Koukou, my sheet says - don't ask me where the Nansho bit comes from, I haven't a clue). It's a big beige building, about four stories high. I went in Wednesday to meet my homeroom teacher, Suzuki-sensei, and the English language teacher, a very nice Wisconsinite college grad I am to call Lauren-sensei. Yes, no joke, she's from Wisconsin. No, I didn't laugh. Anyway, I also met up with Lisa, the Swedish exchange student from AFS, who was similarly treated to a round of introductions before we embarked on a tour of the school. Since I'm a second-year here (for reasons most mysterious - it's the equivalent of being a junior in RHS terms), I'll be spending most of my time on the second floor (whoa, a school with a logical layout!), and Suzuki-sensei showed me where my homeroom and seat was. Japanese classes don't actually move around; the students basically remain in their homerooms all day long while the teachers rotate to where they need to be. My seat was (typically) all the way in the back corner, right by the windows, so I had a great view of the baseball fields and some of Obihiro (I get the feeling I'll be looking out there a lot...).
Afterwards, it was - you guessed it! - unifooooorm tiiiiime! Since AFS is super-cheap, we (being me and Lisa) are borrowing uniforms from the school, though we have to buy our own blouses and socks. My uniform basically consists of a knee-length navy pleated skirt, a navy button vest, and a navy blazer, complete with a little dark green tie. It's very cute, even if it isn't exactly a sailor fuku. (Ah well.) So that was all right. Nothing else of interest happened on Wednesday, so for now, let's skip to...
...Thursday! Yesterday! The first day of the rest of my life! (Or som such crap.) But it was definitely rather awesome, if I do say so myself, because I finally got my parents' permission to go bicycling.
I need to say something about Obihiro: it's in Hokkaido. It's in Hokkaido, and it's got random fields all over the place because it is two gas stations away from being Wisconsin. A biggish city in Wisconsin, yeah, but still. Wisconsin. So it's flat, for the most part, but it's also got mountains. To the west, specifically. Most of the time you can see the mountain range really well - they're always there, snow-covered and imposing and awesome. I love mountains. Hate altitude sickness and nosebleeds and all that, but I love looking at mountains, and climbing mountains, and being on top of mountains. Freaking awesome. When I was a kid I wanted to live in Colorado partly 'cause it's got mountains all over the damn place. Gorgeous stuff.
So anyway? - these awesome mountains. They're to the west and you can always see them, which is a huge help for navigationally retarded little me. The city of Obihiro really starts about 4km away from the residential hamlet my house is in (sorry, no names), so, first things first, I have to bike to the city to really see things.
I ended up biking for about five hours. (But, again, since everything's really flat, not too much of an issue.) Getting to the city was easy enough - it's mostly a straight path, and a very nice path at that - but navigating the city? Hopeless. Kaa-san gave me this sort of pseudo-map that gives a rough outline of the city's layout, but most of the streets weren't even labeled, so it was kinda useless. I'm awful with maps, but I remember places and signs, so that was mostly what I went by as I repeatedly got myself lost, unlost, and lost again.
Surprisingly, I had a really good time. Sure, I didn't find the furuhonya I'd been looking for - turns out it's in east Obihiro, so even if I had known where it was I'd have been biking for hours - but I got fairly familiar with the stores in the area around Nansho and inner Obihiro. And then there was just the general feeling of freedom I got from it. I'd never have been able to go bicycling like that in 'Dolph, for one thing. Bicycling is actually a fairly common means of transport in Japan, so I didn't look odd or out of place at all. If anything, I had to get used to being given the right-of-way at stoplights and riding on the left side of the street (Japanese cars drive on the left side, and the steering wheels are on the right side of the car).
And, I don't know... being able to go wherever the hell you want? Not having to tell anyone where you'll be, how long you'll be there, who you're hanging out with, what you'll be doing - the whole Inquisition? That was pretty nice. I haven't felt like that since I was nine or something. Nine. Do you know how frequently I get to feel nine? Fantastic. And mountains. See? A win-win situation, like the agendas say.
Today was more of the same. Last night I asked Tou-san where I could find a furuhonya that wasn't in eastern Obihiro, so I went there today and went shopping. It's still kind of surreal to walk into a CD store and actually recognize the artists, though. I mean, I know something about American music, but the majority of what I've listened to for the last couple of years is foreign, which means CDs are always imports and always super-expensive. (And, yeah, some of the music here is still super-expensive. But, I mean, it's Suga Shikao, and it's Suga Shikao's ALL SINGLES BEST collection. It's not like I can say no to that.) I'm already regretting not coughing up 1300 yen for that Go!Younha album, so I'll probably be going out biking again tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow. And then the day after that.
...But not the next day. Oh, no. No, that's when school starts. And that's when I have to get up on a stage and introduce myself, in Japanese, to the whole student body.
...Yeah. Juuuuust peachy.
Anyway. School. Everyone calls it Nansho, even though its full title is something impossibly long (...Obihiro Minami Shogyou Koukou, my sheet says - don't ask me where the Nansho bit comes from, I haven't a clue). It's a big beige building, about four stories high. I went in Wednesday to meet my homeroom teacher, Suzuki-sensei, and the English language teacher, a very nice Wisconsinite college grad I am to call Lauren-sensei. Yes, no joke, she's from Wisconsin. No, I didn't laugh. Anyway, I also met up with Lisa, the Swedish exchange student from AFS, who was similarly treated to a round of introductions before we embarked on a tour of the school. Since I'm a second-year here (for reasons most mysterious - it's the equivalent of being a junior in RHS terms), I'll be spending most of my time on the second floor (whoa, a school with a logical layout!), and Suzuki-sensei showed me where my homeroom and seat was. Japanese classes don't actually move around; the students basically remain in their homerooms all day long while the teachers rotate to where they need to be. My seat was (typically) all the way in the back corner, right by the windows, so I had a great view of the baseball fields and some of Obihiro (I get the feeling I'll be looking out there a lot...).
Afterwards, it was - you guessed it! - unifooooorm tiiiiime! Since AFS is super-cheap, we (being me and Lisa) are borrowing uniforms from the school, though we have to buy our own blouses and socks. My uniform basically consists of a knee-length navy pleated skirt, a navy button vest, and a navy blazer, complete with a little dark green tie. It's very cute, even if it isn't exactly a sailor fuku. (Ah well.) So that was all right. Nothing else of interest happened on Wednesday, so for now, let's skip to...
...Thursday! Yesterday! The first day of the rest of my life! (Or som such crap.) But it was definitely rather awesome, if I do say so myself, because I finally got my parents' permission to go bicycling.
I need to say something about Obihiro: it's in Hokkaido. It's in Hokkaido, and it's got random fields all over the place because it is two gas stations away from being Wisconsin. A biggish city in Wisconsin, yeah, but still. Wisconsin. So it's flat, for the most part, but it's also got mountains. To the west, specifically. Most of the time you can see the mountain range really well - they're always there, snow-covered and imposing and awesome. I love mountains. Hate altitude sickness and nosebleeds and all that, but I love looking at mountains, and climbing mountains, and being on top of mountains. Freaking awesome. When I was a kid I wanted to live in Colorado partly 'cause it's got mountains all over the damn place. Gorgeous stuff.
So anyway? - these awesome mountains. They're to the west and you can always see them, which is a huge help for navigationally retarded little me. The city of Obihiro really starts about 4km away from the residential hamlet my house is in (sorry, no names), so, first things first, I have to bike to the city to really see things.
I ended up biking for about five hours. (But, again, since everything's really flat, not too much of an issue.) Getting to the city was easy enough - it's mostly a straight path, and a very nice path at that - but navigating the city? Hopeless. Kaa-san gave me this sort of pseudo-map that gives a rough outline of the city's layout, but most of the streets weren't even labeled, so it was kinda useless. I'm awful with maps, but I remember places and signs, so that was mostly what I went by as I repeatedly got myself lost, unlost, and lost again.
Surprisingly, I had a really good time. Sure, I didn't find the furuhonya I'd been looking for - turns out it's in east Obihiro, so even if I had known where it was I'd have been biking for hours - but I got fairly familiar with the stores in the area around Nansho and inner Obihiro. And then there was just the general feeling of freedom I got from it. I'd never have been able to go bicycling like that in 'Dolph, for one thing. Bicycling is actually a fairly common means of transport in Japan, so I didn't look odd or out of place at all. If anything, I had to get used to being given the right-of-way at stoplights and riding on the left side of the street (Japanese cars drive on the left side, and the steering wheels are on the right side of the car).
And, I don't know... being able to go wherever the hell you want? Not having to tell anyone where you'll be, how long you'll be there, who you're hanging out with, what you'll be doing - the whole Inquisition? That was pretty nice. I haven't felt like that since I was nine or something. Nine. Do you know how frequently I get to feel nine? Fantastic. And mountains. See? A win-win situation, like the agendas say.
Today was more of the same. Last night I asked Tou-san where I could find a furuhonya that wasn't in eastern Obihiro, so I went there today and went shopping. It's still kind of surreal to walk into a CD store and actually recognize the artists, though. I mean, I know something about American music, but the majority of what I've listened to for the last couple of years is foreign, which means CDs are always imports and always super-expensive. (And, yeah, some of the music here is still super-expensive. But, I mean, it's Suga Shikao, and it's Suga Shikao's ALL SINGLES BEST collection. It's not like I can say no to that.) I'm already regretting not coughing up 1300 yen for that Go!Younha album, so I'll probably be going out biking again tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow. And then the day after that.
...But not the next day. Oh, no. No, that's when school starts. And that's when I have to get up on a stage and introduce myself, in Japanese, to the whole student body.
...Yeah. Juuuuust peachy.
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