Rakuda rakuda raku-da. (...KA-PPA!)

UM UM TRC CHAPTER 190 SPLASH PAGE WHAT UM UM UM *Sara explodes into (trademarked) Rainbow Sparkles of Squee*

...Okay, just wanted to get that out of the way. Really, it took forever for me to read the new chapter because first I had to force myself to navigate away from the first page. If I don't see the Internet overflowing with icons/banners/whatnot using this graphic upon my return, THERE WILL BE BLOOD. (As a side not, thank you, Clamp! I knew you loved us. You had me a little worried lately, what with the whole CLONES EVERYWHAREZ thing and the conspicuous Utter Lack Of Touya - which really should be some kind of illegal, now that I think of it - but this makes up for it nicely. Just keep it coming, now...)

Sorry this update's so late, by the way. I've slowly adapted to life in Japan (though I still have to internally repress the urge to say "bless you" when other people sneeze), and as such I've fallen into a sort of rhythm - one that doesn't include hours and hours on a computer, un/fortunately. I've also discovered that the local library actually has a couple hundred English-language books, so my English-starved soul has (predictably) been eating them up like candy as of late. While I admit that reading English books in Japan is a bit regressive, I can't deny that I'm kind of depending on this whole chewing-up-books-and-spitting-out-their-themes talent I've developed to feed me in the future. I mean, what do you expect me to do - not read for a year? Impossible. Besides, there's still college. I need to be in tip-top shape to write up thesis papers on the selection and usage of flowers in Lady Chatterley's Lover and Other Useless Crap. (Also, yes, just so you know - I'm going to Bard. I get the feeling that I will be the first flagrant non-hippie to attend in the history of the school. I will incite revolution in the hearts of all my non-Greenpeace-card-carrying brethren, and then we shall rise up and overthrow our hippie bourgeois oppressors...! Or I could just eat double bacon cheeseburgers all the time. And when I talk about my Japan experience, I will say I ate whale every day. Oooh, that could actually be kinda fun. *happy sigh* Ah, the possibilites are endless.)

However, when I do find the time to watch TV, I still think Japan is awesome. Take that quiz show I saw the other day, for example: I will readily admit that, until the chick in the red and black dress opened her mouth, I DID NOT KNOW SHE WAS A MAN. And then there's Onee-MANS, a makeover show run entirely by homosexual males and a single okama (transvestite). The okama guy is awesome, by the way, and clearly knows more about make-up than any other human being alive. (FYI, The title is a portmanteau of 'onee-san', which means older sister, and 'mans', which means... mans. Obviously.) My favorite show, however, remains - and probably always will remain - Pythagoras Switch, the home of the famed Algorithm March! AndtheyalsodocoolRubeGoldbergdevicesIguess. Okay, no, really, they are very cool. And they're always different! I wonder if they actually just hired a guy to invent Rube Goldberg devices all the time...

As I have remarked on numerous occasions before, Japanese is a cheater language. By this, I mean that thousands of words exist that are shoplifted straight from other languages - English in particular. Don't know how to say 'necktie'? Try nekutai. Poketto. Intaanetto. Pankeeki. Aisu kurimu. Kokka spanieru. (Not kidding, that's actually how you say 'cocker spaniel'. A neighbor of ours was chatting to me this one time, and I got to hear it firsthand. It clued me in that we had somehow gotten on the topic of dogs, so I stopped nodding at every pause and tilted my head slightly to show I was listening. A real life-saver, that kokka spanieru.) When in doubt, Engrish it, and you will probably be understood. However, during my time here, I have managed to discover a couple treacherous holes in the system, most of which (curiously) have to do with food. Observe the following chart:

zeri ...comes from... jelly ...but is really... Jell-O (that is, not jam)
purin ...comes from... pudding ...but is really... flan
purun ...comes from... prune ...but is really... plum

So, for example, the word purin clearly comes from the English word 'pudding' , but it's not pudding. Really. I know, since I actually rather dislike pudding (its consistency is too viscous, like yogurt - another thing I hate). Purin is, in actuality... FLAN. OMGWTF. (Pudding - or at least, our pudding - is kasutaado - that is, custard - although I've found that, surprise surprise, pudingu also works.) And yes, it really is flan. Carmel sauce and everything. (I loooove purin and flan.) There's probably a lot more, but these three are the only ones I can think of at the moment, so they'll have to do.

And then there's... the counters. (...Ellipse and italics for dramatic effect.) Japanese Lesson of the Day, my duckies: everything - really, everything - has its own counter. Two hamburgers are nikou, and two french fries are nihon. My favorite counter, however, has got to be -ki, which you use only when counting airplanes, blimps, escalators, elevators, nuclear reactors, mechanical cranes, and helicopters. And hot-air balloons. Not boats, though. (That's -seki.)Or trains. (-Ryo.) Or cars. (-Dai, also to be used to count pianos, televisions, and cameras.) One can't forget -men, either, which is for counting cellos, pools, ski slopes, tennis courts, and mirrors. Although the counter -chou is also quite handy, as you use it only when counting streets, cakes of tofu, and axes. Yes, axes. It's a good thing all these objects are connected by strings of indelible logic, or else I'd be totally confused. Blah.

Okay, I'm done for now (though there's a lot of other stuff I did want to talk about). Next time: medical overkill, Obihiro vs. NYC on the stranger-danger-o-meter, and Japanese comedians. In closing, I give you a small sample of what I watch on TV practically every day: the Rakuda and Kappa dance! (I'm not kidding - every day. And it baffles me just as much as it did the first time. I still don't quite get what it's about - other than a camel and a kappa - but I do know most of the song. There's something to be said about the power of mind-numbing repetition.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FvT8CrvdBc&feature=related

Enjoy!

ASHITA YASUNDE Y/N

Still fandom-hopping. Still not sleeping. No hope of salvation in sight yet.

Okay, got off of school today 'cause I came down with this gross-sounding cough. Like, really gross-sounding. As in Possible Return Of The Prepubescent Bullfrog (a persona I briefly and unwillingly assumed some winters ago, so named for the profound similarity between it and my own decidedly uncute, borderline-croaky voice at the time) gross-sounding. At first I thought it came from Nobu, but it turns out he's just got asthma (which explains why nobody raised much of a fuss the first time I heard him trying to bring up his left lung some time in early April) and that I developed this annoying thing all by my lonesome. And then my parents were like 'oh, so, ASHITA YASUNDE Y/N?' and I was like 'UM PLZ'. (Ashita being 'tomorrow' and yasunde being the conjugated -te form of the verb yasumu, or 'to rest'.)

Aside from the cough, little to report on except for karaoke, which needs to be reintroduced to the West as a viable form of cheap and socially acceptable entertainment, like, today. I went for two hours with a handful of other exchange student friends, and it was A Good Time. (Especially considering that a private room for two hours, limitless Diet Coke, and a softserve ice cream cost somewhere in the neighborhood of five dollars, it was A Very Good And Inexpensive Time, which meets all of Sara's standards and then some.) Unfortunately, this was my first day with the cold, so after the first song I pretty much lost my voice, but it was all good nonetheless. (You don't need to be able to sing 'Hollaback Girl' anyhow - just yell it.) Then we did purikura, which - like pretty much everything else in Japan - is four hundred times more fun than its Western equivalent. 'Purikura', which is short for 'purinto kurabu' - literally 'print club' - is basically you taking photos of yourself with your friends and then drawing all over them digitally, which is - unsurprisingly - great fun, especially when the booths provide things like digital afros and goatees and bunny ears you can put on people's heads and sparkly borders and whatever. I myself have a couple purikura stickers where I sport a rather dapper moustache while a caterpiller crawls over my shoulder, presumably in quest of the stick of dango (sweet dumplings) I appear to be holding. All while surrounded by gigantic peaches, of course. Yes, purikura is awesomeness incarnate. (It, too, is remarkably cheap. Incidentally, the more people you have the less it costs, since you're splitting the price for a sheet and all. Lovely, quite lovely.)

In other news, WHY DO I NOT HAVE THE NEW PERFUME ALBUM YET. Every time I go looking for their CDs, there's nothing, and God knows I have looked. I have found Muramasa. I have found Amano Tsukiko. For God's sake, I have found Rurutia, and nobody knows who she is. I thought Perfume was, I don't know, popular or something. GAME is still in the Top Three on the Oricon charts, and I'm sure the only reason they're only no. 2 at the moment is because nobody can find their bloody CDs!! AUGH. This is even worse than when I was trying to get my hands on Utada Hikaru's 'Heart Station'. I even asked a musically-inclined friend of mine in homeroom for help with CD searching (by 'musically-inclined', of course, I refer to the fact that she would willingly rip off her own right arm if EXILE's Atsushi asked it of her - at times, I will admit, she reminds me of Cathy and her crazed passion for the Jonas Brothers), and all I learned was that she had gotten her Perfume -Complete Best- album at an electronics store in Sapporo. Well, damn. There goes that.

Other than that, life continues. I wake up, go to school, fail at communicating, go to kendo (I finally got my kendo hakama dry-cleaned, so I can at least look like I'm part of the team), bike home, eat, shower, sleep. Sometimes there is origami (I'm two cranes away from breaking 600), and sometimes there is reading (I found this huuuge bookstore with an actual English novel section, and their selection actually isn't too bad - lots of Nick Hornby books, curiously enough - so you can bet I'm going back there some time soon), but usually I just read the Daily Yomiuri, which, aside from conveniently being in English and being about Japan, the school library ever-so-kindly resubscribed to upon my arrival. Accordingly, my knowledge of current affairs and paranoia of the world at large have swelled appropriately, and now I am very serious about my earlier comment involving a crowbar and me leaving Japan. Like, seriously. The shit going down over Tibet and the Olympics and the Myanmar cyclone? It's almost denting my optimism. (Ah, yes - my invincible Japanese optimism. It's very interesting, that. Ever since I came here I have been almost totally unable to stay melancholy about anything, anytime. Even if something really stupid and annoying happens, my mind automatically finds something upbeat and positive about the situation and focuses on that instead. It is the weirdest thing evar, but I really can't find myself complaining too loudly over it. It's cool.)

Anyway, that's all I have time for today. I intend to finally force myself through 'Invitation to a Beheading' this afternoon, and this may be the last bit of free time I have for the week. (Although, really, why do I always find myself forcing my way through Nabokov books when he's one of my most favorite authors? If ever I had a literary idol, he'd definitely be it, but reading his books are like wading through crocodile-infested swampland in the nude. Augh.)