The Frosting on My Crap Cake

Ladies and gentlemen, I do not think you would believe how terrible my birthday weekend and Christmas holidays have been. It is a tale of such shittiness that even I cannot fathom which god or fortune I have pissed off to deserve such a shitty ass week.

Erykah's bad week: let me tell you of it.

It began about, well, a week ago when my right knee started acting up something fierce. It wasn't the normal chondritis flare up, but something on the side of my knee that was just causing such ungodly pain that it hurt to walk, to sit, or even lay down. Could not get comfortable for the life of me. That, plus the necessity of biking to school every day to save money on transit probably did not help.

Last Saturday, on my way via bike to campus to tour my new dwelling (and meet my roommate, Hikaru) my wallet fell out of my pocket. There wasn't a lot of cash in it (under $10 worth), but important things such as my student ID card (needed for library access), my Gaijin Tourokusho (Foreign Registration Card, my Japanese ID), my NHS insurance card, my LMCU debit/ATM card, my Citibank Visa, my Shinsei Bank ATM card, my SUICA card...

I mean. Fuck. I pretty much lost my life there. Thankfully, I keep my passport in my room tucked safely away. So, there's my last form of ID until tomorrow when my new Student ID is issued and I can go to the ward office to apply for a new Gaijin Tourokusho and insurance card, which will be needed when I go to the Red Cross Hospital in January for the followup appointment about my damned knee.

Which brings us to this morning. The first morning of my Winter vacation, which I had intended to spend watching Stargate and various other movies. But alas, I noticed something was wrong with the fan (it wasn't running) and my keyboard becoming quite hot. So I decide a restart...and surprise, surprise.

Fan Error.

So, within four months I have had the fan unit on the IBM die. What the hell.

Call Mike, tell him the bad news. He'll be shipping out the Dell Mini 9 tomorrow via EMS and I will be shipping both the burnt out fan units back to him, if not the whole damn cursed system.

Here I sit, in an internet cafe in Fuchu, in my cubicle drinking endless free Coke and passing the time. I hope things start looking up soon. I could use some good luck right about now.

日本語のクラスは楽しそうだ！

Class has taken a turn for the better. I say this now in case it eventually eats me alive and I start to loath the teaching methods employed here, but considering I am on a high of good grades right now plus actually debating grammatical semantics with the professors (in a good way no less!) I am definitely enjoying this term worlds better.

Probably because, in all honesty, Kurokawa is a superior professor. That, and the class is half the size it was in Japanese 2. So, no sections, no having 5 different professors. We primarily have Kurokawa for grammar, Hiraki for video/listening comprehension, and Waki all day Friday's for reading comprehension and composition.

But the past few days have been especially fun to note. We are learning how to pretty much reiterate to others what we have heard from one source or another, so each day at the beginning of class, Kurokawa will ask us to tell her some news. The past topics have been:

The Iraqi Shoe-Throwing-at-Bush Incident
Barack Obama being named Time's Person of the Year
How the economic recession has affected F1 racing

The last one, more than anything else, was unexpected. It appears Professor Waki is a fan of rally racing and I actually found out, through her, that Honda and Subaru have pulled out from Rally Racing and currently only Toyota and Mitsubishi remain, though it seems the teams are suffering budget cuts.

Wait, what? Subaru has disbanded it's Rally team?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I mean, yes, I'm a Mitsubishi girl, but damn. Subaru is my second favorite, and the Impreza is a wonderful piece of machinery (again, me and Professor Waki were bantering back and forth about the Impreza and the Lancer Evolutions). To hear that the economic woes are stopping sweet, sweet rally racing makes me sad. Especially since the competition between Subaru and Mitsubishi was pretty intense.

Sad panda.

On top of all this, I feel much more confident in the class, especially when we had to peer-correct each others speech scripts and I had one of the highest scores in the class. Couple that with exceptional grades on my quizzes and first test and I'll say that this term is going to be much better than initially expected. I am having an easier time comprehending everything, so good vibes.

While I'm on this high of good vibes, I also think that when I return home, I might volunteer to tutor the first year Japanese students back at GVSU or even seek an internship with Professor Robinson while I study for the GRE to apply for Stanford, Irvine or Berkeley. It seems to me like California is the place to go, and I have good friends out there to boot.

うんん！ファイト！頑張ろう！

Birthday Party # 1 - The Massive Train Excursion

Today's Tokyo Adventure is brought to you by the letter T, for the massive amount of train tickets used and bought today to get to all the places I had to go and lines I had to switch over to get home.

The plan started about a week ago. Abigail, a classmate and one of the first people I met in class whom I became friends with, had noticed I was in a rather depressive funk. I was away from home, unsure about whether to stay in Intensive II or not (I left, obviously. She remained, Godspeed, Abigail!) missing Michael and generally feeling blue about being unable to go home for my birthday or Christmas. So, she offered to plan a small day out for the two of us the week before my birthday (as on my birthday I intend to have a huge shindig that she might miss due to it being on a Sunday and conflicting with Church).

So the itinerary was as such: go to church with Abigail, go back to her home stay apartment, and dinner and a movie.

Now, I'm apprehensive about churches on general principle. I've had my whole lifetime's worth of bad experiences involving organized religion, and so there is a severe, severe feeling of distrust in any sort of hierarchical structure pertaining to spiritual matters for me. The last church I was a regular attendee of spawned some really bad memories which hurt me. That, plus having attended a private Christian school where the administrators often turned a blind eye to bullying and played favorites...yeah, not hard to see why I was weary.

Much like the last time I went to church with Abigail (and the time before that was with my Mom last Mother's Day), I pretty much felt indifferent. But the sermon's message about, "What is the one thing you would want from God?" and the story of Solomon's asking to be a better ruler got me thinking. What would be the one thing I'd really want from God? Or at all, in life really?

All that I really want, and have wanted, is love. I want to feel loved and to be able to love myself so that I am able to love others. The lack of love I received from those who oftentimes called themselves "Christians" is what hurt me probably more than anything else, and to this day, still makes me weary of being around other Christians as a whole.

As much as I hate to admit it, I broke down. So many negative memories and feelings, ones that I have clung to, came bubbling back to the surface. I grew up in the church, and with the childlike innocence, I held onto my beliefs until they could no longer sustain me. Then somewhere along the line, I just gave up.

I might not consider myself a Christian by any stretch of the imagination, but I am at the very least taking steps to reconcile my negative feelings toward the church so I can move toward a path of healing myself from the pain in the past. Also got a bilingual copy of the New Testament, so here's to improving my Japanese, one scripture at a time.

Anywho, enough about churches...

After that, we headed back to Abigail's homestay, and I introduced her to pictures of the Michael, and she envied his hair. His lovely, lovely, hair ;) We talked about a lot of things, and then her homestay mother (Junko) and father (whose name escapes me) made this amazing dinner for me. Abigail had been phishing for my favorite foods and so I was treated to a creamy carbonara pasta (so, so, so, good), homemade pizza (dough and all!), salad, and a strange yogurt like confection.

But what really got me, more than anything else, was the fact that Abigail made a birthday cake for me. And it was hella delicious. Dark chocolate, with chunks, strawberry frosting and white chocolate chips. It was so delicious, I even brought a little bit back to the dorm with me to enjoy tomorrow. And I was then gifted with a little stationary set, the first volume of Toradora, and a little plushie of one of the NHK news channels (the little pink birdie). It was more than I was ever expecting and really, I think I have found a true friend in Abigail because no one, in my life, has known me for such a short time and gone to such lengths to be there for me.

Her birthday is eight days after mine, which means I better start fishing for her favorite color so I can go get my knitting on.

Stay tuned for next week's birthday party: drunken all-nighter karaoke!

I Might Be Drunk

Tonight was the Second Men's Dorm Christmas ball. And it was crazy fun. After class, I hung out with Debra to watch Stargate: SG1, and then wandered off to the library while she and Eyrun got their pre-party drink on, then I ended up joining them for a rum and coke (which aren't bad...just don't use Diet Coke...or Coke Lite...or whatever it's called here) after which we headed to the party fashionably late.

The music was great and we immediately got our first drinks (they choose beer, I chose a OJ and Creme de Peche mixer, which was cheaper) and got crunk on the dance floor. Maya showed up and she was already pretty gone, just constantly hugging everyone. Turns out Maya is in 3WD, so we'll be dormmates pretty soon. The Swedes are fun.

Then we each caught our second drinks when a wild Stewart appears. By this point I was texting Josh wondering where he was and said, "I am drunk" to which he replied "おめでとう～" (Lit: CONGRATULATIONS!) ...By that point, I think me, Debra and Eyrun were a little past tipsy and were giggly as all hell when Eyrun decides, "This requires tequila!"

And so tequila was had. Did I ever mention I love tequila? Well, I love tequila. God bless the Mexicans. This led to Bad White Girl Dancing. To beats such as "Rehab" by Amy Winehouse mixed to the tune of "Toxic" by Britney Spears. Fun times, fun times.

Then came the adventure of riding my bike home. I made it safely, though I am reminded of the small AMV short of Chiyo and Osaka from Azumanga with the PSA of "If you're a 12 year old girl and you're high on marijuana...don't ride your bike" except it was "If you're a 22 year old woman and you're drunk in Japan...don't ride your bike" because really, the potential for fucking up on the narrow streets and faceplanting was high.

All in all though, it was a much needed relaxation and social getaway. And I had fun. Here's to hoping I have no hangover because right now I feel completely sober :D

A Fistful of Yen = Albums Galore

Today, me and my dynamic duo of British Gentlemen (Stewart and Josh) decided, that after three months of living here, it was time to find some pizza. And find pizza we did, at a place called Shakey's in Kichijoji. For Japanese pizza, it was amazingly good. There weren't really any particularly strange pizza's persay (No squid and mayonnaise) but they had a few odd ones like Tuna and Corn. Me and Stewart both go Bacon and Cheddar half-pizza's while Josh ordered half a Tuna and Corn and a half of the Meaty Combo.

It was pretty damn good stuff, albeit pricey (1/2 of a 13inch pizza is like $12 USD).

Over dinner we talked about novels (We all like Terry Pratchett, or rather, I'm getting into Terry Pratchett now), how our schools are retarded in how they organize degree progress, and of all things, "King of the Hill" because Stewart has some sort of strange adoration of the show.

Afterwards, as it was getting late and most of Kichijoji was shutting down, we ambled around Sunroad and stopped at Dorama, which is a game, dvd, and cd shop that always has a sale going on. This time, it was CDs for 100 yen.

Let me reiterate that: FULL ALBUMS for 100 YEN. Normally stuff like this imported would be $30-$50 a pop. So, I perused and picked up some stuff that caught my eye to broaden my musical horizons.

Orange Range - Natural (First Album, has "Asterisk" on it)
Nana Katase - Telepathy (Not sure who she is, but she's on Avex)
Do As Infinity - Gates of Heaven (Heard of them, another Avex artist)
Anna Tsuchiya - inspi'NANA [Black Stones] (Anna Tsuchiya *_*)
Chemistry - Between the Lines (...Didn't they collaborate with m-Flo?)
Casshern Official Album - Our Last Day (OST to Casshern)

So for about $7USD, I picked up 6 albums. Not bad at all.

On the way home on the Inokashira, I ended up sitting next to an old gentleman. When I went looking through my CDs, he peered over and went, "Japanese music?" (In English) and I was like, "Uhhh...O_o ...yeah." and we ended up having a strange conversation about how America is apparently this big elephant and Japan this tiny mouse that is dwarfed...I think it was about the post-War reaction or some such, his English was iffy and my Japanese is terrible, but it was really fun. He actually knew where Michigan was (and that it had five big lakes surrounding it). Apparently he's been skiing in Vancouver.

Now I'm home, ripping my newly found albums and going to relax before sleep. Tomorrow I re-register for classes. Joy of joys.

Maki Lives!

I am so, so, so, very happy to be writing this. So much indeed, I am nearly in tears.

Not many of you who read my blog are aware that in the town where I live back home, there used to be a Japanese restaurant by the name of Unkh's, and it was run by an Egyptian American 5-Star Chef and his Japanese wife, Maki. Now, Maki was a master sushi chef, I mean, everything she made was delicious. Sure, it was pricey but this was quality Japanese cuisine and it was fantabulous. Me and Michael made a habit of going there for special occasions, and later...we did lunch there once a week.

Well, about a year ago, Maki and Unkh got divorced and she decided to move back home to Japan. Me and Mike, obviously bummed, wanted to stay in contact with her. She was a great friend and very sweet. She was worried that it'd be hard for her to find a job back in Japan due to being "too old" (she's mid-30s, 'ancient' by Japanese standard). We got her a gift (teddy bears, since she loved them) and a nice card. We exchanged addresses and what not.

So I wrote her via email frequently, and then it stopped. To be honest, I thought about writing letters, but I felt like I would be hounding her. Though I did share with her I was coming to Japan in the following Autumn.

Since arriving, I decided to send her a post card to see how she's doing. Weeks later, no response, so I send out another one. It had been a few weeks then and at that point, I had given up hope that she even remembered me or Michael.

Today, in my mailbox was a post card. With a stuffed bear on the reverse side.

It was from Maki!

She's doing great, been very busy, and trying not to catch a cold but all in all she's doing well. I hope to keep writing her, and maybe in March go see her down in Osaka with Michael :3

Too Intense

Well, I lasted three days in Intensive Japanese. It's...well. Really, really intense. They weren't kidding. So Monday I'm dropping down into J3 and going from there. Hopefully this means I will do better.

Good news: I got into the women's dormitory, which means I will be moving in around the first week of January. My new address will be posted then.

I am still so nerved up that I am not going to do well.

Mountains, Tengu, and Grade Reports, OH MY!

Here's a long needed update as to the last days of my freedom before the term begins tomorrow.

Last Saturday was the trip out to Mt. Takao on the western-most outskirts of Tokyo. I met up with Stewart and Josh at Chofu to catch a rapid out to the base of the mountain. The further you get from the heart of Tokyo, the more of the "real" Japan you see. Even though the view was still mostly obscured by buildings and telephone poles, the mountainous area covered in a blanket of trees and the occasional hillside cemetary, was absolutely gorgeous. Gold, orange, red, and green leaves glowed in the rising sunlight.

Around 10 we got to the base of the mountain, stocked up on beverages and then began our ascent up the mountain.

Steep mountain is steep. The first two and a half kilometers up were nothing short of harsh. The steep incline was pretty wicked all things considered, and I found myself feeling dejected at the fact that small Japanese children were hauling up that mountain like no one's business, meanwhile I had to stop at every plateau and reassure Josh and Stewart that yes, I could complete the mountain. I just suck at this whole "holy crap, steep incline!" type climbing. Give me a vertical face any day...

We hit the halfway point around noonish and stopped to eat some of the fruit we packed. The entire way up, me and Josh kept making either 4chan references that went over Stewart's head or lamenting the fact that we were both away from our main squeezes and what a world, what a world, we're so angsty and lonely. Cleaning up with bananas, apples, and mikan in our belly, she trailblazed the last three kilometers of the trail to reach the temple right below the summit.

Fact: Mt. Takao is historically known for its folklore involving a community of Tengu, a sort of winged-dog-man spirit that are the guardians of mountains and the Yamabushi, warrior monks, who trained among them. At the temple were several shrines to Tengu as well as really awesome statues.

Finally, we reached the summit and let me say...there is nothing more breathtaking than being on the top of a mountain and looking down upon a city. Tokyo looked so far away, so tiny against the hilly geography of this volcanic island. At the look out point, you could see a stretch of mountain ranges, and in the far distance, past the mists of the morning, there was Mt. Fuji itself. Finding a plot, we ate our lunches, talked about how we didn't want to leave and then when rain started coming down we decided it would be best if we did, indeed, leave.

They say the descent is often the easiest, and I am sure that is true for most folks. However, my legs are out to end me in any way possible. On our way down, my knees continued to buckle nonstop to the point where I had to keep one hand on Josh at all times or I would end up rolling the five kilometers back down the mountain. Clearly, that was not an option. So we decided to take the lift down, only to discover that Stewart has agoraphobia. Scratch that plan, we'll take the cable-car.

Sure, after we wait an hour because the line was longer than a bunch of tween's waiting outside a theatre to watch their inspid Mormon-doctrine filled vampire romance angst fest. Then, we hit the tram and watched the trees and colors change as we came down the eastern face of the mountain as opposed to the western.

Back to the base, we head onto the train and ride home, separating at Fuchu so I could catch the local one stop over. Head home and promptly pass out due to my legs going "DEAAAAAAAAAAAATH! DEAAAAAAAATH TO YOOOOOOOOOOOU!"

Insert lazy Saturday spent with Debra watching Stargate: SG1 season 1 and lollin' at all the Macgyuver references thanks to Richard Dean Anderson.

Carter: What do you expect us to do so? MacGyuver a solution to this?
O'Neil (Richard Dean Anderson, Aka MacGuyver): ...>_>;

...yeah. We're nerds.

As for today, I am on campus. I got a gift from Yuma in the Matsuri-Dan of a custom mug with the logo and our sub-section name. I also signed up for classes and received my grade report:

Japanese II - C
History of Contemporary Japan - A
Readings in Japanese History - A

GPA: 3.0

HELLZ YEAH. Here's hoping to improve on the Japanese!