Last night was Of Montreal… which was really excellent! I went with Nathan, Ariana, Drew, (and some of their friends were also there, but we didn’t see them)
There were two opening bands, so it was definitely about 11 before Of Montreal actually started playing… but worth the wait.
During the wait, I also got two phone calls from two different people about homework, and I actually managed to help both of them (I think)…
They were a little different from how they sound recorded, which is good I suppose, because their recorded sound doesn’t seem like it would make for as exciting of a concert as this was.
Tonight, however, was the Ryan Adams show, and though I was in the group bringing him here, I decided I was really not up for two concerts two nights in a row, so I decided to go with my meeting for engineering campus tours and chem homework instead. I think it was a good choice, and apparently no one cares whether you work a particular show or not. Either way, next up on the local concert scene is Bright Eyes in a couple of weekends — this fall is kind of amazing in terms of bands I like ending up in this town!
After a tiring week of midterms… I am glad to say I am done with the first round. To reward myself, I came home from the CS midterm last night and finally watched the epic conclusion to 花ざかりの君たちへ, which was a double episode finale.
This show was really great. You have to love a show subtitled “prettyboy paradise”, with a title screen like: (quiz: find the girl)
The finale was a little more conclusive and a little happier than your typical drama ending — Mizuki, the main character, is caught (people finally figure out that she’s a girl) so, having accomplished what she set out to do (get Oguri Shun to high jump again), can go back to America, no regrets. There was a long, drawn out, ceremonial goodbye scene before she left, one final moment with Oguri in the airport, when he finally lets on that he likes her — says basically “I’ll come visit sometime,” kisses her, and she goes on her way. The final scene takes place when she is back in California, which apparently looks like this:
And now that she’s not going to a boys school anymore, she can finally start “dressing like a girl” again… you find me one girl in California that dresses like this, please:
So the last scene she finds out that the school trip for the boys’ school in Japan she was attending is going to have a school trip to… California! So she and Oguri and co. will be reunited in the future.
The surprising thing about this show was that I *wasn’t* rooting for Oguri Shun — I was rooting for the other guy, Nakatsu. Simply because he still liked Mizuki, even when he thought she was a guy. Oguri Shun was a little too strong and silent.
I’m not sure what the overall best moment of the show was, but the point in episode 11 when all the guys did a cheerleading routine at the sports festival to Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” is really hard to match. Look it up on youtube and be amazed.
Again, feel free to play spot-the-girl:
Now that it’s over, I’m going to have to start researching fall dramas, which should start up in a couple of weeks.
BUT! I have more to say. Watching Hanazakari was amazing of course, but what may be equally amazing is the new program I have downloaded in order to watch it. It’s called Miro, and it’s a video player that visually borrows heavily from iTunes, and is a really nice way to organize and play your movies. It also allows you to search and download youtube, google, dailymotion, and other videos from the web. You can also create folders on your computer and tell Miro to treat them as a feed, updating as you add new movies to that folder. Of course, you can also subscribe to real video podcasts or any video feed on the internet.
Plus, it’s open source.
Here’s a screenshot:
Mostly I’ve been using it to organize and view jdramas, but since I can download youtube videos, I’ve downloaded the past few Ainori episodes and watched those — not important enough for me to find a high quality version of, but it’s sometimes nice to just leave it playing in the background while I do something else — it brings back that atmosphere of Japan where there is always some announcer explaining something really ridiculous in highly formal Japanese.
It’s not perfect–it can’t play quite any file format, and there doesn’t seem to be an obvious way to mark videos as viewed without actually viewing them inside Miro. But overall this is a very nice program.
TV really needs to just be on the internet anyway — Miro is helping make that happen. Go check it out:
Yeah, I pretty much live here. This afternoon I stopped in, there were no empty tables on floor (which means I have to sit with a stranger or find somewhere else to study), but in fact Sergei was there so I sat at his table. Tonight I'm at a big table with two other macbook wielding strangers and Nathan. There is always a quest involved in getting a good seat in this library.
Thursday night, Noam came back into town. She came over to my dorm and she did math, while I did chemistry. Just like old times (except that we both would have been doing math). That was the kickoff to my fantastic weekend.
Friday night was Andrew Bird — he is absolutely amazing. He played a couple years ago when I was in high school — at this point a bunch of my friends went to see him and kept bragging that they could see Andrew Bird because *they* were 18 (the age required to get into the particular venue where he was playing). I didn’t know who he was at that point and immediately realized my mistake. Luckily this time I didn’t miss out. My guess is that this concert involved more musically interesting things because he had a very large concert stage to set up on. It looked a little like this. He’s strumming on his violin at this point:
His original training is in violin (Suzuki method!) and he makes good use of it — most of his songs began with him playing a line on the violin, recording himself in realtime, and layering himself over this recorded track. He did use the guitar a bit too (often standing with the guitar on his back and holding his violin in front of him). He also whistles and hums a lot.
Because he’s essentially a one-man-band, he sounded pretty different live than recorded. When he played Fiery Crash, I didn’t really recognize it until he said that line (though it sounded familiar somehow). A really 抜群 concert, I must say.
Unfortunately, around the time Andrew Bird was singing about a Fiery Crash, Nathan was actually having an epic bike crash with a sidewalk…
The rest of the weekend involved… going home and coming back and forth to campus the entire weekend for the purpose of studying and going out — finally saw Ariana’s apartment, etc. I stayed at home until Monday morning, and apparently people came hunting for me Sunday night, mysteriously right before the CS homework was due…
Today I had just taken my chem quiz and was sort of out of it, when I noticed that I had a missed call on my cell phone. The number wasn’t in my phone book, but I decided to call it back anyway. The quad was sort of loud and I couldn’t quite hear what this person was saying, except that it had something to do with CS class, answering a question, and Noam. After about three minutes of going “huh?” repeatedly, I finally learned that it was Boyce telling me that Ford said to tell me from Noam congratulations on answering a question in CS lecture today… Wow. At least I know his phone number now…
And I wasn’t even really sleep deprived while this happened.
Because I am working on re-reading this play for a project that is happening on friday, etc., and right now I am so involved in 花ざかりの君たちへ that if I had a moment I would use it to watch… but here is a picture to show you that I’m actually still alive. We can make this into a game: Who can tell me what this alien spacecraft actually is?
Tonight I went to my first [and last?] party. Luckily I invited my friend Nick (my mathbuddy) so that when we both wanted to leave after half an hour, I had someone to walk back with. I think we both feel like we’ve fulfilled party quota now. However, it wasn’t without its highlights. Best moment: girl is trying to get through the crowd, walks between me and Nick, points at both of us and says, “you’re both in my math class.” And we are.
This week is going by really too fast. I felt particularly rushed today, when I had activities from 10-3 (office hours I went to, then 4 classes), studying at Grainger for 2 hours, math study session, dinner, meeting, back to my dorm for hours of CS fun… while I walk I memorize chemical compounds.
I would have not survived today’s marathon of classes were it not for hanging out with Ford and Boyce a lot last night (facebook albums to prove it) and exploring the food options readily available near our dorm. Since, as previously mentioned, the cafeteria is really never open when I need it to be, and/or closed whenever there’s even something resembling a holiday… sometimes you need food. So we went to Late-Night across the street (since all campus residential halls has it) and basically you put money on your campus ID and then can buy food there, and it’s sort of like a grocery store. The number of people there was surprising — the nighttime activity, the food! So I bought a sandwich that I took with me today to eat between Theatre and Chem. That worked out well… yeah right.
I couldn’t even finish my sandwich on the way to chem (this must have meant I was walking fast, as I have several times eaten Jimmy Johns sandwiches before I make it from one side of the quad to the other) but luckily Ankit had saved me a seat as he promised, and I finished my sandwich with a minute or two to spare.
What I have been working on for the past few hours is CS. Nathan and I want to work on it tomorrow because that might mean we don’t have to spend all weekend doing it (or so we hope). I’ve gotten it mostly typed up, and mostly worked out (comparing answers still REALLY necessary) but I’m still pretty slow and clumsy with LaTeX. It’s coming along though.
I have also been using this parsetree package for LaTeX and since have made beautiful parse trees for my homework.
My plan for this long weekend was to get everything done by Sunday, such that on Monday I can use my time to catch up on watching Japanese tv.
Unfortunately, I didn’t actually accomplish anything on Saturday. This is not for lack of trying: in fact, I did accomplish helping make some peppermint cookies with Jono and Angelina (these cookies taste like Christmas). Then I headed over to ACM where sure enough Nathan and David were attempting work on Sucrose. I worked on my CS homework, and by that I don’t mean figuring out what I think the solutions are (because I’m mostly done with that part), but putting it into a pretty LaTeX document was the part i worked on yesterday. There was something wrong with my LaTeX setup on my computer, and the first disk image of MacTeX I downloaded did not work. Either it was a bad mirror I chose to download from, or the fact that I was using firefox, but the second one worked and then I spent a while sitting in the ACM office listening to people blame each other for why Sucrose doesn’t work, as I worked through some tutorials for LaTeX. People got hungry and we went to lunch around 4.
Now let me make my complaint about meals at my dorm. I realize going to lunch at 4 may be a little late, but the fact that dinner ENDS at 6 pm on Saturdays is completely ridiculous. I predict that I will never eat dinner at my dorm on Saturday for this reason — I’m out, doing things, I can’t be bothered to come back that early.
And the lack of food continues. Since all I did yesterday homework-wise was learn HOW to type my CS homework, I still have a lot of work to actually DO. Thus I needed to get up at a reasonable hour and get going to the library. I checked online what time Sunday brunch opens, and on the website it says 9:30. So I showed up around 10am, at which point there were about three people there, and there was basically no food. “Um… when will there be food?” Apparently there is no hot food until 10:30. So I had some fruit and a bagel and one of the two remaining people in the cafeteria griped at me as well about the fact that we can’t wait until 10:30 to eat breakfast.
I guess one option would be to get up early, eat food in my room, study, and then come back for brunch and use that as lunch. But you never know how much food there will be left when you come late to a meal.
Plus, isn’t Saturday night at 6pm to Sunday morning at 10:30 am kind of a long timespan between meals? Normally dinners end at 7pm (still far too early) and breakfast starts the next morning at 7am.
Aside from the normal lack of food on Sundays, this weekend has an added bonus of no food on Monday thanks to Labor Day. I have been collecting food all weekend and I went grocery shopping too (I had no ramen in my room before last night–really tragic) so I definitely will not starve on Monday, but it’s still sort of a nuissance.
So those are my complaints for today. Soon I will be meeting Nathan to think once again about a question or two on the CS homework. It’s kind of confusing and we have reached different conclusions at different times, so we’re going to have one more shot at it, and then (hopefully) submit the homework.
I ended up not actually doing homework on a Friday night (this is not to say I didn’t try). I got my first fine threat in my dorm (no fines yet, and I wasn’t actually making any noise).
I did get sidetracked from potential homework when Nathan came over (the one pictured below) and we showed him how we roll here in my dorm, as opposed to his decrepit, tiny, not air conditioned dorm on the far side of campus. Apparently on the plane ride over he told someone next to him what dorm he was living in, and they said, “Have fun with the roaches!” Great!
However, he did once again both help and distract me from my homework — this time with none other than the intro to Star Wars X-Wing on DOS. Great stuff. Though I haven’t played that one, the graphics there aren’t much worse than the first Rebel Assault game. So it was really 懐かしい and made me nostalgic for video/computer games that actually kept me entertained. Once the graphics and sound gets good, it loses a lot. Also, it’s a pity that none of the old mac games work once they made the switch to the intel processor, because I want to be able to do the equivalent with all my old games.
Somewhere in all of that I think we sort of finished the CS173 homework though actually, now that I think of it. I also think the ACM dudes are probably the people to ask about my ubuntu problems, but for the time being I need to get LaTeX up and running in order to type out the answers to my homework. I also have quite a lot of other homework to deal with this weekend, but if I get any free time I will spend it in the ACM office where all the magic happens, watch Nathan and David attempt to fix sucrose (the computer powered vending machine in the office), and try to get at least some work done.
Or else just practice playing Go, which I first played last night (Mpitt had explained the concept to me many times before, but I’d never actually tried playing until yesterday).
I actually missed a meeting tonight, but what happened was I went to JCT until 6:30, came back, went to dinner, and chilled with the HH 9th floor East (our imaginary floor of friends) in the lounge, which is when we almost got fined for noise (it was an enthralling game of pool I promise). I went up to my room and ACM people were talking to me on IRC asking where I was (I’m famous in the office now. Not only a clueless freshman girl, which is a pretty underrepresented demographic there, but I have spent the last few days pretty much camped out in the office). However I decided I didn’t really want to start going OUT when it was already dark.
So now it’s 1:30 and a pretty enjoyable evening of doing nothing later, I think I’ll work on writing things into my schedule and attempting this whole sleep thing. Cookies are happening tomorrow and I need my energy.
Nathan vs. Matt, inflatable jousting at E-Night. I also want to give tours of the engineering campus, because of my die-hard love for of my school (and by that I mean they have awesome shirts)
Today I was en route from or to somewhere, and I ended up at this intersection. I saw these guys meet up in the middle of the street — the time on the crosswalk counted down, and soon they were mid conversation with cars and buses driving by on both sides.
It was like a less awkward version of this time when I ran into Take and Yamamoto on a median in Kobe.
Today I also finally got my schedule worked out, and spent several hours in the ACM office doing calculus proofs, and downloading the occasional firefox extension. Nathan has a really good habit of interrupting my calc homework, but always with something interesting.
Also hanging around the ACM office exposes you to a lot of cute tshirts. I liked this one I saw today at the Open House: ./base
Decided not to do orchestra this semester (mostly because I didn’t get into the orchestra I wanted).
Also saw Marquis for possibly the last time at lunch today — a sad thing. What will college be like when my friends aren’t here 24/7? I guess I’ll find out pretty soon. It hasn’t really felt like college as much
I also went to my first Quiz section of Chem today, meaning I had my first TA I guess. Jeff is also in my section, and I realized that I already know a lot of the people in my dorm pretty well, because it actually surprised me when the TA read off Jeff’s name and everyone in the section DIDN’T know who he was.
-getting “elected” for floor government (yeah, I am in charge of the money of like 50 people now… because we all know how well I deal with political power). -finally watching some more hanazakari -getting soaked in the rain on the two minute walk between HoHo and JCT (bonus points if you know what I’m talking about) which is the best group ever even though it’s really not an RSO as far as I know…
And the rest, illustrated in pictures.
Visiting Jono on his break at Borders:
And making us delicious coffee and bringing us cake…
Happiness at the bookstore!
Then I went back to my dorm. It turns out on Saturday night, dinner ENDS at 6 (wtf?) so this resulted in Za’s.
Jef takes a picture of me…
But Jeff’s life force is apparently … bacon. Can you see it?
There was no actual bacon in the pasta… but the Jef[f]s went for it anyway…
I will spare you more pasta pictures.
Speaking of food… I have a lot of pictures of Ankit, which can be found on facebook. Unfortunately he wasn’t at this Za’s dinner.
The rest of my weekend was spent sleeping, chilling out in the LIBRARY (yes, I have already used the phrase, “let’s hang out at the library” in context)… and poring over strange symbols on the CS homework.
On the way to my 8am Chem lab this morning, I ended up walking next to some guy who made small talk and, in trying to figure out why I was up so early to go to chem, I mentioned I was an engineer. What major? CS.
“I hate you guys, you’re always like on your computer 24 hours a day typing up your homework…” “Well, I would be anyway, CS major or not.” “ahh well, I can respect that.”
So there you have it. Now I need to continue chasing down the math department.
So one week at college despite classes only starting yesterday. Best college moment:
Before coming to campus, I joined various facebook groups related to my dorm, one specifically for freshies, created by a guy named Jeff. He and Ankit, another guy I met on facebook, happened to move in early together like me, so for a couple of days we are really the only people in the dorm. Jeff and Ankit are hanging out and want me to come along after my orientation activities. Neglecting to give me the room number they will be in, I hunt around the east side for a while before finding the door.
I knock, one of them comes and opens the door, and in unison, Jeff and Ankit shout, “MO!!!”
And this is the first time I’m ever meeting these people. There we have it — the magic of facebook.
Since, I have pissed off Jeff and Ankit several times by ignoring their invitations to go various places and most importantly, by not sitting by them in chem yesterday. Now they want nothing to do with me — ouch.
I’m living in a suite situation, with a roommate, and then sharing a bathroom with two other girls. Since I’ll be mentioning them, let’s introduce them now (apologies for the bad picture):
Left to right: Landy (rhymes with blondie), Emily, Kimeya (my roommate) and me.
Went to quad day, joined a bunch of groups I have no intention of actually joining (the best group ever, JCT, wasn’t even represented at quad day…) but maybe I’ll attend some first meetings of things — Jef (different from Jeff, this is Jef Mei, who is friends with another friend, Ed, a sophomore in EE), Chris, Jeff, Ankit, and a few other people were at dinner last night. Apparently every meal is a competition for Jeff and Ankit, but Jef decided, after eating a lot of spaghetti, that he actually DID want to attend the first meeting of Kendo.
Kendo is cool, but going on a full stomach does not sound like a pleasant experience. Getting used to dinner ENDING at 7pm is going to be an adjustment. Later on while watching the Princess Bride in a giant group on floor 3, everyone was hungry again and we sort of dissolved into throwing chocolate at each other, and eventually consuming cookies from a care package Jeff’s mom sent.
So here are your quad day pics:
Gotta love swarms of people telling you to sign up for underwater hockey team.
I’ve spent the past few days moving into my dorm, meeting a bunch of female engineers, and trying to strategize about my schedule. Since I didn’t post much over the summer, except about occasional Japanese things, and there have been a decided lack of photographs, I would like to share some highlights in a supercondensed version of my summer. Here goes.
Step 1: Pack up in 日本
Step 2: American bagel.
Step 3: See graduation.
Step 4: Sit in car for 20 hours.
Step 5: The ocean.
Step 6: Make 団子
Step 7: Harry Potter.
Step 8: Unpack vacuum-sealed clothes.
Step 9: Reunite.
Step 10: Bubble tea.
Step 11: Join JCT so I don’t forget 日本語
Step 12: Go to Chicago.
Step 13: Get cool shoes.
Step 14: Dress up for no reason.
Step 15: Sing karaoke (like I didn’t just spend a year doing so).
There’s been a real lack of content lately, mostly because nothing particularly noteworthy goes on during the summer — I can only entertain you with stories of late night Steak n’ Shake gettogethers, college shopping, and C++ for so long. I am going to school in a week though and may feel inspired.
However, one thing that I would like to review here is my summer dramas. Since I got back from Japan, the most urgent feeling I had (besides, “where can I get my hands on some octopus”) has been whether or not I can keep up with the summer dramas.
Japanese tv is heavily drama based, and is broken into four seasons of approximately 11 weeks each, with two weeks or so of break between each season. Last year when I arrived in August, I showed up in the latter half of the summer season, and by the time I left in May enough time had passed to place me approximately three seasons later — towards the end of the spring season. Most shows run for one season only, so they are a complete, 11 episode package. Only rarely do sequel series pop up, and those are usually when the first series did particularly well AND the series is based on a manga with a storyline that continues.
Summer dramas started in July, and through internet research and discussion with friends, I was able to pick out three that I wanted to follow (There are perhaps a dozen or so dramas every season, all broadcasting at the 9 or 10 oclock hours, any day of the week, which adds up to a maximum of around 14 shows, if they want to exist in that prime time). Now we’re just over halfway through the season. Here’s an intro to each:
1) 花ざかりの君たちへ
Title: Hanazakari no Kimitachi e (I think if I translated the title it would be something like “To you, in full bloom” — plural you of course)
The concept: Remember the Amanda Bynes movie “She’s the Man”? Girl disguises herself as a boy, goes to boarding school, lives with the guys, is in love with her roommate, has some sort of impressive athletic skill, etc etc? Well now put that story in Japan. Horikita Maki stars the Amanda Bynes role, but in this case she has come all the way from America to enroll in an all boys school in Japan, just to get near her favorite high jumper, Sano Izumi, played by none other than Oguri Shun. Motivated by guilt about her involvement in Sano’s injury that stopped him from highjumping (he was injured trying to save her, back in America), she decides it’s up to her to make him highjump again. He’s physically recovered enough for it, but has a mental/emotional block. Then add in all the hilarity of the all boys school, the girl trying to act like a guy, the best friend who, having fallen in love with the girl-gone-boy, struggles with his apparent homosexuality, and the ditzy sister all-girls school nearby… you have one great drama.
Plus, I love the fact that the subtitle of this show is “Ikemen Paradise”. Ikemen is japanese for prettyboy (or more closely, “attractive guy”). Here’s the ad:
2) パパとムスメの七日間 Title: Papa to Musume no Nanokakan (translation: Father and Daughter’s Seven Days)
The concept: Imagine Freaky Friday, set in Japan, and instead of a mother/daughter switch, it’s a father/daughter switch. This gives you so much more comedic potential for a few reasons:
-gender roles come into play, unlike with a mother/daughter switch, and on top of that, Japanese gender roles are quite strict, down to the speech styles of men and women being completely different. -girl suddenly has to deal with the dull life of being a salaryman -father has to suddenly deal with being in high school, during testing week, and having a love interest sempai -very awkward interactions between mother and both the father and the daughter
3) ホタルノヒカリ Title: Hotaru no Hikari (“Light of the Firefly” except that the main character’s name is “Firefly”)
The concept: bummy girl with decent job lives to come home, drink beer, play with the cat, and sleep in her messy room. While she has her act together for work, outside of the office she doesn’t know how to interact with people, and is especially hopeless with guys. Her boss breaks up with his wife, and comes to reclaim his house (which this girl happens to be living in), cannot stand her slobby behavior, and tries to shape her up, or at least help her a bit.
It’s mostly funny because of the male lead’s harsh lines. He is normally polite and goes out of his way to help her, but you sense the resentment when you’re having that heartwarming section at the end of the episode, where she has finally managed (with his help) to be a little less of a miserable failure, and then he cuts in with a line like, “You’re HOPELESS. Lifelong hopeless! Hopeless til you die! No, hopeless even if you’re dead! Even if you are reborn as someone else, hopeless! You’re COMPLETELY HOPELESS!” Needless to say that’s one notch below standard politeness levels in Japan.
So that’s what I’ve been doing lately.
And buying all sorts of college paraphernalia.
If that was dull, here is a bonus new commercial Oguri Shun is in — it would cheer anyone up!
My visa didn’t expire until mid-August — had I decided to completely screw college course registration, I could still be in Kansai. Through reading my friends’ emails and blogs, I gather that my life would be similar to spring break: everyone else going to school and cram school constantly (for this is their testing year), and me refusing to go to any such thing, and thus wandering Osaka on my own taking pictures.
So in some sense, I came back at a very good time. Summer break in America is real, and it’s rather priceless.
Being in America, however, does sadly cause me to miss out on an awesome lifechanging event: Oguri Shun, and Narimiya Hiroki (who is apparently one of Yuka’s favorites… who knew?) performed As You Like It three years ago, and now they’re back for more. Shakespeare. Oguri. Narimiya. An unbeatable trio. Oguri stars as Orlando, and Narimiya, Rosalind, as they are going with an all-male cast.
Here’s some promo of it:
I enjoy greatly the voiceover explanation of Narimiya’s character — first they make the point that he’s playing the female lead. And then it is explained that in the story, Rosalind pretends to be a guy. At this point Oguri Shun is like, “I’m so glad it isn’t me,” because it’s apparently easier to act like your own original gender, rather than Narimiya, who says that he tries to figure out how to show the tiny bit of residual, insuppressible femininity of Rosalind while Rosalind is crossdressing.
Similar stuff in this interview, if you can indeed read Japanese.
So this production of As You Like It, or お気に召すまま, is in Tokyo for a few more days, and is coming to Osaka August 3rd – 12th, and I would have SO been there [assuming I successfully found tickets].
