mokudekiru

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].

出身の町に一ヶ月半もう経ってしまった。感想と言えば。。。

一ヶ月半で完成に慣れて来た気がする。以外と速い（早い？）かもしれないな〜日本で友達も家族のおかげで、最後の頃ほんまに帰りたくなかった。何ヶ月の努力（自分のも皆のも）でその気持ち感じられるようになったかな？

日本語聞き過ぎたらすぐにわからなくなって来て、頭痛くなって、喋る事も理解もできなくて諦めやすかった秋の頃のモが今のモとかなり違う人と思ってた。もちろん、違い感じた一番激しい時が帰ったすぐで、数日も続いた。初めて自分の国着いた時、周りの人達の言ってる事少し聞いて、「皆の発音すご〜い！！」って思い浮かんだ。皆自分の第一言語（英語）で話せばいい発音が当然なのに、考えず最初の印象がそれゃった。自分の部屋入った瞬間の気持ちが「ここなんか知らない人の部屋みたい。。。ここに誰すんでてどんな人生やったかな？」って変な感じ。

英語の事も、もちろんぺらぺらねんけど、言いたい事どこから言ったらいいかあまりわからんくて、日本語に慣れた私がもう英語で伝いにくさ良くわかった。単語知ってるけど、まだ日本語の文法に合わせる順番に考えてて、そこから言ったら英語で通じない。

自分の言語練習しないと忘れる事はないけど、自然に出れなくなる事あるで >_<

そういうふうに数日、時差惚けも英語惚けの様子で過ごして、ちょっとずつ慣れて来て、一周間後変な英語の感じがほとんどなくなって、時差も慣れてた。でも、同時に、最初部屋入った時のモと今のモの遠さっていう気持ちもなくなった。なんでかな。。。？何語で喋ってる事も、いる場所も自分自身についての考え方全部かかってるだろう？完全に英語の考え方に戻ってから、英語での人生へも戻った気がある。んで、去年の夏休みから自然に今年の夏休みに成っちゃって、その間全然なかったように感じて「本当に一年間いなかった？本当に日本にいた？ずっとここにいてんじゃない？」と思っちゃう。

だから、帰った時、なにかモが二人生きてるなという感じで、一人部が元からのアメリカで生まれて育てて英語で考えなきゃモいる。一方、一人部が新生の日本で成長できて、日本語の基本のモもいる。しばらく「どっちが本当のモ？」で困っちゃった。

競争で決めてどっちかのモが優勝したら、どっちかのモ負けないとダメって事なんや。だから、日本の沢山の思い出をもって、（この一年の経験と人生と魂を込めてw）、今からどっちも混合しよう！！！って思う^_^v

hello 2.0! Icon…

I am in the process of, well, designing this site, but it’s a little more motivating to have some posts to play around with. Progress is of course slow — it’s summer, I have little real work to do by any deadlines, and thus get distracted easily by facebook, digg, instant messaging, C++ homework, and of course endless net surfing. So it may be a bit before this thing is designed.

Did venture out today to see Colette and Antoine, plus tried out exciting new restaurant that has recently shown up in the vicinity: Flat Top Grill. A constituent of the trendy slew of eateries, subscribing to both the “you pick out the ingredients, we mix it together” philosophy of food preparation, as well as the <descriptive adjective with no particular positive connotation> + <surface on which food is prepared> naming algorithm.

A naming algorithm, which, I believe, has high potential for Mix & Match games:

Okay, back to layout.

okay, I’ve found my spot — a little cafe. Let’s see how fast I can blog my heart out before my host family begins to worry that I am actually mentally ill about the internet. Seriously, I’m not, it just took me an hour to get here, then maybe 45 minutes to find a cafe with internet — the first one I went to DID NOT WORK. Now I have overcome difficulties and I’m enjoying faster internet than I’ve seen in months!! People around me:

Girl doing a quite extensive makeup routine.
Guy appearing to read the news paper but actually emailing on his phone. Hopefully he will leave soon cuz he’s a smoker. Well, he is currently eating a muffin.
Guy actually reading the newspaper.

This internet is like breathing air again! I think I’ll start with Kyoto.

I moved into my new and final host family’s house yesterday (Naho’s family). And. We. Don’t. Have. Internet.

No, that would be a lie. What we have, is wireless dialup. Yes, wireless dialup. Wireless dialup that I can’t even connect to with my computer because I don’t know the password and every time I bring it up my host dad just says my computer isn’t able to do it. Great. Anyway as a test I am gonna try to post a picture and see how many years it takes to publish this post.

So here we go, Kyoto station. Testing testing 123.

Edit: okay that worked, so maybe if I can get my computer on this network I can manage to put together a blog post given infinite time?? I will keep trying to get myself online, because we don’t want the end of mo kudekiru (equivalent to my entire life) and go into an existence that involves watching variety show reruns all day.

For the time I’m spending in Tokyo (which is purely touristy stuff), we have been staying in Shinjuku, one of the districts of Tokyo. It’s got plenty of skyscrapers, restaurants, hotels (including the one that Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson stayed at), a great subway station, and Yakuza (yes, gangsters).

Shinjuku looks basically like this:

Last night, while we were walking to find some sushi to eat, it started raining. We didn’t have an umbrella, so we stood in a dry spot next to some building. There was really nothing to do besides watch people walk by.

People who are wiser than us instantly whip out the umbrellas!

Rain, trains, people, umbrellas, skyscrapers, bikes… so one of the most impressive things about Japan is, in my opinion, the amount of girls with a) umbrellas, b) high heels, c) on bikes, d) in the rain, e) all of the above. I have a hard enough time with any one of those four things, but to do them all together is something you see constantly here. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of any one of these multitasking girls, so you have to be satisfied with this:

another such shot:

the puddle, a few feet from where we were standing, in action. I like the contrast of the different shoes.

Also note how they are all walking on the left side, rather than the right, how we Americans do it. According to a tour guide Bethany and I had last year, this is because back in the samurai days, when you would cross a bridge (or other narrow path) you would want to avoid other people’s katanas. Since they drew the sword with their right hand, it was held on the left side of the body, and thus walking on the left would keep everyone’s katanas away from each other.

Anyway that’s it for Shinjuku. Tune in next time for many other districts of Tokyo including Shibuya, Harajuku, Akihabara, Ginza, and Asakusa.

P.S. I’m really not liking flickr that much for pictures, because I don’t think it’s doing a very good job as far as quality. I tried Zoto on this one. Any suggestions?

This post is for my mom, becaue of her fondness for hotel pictures. Here is our room, no smoking, two beds, and air conditioned, yesss:

my bed, and its 便利な proximity to the bathroom:

a bit more bathroom, the place of hours of entertainment, or at least hours of looking through toiletries and attempting to wash myself:

me in said bathroom:

oh no! Electrical outlet is different from Amerika! Please, conserve energy:

the obligatory toilet shot:

oh, those japanese toilet buttons, gotta love them:

one last shot:

I promise there will be pictures of things besides Japanese bathrooms later on. But who doesn’t love foreign bathrooms??

I’m in Japan! After one day in Nippon, I look like this (thanks, Japanese humidity):

As soon as I stepped off the plane I felt that wonderful Japanese humidity that I have longed for all year. jk.

So here’s the story: Pack until 3:30 am on Monday night/Tuesday morning. Go to our favorite local airport the next morning (Thanks to those of you who were there to send me off, it was definitely the most dramatic sendoff I have ever received… also the only one, but whatever!) Fly on the plane on Tuesday morning… fast forward about 16 hours or whatever, and end up in Narita. Then we are going through customs and they start questioning my dad, and asking me, “is he with you?”… and then they take us into a room and question us. Who are we and why are we here? Why is he only staying a week and why am I staying a year? Why are we going to Kobe in several days?? And then some questions he asked me in Japanese, like, “Is your dad here just because he’s worrying about you,” which I thought I didn’t understand, since it’s such a weird question, but then he said it in English, and that was it. Or, “does your dad go with you everywhere?” Eventually they gave up and decided we weren’t threats, I suppose, cuz we’re IN.

Then a bus later we are at Shinjuku station, and then eventually we wind up at our hotel, which is in none other than Shinjuku. My grandpa is also here, not because he is worried about me either, but because he was born in Kobe.

Here is my dad and Grandpa at the hotel. Note the escalator on the right, it changes which direction it goes based on the time of day. Last night it was going up (helpful for luggage) and this morning it was going down (helpful for laziness). There are stairs too in case you want to go the opposite direction though, you don’t have to swim against the escalator current.

Shinjuku looks kind of like this (actually exactly like this):

and this (better pictures to come when I haven’t been awake for 24+ hours):

After this, it was Wednesday, 7pm (or Wednesday morning, 5 am at home), so we just went to our hotel room, and I spent like two hours taking a shower and getting ready to sleep due to me not being able to find which toiletries I needed. My dad was/is really sick and kept wanting to sleep so I had to try to do this really quietly. He pretty much made me go to sleep at 9 pm, but I did successfully sleep until 8 am, so at least now I will be on a semi-normal schedule. Hotel pictures in next post.

I finally have this thing set up — nothing of interest to read today of course, but tomorrow I depart for Japan. Ideally this blog will be exciting enough that people other than my immediate family will look at it every so often. Armed with technology, I will broadcast to you from the future (well… time-zone-wise anyway). Yeah yeah it’s not really August 15.

testing testing