The Road Less Traveled

Kasahara Elementary English-Language Event

Saturday, February 7th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Well time is certainly flying by. I have just under two weeks until I leave for Asuke – a town about two hours away – for a homestay and “cultural experience” trip. That trip just about perfectly marks the halfway point of my stay here in Japan, so suffice it to say that I’ve been having some mixed feelings – you know, basic half empty/half full stuff. It’s nothing too big, though, so don’t worry too much.

In any case, I’ve started the work that I have to do for the trip – quite a bit of reading and three short papers. Starting on the 15th, I have to start keeping a daily journal of my thoughts regarding the trip – or something like that, anyway. So maybe I’ll share those entries with you all as well.

Okay, now that I’ve sidetracked myself for long enough, it’s time to get down to actual business. This past Tuesday, I went to the elementary school in Kasahara, a town in Tajimi City, which neighbors Kasugai City, in which I live. You may remember the name (though you probably don’t) from back in November, when I went to a similar “English-Language Event” at the junior high school in Kasahara, and did a homestay afterward. Ring a bell? Well, this time it was the elementary school, and there was no homestay, but it was still a lot of fun.

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I can break things from halfway across the world! [FIXED]

Thursday, February 5th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Just a warning… this isn’t really about Japan. It’s a bit of a departure from the norm, but it is about me, so I’m sure you’ll all still care, right? (I won’t feel bad if you don’t… I’m just using this as a scratching post for the moment)

So as you may or may not know, from my computer here I am able to connect to and manipulate my computer back at home to do whatever I want. I can see the screen, take control of the mouse… all just like I was sitting right in front of it. It’s a little bit slow, because the connection between here and there isn’t so great, but it works.

Anyway, about ten minutes ago, I was doing just that, freeing up some space on my hard drive back in the States, and I had just finished things up and was about to close everything down and put it back to normal when I broke the internet at my house.

Yes, from halfway across the world, I broke the internet at my house. All I was trying to do was do a tiny little change in configuration, and it ended up locking me out entirely. I’m willing to bet that back at my house, the internet doesn’t work at all right now. Yay! So when you’re finally able to read this, dear mother, know that I am very sorry.

If I were at the house this would be a rather simple thing to fix. All I need to do is reboot the server that controls our network… but since I can’t connect to it over the internet, I’m unable to actually do that. I assure you, it is immensely frustrating to know exactly how to fix something, but be entirely unable to actually do it because of such a trivial little thing. It’s like locking up your house, going to your car, and realizing you’d forgotten something inside. So you turn around, walk back up, but trip and accidentally drop your only key down into the sewer drain. Frustrating. All you need is for someone else to unlock the door, but unfortunately, nobody is home right now.

And, well, at the moment it’s 3am (give or take) in the States, so it’s not like I can make a phone call and have someone restart the server for me.

Sigh.

Anyway, that’s pretty much it. Pretty trivial, right? But I feel better now that I’ve complained about it. Sorry!

But thanks for listening.

UPDATE: I was just able to walk my mother through rebooting the server over the phone, so everything is fixed now! Yay!

Upgrading [DONE]

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments

I’m upgrading my blog to the new version of the software I use to manage it (WordPress), so it may be down for a short period of time. Sorry!

Update: All done. It seems there were no problems, so we’re all good to go again!

Tokyo, Comic Market, and New Years – Day 5: Sightseeing the right way and the wrong way

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Well I figured that since I missed a day before, I might as well just make it look like I was doing it on purpose by making a pattern out of it. I assure you that I didn’t just forget about it after having a long day spent at an elementary school in the next town over, being harassed by tons of small children at an “English-language event” they were holding. I also assure you that today, I didn’t hear how tall I was a million times, and I didn’t just realize exactly how tall young children perceive adults to be, especially when said children are about half the size of children of equal age in the United States.

So now that we’re clear on what did and didn’t actually happen (though I was becoming a bit unsure of it myself as I wrote that last bit), we’ve finally arrived at the tale of my last day in Tokyo. I’m sorry if I built it up too much, because it was really rather boring. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was a lot of fun at the time, but in retrospect, it was a lot of browsing through random stores, window shopping, and other similarly (fun at the time but boring in the retelling)-type stories (yes, that’s meant to be one word). So instead of just getting straight to the [not so] juicy part, I’m going to tell about just what I learned about sightseeing. To ruin a good (not really) story, good sightseeing is all about having a plan. Which of course we didn’t.

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Tokyo, Comic Market, and New Years – Day 4: Did you say “Maid” Café?

Monday, February 2nd, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Well I just woke up and I realized that I forgot to write a post yesterday, so I have officially ruined my streak of writing about Tokyo every day until I’m done. That is pretty lame. Oh well, I only have two more posts now, including this one.

So it was finally the last day of Comic Market, and like the first day, I went to it not really wanting anything, and not really getting anything either. I had pretty much bought everything I wanted on day 2 of the convention, which is good, because I certainly spent enough doing it.

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Tokyo, Comic Market, and New Years – Day 3: That’s a long line…

Saturday, January 31st, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Three days, three posts (kind of…)! I think I’m on a roll! Unfortunately, you shouldn’t get your hopes up, because if I continue at this pace then I’m going to run out of material in oh, another three or four days or so. XD Anyway, continuing the story from where we left our heroes…

The second night in Tokyo we slept better. Combining the lack of sleep the first night and the exhaustion of traveling in a city you’ve never been to before, full of people you’ve never met, speaking a language you can speak, and understand, but have to work pretty hard mentally to do either… well, and you get surprisingly tired surprisingly quickly. XD

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Tokyo, Comic Market, and New Years – Day 2: That’s a lot of people…

Friday, January 30th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments

The first night we were in Tokyo was odd. It’s like it was hitting us all over again that we were in Japan. But then it wasn’t just that, it was also that we were in Tokyo, the biggest city not only in Japan, but in the world. After reveling in that fact for a while, we were finally able to get some sleep to prepare for our early start on the second day of our trip. One day was done, four more to go. The next three would be spent at Comic Market, the biggest comic convention in the world. We were going to need all the rest we could get.

Note: To anybody who saw this early, congratulations. I meant for this to publish itself on the 30th (for me, anyway), so that it would seem like I write more often than I actually do… so if you saw it, and then it was gone, this is why.

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Tokyo, Comic Market, and New Years – Day 1: Getting there

Thursday, January 29th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Well hello again! Sorry it’s taken me so long to update my blog again, but now that we’re finally done with classes, I’ll hopefully be able to get caught up pretty soon. Yeah, our last classes were on Tuesday. We’re pretty much free until Feb. 19th, when we start orientation for our Asuke cultural trip. We’ll actually go to Asuke on the 21st, and get back on Mar. 2nd. Until — and after — then, I’m free. So I’m pretty sure the last thing I wrote about was Christmas. Well, I suppose I’ll just go in order and write about my trip to Tokyo. Here goes…

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It’s been a while…

Friday, January 23rd, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Well, it’s been a while, but I just wanted to let you know that I will be updating the blog in over the weekend. Classes and finals are finally almost over, and I’ll finally have time to update again. Yay! Anyway, more then. Bye~

Christmas!

Thursday, December 25th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Hey everybody, how’s it going? I just wanted to brag a little bit, because I beat you to Christmas! And even though I won this little competition (that only I knew we were participating in), it was pretty anti-climactic.

I’m not going to lie; I’m actually writing this approximately 6 hours before Christmas…. but the result is going to be the same in any case. We have nothing special planned for the 24th or 25th, other than not having class. Which is awesome, by the way.

I just wanted to wish you all a merry Christmas and give you a brief update on what has been going on in my life. Which is to say, pretty much nothing. Since the JLPT ended, the teachers have given us a little bit of a break from homework, and we have no trips or projects due, so it’s all been pretty easy-going. Plus, Monday the 22nd was our last day of class before Winter Break. Even though we’re only two days into it so far, it feels like it’s been so long… and I actually get sleep at night, yay!

So pretty much my plans for the break are to stay up late, sleep in, and hang out. Then on the 27th, me and Mike start leave on our trip to Tokyo, where we’ll be going to Comic Market, the world’s biggest comic convention. Over 3 days, they have over 500,000 attendees. It’s going to be a really fun and interesting experience, and was one of the only things on my list of “things that I MUST do while in Japan” that I had before I came here. Strike one off that list.

Anyway, that promises to be a good time, though it’s going to end up being pretty expensive. Oh well.

That’s all for now, really. Catch you on the flip side.