Written in Japanese, it’s 朱印帳 (shu-in-chou). “Chou” means book, and “shuin” are red seals. So it’s a book of red seals. Okay, so I should probably explain it in more detail than that. First, though, some background. In Japan, there are two primary religions: Buddhism and Shinto. Buddhism is prevalent all over Asia, and recently, the world, but Shinto is unique to Japan. In the past, Shinto and Buddhism mixed rather often, but from the 1600s on, due to anti-Buddhist sentiments and various other causes, rigid separation between Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples was put into place. All over Japan, there are temples (which are buddhist) and shrines (which are Shinto).

So getting back to the point: what exactly is a “shuin” and why do you need a book for it? Well, when you go to a larger shrine or temple, you can, for a small fee (usually 300 yen — about $3), have them sign a book and place their red seal on it. It usually includes the date and the name of the temple or shrine, but sometimes also has other things written. I first learned of them when we went on a class trip to Kyoto. One of the teachers, Nakabayashi-sensei, had started her Shuin-chou in January, and the other teacher, Watanabe-sensei, saw it, thought it was cool, and started her own. I saw theirs and thought they looked cool, too, so I asked them and learned what they were. Of course, I then bought one immediately and got my own started. It was at Heian Shrine, in Kyoto, which was built in 1895 for the 1100th anniversary of the establishment of Kyoto. It was designed after the Kyoto imperial palace, on a 3:5 scale — but even so, it’s rather large.

It’s a really cool shrine; it’s probably one of my favorites. Of course, it was also the last of the shrines and temples we visited on our Kyoto trip, but I guess that means I just have to go back to Kyoto eventually to get the shuin from all the other places, too. Anyway, that’s all for now. I am planning on posting a bit about each shrine or temple I visit, so stay tuned!

~Matthew

A good study guide: a 3-5 page summary of the material that has been covered
A bad study guide: a copy of the (multiple-choice) test with ten extra questions mixed in that won’t actually appear.

Can you be anymore blatant with your intentions?

Sigh.

I hope you can tell the scale of things in these pictures…

Well, anyway, as the entire world (yes, the entire world) is covered in miles (yes, miles) of snow, I find myself more and more readily accepting my fate. I’m not much a fan of snow, admittedly, but in immensely large quantities, I think it’s fun. And awesome.

That aside, I took some cool pictures, and thought I’d post them, so that even when the world is covered with snow, and nobody can ever get anywhere again, and we all die (this is clearly where this storm is headed, and you know it). I just want to note that as I typed that last sentence, my power flickered. Yeah, the world’s going to end, no doubt about it. Anyway, where was I? Oh, right. I took some sweet pictures, and wanted to post them online before the end of the world so that when aliens come and excavate the results of their crazy snowstorm generator beta test (that’s what this is. It’s true; Spore told me so.) they can see some pictures from the common man’s perspective.

Or something like that. I’m not even sure what I just said, or what I was talking about. Anyway, have some pictures!

Oh yeah, also, I’m going back to Japan in September. Just thought I’d get that out there. You know, before the world ends.
kk, bye

In stark contrast to the last 3 months or so, today was the best day I’ve had in a very long time. Remember my homestay family from way back in November? I may also have mentioned that I visited them again around the beginning of March. Well I spent the entire day with them, today, and it was wonderful. It really brought an awesome end to my time in Japan, I think.

To sum up my day, hmm… it was like being with family. It was relaxing and fun and I had a blast. I’m really, really beat though so I’m going to rush through it a bit.

The day started off bright and early at 7:30am. I got up, at breakfast, and then chilled around the dorm until I caught the bus to the train station, and then the train to Tajimi City. All in all I was on the train for about 15 minutes; I was surprised because by car it takes so much longer… I arrived at Tajimi Station as planned just before 9:30am; Father and Daughter were waiting outside to pick me up.

From the station we went back to the granparents’ house. We talked for a bit and then I (by popular demand) again showed my repertoire of simple card tricks. Everyone was a little bit nervous and awkward at first, of course myself included, by as time went by everyone (again including me) opened up as we had done twice before.

The rest of the day was so much fun that I can’t properly remember what order it happened in, but I’m *pretty sure* that it happened like I’m about to describe it.

After some time playing various different games (including a couple involving Shogi, or Japanese Chess, pieces), we went to a ramen shop for lunch. It’s been a while since I’ve gone to one, and it was pretty good. From there we went to the movie theater. I really wanted to pay for myself, but I’m just about 100% sure they wouldn’t have let me. At the movie theater we saw Disney’s new(ish?) movie, Bolt. It’s about a dog with the same name, and it was rather good. Of course, it was all in Japanese, so I only understood about 90% of it, but it was good.

After the movie we went back to the grandparents’ house and hung out in the barn/shed/playroom/workroom (lol) for the next couple hours. It was fun. We played tag and hide and seek (though it was too small to really play to our heart’s desire, and it was raining outside), and we played in the hammock that hangs in the barn. This isn’t just any hammock, either, it’s a large, square hammock that could hold about 3 adults. If I threw my weight around a little bit on it, I could send the kids flying in the air. It was fun. XD

After that we went to dinner at a place called Meshi-ya (literally, “Fooder” in the sense of “Baker” or “Butcher” or “Food House”). It was a kind of cafeteria-style family restaurant and it was pretty good.

The original plan was to go to the Tajimi City fireworks festival, but it either got canceled by the rain and rescheduled to Wednesday, or was always scheduled for Wednesday to begin with. I missed which it was. But in any case, we couldn’t go, so after we got back from dinner, we set off our own fireworks — in the rain. It went surprisingly well. I think we only had 2 duds, and that might not even have been because of the rain.

After the fireworks were over, we went back inside and sat around eating watermelon and melon for a bit, then finally they drove me home. Unlike the last time, the kids came too. After all, this time I’m going home for good. It was a nice car ride, and it was nice to be able to talk to them the entire way home. It was really like I had three younger siblings all day.

Thank you so much, Maeda family!

That’s all for now. I don’t think I’m going to have time to write again before I get back to the States, so I will say it now: see you soon.
Hopefully once I get back, I will have the chance to tell you of my as-yet unchronicled adventures in Japan.

Until then, sayonara!

As you may or may not know, I have had an iPod for a while now… and frankly, while I do feel overall satisfied with the level of quality that the iPod and iTunes provide, I’ve long had quite a few issues with how certain things are handled. I won’t get into most of them today, becuase they aren’t really relevant. Unlike most of my problems, which are differences between the iPod and iTunes itself (such as differences in sorting), this is an issue that I have with iTunes alone: weighted random in the iTunes DJ (Party Shuffle) feature.

I personally feel that 5-star rating systems (for most things) are a bit restrictive. I much prefer to have the freedom of a 10-star rating system, and as such, have enabled the hidden “Allow Half-Star Ratings” option in iTunes. This gives me much better control over how I rate my songs. The only problem with this is that as shown in an interesting little study on the weighted random feature in iTunes, half-star ratings are not taken into account in the weighted random algorithm. This is problematic. Basically, I want my ratings of songs to coincide directly with how often they are played. For example, when I first learned of the half-star feature, I expanded my previous ideal of weighting to include the extra flexibility, as shown below.

0.0 -> Play never (I absolutely hate this song)
0.5 -> Play hardly ever (I don’t like this song basically at all)
1.0 -> Play seldom (I don’t like this song)
1.5 -> Play rarely (I don’t like this song very much)
2.0 -> Play every once in a while (I don’t think this song sucks, but it’s not that great either)
2.5 -> Play occasionally (I think this is an okay song)
3.0 -> Play sometimes (I enjoy listening to this song, but markedly less than others)
3.5 -> Play decently often (I think this is a pretty good song)
4.0 -> Play often (I like this song more than most)
4.5 -> Play frequently (I like this song quite a bit)
5.0 -> Play very frequently (I like this song a lot)

Of course, I made this when I learned about the half-star ratings feature, and so I basically wrote it up as a guide for myself on how to rate things. However, I then found out about the limitations in the weighted random feature, which basically makes this table more or less irrelevant.

So, being the type of person that I am, my first though was: “Is there a way around this?” Well, after googling around a bit, and coming up with basically nothing, I decided to try and put something together myself using iTunes Smart Playlists. To spoil the ending for you: it worked.

So here’s how I did it, if you’re interested in having a more precise weighted random feature in iTunes. In the end, it took 22 Smart Playlists to get it working as I want it, with one small caveat, which I’ll get to later. And it’s small, trust me.

The first step is to create 11 Smart Playlists for each of the different ratings (0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, … 4.5, 5.0). This can be accomplished using the Smart Playlist criteria for Rating. Unfortunately Smart Playlists only accept a solid star count, and this is one of the few places that half stars can’t be used. Thus, “Rating is” can only choose 1-5 stars, not halves, so for the half-star playlists, you’ll need to use “Rating is less than” and “Rating is greater than”. For example, with 4.5 stars, “Rating is less than 5″ and “Rating is greater than 4″. From what I’ve read, this only works in versions of iTunes above 7.6. Below that, you may be able to use “Rating is in the range 4 to 5″, “Rating is not 4″, and “Rating is not 5″ — this works in iTunes 8.1, but I haven’t tested it in versions prior to 7.6.

Now you have 11 Smart Playlists, each containing all the songs with a particular rating. I named mine “ZZZ (rating) Stars” so they wouldn’t get in the way of my other playlists. Now you make another 10 (or 11, if you want) playlists. Each of these should only have one criterion: “Playlist is (playlist)” where ‘playlist’ is the playlist of the corresponding rating. Then you should choose “Limit to X songs selected by (least recently played)”. X should be a number which is high for higher rated songs, but which decreases as you go down in rating. This is the weighting of the songs. I chose to essentially set the weight of 0-rating songs to 0 (thus never allowing them to play), that’s why I only needed 10 playlists. I named these playlists “XXX (rating)”

Once you have those you need one more playlist, which I titled “iTunes DJ Glossing”. This should have 10 criteria (match any) of “Playlist is (playlist)”, one for each of the weighting playlists I told you about in the last paragraph. This will pull all of those chosen songs into the pool for the iTunes DJ.

Once you have all of these playlists done, simply set iTunes DJ to use the “iTunes DJ Glossing” playlist and you’re good to go, a more precise weighted random system! The only problem with this is that one little caveat that I mentioned above — which I realized, actually, while writing this, that it isn’t even as big a problem as I thought (which was still small).

There are two sides to this, and they both stem from the “Limit to X songs selected by (least recently played)” that we chose in the “XXX” playlists. In case you were wondering, the reasoning behind that rule is simple. The first half of it is obvious; it gives us the ability to choose the weighting of our ratings. The second half, I think, is less so. You could, after all, just choose “random” for that part. However, if you do that, iTunes will randomly choose the songs for the playlist and then… keep them. So you’ll constantly have the same songs in the pool for iTunes DJ, and you’ll end up hearing the same small group over and over again. By sorting by “least recently played”, you force iTunes into rotating just-played songs out of the pool, allowing other ones to take their place. That means, essentially, that the possibility of hearing the same song again any time soon after it’s played is relatively small, as iTunes will just continue rotating through your library. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

The other thing I was worried about is that you would constantly have a normal distribution of songs, basically, when one 3 star song goes out of the pool, one goes back in. But since it’s choosing songs from the pool at random, this isn’t really an issue, now is it?

Anyway, that’s all. I hope you enjoyed it, and it wasn’t too boring…

Feel free to leave your thoughts or suggestions (especially about the “least recently played” issue) in the comments!

Moving on, there are now under 100 days until I return to the States. Which of course means I’m planning for next school year, since registration starts in like 2 weeks. It is going to be an extremely hectic year. I had originally planned on staying an extra quarter into the 2010-2011 school year to finish up some random requirements, but honestly, I’ve gotten to the point where I just want to be done — unless all else fails, anyway.

So I figured out how I can graduate in 1 year, but it’s going to be a lot of work. Fall quarter, 21 credits. Winter quarter, 19 credits. Spring quarter, 19 credits. And then I’ll graduate, assuming I pass them all. (Which I probably will with flying colors, but that may just be my ego talking ).

Anyway, my schedule for fall quarter is going to look something like the picture below (at least, I hope so, because any other combination of those classes has overlaps in class times, and I absolutely need THOSE classes).

Yeah, this doesn't look very fun...

My camera’s been dying for a long time, so I guess I had that one coming, but it finally happened definitively right before my mom came to Japan. Being Spring and all, I decided to splurge and buy a new one. I was kind of expecting to have to since December or so, anyway, so I was prepared for this one.

However, I wasn’t prepared for my laptop dying right after my mom left. It didn’t seem to care that I wasn’t prepared and just up and went on me anyway… at least, more or less. I’ve been having problems with my laptop for a long time now (so many that I’ll probably never buy a Gateway again), but most of them were relatively trivial to fix. This time, my battery is completely dead (from full charge to zero takes about ten minutes) and I’ve now gone through my sixth AC adapter. I decided it was probably just best to put it to its final rest, because I really don’t like having exposed wires out on my desk because its really not safe and it doesn’t work half the time even with them.

So as you may infer from the previous paragraph, I’ve now purchased a new laptop, and am currently posting from it. It’s pretty nice, and was relatively inexpensive, to boot. More than I wanted to pay ($0), I suppose, but you have to get back up and start going again even if you fall down, right?

One thing that I didn’t think about, though, when I purchased the laptop, was that, buying a Japanese model, it would have a Japanese keyboard. Well, it does. Luckily Japanese keyboards also have the English alphabet on them (in the same places, too!) or I would be pretty far up the creek. But in addition to the English letters, it also has Japanese characters on each key, with several additional keys for switching between the different Japanese input methods. Also, symbols are used differently in Japanese, so they’ve reordered them accordingly. Quotation marks and apostrophes aren’t used very often in Japanese, if at all, so they got relocated. The double quote is shift+2 (which you’ll notice is @ for you — that has its own key on my keyboard), and the single quote/apostrophe is shift+7 (which should be &, which is shift+6 for me). I had to look pretty hard for the + sign when writing that last bit, too.

So anyway, I’m planning on posting pictures of the new laptop here in a little bit, but I also need to finish setting it up, so I may not get around to it immediately. See you later!

Sakura tree outside my window

I don’t really know what else to say about this, so instead I’ll just go ahead and link, for your viewing pleasure, to the photo gallery of the pictures I’ve taken of the sakura. Without further ado, here’s the link: http://gallery.rintaun.net/thumbnails.php?album=4

Enjoy!

Note: Right before this, I finally finished posting my mom’s emails that she sent out while she was in Japan, and I don’t want you to miss them just because I put this up, too. So check them out!