Monthly Archives

Already : Hatachi Monthly Archives

« May 2002 · Archive Home · July 2002 »

photo albums and php Saturday June 29

yet again php has struck, grasping my neck and not letting me sleep until i feed it code. i coded a php photo album script. i know that they are already out there, but i could not find one with descriptions...which is what i wanted it for in the first place. therefore, i spent all last night and this afternoon scanning pictures, editing code, and porting the old picture books into this new, leet script format. then, i spent all of sunday night adding the finishing touches. all japan pictures are up and have descriptions for your enjoyment.

top ten of sophomore year Thursday June 27

while at the hostel, i was grooving to my discman -- and it struck me that every year, i tend to have a few songs that i really listened to frequently, for whatever reason, and that i should compiled a top-ten before i forget. therefore, sophomore year of college is given below:

honorable mention:
incubus - aqueous transmission
radiohead - morning bell
trik turner - friends and family [only for the wpgu aspect]

ten: ben folds - fired
nine: bob dylan - shelter from the storm [live at budokan]
eight: dispatch - the general
seven:the reindeer section - sting
six: led zeppelin - fool in the rain
five: guster - two points for honesty
four: opm - el capitan
three: phish - wading in the velvet sea
two: oar - crazy game of poker
one: wilco - i am trying to break your heart

anyway, so there it is. not necessarily the best songs, or my favorite, but all songs that will most likely forever make me think of that crazy second year in good ol' forty-one.

feeling brave?

i finally finished the novel of everything worth mentioning from my weekend of travel. if you are either (a) really bored, (b) really interested (hah!), or (c) at work -- feel free to read it. a picture-style storybook (much shorter!) will be tossed together before the weekend, for those of you who aren't interested in reading and/or don't have the time. (you'd need about 25 minutes.) the working title of this piece will be: kicking ass and collecting style points.

i hate michigan Wednesday June 26

i have never liked michigan. i don't mean the university of michigan, nor do i mean the people specifically. just overall, there has always been something about that state (with the exception of detroit) that just gives me the heebee-jeebees. today, i received spam from a sender identifying itself as "Michigan.org". the title was: "2-for-1 coupons and hotel discounts from Michigan.org!"

is anyone else creeped out that a state, a governmental entity (not even mine, no less), is spamming people? oh, sure, someone sold my email address long ago; therefore, new marketing companies get it weekly. it is still "legal", but only because they can sell the name faster than i can unsubscribe from their opt-in program. i hate spam (who doesn't?), but i actually opened this email out of blunt curiosity. the following appeared on my screen:

************************************************************    
     Michigan. Great Lakes. Great Times. Great Deals & Discounts.
************************************************************
    
     June 2002
    
     You're just clicks away from buy-one-get-one-free admission
     to Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village, two-for-one golf
     at the Thoroughbred Golf Club, lodging specials at Mackinac
     Island's Grand Hotel and much more!
    

first, it was nick panagopoulous (or however you spell his name). he was from michigan, and his family was just so...michigan. following that, there was the university of michigan and their penalty shenanigans against in the 2000 ncaa football season. and now, this email. god, i can't believe i resent a state. but then again, it's better than florida, where the voting...yeah. i am going to stop there.

somehow still alive Tuesday June 25

my previous post was both correct and incorrect: correct, it is possible for me to ride a bicycle that bicycle about ninety kilometers; incorrect, it is more than ninety kilometers to asahi-machi, toyama-ken. so, after two 8 hour biking trips, 3 short hitchhiking jaunts, and a few train rides, i am back in kanazawa. only my camera witnessed what i saw, and i shall set up a seperate page for all the pictures when i scan them this week. therefore, all you have to know is that i am back and i am safe. and both my lower back and my bicycle are seemingly broken.

however, because i feel that every post should be content-worth (not strictly informative), i feel obligated to give you at least one antecdote: when i was returning from the onsen, or hot springs, i fell asleep on the train and almost overslept my stop. the train halted, and i woke up disoriented. i jumped to my feet, ran to the door, and looked at the platform. i decided that this was similar to tomari-eki, the asahi-machi station, but it was not. i claim ignorance due to sleep. at the next station, i decide to walk back instead of waiting 35 minutes for the next train. i walked along the ocean, and it started to rain (what else?). my umbrella is functional, but markedly of the "travel" size. most of the way back to town, a late-model black sedan pulled up along side me.

"doko ikimasuka?", or, "where are you going?", the young, beautiful woman inside asked me. definitely a time to try to sound proficient in japanese. i explained my situation, and, after nodding, she added that it was strange to see me walking in the rain on the side of the road: foreigners don't come here often, especially without a vehicle. that comment, however, was no longer in japanese: it was excellently-accented english; it was followed by an invitation for me to get out of the rain and into her car. yeah.

after getting out of the car, i contemplated dinner for about fifteen seconds before i mentally slapped myself on the forehead. when she asked where i was going, why did i not say, "to find something to eat"? living nearby, she definitely knows what is good -- and probably hadn't eaten yet either. moreover, the reason chikumi was speaking english to me was not because i could not understand her: it was because she truly wanted to practice with a native speaker (she mentioned this). chikumi teaches young children english for a living, but she couldn't have been a day over twenty-three. and i got right out of the car without even realizing what i was doing.

a classic mark scenario: opportunity knocked, but i was not paying attention.

hah Monday June 24

my narrative style is often described as long, including mundane details, and excursive. however, i hope that someday i can write concise prose as my roommate todd did last wednesday. the reference to my father made it more amusing for me, but it has to be one of the funniest stories i have ever read. since disco will not always be hosted where it currently is, i shall reproduce the quoted text:

Wednesday, June 19, 2002
7:30 PM
I had a nice little moment of zen this morning at Espresso.
It was shortly after 9am and we had some drifters from the orientation program who chose not to go on their bus tour. I served a hot chocolate to a gorgeous orientation student (and not just cute but young, she looked easily twenty and could have been a model) and as is standard operating procedure for male ERC I checked her out as she walked away. Now, this is a slightly dangerous procedure as the next person in line is always looking at you waiting to order and there's the danger of them taking offense to your blatant ogling. The next guy in line was a slightly overweight, jovial man (who actually reminded me somewhat of Mark's Dad) picked up on it, and then ordered a pastry. When I handed it to him he said, "tasty, hm?" and started laughing. I thought this a bit odd because he hasn't tasted it yet, and it was a question. When he grinned and winked I realized he was referring to the girl. About that time I realized he was paying me for his pastry AND her drink; a quick glance at his nametag revealed him to be the girl's FATHER. I started laughing, he laughed harder, and I nodded as if to non-verbally convey Yes sir your daughter is in fact tasty, I'd be happy later this evening to bend her over and give her a little somethin' something'.
And he was earnestly laughing.

dad, if you read this, please issue that one chuckle that mom claims you are infamous for.

i am baka-gaijin Friday June 21

listening to: the stereo mc's - sofisticated (yes, without the ph)
reading: my new map of kanazawa, with a homemade distance ruler
feeling:: bring it on. go ahead, try to put hair on my chest...just keep it off my back.

translation of this title in full english: "i am a stupid foreigner." reasons: tomorrow morning, i will awake around 9am and leave for asahi-machi, toyama-ken, japan. for most of you, this means little. however, for an individual who just purchased two maps and on atlas on the exact roads and distances, i have a 180 kilometer bicycle trip ahead of me -- ninety each way. that's only about 112 miles, i know; only a little more than half the way to roscoe to champaign. let's take a comparison, however.

factor	roscoe, il to champaign, il	kanazawa-shi to asahi-machi
instrument of choice	badass buick @ 74mph, 17mpg	my one-gear bicycle @ 10mph, 350kcal/h
average terrain	curvature of the earth only	jagged hilly thingies that the japanese drilled tunnels through
travel conditions	arguing with nathan about not listening to sports on AM	jagged hilly thingies that the japanese drilled tunnels through
weather conditions	annoying suntan on one arm only	rainy season
directions	all interstate, all the time	at least five necessary turns; the rest is improv with a compass.
likely difficulties	no gas money left once in champaign	inability to read road signs, warning signs, and "no trespassing" signs.
language	hick-glish	日本語
travel time	three hours	hopefully one day

so, there you have it. it's clear-cut that i will have the time of my life. i intend on stopping at onsen (温泉), or natural hot springs, along the way. maybe when i am in asahi-machi i will take a bus up into the mountains. if i die, i hope this post was an entertaining last one. if i don't, you'll hear from me on the other side.

for reference, a picture of my route stolen from yahoo japan maps is here:

more stupid people Thursday June 20

first, brian rieder was the stupid person; since then he has not responded to my e-mail, but that is most likely because he is unable to turn on his computer properly after deleting that "virus" in the first place. but brian has been dethroned as the ichiban annoying person.

in technology class, my usual table was a little full -- and we were taking a quiz -- so we had to spread out. i moved to what is usually the tool table -- because they were not there. naturally, after i set up, they walked in late and set up camp around me. many people are unfamiliar with my usage of the word "tool", two such definitions are available here. my favorite part is most likely the following definition of toolbox, the second one, which i believe fits these guys even better.

since then, i have tried to find good reason to refrain myself from telling them how immature they are acting. it is one of those group things, as well. together, they are a toolbox, individually, they are fine. they bitch and bitch about not being able to do this or that. ALL DAY LONG. "i can't read this kanji...i mean, they didn't tell us we had to know this shit.." ALL THE TIME. i am as clueless as they are, but that doesn't mean i go seeking cluelessness redemption from all my other tool friends. and they laugh at themselves. and they are NOT FUNNY.

however, it does no good for me to rant and not propose a solution: every person is allowed four complaints per day. if you use more than that, you have to pay a small fee that is automatically and electronically redistributed to all of the people that had to listen to your extraneous complaint. if you whine, bitch, moan, or otherwise express annoyance ineloquently over something you don't have any control over, you pay. we'll toss in three or four freebies a day for formalities, such as complaining about the weather, the eternally-close chicago cubs (it is a proper social custom to do so in illinois), and instances like now where i am complaining about complaining.

domo-kun

i first saw domo-kun on jon's webcam last semester. i thought it was hilarious, but i did not know who he was or what his name was. however, lateron (april, i think?), this image began floating around email boxes worldwide. domo-kun showed up again, attacking kittens. again, i wondered: who the hell is this guy?

then, i came to japan. nhk, the public television station here, created domo-kun (actually doo-mo-kun, or どうもくん) a few years back as a mascot for one of its satellite channels -- and ever since, his popularity has taken off. if you wonder why, try to download a video of him from the web. it is, for some reason, possibly one of the cutest things i have ever seen: a big block of brown with small arms and a fixed face.

however, domo-kun is not always the nice, clean-cut guy he'd like us to think. after his explosion in popularity (one site indicated that domo-kun is recognized by 90% of all schoolchildren), he couldn't handle the stress and turned to other releases. poor domo-kun. if i find a picture that i am allowed to post, i am going to try to stick one up here, too.

cultural assimilation Wednesday June 19

listening to: cake - haze of love
reading: japanese grammar and communication strategies (still)
feeling: worried about successfully biking 160 kilometers this weekend

three events have occurred to turn my mood from jaded to better. first, i met my host family last night. i have a hard time calling them this, because i will only be staying with them one night; i will call them the nakayama family. i went out to sushi as their guest last night, and had an amazing time. i was right in the middle of a true japanese family: there were no ties to the school or class or anything. i was on my own with a dictionary. the language went all right; per usual, i could understand more than i could say. they have a 7-year-old daughter named rei-chan who instantly took a liking to me, and she and i had a good time. when learning a new language, talk to kids. they talk slowly and use words you can understand. moreover, they're good at saying what they want and only that.

the second thing was today, when i visited a shinto shrine about 20 minutes south of kanazawa (by train). yes, i have seen them before -- but we were allowed to go inside and watch a ceremony. there i was, kneeling on a tatami mat, bowing ceremoniously as the shinto priests cleansed us on the outside by shaking a stick with papers attached around us. after a fifteen minute ceremony i can't quite recall the exact order of, we completed the purification "internally" with a sip of osake. in this way, shinto is more of a ethos than a religion. who else mixes alcoholic beverages and religion but the japanese?

the third thing, well, is minor. the japanese students are wrapping up finals soon, so they will be free whenever we are. translation: i can most likely take sachi-san out to dinner? one final note: i got some postcards at shirayamahime (the name of the shrine), so those of you who i have addresses for will get one. if you want one yet, mail me -- we'll work it out.

it's why they call it the web Tuesday June 18

i visited so anyway... for the first time randomly a few days ago. since then, i have quoted that site here, and since vice versa. following that, i went back to so anyway... to note that my page is on the top of the latest post as a link. so what, right? it didn't get a little bit freaky until i read the post -- talking about this article. foremost, notice that the article is about university of illinois students -- which i happen to be one of -- then, it goes on to quote my fellow hononegah alum and uiuc friend tom rybarczyk. tom had told me last week he was going to be in the news. whoah. i guess that's why we call it "the web".

being original

it is about time i fully detail the old name of this site. i am going to change it now, so first i will let random musings have its last day in the sun.

in high school, my senior year was spent trying to use up all of the goody-two-shoes points i had worked up over the years. i would cut school in the same way the "bad" kids did, but in a system where the attendance office folks are the five-o, judge, and jury, three years of kissing ass and seeming responsible had earned me enough figurative get-out-of-jail-free cards to do anything.

sure, i had a few detentions and an in-school suspension, but even the officials themselves admitted that they were only issuing them because the school handbook mandated those punishments specifically for the crimes. my favorite, and i am sure it is jon's as well, is our last-minute weather-inspired trip to michigan avenue that landed us in in-school detention. we would have gotten away with it, but when three guys who were all friends were missing from 5th-hour newspaper class, dave just had to call us on it. it worked out well, though. we were allowed to bring a sack lunch to the in-school, so we collaborated and brought my 40-gallon cooler, fulled stocked with cheeses, lunchmeats, veggies, and tons of tropical blend v-8 splash (yum). for icing on the cake, i brought my acoustic guitar, too. we had a blast. jon brought his videocamera. people came to visit us, and we essentially made a mockery of the whole system.

ok, enough with the tangents. so, in this aforementioned newspaper class, jen leavitt and i became two regular columnists. one of my columns, actually, won me the reward of having the air let out of my front tire in the school parking lot; i don't hold grudges though. when i read it now i realize i was being too preachy. college has chilled me out like that, you know?

i needed a name for my column, and since i was a fan of the word both random and musings, i stuck them together. internally, a new era was born. when i returned from london in the winter of early 2001, my website did not exist. since i had a thousand pictures from london i wanted to display, i decided to create a new site that would be hosted on my students account. random musings came to mind. and when i started blogging (mind you, buried deep within the site, not on the front page), the name was still there. were these scrawlings still random? would you even call them musings?

even if you would not, i did. what is done is done. however, after checking out bloghop more recently, i discovered that random and musings are not really original at all. this led to my google search on "random musings", which generated a page that was a death knoll to my site's title. i honestly do not know what pissed me off more: the lack of my site showing up among the list, or the over-abundance of other people's slightly-more random musings. with that, i decided i had had enough.

i set out on a quest for a new name. i considered hatachi, or something with it, because it is a japanese word that i like -- but that would be way too i-am-a-dorky-engineer-who-likes-anime-esque. and i don't even like anime. just cowboy bebop. after that, i thought about just adopting the site's name pitchpipe, but i would rather not blur the lines between my domain and my personal business. i could follow the formulaic name creation method via the juxtaposition of two of my favorite objects. let's go with... birkenstock sandals and the urbana hot wok's general tso's chicken: birks and chinese food. not bad, but not good. noone wants to think about eating while thinking of feet. moving on. next, i tried guster's goldfly album and japanese culture and language, but that only yields bury me with my chopsticks. i am not making this up -- these are following the favorite-objects formula. and they suck; not saying that random musings was much better.

or was it? let's take a look: random described my inability to pick one topic, and musings indicated that you were going to get a piece of my mind -- not necessarily the most intelligent or informed pieces, either. so let's play the synonym game, because the blog content has not deviated much from that description. abitrary ponderings. no.

forget this insane rambling about choosing a title, mark. just do it, nike-style. therefore, the new title of random musings shall be already hatachi, defining my site not by its writings, but by the person behind them. it means that i am already twenty years of age, the japanese age of adulthood, and i better start figuring out what i am going to do with life. this forum should help. and if i start attracting lots of anime crowds from the search engines because i have one japanese word in my title, so be it. i am reminded of high fidelity: " we're called sonic death monkey, and if laura's bourgeois lawyer friends can't handle that, well then.."

c'mon rob, we need the gig.

at the ocean

listening to: dashboard confessional - drowning
watching: the calm sea of japan lapping up onto a litter-strewn beach
feeling: empowered as an individual

i am sitting on the ocean. ok, not moses-style, but close enough. just off the beach. last night at dinner, i asked asako-san how far away the ocean was via bicycle. she claimed an hour, but i think i just made it in 35. the reason for this trip was initially to help me gauge distances for the weekend, as well as physically prepare.

for those of you who don't know what i am referring to, this weekend is our "long weekend", where we do not have class on monday nor tuesday. as a result, i will be taking my trusty bicycle (a picture is on the way, i promise) to the next prefecture over for a 80km jaunt to asahi-machi, toyama-ken. most of the ride is along the ocean, and i have to go in between mountains at one point. there are tenative plans to stay in a youth hostel there, but the main focus is just to explore. alone. oh, and i will not leave without going to another hot spring. if you think jacuzzis are good, come to japan. now that you're in the know, back to the scene.

i went out saturday night with some of the other american students, two of which accused me being a little anti-social on this trip. we were all out, and i was talking a lot (surprise?) ; and they insisted that i never talked that much and tended to do things by myself. i admit this -- but my reasons for being here are completely independent of them. they seem to have decided that since KIT treats us as if we are on a little rounded-corners playground, that they might as well concede any hope of escape. i told them my goal was to learn as much japanese as possible by getting away from the sandbox as much as possible. "muri" (a common japanese exclamation, literally, impossible), they claim -- when i venture off alone, i am still not speaking japanese; the only difference is that i am not speaking english as well.

point. but then again, who is the one staring out into the ocean as the afternoon sun peeking through the clouds reflects a beautiful pattern on the waves? all last year, i lacked the time to look inward; i was always busy with friends, obligations, or schoolwork. right now, with the exception of tomorrow's one-hour assignment and dinner, i have no commitments. the word in japanese to describe this is "hima", and even though it means free, it seems to carry a connotation of time that you may use however you please without obligation to anyone else.

quite possibly, i am being selfish. my trip to KIT is about japanese, but it is also about an opportunity to discover what i really want out of college, my job, and my life. with the ocean breeze consistently pressing against my face and arms, and tall reeds waving precariously next to me, i think i am on the right track.

however, there's a large contrast here: the great, beautiful, big ocean -- and a beach that has the trash our society has produced littered about it. i know people have not been this careless to leave it there; the ocean knows what it wants to be composed of -- it spits out the foreign objects all over our beaches to remind us that we can't hide our wastes within it. unless our wastes have cement shoes like jimmy hoffa. either way.

i did not know how to get here, or which roads to take (not that they are labeled anyway), i just took which way i knew was east (via my compass) and started travelling. it appears that i have ended up a little south of campus as well as 10km east, but as soon as i felt the wind hitting my face and saw the water gushing down the canals on the side of every road faster and faster toward their fate with the salt water, i knew that i was headed in the right direction.

coming from a landlocked state, i am not used to this breeze. we have ocean-like breezes in illinois: they are that cool, constant wind we get just prior to a really large thunderstorm. since the skies are mostly cloudy today, and it is tsuyuu, or rainy season, i had concern for awhile; at some point i decided that this was somehow different.

i did not think to bring my camera here, but i think we have all seen oceans and beaches with litter before. again, it is not that i am at the ocean that makes this moment good for me: it is the realization that i am finally free to do what i want to do in life. if i read books on the right subject (say, japanese), i can learn enough to be able to live here. and if i was fond enough of this ocean, i am sure i could locate a job in kanazawa and move to the other side of this artificial hill that hides the ocean view from the homes and rice fields on the other side.

and who knows, maybe i will want to someday. but at least now, i know i could. what a blessed life i lead. people in the middle east just like myself could die tomorrow via suicide bombing, and the largest danger i currently face is the usually-slow-moving cars on the road. when i am not biking, the greatest danger to my health is most likely malnutrition.

one more amusing note: i chose to leave from the group in order to pursue my individual goals. oh, how american. i am not adapting to japanese thought patterns at all yet. just go with the flow, even if you don't like it, there, stud. (that was naturally intended with just the right helping of sarcasm and irony.)

on that note, 5:15 is rolling around, and the way the timezones work here, it actually gets dark rather early. moreover, if i sit on the edge of the sea too much longer blaring cake from my laptop speakers, i will run out of laptop juice.

the best virus: stupid people Monday June 17

i received an email this morning from brian rieder, a guy i knew from high school. we were in newspaper class together senior year, and he was annoying. if you have seen can't hardly wait, brian was, and most likely still is, the will you sign my yearbook? character. hence, you'll understand why i did not just press delete to the following email:

HI ALL! I JUST GOT THIS MESSAGE AND I DID HAVE THE VIRUS. IT HAS SINCE BEEN DELETED. PLEASE CHECK YOUR COMPUTER.
SORRY, Brian

VERY IMPORTANT VIRUS
The virus called jdbgmgr.exe is not detected by Norton or McAfee Anti-virus systems. The virus sits quietly for 14 days before damaging the system. It's sent automatically by the messenger and by the Address book, whether or not you send E-mails to your contacts.

this sounded a lot like the SULFNBK.EXE hoax to me, so i took 35 seconds and went to symantec.com. instantly i located this page, identifying it as a hoax. brian, who used to boast to jon and i in newspaper class about his technical prowess, is an idiot. the only smart thing he did was BCC, if he hadn't, i was going to ream him a new one in front of everyone. also, he most likely won't re-forward to everyone, so i feel bad for all the techno-naive who will delete that file.

thirteen children Sunday June 16

the woman running this blog has nailed a perfect commentary on a recent news item. apparently, there was some guy who left one of his thirteen kids in the car by accident, where it subsequently died. she admits that it is indeed tragic that a baby died, but isn't it just darwinism in effect? my favorite quote from the whole rant was most likely:

Our culture rewards and admires people who have an absurd number of children, especially if they have them all at once. There's no reason to admire someone who can fuck and spawn.

stupid people.

jaded Saturday June 15

listening to: god's reflex - a brief lesson in affection (in memoriam)
reading: movable type documentation
feeling: much better than yesterday

for the first time, i am a little bit frustrated. i mean, moreso than just a moment. as a whole, i am a little frustrated at what feels like my complete inability to communicate in this language. i have made the joke many times about being able to ask where the post office is, and i can, but the truth is that i still have a long, long way to go. when people ask about my family, i talk about my proficient brother, who studied and worked in tokyo for five years. the question i wonder is, would it really take five years to grasp this language the way he has done? i suppose that is a little immaturity ringing through: i don't want to wait, don't want to work; i want the results now. and i do want them now, but i feel like i sometimes fundamentally lack the proper knowledge to express myself.

i think that is where this frustration is coming from. it does not stem from japanese or my study thereof at all, it stems from not being able to express myself like i usually can. this website is a steam vent, but it is by no means a replacement for my daily commentary that i usually subject nathan, todd, michael, or whoever to. i suppose that indicates that i should start writing. or, shut up and study more japanese. there's just so many words, you know? i am planning for next weekend's 4-day event: a bicycle trip to asahi-machi, in toyama-ken. we're looking at about a 180km trip total, roundtrip. i am making preparations (with michael's help), but i expect the unexpected from it. when in my life will i have the freedom to take a bicycle into an unpopulated area of japan? most people will say, "never again". i disagree.

alisa (from another school) asked me last night what my major was, but when i told her that i probably should have done graphic design or something similar instead, she said that i should -- or i will be miserable in my engineering job. it was then that i told her i didn't really want to be an engineer anyway, i just wanted to know everything that an engineer does. therefore, i openly admit right now that my life does not have a direction, and i am making no steps to give it one. idealistically, i would like to go through life this way. i want to do new things until i die. i do not want to settle into a groove. and then, when i have collected enough wisdom from those experiences, i'll write it into a book that no one may ever read -- but at least i will be pleased that i was able to produce at least one cumulative work in my lifetime.

i think this is why alisa suggested i might just be an "artist" without being artistic: currently, life is not a plan; it is a series of uncompleted projects that i am working on independently. this website, for example, is one of those incomplete works. it may function, but it could be so much better -- and it will never be done, it will only be better than before. and that is why i want to write that book when i am old: after enough revision, i might just be able to articulate everything i want to say and have it be a done, finished work -- without the need for constant revision. in this way, our life philoshopies are texts -- and as time goes on, we refine them more and more to be what we want. right now, i like the pages of my philosophies, but they are vague such that life could take me anywhere yet: even the remote ends of japan.

pitchpipe, yo Friday June 14

i finally registered a domain, because i feel that i have put enough energy and time into this site that it should no longer be hosted on a restrictive location such as the uiuc students server. therefore, i registered with site5 today, and as soon as the dns servers update, random musings will be hosted at pitchpipe.org -- most likely www.pitchpipe.org, but i can't register the subdomain until the regular one clears.

what the hell is it?

kate and i conversed via aim earlier today. a brief transcript, edited, that i found amusing:

kate: nick said, "isn't phooze a dirty word?"
mark: i don't know, but if it was a bad word, what would it mean to you?
kate: nothing. i dont know. why i asked
mark: oh cmon...play along
kate: uuughhh
mark: would it be slang for a body part?
kate: fine. i think it sounds like.....
mark: a verb?
kate: andy says..."a kind of ethnic dance
kate: nick says the blueberry filling in donuts

so there it is. i have embodied the name phooze since nathan gave me the name in middle school, and now, a word that i have become synonymous with, reminds people i don't know of ethnic dances with blueberry doughnut filling. i'm done for now, i guess. so now it's up for open forum. with the exception of being my name for almost eight years, tell me what comes to mind when you hear phooze.

untitled Thursday June 13

listening to: a better culture lecture than usual
looking at: the digital pictures from last night...
feeling: like i could really use some benedryl

i have a cold. it is annoying. everyone here is sneezing, hacking, and blowing way too much yellow stuff out of their hana. i know that the colorful imagery used is not necessarily desired, but it is the truth. however, following todd's idea of getting better when sick, i went out last night with scott-san and ballester-san to a bar called the glass onion. this place is nice; karaoke and all that. acdc and old beatles vinyl (still in the plastic, not re-released) adorns the walls behind the bar. natsukashii. the owner is 50; he's a john lennon look-a-like who speaks decent english: definitely a good start. we watched most of the italy vs. mexico world cup game on the tiny television and chatted with japanese businessmen hanging around the bar. japan doesn't really have sports bars, so this was the closest thing we could find since we can't watch the games after 10pm at nishikawa heights. the power in the lounge goes out at 10pm nightly as a method to coerce us into being quiet after 10pm curfew. it's not a strict curfew, the law just requires us to be quiet.

however, a bunch of the guys had been drinking before we went to onion, and so we took some pictures in the parking lot. the only problem, however, is that they had been drinking so much that scott, andrew, and i didn't realize until too late that they had deviated from following us and lost themselves somewhere in nonoichi. they were drunk, whatever. i see them here as i type this morning, so everything must have turned out all right. i am working on photoshopping the pictures such that they are suitable to put on the web.

michael sent me an email identifying the title of the film i was trying to recall the other day: gung ho. for those of you who have seen this steve guttenberg 80s film, recognize that i was referencing the stereotypes it makes about japanese business men.

we're touring a japanese high school today for culture class. yes, that's right -- japanese schoolgirls and all. start cracking jokes whenever you'd like...last night at dinner someone suggested the idea of "divide your age by 2, and then add 7, and you have your minimum age." via that formula, i've got (almost) 20 goes to (almost) 10, so we're looking at (almost) 17 as the minimum age of a girl i can date. riiiight. i was talking online to todd yesterday, and he was saying that even the uiuc orientation freshmen (age 18, usually) are bad enough -- why would anyone want to dip below that?

wait, don't answer that question. i just thought of the reason. on that note, it's time to tour the high school and talk about the educational system. i'll update here about that, and other, experiences on the weekend.

last night Wednesday June 12

last night i took the bicycle out -- wait. i just recently read on sleepygirl that bicycles tend to have names, so i suppose i should come up with one. any suggestions? either way, i explored northern and eastern kanazawa; my bike seat is no good. it was not made for touring. i sat down on it today to ride to class and realized just how improper either (a) my ass' shape is, or (b) the seat's shape is. i passed a bike shop while exploring, i will go there and ask if they have new seats.

it looks like i have a plan for our "long weekend" where we can visit japan. there is a hostel in asahi-machi in the toyama-ken prefecture (think of a mini-state), and it is about 75 kilometers from here. that's a one-day trip by bicycle -- and since i get four to play with, that means i can travel on the first and last days and have the other two to tour a small town in the middle of japan. that's really what i want to do, enough of this i-am-isolated-because-i-live-with-all-americans stuff. when i tried to explain why i wanted to go alone without any other american students to my japanese friends last night, i felt i did not have the proper vocabulary. literally, all i said was, "alone is good sometimes." and they seemed to understand. i hope you do too.

three-part post Tuesday June 11

another three-part post. this time, however, the time frame is far more condensed. we have monday night, tuesday day, and tuesday night.

listening to: cake - motorcade of generosity
reading: my japanese homework
feeling: onakaga ippai dayo

in middle school, there were the cool kids: somehow, they had prematurely and simultaneously discovered that basketball games were no longer cool, and that parent-hating would be the next cool, uber-teenage thing to do. most of us still ran home and remained obedient, which is when i believe i was inundated with most of my cooking knowledge. yes, even with nate around, i still didn't become slightly mom-rebellious until after i had joined theatre in high school. my tardiness on the issue was initially worthy of the dork stamp, but years later it pays off on nights like this one.

i noted previously that sachi-san was coming over tonight to help me eat the dumplings i was making. after a little miscommunication, i determined that a bunch of the japanese kids were at ken's place making food, then all bringing it to my place along with my dumplings. a potluck, i guess. either way, sachi and i did an excellent job, and they turned out well. moreover, all the japanese students liked them, and we all ate and talked and laughed. another gap has been bridged, and i am infiltrating the japanese students and spending less time with the american students; exactly what i wanted.

overall, we ate dumplings, rice, nori, tuna, sarimi, that nasty bean stuff that japan is (in)famous for, veggies, and iced tea. it rocked. moreover, i made more plans: tomorrow yasushi-san and i are going to get me a bicycle. it's all good from here on out, and i would study more if this stupid class and homework didn't get in my way. i am serious -- i learn more from the students and less from this homework, but maybe that will change.

thursday afternoon, just a short tid-bit; almost small enough to forget about.

listening to: the sound of a coming rain, complete with wind gusting now and then
watching: everyone carrying umbrellas

i see a bad habit forming here. there is a girl who works at plus one, which is the bakery located next to the cafeteria, and i would like to make her acquaintance. naturally, i have started picking up a pastry almost daily, even if i have already eaten breakfast. i should stop eating such a large breakfast and resign myself to eating three meals a day anyway. ack. it has begun to drizzle a little, so i will go inside now, and cut this post short. kate would be pleased.

and finally, tuesday night:

listening to: guster (again)
reading: crafting selves: power, gender, and discourses of identity in a japanese workplace (for class, silly).
feeling: worried

tonight, i met with yasu-san as i had said i would earlier, and we went out in the semi-pouring rain to go buy a bicycle. the first place we went had two used ones, both for a pretty price, so we went to a menards-had-a-love-child-with-the-housewares-of-walmart type store; this place had over 100 new bikes -- many for under 10,000 yen. that is about, given the exchange rate i got the other day, $83.50. the bicycle i bought (sans gears, of course, that's why they are cheap) was 7,500, or $62.50. to me, that is just awesome that such an important piece of transportation comes so cheaply. the bus downtown is 330 yen, or $2.75. however, i have to get back, so that is $5.50. not bad, but if i make that trip twelve times, i have paid for my bike. moreover, the exercise is good -- and unlike the bus -- the bike goes where i want it to. it is freedom. maybe michael and i are too alike in this way: the first thing i want to do when i go somewhere is buy a map and figure out all of the geography. here, i have no map, nor did i have a method until tonight. i will buy one tomorrow, if it is sunny. i hope it is coming across how happy i am regarding this purchase. it may sound ridiculous, but it was one of my goals; i now plan to proceed to do crazy things with it such as ride it all over town, maybe even far away for the long weekend. into the mountains, maybe?

anamizu and such Monday June 10

after a long weekend, i am sure i will miss a detail here and there trying to recount everything. however, these tend to be my favorite posts: the weekend-recaps where you were so busy having fun that you did not have time to geekily sit in front of a console and document it. i begin from thursday night:

listening to: guster - goldfly
reading: japanese grammar and communications strategies

tonight i made pork dumplings. pork and green onions on the inside, with a little ginger. it was the shizzz-nat. and i don't say that often. after making a huge mess in my kitchen making the dough, i had about 25 dumplings; naturally, i didn't eat that many. i noticed that they don't keep in the refrigerator well, so i ate the 5 or so i wanted, cooked up the rest, and then served them to the students hanging out in the lounge (with the ginger sauce, score!). mostly, the american students ganked them, but two of the japanese students tried them -- one of them had a few. (ed. note: please recognize this as foreshadowing.) i was pleased.

every night, the power in the lounge with the tv goes out at 9:55, but we wanted to see the end of the uruguay and france soccer game, so we went to a place that daisuke-san (sge japanese friend) suggested...and had a blast. on the way out, we noticed that the tools (see earlier post, from yesterday) in the little park next to our building laying on the grass with the aforementioned girls. we waved, muttered under our breath, and continued. while at the restaurant/bar, i remarked that they probably couldn't convert the situation, and it would be funny if we returned and they were still there. we saw them on the way home 3 hours later. for fun, we walked over, unwelcome as ever, and as they talked to us they did not even introduce us to their new-found friends. apparently, these guys were the ones who did not want to share the wooden blocks in kindergarten.

i had no idea what was in store for the weekend. now, i have been on said field trip without computer access, so the last post comes as one, solid post-narrative beginning from friday morning, and ending now -- sunday morning.

listening to: phish - down with disease
reading: japanese grammar and communication strategies
feeling: like i need to buy my bicycle today

we left at 8:30 friday morning from kit for a weekend retreat in anamizu, where kit owns and maintains a seminar house on anamizu bay. i suppose a map of the area would help explain the situation, but it shall suffice to say that the bay is on the east side, the sea of japan (nihonkai) is to the north and west. pictures will follow. on the way to this beautiful gem of nature (no sarcasm intended), we stopped at a rest area on the limited-access highway (can we call them interstates here?) that was next to the ocean.

i purchased a telephone card with the intention of calling someone at home; i don't know who, but i just wanted to interact with someone from my family to tell them how amazing i felt in the calm, 80-degree weather standing next a peaceful sea on a huge, sandy, and empty beach. unfortunately, the payphone was domestic-only. nathan, as i came up over the parking lot to see the ocean, it was not on fire. i guess the experience can't be that transcendental. either way, such exposure to nature does easily yield a highly-spiritual experience. i'll discuss this later, when i talk about jellyfish (sounds exciting, right?).

ate lunch at a restaurant less than 50 meters from the ocean in nanao, which is another 20 or 30 miles up the road. easily the best sushi i have ever eaten, hands-down. you know that "fishy" taste that no one really likes? none. truly amazing. and it was only a little more than ten bucks. here, however, i made the mistake of trying to order the kid's item, there was only one; since i could not read the kanji (even though i know the kanji for "child", it is often incorporated into other words, making it difficult to read as "children's menu"), i failed to realize that the light purple box around that item was delimiting it as kids and not as a special. hey, i wasn't that hungry, you know? looked good, too.

after lunch, we went out to the open area by the bay to take pictures and to bask in the mid-day sunlight. four japanese workers were standing nearby, song-san asked them to photograph us. they began talking to us when they discovered we knew a little japanese, and we proceeded to converse. they wanted to know what we thought of japanese girls, and moreover, they wanted to teach us words we most likely wouldn't say to our mothers. i accept this, however, because it is a part of language, and regardless of whether or not i use said words, i do need to know them. most of the words were in kanazawa-ben (dialect) anyway, so they would not mean anything to a tokyo-ite anyway. the workers were generally hilarous, though. i'm sure they felt the same way about us. everyone here assumes we are here for the world cup, and not to study.

on the bus, i became entrenched in my japanese textbook. it's amazingly insightful and clear-cut. i want to finish it by next week, even though i have been only assigned the first 40 pages of about 400. it is akin to when i bought a programming book in middle school -- forget 21 days -- let's do the whole thing right now. i think it is a beautiful thing that i have an interest in something the way i did about programming such that i can easily just continue reading unless given something else to do. japanese, as a whole, unlike english, makes sense. discovering the langauge as a foreigner is a beautiful thing, i think, and i am sure that most japanese people don't realize how simple and perfectly structured their own language is.

after arriving at the seminar house, we were instantly impressed. this place was not a house, but a retreat/conference place. it was a four-story building that easy could sleep 250 people, and it had a cafeteria and ofuro (japanese-style bath). also, amidst all the pine trees, you could walk down the quarter-mile hella-steep path to go down to the harbor, where kit managed about 30 man-powered-boats and two big boats (i wouldn't quite call them yachts, but close). there was a boat house, a shop to rebuild and manage boats, and the whole place was clean as a whistle, to use idiomatic expressions. only later did we discover that kit, in general, is a rather structured, right-wing institution; it is the kind that appreciates order, abundance of resources, and, well, things that dubya and company would probably call a fine, american institution. i'm not kidding.

however, the nature was beautiful. i expended an entire roll there, so i hope a few turn out well. the water was low because of the tide (even though it is a bay, it is also salt-water), so rocks were exposed that enabled us to go check out different views and so on, in the water. it was at this point that kelvin began finding jellyfish, but most of them were out of the water. jellyfish cannot really move in shallow water by themselves, so if they get too close to shore when the tides change (which they can't really tell when), they end up trapped on the rocks. in some cases, we saw ones that were "well-done" in the evening sun, obviously out all day.

it was around this idea that the nature just struck me, realizing that the tides and the jellyfish and everything were acting independently of one another, and that there in nature there are no categories, no rules, no games, and no divisions. everything is truth. the jellyfish did not die because he was being punished, he did not die because he cheated on his jelly-wife, or even because he stung someone. the mug was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, as the tide, the moon, and the heavens act without concern to how the jellyfish acts. similarly, we may be here living on this earth, and regardless of what we have been done, or where we have been, sometimes being in the "wrong" place will rob us of living any longer. it is reasons like this that i believe in god, no matter what name you call him, her, it by. there is a greater force in this world, i believe, acting seemingly independently to make everything balanced. on that note, i continue to the description of events.

the barbeque was not what i expected when i hear the english word barbeque. i think of barbeque sauce, grill-flavored beef, burgers, and ice-cold refreshment (which, since we had pocari sweat, was just fine). jon, cool off your pocari sweat and drink it sometime. i'll you buy you another one.

instead, trays of veggies (fine) and raw seafood (ok...) were brought out. there was a little bit of beef and a little more pork, but naturally all of the american guys were huddling around this grill, and i did not feel like playing the game of trying to steal a piece of cooked meat before anyone else. i most likely would have been stabbed in the eye with a chopstick.

i huddled around the seafood grill, where unpeeled, unwashed, raw-from-the-ocean shrimp, complete with whiskers and all, were being cooked. also, we had some snail-ish thing that came in a shell you'd find on the beach, as well as scallops. again, whole and in the shell still. also, goldfish-sized fish were being cooked and served. heads and eyes complete. i know i make this out to be disgusting, but most of you reading this are individuals who take a big animal who farts a lot and eats grass in a field and slaughter it down and take muscle tissue out of its gut, ass, and shoulder to cook and serve. who's the weird one from that perspective? these people just pick up stuff out of the ocean and cook it.

i tried the snail-like thing, i enjoyed it. the shrimp i left, i was still actually a little full from the lunchtime sushi. we had a bit of ah-spah-ra, asparagus, and i eventually got a little pork, too. it was a success, i was getting to know and recognize more of the sge students at this point. i still wish i knew more japanese for manabu-san; he always has to repeat himself a few times for me. i always don't know the words he is using.

fudano-sensei, the head of the program, is akin to a fifth-grade teacher on a field trip. i am not joking. she speaks good english, so just imagine it. sometime, i will discretely take a picture of her so you can see what i mean. she even looks the part. we listen to her and do as she asks, but really no more than that. i ask her grammar questions, too.

after the barbeque, i took a bath in the ofuro, which is where you have to shower beforehand and clean off and then everyone shares the same hot water. it is a very interesting custom, and after the program ends i will most certainly use it as a means of cleaning off. public baths, you know? for americans, it sounds like something we would be too modest to enjoy, but there is something about a roomful of naked men -- it is as if it just doesn't matter anymore. no one stares or looks, and everyone just gets in and that is that. once in the water, it's just like sitting in a hottub.

saturday morning we had to wake up at 6:30am, so i went to bed nice-and-early. however, i woke up at 4:33am (i checked the clock) because ken, and i will call him ken because he is essentially american, came in amazingly drunk and stumbled into the bunk on top of me. there were three bunks in each room, for six people. here is ken's life in a nutshell: ken was born in japan, and he moved to texas when he was a few months old. he lived in the united states until he was 18, whereat he enrolled at kit. speaking japanese at home with his family, he is a native speaker of japanese and english. in english, he is crude. he swears a lot, is overweight, complains too much, and, obviously, drinks too much when he has to wake up a few hours later. he mocks japanese culture, but i feel this is because he feels he is not at home here or in the states, and that is a deep cultural issue that i don't think he has realized he has yet.

immediately after his head hit the pillow, he began snoring. nathan used to accuse me of snoring, but i have never heard something more heinous and disgusting and loud in my life. i fell back asleep about 15 minutes later, after wedging my head between the pillow and an extra blanket. i woke up at 6:30, at 6:45, all ken could say (still drunk), was, "awww, hell no...it is not morning yet...hell no..." over and over again. i had a hard time not laughing at him, but i also did not feel sorry for him. he knew what time he had to wake up. he had been drinking with a few of the american students (he obviously feels more at home with american culture), but most had petered out before 4:30; it was just him and one of the tools (see the posting above from thursday).

after doing morning exercises (think of that one 80s movie where the japanese car company moves to the us. what was that called? as a kid, every time we drove through pennslyvania, dad would tell us how part of it had been filmed there...if anyone knows what i am talking about, i think it started with an "r" and was only one word or so, please tell me via email), we had breakfast. i sat with sachi (nice, cool, sge girl) and scott, scott tried to be cute like he always does, and i just tried to converse properly. however, often, he's more successful. when he screws up, they think it's cute. either way, i am not here to meet girls, but if they are going to drive me to study, i can't think of a better motivation.

the main event of saturday was the sailing, we took the big boat out (there's a good size estimate for you: it took 33 american students and about 25 sge students out, as well as 4 teachers and 2 pilots) on the bay. i slyly began talking to sachi, learning things here and there. she asked why i thought kanji weren't so important for a new learner, and she mentioned the supermarket as an example. she is correct -- i could not read which label was vinegar, i had to ask. but, knowing the word for vinegar, it is not too hard to do.

she asked me what i bought. green onions (yes mom, i like green onions, and have since high school. feel free to feel that your son is growing into tastes; i assure you he will never really like white onions, though), pork, vinegar, flour (which, after i didn't know the word for it, i tried "flour", she thought i mean flower, whereat i had to track down one of the japanese teachers to give me the appropriate word), and ginger, among other things. she asked what i intended to make, and i explained that i had made dumplings thursday night. i don't know the word for chinese dumplings in chinese, so i just told her that she needed to try it to see what i was referring to. it helped when she asked one of the sge students who spoke a little better english what a dumpling was, and he realized that we were referring to the things i had brought to the lounge when he and his friend (how could i have gotten any luckier that that guy was right there?) tried them thursday night. he responded by saying that they were very delicious, which prompted the now-crowd of five japanese people to all say things such as tabete mitai; literally, this means "i want to try it to see what it tastes like". sachi is looking forward to trying them, so tomorrow night i am cooking them again. she's coming over at around 7:30, with some other students.

in the words of mark, todd, jon, and nathan, or just about any guy who is cool at our age, score. i owe a little to juan for teaching me how to make them. the sauce, however, i can thank tony for. (mok, wash table!)

ate a large curry lunch, and we also had a culture lecture which turned into a huge discussion about stereotypes. tool #1 was there, and he did an excellent job of making himself look stupid; i strived to sound like my thoughts were intelligently and eloquently stated when i contributed -- but to be honest, compared to this guy, it was impossible to look stupid. he was being flat-out ignorant, and in front of the japanese students. nasha, the girl from his school who participated in this program last year, told me that she is very surprised. she said he is not like this at home, and has been different since he came to japan; it is not in a good way, either, she said.

this weekend in kanazawa is the hyaku-man-goku-matsuri, or the "one million stone" festival. i believe the stone is some measure of rice; the festival is one of abundance and rejoice about rice, i think. i need to learn more about it. either way, even though we had missed most of it while at anamizu, we arrive back at kit in time to check out the saturday night scene in kanazawa. we caught the bus downtown with the japanese students, then proceeded to walk along about a half-mile of street that was all people dancing in the street to music being piped from a common stage in the middle of it all. pictures will show, but it was truly amazing. thousands of women and men in kimono, kids, elderly, everyone -- dancing uniformly to the intoxicating music. we stopped for awhile to watch, whereat i took some close-up pictures, and one of the sge students asked if we were interested in joining the dance. i don't dance, at least, in the style that people dance in chambana, but i wanted to do this more than anything. it was as schell-sensei (our american japanese culture professor -- wait. he is american, and he is our japanese cul.. you get it) who suggested that we not only observe culture but become part of it, and we most certainly did so. each dance lasted about a half an hour, and in that time we processed most of the way back that we had walked on the side. i did not notice, i was fully encompassed by the dance, beauty, and music.

in america, we do not have festivals like this. i tried to explain that to manabu-san, but when he asked what our festivals do have, i couldn't find an appropriate way to say that we have lots of old, drunk hicks sipping pabst blue ribbon taking their kids on amusement rides and eating elephant ears. i am sure that such a culture is equally interesting to them, but to me, after seeing both, theirs is better. their festivals actually feel like a celebration. i have never been to mardi gras, but i am sure it is the closest thing we have. again, my words do no good here. wait until i get the pictures developed.

from there, our numbers swelled. on the way to ken-roku-en, a famous garden that kanazawa is known for, we went from approximately 20 students and sge students to about 35, japanese girls who were friends of the sge students began showing up and joining us. we don't know where they came from or how they found us, but luckily we had the opportunity to meet new people, which is always good. they were all about 25, and not students. it was fun, but again, the language is a barrier. using japanese is not the problem, it is learning to convert my english-way of saying things to a similar and appropriate japanese format. after that, then it is just looking words up.

we walked around, but it was dark at this point. i will return some other time. the park closes, and most of the people went home. eventually, everyone except for one of the sge students left, and we went to a club that nasha and one of the RHIT guys had gone to the other night. the rhit guy met a girl who wanted to learn english, he had his own ride home. i'm not kidding...kid's smooth. either way, it was a hip-hop and dance show, and the club was called club nospace. since i have been to tokyo clubs before (with michael and nathan), i knew what to expect; this was similar, except note the pun as well as double meaning of "nospace". you could barely move, i am sure it reached 90 degrees in there by the end of the night. i don't have any pictures from this, but i wish i could express the way in which the japanese girls dress. i believe one of the americans put it like this: when americans go out, they dress to impress; japanese dress to shock. it's the most random, strange, and sometimes, just outright silly outfits. i saw a girl last night who was wearing ass-pants (as we call them in chambana) that were white, which didn't look bad, followed by a green top that was again, not bad. however, she was wearing a hat. i don't mean a cap or a cool hat or anything like that -- i mean a baseball cap that farmers wear -- you know, the ones that have the firm bill and the mesh netting on the back half, and some stupid logo on the front. however, this was her outfit. i would say that such items stick out, but everyone there has some sort of flair similar to this. it is the style; for us, it is just different. i was told that as americans, we can do whatever we want in terms of clothes, and i am pleased about that.

i went outside to get air, and i was stopped by the drunk japanese young men in the hallway up the stairs. they asked me to sit with them, whereat they cheered loudly every time they successfully proved to me that they knew a band i had heard of. first, it was radiohead. followed by chemical brothers, fatboy slim, etc. they mentioned many i didn't know, but when i said i liked rock, they suggested limp bizkit. i hope i dispelled thoughts about americans actually liking fred durst, because i told them i thought they sucked. they loved it. they loved everything i said, and proceeded to show me all the english words they felt cool for knowing: sexy bitch, sex, the f word, and a few more. i nodded, noting internally that just as they have a warped view of english and america, we are just as guilty. dad, i love you dearly, but what do you know about japanese outside of moshimoshi? there's nothing wrong with it, it is just that i lack the language to explain that america is not really like that. so, what do i do? give them what they want, and laugh at everything they say. i guess i was letting the stereotype live...but i would not go along with liking fred durst.

at a quarter to 2, we got a ride home from a friend of the sge student's. i didn't catch his name, but his friend studied CS for a year at uiuc, so we loved talking to him. his english was perfect, and moreover, he knew all about how much zych was dasai. after i got home, i crashed (after two), and woke up at 10:45. so it is. it's still sunday, and i want to buy a bicycle today as well as prepare the dough for tomorrow's dumplings.

the problem i have had Wednesday June 5

the problem i have had is that there is more to blog than there is time i have had a computer and internet access. as a result, i have decided to post everything at once, delimiting each segment with respect to when it was written on paper, chronologically. the first piece is from the plane, half written on the motion-sickness bag. hey, it was white, i needed paper...this is from sunday/monday.

i left my hat in the domestic terminal of the san franscisco airport. it does not matter, it is yet another lesson in disconnection from my material things. with a suitcase, backpack, and camera bag, i really did not need one more thing to carry; it would have been on my head, but a little syrup from the connecting flight's french toast had found its way to the brim: i am not a trend-setter, and even if i was, wearing food seems to be just as taboo as eating horsemeat.

the snowflake hat-o-love was initially deep green, after battling sun, wear, and my head, it had faded and molded itself to my nogen. for the past year or so, i have been the man in the green hat with the white, embossed snowflake on the front. but not anymore. i discovered that it was missing in queue to board the final flight, i received offers from other students to take my things so i could run approximately a quarter of a mile to go get it. i debated for a moment, finally determining that i did not want to sacrifice my flight to osaka for a piece of fabric.

i am one of about seven uiuc students aboard this plane, however, the group ticket purchase has only placed me near the others. this is for the better, they speak too much english anyway. maybe heather, even though i don't know her, would appreciate what i desire from this trip. these people i am with, however -- seem to want a fun vacation.

the problem with economy class is that it is very hard to sleep. i am spoiled, and desire a more prone position. there are only about 10 hours left until we are in kanazawa, and now, i am sans hat AND toothbrush AND my special chopsticks. i remember, while flying over the aleutian islands, just how much i forgot. somehow, i remembered toothpaste, though. i remember the cognition well; it went something like this: "mark, remember that you have been borrowing michael's toothpaste this whole time in NYC, remember to grab your own." and ten seconds after that, i did. sans toothbrush.

after that, i scrawled things here and there, but the next piece of semi-coherent writing came yesterday afternoon (wednesday).

thank you, soul coughing. i don't think that i could choose better words to describe my experience with japanese language thus far:

so far...i have not found the science...
but the numbers keep on circling me.

i know a lot of schematics behind japanese, but i am still waiting on the ever-important vocabulary and colloquialism to fall into place to yield understanding. hence, the connection to the lyrics i am listening to currently...i am sitting in my kitchen, the portable clock indicates that it is 12:22pm, and i have to be in a shirt and tie in 20 minutes and head over to building number 1 for the opening ceremony. i don't know none of the buildings here have names, but they all have numbers (which keep on circling me).

i live in #47, class is in #1 and #23, #8 is the library i think. actually, building 47 (mine) does have a name: nishikawa haitsu. literally, this means "west river heights", and there is a river directly outside my balcony that seperates our building from most of the campus; naturally, is it not called "west river".

my current to-get list:
salt, pepper, green onions, pork (for dumplings)
paper towels
a used bicycle
sunscreen
japanese friends, preferably attractive female ones.

until i tied all that up, i suppose i will just have to be content chilling in my kitchen to guster's the prize followed up with the steve miller band's the joker. ah yes, car cd 6. how natsukashii.

and finally, the last installment for now.

listening to: incubus - morning view
reading: all about particles (still)
wanting: a used bicycle, paper towels for our kitchen, and to stop getting tired at 10pm and rising at 6am.

i wondered for awhile wondering whether or not i should bring michael's laptop instead of electing for the kanazawa-provided one. however, after seeing what they are providing us with, it was an excellent choice not to bring one; for one thing it would be more to carry, second of all, we have been outfitted with brand-new toshiba dynabooks...we're all sitting in a classroom that has had ethernet installed all over, so it is the networked-classroom set-up where everyone is using laptops. yes, in order to try to fix the login problem, the instructor just used a rotary phone to ask a question. i am not kidding.

anyway, a brief outline:
it's a celeron (sigh) with 64mb, but i have 8 gig to play around with. either way, the 13" nice color lcd will make up for it.

i am surrounded by nerds. i suppose the only rewarding part of today was when tagge-san had the kajones to go over and ask a few kit girls about their laptops. naturally, all the guys instinctively accused him of working it, but i said that if it worked, then what difference does it make? i went over and asked if it was kakkoii (psuedo-slang for "cool"), whereat the girls laughed. yeah, score.

this evening was an eventful one, we went to meet most of the sge students at vulcan, the cafeteria. no, i am not making this up. it's really called vulcan. the problem many japanese have with english is that they do not realize what is cool to americans versus what is not. however, note that as an american, *i* barely know what is supposedly cool. however, i think we can all agree that "vulcan" is, as i would say here, dasai. i think you recognize that as a potential antonym to kakkoii. either way, i entered and quickly began scouting the room. you see, this is an engineering school. with the gender ratios are as such. i could hang out with japanese guys, and i will, but it is key that i get to the girls before they do. however, the pickings are slim, and in all honesty i can say that. at least, of the SGE students, they are.

i chatted with four overall...tomomi was the cute one, but i was more interested in practicing my japanese. tomomi and mina are not taking any english, so i was all on my own for that part. it went reasonably well, but i don't think i can express myself any further than saying what i like and do not like, where i have been and what i have done, and comment on the weather. ironically enough, that can last awhile, as in two hours i managed to only communicate with about five people. naturally, it takes a little while to understand them and to collect what i want to say. overall, disappointing, it just points out how much i don't know, but equivocally a good time to practice.

on the way out, the two "i am cool and different because i hate pop culture and want to show you why" guys from one of the other schools and the one girl from our school (who is, i am sure, crazy) were talking to two japanese girls, and this time the pickings caught my attention.

naturally, since i am trying to learn the language, there are no boundaries here. for example, though clearly not invited, i just stood there and listened as they made plans for tomorrow night at six, and i even helped translate for some of the people (we all know different things, we all help one another at points). however, even though i believe i will go with them tomorrow at six, i think they do not wish to have the group grow any larger, let alone me. first of all, if they want to be exclusive, that is acceptable. but they are not going to be both exclusive *and* hanging out with japanese people i want to talk to. learn to share, you know? especially when the people in question look like these two. i don't know where these guys found them, but even if they have them earmarked, i can follow. two hot girls will always know more hot girls; todd, i cite joanna and her roommate as an example.

after that, we checked out the physical education stuff, and it looks like we might start lifting regularly. now, i can not only lose weight due to eating solely rice, nori, tofu, bread, and pork, but i can also be buff! somehow, i doubt that plan will follow through...

so there will be more later...i just had to get that all out. well, now it's classtime.

new york city Saturday June 1

listening to: the stereo mc's: deep down and dirty. easily ranks in the top three under-rated albums of 2001.
reading: all about particles, a reference guide to mastering japanese particles.
watching: life blur by, it's a shame how sometimes it is just a string of feelings about the anticipated future. slow down, mark. enjoy this life, now. you will only get one chance to do everything you do. and remember, although zach newman probably thinks nothing of such words at this point, that "all people ever really do is pick things up and then put them back down again."

"why is it that failure is always the first thing i think of?"

i quote high fidelity to begin the thought for the evening; it seems appropriate given that i just went out to dinner and fun thereafter with two reasonably attractive asian women from work. of course, i spent the entire time doing what most males who are not self-actualized do: putting on a song-and-dance, while internally viewing every angle to determine what should be done and said next to appear cool. we try to be ourselves, but just preen out the boring parts. they probably are doing it, too. it's not until you know people as well as i love naomi that you stop that stuff.

what am i talking about? why am i playing games? what would i do if i had "won"? gotten a haircut? (riho is a former stylist, and that's why she came to the united states; she decided she didn't like it). actually, i really need a haircut; that would have been good enough. i would have taken some acknowledgement of mutual curiosity, though -- that would have been enough, truly. now, i am forced to go through with my let's-try-it-shaggy approach. i apologize to all who see me upon my return before i am able to make it to the barber.

the clock on the wall now reads almost three o'clock; it is far time i crawled into that cot-bed for the last time this side of naivete, and i shall see it again when i re-emerge on the other side. you shall see these posts again when i re-emerge on the other side of the pacific, as well. oyasumi nasai...