Routine Update

Since I'm not posting, you must know it means nothing interesting has been happening, which is pretty much true.

Sunday was just a day for studying. I've been reading more of 名探偵コナン(Great Detective Conan) and I'm surprised that I'm really enjoying a manga. I've learned a few useful words, phrases, and sorts of things from it. I'm surprised at how much I can understand with my dictionaries, which means my biggest hurdle now is just vocabulary acquisition. Not bad, eh?

I think I cooked for the first time on Sunday too. I attempted to make haluska, but with some kind of lettuce rather than cabbage. Why? I don't know. I probably was just rushed in buying things that I didn't look hard enough, or I got flustered and didn't want to spend forever in the store. This happens a lot when I have to find groceries.

It turned out just fine though, and I was very much so pleased.

Monday was a four-class day... I have decided to stick with Writing / Reading level 4 since I've been studying the new kanji pretty well, and in class I could beat most people to the readings of them. Also several of my classmates are having the same troubles as me, so I don't feel as bad.

Speaking was funny, since we ended up watching a video of a detective-game-show to see if we could understand! Odd how I start reading a manga of the same theme... It did give me a slight upper hand even though I didn't solve the murder, haha.

I checked my mail, and the convenience store's Softbank booth was advertising that the White Plan, the expensive plan I have will not be available after Sept. something-or-other, and Pre-paid will be available after that date! My only thought was "くそッ!" which roughly translates to "shit." Of course they told me that pre-paid would never come back to get me on the damn White Plan. Oh well, $100 down the drain.

On the plus side, a travel agency gave out flyers and they have really cheap rates. I might see if I can get a more reasonable flight to Elmira in December, but prices will shoot back up by then I bet. I'm not looking forward to flying to China, since they aren't known for quality lately. What with all the airport disasters going on in Spain, Russia, etc, I've been worried about it a little bit. Probably just silly of me.

I got to have lunch with Yukina though, which was nice. It was really enjoyable to talk with her, bouncing between Japanese and English. It worked out pretty well. She's awfully busy with Kansai Gaidai classes coming up, and she's doing a business course at a schooling-company, plus her job cooking at a bar and the fact she lives in Nara, which is a a good hour or so away.

After talking with her, I had Intercultural Communication, where we brainstormed ways to communicate safely and effectively with a culture in a first-contact setting. I stressed using pictures through drawing them or a picture-dictionary, and not just babbling in English, but my words weren't heeded. 4 people were selected to leave the room and the rest of us had to be this culture... Our only rules where to ignore people taller than us and say "yes yes yes" if the person smiled at us, and "no no no" if they did anything else. Body language was open, but no one used it for some reason, probably since we didn't want to break the rules. The 4 people failed at communicating, but they guessed our values and reactions to things after awhile. It was interesting...

Japan-China was alright. Scott usually doesn't mention our readings and just goes off on political discussions which are quite interesting. We did watch a horrible 1960's reel that Encyclopedia Britanica made about China, and were appalled by the lies, misunderstandings, and ignorance of it all. It was just a load of crap about anti-communism... I'm not well versed in Chinese history at all but I at least do know that the communists suceeded because Mao was the only one who could give stability to China. What do you think people wanted? Ugh. I don't remember to many of the other stupid examples in it, but it was ridiculous.

Another note on China, I just bought the album Monkey: Journey to the West which is a modern opera based off the Chinese myth of the Monkey King. It's pretty good if you like electric / symphony music with Chinese lyrics. Good studying music.

Today was a National Holiday, the Autumnal Equinox, established in 1948 as a day to remember your ancestors, kind of in response to O-bon. we had no classes due to this, but I was hesitant to travel anywhere since I didn't know if things were open for regular business. Turns out they were, which I learned when it was too late to do anything interesting. I ended up just doing a short bike ride around town and buying some beans to try and make chilli.

Chili was a disaster. I read somewhere that boiling them for 5 minutes then soaking them for an hour would be like soaking them for the 6 hours that I needed... Wrong. I didn't have time to wait for this anyway, since I couldn't wait. I found my beef had a hole poked in it due to some careless fridge-mate, so I defrosted it and cooked. The meat, an onion, 5 small green pepers, the kidney beans, a can of tomato paste, some ketchup, pepper, paprika, chili-powder... Brought it to a boil then let it sit on low heat for 15 minutes. I put it over rice and found it to taste... bad. Plus my stomach did not feel well after eating this. So I mostly ate breadrolls with butter. Yum. I have two plastic containers filled with all this chili that I was anticipating to feed me for a few nights and now how do I dispose of it... I may just chuck them out in the containers to not be rude to everyone else. Only 100 yen each. I had to lay down for a bit to recover from the food, haha, but I was full...

Maybe I should stick to easier things, research more, or just try restaraunt hopping... That's been cheap and effective so far. Haluska's been the only economic thing I've made since there's more in the fridge now.

But that's about it. After hearing about Matt's day in Osaka I'm a little dissapointed in myself for not going yet... Bailing on going anywhere after not getting contact from Joe about traveling or not wasn't a good idea. Man.

This weekend I'll definitely go somewhere, 90% sure it'll be Osaka. I want to do the Castle and the Sky Tower, then some stores. Maybe try America-Town too, haha.

Take care.