Friday, February 16, 2007

ばか日本のキーボード!!

I am about to smash this keyboard through the monitor. That:s right, they are seperate, because I:m at a desktop in an internet cafe. Went to Seattles Best as usual, internet wasn:t working (just as it doesnt in my house, or at both schools for no reason) so here I am at the internet cafe. Wanting badly to go buy an apple so I:ll have a computer that actually works like it:s supposed to. Typed up a blog, went to turn the volume up, and apparently the volume program is a reset switch, because it restarted the computer.
So, you don:t get to hear about my birthday unless I get in a better mood and decide to retype it. Blasted computer!!! Stupid technology!! I need to get back to the countryside I guess.

The kids, I really love them, but they are vermin. I am now surrounded by hundreds, not dozens of them and I:ve caught one of their nasty bugs. Then I had to go out for my birthday and drink my body into submission of it~
and as unlikely as it sounds, I am running in a race tomorrow with some teachers from work, and this week we had a couple training sessions. Hah. Anyways, I wasn:t feeling too bad until after that, when my lungs filled with the cold evening air, which felt like molten lead that i couldn:t cough up no matter how much i tried.
I:m trying to bolster my body:s immune system, give it a good cheer. Been sleeping like 10 hours a night (9:30 or 10 until 7), eating lotsa veggies and of course my daily nutritional school lunches. Alcohol? haven`t touched the stuff (cept for last night, when some old people dropped a few free glasses of shochu on me, which felt like 8 after i drank them)
anyways, feeling okay today except for my anger at microsoft, and my PC platform.
reading the Earthsea chronicles, which the new studio ghibli film is based off of. Pretty cool, realized more of what an unoriginal book Eregon is (i thought the true language concept in it was cool, but it was taken EXACTLY from this book, and I mean EXACTLY).
i`ve bought a Hammond A harp, and agolden melody C harp. Wow, I just noticed how much cheaper the golden melody was, it actually plays better (maybe because i have it broken in so much more). I swear they were more the same price here? Anyways. That:s about it for my life.

Saturday, February 03, 2007

Coffee Break

I've pretty much resolved to let my internet stay broken until it fixes itself, and keep it a weekend engagement to look forward to. Actually, I am sort of afraid that if I don't have this extra thing pushing me onto the bus to hiroshima, I'd stay in my quaint little town, in my quaint little apartment, doing my quiet little things,and eating my (frighteningly)simple food. Let me put some meaning into that, I think I'm naturally a pretty base person -- I don't have a lot of ambition, or need much else besides coffee or beer and a book or pen and paper to keep me occupied; in other words, I'm afraid my youth is going to slip away living like that. That one day soon I'll meet with someone young and fiery, and have nothing in common with them.
So here I am, in the bustling city, where I plan to go buy some snazzy clothes, a hip new CD, and save as much vital information as i can from the internet to my hard drive.

What's bugging me about not having the internet isn't the lack of communication, but the fact I can't ever look anything up! Like, if i had access only to www.wikipedia.com then i'd be fine. I was thinking about what people did before the internet was around, and I guess they bought gigantic sets of encyclopedias. You'd start with "A", and as you could afford it, you'd work your way up to "Z". Then you'd have a limited set of knowledge about some miscellaneous things. How barbaric.
So, of course, that's out of the question.

My job is pretty darned easy. I stress, a little, because I am new still; still doing things for the first time. But, I can tell it's temporary. And maybe what I'm feeling isn't stress, but just slight hangovers, who can really tell?
I wake up at 6:00 or 7:00, depending on which school i'm going to, get home at 3:30 or 5:30, depending on what bus I can catch, I make myself something stupid for dinner. Listen to Miles Davis "Kind of Blue" again, eat my food, wash the dishes, then do something for a little while until I give up and fall asleep. It's a wierd lifestyle for me. Sometimes I go to the nearby park (or, dirt field with a few benches) and play harmonica until it gets too cold.
There are a couple of girls that I'm trying to date, but that's not going anywhere yet. It's hard to tell where friendship ends and hospitality takes over.



I go to one of two nearby little snack shops, which is where people drink, and order some snack and a drink, and some older man always ends up paying my bill, and forcing more drinks and some wierd type of seafood on me. It's not a bad deal, but I have to tuck away in my apartment for the night if I don't want this to happen.

Finally, It is just so damned cold there's not much I can do. I look at the tilled brown rice fields everywhere, the dead grass, and blow out a frozen breath of air wishing summer would come so I could DO things. Driving me crazy!!
Well, I have, what, a month and a half or so? Then it'll start warming up. God I can't wait.


I took some awesome vids and pics, but forgot to put them to my computer from my memory card before coming here, so they'll have to wait.
Oh, but I found some pics from Kyoto when Maresa was here that I never uploaded. I think I've only put about 50% of the pictures I've taken on flickr. It's a daunting task, but check them out.