Pancakes, In a Can!

Everyone I know has heard stories of the vending machines here in Japan.  I have yet to find anything too interesting in any of them.  All I have seen are standard drink ones.  And the odd cigarette one.
I have seen interesting drinks in them, though.  Such as "Hot Lemon" or "Hot Yuzu"

Lately the Weather has Been so BiPolar

Hello all.  Haven't talked in a while.  Well I guess I have just become better at procrastinating while residing on a different continent.  I suppose I should just actually write more of these things, not like I'm never on the internet.

Yesterday, I bought a bike.  (Go me!) Few cool things about the bikes here, they all have baskets and the locks are not chain locks, though you can find them, but just a little lock on the back wheel.  I still fail to see how these things are 'locked', one merely needs to raise the rear tire slightly and walk it to wherever.  That, and I see people leaving things in the baskets all the time with them never being removed. 

Fog, Hail, Freezing Rain, and Thunderstorms.

Apparently, last night there was a very loud, very close thunder storm.  I did not hear it, did not budge.  So I am not sure if it was truly a very loud thunderstorm.  Or if the thunderstorm here is not as loud and interrupting as ones on the Prairies.  But lots of people here kept telling me that they do not have them very often.  So they were all in awe of the power of the sky.

food!

It sounds weird, but I have yet to find a food here that grosses me out.  At least anymore than it does in Canada.  Still don't like handling raw meat, of any sort, but I'm getting over it.  It took me just under a month to find cheese, three weeks to find milk, and I just found canned fish.  I like to blame the fact that I am being overwhelmed by stimulus.  Way too many things to look at and try to decipher without looking like a fool.  I already stand out enough, I don't need to stare at one package cover to try and understand it for over a minute.

Please Enjoy the Fright

No the post is not about scary things at all.  More about the fact that with one letter is a nice phrase.  The title actually came from a J-Drama I watched for the sole purpose if it involving Hegei and different levels of polite speech.  Basically the character was supposed to say 'Please enjoy the flight" and they mess it up thus causing hilarity.

I giggled.  I'll admit that.

By Popular Demand

Why, hello all!  If I have been asked any one thing consistently by people, that's not 'How's Japan', it's 'What's your room like?" or something like that.  So by popular demand, and now that I kinda have a camera here's my room

1=1000

I was gonna post a long rant, but I am tired and still have homework and stuff for tomorrow.  So here's what the basis of the post was gonna be : blisters = pain.  I've had so many, I no longer feel them.  Allow me to demonstrate. 

"Om nom nom nom" - Cookie Monster

It occurred to me today that is the first time in my life that I actually have to look after myself.  I've lived away from home but never on my own before.  To anyone who has ever just upped and moved away from home, I applaud you.  If I'd done this my first year away, heaven knows what would have happened.  I think I would have survived but not as well.  But I do enjoy my own bathroom.  I also do not mind cooking for myself.  But I wish I could understand all the ingredients and instructions on the labels.

Abyss

I like to think that I always have something to talk about.  And I suppose I do, I just don't feel like subjugating those who take it upon themselves to be entertained by survival attempts to irrelevant childish banter.  As such I have abstained from ranting on this blog every chance I get.  I don't consider the content by any means to be 'articles' or 'thought out', but I refuse to submit to the view that a 'blog' should be random drivel.  That said there's is a lot I could rant about now but I won't.  Yet.  I have to save some things for later (not that I believe I will run out of things to talk about while being 3/4, or 1/4, ways around the world).

Dance Dance

Smiling and nodding can get you really far in a foreign country.  But be sure to know what you are agreeing to.  Tonight, I got to go see Japanese Traditional Dance.  It was really really cool.  But I had no idea where I was going when I met up with the people. 

Arrival Part 2

I made it all the way to Yamaguchi University :D yay!

It rained so hard when we arrrived that my luggage got soaked.  And of course it rained the day I chose to do laundry >> stupid air drying gonna take forever now (shakes fist at weather).

Thankfully they arranged for students to help the new arrivals to get into their rooms show us how things work (really hard to read power buttons etc when in kanji), and then walk groups of us to the suparmarket.  So I know where to buy food and stuffses.

I have devised a system for trying foods from the supermarket.  Go to aisle with add water stuff to it.  Pick something you haven't tried.  Works surprising well.  I have ran into some issues when it comes to preparations of foods.  I can't read all the fine details on the labels.  Thank God I know 入る means to put in and 分 means minutes.  That and most instant food still have some form of pictographs on them.

Right now, I think I will stick with attempting to survive the insane amount of rain.  Then I will worry about things like cell phones and money transfers from home.

Arrival.... part 1

I am here! officially in and get this immigrated to Japan.  That's right, I am immigrated, well I still have to do stuff when I get to Yamaguchi (that is assuming my student visa and college student status counts as immigration).  So I'm in the country just not at my final destination.

I have been up since 6:30 am local time Regina, and it is now 6:00 pm local time Tokyo, but I've only been up for 21 hours.  This proves time travel is real.  In 21 hours I have arrived 35.5 hours from when I began.  Awesome.  In those 21 hours, I have watched four full length movies, 8 shorts, been in the air for 12 hours. Been given a ton of water (and I'm still thirsty), eaten two breakfasts, three lunches and no suppers (if you count anything consumed and the time it was consumed at locally), I have seen four invisible Japanese fire hydrants, and driven on the wrong side of the road.

There is more I could say, tons more, and who knows, maybe I will come back on later and say more, but right now I desire rest.

Goodnight, (well good morning to most of you Canada people)

Finals

23 hours and I will be done University for the semester.  Barring any failing grades (which I very much doubt I will receive) I will be done University in Canada for over one year.

Wow.

When I think of it like that, it's a big difference.  In under six months I will be across the world.  I will be living in a new country for the first time in my life, totally immersed in a culture and language foreign to me.  Crazy.  I find myself thinking more and more about how I different my daily life will be.  It's all the little things that have been coming to mind, laundry, internet usage (amount), size of my living space, the useless objects I keep around me for a semblance of home being gone.  I also find myself thinking back to my Anthropology class (curses University! making me think everything through analytically), and how we (being the prof) talked about how one can never be a full particpant in another culture as 'culture is the common lens through which we view the world'.  Cool bit is I didn't even go searching through my notes to find that quote, yay me!

So I have one more final left to do, and then freedom from school for five ish months.  One more final and on to frantic part time job hunting.  One more final and onto constant kanji studying and vocabulary learning.  One more final and back at home for the summer and helping wedding planning.  One more final and I'm in the clear for Japan.  One more final.

One more final that I should be studying for right now.  But what kind of North American University student would I be if I didn't procrastinate a while?  Not a normal one I can say that.

In my defense, it was studying that brought me to blog.  You see, I was doing a quick review of Treaties for my history class, enter wikipedia stage left.  And then my notes mentioned something about Japanese prefectures, so with wikipedia already open, 'tis a quick search.  Well that lead me to wonder about where I would be living next year.  Search for Yamaguchi prefecture and open it up.  *poof* instant information on my living space for next year.  Well, so in the Yamaguchi article there was a link to Ube city, which is my more specific place of residence year.  Also there was a small section on a vagabond who is building a something out of scrap stuffs and rope, and I thought we were weird here.  Anyway, so I clicked to Ube cities Wikipedia page and low and behold, there were links to both the Japanese official webpage for the city and English official city webpage.  I clicked the English one (my Japanese is not that good).  And I got this "ご指定のページは見つかりませんでした" and get this: I understood it.  Not just in the whole, 'huh, nothing else hear guess it's gone' sense. I actually understood what it said.  I feel smart.  And so I had to come on here and rant to the world how my studying lead to curiosity which lead to an affirmation that I kinda sorta understand Japanese. Go me!

mores (N) sociology

folkways of central importance accepted without question and embodying the fundamental moral views of a group. (aka morals based on ethnicity or ones culture, actually kinda relevant to my rant for once)

World Domination

Next time you are in a Chapters, or an Indigo, or a Coles:  go to one of those search computers and type in "How to Take Over the World" (capitals optional) and see what the first thing to come up with.

It is epic!

Btw, the answer is no, I am not going to tell you what comes up, you just have to go do it to see for yourself.

Don't worry, it is awesome, totally worth your time :D

orthography (N)

1. the art of writing words with the proper letters, according to accepted usage; correct spelling.

2. the part of language study concerned with letters and spelling.

3. a method of spelling, as by the use of an alphabet or other system of symbols; spelling.

4. a system of such symbols: Missionaries provided the first orthography for the language.

5. an orthographic projection, or an elevation drawn by means of it.

Proper Etiquette and No Other Such Sense

So tonight (well actually, yesterday night for you folks) the cafeteria served spaghetti and meatballs.  Yay! Good food.  But as I was eating I realized something: What is the proper way to eat noodles?
You can twirl 'em, cut 'em, fork 'em, use chopsticks or what?

and lets say you twirl them, and there ends up being one really long one at the end, does one slurp it in (regardless of speed) or does one bite it off and let the remainder be nommed later?

This really has me bothered for some peculiar reason.

And for this word, I did not think it was 'formal' English.  According to dictionary.com it is! (I really should get me a dictionary ><)

Bamboozle (V)

1. to deceive or get the better of (someone) by trickery, flattery, or the like; humbug; hoodwink (often fol. by into): They bamboozled us into joining the club.

2. to perplex; mystify. 

3. to practice trickery, deception, cozenage, or the like

Studiousness

Hello all!

Today I have decided to not pay attention to class.  Well, to be honest I did not decide, I merely cannot, for the life of me, keep track of all that my professor is saying.  As such, a wonderful friend of mine is sending me her notes from today.  In my defense, I have written all the papers for this class and the final test is an in class essay that I can take time to prepare for.  So the notes are not all too important.  And the topic today is rather boring, even though he is a fascinating professor who one can tell enjoys his subjects and teaching.
There is one flaw in his classes though.  Especially this one.  This is all about Japan's Imperialistic years, which is a fascinating topic.  However I love to play games such as Sid Meier's Civilization IV, Caesar III, 1604 AD etc. and it is not often for him to say something that makes me want to go and play the game.  Even my other classes that ever deal with history (Which all my non-language classes do in some way) often mention Tokugawa.

Now Tokugawa was one of the three unifiers of Japan that was a very militaristic man that puts his clan in the position of Shogun (ruler) in Japan.  In Civ IV, one can play as Japan with Tokugawa as the leader.  Every time I hear the name I have an urge to go and play the game.  To make it worse, there is also an era in history that is named after his clan.  So the professor does not need to even be talking about something he did or refer to his life time, just the era.  This is not helping my productivity!

Today's word is not a common word, however to any avid reader they would know it, but I have noticed that at times I only ever take the definition from the context.  Which is a good skill, but it does not always lead to the correct definition.  As in the case of this word, I did not know it could be anything but a verb.  Go figure.

thwart (V)
1. to oppose successfully; prevent from accomplishing a purpose.

2. to frustrate or baffle (a plan, purpose, etc.). 

(N)

3. a seat across a boat, esp. one used by a rower.

4. a transverse member spreading the gunwales of a canoe or the like. 

(ADJ)

assing or lying crosswise or across; cross; transverse.

6. perverse; obstinate.

7. adverse; unfavorable. 

Progress

So today I got back my latest Japanese exam, 76% overall.  Not too bad.  What does rock though is the 22.9% out of 25% for speaking!  I may survive a year abroad yet :D  There is progress happening, this is good.

Ever wonder what you could do if. . .

Yesterday I contemplated what I could do if I had a ZPM.  Basically, unlimited energy.  So long as I had it, I could essentially create all sorts of technology or even just build me a house with no energy concerns.  I could be crazy and use the finances from the inventions to build an entire city state.  It would be awesome.  Modifying objects would take a while; it would so be worth it.  Build a portable unit for the ZPM that allows the object ti interface with it for energy consumption.  So if I could mod a car to use energy from a ZPM it would, in theory, never run out of gas (so to speak) and never need to stop. 
If I could use it as a power source that is stationary, I could build a lab that had no power restrictions, or a research hospital.  The progress that could be made in science or medicine.  Even if I couldn't recreate the ZPM, I would be able to power a lot of stuff.  It would be legend . . . dary (HIMYM reference for the win).

And for those that don't know: A Zero Point Module is a piece of technology from the Stargate universe that is essentially never ending self contained power unit about the approximate size of a medium video recording camera.

And now I pose a question: what would you do if you had an unlimited energy source? (World Domination is not an option)


or/and


What else should I ponder 'what if...' about?

Clandestine (ADJ)

characterized by, done in, or executed with secrecy or concealment, esp. for purposes of subversion or deception; private or surreptitious

Exchange

For those that don't know, or those that randomly stumble upon this blog: As of September 2010 I will be studying abroad for a year.  In Japan. (YAY!) I am still filling forms out and have been for about 2 1/2 weeks now.  The Japanese really like paperwork.  Lots of it.
 For the exchange, I believe this will turn into a 'follow me so I can let everyone know what's happening at the same time blog'.  The continuation of definitions? They'll probably take on a more Asian feel.
As of right now I have only three more forms to fill out.  Three research essays, two tests, an online assignment, six quizzes, two chapter tests, four finals and a summer job to go.  I wish I could just let my classes slide, but unfortunately I need to maintain an above 70% average.  Not that it's too difficult, just lots of work on top of school work.
Very glad I am not taking five classes.

In other news, my car, the Citation, aka The Molly Mobile, has been parked.  She still runs mostly but the time has come to leave her in place till pictures are taken and she's sold for junk parts, or to some poor high school student.

Other than that, I procrastinate finishing my procrastination.  So I should probably get back to my studying.


saponify (V)
1. to convert (a fat) into soap by treating with an alkali.

2. to decompose (any ester), forming the corresponding alcohol and acid or salt.