bookish dreamer

So, after three days of being actually locked out of my LJ account (there was a password mix up, don't ask, it's all taken care of, hopefully, at this point) I'm back!

To say that my awesome learning experience in Japan has been enhanced with a cold.  Awesome.  Not.

So i haven't done anything interesting in the last week except to drag myself to class and post one set of big bang art and basically thurs/fri/today I've been sleeping and trying to rest and get over this crap.  Especially since it's my last weekend with my classmates all here.  And I would like to celebrate that a little!  But noooo, instead I have awesome runny nose.  At least they're obsessed with vitamin C here and you can get awesome awesome awesome vitamin C type chewable things and drinkable things at every conbini. 

But seriously body? so did not need this. Better than getting sick after I get home I suppose, because I basically fly home, get to spend a night at each parent's house, then have to get back to LA for paperwork and orientation. BLEH. But still.  It is terribly hard to even think in Japanese properly when one's head is stopped up.

let's not be coy, ok?  both you know and i know and I know that i don't drink the alcohol that often.  (or maybe you don't., but now you do - too many issues with it most of the time).  But when in Tokyo.... well, there's this little thing called nomihodai.

that's　飲みほうだい - which means 'all you can drink'.  and admittedly, it's not like all you can drink of top shelf liquor, but it is all you can drink beer, or, in my case, all you can drink 'moscow mule' (which is gingerale and vodka, light on the vodka), for an hour at a time.  Of course, we did nomihodai at a restaurant for one hour, with dinner, and then another nomihodai karaoke for two hours, with, well, songs!   hilarious, filled with eightys songs and lady gaga (and some japanese and chinese  too) and then, well, we had to catch a train and walk home. 

it's all so very civilized, you see, because if you don't catch the last train by midnight you can't get home by train, so you start early, you drink early, you goof around, and then you go back home (well, ok, some other people stay out till dawn, but i do not have that stamina and i never will, nor do i want it).  anyway, fun, goofy, and now i'm at home after climbing an abominable hill (well, two, really) quite tipsy as tipsy can be. 

It's a reward, of sorts, you see, for taking our mid term today.  which, thank the gods is over and done with.  and so since we were in shibuya anyway because of a class trip to a kabuki performance, we did it up pretty right - haggle with the barkers for a cheep nomihodai, and sing yourselves hoarse. :D

ahhh, Japan!

Week 1 is over!  Well, there's tomorrow (sunday) where the owner is throwing us a bbq and i'll basically be prepping for that and doing homework all day, but other than that it's a done week.  We had placement tests!  I was placed!  I'm in a class with people whose speaking abilities roughly match mine, though my reading abilities are a little better, I think, but that works for me.  We have an absolute ton of homework, some of which I did on the train ride today since I went up to Tokyo and it was a 2 and a half hour ride to get to the conference I was attending!  Which was great fun - saw a panel on social activisim that talked about DIY Punk in Japan, another one where the best presentation suggested that films that have the conflict around traditional/modern (past/present) may not be as easily read and categorized as we think, and felt an earthquake (tiny one! don't worry! they happen all the time here).  I really spent most of the day on trains, but even that was entertaining - there was a guy on the train wearing fuzzy leopard shorts with pockets.  Like the shorts were made out of fuzzy leopard material.  I shit you not.  How I love you Japan!

( and here are more pictures for your amusement )

Well, at least I'm in the airport!  Flight is on time, i'm prepared with everything, even the last minute stuff, i think, and ready to go.... and now comes the waiting and the computer charging! 

I finally got excited for this trip!  And I'll write a longer entry in a couple of minutes once I've done the rest of the 'i'm leaving posts' (and if i have time).  See you guys when I get there!

xxxooo
kate

( things that have been stressing me out )

( things that have been going right )

NOW, you ask yourself, what about summer?  I'm asking myself that very question.  I thought I'd settled it for myself - I was going to do the program I could afford, that I was comfortable with.  But I got thrown back into confusion today after meeting with the grad advisor in our dept because he really thinks it would be a good idea if i go to Japan this summer.

( Here's my pros and cons list of the choice i have to make )

Gah.  it all makes my brain hurt quite a bit...

It's 12 midnight my time, and I'm supposed to be in bed, sleeping, so I'm doing a drive by post with links instead of full thoughts.  Will come back, soon!

Monday afternoon I saw two kabuki performances at KABUKI-ZA!!  Kabuki rocks when there are demons in it!

Tuesday I ran down to Akihabara for more kaiten-zushi (see previous post for link to that) and some present buying, then went to an Izukaiya with my rommie B and ate bite size chicken skin and livers and stuff and had my first sake in Japan on this trip

Wednesday was my last tutoring session, and after I took myself off to Yasukuni Jinja and found the best thing about the place, for me, was the little koi garden in the back.  (pictures forthcoming, promise).  After that I went to Ikebukuro for my first American fast food in Japan - KFC and did some shopping and met a school friend H for coffee and cigarettes.

THEN, I spent the rest of the night reading our homework assignment for class and:

EVERYONE INTERESTED IN ALTERNATIVE FICTION (i'm talking new forms of writing), please check this out - it was a sensation in Japan.  It's a supposedly true story from a single-men's BBS (online forum) in Japan - this guy was worried about asking a girl out on a date.  The BBS of single men (they call themselves poison men because they're the kind of guys who, here, are expecting to be geeky confirmed bachelors their entire lives) gave advice to the guy and basically coached / followed his story.  So, this happened on a forum right?  Well, the owner / mod of the forum compiled the threads into one single narrative, and then it was consumed by millions in Japan.  AND THEN.  they printed a book that is the *exact* same thing you can get on line... and know what?  It sold in the MILLIONS.  I sound like add copy, but it blows me away that the thing that most of us take for granted is our daily life online ... and it was published as a  new form of media and not only sold, but was one of the most popular books of the year here.  Also?  A TV series AND a Movie and I think also a manga and WHOAH.  That's a lot of readers.

I want to write more about alternative writing forms, but have to stop gushing.  Check it out here:  TRAIN MAN  電車男

Today!  Today G & I got together after my class and went to Ueno Park: the National Museum, and also the old black market of Japan that used to be right next door (it's now not a black market, but a market, still!).  And I had falafel that was FANTASTIC and should be on a show about Tokyo - a $5 falafel.  MMMM.  Then we finally, after two previous abortive attempts, saw the new Batman movie and ... well, it just about blew the top of my head off with the goodness.  Even though I was supposed to go home right after we stopped and got some food so that we could discuss because AH! there was so much to talk about!

tomorrow (friday) i'll try and put up the pictures - studying for my finals on saturday, yay, and then on Sunday I depart for LA!

(and this is what I call a short post)

there's a man I see on my way home from school sometimes, a small and thin bent-backed, white-haired man who has a container garden.  A little gray fence screens a square meter of green, with a long-needled pine tree and another leafy vine reaching into the alleyway.  But outside of the perimeter of the fence is where the containers lie.  Three days ago I swore he was pulling carrots from one small pot, and yesterday he was trimming dead leaves off of his geraniums.  Each pot is hardly bigger than the plants I used to have on our porch in LA, although he probably has fifteen pots, some bunched together in one small space like little terraces, four others strung out along the outside of the fence with late-summer plants growing valiantly in the summer humidity.  It's a marker for me, when coming back home, that I'm more than halfway back to my little room - a place to set my burdens down and cool off from the sweating, sweltering, cloying heat of the day (no matter how cold the air conditioners on the trains run they barely cut through the air).

( but my recent days have been less filled with quiet things )

And now, since I haven't taken pictures, but I succumbed to the temptation of snapping away while at Meiji Shrine, the three pictures that I actually liked from the bunch.

( they're not too bad, for touristy pictures )

Ikebana (flower arranging) tomorrow. Possibly movie Thursday night, and a friend from Texas is coming to stay with me on the weekend!

Scintillating things have happened to me since the last time I posted.  Absolutely scintillating.  Or titillating?  Possibly dizzying or dazzling.  Ok, I'll stop with the thesaurus and the sarcasm.  Especially since it wasn't the most exciting of the last couple of days. 

( The highlights have been: )

No new pictures though.  I suppose at some point I'll take my camera to school with me and take pictures of the campus, but as of right now I'm kind of settling in to life.  Perhaps there will be some great Harajuku girls who want to be photographed tomorrow!

Time ran away from me yesterday a little bit, and it was a fuller day than I expected.  We had our orientation for summer school - big differences from last year's program - this one actually gave us student ID's, we have access to the Sophia computers/library/internal internet, and generally the whole thing went off like a well oiled (of a sort) machine.  They've been doing this summer program for years and it shows.  There are about 200 people in my program (up from last year's 80 or so), and we all sort of wandered around introducing ourselves to each other in piecemeal fashion...dribbles of hometown, or major, or Japanese experience, or just who found a way to buy a phone or not.  Most people in the program seem really young, but we'll see how that sorts itself out as we get into classes. 

As a fantastic bonus for showing up at school for the orientation (well, and as one of the planned activities) we were herded onto four buses and driven down to the port so we could take a cruise up the Sumida river to Asakusa.  The river was beautiful and possibly slightly cooler than the rest of the city, and I started talking with a couple of people from my bus (Japanese natives taking the non-Japanese classes for summer credit).  We arrived in Asakusa and they gave us the option of sticking with the tour or heading off on our own.  I stuck with them for about 15 minutes, until I couldn't stand hearing one more word that I already know about temples and fortunes and the whole shuffle-shuffle-snap picture-shuffle  process of being in a group on a tour.  Not that it's not interesting, but I think there's one generic spiel about the functions of temples, how to cleanse yourself, how people gift their prayers, and I heard it three or four times last time I was here.  I want to get a religious specialist to come with me someday and tell me about each temple's distinctive personality, but until then I'd rather walk through the temples and the stalls of food and touristy things (Mom, I got one of your requests already!) on my own.  That's how I found the Buddhas at the end of the first set of photos.

After that I took myself home and managed to save some money not taking the train all the way back from the school.  Talked to my darling man on the interwebs (much better access this year) and got ready to get up at an ungodly hour in the morning.

( And here you go, the pictures of the day )

Today was more exciting for me but less exciting to read about, since classes probably aren't interesting unless you're actually in them.  Japanese looks like it's going to be great, and my literature of Tokyo class is going to be fantastic - a smart woman from University of Washington is teaching. When she heard about my major interests she promptly gave me the name of someone on their faculty who does a cyberpunk class.  Yippee for making connections in Tokyo!  While sitting around / having lunch / etc I also managed to read the book we're reading last in the class, so I'm already ahead of schedule on day one. And I may have a class buddy or two - there are three really sweet German students, two of whom are in my Japanese class, and then one in my lit class, and we talked a bunch today.

I decided to spend another hour or so walking around my neighborhood instead of freezing this evening while watching a Noh play (school activity, yay). Every time I ride the train back to my stop I see these pretty flower streamers hung up on the north side of streets leading away from the train station, so I decided to follow them.  Turns out there's a little shopping district down there with more bookstores, cds, kimonos, groceries, and everything else that seems to be found on every other corner here, but I had a lovely time and took a couple of pictures worth sharing.


( My neighborhood - a couple of streets )

and finally, since *someone who shall not be named* yelled at me for using photos from last year as my Japan icons, I have a couple of new icons from the things I'm posting today... *neener, neener, neener*  ;)

Since I have the leisure to do so this year, I thought I'd start posting pictures now instead of waiting forever and posting them in one massive overwhelming bunch.  Besides, my day wasn't so exciting as I pretty much managed to

a) find my way to my school campus, which may take up to 45 min to get to from door to door - but on the good side one of the administrators was actually there and informed me I don't have to be on campus until 9 am tomorrow instead of 8:30 (yay!)
b) eat lunch at a little cafe
c) go to Rikugien Koen (Rikugien Gardens).  The garden reproduces in miniature 88 scenes from famous poems - although I didn't actually wander around to every single scene, I did see a bunch, and all of them were beautiful.
d) discover the "little" grocery store in my neighborhood is actually a 5-story ... department store with a food component in the bottom.  I got dinner and an alarm clock!  And I'm seriously thinking about going back to the housewares section to get myself a second comforter, since I'm actually using my first one as padding because the mattress is so lumpy.

( To start off the photo tour, you get the neighborhood I'm living in as seen from my 4th floor window. )


( Now, photos from my garden adventures )

Finally, once I got back home this afternoon it had started to rain, including lightening and thunder that I could see in the distance reflecting off the buildings.  At one point the sunset turned everything an almost starteling deep yellow-orange color, and low and behold, I saw a rainbow! 

( That's right folks, a rainbow over Tokyo. )

So there you have it - day two in all it's glory.  I'm sacking out early tonight with a movie and some JapanesePodcast language lessons to get ready for class tomorrow, after which I will continue my search for a cell phone (which was, again, the only thing on my personal agenda that didn't get done today).  I checked online and it appears there are only *certain locations* where I can pick one of these suckers up, or I have to order it online and get it mailed to me.  So I'll be heading to the depths of (or possibly wilds of?) Shibuya in search of the mythical pre-paid cell.