Japan: The Land of Only Two Prongs

The End, More or Less

2009-02-24T21:34:00.003+09:00

As I've said in the past few posts, I'm back in the United States, which marks the end of my study abroad trip to Japan. It was fun, educational, expensive, and delicious, though if you were to ask me to put those in order, I don't think I could.The best thing about going has to have been the people I was able to meet. I made a number of friends with whom I identified with in a surprising

Arrival

2009-02-21T20:31:00.003+09:00

And I'm back in the real United States. Feel free to not worry now.Edit: It appears that there was considerable worry, as the blog's front page usually gets about 30 page loads a day, but during my little stint with air travel, it got nearly 400 hits in the span of three days.

Hawaii Arrival

2009-02-21T07:12:00.000+09:00

Well, I'm officially back in the US now. It's 7:15AM according to my computer, which is theoretically what time my body should think it is. On the other hand, I did kind of jerk around my sleep schedule right before I left, so who knows? I slept for about two hours on the flight here to Honolulu, and watched a movie.It's weird being here. I mean, first of all, there are so many... white

Security Ordeal...

2009-02-20T19:21:00.005+09:00

...Not!I managed to get through security and customs with no problems.... Really!I'm now in the secure area right above the wireless access point that I have been using for the past two days. Though that it happened to be right here where I pulled my laptop out is kind of strangely coincidental, I think. There also just happens to be a power plug right here, as a random bonus.Surprisingly

Status Updated: Missed Flight, part three

2009-02-20T17:22:00.003+09:00

See the previous two posts for detailed information on the extent of my foolishness as it relates to international air travel.Alright, they were able to get the fare difference down to $800 ($2,000-$1,200) and I think they completely dropped the change fee - for reasons unknown to me - but we were able to get it paid for. By "we", I mean Dean, in case you're wondering. One stack of various

Status Updated: Missed Flight, part two

2009-02-19T10:09:00.005+09:00

I am (as of 10AM February 19th) still at the airport, and I'm doing alright. It's looking like my, uh, little mistake is going to cost my family about $1,500 on top of the $1,200 it already took.Moral of the story: Don't miss your flight.[Update:The moral of the story is still "Don't miss your flight". The people at Northwest have been very helpful, especially when compared to the nice, if

Status Update: Missed Flight

2009-02-18T22:14:00.004+09:00

I missed my flight. I'm accessing the Internet from a free terminal that's set up by Domestic Arrivals at Kansai International Airport. I have the beginnings of a nice set of blisters from carrying my luggage around, as a bonus. So, for the "WTF HOW?": - I underestimated the amount of time it would take to get everything moved out of my apartment and packed, etcetera. Even with the massive -

Packing

2009-02-18T09:39:00.002+09:00

It's 9:40AM. I last slept yesterday around 8AM. Well, unless you count the thirty-second-to-a-minute period during which I fell asleep and chatted with people at random from my offline contacts list. For the most part, I've been packing and organizing since early yesterday, minus a gyouza party.It's 9:43AM. I'm about to go to the post office to drop off the first of the packages to go out by

先生の家

2009-02-15T23:47:00.008+09:00

Today, I visited one of my teachers from last semester who I've been in somewhat constant contact with. He invited me to lunch a few weeks back, and I kind of invited myself up to his house. He said it was fine, and we decided on a day, which was today.It takes him (who was sick today, hence the mask) about ten minutes to get to school by scooter; it took me about an hour to get to his house

Phone Setup/Management Software

2009-02-15T19:42:00.002+09:00

I have a Softbank/Samsung 707SCII Japanese cellular phone. Last time I looked online for the software that allows you to manage the phone from your computer, I couldn't find it, so I've pulled it from the CD that was distributed with the phone and put it in a ZIP file, which you can download here.I'm doing this partially because I intend to throw away my disc rather than try and keep track of it

Ko-Un

2009-02-12T17:05:00.002+09:00

I woke up at a decent time today, for the first time in a week. Not such a big deal on its own, but I came with some good ideas for RPG stuff and read some interesting stuff from the GM guide.When I went to school to meet with one of my teachers, she wasn't there, but I met up with another teacher, who took Kilk and I out to lunch for yakiniku (fried meat). When I got back, the teacher I was

Lecherous Statistics Advertisement

2009-02-11T12:25:00.002+09:00

"Your log is full. Increase your log size today!"Sure, it looks like spam that is going to promise that you can get Viagra for 10% it's normal price by going through Nigeria, but it's not. This is what my stats app tells me every time I log into to see what's going on. And I chuckle every time. Wouldn't you?

Coins, Coins, Everywhere, but not a Yen to Spend

2009-02-10T13:31:00.052+09:00

One of the most striking things about buying things in Japan is how much you can spend without really noticing. This is largely due to the fact that they use coins for everything up to 500 yen (~$5). And those 500 yen coins look a lot like an American $1 coin, which are pretty rare, and we usually use paper money for $1 values. The 100 yen coin here is very, very similar to an American quarter

Random Phrase: A Process of Translation

2009-02-10T00:30:00.005+09:00

Just poking around in the news section of 2Chan - which is not even vaguely a worksafe site; seriously, that place has stuff that creeps me out! Anyway, don't go - and I found this random phrase, which I just happened to like. It's talking about a solid state drive that this guy found in Akihabara.数ヶ月行かないと、浦島太郎になる街だなorsuu ka-getsu ikanai to, urashima tarou ni naru machi da naNow, to get you

Flash: チョコ・ブービーズに関して

2009-02-07T03:01:00.002+09:00

I was just eating the remnants of the chocolate breasts when I realized they're actually milk flavored. Like, not white chocolate, but more like a very sweet milk. Oh, and each one is a tiny little truffle. Say, breast milk?

Food Pictures - maybe NSFW

2009-02-06T06:15:00.004+09:00

Alright, three food-related pictures from the past week or so.First is a giant parfait, aptly named the "Crazy Big Parfait". Not kidding.Next is me after having defeated it.As you can see from how big the bowl is in relation to my hand, it was, indeed, crazy big. It was filled with whipped cream and strawberry ice cream, with green tea pocky and waffle cones jammed in the side. It was yum!

Apartment Manager

2009-02-05T11:22:00.003+09:00

The new apartment manager is really cool*. She's immediately able to respond to anything that may be wrong. That her response to everything is "Ask the Department of International Relations", usually without even thinking about the question she's been asked.* indicates sarcasm."Department of International Relations" = kokusai kouryuubu, usually shortened to kouryuubu, and pronounced as koryubu,

Bowling Scorecard

2009-02-04T17:39:00.003+09:00

When we went bowling a few days ago, they printed us out individual scorecards. I took a picture of everybody's, just for good measure, but here's mine.I'm not posting it to brag about the score (average of 120, go me! <- bragging), but so you can see what it looks like. I haven't been bowling in a long time, and I don't even remember what the ones in the US look like.

寿【ことぶき】 kotobuki "congratulations!", "long life!"

2009-02-03T01:29:00.001+09:00

So with Photoshop finally up and running again, I took my feet out of the picture and cleaned up the messiness in general. Oh, and turned the whole thing the right direction, since I took the pictures backwards and sideways.The character was written in a script form, which is why it doesn't really look even vaguely like the character when typed. But the brush weighs something around 20 pounds,

Pictures of Me Not Being Dead Yet

2009-02-02T11:46:00.003+09:00

So this probably doesn't make much sense, since it's just a random spam of pictures from the past week or so. There are pictures from the farewell party, from when ten of us went to Mr. Young Mens (a small okonomiyaki shop, not a gay bar), a random picture of my school from the outside, and a picture from when we went bowling.Oh, and here's a random picture of me, 'cause I look funny.To start off

Not Dead Yet

2009-02-02T11:30:00.002+09:00

I'm not dead yet! Feeling quite well, actually. I think I'd like to go for a walk...Yeah, I'm doing quite well actually. Just been surprisingly busy with stuff, and so I haven't been at my computer as much. What little time I've been at my computer has been spent organizing things or processing pictures. I have a couple of pictures to put up and I'll get to finding which ones to put up right

Wakame? Not Quite.

2009-01-28T10:08:00.002+09:00

Yesterday (Tuesday) was our last day of actual classes. Today, we have the 別れ会 wakare-kai ("farewell party"), which I really need to get off my ass and cook for.So sleepy.

Presentation (Divtesting)

2009-01-28T04:17:00.005+09:00

I was just awake enought to get this up last night, and I honestly don't know what I changed that made it work after two hours. I think Blogger might have just had pity on me.I woke up on Tuesday at 6AM cooked a super-duper protein breakfast, and worked on my presentation and went over some last random notes for Japanese for Certified Tests (JCT), in which class I had a test. As expected, it

クリームパン作り方

2009-01-25T16:46:00.008+09:00

I'm experimenting to see how alignment works to show translation. Tables in Blogger are such a pain.This recipe assumes that you kind of know what it will look like in the end, but if you've never seen one, parts will seem pretty weird. The end product should look something like the thing at left if you decide to start dicing them up or something. There's a reference to a seam later on, and

Creamy Essay

2009-01-25T16:46:00.004+09:00

I've tried to be fairly true to the Japanese as I wrote it without embellishing it or making it sound too much more natural than it fails to be. I did this mostly so that I could make sure that there were no serious gaps in the writing that I was just missing because I couldn't evaluate the writing as a whole. Or something.Now, I'm not saying that there are no fairly serious gaps where you're