The End, More or Less

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 number of ways, and I was able to experience and relish in the rich variety of languages and accents, as well as getting to see little bits of the world from other people's points of view.

One of my goals while I was in Japan was to eat ramen. Sure, it sounds silly, but I'd only eaten instant ramen prior to coming to Japan, and I did so on a daily basis for upwards of eight years. So I wanted to eat lots of varieties of ramen. While I was able to try a number of shops' ramen - probably around 30 - I still couldn't tell you whether I like the miso-, soy-, or salt-based ramen best.

While tasty, my primary reason for coming to Japan was not to eat ramen, or gyuudon, or takoyaki, but to study Japanese, and my stay there was - of course! - invaluable to that end. I'm still very weak with kanji and my vocabulary is very small compared to a native speaker, but the difference between when I left and my current ability is no less than marked.

Writing on this blog was an experience all of its own, and I'm glad that I did. I'll be able to look back on this much like I might a journal.

For those of you that have been reading this whole time: your time and your comments are appreciated.

For who have supported me in other ways, be it in the form of money, cookies, a partner for Super Smash Brothers or DDR or that taiko game, or help defrosting my fridge because I forgot and was late to miss plane, I cannot thank you enough.you for your efforts and your friendship. I don't know how I would've survived this year without the help I received from others.

I hope that many others have the opportunity that I did, and I hope that maybe this log will help one or two of those people out at some point.

Good day and best wishes.
- William Lockwood

Arrival

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.

Pictures of Me Not Being Dead Yet

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 this picture spam are the pictures from the farewell party. Such as the wide shot with a whole bunch of people standing around, and Simon playing guitar off on the right side. The school's calligraphy teacher painted a huge character as a kind of performance, and it was kind of cool. I tried to get a direct overhead shot by way of a bunch (about twenty) pictures from above with me wandering around on the thing. Hence the character being surrounded by my feet.

After that, I went to tea ceremony, where Valentina took this picture of me and Tanaka-sensei, who is the guy sitting next to me who looks like he's about to wet himself. Formal sitting style is apparently his kryptonite or something. On the way home after that, I waited for Angela and Yanavy and took this picture of my school, since the light seemed to be just about perfect for it.

The next day, we all went to karaoke and I didn't sing. Then we went to Kawaramachi and tried to go to a Mexican restaurant, but we had too many people, so we went to a nearby okonomiyaki place and pretty much took up the whole store.

I've brought them a considerable amount of business, now that I think about it...

After that, the girls, QB, and myself went bowling. I think I got the best scores both games with something like 110, if that tells you how skilled our teams were.

Not Dead Yet, But Lots of Pictures

I'm going on a hike today, so I'll be taking another set of pictures. I'm still two sets behind in posting. It's only a backlog of, oh, 700 pictures, though. What's another three or four hundred?
I have picture's from Jeff's Christmas party, Yanavy and co.'s Christmas party, Jes and Roxanne and I's trip to the monkey park, and our trip to Himeji castle.

Today, we're going to go on a hike up by Arashiyama, then hopefully head down to two stores that I found yesterday. Oh, and maybe hit a temple on the way between them.

We also need to eat at some point in there...

Hm.

Bike Repairs, This Time With No Carbs

So... I had a dandy little fix for my shifter lever. Then I snagged my judo bag* on it and popped it back off again. Unfortunately, I lost a very small piece of plastic that triggers a lever which releases a spring which brings my bike up a gear.
*The Cathy bag, in case anybody's wondering.
Naturally, I replaced it with something similar to plastic: a dry noodle. I took a soumen noodle I found in my cupboard and broke four small pieces of roughly equal length off of it, then taped them together.

Then I did it again, this time being careful not to snap the noodle by taping too vigorously. At left is the second one that didn't break. I cut it apart so you could see I could stack them and make that super-cool picture.

So... as it turns out, 80%, 15C thermal cycling, and a few heavy rains turn a noodle into a wet noodle. Normally, you don't care when that kind of thing happens, but you don't normally include noodles in bike repairs, either.

To illustrate - and because I was bored in Photoshop a few days ago - I took a few additional pictures.
If you were to look at figure A, you'd see an arrow pointing to the hole where one end of the noodle was glued. You'd also see a bunch of suspiciously mold-resembling spots that are little bits of superglue. I don't know how it did that, but that's what it is.

If you were to look at figure B, you'd see what the noodle-repair looked like in one piece.

If you were to look at figure C, you'd see why it is that it doesn't make for a great replacement for a piece of plastic.

At that's the story of how I fixed my bike with a noodle. The end.

Ish.

Yesterday, while I was talking with Yanavy, I cut a part of a spoon to size and I'm going to try that next. It's actually made of plastic, so I have high hopes for it. I've left it inside for a day to cure, and I had planned on putting the assembly back on my bike tonight, but I don't want to try and explain to the manager tomorrow morning why I'm riding my bike out the front door. I'll probably put it on tomorrow night as a break from studying for my doom kanji test.

Still Not Dead Yet

As you can see from comments, I'm not dead, just busy. I have two kanji tests to study for and a paper that I need to get done.

Still alive.

And yes, I'm listening to the song.