JOURNAL:
ErMaC
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September 13th. 1:00AM, in Shibuya
2002-09-14 15:31:53
This journal entry is being written using good old fashioned paper and pencil. I don't know how I'll get it online later, but I will somehow. But since I've got three hours to kill I figure I may as well write something. [Note from later: I'm typing it in manually. Woe is me]
I'm currently sitting outside of the Shibuya train station in the Tokyo area. It's past 1AM and the trains have stopped running, so I'm here until the first Yamanote line train to Shinjuku starts up at 4:38AM, or so I think from reading the schedule.
Why am I out here? Well I wanted to spend time in Tokyo at night, to see what it was like. I'm in Shibuya because I heard there were clubs here, but I think they're closed by now – either that or I just can't find them. Regardless, there's currently nothing to do except listen to my MP3 player, look at my Azumanga Daioh artbook or write in this, and since I got the artbook for a friend I'll try not to look at it too much. I haven't even seen any of the series yet so it probably won't be that interesting since a big chunk of it is stuff about the TV show.
Anyways, I still haven’t totally answered the question of why I’m out here. It’s because my chances to see more of Tokyo are rapidly diminishing, because in about a week I will no longer be in Japan.
As I’ve been alluding to in previous entries, and made rather explicit in the last entry, I’ve been very unhappy in Tsuru. My depression was starting to kick back in and compounded with my health problems and resulting difficulties in school, I’ve decided to withdraw from the EAP program.
I hope all of you who’ve been reading won’t be tragically disappointed. I very much wanted to have a good experience here in Japan, but there have been many factors which have really made my stay here unpleasant. First off, ever since I came to Japan my chronic Bronchitis has returned worse than ever, and as a result I’ve been coughing almost every morning, often times very painfully. Add that to the overall sense of fatigue I’ve been feeling, and it’s been very hard to concentrate or perform in school. While as some of you may know, Japanese universities are notoriously easy, and I know I could still get an A in my current language class, the frustration is just not worth it. I’m really having a hard time dealing with taking instruction entirely in Japanese, much more so than I ever did at UCI during Japanese 2B and 2C, which were almost entirely in Japanese although the textbooks weren’t which was a big help. Since I talked to the head sensei and she said the reason all instruction is in Japanese is because she’s trying to prepare us for the standard classes that begin in October, I’ve decided that I really don’t want to del with the October classes.
Rather than dropping out after the intensive language program ends, I’m dropping out now because this way I can get back to UCI in time for Fall Quarter, although I will have to take the classes through the Extension program because I will technically no longer be an active UCI student. When you withdraw from the EAP program it’s essentially like withdrawing from the UC system. That means I will have to reapply to renew my status as a student so I can take classes full time again. I should be able to do this by Winter quarter, and that’s what timeframe I requested in my withdrawal papers. I hope the whole thing doesn’t get too messy and I can restart normal classes come Winter quarter.
I don’t regret coming here to Japan, per se. I certainly still love the country itself. I just 1) don’t like being sick, 2) don’t like being frustrated in class due to the language barrier and 3) don’t like being stuck in a small backwater town like Tsuru. I mean, the people in Tsuru are nice and all, but I just can’t stand living there. It’s two hours away from Tokyo at a minimum (although today it took me three hours) and I just couldn’t del with doing that kind of commute whenever I wanted to go do something interesting. It’s a real pity but I finally realized there’s no way I could survive another three months there, and so I decided to cut my losses early and get out in time to go back to UCI in the fall, even if not as a full-time student.
This does mean that I get to go back home and see all my friends and family again (except for Nathan who’s going to stay here in Tsuru – I feel kinda bad for bailing on him but I gotta think of my sanity here). I can also get back to my new apartment, which means I’ll be paying rent on that instead of here and my roommates are very happy about that. The current plan was to have Kevin and George (two of my roommates who were still in the states) pay for a portion of September and then October on their own, and then Nathan (my other roommate) and I would start paying rent in November so we’d have a place to live when we (planned to) return in December. Now I’ll be paying rent from the beginning which makes things much easier financially on Kevin and George. It also means since there’s 3 of us we can afford to get some nice Internet access from the beginning, instead of George and Kevin being stuck on dialup until Nathan and I returned, so they are doubly happy.
I’ve also probably got a job lined up for when I return to California with a friend, which means I’ll finally have a steady income and can make some upgrades to my computer I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, as well as catching up on DVD purchases (have to finish off Kenshin TV, Card Captor Sakura, Sailor Moon S, etc).
Doh, batteries just ran out on the MP3 player. Good thing I brought extras. =) Always be prepared. I’ll just swap ‘em in after I finish writing. It’s now 2AM, just 2.5 more hours to go. Been writing for an hour. Damn my hand hurts.
Anyways, needless to say I will be glad to be coming home. I hope this whole ordeal won’t mess up my school career but on the bright side I got to buy a bunch of manga for really cheap. =)
In AMV news, this also means I might be able to attend AWA! Wai, wai! I’ve sorta got room plans and now all I gotta do is get plane tickets and I’m all set. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, I wasn’t nominated for any awards in the AWA Pro competition, but as I said before, I wasn’t expecting any. There were a few really good videos that I don’t feel bad losing to, although it sure would’ve been nice to at least be nominated for something, especially with my one year AWA Pro track record. [Trivia: ErMaC in AWA Pro – 1 nomination, 1 award! So far I’m batting 1000!] I guess I can always hope for Masters, but with the competition in that contest I don’t expect to win anything.
But just in case I do win, I think I’ll compile a list of people to thank. Also, this list is of people who I wish to thank in general so posting it here in my journal (once I get home and type this monster up) will hopefully let those people know how much I appreciate them. In no particular order:
Mom, Dad, Sandra, Shaun, Sayaka, Ian, Brad, Hsien, Vlad, Tim, Eric, Troy, Tony, Sean T., Ben, Alan, Aidan, Katie, Kelson, Jason L., Sean F., Dan, Wayne, Nathan A., Brian, Rob G., Jason G., Rob W., Jennifer, Kevin E., George, Mike, John, Kong, Jason S., Elizabeth, Patrick, Jay, Kevin C., Anna, Nic, Himura, Cyberg, Chris, Dolce, Nathan B., Scorr, Meri, Michael, and Jerry.
I think that’s it. I know most of them probably don’t read my journal, but I’d like to thank them anyway. It’s now past 2:20AM and I’m right at the end of a page so I’ll stop here. ErMaC out.
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September 9th, 1:06AM
2002-09-08 12:49:05
Well yet again it's been too long without an update.
Anyways, lotsa stuff going on and yet not much at all, in some ways.
AMV Blog:
Progress on the new guide goes well, we've gotten the layout close to finalized and are now filling in all the holes. I'm updating the old content, and we've added new content such as information about colorspace conversions, a revamped encoding guide for both Nandub and TMPGEnc (complete without downloadable profiles for each to make it really simple) and as I've previously mentioned Ian's awesome XviD guy. This is is great, so glad to have him aboard.
I decided that since I can't edit music videos or anything in my spare time I'd catch up on watching some anime that I'd been missing out on. My friend back at UCI was nice enough to put up an FTP server so I could leech off him and I finished watching all of X (had to watch the last 6 episodes) and I'm currently burning through Jungle wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu at an alarming rate. ;)
X is awesome. I cannot say that enough. Best television show of the last few years, hands down, possibly the best since Cowboy Bebop, although Excel Saga ranks up there pretty highly too. Since Excel currently sits at my #10 spot it will be very difficult deciding where to put it... do I knock excel off the list to add X in or do I leave it alone? Or do I reevaluate and knock something else off?
Guu is just plain funny and whacky, although it doesn't quite reach the marvel of comedy that is Excel Saga, sadly.
Watching Anime on this laptop has proven to be quite the challenge, however. One reason I picked Guu is that most of it was encoded in 480x360 which I can play without too much trouble. The 640x480 encodes of nowadays though are just murder on my poor machine here. Sigh.
Japan blog:
Well I wound up not going to school on Thursday because I felt like crap, but I still went to my host family's that night since I figured real food would be good for me and I didn't want to stand them up or anything since it had been a while since I've seen them for more than a few minutes passing them by on the street.
After dinner (which was quite delicious) Shino-san asked me some more translating stuff. And the question she asked had me stumped for quite a while, and eventually I came up with some decent guidelines but man it was tough, because I had never thought about it before:
Which prepositions do you use before the various kinds of times? On Tuesday? In December? Next Week? At Five? During Tomorrow? It's all very confusing to her. And it was to me, too. I had to try and figure out WHY I said the things the way I said them. I had no pre-defined rules in my head, it was just natural to me, so it was difficult to get right. Finally I came up with this set of rules:
1) If it's a day of the week, or a month, you can place This, Next, or Last in front of it. If it's a week it MUST use one of the three words.
2) Anything with a This, Next, or Last in front of it, OR is the word Today, Tomorrow, or Yesterday (or their modifications like The Day Before Yesterday, etc) does not require any preposition before it.
3) Anything that's a specific time uses At.
4) Any day of the week or day of the month which doesn't apply to one of the rules above uses "on"
5) Any month that doesn't apply to an above rule uses "In".
I figured this was the best options I could come up with that would always work. At the time I couldn't think up any exceptions (although I guess you can say "The week after next" but that's more complicated that I needed to get into) and so I gave her that list as something to follow which I think should work. But coming up with those rules took about an hour of internal debate, because I was constantly thinking up some kinda of logical explanation as to why things are the way they are and then finding an exception.
In summary: natural languages are not logical, and sometimes downright nonsensicle.
Afterwards we had an chat and I realized that Japan is a really safe place. We got on the discussion (I don't remember how) of bikes and she mentioned that her bike was stolen once. I said I'd left mine unlocked before all the time because I felt really safe here.
And it _IS_ safe here. Seriously. You want an example?
People leave their cars running outside of 7-11 with no one sitting in them. Nothing. Just idling there by themselves.
That's not the kicker, though. Outside 7-11 there's a sign that says (in Japanese, obvious) something to the effect of: "Please do not leave your car running as the exhaust can pollute the air."
...
I'll wait for that to sink in.
Yes, they're more worried about the air being polluted than their car getting stolen. Crazy, huh?
So Friday comes around and I still feel like crap. Turns out the package I was supposed to receive has been held up at customs because my parents sent 90 tablets of something when you can only send 30 through at a time. Oh well. They're separating it out and sending 2/3 of it back to my parents and the rest to me, I hope. Should be here this week.
Friday I slept for like 75% of the day. It was crazy. I went to bed at around 1AM, woke up at 9 and said "OH HELL NO" and went back to sleep. Woke up at 6PM. Stayed up til around 12, then went back to sleep. So I was awake for maybe 7 hours, tops. Yea I was feeling that lousy.
But then Saturday rolls around and I'm feeling much better. Since I'm getting a little stir crazy I decide to follow some more advice from the people at this DDR forum and I take a trip to Ikebukuro, which is a place on the Yamanote line (the train line that visits all the major rail hubs in the greater Tokyo area). To get there I have to first take the Fuji-Yoshida line, which is the local train line, to Ootsuki. From Ootsuki, I am then on the general JR lines and from there can get to mostly anywhere on the same ticket if necessary and adjust my fair later. The only line that heads inward on the big web of rail lines from there is the Chuuou line, which terminates all the way at the central Tokyo station. I take that line to Shinjuku, though, and from there take the Yamanote line to Ikebukuro. This takes around 2-2.5 hours.
I finally get to Ikebukuro and I find an arcade that does, indeed, have DDR 7th mix. It's not the best location and the price isn't the greatest but I play anyways. It's fun, there was like 1 other person there and it was fun actually having an audience and also watching him play and remembering when I sucked that badly. :D
After that I looked around some more but the place really didn't seem all that interesting and I didn't want to get too far from the Train station so I got a bite to eat at a McDonalds (Oh, how conforting it is to eat at McD's) and then I took the Yamanote line back into Shinjuku. There I took the East exit and looked around - since last time I'd taken the South exit. I look around, and I find a Tatsuya Records store. There's a big Anime/Game section, so I head to that floor (again, this is like an 8-floor store) and I gasp in all it's beauty. There's like two rows of Anime DVDs (nothing spectacular but still it's quite a sight, especially since the only other thing I'd seen was the Virgin Megastore's selection) and three rows of Anime CDs. It was GREAT. And then I realize there's another floor that says anime, and next to it in Katakana is this: RENTARU.
I dash up the stairs to see if this is, indeed, what I think it is. And sure enough, it is. A HUGE place with DVD and VHS rentals of all Anime stuff. I would've stopped right there and genuflected for all I was worth if it wasn't for the fact that I realized it was still 2 hours away by train, and the sheer cost of tickets would negate most of the savings of renting.
I wound up buying the X Soundtrack Volume 2. I was like *THIS* close to buying both Puni Puni Poemi DVDs, or the Iketeru Futari collection DVD, but I decided to go small and if I really thought I could afford it go back later and buy the others - or just mail order them off of CDJapan since the shipping might actually be cheaper than the train tickets. But if I wind up going into Shinjuku again (which I know I will, I've got 3 months left here) I will definately pay them a visit.
And as for Sunday? Well not much happened. More sleeping, recouperating, and some homework. I've had essentially four days off from school and I'm DREADing going back on today (since it's past 1AM). I really, really, do not like the classes here. I like being in Japan, although frankly I would much MUCH rather be closer to Tokyo, or Oosaka (even though I'd have a hell of a time understanding people there), but the real reason I came here was to learn Japanese - and I'm not doing that. The classes are not helping in the least. The fact that I actually feel like my Japanese is WORSE right now than it was at the end of the school year in June isn't making the decision to stay here any easier, either.
I saw Davee on the way back home from 7-11 tonight and he told me he's probably just going to go home. I think he and I have been having the toughest time of it (from what I can tell) and seeing him go is a real downer. I feel like I want to give up too, sometimes, but I figure I don't want to waste this time I have here. The worst thing that will come of this is that I'll have wasted 5 months of my life, and in the grand scheme of things, that probably isn't a whole lot, but it's hard to convince oneself of that every day, over and over. After hitting what I thought was rock bottom a week ago after the Hachioji trip and the HD crash, I was so depressed that I was just about ready to call and buy plane tickets. But I stuck it out. I hope I will find the strength to keep doing that, but I just don't know how much longer I will last.
I will definatey give my best until the actual Tsuru classes start, and it's not just this intensive Japanese class. But if that doesn't turn out to be any better or rewarding, I will call it quits. I'm already going to be paying for an apartment in SoCal for November and December (since otherwise our roommates back home couldn't afford it) and considering how unfulfilling it's been over here so far I'm not going to spend extra money for being in both places at once if I'm not going to be getting anything out of it. I can always complete my major requirements back at UCI, it's not like I need to do them over here. I came here to improve my Japanese, and so far, it's not working. And that's really a shame.
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September 4th, 8:18PM
2002-09-04 07:37:47
Been quite a while without a journal entry, but a lot of stuff's happened so I guess this'll be a long entry.
First off, here's my progress on AMV making:
http://www.ermacstudios.org/nothing.jpg
That's what depresses me, I can't do any video editing. I can barely test new filters and stuff because my P2 laptop doesn't have SSE and thus the Wavelet Noise Reduction plugin which is super-neato crashes VDub because it requires SSE. Same with a lotta other new filters.
The new guide is coming along rather nicely. It's gonna be called A&E's Technical Guide because we're wrapping Ian's audio guide, my old video guide, and a bunch of new content all into the same guide. New stuff includes IVTC'ing video before editing, dealing with 23.976fps footage in Premiere, updated encoding guides for Nandub and TMPGEnc and a new super-cool guide by Ian on XviD encoding. Also there's an AVISynth tutorial section, advanced scripting, stuff on various filters that are out there and might be useful, all sortsa good stuff. However most likely it will not be hosted here at the .ORG because as much as I like Phade I don't want to have to deal with waiting on him to update the pages. Right now he's on a cruise or something, but even when he was around he's really busy and doesn't have much time for these kinds of things. I plan to still have it be linked in the Guides section here but I doubt it'll be hosted on the amv.org server.
I borrow a VCR from my sensei in class and managed to watch all three of the AWA Pro tapes...
Note: what follows are my own personal opinions, and if I offend you with them, tough. I'm grumpy and depressed so you can piss off.
I'd say about 1/5 of all the videos were actually good, maybe 1/3 at least had some potential or were semi enjoyable. So much crap though it's unbelievable. I'm almost thinking about skipping Pro next year because I just don't want to deal with all the garbage. Whoever submits this stuff and thinks they are "pro" material should be shot. I set a rule that I would give every video 60 seconds to impress me or hold my interest before I fast forward. That limit quickly dropped to 30 seconds of actual video. If during fast forwarding I saw something interesting I'd watch it, but I'll say that that only happened ONCE. I also personally DQ'd videos from my voting if their vid quality sucked or had swapped field orders, which a TON of videos this year had. They had mixed field orders which meant no matter what Quu did they'd be messed up so it wasn't his fault. Jesus, the video quality on some of those videos just depresses me.
Thankfully, there were several very good videos I had never seen before on that tape which I thought were definatey worth watching and will be getting votes from me. I've almost convinced myself at this point that I will not be winning anything, which is good because it means if I do I'll be pleasantly surprised.
Japan blog stuff:
So since my trip to Tokyo was so successful on Thursday I decided to go to Hachioji to look for a 7th mix machine that was a little closer, on the advice of some people at a ddr message board. Well, my friend and I searched around for three hours (this was after an hour on the train) and we never found a single DDR Machine of any kind. We found three arcades, one of which had a huge bemani section with every newest bemani game, but no DDR. It was extremely frustrating.
Then, just to put the nail in the coffin on making that the most rotten day since I came to Japan, my external 6gb hard drive on the laptop died and is no longer functioning. Now I'm down to 6GB _total_ space on this thing. Really depressing...
Anyways, then on Tuesday I head the other direction on the Fujiyoshida trainline to look for a machine because Nathan saw an arcade near one of the stations when he went to Fuji Highlands (an amusement park) with his host family. They did indeed have DDR - but it was an old 3rd mix and you couldn't even select Maniac difficulty so I played 1 game and left. It appears if I want to play 7th mix I either have to go all the way to Nagano, Shinjuku, or Yokohama, which really sucks. And the most ironic thing is that now UCI's machine has been upgraded to a 7th mix, so if I hadn't come here I would have a 7th mix ON CAMPUS. GAH, it's so unfair.
I'm getting together with my host family for dinner tomorrow. Yay, real food for a change.
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Confessions of an Eva fanatic
2002-08-30 16:52:31
Well it finally happened. I can no longer rationalize keeping Marmalade Boy in my #1 favorite anime slot. It has since been demoted to #2 and Ye Olde Shinseiki Evangelion has been promoted to head honcho.
I realized it on Thursday on the way back from Tokyo. I really, truly, passionately love Eva. Despite my utter love for Marmalade Boy, there is no other series for which I would go to such great lengths as I have with Evangelion.
I have watched the series from start to finish 5 times. End of Evangelion I have watched 17 times.
I have imported the Movie DVDs from Japan, and now that I'm actually in Japan I've purchased the Director's Cut DVD - even though I already have the VOBs that are on them sitting on my hard drive (obtained on CDs from a very good friend but it took forever to get them after many attempts).
I have subtitled the films myself, with help from scripts already in existence but I heavily edited all of them, retimed them all from scratch - including frame-accurately timing all the still text in Death - and then mastered a DVD from said scripts. I then showed this DVD at a University-level Film Studies class (Contemporary Japanese Cinema) and gave a talk on Eva. I've also written a term paper on Eva (compared with Battle Royale actually and how they're alegories for the pressures put on youth in modern Japanese society, for those curious)
I've purchased 3 of the 5 Groundwork books and am 100% determined to buy the remaining 2, along with the other artbooks that exist (except the H one, yeech). I also have all the Manga for Eva in the original Japanese that has been published (eagerly awaiting vol 8).
I've made more Evangelion videos than I care to count, and I have plans for more despite the perfectly rational argument that I've already made too goddamn many.
I have talked for hours and hours and written pages upon pages about Evangelion. I find talking about Eva with someone new one of my favorite pastimes.
I can name the four roles Hayashibara Megumi played in Eva (yup, four). I can also name every other major Seiyuu in the show. I know the kanji for most of the characters' names.
Despite how much I love Marmalade Boy, the scale of things I've done for it are dwarfed by my sheer devotion to Eva. Evangelion has changed my life. I love it. I can't get enough of it. I am an Eva fanatic.
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Omni...
2002-08-30 13:59:02
They call it a PersoCon because in the series that's what it is... it's a play on words.
The Japanese contract the world "Personal Computer" into Pasokon. However, the joke in Chobits is that they're now "Person Computers" - they're actual people. Thus the joke, PersoCon. That's why they're called PersoCons and not PCs... because they are not PCs. CLAMP's wacky sense of humor.
And do you REALLY think it's a coincidence that everyone in that show is hot? My friend mistook some of the actual comics for Hdoujin, that's how sell-out this new thing is. CLAMP dropped several notches on the artistic credibility meter with this one and it's obvious fanservice-motivated origins.
And this show is gonna wind up having more merchandise than Card Captor Sakura. For those who don't know, that means A LOT. Like, more than any person who makes less than $80,000 could ever afford and still manage to not starve. Chobits is on its way to surpass CCS in a few years.
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