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August 21st, 5:36AM
2002-08-20 16:38:18
Fricking headache - nope couldn't sleep, AGAIN. Now I'm gonna be like shit all day, probably will not be able to go to school again. Gah this sucks.
BTW, to you-know-who, send me an email and pick your poison. :) As long as my little P2 366 laptop can play it I'll be happy to review it. Just try to pick a series I've seen... -
August 20th, 6PM
2002-08-20 04:58:27
I didn't go to school at all today. They called me around 9:40ish to ask if I was coming and I said no, because I felt aweful. I'd given my homework to Tae the previous night to give them at school in case I didn't come in, so I don't feel too bad about it. I just dunno what I'm gonna do. I slept for like 14 hours and I'm still tired as all get out.
Plus ProjectorPerfect just went down, thus ending my shortlived flirtation with highspeed hosting once again. Sigh...
But in very very nice news, someone reading the journal left a review on I Pray, and almost made my day. :D So not all is lost. Thanks, dude, you know who you are. -
August 19th, 7:50PM - And the streak is oh-so-broken.
2002-08-19 07:06:11
OmniStrata - for what it's worth the video I get the most about is Closer to God, and that was one of the first of my videos available online. I guess people just like Nine Inch Nails swearing. Same thing happened with DiamondDiegger (i think that's his nick). If I have the wrong person I apologize, but he apparently made ONE DBZ video way back and the huge volume of mail from DBZ Fanbois eclipses that of all his other videos.
I think I'm just trying to say people like what they like, and a certain crowd seems to write fanmail. And also what you think is your best work may not be so to others - I know some people (like UncleMilo) like to say that Anime Polka is my best work. Some people say The End Of Me is my best, some say SoaA. No one says I Pray, though, and that I think is my best video, which is why despite the fact that it gets almost no hits and no reviews, I still wanted it online. I just hope that someday people will discover it and appreciate it.
As for real journal entry stuff...
Yes it's been way too long without an update. Sorry, but I just haven't been in the writing mood. I've found myself sort of huddling into a routine of trying not to interact with the Japanese people outside of School or host-family get togethers. At night I will slip out to go to the supermarket or the 7-11 to get some dinner, and I will sometimes make the trip without a single word leaving my mouth. I slip in, get my things, and then go to the register. The list up the prices, I hand them my bill, they say thanks, and I dip out. As far as I know there is no standard response to a store clerk when it comes to the irasshaimase or arigatou gozaimashita at the start and end of a transaction, so I'm not exactly being rude. People must think the foreigner with the red hair is awefully quite, though.
It's kinda depressing, but it's sorta my way of coping with the stress of not being able to talk to anyone and sounding half way intelligent. Not to sound arrogant, but I prided myself on my oral skill in a conversation a lot and I have a pretty darn good grasp of the English language and the ability to flex said grasp, and now that whole means of communication has been severed and I am left trying to communicate like a six year old, except that I have to constantly look in a dictionary. It's frustrating but I suppose I'll learn to cope at some point.
A Typhoon moved in on the coast a couple days ago, so it's been raining ever since Saturday night. This morning on the way to school it was really bad, but the worst thing was I couldn't sleep at all the previous night and wound up getting less than 2 hours worth of sleep cause of this nasty headache I'd gotten. It got worse during class. I had forgotten my watch and I asked Nathan at one point what time it was. He held up his watch and I literally could not read it, at a distance at which it should be simple to do so. I couldn't focus or do anything, so I asked the teacher if I could go home. So I come home and try to sleep for a bit, and I still can't. Eventually around 5PM after doing some cleanup and stuff I layed down again and fell asleep for a couple hours until 7 when I got up and made one of those silent treks down to 7-11.
On Saturday during the day I got together with my host family again and we took a drive around the town near Mt. Fuji, which was lots of fun. We took a bunch of picture with Shino-san's digital camera, and I put them online here:
http://www.ermacstudios.org/JapanPics/
Well I'm really tired cause this lack of sleep is taking its toll on my, however I've still got a crapload of homework due tomorrow, as well as memorizing a speech I'm supposed to give tomorrow. I have no idea how I'll manage the latter considering my head is so messed up. Hopefully the Senseis will go easy on me.
I miss my cat. -
For EK
2002-08-16 00:33:46
I'll make a real journal update later, but just thought I'd tell EK...
Bitches With Issues would make a really cool band name. :D -
August 12th, 10:56PM
2002-08-12 10:07:16
Again coming in close to the wire!
Not much to talk about. Well maybe there is.
Class is annoying. There are two classes (an upper section and a lower section, mostly divided by who has had 2 years or 1 year, respectively) and there are three teachers, and they sort of rotate around. There are two one and a half our classes every day (9:30-11:00, 11:15-12:45) and usually the first and second class is taught by a different sensei. Two of the senseis I like. I think they teach well, they make me feel like I'm learning and improving my Japanese, and they don't leave me staring blankly at them trying to figure out what the directions for the listening exercise are.
But not the third one. I do not like the third one. She annoys me. She never explains things well, she uses vocabulary we don't know and then doesn't explain them (because apparently she doesn't speak very much English), she seems to be teaching at a level which is above 2/3 of the class (Nathan and Tae get it, but the other four of us don't apparently) and it just generally frustrates me. I hope this gets better.
Something I thought I'd point out since a lot of people reading this watch anime. (duh!) If anyone thinks that those background sound effects used a lot in anime (the cicadas making noise, that weird symphony of almost cricket-like sounds that you hear all the time in anime) they are NOT!
Separately, the first times Nathan and I went out to actually listen to it our first reactions were both independantly, "I'm in Eva". The noise that the cicadas make sounds EXACTLY like how it's protrayed in show after show, and it really does go on /all the time/.
It doesn't just stop at natural sound effects, too. Aside from the other sorts of natural noises I've heard in anime (which all the ones I can remember have found a corallary in reality here in Japan) there's also plenty of artificial ones. Like in Episode 1 of Eva, when Shinji hangs up the phone and it goes bee-beeeep, bee-beeeep, bee-beeeep. ALL the public phones make that noise. The first time I heard in in City Hall it creeped me out. As soon as I heard it I thought of that scene from Eva (yes, I know Eva too well. For those curious, the lines he says in that part are "Dame ka. Shou ga nai, shelter ni ikou," and then the ground shakes. Yes I knew that from memory).
I have a feeling it will happen more and more as I stay here - things from anime will match up with their counterparts in real life. I half expect the first time I see that Dog statue in Shinjuku to be looking around for Kotobuki Ran in a swim suit (let's see who gets that reference).
And I shudder to think how nervous I'll be the first time I go up Tokyo Tower. :D
JOURNAL: ErMaC
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