Monthly Archives: Saturday September 1st, 2007

Can I Get Back into Semi-Daily Posting?

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I don’t know… we’ll see…

Today I had another study meeting up in Komatsu. Not too bad, but all the moving around and rushing to classes afterwards meant I had to get up earlier, and didn’t get to eat lunch… >_< So now I'm desperately waiting for my slow rice cooker to finish me dang rice!

Speaking of food, I'm trying so hard to do my own cooking, and I'm failing miserably. I should post photos of the atrocities I've made and had to eat, but there'd be too many and this would turn into a cooking blog. I designated weekends as my food experimentation times, since I have the time to cook carefully then... So I bought some bacon and slices of beef. The bacon was... well I thought it was bacon, but I was disappointed. Actually, I'm sure it was bacon, but I guess it wasn't seasoned at all. So the first day I ate really, really bland bacon and rice and really oily eggs (to prevent burning). My beef fared a bit better, but only because I’m drenching things with salt for flavor now. So, I’ve learned to make something edible… however, oil-fried eggs, salty and fried beef, and tons of rice is not exactly healthier than the McDonald’s I’ve been trying to avoid… Oy.

So this weekend I sorted out some bills (holy crap, paying some of them is HARD), rented a ton of movies, played with Pi-chan, and went to Fukui to meet with Minako. It was a pretty normal weekend, I guess, but getting the bills sorted out was relieving. I still have a few snares — like fixing my hot water, setting up internet, and getting my bank card. I’ll need staff to help me with those, cause it has to be done all in Japanese for various reasons.

Oh yeah, I went to find toys of Pi-chan too… but apparently birds are a super rare pet to have here. So I couldn’t find any bird toys at all! I managed to fashion some out of cat collars with bells and colorful clothespins, and Pi-chan likes them enough… but I’m sure he’d love a mirror. I might get him one soon.

Ah man I know I had more to say… but I’m wiped… >_< Time to eat my unhealthy dinner.

Holy Dancing Monkeys, It’s September!

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I knew something was different when I woke up yesterday — the air felt different, it smelled different… It was still warm, but it was comfortable. I didn’t sweat on my 1 minute walk to work. And then when I got there, I realized why: it’s September! I know it’s not technically fall, but to me it’s as good as there… and fall is my favorite season hands down. I went on a long bike ride last night when it was that perfect fall night temperature: cool, humid, slight breeze, and clean smell; the kind of weather you could wear shorts, pants, a short-sleeve shirt, or a long sleeve shirt in and still be perfectly comfortable. Takefu is a beautiful city at night. The streets are so peaceful and quiet, and you can hear people having conversations, or watching TV in their homes as you bike past. Of course, in Japan, everyone leaves their windows or doors wide open on nice evenings, so I could smell what they were cooking too.

I drove down one street that I hadn’t gone down before, near the big shrine, and discovered that it was paved with white bricks instead of pavement and in the night lights, it was such a gorgeous place to stroll around.

So every year for me the inevitable consequence of fall weather is that I start to feel nostalgic. So on my bike ride I was thinking about how quickly 1 year has past — one year ago I hadn’t finished applying for JET yet, one year ago I had just come back from visiting Frances in Vancouver (and we were still dating), one year ago I was starting Children of Eden rehearsals, Lydia hadn’t been born yet, I was still working with Greta at the JASGP and hadn’t even met Sam or Kaori yet, I was still using Ubuntu Dapper Drake (wow!), and was having movie nights with Jen nearly every day. It’s really hard to believe that it’s been a whole year since then, and really hard to believe that I’ve been here for 1 and a half months already!

This borrowed internet connection really isn’t very good, so I’m going to call Yahoo BB tomorrow when they open and see what I can do to get internet here ASAP…

For now, it’s such a gorgeous day that I have to go outside, or else I’ll just sit in my room and feel nostalgic until I get all lonely and lame.