Christmas Wishes

I need to take a quick break from studying from my Computer Graphics final (which I am going to fail, despite the massive studying I've done for it so far >_<). So here are some random things that popped into my head. Wondering what to get me for Christmas? Here's a small list:

- A replacement battery for my dressy metal watch. I haven't been able to wear it in months. ._.
- Some cool stickers for my laptop cover. Preferably largish ones that I wouldn't mind being seen with.
- Nice portable headphones that aren't quite as massive as my... really massive ones. But something better than my iPod earbuds. o_o;
- How about a decently sized mixing bowl? Making pancakes is always a near-disaster for me.
- I don't read much in the way of English manga these days, but I wouldn't complain if someone got me Shaman King v.7. I'd say Peacemaker Kurogane too, but book 4 isn't out yet.
- I'm receptive to books in general...
- Anything that would be useful for a recent college grad. Ha ha. o_o;
- Oh yeah. How about some new, plastic clay tools? My old ones are a bit scratched up, and they don't do justice to my dragons.

*goes back to studying*

- Rindi

Current song: Random radio in the background of the dining hall
Current mood: Worried

The Popular Kid

Well, this is a strange new turn of events. I've gotten emails and guestbook comments about my clay dragons before, but they've been sporadic and random. However, in the past week, I've gotten three serious dragon requests. Two of them are as presents for daughters, and two are based off of a series of dragon books written by Chris D'Lacey that I've never heard of before. Apparently it involves small clay dragons. XD

Since it's the end of term, things are winding down, and although I still have ridiculous amounts of work to complete before term's out, I'm quite interested in getting back to working on dragons. I was thinking of taking all my clay stuff home over winter break, but perhaps this is an opportunity to start early. I actually completed a transaction with one of the requesters, as they wanted a dragon that I had on hand, so sending that out tomorrow will be an adventure. This makes me wonder how I would go about offering myself out for dragon commissions on a slightly more regular basis. It's not quite so easy, now that my mom's closed down the toy store. Guess I can put something up on my DA account. Or maybe on FAC, although most of the people there are young and poor. ^^;

A bunch of us on the FAC forums got together to do a Secret Santa art exchange thingy... I'm looking forward to it - I know who I was assigned, so now I just need to take the time to sit down and draw something. I feel bad for whoever pulled my name, as most people there don't know me all that well. I'm not a terribly vocal member. ._. Sucks to be them, but it might also suck to be me. We'll see...

I went to a craft fair today, which filled me once again with dreams of attending a craft fair as a vendor. Someday... Some way... Heh. Maybe I should be more worried about finding myself a job after I graduate.

While I'm on the topic of being extremely artsy at present, I guess I might as well stick in a link to my latest original characters. More dark elves, I know, but I am so very fond of them. ^^; Assassins for the win! That's the first picture I've colored in months...

- Rindi

Current song: The Rasmus - Lucifer's Angel (I absolutely *heart* the singer's voice *_*)
Current mood: Whyyyyyy am I still up? =_=

Brr

Today we had a blizzard and a thunderstorm... at the same time. It was a very strange experience, to say the least. Now all the freshmen are out romping around in the snow, but I'm stuck having to finish my overdue article for the anime club newsletter. Oh well, at least I'm forced to go tramping around outside to get to anime club later.

I've got icicles down my window - that's never happened before. Term's almost over, and I'm feeling rushed and rather lost. I don't know what to do with myself - makes me feel pretty gloomy these days. At least I get to go home soon. I'm looking forward to some free time to do jigsaw puzzles and read manga. Just a bit more than a week, that's all it is!

- Rindi

Current song: Trans-Siberian Orchestra - First Snow (gotta get in the mood, you know?)
Current mood: Exasperated

Ultimate Choon-age!

Haha, I haven't written in ages, and I'm completely unrepentant. I came back from Japan, life became normal/boring again, and there hasn't been much of anything to say. However! Today I have something to talk about!

My absolute favorite trance DJ is Armin van Buuren. Not only does he produce awesome songs, his live shows are legendary, and I believe he's currently ranked as the world's third best trance DJ. His weekly radio show, A State of Trance, is something that I've loved listening to for over a year, so a few weeks back, when I heard that he was touring the States in order to promote his second album, I took a quick look to see if he was coming to Boston... And by gosh, he was scheduled to play at Avalon!

Amusingly enough, I've never gone clubbing in the States before - all of my clubbing experience had taken place in Japan, so I figured that this was the time to check out an American club. I ended up going with Vivian (she ran late, so we met up on site), and wow, we had a total blast!

People are completely correct when they rave about Armin's energy and mixing. The guy is incredibly fun to watch, and the songs that he dropped were just fantastic. I didn't recognize many of them besides two songs from his new album - Zocalo, which is an amazingly beautiful track, and a weird version of Shivers that I didn't much care for (the dub version is the best, IMHO) - as well as Traffic (Aahhh! Tiesto! He never goes away). He also ended with Marcus Shulz's Without You Near, which was a fantastic way to finish off the evening. :3

Anyway, I came back and I was so excited that I actually felt inspired to write up a blog entry. So here you have it. Armin is awesome - I wish he'd gotten longer than two hours to play - silly Boston 2am curfews. Definitely check him out if you've got the chance - you won't regret it! Heh, and now I hear that Tiesto's putting in an appearance at Avalon sometime in November... I'm not a huge fan of his work, but I hear that his live sets are also really good, so we'll see... It could be fun. Now all we need to do is get Ferry Corsten to come over to Boston sometime and my life will be complete. ^_^

Tonight's experience was sooooo much better than that techno club in Shibuya, even if Avalon was a much smaller venue. Okay, the downside was that I had to put up with a whole bunch of creepy guys (Hello? I go to clubs to dance and enjoy myself, and that doesn't happen when I'm forced to rub my butt over your crotch D:<), but still... Trance really is the best! I'm such an addict. XD The past few days, all I've been listening to is old episodes of A State of Trance. Episode 200 has got to be one of the best things I have ever heard in my life!

So... Yeah. Today was win. And now my knees are kinda sore and I'm scheduled to go play in the anime club's 5-hour DDR marathon tomorrow. I'm such a nut. Wish me luck. @_@

- Rindi

Current song: Gabriel & Dresden vs Armin van Buuren - Zocalo (<3)
Current mood: Euphoric

Summer Recap

Well, that's it. I'm home again. This summer was absolutely fantastic - I did so many crazy things. Here's a brief list, in no particular order:

+ Kyoto. Twice. Once by overnight bus (D:), and once by bullet train (:D).
+ Kamakura - temples, big Buddha statue, ocean
+ Nikko - temples, waterfalls, bog, lake, beautiful
+ Shimoda - balmy and tropical, festival with portable shrines, swimming in the Pacific Ocean, hellishly long commute
+ Clubbing in Shibuya - smacked a guy, it was an accident, I swear
+ Shopping in Harajuku - I love used clothes
+ Comiket 68 - awesomely awesome doujinshi convention, my collection rocks
+ Playing Pop'n Music - best damn arcade game ever
+ Excursions in Akihabara - crazy electronics district, so much fun to wander through
+ Climbing Mt. Fuji - craziest thing I've ever done, 8 hours up, 4 hours down, hiked all night so I could see the sunrise at the top, gorgeous, but freaking cold
+ Edogawa fireworks - there's nothing quite like watching fireworks explode right over your head, then being blinded by all of the ashes falling down on you

Haha, and here I was thinking that I should have done more with my weekends. That ain't bad at all. ^_^

- Rindi

Current song: None
Current mood: Pleased

One Last Hurrah

Well, this is just about it for the 'Rindi in Japan' part of my life. It was pretty darn fantastic. I'm so glad I had the chance to do this. ^_^

I finally went to the Ghibli museum yesterday. It was really quite whimsical and fun to wander through. Too bad I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the inside... The best part was that I got to see a 15-minute short that's exclusive to the museum. I was really lucky and they were playing 'Mei to Koneko-bus' (Mei and the Baby Catbus) - the short that I really really wanted to see. Hey, anything to expand the world of My Neighbor Totoro. ^^ Ahhhh! It was so cute! It opened with the Sanpo theme song and had the little animals jumping out and stuff... And the movie was totally understandable because there wasn't much talking at all. I even understood almost all of the spoken parts, which consisted of stuff like, "You're small," and "Is that your father?"

Anyway, the gist of the movie is thus: Mei is playing by herself outside on a windy day. She unwraps a caramel candy and is about to eat it when a small whirlwind attacks her. It snatches up the wrapper and starts chasing her. Mei flees into the house but the whirlwind follows. She shuts the door behind it so it can't get out, and when it gets close enough, she grabs it. And hey, guess what! It's a baby catbus. It panics and tries to flee out of the window, which is shut. Mei calms it down by giving it a caramel. Then the adult catbus shows up and grins at them. The kitten tries to flee again, so Mei opens the window and frees it. It flies off into the sky after its parent. Later, during the night, Mei wakes up to find the baby catbus at the window. It opens up its side, inviting her in. Mei fits perfectly! XD They fly off into the night, and join many other catbuses running through the sky. They are all chock-full of totoros, grinning madly of course. Some are long, like bullet trains! X3 They all go to a forest and drop off their passengers there. Mei is left behind, and she gets scared because all of the totoros are walking past her to some destination, and they're completely ignoring her. Fortunately, THE totoro shows up (complete with umbrella), and Mei jumps onto his chest in relief. They follow the others, and it turns out that all of the Totoros are filing into this HUGE, ancient catbus (apparently the kitten's grandmother). The sign announced where their destination was, but I couldn't read the kanji. ;~; The totoros all seemed very solemn though. Anyway, Mei befriends the huge catbus by feeding it a caramel, and all of the totoros grin and laugh. Mei gets back into the baby catbus and they take off into the night, flying alongside the huge catbus, who looks something like a cruise ship. For some reason, the totoro with the umbrella gets left behind, and he waves goodbye to them. EL FIN.

Hahaha. I was bawling through the whole thing. XD Nostalgia hits me hard like that. I hope no one around me noticed - if they did, I'm sure they were pretty confused. Anyway, it was awesome. I was so glad that I got to see it.

Mrrm, besides that, I went shopping in the huge shopping complex in Nakano, simply because I'd always seen it from the train window, and I wondered what it was like. There was a huge Mandarake there, which was pretty cool, but I didn't feel like buying more manga. I did find a cute shirt in a clothing store (it was on sale!), so I bought that. It's sleeveless, black, and button-up. There are pleats down the front, a collar, lightly frayed edges, two pockets on the front chest, and lots of chunky metal buttons. So excellent. *_* I think it'll go well with my black skirt, fishnet shirt, and favorite chunky shoes... Now, to find a reason to wear an emsemble like that... Hm. o___o; Actually, I wish I had some appropriately frilly-sleeved white shirt to wear under it. I've got the perfect thing in mind, but I don't think I'd be able to find it by randomly looking around. Ah well. Love.

Today I made one last trip out to Odaiba to check out the Shounen Jump store. Didn't buy anything, but it was a lot of fun to look through. Also wandered through that mall complex - it's freaking huge! After that, I rode over to Akihabara to pick up KOTOKO's first CD. I'm listening to it now, and it is truly wonderful. I love it! I think I might like it even more than her second CD, which I bought a while ago, but I haven't finished listening to it yet, so perhaps I shouldn't pass judgement yet. ^^; Anyway, it's good.

I'm flying home this Thursday. I need to notify various people that I'm leaving. Gotta find someone to pay my bills. Gotta reserve a seat on the Narita Express, because I want as little hassle with my luggage as possible. It'll be a bit pricey, but it's better than having to brave public transport. Hahaha. I also have to pack all my stuff. Boy, that's going to be fun. *sarcasm sarcasm*

- Rindi

Current song: KOTOKO - Genei
Current mood: Happy happy happy

Name Change

I have some more posts to put before this one, but they aren't quite finished yet, so they'll be up later. I just thought that I'd mention that I decided to change the name that I post under.

It's bothered me for quite some time that I've been using the pseudonym of Flykyr Skysong. I mean, she's my little golden dragon. She definitely ain't me. I totally don't go by that name - never really did before either. So from now own, I'll be posting with something a good deal closer to my real name (Rindi), and my blog will be retitled appropriately.

Not that you cared or anything. o_o;

- Rindi

Current song: Seal - Kiss From a Rose (<3)
Current mood: Feeling rushed

Rindi and Skuld's Great Scientific Adventure

By now, I think we've established that my favorite Japanese arcade game is Pop'n Music. Well, Skuld likes Pop'n Music too (we've gone through several entertaining rounds of battle mode), but her favorite game by far is Sangokushi Taisen. It's based on the Three Kingdoms period in China, and is what can only be described as an online arcade trading card game. Sound complicated? It is. >:D

You collect cards by playing the game - the machine spits out cards after every game. Player data (name, wins, losses, ranking) is stored on an IC card. Basically, you choose one of the three kingdoms (each represented by a different color), build up an army of cards from that kingdom, and then face your troops against another player somewhere in Japan. The players come from a nationwide pool, so you could be playing someone all the way across the country. All cards have a cost, with the better cards having higher costs. The cost limit is eight, so you can either use eight weak cards, or fewer (but stronger) cards. You move your troops by pushing the cards around on the playing field. The object is to get your troops across the field to attack your opponent's castle. Action takes place on a video screen, where you can watch your troops running around, attacking, and casting spells. Destroyed troops have to return to the player's own castle to recharge before setting out again. It's interesting because you're up against actual people instead of a computer (you can play the computer if you want, but that's not nearly as fun). As with any trading card game, the people who have the money to buy rare cards dominate the game, so that kind of puts a damper on things...

Anyway, Skuld and I were curious about how the game managed to read cards. I thought there might be some sort of chip to read, but that sounded rather pricey, and people throw out unwanted cards all the time. I put an extra card in water for a while to separate the front and the back, but there was nothing inside. Since there was no chip inside, we hypothesized that the game sensors were optical, and we went over to the arcade to check it out.

At the arcade, I put down the separated card on the table, and it recognized the back but not the front. Understandable. Even for a normal, unaltered card, only the back can be read. The back of a card consists of part of the character portrait from the front, and a few boxes with text in them. Next, I completely crumpled the card so that it was completely illegible. I took another card and tore it in half. Lastly, I took a third card and folded it in half twice. We tried all three of these cards, and only the third card was readable by the game. Conclusion: the sensors must indeed be optical. Our guess is that it reads the character portrait... But that's just a guess. A good next experiment would be to cut out the character portrait from one card and tape it to a different card, to see if we can trick the machine.

Haha. Yay for the scientific method. Yay for being nerds. This is how MIT students amuse themselves when they have nothing better to do. ^__^;

- Rindi

Current song: None
Current mood: Still exhausted

The Beginning of the End

In a completely unsurprising turn of events, summer vacation came and went almost before I realized it. It was fun though, and for that I am glad. I have photos of Comiket cosplay, Nikko, and Shimoda.

No pictures for today - I didn't do much, although I did go shopping in Harajuku again. I really get a kick out of seeing Japanese clothing. I walked down a sidestreet which ended up having all these fancy little boutiques, and I wasn't really planning to go into any, but then I walked by one that just made my jaw drop. Everything inside was black or white, and spiffed up with straps, buckles, seperated sleeves... You name it, they had it. Gothic awesomeness, in a very classy sort of way. I had to go inside and poke around. The sales clerk pointed out the cute little ears on one of the hoodies. I swear, the moment I am able to drop $100 for a shirt without thinking twice, I'm going to buy a plane ticket to Japan and go and buy out that store. Because at that point, paying for a ticket to Japan will seem like nothing either. XD Hahaha, so much hawtness. Now, if only I had a reason to wear clothing like that, the money to buy it, and a svelte Japanese physique. >_<

I put some of the pins that I bought at Comiket on my backpack. They make me ridiculously happy. I've been filled with this sort of warm, fuzzy feeling since Friday-ish. I think it's the feeling of fangirlishness. It's certainly something that I'm not used to, but I rather like it.

Well, tomorrow puts me back to the daily grind. Only two weeks left! I can't decide whether to feel sad or relieved about that. Heh. At least Skuld is coming to stay over for a few days again... Darn those other interns and their non-communicativeness.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Kiss and Cry - Fly Hi (Physalis remix)
Current mood: Still on a weekend high

Great Comiket Moments

Stepping into the largest room I have ever seen, and being blown away by the amount of people in there. I hear that Tokyo Big Sight is as big as six Home Depots. And yes, it still isn't big enough.

---

Finding an artist whose website I've visited multiple times... and getting a personalized sketch from her!

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Finding the Deuil/Pop'n Music doujin section... and realizing that it's bigger than the Inuyasha, Shaman King, and Sonic the Hedgehog sections combined. Take that, teenage American fangirls!

---

Deuil cosplayers. Japanese Deuil cosplayers. 'Nuff said.

---

Pong: But yaoi doesn't involve explicit male sexual encounters, right?
The rest of us: *long long moment of stunned silence*
*hysterical laughter*
Pong: *hangs head in shame*

My wording is off - so shoot me. Pong is such the fanboy, but that's what makes him so loveable.

---

Playing 'The Typing of the Dead' with Skuld at Leisure Land. It's still the best game ever, but the fun is doubled with an extra player.

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Purikura and Japanese karaoke are fantastically hilarious. What kind of crazy bored people make those karaoke videos?!

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Note to self/anime club members: Next time, when infiltrating Comiket as foreign press, bring business cards!

---

More later... Let me fangirl in peace. Because fangirl is totally a verb.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: none
Current mood: I must be the happiest fangirl alive... KYAAA!

Scattered Thoughts

A few quick notes before I drop off to sleep. Summer break started today, so I have no work until Tuesday. Woot! I went to Shinjuku today to pick up a sketchbook, mail some junk to the US (darned expensive! ;~;), and to watch Star Wars. About time. I've been meaning to see it for ages. By lucky chance, Wednesday is Ladies' Day at the theater, so I got my movie ticket for only 1000 yen (a bit less than $10). That's totally comparable with going to see movies in Boston, so yay. Usually it's 1800 yen. @_@

I had about an hour to kill before the 6:30pm show, so I wandered a bit. There's a theater in the area that's putting on 'We Will Rock You: Queen, the Musical'. It was very amusing to watch/listen to the advertisements for it. I also went into one of the numerous arcades and played the best game ever! There's nothing more amusing than blasting zombies with your... keyboard. The game characters even run around with these keyboard devices strapped to their chests. The game isn't even all that old - it's from 2000, and the graphics are quite impressive. The dialog's in English, which leads me to wonder if this was an American game at any point. Nahhh.... There's no way. The game is too nerdy for its own good. Actually, I thought it was pretty fun, although it would've helped if the words were in English so that I wouldn't have to type a vowel as every other letter. That really hampered my gameplaying abilities. XD Ah, that arcade also had DDR, so that makes two places in Shinjuku now! This one was expensive though, so I didn't play.

Anyway, I finally went and got to see the movie. The theater was cool - it was totally a theater at one point. It still had the plush seats and the stage with a screen across the back of it. Much much bigger than the place where I saw the Fullmetal Alchemist movie. Makes sense, I guess. There were plenty of other people, but I had no problem getting a seat. Movie's been out for a while, so I think most people have already seen it. I was clever and bought some meat buns from a department store beforehand, so I had dinner as I watched the previews and advertisements. Japanese ads are funny. They really are something else. I thought it funny that the car commercials all focused on happy drivers/families/people in general. American car ads are all, SPEED! COOL! OMGBUYMENOW! The Japanese commercials had the same elements, but there were people too. Heh. Anyway.

It was really funny. I was totally spacing out through the first few minutes of the movie. I think that my general non-understanding of Japanese has trained me to space out when people are talking. I had to kick myself a few times because the movie was totally in English, and I was busy thinking, "Eh, they're yelling stuff and getting shot at. It's action. It doesn't matter what the actual dialog is." Heh heh. I totally could have watched this movie in Japanese and still known exactly what was going on. It wasn't complicated like the FMA movie. :P Soooooo predictable (except for one little exchange between Yoda and Obiwan at the end about Qui Gon which pleasantly surprised me). But I guess I can't really blame George Lucas - it all had to work out like that to tie in with the original series. I kinda feel like I ought to go back and watch all those movies again.

I feel bad for all the Japanese watching the movie. I wasn't at all impressed by the subtitles that I was able to read. They missed out on so many nuances! It felt very... sterile. Dispassionate. Ah well. I guess it's the same for anything that gets translated. Better than it not being translated at all.

---

I have figured out why I'm going to be single for the rest of my life. Some random guy tried to talk to me in English when I was walking to the theater, but he surprised me and he looked a bit sketchy, so I didn't answer and just kept walking. I should've at least asked if he was lost or something. I feel like a bum now.

Let's take a look at me versus random guys in Japan:

Gaijin waiting for the Narita Express from the airport - Were talking together, too shy to join in
Random foreigner dude that I saw one day at Hitachi - Too shy to go and talk to him
Guy who danced with me at Club Womb - Invaded my comfort zone and I accidentally smacked him. Didn't mean to. Honest.
MIT graduate who saw my ring while I was waiting for the Sumidagawa fireworks - Had a lovely chat for a few minutes. He was an Econ major, class of '81, and was surprised that I was still an undergrad.
Sketchy Indian guy in Roppongi - Treated me like property. I refused to answer his calls (hooray for caller ID). Dares fail. >:(
Random guy in Shinjuku today - Did not respond to his "Hello, how are you doing?" and weird eyebrow-raising-ness

The verdict: I suck! But so do other people!

Sometimes it feels good to hate the world.

---

I think I've figured out why LotR doujinshi disturbs me. It's based on real people. I don't mind weird pairings between anime and manga characters because they aren't real to begin with. But, when people start pairing up their favorite band members (Green Day doujin exists!) or Major League players (I'm totally serious here!), it just creeps me out. So much for being open-minded. XD There are so many things that would never have occurred to me had I not flipped through that Comiket catalog. I feel dirty. ._.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: The Postal Service - The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
Current mood: Sleepy

Fun in the Sun

Today was a good day. Full details here.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Random piano stuffs in the background
Current mood: Happy

Mounting Excitement

Oh man! I am totally psyched for Comiket! I'll bet it's something that you've never heard of. Comiket is short for 'Comic Market', and it's Japan's premiere doujinshi convention. Doujinshi are fanmade manga, based on anime, manga, or game series. Perfect if you want to see other peoples' takes on your favorite series. The event is three days long, and each day has a different theme. Friday the 12th is primarily video-game centered, although there are also some manga series featured too (I noticed GanGan - they publish Fullmetal Alchemist, among other things). Saturday is dedicated to other manga series - primarily Shounen Jump (there are huge sections dedicated to One Piece, Naruto, and Prince of Tennis). Sunday is like, bad hentai day or something - it's seriously all porn. I'm definitely going on Friday and Saturday, but I think I'll pass on Sunday. It really is catered to guys. ^^;

Next week, from Wednesday to the next Tuesday, is Hitachi's summer vacation, so I'll have that Friday off. Le woot. I was flipping through my catalog and I randomly landed on the Pop'n Music section. SCORE! I am going to raid the Deuil section because I will kill to get my hands on any doujin featuring Yuli. XD Actually, I recognized one person whose website I've visited a couple of times. I'll have to drop by - maybe they'll draw a sketch for me. That would be totally sweet. I hear that if you bring a sketchbook with you, you can ask artists for drawings, and they'll do them for you, free of charge! I wanna fill up a sketchbook with drawings by doujin artists. X3 Just have to remember to pick up a sketchbook this week.

You have to really be familiar with a series sometimes, to figure out what different circles are featuring. They tend to shorten names to the first one or two syllables...

The catalog really opened up my eyes to stuff that I wouldn't expect to see. I mean... Lord of the Rings doujinshi? Aragorn x Boromir? Oh man, my eyes!! Some pairings are just disturbing... Although the single offering for Isildur x Elrond just made me laugh. Of course, right after LotR comes the huge Harry Potter section. I had to strain my eyes to find straight pairings amidst the plethora of male/male pairings. Draco x Ginny? o_O Hm. I might drop by there if I have time, although I'm not a terribly huge HP doujin fan. Things I definitely have to check out will include Fullmetal Alchemist (Ed and Envy... does it exist? I feel like everything is RoyEd... blech), Final Fantasy VII (Reno? o_O), Pop'n Music (Deuil!!!), Naruto (SasuNaru? KakaIru? I wonder if NaruHina exists...), One Piece (ZoLu = so cute :3), Legend of Zelda (Link <3) and probably ten thousand other things that haven't sprung to mind yet because I haven't finished flipping through the catalog. I got too excited and I had to calm myself down by writing this. I'm sad that I won't be able to understand anything that I buy. Need to improve the kanji skills. ._.

Anyway, I got a bit of planning that I need to do before I'm ready to go. I have a bunch of floor maps that need to be marked up and stuff. Gotta get the sketchbook, and also contact Pong and see what his plans are. The lines will be really long and I don't want to wait alone, so it'd be nice to hang out with him. Haven't seen him since June either...

Oh yeah. One last thing I want to do. Take pictures of Japanese cosplayers. They tend to do a fantastic job, and I really really am looking forward to seeing them. I need to make sure I've got spare batteries. ^_^; My only problem is that of money. I'm not getting paid 'til after summer vacation (;~;), and I'm down to a couple hundred yen. Makes day trips a difficulty. I might have to find myself an ATM. Geh! Didn't want to have to do that. I knew I shouldn't have bought all those CDs over the past few weekends. Sigh. I wonder how much a single doujin costs...

*smacks herself* Nothing's going to dampen my enjoyment and anticipation! Lookin' forward to it!

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: KOTOKO - RETRIEVE
Current mood: :DDDDDD

Firework Frenzy

Fuwa fuwa... Today was awesome! I started out by going to Akihabara and picking up a CD that I've had my eye on. I also grabbed souveniers for various anime-fan friends of mine (they are super cool and no, I'm not saying what they are), and I got the main thing that I went to get - the Comiket catalog! More on that in the next post.

After that, I grabbed lunch and hopped on a train to Ichikawa to wait for the Edogawa hanabi taikai (fireworks event). Hiro, who lives in Tokyo, invited all the MIT interns to come and watch, so I decided to go, since I'd been rather disappointed by the Sumidagawa hanabi taikai. I got there around 3, and there was only one other person waiting... Hiro showed up about half an hour after that. He'd set up the tarp on Wednesday, and we were in a perfect spot - directly across the river from the launch site. Actually, it was a bit of a problem because the wind was blowing towards us, which meant that later on, during the fireworks, we were constantly having debris rain on us. Still... Talk about freaking awesome! I don't think I've been so close to fireworks before. Not even in Boston, where we usually get the best seats in the house, right across from the launch barge. I mean, when the stuff is actually falling on you... Anyway. It was fantastic. Pictures can be found here!

Some of the more interesting fireworks included hearts, butterflies, and kitty faces! There were also the standard smiley-faces, but those are just so... common. Plenty of flower-inspired fireworks too. There were also various 'themes' for the various major parts. One was 'rainbows' with seven-colored fireworks, and another one was 'red rain' with plenty of red and gold fireworks (I heard something about imitating the autumn sky over the loudspeaker). Sam took lots of video, so I'm going to have to download that. Fun fun.

Also got to speak some Japanese to various friends of Hiro, which was nice. I got complements about my kanpeki (perfect) Japanese. ^^;

We chilled at Hiro's house for a bit after the show, and people displayed photos on Hiro's laptop. I gotta get my hands on some of those, because most of mine came out wobbly.

In the end, I dragged myself back to Kokubunji and jumped into the shower so I could wash off all the ashes. Thank goodness! I'd been feeling like I'd never be clean again.

Then I settled down to check out my Comiket catalog and I got so excited that I had to start blogging about it. In fact, I'm going to give it its own entry. Check it out, yo.

There was a small earthquake right after I started typing this... just to round out the evening, I guess.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: KOTOKO - 4 2 1 -a will- (from her second album, which I bought today... it totally rocks!)
Current mood: Utterly exhilerated

Closure, At Last

I just got back from watching the Fullmetal Alchemist movie! I've been dying to see it, ever since I finished the anime series back in the spring (and was subsequently shocked and heartbroken). Well, the series finally has an ending, and... what an ending it is!

I'm not here to spoil the series - in fact, I could hardly understand it myself, so I need to look up some movie summaries online. A few thoughts though.

1. CLOSURE!!! Thank goodness! The ending was kinda cheap... but not terribly surprising.
2. Damn you, alternate universes!
3. Hahaha... Take that, Winry!
4. Poor Envy. We didn't even get to see his normal form.
5. Gluttony?! o_O
6. Wrath??? Oh. So pathetic.
7. Armstrong! XD
8. Hughes! As a Nazi! XDDDDDD
9. The rise of Hitler confused me, as I thought the movie was taking place before WWI. I think I got the date wrong. Gotta check.
10. I need the manga. In Japanese. All 11 books of it. Heaven help me.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Tomoyuki Nakazawa - Photo Biotic
Current mood: Tangled and a bit confused

Cutting Corners

Will write more later, but I gotta go soon - I think this place is going to shut down in a few minutes.

I got my hair cut today. It was quite the adventure. I felt really bad for the pair hairdresser - I didn't understand most of what she was saying. The haircut itself took a full hour (after the twenty minutes I spent waiting). There were various things about it that were just weird to me. Like how she'd cover up my face with a cloth when washing my hair, and I thought I was going to suffocate. Or how the smock had armholes so you could read magazines while the hairdresser was working on your hair. Hah! You're supposed to read, instead of chat with the hairdresser.... Well. Fine by me. My Japanese is teh suck anyway.

I'm used to twenty-minute haircuts though. I guess this one came out better than those though. No hiding hairs yet, plus she washed my hair afterward. Didn't cost an insane amount either - only a little bit more than I'm used to paying.

Anyway, that's my story for the day. Over and out!

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Random soothing piano music
Current mood: Rushed

Am I a Bad Person?

Hah, laziness strikes again. I've found other ways to occupy my evening instead of blogging, and my camera battery died last weekend, so I don't really have any new pictures to put up. My mom's been in town, so I've been spending time with her too. Trying to remind myself to buy souveniers for people, but it's kind of hard to feel inspired when people don't frickin' talk to you...! Okay. So I've been feeling a bit isolated lately - too much time with my mom and not enough time with the interns. I don't even know what they're up to this weekend... I wonder if playing some more DDR is the solution to this restlessness. Somehow I doubt it.

I just realized that I totally suck and haven't sent out the postcards that I got two weeks ago. Fail. On the other hand, I found out that the Fullmetal Alchemist movie debuts on my birthday. Win. Now, what are the odds of me getting tickets to that?

I ate a whole box of Pretz Salad today. They are these pretzel-stick type snacks, and I do prefer to have the wrappers in the trash instead of lying about my desk, thank you very much. I feel like a horrible person because I don't usually go for excessive amounts of junk food, but hey, they were nice and salty, and it only cost me 100 yen. Makes me wonder how much Pocky costs...

My code finally works! Too bad my supervisor keeps disappearing so I can't ever show it to him. He must think that I suck. Because I do. I'm sort of a week behind schedule. No matter though. It's the weekend, and I'm so out of here. Back to Shinjuku again. Maybe I will get in some DDR tonight. I should get my mom to play with me. We can scare all those annoying guys that always seem to line up while I'm playing (failing).

I have no life. I want to go clubbing, but the interns went without me. Plus, I doubt that they went to an electronic/trance related club anyway. ._.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: None
Current mood: Sleepy

Redecorating

I've been on an artistic bent lately. I whipped up a bunch of sketches over the weekend, surprisingly enough, and I even started working on a serious pencil picture. Haven't done that in ages. Okay, it's for a contest, but still... It's a picture I've been meaning to draw for ages.

While in Nara, I picked up a spiffy ornament for my cellphone. I also traded faceplates with one of the interns, so now my cellphone is ultra spiffy! The glass block holds a little laser engraving of the Buddha. Below that is a deer, and at the bottom is one of those weird ying-yang halves that are everywhere in Kyoto and Nara. Not sure what their significance is though.

Also, I finally got myself one of those nifty transparent umbrellas. I love those things so much... All this time, I've been meaning to get one, and doodle stuff on the inside, so it'd be like stained glass. The only problem was that I didn't have any colored Sharpie markers with me... BUT, Sarah is awesome, and she sent me a birthday present - colored Sharpies! They couldn't have come at a better time. This is just the start, but hopefully, there will be further additions made soon. ^_^

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: SuperGreenX, MC - DDR - 4F73R M3 (Yeah, this one's on OC Remix, but you can also find it at SGX's website)
Current mood: Yaaaaay!

Back from Kyoto

I went to Kyoto this weekend. It was awesome, although I was dying from a headache for all of Saturday and most of Sunday. I was totally stupid and forgot to bring painkillers along with me, and everyone else only had Tylenol. I know very well now that Tylenol does nothing for me. -_- At least, on Sunday, the cool architect guy that we met with gave me some Ibuprofen, and I was able to enjoy the tail end of the trip.

I don't feel like writing pages and pages of stuff right now... Maybe later. However, I did put some descriptive titles on my photos, so you can probably figure out what I saw. Since I didn't bring my laptop with me, I took smaller pictures (my camera can hold about 85 large photos, or over 200 small photos, and I knew I was going to be taking more than 85 photos...), and I kind of regret it. Should've brought the laptop! Oh well, so you can't see everything properly. I'll keep this in mind, the next time I go on a weekend trip. Here are pictures from Saturday and Sunday. And here are some lovely photos, courtesy of Mike-san, Mitsuko-san's husband. Enjoy!

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: djpretzel - Super Mario World - Swanky Vegas (The pretz runs OC Remix, and most of his remixes are awesome)
Current mood: Kinda stiff and sore... Is that a mood? o_O;

Photoblogging?

I bought some green onions to go with tonight's pork ramen, and they are ridiculously long. I decided that I needed to take a picture of them, and that inspired me to do a 'cooking with Flykyr' tutorial. Because ramen is totally hard to make, I know. I went and put captions on all of today's pictures because I was too lazy to put it all together in a Powerpoint presentation. Plus, this way, people who don't have Powerpoint can see the pictures too. Check it out right here.

Speaking of photoblogging... Maybe I'll give that a try sometime, instead of just putting in links. Maybe after I get back from Kyoto. ^_~

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: The Wingless - Starfox - Godspeed (Hey hey hey, guess where I got this song from...)
Current mood: Content

Finger Lickin' Good

This evening was my welcoming party. My work group took me to a chicken restaurant - they specialize in everything having to do with chicken. We had yakitori, deliciously salty fried chicken, chicken soup with rice (NOT at all like your standard Campbell soup), "Italian" chicken salad, chicken shumai, chicken gyoza. I think the appetizer was spiced chicken skin. The weirdness prize goes to the chicken sashimi. Yep, raw chicken wrapped in mint leaves. I was brave and had one. Kind of the same texture as sashimi... but more tasteless. It wasn't too bad, provided that I refused to think about salmonella or asian bird flu. At least the drinks were free of chicken. :D

Yamamoto-san has decided to turn me into a Kyoto girl, being that she is from Kyoto herself, so I got a lesson in the different words for 'fool'. In Kyoto, Osaka, and the rest of the Kansai region, the word is 'ahou'. In Nagoya (and only Nagoya, apparently), it is 'tawake'. And everywhere else, down south to Kyuushuu, or north to Hokkaido, the word is 'baka'. I was familiar with 'ahou' and 'baka', but 'tawake' is a new one for me. Probably because it's so localized. I'll have to keep it in mind, in case I end up going there. Yamamoto-san's theory is that each word originated from Kyoto and spread outwards from there because, naturally, Kyoto is the center of Japan. There was much protest from the non-Kyoto types (that is, everyone else in the group).

We also talked about sightseeing in both Japan and the US, fireworks, and musical instruments. Yui-san and Saito-san both play the piano, so there was a mutual comparison of hand sizes. People were impressed by mine - I have a fairly wide fingerspan. Of course, many other things were said that I did not understand, but I still had a good time. Speaking in Japanese comes fairly easily, even though I don't think I'm using as many second-year Japanese structures as I think I should be. It's understanding it that's really difficult!

On the gaming front, I found a couple Pop'n Music simulators. Stepnmusic is an offshoot of Stepmania (a DDR sim, and it looks very spiffy - I will have to try the DDR part out sometime), and is kind of like DDR for your fingers... Sadly, there are no keysounds - I can't play out individual sounds when I hit the keys. And that's really what makes Pop'n Music fun. But that game is what I found several simfiles for, so it's got the most variety. I desperately want to make a few more character designs for it though. It only came with one, and I can't find any more! The other sim is called Feelin Pomu, and it supports keysounded files (YESSSSS!). Unfortunately, I have found only three simfiles for Feelin Pomu, and they are all impossible for me. Sigh. Guess I have to learn in the arcade after all. :P Still... Pop'n Music is awesome! They need to bring it to the US, because I think I am really going to miss being able to play it once I go back home. I'm such a nerd. ._.

This weekend: MIT-Japan intern trip to Kyoto. It's going to be a blast!

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: djpretzel - Phantasy Star 2 - BurntMota (Yes, I am going through all my OC Remixes, in case you haven't noticed...)
Current mood: Satisfied

Suddenly Social

This was an intern-heavy weekend. Not too many pictures, but you can see pictures from the intern party and its aftermath here. The party was great - it was good to finally meet all of the Tokyo-area interns, and the food was excellent. We watched Dracula - it had Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder in it. I only watched the second half, but I found it rather annoying and lame. I never figured out why Keanu Reeves' hair was such an odd shade of gray.

After the party, everyone headed over to Shibuya to go hang out at a cafe. Pong, Jumaane, and I went to one of the two (two!!) arcades in Shibuya that has a DDR machine. Jumaane is really good and I am teh suck. ._. Sadly, in the two-minute interval where I went to go watch Pong play Beatmania before dragging him over to play DDR, a horde of guys appeared and hijacked the DDR machine. There were like, a dozen of them! Somehow, this always happens. After I play on an unoccupied DDR machine, people show up and take it over for a long time. I don't know how that works.

Sunday, I went out for shabu shabu and sukiyaki with some of the interns. Photos are here. Not so interesting, but there is a nice picture of us at the end. Anyway, that's that. Time to get ready for another work week.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: None
Current mood: Worn out

Week's End

Wow, it's Friday again. That was quick. Today's lunchtime entertainment included a discussion of the dangers of keeping one's cellphone in one's shirt-front pocket. Quite a few people appear to have dropped their cellphones into the toilet because of this dangerous habit (squat toilets are fuuuuuuun....). Good thing I always keep my cellphone in my purse or my backpack.

The apple juice that I bought tastes suspiciously like pear. I am so mistrustful of all the drinks at the company shop because they are made by brands like Kirin or Asahi or Suntory (for a relaxing time, make it Suntory time), all brands that I know as producing alcoholic beverages. But hey, they make plenty of non-alcoholic drinks too. My favorite so far has been the jasmine tea. It's cold, but it sure brings back nostalgia.

This weekend, there's a Tokyo-area MIT-Japan welcoming party at an alum's house. Free food is always good. There was mention of clubbing afterward - I wonder if anyone will actually act on it. I am kinda curious...

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: None
Current mood: Annoyed

Watashi no Keitai

Back in the internet cafe for another ice cocoa (tonight is good - they used more cocoa powder than the last time I was here) and some more picture uploading. Sarah expressed a desire to see pictures of my keitai - my cellphone. And here is a picture of me with my phone. Ugh, I am so not photogenic - you don't want to know how many tries it took to get to that picture. At that point, I wasn't even trying to smile anymore. But that takes care of Mike's request for pictures of me in Japan. There. That's me, and I'm in Japan. So there. ^o^

There is an annoying gaijin dude here in the cafe, jabbering away on his cell phone. He is swearing a lot, which I find to be highly distracting. Talking on your phone in a cafe meant for reading books and listening to random classical music seems like a horribly rude thing to do. Americans. *shakes head*

Actually, I brought my iPod along and thus have headphones, so I think I will listen to DI.fm for a while. Goodness, it's been ages. I've been missing out on so much cutting-edge trance. I miss hearing A State of Trance... But it's on at like, 1am on Friday mornings, so there's no possible way.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Orinoko - Island (thrillseekers dub mix) (Score! Not only a song that I recognize, but a good one, to boot.)
Current mood: Bouncy

Food and drink

Today for the first time, I tried melon pan, a kind of bread which is very popular in Japan - Minataku from Digi Charat is always eating it. It was delicious. But that is because it didn't taste like melon at all.

Today's drink: oolong tea. The Japanese really like cold tea. Cold green tea is nasty, and straight tea is full of sugar. But oolong tea is just right. I might try jasmine tea tomorrow, provided that they don't restock on apple tea first.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: None
Current mood: Anxious

Someday I Will Get Beyond Shinjuku...

Sarah and I have discovered the wonder that is cell-phone email. Finally, a way to communicate on weekends! I went down to the local internet cafe to meet up and chat with her over AIM. Caught up on the latest gossip concerning Jim and Vikki, neither of whom I've heard from personally. Also caught Mike online, which was a pleasant surprise.

I decided to go back to Shinjuku and DDR the afternoon away, so I did just that. I decided that I suck less on the 2P side than the 1P side, but I'm still relegated to playing Standard mode. I've realized that in order to play Heavy mode, you have to know exactly what you're doing, and my DDR sim's timing is very different from the arcade machine's. I can see why Brett has such a hard time when we use my computer to play. I stuck to playing easy songs, except for on my last song of the round, since it doesn't matter if I fail that one anyway. And every time, I picked a song I knew I could beat on my own system, and I failed every time. I came darned close to beating Era though. >_< I think the only Heavy level song that I passed was Cowgirl, and only barely, at that. More people were watching me suck away... At least they were more polite than some hecklers back in the States that I can think of. I wonder what they thought of the clueless gaijin in shorts, hopping around like a monkey to the gallops in Cowgirl. @_@;

Oh man, I felt so inappropriately dressed today. All of the girls and women in Japan wear either pants, capris, skirts, or dresses. Nobody wears shorts. Most of the guys wear pants too - if they wear shorts, they are knee-length. Actually, I saw one girl in Shinjuku with shorts that were actually knee-length cut-off jeans. But today was so hot! There was no way I could have worn pants. I would look less out of place if I went out in a skirt, I guess, but there is no way I'm going to DDR in a skirt. Skirts and sneakers don't go together anyway. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah...

People don't stack tokens to claim a place at the DDR machine. Instead, they line up, and when someone finishes a round, the next person in line takes their place. Yay for politeness. DDR is cheap too - 100 yen for five songs! Provided you don't fail right away... Of course, that means that if there's a line behind you, it takes forever to get another go. Took me a while to figure out how to access the non-Extreme songs (stupid Flykyr), but once I did, it was much easier to find songs to play. I was crushed that they didn't have Night in Motion, though. -_-

After four rounds of DDR, I'd had enough. I'm really sad that Heavy songs like Tsugaru, Frozen Ray, and even A are out of my league. I really need to work on my timing. I beat a hasty retreat because the smoke was killing me (arcades are sooooo smoky, it's awful) and I needed a drink. I remembered a fruit stand over on the west side of Shinjuku station that sells pineapple on a stick for 100 yen, which is cheaper than most drinks from a vending machine (vending machine drinks tend to range between 120 and 150 yen). Unfortunately, I was on the east side of the station, so it took me twenty minutes to get to the other side. The pineapple was good, though! Definitely better than cantaloupe on a stick, and only half the price. And I laughed because the stick that it's on is actually half of a pair of your standard disposeable chopsticks.

I stopped by another arcade and finally worked up the nerve to try out Taiko no Tatsujin. 200 yen for two rounds. So pricey. ;~; Plus, I played it on the stupid easy level, so it was no challenge at all. Still, I had this idiodic grin on my face through the whole thing - the game was really amusing. I probably scared anyone who was looking at me. My little sister would love it. She'd probably be chanting along with all the don's and the ka's. X3

I returned to Kokubunji after sitting down in a bookstore for a while to flip blindly through cooking magazines (it was all an excuse to sit down and rest my feet). Had dinner at a restaurant at the local department store, then came back to my room to watch Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, a classic anime movie that Seto-san lent to me. It even had English subtitles (sucky ones at that). The movie was great. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Lupin is awesome. :3

Today's expenses:

One hour and ten minutes at the internet cafe: 524 yen
Onigiri for lunch: 103 yen
Train fare to Shinjuku: 380 yen
Four rounds of DDR: 400 yen
Pineapple on a stick: 100 yen
One round of Taiko no Tatsujin: 200 yen
Train fare to Kokubunji: 380 yen
Dinner: 840 yen
Grocery shopping: 415 yen
Total: 3342 yen

Ugh! Over $30! For all my attempts at cheap entertainment, things still add up. Stupid train fare. And I keep going to Shinjuku because it's the cheapest place in central Tokyo for me to get to. *scratches head*

BTW, I'm fully recovered from my cold. Tomorrow's blood test is goin' down!

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Pop'n Music 10 - DJ Taka - Votum Stellarum
Current mood: Sleepy

Another Day of Memories

Here are today's pictures.

On my way to the station, I was amused to see a little boy waving a tiny bug net around. I couldn't imagine him managing to catch anything with it. Then I noticed his little brother walking along behind him, carefully carrying a green slotted box with a large white moth flying around inside. Little kids are so frickin' adorable.

Oh, the cleverness. Why is nobody laughing?

These fish are always there, and they always look dead. But for some reason, in this picture, they are looking a little bit less dead than usual. And OMAG, you can see my reflection in the fishtank. I'm wearing my 1UP shirt, obviously.

This town isn't big enough for TWO hair salons!

This guy's legs, claws, and eyes move! It was especially amusing because the same thing shows up in Samurai Champloo, and I saw it just the other night.

Went to Kinokuniya - a huge, huge bookstore. Spent a good deal of time in the foreign books section, almost got a Steven King book, but couldn't justify the $10 pricetag for something that I can get back home for $7. I figure that for now, I can still rely on my iPod to keep me entertained. Ended up going back later and grabbing the first book of Spiral. I think I'm going to be very confused by it, but the main character is a cutie, so it's all good. Manga can be cheap, but it can also be pricey. I hate how all the interesting-looking books are the expensive ones. ._. Oh, has anyone read My Father's Dragon? I loved those books as a kid - here's the Japanese rendition.

Wandered into Yoyogi a bit, but couldn't find the park. Instead, I found a guy and his laptop. I had to wonder if he was getting wireless reception there...

Spent an hour in a manga/internet cafe while waiting to wait the MIT folks. So much cheaper than the Kokubunji cafe, and the chairs are more comfortable! Plus, drinks are unlimited.

Waited for people in the designated meeting spot, but disappeared for 20 minutes or so to get the manga, since we were meeting right by Kinokuniya. Showed up, and no one was around. I feel like I went to the wrong spot. Tried calling Miles, since he was in charge, but I could only reach his voicemail. Sent him an email and left a message, but never got a reply. Eventually got tired of waiting, and went to a ramen restaurant in a nearby department store. Had a very lovely, but lonesome dinner. Considered dessert, decided against it.

I used the funniest bathroom ever in the department store. As soon as you sit down on the toilet, this machine starts playing gushing water noises... I guess to hide any embarrassing sounds of your own. Flushing is cool though - you put your palm up to an infrared reader, and it flushes. Soap and water at the sink use infrared - more reliable that in the States too. The dryer was scary. You stick your hands in this box, and some really strong air blows onto them and that supposedly gets most of the water off. Actually, it worked pretty well.

Went to the ONE arcade in Shinjuku that has a DDR machine. Watched a guy doing crazy doubles on Heavy, wandered a bit and watched a guy playing one of those weird card/video games, then went back and tried the DDR machine out for myself. I haven't played in several weeks, and I am fully aware that I suck at playing on an arcade machine, but I thought that I ought to be able to pass A. I tried it, after barely passing Air (which should have indicated that I need to play some easier songs to get used to the arcade machine), but I failed miserably! Then I turned to leave, and saw this huge queue of guys waiting for the machine, all staring at me. Soooooooo embarrassing! I felt like such a moron. No more going to the arcade on a Saturday night, when it is all crowded. Where did they all come from anyway? >_<

Spent the train ride back typing an email to Sarah on my cell phone. Typing via cell phone sucks, but at least it kept me entertained for the whole train ride back. Accidentally went through the wrong gate at Kokubunji station, and had the exit gates attack me. I fled out the south exit in shame, and then spent fifteen minutes walking around the station instead of turning around and passing through the station to go back out the north exit like any sane person would.

It is far too easy to spend money in Japan. Usually, I cook myself dinner so I can splurge on weekends. Current exchange is about 104 yen to the dollar, so you can approximate prices by dividing any Japanese price by 100. Today's expenses:

Train fare to Shinjuku: 380 yen
One hour in the internet cafe: 380 yen
Manga: 390 yen
Dinner: 680 yen
One round of DDR: 100 yen
Train fare to Kokubunji: 380 yen
Bottle of water for the walk back: 100 yen
Total: 2410 yen

In the end, transportation is expensive. Groceries are expensive too - I think I spent about 3000 yen on groceries this week. My goal was originally to get by on $10 per day, which was a stupid goal, considering that lunch alone always costs me about 500 yen, and if I go anywhere, that takes at least 600 yen. The goal has since been revised. <_< I think I still have enough cash on me to last me 'til I get paid at the end of the month. Hooray for getting paid in cash. Japan revolves around cash.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Vincent de Moor - Flowtation 2002 (From my 105-yen Cyber Trance 4 CD ^_^)
Current mood: Still feeling stupid

Post-Shibuya Post

Ufuu... Up late! I hung out with Gabe and Cathie in Shibuya tonight. Good times, although we didn't do much besides walk around and eat. We tried okonomiyaki, a sort of Japanese pizza, and it was good, even though we were clueless and didn't know how to make it, and had to have the waitress help us.

We also went to a music store, and I found some cheap, used 100-yen CDs - a trance compilation and the Scatman CD. Oh, I laughed over that one, but it was so cheap, I couldn't resist. I've loaded the music onto my iPod, so I will listen to it tomorrow while I ride the train. The next time I go into a store with used CDs, I'm going to pick up some random J-pop. Should be fun.

It was so good to hang out with English-speaking people again. Not that the people at Hitachi are bad at English, but I have to talk a lot slower around them. It was also cool to hear about other peoples' experiences. I am reminded again how fortunate and unusual I am to be living across the street from my workplace. Cathie has internet in her room, though. I am jealous. ;~;

I left Shibuya around 11:30pm, because the trains stop running midnightish (actually, it's closer to 1, but that's what I thought at the time). Unfortunately, everyone had the same idea, so I got a real taste of humans-as-sardines on the ride back. Every time we'd stop and I'd start to be able to breathe again, more people would get on the train, and I'd be squashed back into my corner. Fortunately, I got a seat halfway through, but then I just felt guilty because I was in one of those priority seats that you're supposed to give up for old people and stuff, and I was all... young and stuff. Yeah. Oh well, no one beat me for sitting there or anything.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Ian Van Dahl - Will I? (From my 105-yen Cyber Trance 4 CD ^_^)
Current mood: Tired

Adventures in Cooking

Today, I decided to try making Japanese curry rice. My mom has made it on occasion, and it's very popular over here. I was inspired when I was doing my grocery shopping yesterday and discovered that they sell precooked rice. Until then, I had been despairing of ever seeing rice this summer, on account of having no rice-cooker. So I bought myself some rice, curry roux and potatoes from the 100-yen shop (100-yen shops are the best - so much better than your standard American dollar store). Today, I went to the supermarket to get the rest of the vegetables, and realized that they sell cute 'curry packs' of your common curry vegetables - one carrot, one onion, and two little potatoes. I passed on it though, since I already had the potatoes. I also bought some meat that I hoped was beef, since I couldn't really read the kanji on the label. I could make out the word 'curry', so I assumed it was meat meant for curry, and that must mean that it was good. Heh.

It is very easy to make curry. First, you cut up the vegetables, put them in a pot, add water, and boil them until they become soft. You can also brown the meat on the side. At this point, I discovered that the 'beef' was actually pork. Whoops. After the vegetables are done, add the meat to the pot, and then add the curry roux. Melt the roux, and then you're done! Served with rice, it makes for a very tasty and filling meal. Plus, I ended up with enough leftovers to last me several more meals. And I still have enough ingredients left over to make another batch sometime. At long last, I've added another meal to my cooking repertoire, which up until this point has consisted of... uh... mapo tofu, pancakes, scrambled or fried eggs, paella, and ramen. <_< Maybe I should teach myself something else next week.

I got my cell phone today! Spent a good deal of time getting it up and running, and fooling around with it. It can do email, but sadly no web browsing. I called home, but the reception was so bad that I couldn't stand to talk for more than a few minutes. Plus, for some reason, the stupid thing would repeat my voice every time I talked, so I couldn't hear my mom on the other line sometimes. There was all this noise on the line... Oh, I was so disappointed. I expect to pick up a phone, and just have it work. At least it gives me a way to send email over the weekend.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: mv - Final Fantasy VII - A Foray into the Eastern Horizons (yet another excellent OC Remix)
Current mood: Satisfied

Recapitulation

I've been too busy to get out to the internet cafe for a few days. I spent an evening playing with my new cell phone, as well as a few days coloring a picture that I wanted to have done for tonight, but didn't... -_-

I uploaded some pictures that I took on Sunday. I got a late start because I had been up half the night with a coughing fit (but I'm getting better, at long last!) and slept in really late. I didn't do much but wander around Kokubunji. I also visited my first 100-yen store. Man, those places are awesome. It's mostly a grocery store, but also has various mundane objects, and everything costs 100-yen. That's about a dollar. But this is so much better than a US dollar store. I can do a good deal of shopping for a very reasonable price. Still need to look elsewhere for vegetables and meat though.

Quick note on the pictures - the first one is a picture of the Hitachi campus (the gate's closed because it's Sunday). Most of the following pictures are random neighborhood pictures, and pictures of trains (because I think the trains are cool). And then, near the end, I found a little graveyard and shrine. The last picture is uh, the latest exercise machine for kids. BTW, I never knew there were such things as black ladybugs.

Myuh. I better go - it's getting late, and I have work tomorrow. Weekend plans include possibly wandering in Shibuya with Gabe, as well as a Tokyo-area intern meetup on Saturday in Shinjuku. Should be fun. I wonder if DDR will be involved. :P

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Tonight I'm being treated to a stream of classical piano and accordian music
EDIT: OMAG, they just started playing 'Walking in the Air' from The Snowman. Nostalgia, nostalgia. Now, if only it were the original instead of some weird laid-back orchestral version...
Current mood: Tired

Stupidity is my Forte

I wash the dishes after dinner, berating myself once more for forgetting to buy dish soap. After, I stand there drying the dishes and thinking it strange that I was provided with a dish towel, but no dish soap. It is then than I drop the towel on the ground, and it falls open, showing me the unpristine interior. I mentally curse.

I've spent the past week drying my dishes with the dust rag. No wonder my teacup keeps getting bits of dust in it.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Heglar - Deep Sky
Current mood: Disturbed

Internet (Cafe) Access

I've finally gotten my laptop back onto the internet! I found a little internet/manga cafe nearby Kokubunji station. I went inside after staring at a sign outside that seemed to indicate that I could bring my own laptop inside and have it work. The deal is that you buy a drink, and they bring it to you along with a time printout (and an ashtray). You pay for the first hour and then additional 30-minute blocks, and there are racks and racks of manga, as well as ethernet connections. Sweetness! I'm still wondering if the drink is included in the bill - guess I'll find out when I leave. I uploaded lots of pictures to my webspace. I really need some sort of photo organizer account so I can explain them all... Oh well, for now, this will have to suffice.

As you can see, I went to Shinjuku today! The photos start with some shots around the dorm where I live, and then move on to photos of Shinjuku's skyscrapers. I went to a tall governmental building (I forgot the name already - I'll have to look it up) and took an elevator up to the 45th floor, which is where the next batch of pictures come from. I also saw some interesting souveniers.

I then visited the nearby park and wandered for a bit, before heading back to the busier center around the train station. I wandered for a while in the maze of streets, never really worried about getting lost as it's very easy to orient oneself by the skyscrapers. Plus, all roads lead to the train station. X3

I went into some arcades! Pachinko parlors are stupid, but the arcades are cool! Because space is limited, all arcades are several floors tall, and have different things on different floors. Purikura (I think they're called) are extremely popular - those are those little photo-booths where highschool girls go in droves. Interestingly enough, guys aren't allowed on the purikura floor by themselves (maybe not so in all arcades, but that was the case in this particular one).

There are all sorts of iiiiinteresting games in the arcades. The fancy shooter games are gorgeous, with huge screens and guns. The gambling games are very numerous and very popular. You know those games where you put a token in, and if you're lucky, it will push the other tokens around to make some fall out of the machine? Those aren't popular at all back in the States, but they're all the rage here. Fighting games are set up interestingly - instead of playing side-by-side, the other person sits on the other side of the machine with their own screen, so you can't see who you're playing against. Here's another odd one - horse racing games. You sit there and... bet. Or something. I didn't really get it. There were also classic games, which Sarah would appreciate. UFO catcher-type games are also hugely popular, as are bemani-type games. I had a heck of a time finding a DDR machine - DDR is not nearly as popular as Drummania, or Guitar Freaks, or Beatmania. I got to play a round of Pop'n Music. I'm sure I traumatized the guy who was waiting behind me, I sucked so much. >_< Next time I'm going to play Taiko no Tatsujin - it looks hilarious! Trust the Japanese to come up with a taiko-drumming game.

Anyway, I'm out of time for the evening, so I'm gonna go. Have a look at the rest of the pictures! :3

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Some weird oldies playing in the background
Current mood: Annoyed (at still being sick)

I HAVE PICTURES!!!

Lots of things happened today. I had a health check, which was fine, albeit sketchy. I also got a huge stack of papers to read (on top of the ones that I got yesterday -_-). I also spent many hours loading an English version of Windows XP onto one of my workstations. I will be using three (THREE?!) computers this summer. One is Windows XP Japanese, and is for 'office work' (read: email), one is Windows XP English, and is for software development, and the third is Linux to be used for goodness knows what. There's not much room on my desk because of all the hardware, although there is a neat switcher box that lets the monitor switch between two of the computers.

Tonight was a sort of Ladies' Night Out - Seto-san, Yamamoto-san, and I went out to dinner at the same restaurant that I went on my first night here. Seto-san has a five-year-old son, so she usually has to go home early to take care of him, but today was special because her husband would come home to take care of him, so she could stay late for dinner. So she requested to go to the place that we went the other night, because Yamamoto-san recommended it. During lunch, plans for the evening were discussed, and Seto-san jokingly invited Yui-san along with the stipulation that he would have to cross-dress in order to join us. Yui-san, of course, declined.

We enjoyed a delicious dinner. I think I'm acquiring a taste for raw fish, if only because I can stomach fish better than conch or sea urchin, or other oddities that induce a gag reflex. ;~; Ugh, conch is awful... Katasugimaaaaaasu! At the end of dinner we got 'pineapple saabisu' - dessert on the house. Presumably because I was a cute foreigner or something. ^^; It was delicious, but what can I say? Girls like fruit. And fresh pineapple is one of my favorites.

After dinner, we went to a video rental store because Seto-san and Yamamoto-san were worried that I would be bored without anything to watch (they have no idea how much unwatched anime I have on this computer), and we spent a pleasant while wandering through the anime section. Unfortunately, there are very few DVDs, and many of the VHS tapes are very very old (they had Heidi, and the Dog of Flanders, and other similarly old series. We did find the DVDs eventually, but most were Miyazaki films that I've already seen, and the others were things like Pokemon and Godzilla films from the 60s. In the end, I settled on a few DVDs, but none of us could check them out because neither Seto-san nor Yamamoto-san had proofs of address on them, and I don't have my Alien registration card yet. Yamamoto-san says that she will rent the DVDs later and leave them in my mailbox for me. So kind of her! o~o

I was planning on getting a cell phone with a camera to make up for my lack of a digital camera, and Bitoh-san and I spent much time walking around Kokubunji station yesterday looking for a store that sold the model I wanted. The model I am interested in is a prepaid cellphone, and is sold only in convenience stores (something to do with the increase in theft and misuse of prepaid cell phones and phone companies not wanting to take responsibility o_O;), so you'd think it would be convenient, but it was not! We could not find the correct phone anywhere. Eventually, we had to give up.

Today, Bitoh-san brought in an old digital camera that he does not use anymore, and offered it to me. The battery cover is broken, so the battery is held in place with tape, and the rechargeable battery was also lost, so it has a normal nonrechargeable battery in it right now. The camera's resolution is only 1 megapixel, but that's 1 megapixel more than what I had before, so I'll run with it. ^_^ Hopefully this will encourage me to be good and take lots of pictures. The pictures are stored on a compact flash card, so I also borrowed an adapter card from Hitachi. This means I should go and buy a rechargeable battery, an adapter card, and a cheaper cell phone without a camera. Oh, and some sort of nice thank-you present for Bitoh-san. ^_^;

I took a couple pictures already and you can find them here. Just my room, for starters, since it's the middle of the night and I can't see anything outside. Plus, I decided to be all multimedia-happy and bring my tablet into the pictures... Well, you can see for yourself. I wish I could take pictures of the Hitachi campus, because it is really beautiful, but doing so is forbidden. ;~; At least there are plenty of other parts of Japan that I can photograph.

All right! Time for some sleep so I can go sightseeing tomorrow. My first point of interest is Shinjuku, one of the major metropolitan centers of Tokyo. It is well-known for its skyscrapers and department stores. Should be exciting - I'll be sure to take pictures!

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Zeratul - Chrono Trigger - Blue Minded God (Yet another excellent track that you can find at OC Remix)
Current mood: Exuberant

Tea Time

Apparently 3:00 is time for the office's women to have coffee and sweets. Yamamoto-san, Seto-san, and I gather in the back of the room and discuss the various sweets and omiyage that are sitting on the shelves over cups of coffee (or in my case, tea). I try Pretz with seaweed powder (quite good, and the sticks are much bigger than the tomato Pretz we get in the states) and we make plans to go out for dinner tomorrow night.

Panpon practice was cancelled because of the rain, so I will not get to observe today. Panpon is like a larger version of pingpong. I'm thinking that it's similar to pickleball, although I never played that in PE so I wouldn't know for sure. Yui-san is on the team, and practice is on for the big tournament in two weeks. But Hitachi appears to be the only company in Japan that plays Panpon, so I don't know who they are playing against. Each other, I suppose.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: None
Current mood: Neutral

Hello, from Tokyo!

Hi there everyone, I'm writing this from my workplace in Tokyo. I have several entries that I've written between the end of school and now, but they are all on my laptop and I haven't found a wireless hotspot yet. So please wait for those. ^^

Japan right now is quite warm. It's the start of the rainy season, so it was pouring when I first came here. Hasn't rained since, although today is quite cloudy. This place is really funny because every place has an umbrella stand, and people leave their umbrellas in the umbrella stands when they enter a shop, a restaurant, the workplace, etc. Clear umbrellas are really popular here because one can ride a bike and hold an umbrella and still see through it. I want one so I can doodle on the inside... I think it'd be cool.

Tokyo is huge and sprawling, but everything is small. The houses, the shops, the people. I'm average height back home, but I feel pretty tall here. The power lines dominate everything. They are everywhere, and the poles they are on can be huge. Old is mixed with new - the houses near my modern dorm have sliding doors and there's a little temple nearby. Lots of vegetable gardens with vegetable stands set up at the entrance. Flowers. Lots of flowers. Lots of strange flowers that I've never seen before, as well as plenty of beautiful roses.

The crows here are very large. And they sound completely different from American crows. I saw some pigeons on a roof the other day, and they too looked huge, but I think it just might be that the roof was small. Dogs are quite popular here, especially small ones. I passed by a woman walking a chihuahua yesterday. I found a pet store while walking around the other day, and they were selling a huge duck. Chickens and parakeets too. Go figure.

Work is keeping me busy. As in, I'm here all day. But I haven't done too much yet. Met some people, did some email... I have a lot of papers to read though, so I should go do that. Woot. I hope I'm going to be okay here - my supervisor has high expectations of me, and I don't feel particularly intelligent at the moment. The jetlag and the fact that I'm sick do not help.

Apologies if the text comes out weird. The international keyboard that I'm using is... special.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: None
Current mood: Tired

A Leisurely Start

Today was my first day of work, and of course I had to wake up with a cold. It's my yearly pollen-induced early-summer sickness. Somehow happens every year. Annoys me to death. Thank goodness for the packet of tissues that I picked up from a streetside hawker yesterday. Too bad I have to go in for a health check on Friday. I hope that goes all right, because I doubt I'll be better by then. I wish I had brought some vitamin C along with me... I guess I'll make do with orange juice.

Not much happened today. I toured the campus (very pretty with lots of old trees, a pond, a couple of swans, and lots of koi), got new stationery (about 10,000 more pens than I know what to do with), registered for an alien registration card (required if I'm staying in Japan for more than 90 days - I'm here for 94), and got to check email (at last, thank goodness!!!). The real stuff starts tomorrow. Hopefully.

Today during lunch, I met Seto-san and Yui-san, as well as various other office-mates whose names I do not yet know. Setto-san is the only other woman in the room that I'm working in, and after lunch (where everyone praised my Japanese and chopsticks abilities) I went for a walk with her and Yamamoto-san. I got to see the pond once more, both of the swans, and the everpresent koi. A few sports teams were out practicing - "soft tennis" and "catchball". The former is like pickleball, or a larger form of ping pong, and appears to be done only at Hitachi. The latter is pretty much just the catching and pitching part of baseball. I wonder if they have competitions... After work was over, Yamamoto-san took me around to the various supermarkets in the vicinity of the train station, pointing out the good cafes along the way. I wonder if I will ever find any of them again - it's all too easy to lose oneself in the maze of streets.

Jet lag has finally caught up with me. I slept well the first night because I was exhausted, but last night I couldn't sleep at all. Right now, it's all I can do to keep myself awake. This evening I experienced my first earthquake. Everything started shaking - not very much, but enough to make me nervous. I've heard that earthquakes are weekly events around here. Should be, ehm, exciting.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: NoppZ - Asterix & Obelix - 3 Ways (get your own copy at OC Remix)
Current mood: Sick and sleepy

First Impressions

Going through customs and money exchanging must have taken a couple of years off my life. The immigration officials took me aside so they could fiddle around with my precious Certificate of Elegibility, which had taken so much trouble and effort to get, only to take it away and add a 'permission to land' paper to my passport. Then, I thought I lost my passport at the currency exchange counter, but it was really tucked into a corner of my purse. *rollseyes* My first Japanese exchange was with the train ticket seller - I bought a ticket to Tokyo station, from which I would switch to another line that went to Kokubunji, which is where the Hitachi Central Research Laboratory is located. After that, I bought a phone card and after many failed attempts, managed to contact Yamazaki-san at HCRL to let her know that I had arrived safely in Japan. After that, all I had to do was hop on board my train and hightail it out of the airport.

My first thoughts of Japan as I looked out the train window were that there were an amazing amount of powerlines everywhere, and wonder at the rice-paddies lining the areas by the train tracks. The landscape is very different from New Hampshire - parts are very flat, and the hilly areas that the train drives through are covered with green green grass, instead of bare granite. The outlying urban areas reminded me of the small cities back home, except that the houses (those that weren't western-style brick constructions, that is) had very Asian roofs with the distinctive tiling and curving edges. Then we got into more urban areas, and high-rise buildings started taking over the scenery. I think my mother will be quite surprised when she comes to visit. She hasn't been here in nearly thirty years, and I'm sure lots of things are different now.

As soon as I got off the train at Tokyo station, I caught sight of a guy wearing one of those university-style zip-up hoodies that usually has a school name written across the front, except his proclaimed "COLLEGE". I was amused - I'm looking forward to seeing some amusing Engrish here.

After getting a bit lost and confused, I got on the right train and made it out to Kokubunji. It's quite long - about a 45 minute ride. We passed by Tokyo Dome, which was all lit up. That's where Japan's baseball games are played. I felt terrible taking up so much space with my luggage during rush hour, but at least I don't have to worry about it again until I go back at the end of this summer. It was pouring buckets, so I took a taxi to HCRL instead of having people meet me at the station. HCRL is only two-minute taxi ride (a five-minute walk, perhaps) from the station though - it's really close. Good thing, because taxis are really expensive.

Anyway, I met Yamazaki-san, who has been so much help in getting all of the paperwork settled, and then I was handed off to Bitoh-san, who took me up to the office where I'd be working. I met a few of my future coworkers there (even though it was 8pm, there were three or four people still there), and then Yamamoto-san showed up (she lives in the same dorm as me, and worked in the same group with Bitoh-san until April, when she was transferred to another division) and we went to the dorm. Yamamoto-san and the housekeeper then gave me a whirlwind tour of my room, showing me how to use the combination sink/shower, how to assemble and disassemble the bed, and the many uses of the oven/toaster/microwave contraption in the kitchen. They were amazed that most American stoves use electricity to work - I guess most of Japan relies on gas stoves. After that, Bitoh-san and Yamamoto-san took me out to dinner at a nearby restaurant, which was very delicious, and after that, Yamamoto-san introduced me to a nearby convenience store, where I bought bread and juice for the next day's breakfast. Japan has many varieties of bread and they come individually wrapped. It's really quite interesting. The one that I bought was a ham and cheese in a croissant-ish type bread, and it looks quite interesting. After that, I returned to the dorm to unpack and settle down for the evening. Whew! Safe and settled! And I'm glad to see that my laptop appears to be working fine on Japan's weird 100V electrical power.

Everyone's English is so good - I feel bad for having such poor Japanese language skills.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: None
Current mood: Excited

In the Air, Halfway There

I'm halfway through my flight to Japan. I tried sleeping, but I only managed an hour-long nap. I'm going to be really tired later on today, but I've handled all-nighters so I'll live. I'm just far too antsy to sleep right now.

Flying to Japan is quite the paradox. I'm going to be in this plane for twelve hours straight, and it's never going to get dark. I keep wondering what flying back to the States will entail, but I'm not willing to seriously consider the matter right now - that's a question for me to figure out in three months' time. Halfway there, and we're still over snow-covered mountains. At this point, I think it must be Alaska. Funny that we're halfway there, and we haven't even left North America yet. That's the polar route for you.

I was really impressed when I arrived in Detroit for my connection. The Northwest Airlines terminal is huge and really nice and even has a little tram running from one end of the terminal to the other, elevated far above the passerby. Indoors. Funny thing to watch. I found my gate easily enough, and was duly impressed with the sight of the 747 that I'd be flying in - I haven't been in one (or even seen) of those babies since I flew to Germany in the summer after I graduated high school. Fond memories welled up of that 8-hour flight and the little TV screens in the back of each seat that showed great pictures, even though the screens were so small.

I get onto the plane an hour before takeoff - I'm in the far back of the plane, row 63K. My row is interesting because it consists of only two seats, and the row in front of me has three. Sweet - I get a place to stow my backpack and a empty space for legroom. Clearly, I have the best seat on the plane. Then I look up and notice that this plane is not nearly as up-to-date as the one that I took to Germany. I can see a single TV projection screen, many many rows away. As I frown upon this, a tall guy sits down directly in my line of sight. Okay. Movies are now out of the question. Not that the plane is showing anything of interest anyway. Spanglish is not high on my priority list of movies to see. I pick up the airplane magazine, only to be taunted by options that apply to first class or more modern planes. I want outlet power for my laptop, dammit! I figure it's going to be a long and boring flight.

In all actuality, I have brought far more things than I can possibly do in one flight. I spent a good deal of time reviewing old Japanese flashcards, reading my Japan guidebook, and cursing myself for leaving all my useful 'survival in Japan' handouts at home. I start to wonder what the hell I'm doing - am I really going to be all right, all by myself in Tokyo, trying to commute out to Hitachi with a huge suitcase in the middle of evening rush hour traffic. Guess I'll find out soon enough. For now, I can take comfort in the fact that I packed three months' worth of clothes and various sundries into only one suitcase - we were all convinced that I'd need two.

Way early in the flight, this flight attendant walked around, handing out these forms that some people had to fill out. Unfortunately, she was speaking in Japanese when she walked by, so I couldn't tell what they were for. No one seemed to be taking them though, so I didn't jump up to grab one. Now, I'm wondering if they were for people staying in Japan, since everyone around me appears to be flying on to other places - Singapore for the guy sitting next to me, and Thailand for the three girls in front of me. What's going on? I feel terribly clueless. I also feel like I forgot all of my Japanese in the past couple weeks since school ended. This nagging feeling of worry has been growing on me since the plane took off - I think it has only just struck me that I'm actually doing it. I'm actually going to Japan. And I'm going to be there for three whole months. Wow. Deep breath, Flykyr.

Life is an adventure.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Young Parisians feat. Ben Lost - Jump the Next Train (Kyau vs. Albert Remix)
Current mood: Worried

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

I'm so spoiled. I got back from St. Martin today, and I'm missing the sun and 85-degree water already. The diving there was pretty good, and the food was fantastic. My dad and I stayed at Anse Marcel, which must be the nicest part of the island. I guess it wouldn't appeal to the average American, but I really appreciated our time-share. It was huge compared to the timeshare we stayed in at Tortola last year, and there was plentiful air-conditioning. The local cats were friendly (too friendly actually - one would try to follow us inside and the other would sit outside and miaow endlessly at us) and the place felt really isolated. It was quiet. Perhaps one of the quietest places I'd ever been to. The beach and the marina were only a five-minute walk away, so it was really easy to go diving or take a swim.

Highlights of diving include a wreck-dive of a year-old wreck. Big old boat called the Porpoise, with all sorts of nifty swim-throughs. Also, one of the dives featured a sandy area with conchs, conch-sized hermit crabs, and sting rays as long as I am tall. Pretty nifty. No octopi though. ;~;

I've tried all sorts of wonderful French desserts - pistacio creme brulee, grapefruit mousse, grand marnier souflee, quince. The French food there is reputed to be the best in the Caribbean. It's just a shame that it's so expensive.

Today was kind of exciting albeit time-consuming. I drove down to Boston on my own for the first time to pick up a supplement check for Japan and somehow managed to avoid the stop-and-go traffic that Memorial Day weekend had created. It was a smooth ride either way, although it did take me more than 20 minutes to get out of Cambridge itself. I'm a bit afraid to start packing from Japan - there's no way that everything's going to fit into my one suitcase. Even though it's the largest one we could find, it seems awfully small for a three month excursion. Well, we'll see.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Midori no Hibi ED - Mousukoshi, Mousukoshi
Current mood: Content

Over and Out

Well, finals are over, I moved out, and now I'm back home. I got a haircut, and have to pack my suitcase for St. Martin. A near-week of diving, and then Japan! I got my visa, thank goodness. So far, so good, although I still have work to do on the omiyage front (gifts for people in Japan). I'm ready for some hardcore relaxin'! :D Diving should be great - I'm looking forward to it.

I sort of figured out how to draw with my tablet, but it still needs practice. I've been pretty active on my FAC account - there's a link in my sidebar. You should check it out!

Wow, there's so much I could say, and yet I don't feel like saying any of it. So, I'll just smile in your general direction and wave good-bye. Don't worry, I'll eventually be back. Eventually. *break time*

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: Talla 2XLC feat. Ely - The Air That I Breathe (Grey And Frost Short)
Current mood: Happy

Empty Mind

People confuse and concern me. I am hoping that summer lets us all take a breath and get back to normal. Whatever normal might be.

I did last minute clothes shopping today - finished fairly early, so I went home and got to see the new hamster, Pico. He's so adorable! Even if he's terrified of everyone. I hung out for a while, then we went to dinner, and I got brought back to MIT, to face the mess that is my room, and the disaster that is finals. Bleh. At least my room's a little cleaner now, where by clean, I mean that my artwork has been organized at long last. I've been meaning to do that for ages, but I just keep sticking drawings in various corners of my room. I found several interesting pictures that I never finished, or never scanned.

I downloaded various DDR adaptations of Pop'n Music songs, and was extremely fortunate to find a copy of Yuli's song Late Riser. It's a really cool song - I like it a lot. But the song is too darn hard for me! More on Yuli later... *points at the next paragraph* ^_^

Yes, I know I still haven't done an Anime Boston writeup, but I'm way too tired to work on that right now. Sleep now. More blogging later.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: O-Zone - Dragostea din tei (DJ Ross Radio remix) - I can't help loving this song to death! XD
Current mood: Sleepy

Star Gazing

As luck would have it, today's set of books includes several star charts and mythology on the constellations' origins. Oh, so much time spent poring over those. I wonder how different the stars will be in Japan...

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: DJ Taucher - Child of the Universe
Current mood: Annoyed

Sick Sick Sick

Looks like I'm running a fever. No wonder I feel like I'm about to die.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: None
Current mood: Death death death

CityScapes

As you should have gathered from my last blog entry, I went to NYC with Sarah and Vikki last weekend. I had a good time - the weather was fantastic and we got to do a lot of things. Let's see... In no particular order, we went to Central Park (gorgeous... simply gorgeous), the American Museum of Natural History (hadn't been in years - it was great!), the Serendipity cafe (If you've ever seen the movie... Their desserts are really good, but the service is highly questionable - any place where you have to flirt with the waiters just to get a table clearly has something wrong with it...), the UN building, the Strand (a very cool bookstore in Union Square), Chinatown (the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory is a new favorite of mine), Times Square (but no shows, sadly), Grand Central (there was a lady towing along her little dog that didn't want to walk), a Korean restaurant (Thai is better, I think), Pret a Manger (a British chain of sandwich shops that has expanded into the US - their sandwiches are fantastic, and it's a shame that Sarah and Vikki had the unfortunate experience of... going to the wrong place! o_o), and Kinokuniya (more manga for me, what did you expect?). We also discovered an art piece called the UberOrgan, basically a giant organ made out of all sorts of random plastic sheets and tubing, which looked a lot cooler than it sounded. The Chinatown bus was more expensive than last year, and it took just as long to get in and out of New York as it did last year... But at least this time around, I had my iPod and it did a good job of keeping me occupied.

This all reminds me that I still owe Sarah's sister a thank-you card, 'cause we stayed at her apartment. Guess I better figure out where I stash all those random cards that I never use.

Anime Boston is next weekend... Already, argh! My wings are still incomplete, but they're getting there... Slowly. I need to get it done soon, so I can start playing around with feathers and ribbon. o_o; I started growing out my nails, and they are making it hard for me to type, so I'm probably going to give up on that, and find some fake ones. Long nails suck - I don't understand how my sisters can stand it, what with all the computer chatting and piano playing that they do.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: onoken - BRIGHTONE (try googling for this one - it starts out jazzy and ends up trance-y... it's really cool!)
Current mood: Sick and tired of reading! Darned Japanese Politics class.