departure!

tiny plane to narita! it kind of smells like poo outside.

kikoku

I'm going to be in Sweet, Sweet America in less than 24 hours, and then Sweet, Sweet Tahoe in less than 48. It'll be my first time back to the states in almost 1.5 years. Now that I'm typing it, it really doesn't seem like such a long time, but it really felt like an eternity. I think I'm finally accustomed enough to the Japanese way of life that I may actually get the elusive "reverse culture shock" when I go home. Most likely, the hardest things will be:

1. Not mixing Japanese into my English sentences. Sometimes it's just so convenient! Nihongo-mazeta-Eigo is such a unique JET-ism...I just realized that, linguistically, it would pretty interesting to study which words people tend to adopt to replace English and why.

2. Not getting annoyed by excessive comprehension -- I'll suddenly be able to understand what everyone around me is saying, from annoying high school girls to annoying people talking loudly on cell phones in quiet places. I already get really irked in places bustling with English-speaking tourists, so we'll see how that goes.

Small worries aside, I am SO EXCITED to be going home. In fact, I'm just writing this blog entry to kill time before I can hop on a plane (several trains and two planes) and blow this popsicle stand.

The real issue is...how I going to fit my monster luggage(s) through the subway turnstile...?

reasons Saturday rocked

1. Starting the day with Japanese toddlers amped up on Christmas cookies.

Japanese elementary school kids and kindergarteners are already notoriously cute, so preschoolers are pretty much unbearable. My friend was enlisted by a preschool downtown to play a real, foreign Santa for the kids, while me and another disappointingly Asian girl acted as his jolly helpers. After watching a show put on by all the toddlers (with a little help from the talented staff), we went from class to class handing out presents.

Some of the kids were definitely young enough to believe that my friend was Santa, just flown in from the North Pole, so it was pretty wonderful.

2. Parting gifts.

The preschool staff sent us on our way with a huge pile of gifts and snacks and a yummy lunch bento.

3. Coffee, on Santa.

My friend Santa treated me to coffee and dessert, so now you know -- that is exactly how nice I've been this year! Catching up with Santa and having some stimulating conversation was also nice.

4. Finishing Let's Go Jungle.

I met up with Greg, and then with our powers combined, we defeated this brilliant arcade game that I've been dying to beat for ages. It gives you compatibility statistics afterward, and uh, I can say that at least we passed the 50% mark. That aside, I placed 12th in the game records with my score!

5. Winning ホワイトさん

I had been eyeing this machine prize for a week. Tried to win it once and failed, but this time victory was mine for only 300 yen!! Now I have a matched set of capybaras taking up precious real estate in my room -- they are dubbed Nibbles and Wiggles. Nibbles (the brown) is quite a bit bigger (and lacks the little Xmas hat), but it's okay because he likes his ladies petite.

From here on, I am determined to become a prize machine master.

6. Free dessert

We went to a chic little yuba/tofu restaurant for dinner. They always have issues trying to understand our order, and this time, par the course, we got something slightly different from what we had expected. It was still good, though, and they brought us a free dessert at the end. It also didn't hurt that they had Kiki's Delivery Service playing on a huge LCD screen above us.

7. Slumber

There is nothing like the deep, delicious sleep you have after a long and exciting day...and the best part was not having to squeeze in a blog post first!

Think of the environment, will you?

This is brilliant:

Conservation Group Condemns Waterboarding As Wasteful

December 4, 2007 | Issue 43•49

WASHINGTON—National Water Watch, a Washington-based conservation group, criticized the government's use of waterboarding Monday, calling the practice of stuffing a cloth into a detainee's mouth, immobilizing him, and pouring water over his face and body to simulate the sensation of drowning "a tragic waste of resources." "The idea that the United States could condone the despicable act of squandering several pitchers of water is shameful," NWW spokesman Gregory Hammil said. "It is amoral, unconscionable, and in direct opposition to all internationally recognized water- saving techniques." Hammil recommended the government switch to more eco-friendly means of enhanced interrogation, such as waterboarding with a return-hose device in order to reuse old water, or simply beating suspected terrorists to a bloody pulp.

Yeahhh, that's from The Onion. But isn't it scary-close to believable?

boogie!!

Oh my god, this video was posted on Music for Robots today, and it makes me so happy in a way that "Soul Train" and it's voyeuristic doppelganger "The Grind" never could.

It's sassy couples grooving something awesome without the usual lewdness we're so used to now, and it's all set to the pinnacle of 70's electro-disco.

I want to have a party like this?!

stringy cheese incident?

Yesterday, Greg and I did finished a sprawling NYT Sunday puzzle, in record time (as he said, "Take that, Will Shortz!"), so now I can't help but think in obliquely descriptive phrases that end in question marks.

I had a little fun with parmesan today. Cheese is fairly expensive here, so it's a real crying shame when a pretty chunk grows mold and you have to let it go. To try and keep that from happening to a new hunk of parm, I took half and put it into the freezer. Of the remaining chunk, I halved again, down to two jumbo-egg-sized lumps. After grating these, I made parmesan/basil/garlic/lemon butter out of one, and decided to store the rest.

So, with about half a cup of grated cheese left, the quandary became: how do I store this so it remains freshest, longest? I had a choice between two tupperwares: small and round or bigger and squarish. It filled the small one with about a heaping tablespoon of overflow. It barely came up to half of the larger one. So, with only the knowledge that air exposure for foods = death, I put it in the small container.

What, you might ask, did I do with the leftover? Well, I wanted to just eat it, but that seemed a little too indulgent. So, as I was right next to my stove, I fired up a nonstick skillet and dropped it in the center. It melted down all tantalizingly bubbly, then cooled into a slightly-crisp-slightly-chewy parmesan cracker. So. Good.

(And that, my friends, is why I'll get fat and have a heart attack.)

post-JLPT zombification

It is done! The test went well...at least, better than last year, which is all I really needed. I'm not confident I passed by any means, but I'm quite happy just having the feeling that I've actually gotten better and made progress since one year ago.

Aside from that slight sense of satisfaction, my brain feels quite slow and mushy; i.e., it's been drained of all necessary sugars and is flooded with errant neurotransmitters. It's really been too long since I've felt that -- the electrifying burn of an intense info-in/process/consolidate/info-out session (wow, how much is studying and testing like pooping?). File intensive study under: things I miss about academia.

The test results are distributed in February. Until then, I'll be waiting anxiously, then gradually forgetting about it, and then working myself back up into a frenzy. If I pass, I'll be happy to say that either my sporadic studying improved my Japanese skills, or my voracious consumption of news feeds made my test-taking intuition better. Or both! One way or another, celebratory drinking will be in order.

If I fail, I'll be sad to say that either my infrequent studying did nothing for my Japanese, or my daily barrage of English news feeds usurped any new Japanese trying to enter my brain. As such, consolatory drinking will be in order. Who's with me?

today, christmas shopping. tomorrow, doom.

Tomorrow is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. I'm taking Level 2, the 2nd hardest level, again this year. I know my Japanese has improved in the past year, I just don't think it's improved enough (no one's fault but my own, bah). I expect failure or a verrrry close pass (giri giri, we would say), so one hand will have fingers-crossed while the other fills in bubbles.

I did a little Christmas shopping today, but it was no big deal because there's no Thanksgiving here and therefore there's no concentrated Black Friday madness. Instead, there's just a gradual increase in shopper-density all the way up through Christmas and New Years...and then WHA-BAM!! It's January 2nd, the first shopping day of the new year, and one of the two MAJOR sale periods in Japan has begun. Sales are pretty rare other than the "first sale of the year" (初売り: hatsu-uri) and a big summer-long sale, so people go semi-annually nutso. You should see what you can get in the "lucky mystery bags" (福袋: fuku-bukuro) they offer only at these times...e.g., $300 worth of winter outerwear for $100. Yes, I am a little excited to come back to Japan after vacation and shop at any of the three stores I usually shop at here.

Ooh, I also played an awesome round of the arcade shooter Silent Hill today. I shoot things good. I shoot things dead. I get really fucking AMPED doing it.

Zombie-hunting aside, today is also the last day of NaBloPoMo! It's been a really amazing run. I know the posts haven't always been riveting, but I'm just surprised I could come up with something, anything to say each day. I wanna try to keep this up, but I'll be honest -- it'll be nice to have the pressure off. There were definitely nights where, after realizing I hadn't posted by 11:45 and then panicking, I would ask myself, why do I even CARE? Sometimes it seemed like such a fucking drag, but in the end it felt really good to git'er done. I hope y'all have enjoyed this little blogging streak of mine.

Good luck to the other test-takers; just don't forget that THEY ARE ALWAYS TRYING TO TRICK YOU (the bastards)!