I find it so strange when I know what's going on...

Looking ahead

2011-10-01T22:54:00.000-07:00

Two more semesters left of school. 12 more credits this semester and the next and I will have a masters degree. I feel like time has gone by so fast and there is no way it's going to get any slower anytime soon.

So much to think about these days. I know I need to find a part time (preferably work study) job, but I can't help but be much more concerned with what's coming post-MIIS graduation instead. Where should I look for a job? Can I stay on the West coast? Will I have the luxury of picking where at all? Would I be able to get a job that is enough for me to make my monthly student loan payments?

...and there's also that impulse that kind of wants to look into Halloween costumes. *cringe*

I have been dedicating a lot of time to extra-curriculars hoping to really give my resume a boost. I joined the STOP Anti-Human trafficking club and I am being more active in the Conflict Resolution Association club. I am also on the core team to put together a Conflict Resolution conference for spring semester. I am also considering contacting the Monterey College of Law and see if they still want me to do volunteer small claims mediation at the county court. I'm hoping that doing all of these things will make up for the fact that I've pretty much decided against doing the internship program for my last 12 credits.

In other news, I LOVE my new apartment. I'll admit that it is one of the reasons I decided to stay in the area for this year. I am really close to school, Trader Joe's Walgreens, and the weekly farmer's market, so there is really no urgent need to drive anywhere. I also really like living with my friend Tina and having a place where I can have friends over. Last Wednesday, I hosted a pizza night/study group for some people in one of my classes and on Thursday, Tina and I hosted wine night once again. I wouldn't do any of these things at my old place! I am also making friends with the next door neighbors and there's a cute but kinda creepy cat on my street that always stares at me when I walk by. I am actually kind of disappointed when it's not there.

Times are crazy (but kind of awesome) and I was too distracted while writing this blog to remember what else I was going to say.

Effort

2011-09-10T20:57:00.002-07:00

I realized something recently. This is something that's really irked for a long time and I wasn't always conscious of it- effort is a VERY important thing to me. I get very put off by people who can't be bothered to figure things out, don't try to make a good impression, or try to work towards what they want. Some people can't even bother to use their own brain and common sense!

I have so much difficulty with these people because I am -always- trying. I don't live life half assed. I do things that aren't necessarily in my comfort zone. I put out a lot of effort everyday for the sake of other people. I have days when I am relaxed, but I don't glorify it like laziness is the greatest thing on Earth.

Call it crazy, but I just don't like to be inefficient, unimaginative, unhelpful, unmotivated, and unwilling to try new things!

These are the things you become when you are a person who does not TRY!

Sleep?

2011-06-20T03:31:00.001-07:00

It's almost 3:30 am and sleep just isn't coming. My body keeps overheating although I've already retrieved an ice pack from the freezer and my brain just won't shut up. I haven't brought an ice pack to bed with me since summer in Japan.

Blame it on the somewhat tense situation of the past evening and the ill feeling it put in my stomach, but I just keep thinking about times long gone. I keep thinking about facebook messages I could write to people from the past and then I have to stop and wonder why I would ever want to. These people are out of my life and nothing would come from me spilling my thoughts and experiences to them. No harm, but also no point.

Don't you just hate it when your brain is tired, but still very restless? You find yourself thinking about and getting depressed about events and things that you've already moved on from ages ago. You lose sleep and end up tired all the following day when you're trying to be productive and actually get things done.

I'm fine, I'm just hoping that forcing myself to blog from this tiny cell phone keyboard will be enough to tire my brain out to let me sleep. I am struggling to think of a topic, but just before picking up the phone, my brain had absolutely NO trouble thinking of unimportant things to fuss over. Let's hope it doesn't find inspiration again once I post this.

Here's a question that I think about sometimes- Am I an inflexible perfectionist in all aspects or are other people settling for too little?

It's 3:45... can I sleep yet?

Reactivate Migratory Mode!

2011-05-30T00:02:00.002-07:00

I almost feel like I shouldn't even be blogging right now. It's late and I should get to sleep. But I kind of felt like blogging, so I figured that I shouldn't keep myself from doing so when I actually think I might get around to it.

I am halfway through grad school. Actually, I'm MORE than halfway through grad school. I've completed 36 of the 60 required credits for my program. I can't believe that for my last two semesters, I only have to take 12 credits! That's the bare minimum to be full time and I've never EVER had so few classes before. I'm kind of glad about this because I had a terrible semester health-wise in which I spent the entire time so frustrated with myself that I kept time and time again having to fall short of my own expectations of myself. It's a little too soon to tell, but I am hoping that through that awful experience, I've learned to be more patient with myself. I like setting high goals and standards for myself, but perhaps now I can learn to become more lenient when the circumstances aren't quite in favor.

For my last 12 credits, in the spring semester of 2012, I was accepted into a program in which I will do an internship from February to late July. Actually, I wasn't accepted into this program initially, but I got in after I made an appointment with the coordinator and worked out a misunderstanding.

It's good to be able to fight for what you believe you deserve and a big starting point with that is to know what you deserve.

I think I've come a long way in that regard. I have a much better idea of what I deserve and what I am capable of than I have ever had.

When I was younger, I've always had people telling me that I didn't deserve things that I had accomplished. When I got the role of Becky in the school play, Tom Sawyer, in 5th grade, a classmate approached me and said "I can't believe you got the part of Becky." To that, I replied, "Talk to Ms. Moncrief (the director) about that." When I was the 6th grade basketball team that my dad co-coached, he decided that I deserved the "Most Coachable" award. He told me later that he and the other coach considered the possibility that another kid might say I only got the award because my father was the coach. He told me that I earned it, so it would be wrong for me not to get it, and not to listen. It was a good thing he told me that because some kids actually DID do actually that. On top of that, being a younger sibling tended to leave me feeling smaller, sometimes invisible, and I was often picked on. These kinds of things greatly altered my perception of myself for a long time and it's been a tough thing to overcome.

If I were still like that, I don't know if I would have met with someone to discuss acceptance into a program I was rejected from because I don't think that I would have taken the chance to apply in the first place. Applying for things has been getting much easier and every time it feels a lot less like I am forcing myself onto a limb.

I always talk about my standard for myself and how high they are. I forget to talk about how flexible they can be. When I apply for something, I don't think about how it must be so much easier for others to do so, I think "Wow, I've come a long way to bring myself to be able to do this!"

I don't tell people this at all, but in spite of everything, I can honesty say that I am really proud of myself. Yes, I do sometimes feel very weak in comparison to people who seem to have it all so easy- those super type A people who seem to be able to always do so much and are so great at everything they do. I want so bad to be one of those people, but at the same time I acknowledge the fact that it wasn't an easy task for me to get to where I am now. I'm at a point where I can do what they do with just a bit of aggressive pushing and a little boost of confidence. Who ever saw that coming?

Wow, I wrote so much but I haven't gotten to what my title is about.

I feel like I am returning to this blog of 3 years ago when my mom upgraded her place and then I moved to Japan- resulting in three moves that summer. I am putting most of my stuff in storage here in Monterey and moving back to her place during the summer so that I can save a little rent money and be closer to where my internship is (in the San Jose area). At some point, I am going to arrange a new place here in Monterey and move back for the new semester.

My classes for next semester are promising and I'm excited to think about things I can do for my summer internship. Not to mention I am sure my semester long internship in Spring 2012 will be really great, too. I feel like everything is coming together and making the shape of a specific goal.

When I was younger, the future used to intimidate me, but now it doesn't scare me at all.

I am SO excited about what's to come.

Emo blogging

2011-02-24T18:28:00.002-08:00

I'm attempting to calm myself down now.

Blogging will maybe help.

I'm having a bit of a meltdown- I know a big part in it's intensity has to do with the fact that I am really overtired. I woke up last night at about 2 am from an odd dream and couldn't get my brain to calm down until around 5. Then I had to wake up two hours later to get to school early because the home internet wasn't working and I had to do some reading for my class at 10.

I've had lots of pain lately in my neck and right shoulder. I don't know why exactly, but although it's gotten better, the pain has been randomly choosing to flare up. It's really infuriating because of course I need to read a lot for my classes. It's REALLY hard to keep up with the reading when you can neither look down at the book or comfortably hold it up. I've also had a head cold lately which has made it hard to concentrate- another struggle in my already difficult plight as a grad school student.

I'm taking 16 credits and working about 12 hours a week... I'm usually on-the-go Monday through Thursday from morning until evening. Then after that, I have tons of reading and work to do until about midnight and on Fridays and the weekends. I'm fine with this, actually, I like being busy and I like what I am doing. I am the type of person who kind of thrives when just a bit overextended. However, with these complications with my body slowing me down I begin to feel like the mountain of work is insurmountable and that I am falling short of everyone's expectations of me... and worse- my expectations of myself.

After pushing myself, my fatigue, my bad concentration, and my (for some reason) irritable stomach through four hours of work which followed the class I had this morning, I was driving home. I was driving through the tunnel and planning to stop briefly at Nob Hill to get some food, when all of the sudden my right shoulder pain flared up REALLY bad. It hurt to use that arm on the steering wheel and even just the weight of the arm was bothering it. I was so annoyed because I wasn't even doing anything out of the norm to it and I certainly didn't need to add that to the day. I had to buy food with no appetite for eating whatsoever and then I finally went home. I stepped through the doorway and felt that I was away for a week instead of just around 10 hours.

I have so many things I need to catch up on this weekend because of the difficulties I had with my neck and getting sick. I felt already so overwhelmed. Plus there's the MIIS career fair that everyone says I should go to tomorrow and someone who was one of the chaperons when I went to Japan for the first time with the sister city foundation died and his funeral is this weekend, too. I was so overwhelmed- do I secure the future or show respect for the past that played a huge role in where I am now? And with SO much work to do in the present how can I do any of those things?

So I got home tired and overwhelmed and just kind of broke down.

I was on the phone with my mom a little while ago during perhaps the worst part of this little breakdown. She kept reminding me that I am doing well and that she would DEFINITELY be telling me otherwise if I wasn't.

I don't know why I have so much self-doubt. I don't know why no matter how much I achieve, I never feel like it's enough. I don't know why although I keep striving to better myself, I still can only think of myself as inadequate (at worst) or "passing" (at best). I know I spent my childhood and youth around lots of people who would respond to my achievements with things like "I can't believe YOU of all people won~", "you only got this because someone else refused it", and "you only got this because~"... but I know these things are ridiculous and they shouldn't have affected the way I look at my achievements so much.

I've learned to live and even thrive with the self doubt- working to try to prove it wrong and silence it. It has been a strong motivator in my life for years now. The bad thing is that my self doubt causes me to think that other people think poorly of me- when I keep pausing in my day to day hustle and bustle to remind myself that the only thing I am fighting here is the nagging feeling in my own head. No one thinks poorly of me- at least that I know of. I am not being judged so strongly by outside sources, but in my own mind. This is something I am unaware of, but I find myself projecting these thoughts onto other people all of the time.

What's frustrating is that I know how lucky I am. I have a comfortable place to live, food in my (ingrateful) stomach, I am safe and relatively healthy, and for GOD SAKES I am one of the small percentage of people on this Earth who can say I am where I want to be and doing what I want to be doing. I can also say with no hesitation that I know I will be heading to even more things in life that will make me very happy. I am aware of suffering in both faraway and nearby places and I know about people who are rightfully frustrated because they just can't get where they want to go. I know rationally that I earned being where I am although I can't feel it. Amidst all of this good fortune in my life there's STILL that doubt. Who am I to have this doubt? I feel like I have no place to get like this when overall, things are going so well. Why can't I just be ok with being sick and sore and not be able to read over 100 pages a week sometimes. Why can't I be as patient with myself as I am with everyone else?

There's nothing else to do but to just let the rest of this emotional hurricane finish it's little rampage. Then I'll look over my information about the career fair to decide if I should go or not and look for a place online where I can leave the Sister City Association chaperon's family a message. I'll do my best with the reading and other schoolwork because my best is all I can give any time.

Deep breaths... I think I am starting to really calm down. I actually really do think the breakdown was probably about 97% due being overtired and in pain. Most of the time, I am really grateful for where I am- even if I do often feel overwhelmed with the loans hanging over my head and out of depth around some of the other MIIS students.

Please no lecture-y comments. If you post any, I will definitely reconsider letting you in on my problems in the future. Especially since I am perfectly aware that I am just kind of bouncing off the walls emotionally due to sickness/fatigue/everything else and this is not a proper representation of how I usually am.

Phew... emotional breakdowns make me thirsty.

name meaning thing

2010-12-27T23:05:00.002-08:00

From http://www.paulsadowski.com/numbers.asp -

---------------

There are 18 letters in your name.
Those 18 letters total to 88
There are 9 vowels and 9 consonants in your name.

What your first name means:
Swedish Female Youth.
Shakespearean Female 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' A lady of Verona, beloved of Proteus.
Latin Female Young. The feminine form of Julius. A character in Shakespeare's play 'Two Gentlemen of Verona'.
Greek Female Feminine form of Julius: Downy. Hairy. Derived from the clan name of Roman dictator Gaius Julius Caesar.
French Female Youthful.

Your number is: 7

The characteristics of #7 are: Analysis, understanding, knowledge, awareness, studious, meditating.

The expression or destiny for #7:
Thought, analysis, introspection, and seclusiveness are all characteristics of the expression number 7. The hallmark of the number 7 is a good mind, and especially good at searching out and finding the truth. You are so very capable of analyzing, judging and discriminating, that very little ever escapes your observation and deep understanding. You are the type of person that can really get involved in a search for wisdom or hidden truths, often becoming an authority on whatever it is your are focusing on. This can easily be of a technical or scientific nature, or it may be religious or occult, it matters very little, you pursue knowledge with the same sort of vigor. You can make a very fine teacher, or because of a natural inclination toward the spiritual, you may become deeply emerged in religious affairs or even psychic explorations. You tend to operate on a rather different wavelength, and many of your friends may not really know you very well. The positive aspects of the 7 expression are that you can be a true perfectionist in a very positive sense of the word. You are very logical, and usually employ a quite rational approach to most things you do. You can be so rational at times that you almost seem to lack emotion, and when you are faced with an emotional situation, you may have a bit of a problem coping with it. You have excellent capabilities to study and learn really deep and difficult subjects, and to search for hidden fundamentals. At full maturity you are likely to be a very peaceful and poised individual.

If there is an over supply of the number 7 in your makeup, the negative aspects of the number may be apparent. The chief negative of 7 relates to the limited degree of trust that you may have in people. A tendency to be highly introverted can make you a bit on the self-centered side, certainly very much self-contained . Because of this, you are not very adaptable, and you may tend to be overly critical and intolerant. You really like to work alone, at your own pace and in your own way. You neither show or understand emotions very well.

Your Soul Urge number is: 5

A Soul Urge number of 5 means:
The 5 soul urge or motivation would like to follow a life of freedom, excitement, adventure and unexpected happening. The idea of travel and freedom to roam intrigues you. You are very much the adventurer at heart. Not particularly concerned about your future or about getting ahead, you can seem superficial and unmotivated.

In a positive sense, the energies of the number 5 make you very adaptable and versatile. You have a natural resourcefulness and enthusiasm that may mark you as a progressive with a good mind and active imagination. You seem to have a natural inclination to be a pace-setter. You are attracted to the unusual and the fast paced.

You may be overly restless and impatient at times. You may dislike the routine work that you are engaged in, and tend to jump from activity to activity, without ever finishing anything. You may have difficulty with responsibility. You don't want to be tied down to a relationship, and it may be hard to commit to one person.

Your Inner Dream number is: 11

An Inner Dream number of 11 means:
You dream of casting the light of illumination; of being the true idealist. You secretly believe there is more to life than we can know or prove, and you would like to be provider of the 'word' from on high.

Curls

2010-11-18T14:10:00.003-08:00

6 days ago, I sat in a chair getting a haircut.

I didn't trust the man cutting my hair at all. He was hard to understand- not just because of his accent, but his method of communication itself seemed rather flawed. Not to mention every time someone walked into the shop, he would spin around quickly to greet them. I found this very disconcerting considering he had sharp objects near my head.

I really missed the place where I used to get my haircut in Japan. It was always very gentle and, although the communication was all in Japanese, I trusted them not to mess up my hair (or stab me accidentally). I hadn't realized how much I would miss that place until I was in this other place.

I ended up there because I told my mom I wanted a haircut and she told me that a place in Prunedale which usually charges more was having a $12 special. While that would be about the same as a Supercuts haircut, I figured that it would likely be a better haircut for cheaper. As a grad school student, naturally, the chance to save money drew me in.

At one point, the said that after he is done cutting my hair he will show me a way I could do my hair for going out.

'Sure, why not?' I thought.

This is what he did....

He took a HANDFUL of mousse and put it in my hair. This alone made me cringe- I don't like having a lot of product in my hair and even when I do put some in, it's only a tiny amount which I sometimes even dilute with water.

Anyway, he covered my hair with mousse, got out a curling iron, and began curling my hair.

I just sat there; my expression irritated.

I've never liked or wanted curls in my hair.

Let's flash back to my childhood, shall we?

Like many other kids, I didn't like to eat the crust on bread (I still don't actually, come to think of it, but I eat it anyway). When my mom and her sisters were younger, they used to be encouraged to eat bread crust by adults who told them that it would make their hair curlier. As the story goes, this was enough to convince them to eat the crust from the bread.

So, naturally, some of them tried to pass on this encouragement to me.

This had an adverse effect- I did not want curly hair, so hearing this made me believe there was even more reason to avoid eating bread crust.

Years later, I watched the movie Mulan and started to envy straight Asian hair.

I was always easy going when someone wanted to curl my hair, but I would always get rid of the curls as soon as I was home again.

Anyway, the guy at the salon I was at tried to charge me eight additional dollars for the styling. I told him that he can't charge someone without telling them and he brought the price back down to $12.

I went back to my mom's house and the mousse-y, curly hair was bothering me. I wanted to determine what I thought of the haircut, but the ridiculousness that I had no wish to replicate was getting in the way. So, I used my mom's shower, washed the mousse hair, and regained my rights to the top my head. It felt like sanity and control re-entered my life.

A few hours later, my mom and I were at the mall in Salinas. We passed by a booth selling straighteners and curlers. A saleswoman was trying to get us to stop. I thought it would be nice to have a good quality straightener, but I don't feel like I have the money to spend, so I kept walking. However, I realized that my mom had stopped and began talking to the woman- I was trapped.

My was was obviously the one who was interested, but since she has very short hair, the saleswoman kept asking me to sit down so she could demonstrate on me. I thought this was ridiculous- she curled part of my hair once and I asked her to straighten it again. From this, you would think that she would understand that I have absolutely no interest in this straighteners ability to also curl, but she curled my hair a second time. My mom was the one who was interested, but she continued to insist on using my hair to demonstrate when that really only communicated that my mom couldn't do these things to her hair anyway.

I really didn't get who exactly she was trying to sell the product to and I was really glad to finally get away. I was baffled that two people curled my hair without my permission in one day.

And that's the story.

It seemed more interesting in my mind.

(I'm willing to bet $238239 that Bethany thought of at least one comment while reading this.
By the way, I don't dislike other people having lots of product in their hair or curls- I just don't like either of those things for myself.)

Keeps getting better

2010-11-12T00:40:00.004-08:00

It's way too late to be blogging right now, but I've had this blog in my head for a while and I kind of feel like if I am ever going to get it posted, I should just do it.

At this time in my life, I can say that I truly believe that life is getting better. I'm really enjoying grad school. I'm finding it is in many ways better than JET, which was better than college, which was better than high school. I find myself more inwardly open and able to find niches and friends and in places and through the years my environment has changed gradually to one that has more and more niches and friends available.

I'm not going to lie- I've been stressed and overwhelmed. There is a lot to do and think about as a grad school student. My typical life methodology is to take things step-by-step, but it almost feels like some other students were gifted with extra legs and can take several steps at once. In a way, though, I thrive on that. And, from what I can tell, I'm doing rather well.

I'm pretty sure I've adapted to being at MIIS faster than any other place I've gone to school at or worked at. Maybe it was due to the challenges I faced living alone in Japan, perhaps I am just not phased by things as easily as I used to be.

I'm single and I'm fine with it. I always hear about people feeling empty without someone to be in a relationship with, but I don't feel that way at all. I feel that there are no vacancies in my life. Instead I feel like my life is already full of really good people- all taking up spaces that they belong in. They're not replacing anyone- where they are is unique to them. I might look at a guy and think he's cute and perhaps be a little interested in him. Maybe I might feel a little sad if he's not interested in me, but I wouldn't feel like I'm lacking anything without him.

Society has a lot of expectations.

How you should feel about being single, how you should dress, how you should act...

That's another blog.

I feel like I am too overtired to write this blog. Perhaps I shouldn't have tried.

Not a real blog

2010-11-07T23:46:00.003-08:00

Just a few past blogs of note that motivated me a bit when I found them again--

Applying for a scholarship in 2007.

Visiting my old elementary school also in 2007.

I'll post a real blog sometime soon. I've been writing one in my head and I've been determined to write it. I just haven't had the time.

*sigh*

A long awaited update.

2010-10-21T14:02:00.002-07:00

I forgot what the template to this blog looked like.

It's been over two months since I last wrote a blog. It's funny- just a few years ago, the blogs just kept coming, but now it just doesn't seem to work that way anymore. I haven't been much of a blogger in years and I am not sure exactly what happened to that.

I thought that returning to student life would mean a return to blogs because my blogging habit pretty much ended when my undergrad life ended, but here I am halfway through my first semester as a grad school student and the blogs have not returned.

But there's no reason for me to fret about it. What's done is done, but it won't stop me from now and then trying to revive the blog creature in my brain.

In a way, I feel like it's never completely died. I've been writing blogs in my head all of the time in the past 2+ years, it's just been that by the time I'm sitting in front of a computer, the train of thought is already miles (or kilometers) away.

I've written a few papers for school so far. It felt strange to be back in the world of writing papers, so it was a little difficult at first. Quickly, I rediscovered aspects of it that I like and ones I really don't like (ex. figuring out how to do citations).

The school has offered me work study, but I've only applied to one job that I haven't heard back from. I'm beginning to feel a lot like I did as an undergrad- like I just want to be a student and I really DON'T want to work at the same time. I'm still fully intending to work, but I still wish I could focus entirely on academics.

Although I seem to be doing well in school, I can't help but feel kind of behind compared to many of the other students. I get the impression that most of the other students at the school have more precise goals and ideas of where they want to end up. For me, I've been studying Japan and Japanese for so long and I want to use my time at MIIS to learn about many other places and cultures.

This week was kind of unusual in that I found myself thinking about potential things I could do in the not-too-distant future. I have random spurts of inspiration every now and then. It's from those times that I can figure out what I plan to do next. I didn't really have any experiences of that in my post-Japan life until this week. As much as I've been enjoying my time at MIIS, it seems like I miss out on a lot having no idea what kind of direction I want to take.

Last night, I was supposed to work on a news article report for my Japanese class, but then ended up doing it much later because I was suddenly struck with the desire to plan the rest of my MIIS semesters and look up some internships. I figured that I've been waiting for months to get that kind of frame of mind to show up and it's worthwhile to neglect a little schoolwork in its favor. Because of that, I was up to about 1 am working on the news article report. Still, I think I made the right decision.

After this week, I have an idea of a region I might want to specialize in conflicts in and an institution that I would love to to an internship with (although I am not sure if I would be able to get in). I've also decided that I want to add a new aspect to my education at MIIS. So, I have a few things to talk to my adviser about.

Between chats and a phone call, I completely lost my train of thought. There was something else I was going to say.

I suppose that means this is it for now. Hopefully, I'll blog again soon.

here again

2010-08-18T11:06:00.001-07:00

Well, this is about a month late, but I am back in California. I have a lot to talk about, but no time and energy to, but I think that should get better soon.

Meanwhile, my econ class is starting again...

(posted from my phone)

Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.3.1

praise vomit

2010-06-30T23:57:00.002-07:00

When you're on facebook (or anywhere, really), do you ever notice there are some people who, regardless of what they say or do, always get a bunch of comments praising them? There are always a handful of people posting about how great they are.

I am not one of those people who attract praise in abundance.

Nor will I ever be. Nor do I need to be.

This was a full thought, but now it's gone.

(This is what happens when a person blogs with an awful headache.)

Home Away from Home

2010-06-09T22:13:00.004-07:00

I had this blog really well written in my head a few hours ago. I just didn't have a computer in front of me. I could have used my phone, but I worried it wouldn't flow properly. I could have written it down in a notebook, but I worried that I might decide against re-writing it.

And now the tone and the feeling I felt made this a promising blog is gone. It will probably return, but now I am just too caught up in feeling exhausted.

It was in Kagoshima almost 6 years ago that I helped my host sister with her English homework, met an ALT, loved Kagoshima, and put those all together to figure out something I really wanted to do.

It was almost 5 years ago that Aya, who later became my Japanese little sister, came from Kagoshima and stayed at my house for about two weeks. I met other people who were traveling with her and we had a lot of fun together.

It was almost 4 years ago that I traveled around Japan alone and visited Kagoshima for a second time. I started to learn the local culture and area just a little more.

It was almost 3 years ago that Aya came back to stay with my family for a year while she went to school. I became interested in Kagoshima's dialect.

It was almost 2 years ago that I moved to Kagoshima. It became the place where I had both hard times and rewarding experiences.

It was almost 1 year ago that I was leaving Kagoshima to visit my family in California. I imagined what it would be like if I were leaving Kagoshima for good and it kind of broke my heart.

A little over a month ago, I traveled up to Tokyo by bus. I looked at the area around me and saw that the rest of Japan looks a little different from Kagoshima. It kind of made me want to just turn around and go back.

In a little more than a month, I will be leaving Kagoshima. Maybe for good. It's not that I would avoid coming back, I just don't know when or how it could possibly happen.

While I have only lived in Kagoshima technically for two years and spent about 3-4 weeks total in this prefecture before that, Kagoshima was definitely home to me long before I ever lived here.

As of yesterday I have a place to live for when I move back to California. It's in an area that I've always kind of dreamed of living in. This area IS home. I lived about 20 minutes from where the room I will be renting is most of my life. I know I am going to love being back in the familiar climate and able to see and talk to people in my family whenever I want. I will be living just a few blocks from the ocean and I will be studying a subject matter that I really want to learn about. I quite honestly couldn't be more excited.

But I am also kind of sad.

I'm experiencing much of the same thing I experienced two years ago as I prepared to move to Japan. Living in Japan was a dream of mine and I knew it would be great, but moving here meant leaving where I was and everything good about it.

I'm starting to feel myself get upset more easily like I was two years ago. I feel myself holding onto moments more trying to imprint things into my memory.

My life is wonderful here. Yes, I have troubles now and then, but I really couldn't ask for anything better. However, lucky for me, I have another great situation waiting for me. Chances are, yet another really great chance/opportunity will come up and I will have to experience this again.

It's not a bad thing to be sad to leave somewhere. It means that the place was worthwhile and that it made a positive difference to you. It's an even greater thing to sadly leave somewhere great for somewhere else great. I'm extremely excited, but also quite sad. I know I'll end up crying a lot in the near future.

But I am fortunate to feel this way.

Getting ready to go home

2010-05-23T23:05:00.004-07:00

I just wanted to blog. Give me a moment to form my thoughts together and figure out what to write about.

Well, it's May. About two months from now I will be arriving back in the US to restart live there. I am bound to enter a world of no money, no time, and lots of stress. At the same time, I will be doing something that will motivate and challenge me.

Today's one of those days that I can honestly tell myself that I am excited to leave here.

Admittedly, I had a few rough days last week in which I found myself underestimated and judged based on the fact I am not Japanese and I can't claim that doesn't happen sometimes. In the US I can be identified for who I actually am and I can work towards showing people who underestimate me just how wrong they are.

Today I talked to my supervisor and he is going to work out selling by car with the person I bought the car from. I also scheduled with him to discuss my plane ticket back to the US on Thursday (so I'll have an actual date soon.)

I know when the time comes, I'll probably be really sad to leave, but today I just feel excited.

Meanwhile, the weather has become very humid and rainy. It's already getting pretty warm and it shouldn't be too long before it gets to be hot. The reminder of how hot and humid summers are here makes me kind of glad I am not going to be enduring this one all the way through.

I need to start mailing some of my stuff back to the US. I need to get rid of things that I don't want/need. I need to start cleaning my place for the next ALT who will live there. I need to figure out where I will live back in California.

Two. more. months. :)

And in the meantime, this place isn't half bad.

Note to Japan

2010-05-16T23:58:00.004-07:00

You're a great country and I really like you, but there's something you really need to understand. Not every Japanese person thinks this way, but there are enough that do to make things really annoying for a foreigner taking residence in your country.

You are a very unique country, Japan, as should be expected from a country that was isolated from the rest of the world for so long. Your language is very difficult to learn and many foreigners have a hard time adapting to your customs.

But, contrary to what some might believe, it IS possible for a foreigner to learn your language and understand your customs. I know that perhaps at some point in their education, many of your people decide that English is impossible for them and they conclude that it would be impossible for them to function in cultures other than their own. They come to believe that Japan is so completely different from other countries that understanding is impossible.

However, they're wrong.

Japan, you are not that unique. You are NOT that special. You just a country! Your people are human just as any one else on this planet. We can learn to understand each other. Your people have created unnecessary barriers that are both restrictive to themselves and annoying for the foreigners that end up having to try to deal with them.

Even in some English lessons, the content is laced with a certain feeling of impossibility and sometimes the English teachers do nothing but make it even more so.

Oh, and for the record, we have technology such as washing machines and computers in other countries.

So next time I am given unasked for, painfully obvious advice about technology, I will not be held responsible for screaming at the person who provides it in my native tongue.

OK, so the last sentence hopefully isn't true... ^^;

Blog

2010-05-16T05:42:00.003-07:00

I keep writing entries in my head that don't quite make it here. Even if I write them, I'm never quite happy enough with the outcome.

*sigh*

Oh, and I had a concussion for about a week. I think it's better now, though.

Time's Up!

2010-05-06T00:20:00.002-07:00

Or rather it's been up for a while now...

I vaguely recall some indeterminable time ago dropping by this blog and seeing that there was about 6 more days left in the countdown I had off to the side. I made mental note of that, which apparently failed until today.

(I just checked my calendar, however, and noticed that I am only almost two weeks late. *pats self on back*)

A year has passed since I wrote this post and now it's time to share our results!

Now, for me, hearing odd things and getting asked strange questions is far from out of the ordinary. I live in a foreign country and I am always around people who know very little about where I come from. On top of that, I always get questions from people who don't know much about Japan. I've become so immune to this that I almost forget to think anything of it.

So... here's what I got-

1) How is the weather in America? (I actually get asked this one a lot. I'm often tempted to put out a map of the US and start rambling about the weather in different regions.)
2) Are there any clowns in Japan?
3) Do you know where the Pokemon building is?
4) Do you even know how hard it is to get cheese from a dead cow? (asked by Akemi)
5) (I'm out of time, I'll fill this in later)

Comment with yours!!!

the present

2010-03-18T07:00:00.003-07:00

I was going though my old myspace blogs again. I found quite a few that I enjoyed reading. I used to have so much fun blogging and they were so witty (sometimes) and fun to read. I wish I could bring that feeling back.

My wit and randomness has mostly found a home on my twitter account. Actually day to day things aren't really recorded anyone except in chats and emails. It's a shame, though.

Yesterday, I tweeted-

"So I just realized that my tweets are really weird without the context of... umm... the REST of my life. Oh well, you'll live. ;)"

and someone I don't know personally who has been following my replied-

"@Juuleeya Understandable or not, your tweets are entertaining. And that's the point, right?"

It was kind of neat to know that one of the accounts owned by someone I don't know is actually someone who enjoys my tweets and not just some random twitter bot.

I always really like it when other people can appreciate my "mind goo." :D

Anyway, I thought I would link to some of my old blogs that I really liked as I was skimming through this evening-

1) I LOL'd at this SHS drama related dream that I don't even remember having had before.

2) Reading myself wax poetic about curry amused me to no end. (I actually got tired of it after a while living here, but I still really like to eat it someitmes.)

3) I almost passed right over this blog because I don't even like to think about Annie Get Your Gun, but I ended up reading it and really liking what I wrote about it.

4) I just really love the part about the "Certificate of Appreciation."

5) I wish I remembered if I ever found out what this was about. Oh, and I like my lone comment on it. I think it was originally replying to someone.

6) Is it bad that I just realized how out-of-it this blog was this evening? I like the "Perhaps I'll be able to walk on my own soon??" bit.

7) And lastly (but not leastly?), I liked this blog a lot because it's along the same lines that I've been thinking about lately. :)

That was a fun, yet pointless, little blast from past, right?

Soo.... let's blog a little more about the present shall we?

Today in an English class I was co-teaching, there was an activity in the book where one person had to quickly ask the questions and the other person had to answer as quickly as possible. The teacher and I demonstrated with each other. We had to say "yes, I did" to all of the "did you...?" questions for the sake of the next question making sense.

This is how the conversation went when I was answering-

Teacher: What time did you wake up on Sunday?
Me: Noon. (This was true, I was at an open mic night Saturday night and got home at around 2:30. I didn't get to bed until 3:30-ish.)
Teacher: Did you study?
Me: Yes, I did. (Not true)
Teacher: What did you study?
Me: I studied economics. (Well, I have been studying that lately...)
Teacher: Did you play any sports?
Me: Yes, I did. (I most definitely did not.)
Teacher: What did you play?
Me: I played badminton. (went with the sport I like playing the best even if I hardly ever play it.
Teacher: Did you watch TV?
Me: Yes, I did. (...nope)
Teacher: What did you watch?
Me: I watched (at a complete and total loss) the weather.

The weather?? That's all I could think of?

Anyway, I thought that was a fun story.

Krys is still in boot camp now and I've been mailing her letters about once a week. It's funny, sometimes while I'm writing them, I think "wow, I can usually do this whole sit down and write a letter thing..!" but most of the time, I think I'm just blabbing. It seems like the words written in letters are so much more important than emailed words. Especially when email is out of the question right now. I miss chatting with her all of the time... although most of what I talked to her about was entirely pointless.

Anyway, I've been pretty busy these days and I've been enjoying life a lot.

I'm going to be going to Thailand soon. Hurray!

Hello March

2010-03-04T23:14:00.002-08:00

Today was my last day to say goodbye to my graduating 3rd year JHS students. Some of them are really good kids and I am going to miss being their teacher. It makes me sad to see them go. It's funny that I can feel so attached to them when I don't really even know them well at all. Despite the fact I don't know a lot about them and considering how many students I have and how little time I had for each individual student, I learned a lot about their personalities and had fun interacting with them. I think, all and all, I made good use of the time we had together.

A big story in the news today back in the US is the protests of the budget cuts in higher education. I was surprised to hear the enormity of the protests and was sad to hear that so many students had been arrested because of them. I've been calculating how much money I have for grad school over and over these days, so I understood how terrible these students feel to have the impossibility known as "having money" get in the way of their dreams and what they want to achieve.

I think everyone should have a chance to be educated well and at least make an effort to get where they want to go in life. Of course there should be barriers- because, as they say, nothing is worth having that's not worth fighting for, but there's something wrong with the system if the barriers are simply too strong.

Today is a rather sappy day in which I keep getting myself upset over things. Sorry if this blog goes off the emo charts.

Opening up?

2010-02-25T05:19:00.003-08:00

It's always been very difficult (if not impossible) for me to talk about the things that are really really close to my heart. When I do, I often either make them sound less important than they really are or exaggerate humorously. If it's something I'm really passionate about, I don't like people knowing it. I don't like letting people know what's really important for me because I feel like that gives them the power to destroy it.

But they don't have to have this power. I keep reminding myself of this. If I hold true to what I want and believe in, it won't matter what other people say or do.

Once I start grad school, something I'm very passionate about will be out there in the open. Even now, talking about grad school with everyone I know, I end up opening the door just a crack or a little more letting people know what I want to do... but still very rarely why or how much.

If I am going to be who I want to be, I am going to have to pull that door open and let anyone who would listen know what I am really about.

But these things aren't easy. I feel the door opening gradually at a speed that I can almost call comfortable.

...............

My name is Julia and I will be starting to work on my Masters degree in the fall. I will be entering the International Policy Studies Program at Monterey Institute of International Studies with a concentration on International Conflict Resolution. If time and money permit it, I also want to work towards getting a certificate for Nonproliferation Studies. I want to do this because I dislike the idea of innocent people losing their lives and having to live feeling that they are unsafe. I want to make the world just a little bit safer. I'm especially interested in nonproliferation studies because I've visited Hiroshima and decided that I never want to see that happen again to anyone in the world in my lifetime. I don't need to be an important or well known person, but I just want to make a difference.

Still, beyond this, there is so much I want to do. I think that getting into JET gave me a little taste of what it feels like to really succeed and I am not sure when exactly I will stop wanting more.

.................

Hmm... well, that wasn't much but it's a start.

Because it is so difficult for me to open up to others about what's really important to me, you can imagine how hard it was to up the courage to even apply for this grad school program.

It's all going to be worth it.

I just it's ridiculous that I got over such a barrier and now suddenly I'm constantly obsessing over something as ridiculous as money.

Oh well, MIIS will happen even if I have to get (a) loan(s).

(this blog kind of deteriorated....)

been a while

2010-02-16T16:19:00.002-08:00

It seems like I just can't stick to blogging, can I?

So I was sitting at my desk thinking about what things I need to do. I went through the list that had been going through my head for months now.

'Finished that... finished that....'

I ended up confused with an empty list.

Suddenly, 'I guess it's time to return to cleaning your apartment' popped into my head.

"Oh!" I almost said out loud.

I'm not sure why, but my mood has been kind of poor lately. Knowing me, it's probably a combination of a lot of things. Krystina's been off at boot camp for about a week now and it feels like it's been much longer. I find myself in the middle of the day wondering what she's been doing and how she's doing. I wrote her a letter in which I requested that she tell me "everything", but obviously this is snail mail we're talking about so it'll be a while.

I think I've also been experiencing a post-performance slump. My Japanese dance performance was last Thursday and, leading up to it, I was really looking forward to it. And, after just a few hours, it was over. I realized I really started liking dance more knowing there was going to be a performance (the news evidently had the opposite effect on another one of the girls, though. :/) I can't remember if I had post-performance slumps in high school after plays were over, because it probably just would be blended in with the ups and downs I had all of the time in high school.

I've been studying economics on my own. I tried to sign up for classes online for a prerequisite for a class at MIIS, but the teacher told me that it was too late to sign up for the class. I got the text books anyway. Sometimes, MIIS allows students to take an econ test instead of having to take the prerequisite classes, but I am not sure if that will work out for me. However, the textbook has a magical ability to put me to sleep, so that worries me that an economics class would have a similar effect. So, I decided that even if I still have to take these economics classes that I am now studying the textbooks for, it's a good idea to study them now at my own pace so that I can be a good student and perhaps get some interest in the subject.

Besides... I have a lot of work time on my hands with Krystina vanished from the internet.

I started chapter 3 of Macroeconomics yesterday. The concepts so far aren't really complicated- they seem to be almost entirely common sense, but the book choses to discuss these simple concepts in just about the most complicated ways possible. Up until about chapter 5, it's just basic economics info. I checked the Microeconomics book and the first 5 chapters are exactly the same. It's pretty cool to know that when the times comes to start Microecon, I can skip a reasonably sized chunk of the textbook.

Hmm... I think that's all that has been going on with me recently.

black things

2010-01-28T15:52:00.004-08:00

Remember that blog from last April in which I said that I was finding black things on the ground and that I thought that a rodent had left them?

I concluded that it was not a rodent, but from then on those black things just kept appearing out of nowhere. Sometimes on my bed, sometimes on my kitchen table.

Well, I finally solved that mystery.

I was brushing my hair yesterday when I noticed that my brush was caught on something. After some gentle brushing from the bottom up, something fell into my hand. A black thing.

"It's in my hair, too?" I thought, astonished.

Then I looked at my brush and realized that a parts of my black hairbrush (round things attached to the end of each.... tong?) were falling off.

So that's why they were always appearing all over the place. ><

And that's why I tweeted that I felt like an idiot.

:)

(super glad to know it's not rodent related, though!)

just a little rant

2010-01-23T07:13:00.005-08:00

Sometimes it is just so hard for me to be patient with people.

When I started taking Japanese dance, I was mostly in it for a chance to hang out with some of the other ALT girls and make friends with them. As time went on, though, I started to really like Japanese dance itself.

It's so difficult for me to enjoy things that have precise rules and details that have to be followed. Usually if I don't have a little room to make something a little more my own, I don't care for it.

But I like Japanese dance. I like it even though I am told exactly where to put my feet, exactly how high to lift my arms, etc. I am always told to relax my shoulders- which is something that the pilates instructor is always reminding me to do as well. I came to realize how much tension I put into my shoulders a lot of the time and I think these biweekly reminders to relax them are good for me.

But I have some stress associated with the dance classes and it just seems to increase. Being the member of the group that knows the most Japanese, I have become the translator. My status as the go-between has been slowly but surely wearing me out.

As the translator, I am the one that always has to tell the teacher why someone in the group can't make it to a lesson and, even worse, it is me to has to call and cancel lessons.

It's been increasingly hard for me to be cool about it when someone tells me that they can't come to the lesson. I understand it when it's a good reason (like traveling), but sometimes I feel like the reasons that they tell me can easily just be put aside or worked around.

Tomorrow is a rehearsal for the performance we're putting on in a few weeks and I am really hoping they all show up. During that last practice, our teacher seemed to really think it's important for us all to attend this one and I really don't want to let her down. She's been very kind and generous to us. Plus, this is the rehearsal for the whole show- including the elementary school students class and at least one another group. It's not all about us and we should try to do all that we can to not disrupt the entire rehearsal for everyone else. (The culture plays a big part in this, too. Our teacher is a very traditional old Japanese woman.)

One of the girls in the class actually lashed out at me because she had plans for the day of tomorrow's rehearsal and she said that I should have told her before. This was completely inappropriate because-

A) I told her via facebook chat that I would message her the rehearsal schedule a few days before when she got back into town, but she told me that there's no big difference between hearing the dates then and waiting a few days and finding out what they are at the lesson. So, because she said that, I didn't send them to her.

B1) I played no part whatsoever in the scheduling of said rehearsal. I was JUST translating.
B2) I don't have a copy of her social schedule. I'm sorry that it clashed with the rehearsal schedule, but it's really not my fault at all.

*****sigh*****

I understand that she could have just been irritable and took it out on me. I understand- people do that sometimes. And she apologized later (although she didn't mention whether she remembered TELLING me to not worry about messaging her or not, so I'm a little irked about that.)

What's driving me crazy is being blamed for what I was just translating on top of all of the practices I've had to go to without everyone else there.

And I know it's not always their fault. We had someone with swine flu, people traveling, etc. etc. etc. It's just that this has really made me so tired of being the person in between.

I just want to enjoy dancing and relish the fact that I finally get to perform something again for the first time since graduating high school.

It's so hard to be patient with people sometimes.

Dance class girls- sorry you guys end up reading this. I kind of felt the need to get this out somewhere.

Mornings

2010-01-19T16:02:00.002-08:00

When I set my alarm clocks at night, I choose a song on my iPod to wake up to in the morning very carefully. Sometimes I go for something calm sound so that I am not too surprised when it wakes me and sometimes I choose a song that I think will energize me.

But it's always just noise at 7 am.

I know for a fact I haven't been getting enough sleep.

I pick up my cell phone from the table next to my bed and I check my email and twitter. Yes, I know that I can easily do it on the computer if I just get up- but for a while this worked to help me try to wake up.

This morning, however, I just got disoriented and kept reading the same tweets over and over.

At some point, my cell phone alarm set for 7:05 goes off.

Whether I can get up immediately depends on how cold it is. My main concern is that where I am is warm and outside of that is NOT. All that's in my world at those moments is my bed and the ridiculously high pile of blankets that I feel that I need to have.

But I resolve to get myself to get up.

So I quietly countdown...

"5... 4... 3... 2... 1...."

...and I get up about 15 seconds later.

And then what's usually the worst part of my day is officially over with.

Weekly schedules and keeping busy

2010-01-17T17:03:00.003-08:00

I think the most interesting aspect of my life these days is my busy schedule. This is probably also the reason why I haven't been blogging so much.

Here's what I do each day of the week-

Mondays- Work, Japanese dance class
Tuesdays- Work, Japanese lesson, gym (a stretching class that involves big bouncy balls)
Wednesdays- Work, Japanese flute (formal lessons started just recently)
Thursday- Work, gym (pilates class)
Friday- Free after work! (usually)

I'm enjoying all of the things that I'm involved with and I love to be busy, but I've been so tired a lot of the time lately.

I've also been working on getting funds for grad school and other preparations for moving back to the US. I signed and turned in the paper saying that I will NOT be re-contracting here in Hioki for another year and it's official.

This should be a very interesting six months.

Oh well

2010-01-17T05:48:00.003-08:00

This blog has gotten pretty heavy compared to how it used to be.

So, I was thinking that I would do something lighthearted here for the first time in a long while and post a photo blog.

But then I uploaded all of the pictures to facebook and realized that the pictures were posted and their stories were told- I didn't really care to write it in blog form anymore.

So in case you live in a cave (I mean, don't have facebook), here is the album that contains the pictures I was going to use here and mooooore.

I still intend to start writing some more fun blogs, but in the meantime you can enjoy my new template. :)

on line

2010-01-11T23:06:00.004-08:00

Today I learned that I was accepted to grad school.

At first I thought I would be quiet about the acceptance- just in case I decide that I would rather stay in JET for another year. Instead I found myself on just about every internet site posting about it and even telling my classes.

I am psyched, I am disappointed, I am full of anxiety, I am overwhelmed and I'm happy.

I'm up and I'm down.

Not to mention feeling dizzy.

I'm... uhhh... trying to write a blog in this state of mind.

I feel like this came way too simply. Things that are too simple never quite sit right with me. I always expect things that are worth it to have more difficulties than that. I try to satisfy this feeling by telling myself that all I have been doing have been steps to this, but I guess after the huge, stressful leap that was JET, a nice gradual, natural step up is going to feel foreign to me.

My mind is just about everywhere now, but I am not going to try to cover everything now. I have the feeling that this will be the subject of many blogs to come.

Oh! I just realized this is my first blog of the decade! Happy New Year!

10 years

2009-12-30T06:06:00.005-08:00

I thought about putting this blog off until tomorrow (New Years eve), but then I realized that I've been putting off blogs a lot and then they simply haven't been happening.

Before too long, it will be 2010. Until recently, I almost forgot that this had significance. I guess the decade following the big 2000 is almost guaranteed to be overlooked. But no, 2010 is significant- just like any other decade such as the 90s, the 80s... and so on. There is so much culture that revolves around our decades- like if we're describing older music or movies we describe them with the decade. Each decade has it's own unique impressions and culture attached to it.

And we're about to say good bye to the one we've been in for 10 years and hello to a brand new one.

The '00s is/was, I think, a very significant decade for me. I think it was probably equally significant for other people my age- who started their teen years and became adults in this time period. Maybe my perception will change as I experience more decades, but I think this one will stand out.

When it became the year 2000, I was a home schooled 8th grader. I was bored and (since I did my schoolwork on my own time) a seasoned pro at procrastination. Due to the fact I was obsessed with anime at the time and didn't attend school, most of my friends were online. Due to a breakdown of sorts from my 6th grade year, I was anxious about the idea of being around kids my own age. Nevertheless, I was bored and I wanted to get out of the house more, so I committed myself to the idea of returning to public school for high school.

My mother told me that I could return to home schooling anytime and my brother told me that if I needed friends to hang out with, I could hang out with his friends. But, luckily, I never needed to return to home school and I only really met my brother's friends once. After a month long period or so of spending my lunchtimes with a kind of creepy group of people, I joined the group that I pretty much stuck with for the rest of high school.

As a kid who was bullied in elementary school and then spent junior high being home schooled, I was really nervous when interacting with my peers. I rarely made eye contact. I was 6th period drama class with my brother and I spent most of the class just sitting and watching the classmates walk around and talk to each other. Looking back, I think the high level of interaction terrified me. It got better when I had people in the class to talk to (Rachel and Dusty.)

2001 came and it was hectic. My (step)grandfather had cancer starting near the end of 2000 and my family was basically going through the chaos that -always- happens when someone is in the hospital for a long period of time. I was the only person in my family too young to visit him in ICU until Sam's family visited and I had him for company. He died in February and soon after, my grandmother's health failed. She spent her last few months in a convalesce hospital. After she died there, I had reoccurring, detailed dreams about the place that would always really distress me.

It was in the last of my "convalesce hospital" dreams where I was really upset and a woman came up and talked to me and I felt better- this was the first time I had a vision of who I wanted to be when I got older. After that, those dreams finally stopped.

During the summer of 2001, my parents divorced. At the time, I didn't really pay much attention to what I was feeling because I was more concerned with the feelings of the people around me. It wasn't until years later when I realized the effects that this change in my life had on me and I'm still discovering them.

As a teenager, most people seem to try to distance themselves from their parents and become more independent- I did the opposite. I focused on trying to strengthen my own relationships with my parents. I felt like it was bad timing to do the whole rebellious "teenager" thing. Watching things fall apart made me want to focus on putting whatever I could together.

Another significant event of 2001, of course, was 9/11. As terrible as that event was, it was kind of ____ (I wouldn't say "nice", but I can't think of a better way to say it) to feel that what I was going through was the same as everyone else in the country. Unlike the deaths of my grandparents and my parents' divorce, it was a grief and tragedy that could be shared by all. (I'm not saying at ALL that this was a good thing.)

I remember my feeling of unity being significantly fractured when the general population seemed to have switched their energies towards anger. Perfectly innocent people in the US were harassed due to their heritage and that was just the tip of the ice berg. I remembered watching the bombing in Afghanistan on TV and feeling absolutely none of the satisfaction (of vengence???) that I thought I was supposed to feel. Instead I just wondered "why?"

9/11 caused me to start thinking about politics, current events, etc. for the first time in my life. I feel like to this day, a lot of my opinions can be traced back to what I thought and how I felt around the time of those attacks.

Because of both my parents' divorce and the attacks, it became very important to me to want to learn to understand that thoughts and feeling of people on every side of a conflict- regardless if they were something I would disagree with or disapprove of.

My goal in high school was always to never let the kinds of things that other kids obsessed over become my life, but there was more to it- I wanted to learn how to communicate confidently with people, I wanted to do more than pretend to have myself together, I wanted to become someone that no one would have to worry about, and, most importantly, I wanted to learn to like myself.

So, I spent a lot of my high school years in my head. Sorting through things, organizing, and trying to throw things out. My mind was a chaotic mess and, to this day, I am glad that I took the time to do the housekeeping.

Little by little, with the help of theater and classroom debates, I became better and better at talking to my peers and became a little more outgoing. I tended to be a little depressed and I didn't really care much about my grades or appearance. Then one day in junior year, I had a revelation of sorts that ended my depression and I started to try harder to achieve things. I became a lot more cheerful and talkative, too.

The summer before my senior year (2003), I went to Japan for the first (two) time(s). The Salinas Kushikino sister city association was the first time I interviewed for anything and I felt good about myself when I was chosen. (Although one kid was mean and told me that I was only chosen because someone else she knew couldn't go.) It was a very inspirational trip for me- going to Salinas' sister city made me want to move to Japan and teach English and visiting Hiroshima helped me make sense of my post-9/11 feelings towards war.

Hiroshima made me feel like pain and destruction doesn't need to be countered with more of the same thing, but can instead be used as experience needed to be constructive. I felt extremely motivated to help spread what I learned, but then back in the US, I felt my ambition crushed by people who had a different opinion and my own lack of self confidence was too afraid to try to recover the pieces to put back together. It really hurt to have something that I was really passionate about treated that way. It's because of that, to this day, I have a lot of trouble talking about things that are really important to me.

Meanwhile, my desire to teach English in Japan still thrived. I continued studying Japanese. I already knew I wanted to take part in the JET programme. I told people that afterward I would probably move back to the US and become a Japanese teacher, but I never entirely felt like that I was what I really REALLY wanted to do.

Senior year of high school was a kind of crazy time for friends. There was a lot more drama that year than in previous years. I realized that our friendship was mostly based off of just laughter and goofiness and that, in reality, these friendships didn't help me feel better about myself. So, as the year drew to a close, I learned that almost everyone I hung out with was going to Hartnell, I decided to go to MPC instead. Best. decision. ever.

Sure enough, the lack of proximity to the old high school friends pretty much disintegrated all interaction. MySpace came about around this time, but really it was inevitable. I was sad at first and talked a lot about it to Danny. During the spring semester of 2005, Danny and I met Bethany and Krystina in our English class. The four of us became a super tight group of friends.

Krystina and Bethany (they'll notice the order of their names, so I should make sure to switch) are quite possibly the best friends I've ever had. I don't want other good/best friends of the past to see that and to feel bad, though- but hanging out with them (even in stressful times) has always been a positive thing. I have a good life long friendship and I refuse to ever lose touch with that person, but that was built upon lots and lots of not-so-good things I shouldn't mention here and lots of energy that I put out for the sake of that person. I have no resentment and I am glad I did it, however- but the friendship had very little room for issues or things I was going through. My high school friends (blame lack of maturity, I guess) didn't exactly make me feel like I was important or wanted. Unlike all of those experiences, it was always positive, fun, and uplifting to hang out with Bethany, Krystina, and Danny.

This groups value to me was tested and proved when Krystina suddenly had to move up to Washington around New Years 2007- it was a hectic and emotional three days that left me both emotionally and physically drained. I was actually unable to function properly for the next 24 hours or so (no joke ^^;). But unlike the high school friends who I lost contact with by just going to another school, we kept in touch. Bethany went to study at Oxford for a semester and we're still just as much friends as we always were. Because of this, I wasn't afraid of losing their friendship by moving to Japan. In fact, I probably talk more to Krystina than to any other person on Earth these days.

That year, 2007, Aya came to live with my family to study at North Monterey County High School and I started going to CSUMB majoring in Japanese. During this time, I was just kind of rolling with the direction my life was going in (Japanese major, wanting to do JET) and nothing was too extraordinary about that time. I started applying for JET around November 2007 which was the most stressful application process EVER and has forevermore made me unfazed by application processes (...I hope.)

Deciding to move to Japan kind of came with a long term worry(?) that I had most of my life that I had to conquer a little bit each and every of the 4 times I visited Japan previously. I've always had a sort of guilt in leaving people behind. In elementary school, I always worried that something would happen to my friend if I went out of town and after my parents' divorced, my dad had a weird blacking out episode and my brother had to take him to the hospital while I was out of town. Although I liked going to Japan, I always kind of felt like it was a selfish thing for me to do.

I don't really have a lot of a "sense of self" to begin with. I didn't get good at liking myself as much as I do now until I started almost regarding myself as another person. I felt like it was a very big thing for me to do something "selfish" that I wanted to do ENTIRELY for myself. The people around me, of course, friends and family alike were very (almost overwhelmingly) encouraging.

I moved to Japan in the summer of 2008. I figure it's just like me to take such a big leap as going from living with my mother to living alone in a foreign country. It was very tough, stressful, and often lonely, but because I spent so much time in my head in high school and, through many years of hard work, grew to love myself, I always knew even in the worst times that I would get through it.

This time in Japan was also very good for my confidence- so much that I've even picked up my previously discarded passion from my visits to Hiroshima, reassembled it stronger than ever, and I'm planning on going to grad school to learn how to use it.

...But grad school's in the next decade.

2000 to 2009, thank you very very very much for everything. The highs, the lows, the boring middle points, keeping time fast enough to stay entertained, and slow enough to grow and learn.

things you probably didn't know

2009-12-16T05:36:00.003-08:00

1) I like a lot of pop songs when they are covered by people with just vocals and perhaps a piano or a guitar a lot better than the originals. I guess the "pop" elements are just kind of distracting for me and sometimes kind of annoying. A good example being Lady Gaga- I think her songs are ok, but I absolute LOVE some covers I found on youtube of her songs. Most currently and notably, this one! You might recognize this guy as the one who made a cover of Glee's ([much better] cover of Journey's song) "Don't Stop Believing". Actually, I was meaning to show Bethany this youtube account because there's a webseries on there called "College Musical" (as well as other really good covers, etc.)

2) At any given time, I probably have about two or three crushes. They're not anything I take seriously, but instead I just enjoy the fun, goofy aspects of having crushes. Come to think of it, I think I only have one right now. Anyway, these guys are never much more than yet another excuse to feel like a dork.

3) I figured out how to make paper snowflakes today. Virtual snowflakes are much easier to make look pretty, but it's fun to actually do it yourself. I don't really know why I never tried before.

4) I intend to continue this list and repost it with more super fun facts(!!). ....I don't know if that will actually happen. Right now, I have to get to bed.

go go (stop and smell the roses) and GO!

2009-12-08T23:10:00.004-08:00

I finished my application to grad school today and submitted it over the internet.

I realize that I haven't even really directly mentioned grad school on this blog... which is a definite sign that the way I use blogs is very different from how it was.

The application was a bit stressful to pull together- especially trying to figure out the quickest way to get transcripts from MPC and CSUMB from another country. There is really no urgent hurry, but I want to know for sure about grad school (MIIS) before I decide for sure about not staying in Japan another year.

(I am about 98% sure now that I'll be moving back to the US this summer either way.)

The whole transcript craziness might be over now, but I am waiting to know for sure.

The application process made me remember how much a thrive from being stressed and busy. I used to know this feeling well when I was a student, but the ALT life very rarely feels hectic or busy.

Even now with nothing to do, the "high" from getting things done earlier has yet to fade. I am just sitting here in this desk and I might seem outwardly content, but I'm inwardly restless. I'm glad to have things done, but I kind of feel like I want more.

I had a dream that I was back in the US and going to grad school. It seems my brain is so stuck in the future that I don't even dream in the present. I was like this before I moved to Japan- I didn't really feel like I could get into anything because my mind was already moved onto the next step.

So... once I am sure that everything for my grad school app is taken care of, I'm going to try to refocus on where I am now and enjoy it.

the climb

2009-12-01T23:17:00.005-08:00

When you're a child, very few things are more enticing than a playground structure that towers high above the ground.

As you progress higher and higher towards the top, the desire to stand at the top and look down at the view only grows more and more.

But then, this way of feeling isn't something you grow out of... at least not in your early 20s.

Then one day you're 23 years old and you're walking up the stairs to your apartment. You realize suddenly that you're doing the exact same action that you found exciting and fun before, but you've done this action time and time again and found it really bothersome and dull.

Elevators... escalators... so many things people do to avoid climbing, but many people go out of their way to climb.

So confused.

Why I am, like, super cool

2009-11-27T04:17:00.003-08:00

This morning, I was full of dread. I had a class today with the elementary school teacher that I've had the worst experience with so far. The guy never used me in class, so basically I would end up standing there watching and listening as he relied on the bad recordings from the software that comes with the textbook and speaking to the students in his own terrible English.

Last month, after my last class with him, I actually got fed up with this and complained to the vice principal before I left. This was going to be my first time going to that school since then.

'What approach will the vice principal take?' I wondered as I drove to the school.

I decided that I didn't want a confrontation or apology- I decided that if a meeting was calling between me, him, and the vice principal, I would try to redirect it to something more productive like talking about how I can contribute to the class.

I got to the school about an hour and a half before the class I had with that teacher. They told me to get there early, which made me think there was a meeting, but the teacher's room was empty. This gave me time to think and I decided what I was going to do. The bell rang and teachers started coming back into the teacher room. I engaged in small talk with them to warm up my Japanese so that I could speak as eloquently as possible to the teacher I had issues with.

Finally, five minutes before the class, that teacher walked in and came up to me. I asked him to explain the lesson plan to me. Then, I began telling him bit-by-bit all of the things I can do to play an active part in the lesson- including explaining why it would be more beneficial/helpful to the students. Perhaps my Japanese wasn't perfect, but he understood and I was able to play an active role in the class. It wasn't perfect, but I left the class in a good mood and I think the kids enjoyed it a little bit, too. (And the teacher got to learn some correct English phrases... :) )

I am not sure if the vice principal said anything to him, but I am very glad that I was able to work my way through this in a mature, polite, yet direct way. It's so hard to have issues with people in this country because it can be really hard to balance "politeness" with "directness" in this culture.

At one point, we were doing an activity where he had to ask me a question and I would answer it. I wrote the question he had to ask on the board as if I were doing it for the students, but actually I was doing it just as much. There is an art to being subtle and I wish I mastered it to this extent every day. (....actually, I think I am generally pretty good at that.)

During the next period, I got to join in on a music class with 3rd graders. I attempted to play a song on the recorder with them and tried to sing along with Japanese songs I have never heard before in my life. At one point, the kids had to tally up scores and I actually helped a girl with her math- IN JAPANESE! Crazy, right?

I had lunch with 4th graders and I told the group I was eating with that my brother used to try to get various beverages to come out of nose when I was a kid. I tried to make that happen with the kids sitting around me as they were drinking milk. After everyone hurriedly emptied their milk cartons when I wasn't looking, I entertained them with my ever-growing repertoire of silly facial expressions. (I'm always a little surprised by the number of people who are impressed by them!)

After that I had a class with 6th graders, which was also a very good class.

All in all it was a pretty good day.

Krystina, Bethany- I know it's only been a few days, but I miss chatting with you guys. :) Although you only would have heard me complain all day on Thursday (my time.)

Oh, and hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving. Sorry, I'm just not in the right country to think of that.

after a while, crocodile

2009-11-19T23:06:00.003-08:00

It's Sam's birthday (in the US) and what better time than this to chronicle my lifetime aversion to crocodiles.

This applies to alligators, as well. I've been told a few times what the difference between alligators and crocodiles is, but I keep forgetting. For some reason, I figure alligators are a little less creepy than crocodiles- so this blog is about crocodiles.

Ready... set... and GO!

So I was reading an article earlier today talking about fossils that were found in the Sahara of different never before discovered species of crocodiles that once existed. Anyway, the article was in interesting, but somewhere inside of me I felt a feeling I've had from long ago return to me.

I think crocodiles are really terrifying animals. I would have to say that they would probably be near the top of the list of "animals I never want to be near in any kind of circumstance". I guess (like many of my childhood fears), it started from watching something on TV.

Note that I have -never- lived anywhere with crocodiles. Or alligators, for that matter.

(I just searched alligator to find out where those live and just a picture scared the crap out of me. OK- alligators are equally terrifying. From here, this blog will be equally about alligators.)

Ahem... as I was saying. I don't think I've ever even been in an area that has crocodiles or alligators before- and I can't say I really want to.

Most people are afraid of sharks- which makes sense, but really you're safe from them if you just stay out of the water. Crocodiles and alligators can swim and crawl... and alligators can climb trees, too- I can barely do that.

Imagine you're running from an alligator or a crocodile and you're not sure which kind it is, so you don't know whether you can climb a tree to escape or not. o_O (I'm kidding)

OK- so I can pretty much dismiss scary sea animals with the same argument that I used with sharks.

Mammals can be scary animals, but since we are mammals too and most of our domesticated animals that we can develop friendships with are as well, you can predict them a little easier because their mannerisms are familiar.

Birds are just ridiculous. They creep me out sometimes, but they are nowhere as creepy as the reptile family.

Crocodiles. Alligators. They just float there, blending into things and ALL OF THE SUDDEN THEY ATTACK!

"In land they can catch you running. they have even eatean pet dogs. "

.... D:>

These animals have to be the only ones that can totally creep me out just thinking of them.

If you know of a more terrifying animal, let me know- I can't think of one.

(Earlier today, I keep wanting to type "crocolate" instead of "crocodile" for some reason... weird. Guess I had chocolate on the brain.)

6 years

2009-11-16T16:22:00.001-08:00

Hello,

My name is Julia's Blog and I am writing this today because Julia apparently can't be bothered to.

Yesterday (today in California), November 16th, marks 6 years since Julia first started blogging. Since then, she's switched blogging sites a few times before ending up here almost 2 years ago. Wow, has it really been that long? You would think that with all of the neglect I have been getting, I've had lots of time to reflect on the time that has passed since I was created. Despite everything, time has gone by very fast.

I don't know whether to be jealous, Julia's last blog was a literal record of her life- every finals week, every cold, and just about every fun outing with her friends can be accounted for within those pages. I don't know why, but I have been used more so for passing thoughts and other things not particularly attached to any particular time. Which of these is a better kind of blog? I suppose I can't really say I know for certain and it doesn't do me a lot of good to think about it anyway. I can't change what I am used for.

This being an anniversary, there ought to be an element of celebration to this. Julia being uninspired (and tired) and myself not a sentient being, this is the best we can do for you right now.

Fireworks!

Enjoy!

Dear Japan (an open letter)

2009-11-10T19:42:00.002-08:00

Dear Japan,

You'll probably never read this. This letter would probably be lost among thousands of odes, articles, web pages and other publications about you.

This is not a goodbye letter, but rather just an explanation of what's been going on in my head for some time now. You know, to make sure we're on the same page.

I put a lot of my time into you for a very very long time. I've spent most every summer since the end of high school either going to Japan or doing something else Japan related like hosting a student. In return, you've been great to me- you even eventually set me up with a great job with good pay and excellent benefits during a time that most people my age are struggling financially.

I'd say in terms of relationships between a person and something that's not technically human, I'd say we've had a very wonderful, amazing friendship. Although you've probably never particularly noticed me, I've benefited a lot from knowing you.

I started all of this as much a fanatic. People could not say anything bad about you in my presence without getting me angry or defensive. As time flew by I came to know you better and better and I realized that I didn't need to protect you. I came to see your less than admirable points and accepted them. My interest in you became much more balanced.

I moved to your country soon after that happened. I thought that maybe I would skip the "culture shock" period of adapting to the new life due to the fact I already knew many of the shortcomings of your society. Nevertheless, it still happened- I went through a period in which I easily got annoyed at everything. Through it all, however, I never believed that it meant I ever hated or disliked you.

I still like you a lot, Japan, but I don't feel like I can live my life revolving around you anymore. You've done so much for me, but there is so little I can do for you. You have pretty much everything you need except English skills and there are sooo many people in line at this very moment who want to do that for you.

There's a big world out there and I feel like there are a lot of things I can do for it. In the long run, maybe you might benefit a little from what I can do for the world. If it works out that way, I will be glad.

I'm expanding myself and backing away from you a bit (in fact, I've already backed away in many ways), but know that I don't want you out of my life.

When I move back to the US, I don't want it to be the last I see of you. I want to see you many, many more times, but just maybe not the following year or even the year after. It definitely won't be the way it was before. I want to keep learning your kanji and I want to keep practicing Japanese. I wonder, however, is it possible to hang onto you just a little bit? Would you fade out of my life entirely without me realizing it? I suppose I have no way of knowing.

Your friend,
Julia

Candles

2009-10-29T18:59:00.003-07:00

Happy Birthday to me.

I felt a little bit impatient for my birthday to come this year, I think I felt much the same way last year, but it's not so much looking forward to the birthday itself.

I spent at least half year before now feeling like there is no way I could possibly still be 22 years old. I felt so much older and although weeks and months seem to fly by so quickly, years still seem to take their time.

My birthday felt like vindication- finally I can officially be a little bit closer to the age that I feel.

Which is why what happened last weekend surprised me a bit.

My adult English conversation class took me out for lunch to celebrate my birthday. Of course, a few of the ladies were kind enough to bake cakes for me. So, at one point they were putting the candles on one of the cakes.

23 candles, I confirmed. Yes, I was going to be 23 years old.

So I watched the candles be put on the cake.

'They are being put on too close to each other.' I thought, but kept it to myself.

The candles circled the perimeter of the cake, keeping the same distance that I had believed was too close to possibly work. I had kind of a gnawing feeling somewhere within as I watched almost unable to tear my eyes away. To my bafflement, the way that the candles were spaced out worked perfectly.

I counted the candles to myself, in awe of how many there were. Sure enough, it was 23.

(It had been a few years since I last had a birthday cake with candles, I realized.)

Mid-class thought

2009-10-21T06:57:00.004-07:00

So today I was teaching in my least favorite of my 5th grade classes. I don't quite know why but this particular school seem to have a lot more bratty children than other schools that I go to.

In this class, there's one boy in particular who manages to get on my nerves a lot. Sitting near him, his female classmate seems to find his antics funnier than anything on Earth and is eager to jump in on it.

I was a 5th grade girl once and I'd have to be more dense than Osmium to not know that she has a crush on that boy.

So easily I could end this nonsense by asking her in the middle of the class out loud if she likes him.

So easily I could use preteen awkwardness and peer pressure to make the 5th grade classes a little more bearable.

But I didn't and I won't.

Why?

Because I was once a 5th grade girl and it would be downright evil.

Kind of random

2009-10-21T06:46:00.003-07:00

I'm posting this with the assumption that the people who read this blog are people who love me.

Here's a list I suddenly decided to write of the things I want to with my life (at this time, anyway... this list will probably change bit by bit.)

- learn to portray myself better to people who don't know me so well
- take part in making the lives of less privileged people around the world a little better.
- always be moving, changing, growing, and marching to my own drum.
- take an active stand against nuclear weapons and other war methods that harm innocent civilians (or at least be on the team or staff of someone who is).
- learn how to express my thoughts and tell stories well. (And confidently)
- adopt a child (children?) instead of having my own. I just really feel when the time comes, there will already be a lot of children out there who need a safe place to live.-
become well known just enough so that I can go talk shows and tell some people to their faces that they are a**holes (although I'll put it in a slightly more civilized manner).
- learn how to make the people I talk to feel very important (put less importance on myself).
- be a mediator.
- take in foster children. Those kids are usually put through so much and are sometimes not the easiest to relate to, but I just want to be one of those people who are there for them anyway.
-become an amazing person

groggles

2009-10-18T00:23:00.004-07:00

Ugggggh... I have a cold. It's not really a bad one- if there was something in particular I had to do or wanted to do, I could do it. But, besides a little bit of shopping to try to get a Halloween costume together, I can't think of anything in particular.

So I have been just sitting here all day at this computer. Watching a loooot of youtube.

Uggghh...

I've been entertaining myself by complaining about stupid things. I like doing that. With the head cold, the things I come up with to complain about are even more pointless and silly.

I kind of want to do something, but at the same time, I don't think I'll get better if I push myself too much today. Maybe I'll find a movie to watch. I watched Something Wicked this Way comes last night because I finished the book yesterday and I just happened to stumble upon the fact there was a movie. I liked the book --a lot-- better.

"achoo!" says my nose. I do not appreciate that comment.

"How dare you, nose!" I say and I slap it across it's face.

Except not.

The "Something Wicked This Way Comes" movie is from the 80s- for some reason quite a few of the movies I've watched lately are from that decade. I am not quite sure why. I guess I just don't care if a movie is old or not when I choose to watch it.

Where is this blog going?????

I want to post funny blogs again... or whatever those older blogs were. I almost spelled "blogs" as "brogs"- so Japanese. X(

I can't decide if I feel more gross or bored. -_-

About ambition and the like

2009-10-14T23:20:00.001-07:00

I had a well written blog in my head just seconds ago, I even started using Google Notebook so that I could write it down before it goes away again. The ideas are still there but the structure has pretty much gone to hell. Let's see what I can reassemble.

Hm... it seems a lot of things seem structured in my mind, but aren't quite so when expressed to other people.

I have a lot of ideas about what I want to achieve in life, but I don't really know for sure if I can actually do these things. I don't know exactly where my limits are- I just know that day to day I go from believing I could conquer the Earth blindfolded to wondering how it is that I am breathing without choking.

Both of those extremes were exaggerated, of course.

(Although I'll admit to having choked on my own saliva a few times... *sigh*)

But I try to hang on to the same goals no matter how I am feeling about myself. Sometimes I feel like it would be easier to just change my goals to something easier- that way the thoughts that plague me at times that I can't be all that I want to be would not be a problem. I could do this, but the high ambition, high confidence side of me would never be happy with it.

That side wants to keep moving up until it finds just the right place. It does not want to stop at the ceilings set by the not-so-confident side or by other people. It wants to stop only when it reached the top of it's ability to climb- wherever that may be.

That side wants to prove the not-so-confident side and the not-so-confident people wrong.

"Wait..." someone might ask "People who are not so confident in you?"

I am not sure why I tend to believe that people don't see me as qualified. I have really no basis to believe this other than silly things like bullying during childhood. I can really only say that I think that part of the assumption is based on the confident/insecure dynamic in my mind. Something in my mind wants to prove itself and it somehow only makes sense to me that I would be proving something to someone else.

It helps me push myself along to believe that I need to prove something, but having a few choice people in my life to overwhelm me with their confidence in me is great for balancing that out. That's pretty much the way my life is now and I think it works well for me.

People also inspire me with their own strength and ambition- regardless if it's something that I could do easily, I still really admire people who keep trying at something even if it's difficult for them. I worked hard as a student, but I never quite had any challenges that seemed to impossible to solve.

Or maybe I have- I don't really take a lot of time to reflect on my achievements usually because I'm usually thinking about the next thing by then. As a consequence, I tend to think pretty little of them. They're just steps and there are large number of them ahead. Yes, it's possible I have been challenged like that, but I still think that I haven't. I -think- I would remember it.

Anyway--- the people who keep trying at things make me want to find and conquer my own blocks, but at the same time, they make me afraid that I would instead walk away from said "blocks" and pretend they don't exist. I get discouraged and afraid of failure. I am a pro at talking myself into things and I am even better at talking myself out of things. It's possible that I might just come across the road block and decide it's just not worth trying to pass and then coming up with a different route. I know what I might whine, complain, and consider giving up, but I like to think that in the end I would suck it up and give a good effort. Then, if I fail... be a vegetable for a day, a week, or until I can come up with a new plan.

Either way, I guess I'll be fine. Even the part of me that lacks confidence doesn't believe I will ever be down and out for long.

I have a bit of a dislike for metaphors, so I am inwardly cringing as I continue to rely on them in this blog entry.
I also don't like how my vocabulary seems to have escaped me at many points while typing this. I'm feeling a tad too stubborn to consult a thesaurus, so sorry for that.
I kind of feel like I am reiterating the same things over and over so, I think I'll end this entry here.

hats are for everybody

2009-10-14T00:11:00.003-07:00

I want to build something with gigantic Styrofoam blocks. Curse adulthood.

I got an idea from a vlog I watched some time ago although I am not sure how well it would work for me. Basically, you go through the alphabet and write a blog about something you like starting with each letter of the alphabet.

Maybe I'll try that. I've been tired lately, so it's been hard to even get myself to start listing things.

Gravity seems to be working on overdrive today, I saw someone trip and/or fall for the 5th or 6th time today. It's a wonder I am still standing.

Obviously, this was a boredom induced blog, but I am really too tired to really make it into anything.

I just want to get myself back into this... even if it means posting some really uninteresting and probably hard to read entries.

Bethany, sometimes you make me want to join Livejournal again. Weird.

(all of my blogs this month have had titles starting with "H")

Here and there

2009-10-11T07:53:00.002-07:00

My brain was basically filled to the brim with blog ideas for most of the day today, then I finally get around to logging in here and I draw a complete and total blank.

I would I could telepathically blog. Like if I could use a computer in my head anytime, anywhere.

Wow, I think I just chose my super power of choice. Screw teleportation! :)

It's been an uneventful weekend- other than a party I went to on Friday evening, I've spent pretty much the entire time sitting around at home, doing laundry, cleaning, etc. Tomorrow, I am planning on going to the city and shopping a little bit- it's a holiday, after all.

Tomorrow is also the Ijuin town sports festival, but (like last year) no one thought to invite me for anything, so I don't see any reason to go. So, I think I will go shopping tomorrow instead. Believe me, it will be a lot more appropriate for "Heath and Sports Day" than what I did last year- I spent the entire day in front of my computer.

The weather has been absolutely wonderful lately- I know I need to enjoy it while I still can. It's going to get very, very cold again soon, after all. The sky has been a pretty amazing blue color and the clouds have been awe inspiring (this, of course, coming from someone who LOVES clouds.)

Best of all, it's sweater weather. Sometimes I can even get away with wearing a light jacket or even just a short sleeved shirt- I LOVE weather that allows that much flexibility.

(Of course, I do, I'm from Salinas/Monterey...)

Sadly, it won't last.

My mood has been kind of odd these days, I've been feeling pretty good about myself appearance-wise- I've been experimenting with make up and just having fun with it. I honestly don't feel like I really need it, though. On the other hand (this is the odd part), my overall confidence is not exactly gone, but I'd say it's at least been tipped over onto it's side. My confidence feels a little ill, I guess. My Japanese flute, which I can barely put down after picking up usually hadn't been touched in days (I started feeling like I'll never get good at it) and just thinking about grad school is kind of freaking me out.

I'm still going to the gym across the street from my apartment- maybe not as frequently as I should be, but I do enjoy it. It's just across the street, so it's not a big deal to decide randomly to push myself to get over there at around 8:30 pm and exercise for about an hour. Having an ipod, of course, makes this 10 times easier.

This blog has been just about everywhere, so here's a random tidbit-

Apparently every blue eyed person can be traced genetically to one person who lived less then 10,000 years ago.

Hello window

2009-10-03T08:30:00.004-07:00

Who reads this blog now?

I guess it's hard to remember to check when I update so rarely.

I posted kind of an odd sequence of tweets. It's funny how tweets are ALMOST like blogs, but they still lack so much. They're almost meaningless after you forget the details or stories behind them. So, here's a little meaning-

"Here's to that flaky thing we like to call self confidence."

Just a little while ago, I felt ready to attack grad school and eager to use it to learn all I need to move onto the next thing in my life. I have high aspirations. But lately, I've been doubting my ability. As bad as it could be, it won't make me give up. If I want to deserve something enough, I strive to become the kind of person that deserves it. Just... boy, I miss the confidence when it decides to take a break.

"Here's to traits you can always rely on- sense of humor and flexibility."

People exist in this world who lack those things... I've met people like that. I wonder how they can possibly cope with the crazy things in life. I don't know if I could do without them.

"Here's to this body that doesn't ever seem to do what I want it to do... yet it has done everything I've needed it to do."

Feeling sick, sore, and then having that-time-of-the-month. Oh, and acne doesn't exactly make me feel great about my image. I'm not as strong as I would like to be and it's hard for me to sit in proper Japanese "seiza" with my legs folded under my body. But my body did a marvelous job fighting off whatever I was suffering from earlier this week, it would be scary if I didn't have a time-of-the-month somehow, and breathing, eating, and walking seem to be doing just fine.

"Here's to annoying people with consecutive tweets."

I seem to think what comes out of my brain like this is interesting. I take care to remind myself fairly frequently that what is meaningful for me isn't necessarily what's meaningful for others. In terms of being meaningful, this was a really, REALLY meaningless tweet. :)

...I'm up too late tonight.

this blog starts in mid-sentence.

2009-09-29T23:43:00.003-07:00

And just as she decided to get over herself and not worry about things while in this kind of emotionally crazed state, her body finally decided to adjust to the cold temperature of the room. The muscles became less tense and the body relaxed a little more.

The eyes still feel kind of sad, but still it was a somewhat miraculous recovery.

The Interview

2009-09-09T23:54:00.002-07:00

Yesterday, I asked Bethany and Krystina to interview me via Google Documents.

The questions are in a bit of a funny order. I was going to organize them a bit better, but then decided not to bother with that.

Here it is--

Krystina Question: fav. class in school?

My current favorite class in school would have to be English- because that is the subject that I teach and therefore the only class I attend in any of my 6th schools. But, along with the Japanese lessons, I started taking Japanese dance with a bunch of Kagoshima city ALT girls. It's fun.

Bethany Question: What classes are you teaching right now? Any cute antics by your kids?

Well, most of my classes these days are showing the video I made from my trip to California last July. It's interesting to watch their reactions.

Bethany asked: Well I mean, what grades are you teaching?

Krystina asked: or what's your favorite grade to teach?

Mostly middle school, but tomorrow I have elementary school 3rd graders. We're going to play Duck Duck Goose. My favorite grade to teach depends on how tired I am and how much I want my arms to be a jungle gym.

My arms are sunburned, so jungle gym is a no right now.

Bethany question: Who's Yacht did you go on the other day?

The Yacht event was a sort of international event put on by a city up North from here. I forget the name of the owner of the ship I was in... there were maybe 10 ships total.

Krystina question: What is the absolute worst thing you have to do as an ALT? And what got sunburned?

Try to get conversation out of painfully silent kids. I can't think of anything else now. At least that I can say here.

I got light sunburns on my arms, shoulders, and legs- but the most vicious is the one on my right shoulder. It's probably my worst sun burn ever.

Krystina question: Favorite food from Japan? Food you miss the most from home? and favorite food from home?

I've been craving tempura. My overall favorite food is, hands down, Mexican food. Was there any doubt? OH! Recently a Brazilian themed bar called Recife in Kagoshima city started having Mexican Mondays and Wednesdays. It's AWESOME!

The cook on those days is actually from Mexico. I had awesome enchiladas a few weeks back.

Bethany Question: How did the Red Rover game go?

Hasn't happened. I put down Duck Duck Goose along with that and let them choose. They chose Duck Duck Goose. That will be tomorrow.

Bethany question: How are the dance classes going?

It's fun. Some of it is pretty challenging, though. Especially because a new part of the dance we learned on Monday includes sitting gracefully on our knees in kimono.

Krystina question: Whats your second favorite color?

When I decide my favorite color is green, my second is blue. When I decide that my favorite is blue, it's green. Otherwise, I have no clue.

I should have said something you wouldn't expect. ;)

Krystina question: favorite computer game?

Ugggh.. my friend Robin has been trying to get me to play the game she's addicted to. She even made me make a character for myself. I don't think it's going to happen, though. I can't even remember what the game is called. She made my character join her... uhh.. what's that called... I'll just say group. So, basically, I'm just going to feed off of the group's resources if anything.

Bethany question: Have the kids liked the video you made?

It's really, really hard to tell. The dancing sea lion part probably blew their minds.

Bethany question: Do they laugh at all? Do they seem to enjoy it?

Yeah, laughter at some points. It depends a lot on how tired they are and now lively the class is. Some of the classes have been really great.

Krystina question: Longer hair or shorter, and red or normal?

Haha. Long-ish medium, naturally brown colored hair.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Open says me

2009-09-09T00:48:00.002-07:00

Life has been pretty great lately. I am not entirely sure what came over me, but lately I've found myself a lot more open to trying new things and it's been a good experience so far.

I've ridden on a yacht, swam in the ocean (and got my foot cut several times on the rocky ocean floor), started taking Japanese dance and shamisen lessons. A few months ago, I probably wouldn't have taken part in any other those things- mostly out of fear of being terrible at them, but I've been finding myself willingly dragging myself to all of them.

I have also began speaking my mind more. I've been an ALT for a year now and I've kept a lot of things that really bothered me to myself- and now I'm talking about it more and to the right people. It's great not to just keep things inside.

On top of all of this, I've made a couple of good friends since coming back from my visit to California.

My second JET year seems so promising that it's making me reconsider returning to the US after this year. Being the indecisive sort that I am, I decided that I will make up my mind about this during winter when we get the re-contracting papers and the cold weather will probably have me at my lowest possible mood-wise. If my 2nd year low is bad, then I can decide whether I want to go through it again in a 3rd year.

Under all of this fun I've been having, I kind of feel like something is bothering me. I've been feeling sensitive- my feelings have been hurt easily, but I've been having equally speedy recoveries. I've also been pretty lazy about things around the apartment. To me, those are signs that something is wrong that I am not paying attention to.

I suppose that's all. Krystina and Bethany interviewed me via Google documents today and I will be posting that at some point (today? tomorrow??), too.

I forgot to give this a title.

2009-08-25T18:18:00.003-07:00

I've been so overtired lately and I am not sure why.
This morning I skipped breakfast because I woke up too late and had to hurry.

On Monday, there was a work related health exam. 3 vials of blood were taken from me for testing and apparently the needle was put in improperly- two days later and my arm is still bruised.

I'm kind of excited because I am going to eat Mexican food for dinner tonight- a bar that's Brazil themed, but owned by a man from England has Mexican food nights every Monday and Wednesday. I guess someone from Mexico who is studying in Kagoshima has been doing that, so I guess it's going to be pretty much as authentic as one can get in Japan.I'm going there with Aya, Eli, and Robin. Robin might not be feeling well, so maybe it will just be me and Aya (and Eli???). Either way, it should be great. :)

I've also been kind of slacking on keeping my apartment clean. I really don't know why- it must have to do with the overall fatigue I've been experiencing this month.

Anyway, I'm really hungry from skipping breakfast. Going to see if the vending machine down stairs has anything semi solid.

California and returning

2009-08-05T19:17:00.002-07:00

My trip to California was all that I expected and even a little better than that.

I've been working on putting together the movie from what I filmed on my camera during my trip. It's fun to relive it a little. Not to mention it gives me something to do.

I had a lot of quality time with family members and a good chunk of fun times with friends (including running around the MPC in the earliest hours of the 31st with the RftW crew.)

I also got to witness an odd little drama unfold due to thrown silverware in a Denny's.

It's been a little hard to be back. Living here with California so fresh in my mind, I notice things that get under my skin more. Like differences in what is acceptable in Japan vs in the US (people are always talking about Americans accidentally being offensive to Japanese, but it works the other way, too), assumptions that I don't understand things, and overall the isolation that comes with those things. It's hard to adapt.

But I do overall enjoy my life here even if it's not perfect. I tell myself over and over that how my life is in California and how it is in Kagoshima are completely different and one can never be the same as the other.

It's comforting to think this way because it helps me accept Japanese life as a completely different thing- outside of the standards I set for US life. On the other hand, it makes me worry that I can never be completely content in either place. One will always be missing aspects of the other.

It's happened almost everyday that one minute I was perfectly happy, feeling as if I am inwardly light and free as a feather. Then someone would say or do something that would put me in a rotten mood. I can't remember if this was standard behavior here before my two weeks in California, but I think it was similar.

I guess I'm overall content in Japan, but I am also a lot more sensitive than I am back in the US (for good reason, I think.) So, I've been playing with the idea of renaming my blog "Real Life Confessions of Happy Bruise"- because I am a cheerful person that doesn't react well to getting "poked at."

I also think that title just might be way too long... :S

Airplane blog vol. 3

2009-08-02T07:15:00.001-07:00

What's it time for?

It's time for Julia's third annual summer midair blog!

Wooooooooooooooooooooooo!

(There is no enthusiasm...)

I am writing this on the final leg of my journey- I already arrived in Japan hours ago, but now I am flying down to Kagoshima. I already tweeted that I am here and everything.

I didn't really want to type this up during the flight over the Pacific because I didn't want to bother getting the bag down just for a blog. :S

I don't mind sacrificing a little more leg room in the domestic flights, so I have the laptop bag with me.

I am so completely tired.

During my long wait for this flight, I calculated how long it has been since I woke up in California and it came out to 30+ hours. Yikes.

(Edit- actually, the total travel time was about 24 hours... I am not sure how I came up with that 30+ number)

I DID sleep on the plane though! Without any assistance from sleeping pills- it wasn't very restful, though. Neck pain and drool (yes, drool) kept waking me up.

Oh joy.

Aren't you glad I feel pressured to write these things for your entertainment?

YOU SHOULD BE GLAD YOU JERKS!!!!!!!!!

My ears are popping. The stewardess is giving out drinks out and I think one of the options is a soup. Yaaaay! I could really use some nice, soothing soup right now.

My throat is bugging me. I am guessing my voice is rather hoarse right now, but I haven't been using it, so I don't know. I figure it's a mixture of the altitude and my fatigue. I can't really even think right now about whether that makes sense.

In fact, I was really impressed that I could spell altitude just now. The spell check is on and everything. There have been a lot simpler words that I have screwed up royally in this blog so far, so the fact I can get "altitude" right is pretty dang awesome.

I should go soon. Gotta get soup. I guess I can keep this on my lap while I drink it and tell you all about it afterward.

But she's not here yet. She's still making her way down the aisle. BRING ME SOUP!

I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING!!

Ok, ok, I am guessing she went to the back of the plane to refill on stuff. Either that or she hates me.

I really want to be home sleeping now.

Anyway, I only have this short flight, a not-so-bad wait for a bus, an hour long-ish bus ride, the short walk home, and the shower that I am still determined to take.

Yay! She was just refilling her cart. Are you relieved? I'm not- I knew it would happen all along.

Don't look at me like that- I did.

DON'T JUDGE ME!

Nonsense comes easily when one is very very tired.

The cart is coming nearer. I'll put the lappy on my lap.

Beef consomme (????????) broth brings me back to LIIIIIIIFEEE!!!!

For now, anyway.

So the cart lady on my side of the plane was totally pwnd by the other cart lady. The cart lady on my side was just a few rows ahead, but the one on the other side asked me what I wanted first. It's kind of unusual for them to take orders from the other side, but maybe I just looked really close to passing out. I have no idea how I look.

This is a blog about drinking broth. It was pretty salty. I'm going to drink some water after I finish this blog.

You know what's crazy? My mom gave me $2 to buy bottled water after I got through security, but I ended up having to use my card because the cheapest I could find was $2.70!! I can't believe how much they abuse the fact that people can't bring water in from outside.

Japanese airports have vending machines just like everywhere else in Japan- I was able to buy a bottle of water for just 110 yen ($1.10 USD) past security. Airport shops in general are much less rip offs in Japan than in the US, I've noticed.

I do really like airports though. The big ones that are confusing are fun to figure out and the small ones are fun to stroll around. It's a hassle to carry so much though.

We got some turbulence and I am extremely tired and wanting water, so I'll end this here.

I'll probably blog about the CA trip. I can't think about that now.

Airport blog

2009-07-18T22:38:00.002-07:00

This is not an airplane blog, but rather an airport blog.

Not written from the sky, but the ground.

Don't be sad, there just might be an airplane blog, too. Either now or on the way back (traditionally, my airplane blogs are on the flight from CA to Japan, so it'll probably be the way back.)

I am delighted right now because Kansai airport has free wireless internet. I didn't expect to be on a computer with internet again until California, so this was a pretty pleasant surprise. Before now, I've only heard of the cool airports that let you use internet for free and I've always wanted to end up at one.

I have over two more hours left to wait for my plane, so I am just hanging out here. I'm trying to figure out how much of my battery I should spare for the flight- but it doesn't really make sense to save lots of battery because, as I have stated in an airplane blog once, "there is no internet in the sky."Probably the only thing I would use this computer for would be to watch something I brought. I think I rememeber seeing some good stuff listed in the "in flight movies" list, so I think I should be ok with that.

Kansai airport is SO WEIRD to me. There are so many other foreigners and they're all speaking English and I don't know them!!!!! I started a conversation with another American woman who was behind me in line just because it was so weird for me to have to there and I wanted to talk to relieve the awkwardness.

....Is it going to be really REALLY strange to be back in the US?

I am hoping this visit to California gives me a bit of an idea of what reverse culture shock will be like next year when I move back.

I can already tell from this experience that it's going to be very sad for me to leave Kagoshima next year.

This is my first boredom induced blog in a while, come to think of it.

Airport blogs are very serious compared to airplane blogs. But equally scattered. Whoopee!

Parking spaces and dinosaurs

2009-07-17T06:07:00.002-07:00

Yeah, it's a two blog night. I just thought of two different things I wanted to type about here.

In my very grumpy blog from the other day, I mentioned that I was told the parking space I thought was mine this entire time at my apartment building isn't actually the one I thought it was.

The next day, I got a letter from the building owners and I could tell that it was on the topic of the parking spaces, so I figured that they were just telling me what I already knew.

But, there seemed to be more to the letter, so I brought it into my Japanese lesson and let my teacher look at it.

It turns out that the space 55 has been erased, so the person who is assigned 55 has been parking in 54 (my actual space). The content of the letter was actually asking me if I had any complaints about my parking space being taken so much. But -I- had just barely learned about that spot the day before, so of course I had no issue with it.

My Japanese teacher called the company that owns my building and found out that the space I've been using (52) is unassigned to anyone. Of course, that's obvious because I've been parking there for almost a year with no complaints. Anyway, I told her to tell them that I would like to continue to park in 52 if that was acceptable and the person assigned to 55 could park in 54.

I don't know many details, actually, but I did get permission to park in 52 for now.

It was a pretty crazy mixup and I thought it was funny that I was asked if I had problems with the person parking in 54 just a day after I first parked there.

Now for the "dinosaurs" part of my post.

I realized recently that I've been making a pretty funny Japanese mistake for months now.

A way to say international exchange in Japanese is "kokusai (international) kouryuu (exchange/interaction).

Instead of "kouryuu", I've been saying "kyouryuu" which, I figured out recently, means "dinosaur".

"International dinosaur"

Giant Dipper

2009-07-17T05:16:00.003-07:00

So, just now, I was just in the middle of my bi-weekly(-esque) nighttime power-walk which is, indeed, turning into a jog little by little.

(Yep, I'm still keeping up on the exercising... all on my own, too. Impressed?)

Anyway, I was walking along and I just happened to look up and immediately notice the Giant Dipper.

I was surprised because I never really casually looked up, noticed, and identified a constellation before. I've noticed them before, but never so quickly and easily. I looked a little more and quickly saw the Little Dipper and Orion's belt (kind of made out the rest of it that constellation, too).

Truthfully, I've never really been able to follow the idea of the imaginary lines connecting certain stars to make a picture. At that moment, I could practically see the lines in my mind.

Impressed and inspired by this, I suddenly had tons of energy and ran the rest of the way back to my apartment building.

(Then wrote one of my very rare blogs... *grins*)

As trivial as this is, I want to remember this as a very very cool moment of my life.

It's Friday night, I head back to California on Sunday for a two week visit.

Today

2009-07-13T01:28:00.002-07:00

TMI (Too much information) warning issued. Read at your on risk.

Today sucked and here's why-

1) I woke up at around 2:30 in the middle of the night suddenly because I was incredibly overheated.

2) I woke this morning to find period blood on my sheets so I had to wash them this morning. Fortunately, this also happened yesterday morning, so I was able to do it quickly and easily.

3) I had 4 classes today with 2nd graders. It's been really hot lately and there is no AC in elementary school classrooms- so I had to be energetic while becoming increasingly covered in sweat, hot, and also cramping at times despite motrin that I took.

4) The last class finally ended and I was more than ready to return to the office. I wanted to use the office bathroom because the crouching floor toilets at the elementary school are absolute misery when it's hot, you're sweaty, and it's that time of the month. BUT- I had to wait quite a while to get my car out because it was boxed in. There was some kind of swim meet that no one told me about ahead of time, so parents' cars were blocking the way in every direction.

5) I got back to the office and learned that I was parking in the wrong space at my apartment building all this time. I guess the person from my office accidentally told me the wrong space number. My actual parking space sucks- if I went into more about why this parking space sucks, I would be rambling.

*SIGH*

It'll be nice when this day is over.

Julia ponders intangibility

2009-07-09T23:25:00.003-07:00

From a chat I am having with Krystina--

[15:22] giuliafelix: I wonder if people who can make themselves intangible ever fall through the ground
[15:22] giuliafelix: like you're standing there
[15:22] giuliafelix: and you decide to make yourself intangible
[15:22] giuliafelix: so then you free fall into the ground
[15:22] Kshorsehick: bam!
[15:22] giuliafelix: and you can't get back up
[15:23] giuliafelix: you can't stop the falling by becoming tangible
[15:23] giuliafelix: because then you'd get stuck in the ground
[15:23] Kshorsehick: yeah
[15:23] giuliafelix: so you'd have to keep falling until you reached the surface of the other side
[15:23] giuliafelix: and then make yourself tangible
[15:23] giuliafelix: then you reorient yourself, stand on the ground
[15:24] giuliafelix: and then make yourself intangible
[15:24] giuliafelix: fall through again
[15:24] giuliafelix: and then you're home!

[15:27] giuliafelix: The powers of intangibility only make sense when you can fly.
[15:27] Kshorsehick: oh?
[15:27] giuliafelix: yeah
[15:27] giuliafelix: or else you fall through the ground
[15:27] Kshorsehick: oh

BLOG NEGLECT!!!

2009-06-23T00:27:00.003-07:00

Not sure where the ol' blogging spirit went.

Come to think of it, I think that one of the reasons why I don't update this blog so much is the lack of interactivity involved. I tweet on twitter and I get replies, I talk to people on messenger and (of course) that's a conversation. There isn't really much conversation going on here, I don't think.

I think my blogs in the past had more in the of comment conversations and what-not.

I am not blaming you all, of course.

My arm is very very itchy due to my sunburn from last weekend. I don't know for sure, but I think something is up with my wrist now, too.

I know I've been in a good mood over all these days because songs have been popping into my head a lot lately.

I've been following tweets on twitter from Iranians risking their lives to keep people in other countries updated in what they're going through in their post election chaos. It's crazy what those people are going through these days. Of course, the talk of "martyrs" that's popped up a lot lately kind of freaks me out a little. I know from reading "Persepolis" that this isn't something new to them at all.

I don't know much about who would be best to lead Iran and that's not really my business, but I do hope that their struggle for a real democracy eventually comes to something. Reading the tweets, it's impressive how much courage these people have. Who really knows if everyday Americans have this kind of courage because it's never been tested.

Boy, this blog is jumping around just about everywhere. Probably mostly because I am not exactly writing it all in one sitting or with any focus whatsoever.

(That last sentence was also written with absolutely no focus...)

language

2009-06-07T22:52:00.002-07:00

It doesn't seem like written word is coming quite as easily to me these days.

Is that a sign of the deterioration of my native language?

I seem to be expressing myself with pictures these days because I started a doodle blog that I share with other people.

Hopefully this is just a phase, it's scary to think that composing in English is getting to be difficult.

Broken windshield

2009-05-28T07:01:00.002-07:00

Today I returned back to the teacher's room from 4th period a little earlier than usual. I was relieved that the class finished early because those 2nd graders were a very rowdy bunch and I kind of wanted a little bit of recovery time before rejoining the same kids for lunch.

No sooner than when I walked in the room with my mind on washing my hands and helping the teacher set up the lunch trays, I was asked to go to the principal's office. The principal started talking to me about my car and I assumed at first that I parked somewhere wrong or something.

When it dawned on me that what he was trying to explain to me was that my windshield was broken, I was really surprised.

It turned out, from what I understood, a student was trying to hit something in a tree with a stone and it accidentally fell on my windshield instead.

I wasn't mad at the student because kids make careless mistakes all of the time.

Anyway, they called the student in to come in and apologize- which he did. But then, the principal, vice principal, and his teacher were all trying to get him to tell us what exactly happened. This poor kid obviously was really upset and he could hardly say anything. I felt really bad for him. I mean, my windshield will be repaired and it will be no big deal for me in the soon to be future, but I think this situation will bother the kid a lot more.

The whole situation was entirely uncomfortable to me- witnessing and having this child's guilt directed towards me as if I were angry about it and, a little while later, all of his mother's apologizes.

Luckily I don't have to pay for anything. The repair place has my car until Saturday or Sunday and they let me borrow a car in the meantime.

Man, today was a crazy, crazy day.

New title

2009-05-21T06:05:00.002-07:00

I was kind of hesitant to put a Japanese title on this blog. Especially since I don't think anyone who reads this knows Japanese.

But this has a story.

It was last Tuesday and I was in Hotto Motto, a bento place, buying dinner because I had a Japanese lesson later on and I don't have a lot of time to get dinner together on those days.

So I ordered and then, as always, looked at all of the ads while I was waiting for my food.

I'd seen this ad before many, many times, but I hadn't noticed before.

It advertised a new bento meal as "390円のしあわせ," which basically means "390 yen happiness." I decided it was funny on many levels, especially in that it sounds like a title of a Japanese book or a drama. I was thinking I wanted to use it as a title for something and decided to stick it here in the meantime.

So that's the story. No more confusion! Yay!

Power walk

2009-05-16T07:14:00.003-07:00

So I started exercising recently. This was inspired by a number of things.

One of those things was standing in a dressing room trying on a shirt and realizing that sitting around sick most of Golden Week gave me a little more of a tummy than what I had before. I've actually first realized that I had a little bit of one senior year of high school and sort of wanted to actively try to get rid of it since then.

Umm... wow, there were other things that inspired this, but I can't remember what they are right now. I totally listed them to Bethany the other day via AIM, but it's gone now.

Anyway, these are the things that I thought of-

1) This time I will start easy: My first semester at CSUMB, I had decided that for my fitness goal for my health class, I would take up jogging. But, unfortunately, that was probably one of the most unhealthiest periods of my life. I wasn't eating very well and I was under lots of stress. I felt really dizzy and sick after trying and I couldn't keep it up. It was really discouraging. I realize now that I was aiming too high, too quickly, and at the wrong time. When I exercised at Curves about a year later, it was really nice because I could pretty much pace myself however I wanted.

2) I don't need to spend money: Because I am starting easy, there is no need for me to get a gym membership or to buy any equipment. I can just do things that I can do easily in and around my apartment building. I will spend money on my habits I have, rather than spend money on habits I WANT to have like many other people do.

So with this healthy and realistic mindset, I started exercising.

I started last week and so far it's been 2 times a week. I aim for everyday except for the day I have my Japanese lesson, but naturally feeling icky and having plans get in the way. I figure that 6 times a week is a tad too much, but if I intend to do that much, but allow myself little excuses not to, I'll average 3-4 times.

Like I said before, I'm start off really easy.

First of all, I go for a power walk around the neighborhood of building. I usually do this after dark because I kind of just want to exercise and not think about being "the foreigner". Plus, I've already preferred working out later in the day because I don't worry about saving energy for the rest of the day. Plus, I don't mind sweating because I will jump into my nightly shower right after.

I figure this power walk will turn into a jog eventually, but I want to make sure that I can actually jog the whole distance without tiring myself out first. If I let that happen, it would all be pointless, right?

I get home and I do crunches (sit ups for wimps) and then I do a wimpy version of push ups (my arms need work!). Then I stretch for a little while and then run in place until the song I am listening to ends. Then I enjoy a nice shower.

Sounds good, right? :) I feel good about it.

The 3～4 days I liked House M.D.

2009-05-07T23:57:00.004-07:00

I am not really sure how/why that happened.

I don't remember the exact day, but it was near the beginning of the five day weekend I had from May 2nd to the 6th. Knowing that there will be no new episodes of The Office for a while in my not-too-far future, I decided to take a look at other shows that are currently popular.

And I guess that's how it happened. I found myself watching House M.D.

I was really enjoying the episodes I was watching, but the show really disturbed me at the same time.

The patients in this show have like the most disturbing, unreal illnesses known to mankind.

So I kept watching episodes online of this show, but I kept wanting to stop because it was making me think of the gross things that happened to the patients.

Then, on Tuesday, I watched the new episode.

I was relieved to find that I was completely unamused by the show.

"YES!" I thought, "the spell is broken!"

I am not going to allow myself to watch medical shows anymore. Except maybe episodes of Scrubs (I heard that show ended, btw).

I don't remember disliking high school...

2009-05-06T22:45:00.003-07:00

I have a notebook for a specific purpose. Well, actually, it's more of a folder because it fell apart.

Strange opening sentence to this blog, but I couldn't think of a better way to start it.

I wrote three pages in it as a semi-troubled high school senior in 2004. Then I forgot about it, found it again, and wrote a two page reply in 2006. The same thing happened again in 2008. The interesting thing about reading these pages over time is that every time it's a little more interesting. Each time the way of thinking and the setting becomes more foreign to me.

I read the notebook/folder last night trying to take my mind off of crazy things that I was obsessing over. There was one part of my 2004 entry that kind of surprised me. I wrote something along the lines of "if I have to be in high school much longer, I'll claw my eyes out". It surprised me because I don't remember disliking high school that much. It also surprises me that I don't recall finding that part strange in 2006 or 2008.

Maybe my vague memory of what my impressions were as a high school student have been transformed a little by the fact that I teach now. *gigantic shrug*

Did I dislike high school? Obviously, I was kind of tired of it near the end, but I don't quite remember that either. Was it all having to do with friend drama or was that just part of it?

Knowing me, the fact that I don't remember just means that it probably sucked.

:D

"Except it's my mind"

2009-04-27T20:59:00.007-07:00

So I had a really weird dream last night.

--------------

The beginning part, I was at some kind of bar. I was hanging around with different people and they kept leaving. I thought it was strange, but then I saw Aya's dad sitting at a table and he said that it was understandable that they would leave.

So I started to walk home. While walking, I decided I should run for some reason. I began to run and this poor, tiny old woman thought I was chasing her. So, the old woman took off away from me.

I felt really bad about it. I didn't like this woman thinking I was scary and making her feel like she had to run from me. In my dream, she had also run from me on my way to the bar, too.

But even though I felt bad about her feeling chased, I continued running. I was unintentionally running after this poor old woman for a while, until she hid behind trash cans. I pretended not to see her and ran by.

So I was still running through this city... town... place and I saw some kids that were about middle school aged. They also ran from me.

It was dark and I was hurriedly trying to get back home. I was actually nudging people who just happened to be walking out of the way. I didn't like how I was pushing these people, but I had sort of a sense of urgency. I think I felt kind of chased, too. I think I thought I was going to be arrested for something I didn't do.

I arrive back home- but it's nowhere like anywhere that I've really lived. It's was a very very small place. My room was only big enough for a couch and a mattress on the floor. Two people, the older sister of my childhood friend Charlene and a little girl, were there. One of them said "How are you?" I smiled, stood on the mattress on my room and I said something along the lines of "That's what I wanted all along." Although in my mind, I wasn't sure if that were true.

I consider this next part to be a whole other dream because it doesn't really fit with the other one. It MIGHT have taken place at the bar in the first dream, but I am not sure.

So, I was at a party and someone (I -think- Sam's friend Joe) said he was going to finally call someone. Everyone was really happy because apparently he was due to call this person for a very long time. So, we all got together to take a commemorative photo.

Then, the world became like twitter and I was interacting with everyone around me with a keyboard and typing @ before the names of people I was interacting with.

This next part, I know for sure comes at the end-

Someone, Dan, I think, asked me what my occupation is. I thought for a bit and as I was waking up from the dream I replied jokingly "prostitution, except it's my mind."

And then woke up wondering just what kind of job that would be.

I was startled by this dream for some reason, so I couldn't get back to sleep until I went to the bathroom and read a little.

-----------

I think it's weird that everyone in my dream except for Dan was someone close to someone I know very well.

What do you think brain prostitution is?? (haha)

Idea

2009-04-23T00:16:00.004-07:00

So I just had sort of a fun idea while chatting with Bethany.

People are always being asked weird questions, right?

My idea is that whoever wants to can keep a list (on their cell phone or whatever) of the top 5 weirdest questions they are asked between now and a year from now.

In a year, we can compare notes.

I'll put a spiffy countdown thing-y to April 23rd, 2010 on my blog when I get home from work.

Who's in? Comment!

:D

2009-04-19T04:07:00.001-07:00

Jon Stewart says it and says it well.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

Nationwide Tax Protests

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Economic Crisis

Political Humor

Ow

2009-04-14T19:02:00.001-07:00

I am writing this on one of the school computers. I can't get onto blogger.com from there, so I'm testing an igoogle app.

So, yesterday I was rushing to get out the door to work and I accidentally scraped my elbow on a wall in my room.

(My walls are not exactly friendly to touch.)

It wasn't until halfway into the day when I realized that it was weird that my elbow met the wall in the first place. What -was- I doing?

So basically it was just another day in the life.

This is NOT Hamtaro!

2009-04-11T08:01:00.013-07:00

The reason why I put it off was NOT because I didn't want to take care of it.

Arg, no, I had a slightly better excuse than that.

Let me start at the beginning.

About a month or so ago, I began finding little black things on the ground in my room. My first thought was that there was a mouse somewhere.

I asked Bethany over Instant Message if she thinks I have a mouse on my hands. She told me that they scurry about and they're not quiet about it. I heard no scurrying.

Knowing I had guests coming, I decided to keep my place clean as I could and try to put off this issue. Fortunately, I didn't notice any sign of rodents at all during both of the visits except for once just day or so before my father left.

I asked him whether he thought there was a mouse.

He point around the apartment saying basically "If there were a mouse you see (blah blah blah) here and (blah blah blah) here." My apartment showed none of the signs that he spoke of.

I was hesitant to get people involved because, well, I don't like the idea of being the crazy delusional girl who starts a big ruckus for no reason whatsoever. I wanted to be absolutely certain that there is, indeed, a mouse or mice in my apartment.

A few nights after my mom's visit ended was the absolute WORST.

My entire apartment REEKED of rodent. I wanted to at least open the window, but Sakurajima erupted earlier and the air in Ijuin was polluted with ash.

I stood next to my window pondering "rodent smell or ash? rodent smell or ash?" before picking ash. I left the window open until it simply got too cold and I ended up shutting it.

The next day, I told my office. My supervisor and I went and bought a mousetrap.

Mousetraps in Japan are, strangely, not the kind that snap shut and kill the mice very very quickly, instead the Japanese rely on trapping the mouse with stickiness. I bought these little boxes that can be assembled with sticky goo on the inside. I set them up in my apartment and I went out today hoping that they would see it as a chance to come out of hiding.

I came home and no mice in the two traps I set.

I sniffed and smelled no rat smell. I checked the floors in my room and there were no new unpleasant signs of rodents. I wondered at that moment if I were delusional.

I DID leave my window open for my apartment to air out while I was shopping, so now with the window shut, the smell is kind of returning. It's not as overpowering of a smell as it was the other night, but at least it means that there really is a mouse here and I am not insane.

I just want the stupid mouse/mice to get caught already so that I can move on.

I've been playing with the idea of hiring some kind of cleaning service after I get rid of the mice so that I can feel more confident about the sanitation of my apartment again.

Come to think of it, I've never been 100% sure about it, so professional cleaners would probably help that a lot too.

Oh, a random side note (if you've bothered to read all of this).

Adding to my list of electronics that I thought were going to blow up:

My microwave. (a few days ago)

Thanks for working through that one with me on AIM, Danny, if you read this. (haha)

Oh, and tonight I thought my water heater was going to blow up (I know, we've been through this one before!) It was making creepy beeping sounds. I turned off my hot water and then turned it on again and the beeping didn't happen again. Weird.

What is there to say?

2009-04-08T17:27:00.003-07:00

Blogs came so much more easily when I was in college.

The desire to blog just hasn't been present. Maybe it's time to give it a break?

I'm not quite ready to give up yet, though.

Part of the reason probably is the fact I've been using twitter. My random daily thoughts usually end up here. I'm pretty good at condensing what I want to say to under 140 characters.

So... what do I post here?

I have some time on my hands, so I'm going to look over some old entries.

Back

2009-04-05T16:36:00.002-07:00

So I am back at work now.

I took my mom to where she could get on a bus to Kagoshima airport.

Now I have to come up with something new to look forward to... :)

Anyway, I haven't posted here a lot because I've been busy preparing for, showing around, and cleaning up after guests.

I had a chance to see a lot of really cool places not too far from here and now I feel like I know my town and Kagoshima city a lot better. I used to be really hesitant to use buses in the city, but now I feel like I can do so confidently.

I decided I am going to write about nearby touristy places in my next Julia in Japan blog.

Last night after we ate dinner in Kagoshima city, my mother and I lured Aya over to my apartment with the invitation to eat some cake we bought earlier. We ended up spending about 2 hours (seemed like it!) pondering the earth's orbit, the speed of planes, and the lapse of time.

My mom has been wondering how it is that some people can see the sunrise twice when flying to Japan from the US. It's really, REALLY complicated. The more you think about it, the more it doesn't make sense.

Let me know if you have any ideas. I am going to be posting pictures from our long discussion on facebook and I'll provide explanation of what we got so far. :D

We were laughing a lot, it was a really good time.

Anyway, back to "real life" now.

I've got a dull work week ahead of me, but it's April now and I am looking forward to the fresh new school year.

I felt sad saying good bye to my mom, but really I am feeling energized, happy, and ready to go thanks to her visit.

The start of a beautiful friendship

2009-03-16T05:25:00.001-07:00

If only all friendships were like this.

I wish I had a friend to count things while I eat them.

(alternative caption- The Inspiration for Weight Watchers)

Word.

2009-03-15T23:09:00.002-07:00

I am really not very good at writing stories. I can come up with tons of ideas that no one has ever heard of before, but I simply lack the ability to describe things well enough to do the things I come up with justice. I can describe moods, feelings, and thought processes pretty well, but physical descriptions escape me even in real life.

I should team up with someone who is really good at writing, but not very creative.

That is, if I wanted to write stories.

Roar.

By the way, my apartment looks pretty great right now. :)

whitengog

2009-03-11T16:53:00.003-07:00

This blog's title came from careless cell phone spelling. Sorry if it means something distasteful in Dutch or something... *gigantic shrug*

So the other night I had kind of a crazy dream.

In this dream, I lived with my mom in a really big house. I guess we were rich or something. Anyway, we had a private chef.

This chef, by the way, was Arnold Schwarzenegger (....of course.)

But I didn't get along well with Arnold the Chef at all.

In the dream, I had a small upstairs kitchen of my own.

I opened the cupboard and found dirty dishes. Angry, I found Chef Arnold to give him a piece of my mind.

It turned out, he did it because he was angry at me for cooking.

I, of course, thought this was INSANE, so I disagreed with him.

Then the guy pushed me.

So I went to my mom to get her to either fire Chef Arnold or demote him to just dish washing duty. My mom knew that was going on, but whenever we tried to talk about it more fully, Chef Arnold would show up. So we went for a walk.

....That was pretty much it.

Weird, huh? (haha)

Now for random Julia updates---

1) Last night, I ordered a mac! It's going to be fun to have a nice, new, snazzy, not-broken computer.

2) I've been struggling with my taxes. Well, the taxes itself worked out just fine, but the website (H&R Block) is giving me errors. It's driving me crazy. Anyway, I wrote a question on Yahoo! Answers about it and actaully got a reply from someone from H&R block! It was a really pleasant surprise that someone from that company would find my question and answer it. Sadly, though, none of her solutions worked. I tried emailing her, but I haven't gotten any responses. Maybe she's only supposed to do Yahoo! Answers for free. I'll write up a new question and maybe she or someone else can give me more suggestions.

3) I went to the dentist last weekend and I talked to him about ways that my teeth can be whitened. He suggested something would put paste on and put over my teeth every night. I am going to be getting that this Saturday. I hope it works.

4) On the eye front, allergies are still bugging them, but the allergy drops help a lot.

5) I have less than a week now to prepare for the first wave of company at my apartment.

Where does 10 pm go?

2009-03-03T15:54:00.003-08:00

Because getting up in the morning for work isn't getting any easier, I've been trying to get myself to go to bed earlier.

My ideal plan to get physically to bed around 10:15 or so, put lotion on my hands (1), and read while waiting for the lotion to dry... absorb... (whateveritdoes).

So, around 10 or so, I drag myself off the computer. I'm already wearing what I intend to sleep in. I just need to do a few things before I go to sleep (like brush my teeth and set my alarms(2)). I finish those things and I glance at the clock.

It's suddenly about 10:45 and I wonder "how did that happen?!"

I'm pretty sure 10 pm is the fastest hour of the day. ;)

(1)- I put lotion on my hands NIGHTLY but the skin still broke and bled last week. *gigantic shrug*
(2)- Yes, I set two alarms every of every work morning. I figure just in case one of them doesn't work. The first alarm really actually serves as an alert to me that the second alarm will be going off 10 minutes later. Whether that's beneficial or not, I really don't know.

(I honestly don't know why I wrote this blog entry like this...)

My eyes are itchy...

2009-03-01T16:08:00.003-08:00

...and the blogs just keep on coming.

:)

Actually, the day of my last entry was almost a two blog entry day. These things certainly come in spurts, don't they?

Ok, so I am not 100% sure that last sentence made sense.

My head cold is all better. I am really glad it didn't get into my lungs like a cold I had before. It drove me crazy how long I was coughing after I was sick and how everyone around me thought I was still sick because of it.

I went to the eye doctors yesterday because they've been bothering me a lot lately. He looked at my eyes. There are no infections and there is no more big problem with dryness.

The problem -now- with my eyes is allergies.

I have mixed feelings about this outcome. On one side, it means that once the pollen dies down, I might finally have eyes that don't bother me again. On the other hand, since it's seasonal allergies, it'll probably be back next year.

But if the allergy eye drops do what they're supposed to do, then that shouldn't be a problem either.

I am not against the idea of being able to wear contacts in summer, fall, and winter and have a pretty nifty pair of glasses (like now) to wear during the spring.

So, eye-wise, thinks are looking up.

No pun intended.

....

Speaking of things that aren't funny-

What's big, red, cheerful, destructive and turning 2 years old today (Monday)?

(There was a minor update on that site that I posted the other day. Whether the celebration of the terrible twos will bring a bigger update is not yet known to me.)

It's March! This is going to be an eventful month (as will be the beginning of April).

Right now, I ought to be looking into touristy Kagoshima things.

Gobly gook

2009-02-24T18:23:00.002-08:00

"Maybe it'll mean I'll blog more. :)"

It's been about 9 days since I posted that sentence. I guess I haven't really been posting more.

Anyway, my excuse these past few days is a head cold (I wrote "cold head" before). Before that? Well, I don't know.

This week, I had trouble with my office internet. That was finally fixed today when I spoke up about. I felt bad about it though, getting people to stop their work to fix my internet when they KNOW that I don't use the internet for work related purposes.

Out of complete and utter boredom on Monday, I opened up a word document and just started writing whatever came to my head.

I wrote things like-

"Roar, I’m not doing anything and I am not even progressing at doing nothing. Yes, I just roared. I decided to speak dinosaur. I am fluent in dinosaur."

and...

"Woo! I am almost on the third page. The third page! I know, I am repeating myself like I am channeling the two unicorns from Charlie the Unicorn. We’re going on an adventure, Charlie! Yeah, Charlie, an adventure! We’re on a bridge, Charlie! It’s a magical leoplorodon Charlie. By the way, I don’t know how to spell leoplorodon. The word document tells me I misspelled the word, but it has no suggestions. Worthless piece of junk! I broke my spell check on my laptop during finals fall semester 2006. I was taking both a Japanese pop culture class and a Mayan civilizations class. I was writing two papers for those classes and I was adding so many words to the dictionary (not to mention all of the jibberish I used to add just out of boredom). So, the dictionary ran out of space. Isn’t that amazing. I bet you never heard of someone managing to break his or her spell check."

And then I got bored and started writing lyrics entirely out of memory.

I think the song "No Air" is funny because sometimes in the song, they sing something that sounds like "eh ah" instead of the word "air". Anyway, this is what I wrote-

“Tell me how I’m supposed to breathe with no eh-ah. Can’t live can’t breathe with no eh-ah. It’s how I feel when I know you ain’t neh-ah. No air no air. Tell me how somethingaboutwater so deep. Tell me how are you gonna be without me. If you ain’t here I just can’t breathe, there’s no air, no air. No eh-ah! Eh-ah.”

;)

I am very good at both intentionally and unintentionally messing up song lyrics.

Does anyone have any requests?

I still have a head cold (almost typed "cold head" again) and I can't think.

conversation

2009-02-15T16:24:00.002-08:00

This is a example conversation I was given to say with a teacher in front of students on Friday.

A: Hi ____? How are you?
B: I'm fine thanks. And you?
A: Me too, thanks!
B: (By the way,) what do you want to be?
A: I want to be a teacher.
B: I see.
A: What do you want to be?
B: I want to be a tennis player.
A: Feel so good.

What happened? Did B suddenly start massaging A or... something...?????

I guess I'll talk to the teacher and we'll change it to "That's great!" or something that makes a lot more sense. :)

My fresh, new world full of pollen.

2009-02-15T16:02:00.003-08:00

Today, somehow, the world seems a fresher, newer, and somehow a lot better than it has been in a very long time.

Sitting in this office, I feel in a lot better of a mood here than I have in a very long time.

Although, truthfully, today is looking like it will be what would usually be my least favorite kind of work day here. Still- I feel so much lighter today than usual.

Whatever this is now, I really REALLY want to stick with it.

Maybe it'll mean I'll blog more. :)

I'm wondering now- why was I so angry and upset for such a long time?

I logged on AIM a little while ago so that I could share my good mood with Krystina. I figure with her usual availability on AIM during my work hours, she usually ends up hearing the worsts of my bad moods. Like a very awesome friend, she listens to them. :)

But, I think she's still enjoying her vacation. Oh well.

Both Krystina and Sam were on planes on Friday the 13th. Isn't that crazy?

I just realized that I drank my entire morning green tea on my desk without noticing it.

OK, focusing again.

Yesterday, I was in my extra room trying to work out bedding for having people over next month and I realized "hey, how should I expect to have other people SLEEP in here, when I don't like to be in here for more than 5 minutes.

It's true. though, because I hardly even use the room, I often forget that it even exists. Months ago, I had a dream that someone moved into that room without me knowing it and it disturbed me because I had almost completely forgotten that room at the time.

So yesterday, I started working on trying to make it livable. For one thing, I left the window open most of the day and then put in an air freshener near the end of the day to get rid of the stuffiness.

Yesterday was an excellent day to do something about stuffiness and air ciculation, because for some reason, I had some kind of hypersensitivity to it yesterday. I got into my car and thought it was too stuffy, too. So, for the first time since I got the car, I kept the windows open while driving (I never really did that with my cars in the US either.)

Maybe the stuffiness in my car and house was what was wearing me out?

Anyway, Spring seems to have come early and the pollen levels are high. It probably would have been more ideal if I decided to become a fan of opening windows BEFORE the entire outside world became something I am allergic to. Of course, it was freezing before that. *gigantic shrug*

Maybe it was the cold that had me down...

Oh yeah, one last thing- this month I pay my last car payment! Woo hoo!

An open letter

2009-02-06T04:09:00.004-08:00

Dear Krystina,

As you are aware, when it comes to dear friends, you are certainly one of my dearest.

Which is why I believe that I have discovered a new brand of cruelty when I looked at my facebook requests and found this---

Yes, an invite from you to add a "Best Friends" app.

Now, if anyone ever asked me if I consider you to my one of my bests, I would definitely, without hesitation say "yes."

But THIS is a Facebook application.

I feel guilt eating at my very soul every time I reject an application invite for something promoting a worthy cause like world hunger or global warming or telling me that someone was nice enough to send a little virtual gift my way.

I bet the picture is going to be small. Let's discuss the wording of this invite.

"Hey, I added you to my Best Friends because you are important to me and I want to receive updates on your status updates, new photos, and birthday. Could you do me a favor and add this application and add all your best friends too, so we can find out which ones we have in common!"

The button to confirm the request reads: "Sure, I'll be your best friend".

.........

It's like if I decline or ignore the request, I'm saying we're not best friends.

That is so WRONG!

My question to you, my friend, is "WHY?"

WHY?????

How did this vile application with it's horrible guilt ridden request wording coerce you into playing into it's evil, EVIL scheme?

So, with that said, I am going to ignore that application request. Not decline- ignore.

But know that I am doing it for the sake of all that is sanity, friendship, and not promoting the facebook application insanity.

Your friend,
Julia

(Of course this is to be taken lightly. I actually had a hard time keeping it as serious as it was because I was enjoying writing it. It was ALMOST as fun as my Across the Universe note on Facebook ;) )

Why?

2009-02-01T03:56:00.000-08:00

Why aren't my blogs fun anymore?

Exhibit A

Grasses

2009-01-29T21:39:00.006-08:00

I haven't been blogging too lately. Not so much because I don't have anything to blog about, but rather because I simply haven't been feeling up to it mood-wise. I've been feeling either grouchy, tired, or busy most of the time recently and I don't really end up blogging in either of those conditions.

So, this news is a little on the late side. If I waited until tomorrow to post about it, it would be exactly a week after.

I think I am making this sound way more exciting than it is.

I got new glasses!

I call them my "coming to terms with things" classes. They have much more character than my old glasses and are a lot more photogenic to come to terms with the fact that I probably will be continuing to wear glasses for A WHILE. They are brown to help me adapt to the idea that I probably won't be dyeing my hair red again until possibly summer.

So I feel pretty great about these glasses. It feels kind of like I am finally getting up from the old plan being out of the question and making a new one.

So... yay. :)

Time

2009-01-27T15:53:00.003-08:00

It's still the 27th in the US, so this blog technically isn't late.

It has been one year now since I've started using blogger again. Yay! *throws confetti*

And, in a few days when it is February, that will mark 6 months since I moved here to Japan.

6 months.

Half a year.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize that I simply must have a poor concept of time.

Some people seem to remember their pasts so clearly. For me, it's kind of like watching a small, fuzzy television, I know what's going on and where it's going, but it's just too much of a hassle to do the effort of reflecting too much on it. I don't really see myself in those memories either. When I do have a clear memory pop into my head, I am usually so surprised by it.

Is everyone like that?

I also have trouble wrapping my mind around the idea of me and others around me getting older. I was looking at the wedding album on facebook of someone I've known since I was in elementary school and it was rather overwhelming. When I am in Kagoshima city for some sort of ALT event and I am wearing business casual clothes and checking into a hotel, I feel like some kid playing "business trip" rather than an adult who is actually really doing that for a job.

I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but I just think it's weird that my perception of time is kind of... off.

I haven't been blogging much lately. I know a few people who check here fairly frequently for updates, so my apologizes. :) I guess I just haven't quite been feeling like blogging lately. *shrug*

SNOW! Really snow!

2009-01-24T04:40:00.003-08:00

So, I was watching the movie Dead Poets Society. It's really an amazing movie.

But anyway, I was watching some really great scenes being played out in snow and I could help but think about how snow is expected tonight. I thought that it would probably melt as it hit the ground like when it snowed here before.

After the movie, I went on facebook and saw the status of another ALT who lives in this town. She wrote that there was SNOW on her car.

So, I put on my heavy jacket and my boots and went outside.

Amazing.

2 reasons

2009-01-11T22:21:00.003-08:00

There are two reasons why I am so glad today is a holiday here and I have no work today. One reason is not such a happy one, but the other is simply AWESOME!

1) I was suffering from TERRIBLE cramping up until 1 pm or so. I've always thought the intensity was only this bad if I had been really stressing, but 2 weeks of this past month I was on vacation, so who knows. *gigantic shrug*

and... reason two.... *drum roll*

2) It's been SNOWING here all day. It's not cold enough for it to not melt after it hits the ground, but I was standing outside in the snow while it was snowing earlier and it was simply amazing.

I filmed part of that excursion. You can hear me all excited about the snow-

Give me a sign

2009-01-06T17:02:00.011-08:00

Today I noticed something.

Looking at the top of my water bottle, I realized that in a small font the lid showed which way to turn it in order to open the bottle. Counter clockwise, of course.

I thought this was really strange because I've been opening up plastic bottles without having to think about which way to open them for a really, really long time. So, I saw this and thought that it seemed so ridiculous. It would only really benefit someone who's lived in a cave all of their life, but managed to teach themselves Japanese and hiragana in the meantime.

It made me think about signs on doors saying whether to push or pull. What's kind of funny is that I am a lot more likely to notice a Japanese sign than I am an English sign. I try to pull at English "push" sign doors and I try to push and English "pull" sign doors all of the time. But, I hardly do that at all with the Japanese signs.

Knowing whether doors are push doors and pull doors isn't quite as simple as knowing which way to open a plastic bottle, but do the signs really help people get it right the first time? Don't you feel kind of like an idiot when you try to pull a door open and you notice that there's a giant "PUSH" sign on it?

There's a sign in the bathroom here at the office next to the toilet paper and those signs drive me crazy. There are two sentences on it and this is how it looks (pretend they're all different characters, rather than just the same one over than over)-

らららららららららららららららららら
らら。　　　　　ららららららららららら
らららららららららららららら。

I always look at the sign and I think that if they just made it a LITTLE wider, they could have fit the last two characters in the first sentence into the first line and then wouldn't have had to have the weird gigantic space between the two sentences in the second row.

らららららららららららららららららららら。　　　　　
らららららららららららららららららららら
ららららら。

See how much neater that looks?

Anyway, there's my blog about signs.

Guest blog 1 by Krystina

2009-01-05T23:17:00.003-08:00

Happy New Year, everyone! I have a good feeling about this one and I hope you all do, too.
Anyway, here's my very first guest blog.
Take it away, Krystina!

--------------------------------

GUEST BLOG!!! Come one and all!

Krystina here, reporting from brrr, Montana. Julia is somewhat busy at work, standing up when important people come in and singing about how much time she has left at work. I'll quote:

" giuliafelix (11:33:55 PM): 57 minutes of work on the wall! 57 minutes of work!

giuliafelix (11:34:02 PM): you take one down and pass it around"

AND:

"giuliafelix (11:43:51 PM): he's wearing casual pants and a sweater

giuliafelix (11:43:59 PM): important people wear suits"

Meanwhile, I am here, multitasking by watching/ listening to Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, writing this, talking to B'thany and J'lia on AIM, AND looking at websites. Being sick made for a very long day for me. I kinda got a bit bored. Lol.

But really, Staying home all day alone and bored is not like it used to be as kids. Back in the day, staying home was kinda fun. Right? Now, it was sleep most the day, be bored, sleep, try eating, sleep, boredom, bathroom, sleep, and eat. Then internet off and on through the day. Totally LAME! Lol.

So yeah, sleeping a lot today was what I did. But it paid off in that I feel better! =)

…Sorry, got side tracked by the movie…. Vogon poetry, you know..

Apparently, some hair ties have been made with condoms, possibly used ones. Isn't that icky?

I give you my apology for being so random. =P ...lol... I have to admit to this- i've kinda been adicted to the cosmo website. teehee..

Julia did her song again. lol.

Resolution

2008-12-31T01:39:00.002-08:00

It's 6:40 pm on New Years eve here right now.

I have a New Years resolution this year.

I don't usually believe in New Years resolutions. I usually think that if someone puts off a change that they want to make for a certain day, they probably aren't really that serious about it.

But, I decided on this change around the right time coincidentally. So yeah, it's a New Years resolution. By coincidence.

It's to be braver. By that, I mean in regards to speaking to other people.

Like I will hopefully become less hesitant to ask for things (THIS is going to be difficult for me!).

I'm really going to try but I am not sure how it will work out.

Anyway, this is probably my last blog of this year- at least in this time zone.

So, happy new year! <3

Good tidings we bring, wherever you are

2008-12-24T18:21:00.002-08:00

Merry Christmas, everyone!

It's 11:22 am on Christmas day here and it's pretty uneventful. I am staying with my former host family in Tokyo. Because Christmas is not a national holiday here, the older of the two kids still had to go to school.

It's kind of neat to spend Christmas with kids who are still young enough to believe in Santa. The older son doesn't really believe in Santa anymore, but the younger one certainly seems to. This morning, I asked him if Santa came and he told me in all seriousness that Santa did, indeed, come and he got a present from him.

It's different from the US, each kid just got one present and there was no stockings or anything. I guess it pays off to leave a carrot for Rudolph along with the cookie for Santa.

Unrelated to Christmas, but my computer is falling apart presently. I can still use it, but it's hard to open and close and the left side of the keyboard isn't registering all of my keystrokes. I think it was rather considerate of my computer to break in a way that I can still use it, I haven't lost access to any files, and I get to see the a little bit of the inside of my computer.

Anyway, thinking I'll buy a new one when I get back to Kagoshima. I am thinking that I will get a mac because a windows machine might be a pain because of regional software differences. I heard that macs don't have that problem. But- if you know anything on the topic, please drop me a line.

Anyway, my focus is bad, so I'll end this blog here.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Tokyo

2008-12-21T03:56:00.002-08:00

I am in Tokyo now.

I am a happy camper.

Although I am not camping.

:D

Dragging all of my luggage across Tokyo was sucky, but I am really enjoying being at my former host family's house right now.

It's kind of overwhelming how much I am being taken care of after almost 5 months of being completely entirely taking care of myself and living alone. Talk about extremes, right? Anyway, I just thought I'd drop a line. I'm totally drained at the moment.

Chronicles of Boredom

2008-12-18T18:29:00.008-08:00

11:30 am

Today is a bit of a throwback to the days of bored-out-of-my-mind insanity back in August. I have NO classes today. It's the last day before I get 2 weeks off from vacation, so of course I am completely and utterly restless.

Actually, I am feeling pretty good at the moment. Probably because I have going to buy lunch to look forward to in a half an hour. Lunch is amazing. :)

Danny had the great idea of writing a blog and updating it every hour.

"We can all watch your gradual decline into boredom-induced insanity."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Although I wonder if Danny will ever read the blog he suggested. (haha)

I've been saving things to do today at the office pretty much all week. So, let's see how I hold out.

Wow, I am really hungry.

12:30 pm

I just finished eating lunch. It was very very awesomely delicious. I wish I had more control of what I eat for lunch more often.

With lunch aside, that's one less thing I can do to prevent boredom.

So, since it's still lunchtime, they have the TV on here in the office. There is an enka program on. I am playing an exciting game of "male or female?" in my head with the person currently singing as the subject. I think the verdict is going to be male.

There were onions in the salad that came with my lunch. I tried to eat that first so that I could get rid of the taste with the other food, but I am finding now that it didn't work.

It sounds strange, but I think onions have been sticking to my taste buds more these days.

~~1:30 pm~~
1:50 pm

I missed updating 20 minutes ago. I have been keeping myself preoccupied with trying to find a way to get the date back on my entries in this template. So, basically, this fight with blogger templates is driving me insane, just a different brand of insane than what I was expecting sitting in this office all day.

Why would anyone make a blogger template without dates on the entries? That's just ridiculous!

So yeah, I realized that 1:30 had passed when my computer froze and I lost everything I had been working on. Anyway, going to get right back to it.

2:30 pm

Aaah, I am so glad I know close to nothing about how to REALLY change blogger templates, or else I would be lacking some fun time wasting in my life. :) Seriously, though, I should try to do something like this every workday where they have nothing for me to do.

Buuut-- I did get the date! Now I am working on moving it. I tried the "align=" tag thing, but blogger didn't care for it much. *shrug*

Two more hours to go......

The onion taste is gone. My shoulders and neck feel like... umm... well, they feel like I've spent the whole day at this computer. Oooh, that's right. I have been spending the whole day at the computer. :D

Arrgggg...

Sorry, I seriously thought I was going to be more insane by now.

3:30 pm

I fixed the date, but I lost the time on the blog. I don't really consider that to be a big loss, so I won't bother with it today.
My shoulders and neck hurts from sitting here at this computer all day. But- there's only an hour left. Unless I end up having to stay because the year end office party is later.
I am not going insane, but I am definitely tired. I really want to get out of here.
Not sure I feel up to going to the party, actually, but I think that being with the people in this office in a more relaxed environment would be good for me because I haven't exactly felt good about all of them all of the time.
So yeah, I'm going.
I have tomorrow to do my packing for Tokyo and then the next day I am there.

There should (hopefully) be one more hourly update.
This is probably the worst blog ever.

4:30 am

The work day is finally over. I have to ask soon whether I have to stick around to go to the year end party with the office people. I still have mixed feeling about that, because I am really drained and I have a lot of things I have to do tomorrow to be ready for Tokyo on Sunday.

So, this is the last update of today's hourly updated blog.

If the blog sucked, blame Danny. ;D

Sorry I didn't go crazy enough.

I'll try harder next time.

Ugh, tired.

It's weird to do a blog over this much time. I can't even really remember what I wrote at the beginning.

Down

2008-12-17T23:18:00.003-08:00

I've been feeling bummed lately. Time has been going too slow.

I am afraid I am in my usual December BLAH mood only maybe a little bit worse this year.

My feeling down/depressed/blah isn't too big of a deal (even to me) because I always know that in a little while, I'll be back to normal again.

But-- if you want to drop me a line or something to try to cheer me up, I would be most grateful.

Thanks. :)

I'm heading up to Tokyo on Sunday for Christmas and New Years. I am pretty sure a change of scenery will do me a world of good.

Haha- I almost typed "a world of food".

Wow, now I can't concentrate on this blog anymore because I keep trying to imagine something doing me "a world of food".

*dies laughing*
*no wait, she doesn't, she's at work. sigh.*

Two weeks off of work is going to be amazing.

One step, two steps, three steps, four

2008-12-11T05:23:00.004-08:00

I'm thinking more and more that my future after JET is not going to be teaching.

I love teaching. I really TRULY do. I like my students a lot and I especially love coming across students who really seem to like learning what I have to teach (English, if you haven't caught on).

However-

There are so many things I want to do with my life. I don't have any real precise image or plan, but I have an idea what it is.

I love studying Japanese, too, but that's not necessarily entirely where I feel myself going either.

I have a grad school program in mind that I want to get into after JET. What I want to do with it afterward is still unknown, but I've learned very important things from applying and getting into JET.

I wanted to apply and get into JET for a while before I even became a Japanese major. At the time, though, I really didn't have a real image of what my job or life would be like. The image in my mind was extremely fuzzy, vague, and somewhat unreal to me. Still, I knew that it was something I really wanted to do. I began trying my best to be someone who would definitely be qualified for the ALT position.

And, as you know, I got into the program and it has, so far, exceeded my expectations.

So yeah, following what you want to do and working hard at it seems like a good life strategy.

So, after JET, I am going to get into a good grad school program that strikes me as something I want to do. I won't worry about the outcome because if I am following my own heart and dedicating myself to it, things will fall together and the next step will become crystal clear.

Whether I'll ever know exactly where I am headed, I don't know. But I can choose paths that appear to lead to places that I would like to end up.

After all, life is about the journey. The destination means nothing if the journey is pointless.

I'm sleepy.

Randomest blog ever

2008-12-10T17:08:00.005-08:00

SO, first of all, about the song lyric- "I miss you, like the deserts miss the rain." Does anyone else think this lyric is stupid? The desert hardly needs the rain. It doesn't miss it. Sure, it would suck for the rain never to come, but the whole ecosystem is based on the fact it hardly ever rains there. The desert does not pine for the rain. Maybe the cactii do, but I wouldn't know.

For some reason, I've always thought the lyric "I did it for the drugs" was kind of funny. For a while I thought that it was because it's kind of funny for me to be saying it because the only thing I've ever done "for the drugs" was to get prescriptions from doctors for some health related issue. The other day, I suddenly remembered why I started to think it was amusing. You know those "Kid's Choice Awards" shows that Nickelodeon has every year? A few years ago I found myself watching and they had that band playing that song. BUT- instead of "I did for the drugs", they sang, "I did it for the daaaa-duuumm". The "daaaa-dum", by the way, was a guitar sound from what I remember. Anyway, while I could understand why they were taking out the word "drugs", I thought it was funny.

What did they do? What did they do it for? Aaaahhh!

Looking back, though, I think it's strange that The Kid's Choice Awards had that performance in the first place.

Okay, so I actually decided to check who the band was and what the song title is.

Funny that I didn't bother looking up the first song I mentioned here. Be my guest.

Recently, at one of my elementary schools, I raked leaves for the first time in my life. The leaves were a really neat bright yellow color and there were SO MANY of them. My mood the entire time was, pretty much, "yay!" I buried some kids in the leaves a few times. :) I was worried that the teacher that was raking with them would be annoyed with the kids (and I) playing, but he was really cool and joined in, too. I always thought raking leaves seemed pretty fun on the chore scale, but I am sure people who have had to rake a lot in their lives possibly hate it. Anyway, I suppose it just goes to show that one's favorite chores are always the ones that they never had to do.

Ending this random blog on a very random note, here's something you probably had never thought of before.

I did this blog in two sittings, saving it as a draft the first time. I was going to work on it more, but then I started writing a real blog in my head. Go figure. ;)

A dolt

2008-12-08T22:37:00.004-08:00

Here's another blog in which I have something to say, but I don't really know how to say it.

I realized recently that I just can't picture myself going somewhere and goofing off the way I did maybe even just a year ago.

You know how when you're a certain age, anywhere can really be a fun place to go and hang around? Like when things around you make great props, good material for jokes, and there is a lot of space? I can't really see myself going to a store and goofing around there with friends as I have done before.

It's different being a person with a job rather than a college student. It's a very different feeling- at least for me. Many other ALTs still do seem like college students, so I guess don't know exactly how that works.

Maybe it's because now I am in a town where I am constantly being recognized as the English ALT and I feel like I have to seem... credible (sane?) to people seeing me places.

The realization that the days of doing things like that might be over shocked me a little.

But at the same time I think that it could just be that I haven't been around the right people to be doing things like that.

I still do goofy things and I don't really believe that's going to end anytime soon.

I guess usually as I move forward I am thinking about beginnings and middles and I fail to remember that sometimes things end, too.

This is probably the most pointless blog ever.
Hah! As if things like that ever stopped me!

Oh yeah, I finished the new Ender book, Ender in Exile, the other day. It was really good. I felt really good about how it wrapped up loose ends that both Ender's Game and the whole Shadow series left hanging.
I started rereading Ender's Game again last night.

No one cares about that, Julia

2008-12-05T04:44:00.002-08:00

I think I realized why I thought to write that last post.

I worry too much that I might be the only person who cares about something that I'm making a deal of.

Maybe everyone feels that way. I honestly don't know.

Ew, this blog off to a bad start. This was worded much better in my head, but then I started writing something else in my head and I lost exactly how I was going to go about this topic.

Have you ever had it happen that you were trying to convince someone of something in a group in all of the sudden you realize that you're the only one that really cares either way? You feel really stupid about it, right?

I felt that way for a while when I was younger and I still think about it a lot now.

Like when the other graduating WLC Japanese majors and I were signing a card for the Japanese teachers and one of them pointed out that it was weird that I thought we should all sign in the same color pen. Luckily, because it hadn't dawned on me that this was unusual, I was able to find the situation funny.

But yeah, there are times when I don't necessarily agree that what I am talking about is pointless or just flat out ridiculous.

Last weekend was a Thanksgiving dinner at another ALTs house and I bought chicken from KFC. Because it was expensive, I bought only enough that each person in the headcount I was given could have one piece. It turned out that there were a few more guests than what was expected.

So, when we were lining up to get the food, I spoke up to make sure everyone knew that there wasn't too much chicken to go around.

And then later, there still seemed to be some left and someone commented that I was "flipping out" about the chicken earlier.

.....sorry? I wasn't flipping out. I was trying to make sure that everyone who really wanted a piece of chicken could have one.

I'm figuring this person uses the phrase "flipping out" loosely and was just innocently unaware of how sensitive I can be to hearing that.

I really don't want to feel like the crazy person who freaks out about stupid things.

....

Am I flipping out over worrying about flipping out?

Arg.

I'm going to end this blog with a quote that is only relevant because this IS a blog.

"Blogging is not about perfection. Blogging is about intimacy, immediacy, transparency, and sharing your thoughts the way you share it with a friend." –Arianna Huffington, The Daily Show, December 3rd, 2008

When I saw that Jon Stewart had a guest who was going to talk about blogs, I thought that she was going to talk about blogs written by famous people or people living in places where history is happening. Instead, she talked about regular blogs. Anyway, that made me happy- for all that's worth. ;)

Memory

2008-12-04T03:48:00.003-08:00

It was pouring rain outside. I remember I was looking out the window of the classroom along with other classmates.

"Did you know this is El Nino?" I asked everyone around me excitedly. I had heard so much about it but I hadn't known that it was the reason why we were getting so much rain until not too long before. It was a big surprise for me to learn that something so big was happening where I was.

So I thought I'd share it with my classmates.

"Duh!" replied one of the other kids.

There was a reason why I wanted to post this, but I forgot.

Edit: Ew, so I FINALLY noticed that my new template got rid of my links and such on the lefthand side. I put them back up pretty much how I could remember them. :)

New template

2008-11-28T06:15:00.003-08:00

I am not particularly crazy about it, but it was the only one I found so far that worked that I kind of liked.

Meh.

;)

I'll turn this into a real blog tomorrow... possibly.

Edit a few days later: Okay, so no, I didn't.

Ick

2008-11-24T22:50:00.003-08:00

I feel sicky today. Pretty much my whole body hurts randomly (especially my arms and legs) and my brain is in a fog. :S

Work is almost over for the day and I am trying to figure out what I am going to do for dinner when all I really want is to curl up and go to sleep.

...of course, what I would probably actually do is curl up with my laptop watching TV shows.

I've been watching the Daily Show and the Colbert Report everyday that there are new episodes up, I've been watching The Office weekly, and I've also been watching a lot of Futurama, Rocko's Modern Life, and Invader Zim. :)

My actual television is neglected. I used to watch the news mostly to get weather reports, but now I check the tv station's website for that. I -should- continue watching the news, but I just haven't felt like it lately.

I finished the Haruki Murakami book and I am now a little over 100 pages into the new Ender book. Just like the other books in the series, it really drew me in right away. Reading it kind of makes me want to reread the other books in the series... again. ;)

Back to complaining about icky-ness.

This morning was awful because I woke up cold with my throat and stomach hurting. I had a really rough night's sleep, too. It made me get to work later than usual, but technically I was still early.

But yeah, it's not the end of the world. I bet I'll feel excellent(???) again come tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, I've been wanting to change the template on this blog. But, as always, I am picky. I've found a number of templates that look nice already, but none of them I really think works for my blog.

I'm just kind of tired of the dragonflies.

Hmm... right now, I am just tired in general.

Random question- What does it take to make a water heater explode terribly? I watched a MythBusters video on youtube the other day and they made a water heater explode and it was almost like a rocket. I was showering yesterday and I realized that the water heater (which I think has been making weird noises lately) is right next door to me. And then, of course, I had to start scaring the living daylights out of myself. Logically, I would think that the MythBusters probably did something extreme to make the heater explode like that and it wouldn't happen just because the heater simply broke or something. It would be good to know the worse case scenario would be cold water (although that would be TERRIBLE.) Buuuut, I don't know. So yeah. If the sound persists, I am going to try to get word of it to the owners of my building. It's just a pain because Japanese isn't exactly my first language. X(

The winter season, the great everybody-knows-Julia school crossover story, and a book I haven't read yet

2008-11-18T03:58:00.003-08:00

I've been liking long titles these days. ;)

(Edit: I decided against two of the topics I was going to write about, so the topic became shorter. Then I decide to add something else.)

Winter started today.

There is really nothing to debate about on that one. Yesterday, the weather was pretty decent and when today it got terribly, TERRIBLY cold. Yes, winter, ALL OF THE SUDDEN, is here.

All of my complaints about cold from before- BAH! They're nothing!

I spent a good portion of today freezing in the gym of one of my elementary schools. Today was a meeting about teaching English in the elementary schools and I attended it with a Japanese Teacher of English from one of my junior high schools. Naturally, there was at least one person from each of my four elementary schools, two middle schools, the whole teaching staff of the school it was hosted at, a few teachers I had met through other ALTs, and people from the Board of Education office where I spend a good portion of day when I am not at schools. It was actually really funny that I knew so many people at this meeting. I was telling the teacher that I went to this meeting with who was from where. I was the only ALT attending, although I heard that last year a few ALTs went.

I have my kotatsu set up, but I don't have it up and running. I am guessing there is some missing cord or something. I emailed my predecessor to ask her about it. So now I am sitting here with a fleece blanket over me next to a space heater that I bought. Maybe I -did- do okay preparing for winter after all. Ugh- it's going to be a pain getting myself to get up in the morning because it is going to be FREEZING. It does seem like my usual wish to be able to hibernate over winter is going to show as normally does.

I got a book delivered to me today. Not just ANY book, though, it's the new Ender book! I am very excited to read it, but I am going to make myself finish the Haruki Murakami book I've been reading first. Anyway, I ordered the book off of Japanese Amazon and, because I don't have a card that I can/want to use to pay over the internet, I selected a pay on delivery option. It was kind of fun to do that because that sort of thing is past dead in the US. It required a special delivery service, although it wasn't someone who directly worked for Amazon (for some reason I thought it would be cool if it was...)

I got the book, flipped through a few pages, and then found myself letting out a very happy squeal. Then I realized I probably shouldn't have done that because I could have startled the neighbors. I -think- the walls are pretty thick because I don't hear them very much, but it just might be that they're quiet. In that case, I really hope that I am (usually) quiet, too.

/blog

800in5

2008-11-16T04:56:00.003-08:00

This is my 800th blog.
And it's been 5 years since I've started blogging.

Hurray!

Errr... I really feel like I should put something relevant to this having being 5 years since I started blogging.

I had a kind of odd weekend. Saturday was good in that I did some much needed shopping, but it was also a stressful day because driving the city and then getting lost on the way back was already bad, but also it was raining pretty hard that day. Today was a complete polar opposite in that it was a pretty great day. I guess a mixture of the usual foggy form my brain takes during weekends, the stress of Saturday, and all of the sunlight I ended up getting today, my mind feels like goo. I'm having a hard time making this blog, well, a blog.

Okay, here's something, and I can KIND of tie it into being relevant.

This is a very known, touching song that many people in Japan know these days. The song is basically a 15-year-old writing a letter to her adult self and then the adult self replying back.

It kind of makes sense for this entry because I started blogging at 17 and now I am an adult blogging. So... I suppose that's KIND of like the song...?

But mostly I just kind of wanted to share this anyway because it is a sweet song that I think would touch anyone with a past and a future. ;)

(....I still plan to make a blog in the Julia in Japan blog this, too, I'm going in a different direction that one.)

Anyway, it song is called "Tegami," or "Letter" in English. It's by Angela Aki, a half Japanese, half American singer.

And here is an English translation.

I would've provided the actual music video, but I actually really don't like it so much. I think this video where she's just singing to students gives the song a lot more justice.

I think it's a wonderful song.

Happy 800in5!

Cold? Yes, cold.

2008-11-12T16:44:00.004-08:00

Today is the second day in a row that I woke up with a headache.

I really need to figure out why that happened because it is a very unpleasant way to start the day.

That, along with running late (for being early) to work every morning because it takes longer to dress myself because of the colder temperatures. Clothes take forever to hang dry and I haven`t quite worked out having sweaters and such to go with my work clothes.

This weekend, I am planning on visiting the coin laundry. I am looking forward to pulling nice, warm clothes out of a dryer for the first time since I left the US. I am also thinking that I will go work clothes shopping so that I can hold out a little longer on having to go to the coin laundry and have a few more outfits more suited to the colder weather.

It`s amazing how much you have to plan for cold when you live somewhere central heating is not common. I mean, it`s　probably not going to be -TOO- much colder than Monterey (although I`ll admit I have very little idea what to expect), but there I simply put on a big jacket and maybe a hat and then warmed up when I got inside. Here, I need to be able to dress warm indoors more frequently than I used to.

I was going to break my rule about not being too political on my blog, but I am too sleepy so I blogged about the cold instead.

I read through some of my entries I posted here yesterday. They`re pretty okay.
I forgot the squirrel blog was during my list writing phase.

My moles hate me and a random reminder

2008-11-06T15:52:00.003-08:00

You know what`s really weird?

Since moving to Japan, I had another mole which was acting funny like the one I had removed. I went to the doctor about it, and, like my doctor in the US, didn`t think it was anything to worry about.

And now a third mole is doing the same thing.

I don`t even know if "mole" is the correct word for it.

But whatever they are, they don`t like me and they want to escape from my arms.

The first one was on my right arm, the second on my left, and the third is on my right arm. So I assume the next one will be on my left again. Who wants to take bets?

Speaking of bets (although it isn`t really one), Danny is certain that my successor to my current job and apartment after I go back to the US will be a male. I doubt it because all of my known (to me, anyway) predecessors are female. So I am writing this entirely for the sake of remembering so I can tell Danny he was wrong.

Yes, it is going to be a few years before this is actually known.

I had a few topics that were better than discussing rebellious moles, but I can`t remember them. Probably because they aren`t placed on my arm where they catch my eye and they are not so hard to resist poking at.

Oh, and if you didn`t read the comments for my last blog (GASP!), I am going to go for the 800 blogs in 5 years thing after all.