I don't usually post just pictures, but this is by far the coolest picture I've ever taken. I was coming home, and I heard a "bzzz....bzz ...bzzzz" sound. I looked down to see this orgy of insects, and I couldn't quite figure out what was going on. With a closer inspection, I realized that a poor cicada was being eaten by a wickedly large praying mantis.
Luckily this was all happening right outside of my neighbor's driveway, so I ran upstaris, grabbed my D40, and came back down to snap some shots.
Damn, people complain about dying, but how about death by having your face eaten off?
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Stepping Up
Over the past month or so I've given up the following:
-Anything English; movies, music, books, etc. If it has English, I don't get near it (with exception to my job)
-Alcohol. Of course I never had a drinking problem, but being in an altered state at any time makes me that less sharp
-Dating
-Going out on weekends
-Pretty much going out at all
-Social networking sites (myspace, mixi, facebook, etc)
-Video games
Why? Quite simply, I want to be good at something. I want to feel like I actually did something with my life. After this conquest, chances are I'll spend the rest of my life punching and punching out, find my way to retirement, grow old and die. But at least I can die knowing I worked towards a goal and completed it.
I've seen too many people live wasted lives, ignore their potential and turn out to be average (or less than average) Joe Slob who is content with mediocrity.
Not me.
Other than staying fit by going to the gym and snapping the occasional photo, I've cut out any part of my life that could be spent otherwise bettering myself at Japanese.
This isn't for a test I want to pass.
This isn't for getting job with a Japanese company.
It's for me.
It's to look back years from now when I'm bald, wrinkled, and fragile, and be able to think, "I did something. And I did it well."
-Anything English; movies, music, books, etc. If it has English, I don't get near it (with exception to my job)
-Alcohol. Of course I never had a drinking problem, but being in an altered state at any time makes me that less sharp
-Dating
-Going out on weekends
-Pretty much going out at all
-Social networking sites (myspace, mixi, facebook, etc)
-Video games
Why? Quite simply, I want to be good at something. I want to feel like I actually did something with my life. After this conquest, chances are I'll spend the rest of my life punching and punching out, find my way to retirement, grow old and die. But at least I can die knowing I worked towards a goal and completed it.
I've seen too many people live wasted lives, ignore their potential and turn out to be average (or less than average) Joe Slob who is content with mediocrity.
Not me.
Other than staying fit by going to the gym and snapping the occasional photo, I've cut out any part of my life that could be spent otherwise bettering myself at Japanese.
This isn't for a test I want to pass.
This isn't for getting job with a Japanese company.
It's for me.
It's to look back years from now when I'm bald, wrinkled, and fragile, and be able to think, "I did something. And I did it well."
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Imagine...
No, not the utopian society where John Lennon imagines there aren't any more countries. Imagine this:
-You were given the gift of going to work, and being able to 100% tune out all of the dramatic crap that flies around the office.
-You were able to divert tons of responsibility at work (with no added benefit or pay even if you did it) by being simple being ignorant of what is being said to you.
-Annnoying commercials? Don't understand them!
-Annoying neighbors bitching? Gone!
Damn.. why did I learn Japanese?
-You were given the gift of going to work, and being able to 100% tune out all of the dramatic crap that flies around the office.
-You were able to divert tons of responsibility at work (with no added benefit or pay even if you did it) by being simple being ignorant of what is being said to you.
-Annnoying commercials? Don't understand them!
-Annoying neighbors bitching? Gone!
Damn.. why did I learn Japanese?
Monday, July 7, 2008
So I'll be going home in less than a month! It'll be nice to catch up with friends and family, eat 'brerros and look at the pretty beach. I can't wait.
Updates basically stopped because I have become accustumed to life here. It's like asking somebody to write something interesting about their hometown; they'll probably say, "what should I write? The same things happen every day. It's boring". That's basically how it is over here. If interesting things happen, I'll post it here. But for the most part, I'm living the same boring life you are, just in a different country with a lot of Japanese folk.
I can't wait to be home though.
Updates basically stopped because I have become accustumed to life here. It's like asking somebody to write something interesting about their hometown; they'll probably say, "what should I write? The same things happen every day. It's boring". That's basically how it is over here. If interesting things happen, I'll post it here. But for the most part, I'm living the same boring life you are, just in a different country with a lot of Japanese folk.
I can't wait to be home though.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
High School is Universally Awkward
High School knows no cultural bounds when it comes to having the most intensely awkward moments of your life. And those are the formative years that hurt: if you're in your mid 20s and you get turned down by someone of the opposite sex, you brush it off and find somebody else. But if you're 16, your voice just started cracking, and you find yourself in an inescapable situation that will leave you feeling rejected and humiliated for years to come, it will leave an emotional scar.
I certainly just witnessed one of those moments tonight.
Coming out of the room that my Japanese lessons were held, I noticed a high school boy and a girl silently looking out a window. They boy had his hands crossed in front of him when I first looked. I talked a bit to everyone else leaving the class, and when I looked over again, the kid made his move. His hand was holding hers, both still looking silently out the window. Go kid!, I thought.
The group that I meet up with every week hung out for a few minutes later. During that time the couple descended down the stairs and left. I myself followed suit a few minutes later and hopped on my bike to head home. Peddling down a dark street, I noticed the same couple I saw a few minutes earlier, only they weren't holding hands. In fact, they still weren't talking. It was worse than that. There they were, walking in near pitch black and dead silence, while the girl was reading a book. That's right. She was using both of her hands to hold the book close to her face and attempt to read it under the extremely dim streetlight.
This was the most awkward situation I've ever had the privilege of seeing. Not only is the girl saying "I don't want to hold your hand" because both of her hands are occupied, she's saying "don't look at me because I'm reading and don't talk to me because I'm trying to concentrate". And I've seen nerds here and there walk home and read books, but certainly not at night.
I hope at least it was an interesting book.
I certainly just witnessed one of those moments tonight.
Coming out of the room that my Japanese lessons were held, I noticed a high school boy and a girl silently looking out a window. They boy had his hands crossed in front of him when I first looked. I talked a bit to everyone else leaving the class, and when I looked over again, the kid made his move. His hand was holding hers, both still looking silently out the window. Go kid!, I thought.
The group that I meet up with every week hung out for a few minutes later. During that time the couple descended down the stairs and left. I myself followed suit a few minutes later and hopped on my bike to head home. Peddling down a dark street, I noticed the same couple I saw a few minutes earlier, only they weren't holding hands. In fact, they still weren't talking. It was worse than that. There they were, walking in near pitch black and dead silence, while the girl was reading a book. That's right. She was using both of her hands to hold the book close to her face and attempt to read it under the extremely dim streetlight.
This was the most awkward situation I've ever had the privilege of seeing. Not only is the girl saying "I don't want to hold your hand" because both of her hands are occupied, she's saying "don't look at me because I'm reading and don't talk to me because I'm trying to concentrate". And I've seen nerds here and there walk home and read books, but certainly not at night.
I hope at least it was an interesting book.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Training for Stardom
Today I realized that being in Japan and speaking decent Japanese has a lot of parallels to being a movie star. Take any known musician, and they are probably stopped numerous times a day to be told how amazing they are, and how their music has changed so and so's life, etc. The first few times, they must be absolutely flabbergasted and amazed, but after a while the initial euphoria wears off. Eventually that musician gets the same comments, the same questions, etc. He gets tired of it, yet at the same time, he can't tell them to bugger off; because the person is praising him, trying to take advantage of a once in a lifetime opportunity to tell somebody how they were moved by their work. How can you possibly be a dick to somebody who has something like that to say? So the musician doesn't tell said fan to bugger off, nor does he get all excited, because he's heard it all a million times. What does he learn to do? He learns to politely smile and tell them "thank you".
That's where I'm at. Modesty aside, my spoken Japanese is pretty decent. Japanese make it a point to make sure they aren't simply giving me the polite "your Japanese is good", they continue on to say how shocked and amazed they are I can speak their mother tongue so well. Then come the barrage of the same questions I hear day in day out: "How long have you studied?" "How long have you been in Japan?" "Do you have a Japanese girlfriend?" "...want one?".
Okay, I made the last one up. But in any case, I have canned answers ready for all of these questions, and I'm polite enough to make it sound like it's the first time I've been asked these things. Hell, at least a musician's fan prefaces their comments with "I know you've been told this a million times but"...
In another completely related story, I was startled when coming home tonight. For those of you that know me, I'm easily startled. If you come up behind me and start speaking without my knowledge, I'll jump. Well, a girl certainly got the jump on me tonight. And I damned near reached out and punched her in the face.
Coming back to my apartment around 10pm, there weren't a lot of people on my route home. I cross through the train station to get home, and usually the only people around are those waiting for their train. Crossing over the tracks, there is a set of stairs and an escalator, which is painfully slow. If somebody is descending the escalator and just standing on it, it's much faster to take the adjacent stairway. Heading towards the escalator, I saw somebody already making their way down while remaining stationary, so I took the stairs to the right. All the while I had my headphones in, so I couldn't hear a damned thing. As soon as I got to the bottom of the stairs this girl pops out of nowhere (well she came from the left) staring at my face from about half a foot away. I jump, she just kinda shrugs it off and keeps walking.
So I suppose if she's writing her own blog entry, this is how it would go:
"I was walking home last night, and as I was going down the escalator, I see this weird, human-like thing pass me on the right. It looks human, but its eyes are far to big and the way he walked was really weird. Deciding I only had on chance to see what this creature looked like from the front, I rushed down the escalator cut him off as he was about to make it down the last step, and looked at him straight in the face. I scared him! He jumped back and his eyes got really wide. (and by wide, I mean HUGE. His eyes were really round already). Maybe it was the first time he's ever seen a human? Welcome to earth!"
That's where I'm at. Modesty aside, my spoken Japanese is pretty decent. Japanese make it a point to make sure they aren't simply giving me the polite "your Japanese is good", they continue on to say how shocked and amazed they are I can speak their mother tongue so well. Then come the barrage of the same questions I hear day in day out: "How long have you studied?" "How long have you been in Japan?" "Do you have a Japanese girlfriend?" "...want one?".
Okay, I made the last one up. But in any case, I have canned answers ready for all of these questions, and I'm polite enough to make it sound like it's the first time I've been asked these things. Hell, at least a musician's fan prefaces their comments with "I know you've been told this a million times but"...
In another completely related story, I was startled when coming home tonight. For those of you that know me, I'm easily startled. If you come up behind me and start speaking without my knowledge, I'll jump. Well, a girl certainly got the jump on me tonight. And I damned near reached out and punched her in the face.
Coming back to my apartment around 10pm, there weren't a lot of people on my route home. I cross through the train station to get home, and usually the only people around are those waiting for their train. Crossing over the tracks, there is a set of stairs and an escalator, which is painfully slow. If somebody is descending the escalator and just standing on it, it's much faster to take the adjacent stairway. Heading towards the escalator, I saw somebody already making their way down while remaining stationary, so I took the stairs to the right. All the while I had my headphones in, so I couldn't hear a damned thing. As soon as I got to the bottom of the stairs this girl pops out of nowhere (well she came from the left) staring at my face from about half a foot away. I jump, she just kinda shrugs it off and keeps walking.
So I suppose if she's writing her own blog entry, this is how it would go:
"I was walking home last night, and as I was going down the escalator, I see this weird, human-like thing pass me on the right. It looks human, but its eyes are far to big and the way he walked was really weird. Deciding I only had on chance to see what this creature looked like from the front, I rushed down the escalator cut him off as he was about to make it down the last step, and looked at him straight in the face. I scared him! He jumped back and his eyes got really wide. (and by wide, I mean HUGE. His eyes were really round already). Maybe it was the first time he's ever seen a human? Welcome to earth!"
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