"Stop thinking sleeping and start thinking baseball."

What a crazy Monday.

But before we get to that, there's the small matter of the weekend to cover.

So Saturday wasn't a particularly eventful day. Took the opportunity to travel out to Teramachi (along with, it seemed, every other gaijin on the course) where I followed Polly's advice and found my way to a big used clothes shop called Kinji. And what a delight it was! 2 parkas, 2 hoodies, 2 otaku shirts (plaid ones) for 5000 yen (about £25). THIS is the sort of money I'd like to spend on clothes all the time, not the nonsense shops are charging nowadays. Plus I hear the exchange rate is improving these days.

Then, unable to resist, I played my second game of Senjou no Kizuna. Wow is that game fun, but the inevitable is starting to eke it's way into reality. Blown up twice, I was, with only one kill to my name in both games. Still, that was enough to push me up to Rank 3, as well as earn me a Zaku Mk I suit to try. Quite like my Zaku II, though, so I'll probably stick. Then it was to Book Off to get the second volume of Steam Detectives for 105 yen. A good little book, that, though it bears a few too many similarities to Batman for my liking. A young boy loses his parents to the criminal underworld and vows revenge, lives in a big house with a basement filled with gadgets and a butler who knows more than he lets on, fights costumed villains every week in clever ways. Very suspicious. Also got around to watching the next Pokemon movie (Lucario and the Mystery of Mew) which was pretty good (check Facebook for a review).

Now, Sunday, and the day of the softball game. I must admit, I was not looking forward to making a fool of myself. The service was taken, much to our surprise, by the leader of the youth group, the theology student who greeted me on day 1, and he did a good sermon. It was on Acts 6 1-17, and the importance of prayer. Mark and I found we could understand more this week, though maybe he'd simplified it for our sakes. Wouldn't put it past him. Then it was off to the manse for a quick lunch of udon, then down to the Gardens, kit in hand. My fears were then confirmed: these guys didn't know what softball was, or how it differed (at least in my mind) from baseball.

So we played baseball instead.

I'd like to get into that game if I could, I found it a lot more fun that football has ever been. The Japanese players showed off their skills at their national game, but not to the degree that it was humiliating. Mark did especially well (curse his eyes!). All in all, a wonderful experience.

Afterwards Mark and I walked the short distance to Teramachi, as he was keen on seeing a couple of the places I had discovered the day before. We had taiyaki (fish-shaped sweet bread and bean curd, superb) and then went to a little shop on the 4th floor of the tower block called Yellow Submarine, a card gaming and boardgaming shop. Both days it was full of people, a group of about 15 gathered in the far corner to play games and be frivolous, so it was a great atmosphere. Popular card games, as far as we could see, were Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic the Gathering (to a lesser extent) and a game we hadn't seen before called Gundam War.

We now both own a starter set. It's a fun-looking game, as well, and plays remarkably similar to Magic. You use Generation Cards (GCards) to deploy units, fire one-shot Commands or long-term Operations or bring Characters to the field. Rather than elements, as in Magic, you have 7 Nations with 7 colours to choose from, and Generations for each. Blue is for the Earth Federation, Green for Zeon, Red for Neo-Zeon, Purple for Freelance (stuff like Celestial Being from 00). You then get Brown for the repressed underdog characters (e.g. G Gundam's people), Black for characters forced into conflict (e.g. V Gundam's lot) and White for characters searching for ultimate peace (such as Gundam Wing and Gundam SEED), or something like that. Each colour has strengths and weaknesses. Turns out my lot are Green, lots of weak units that deploy cheaply and quickly, and Mark's are White, expensive but powerful. Looking forward to our first proper battle tomorrow.

Right, today.

Nothing special to day about language class. It was on causatives, for those who care, and was actually very straightforward. But after lunch came InterCom, but much to our surprise it seems White-sensei had forgotten. No explanantion. He just didn't show. No complaints here, gave us time to do homework and revise for both tomorrow's kanji quiz and Wednesday's grammar test.

Culture class was equally bizarre, as I had forgotten that it was the scheduled Aikidou lesson. A lot of fun that (I was picked for demonstrations twice...) as it actually doesn't hurt much, and gave me lots of chances to practice stage-falling. I'd like to get into it if I wasn't so lazy and didn't want to hold up a job as well in the future. But no, that was a nice surprise.

Afterwards Mark, Stephanie, Angela, Ben and I went off to find dinner and, after some debate, settled on Mos Burger. Happened into Tsutaya on the way back, a local bookshop chain (I wanted to check their Gundam War card prices, turns out they don't do them) and was coerced into getting a rental card after seeing the ridiculous range of CDs on offer. For 1330 yen (£7-ish) I got the Gundam 00 soundtrack, the Shin Megami Tensei soundtrack, the Super Robot Wars alpha 2 soundtrack and JAM Project's 2nd Best Of CD overnight, which are now all on my harddrive. Heck, we're allowed! Will be going back there later!

So here I am, taking a break between kanji revision sessions. It's looking... okay for tomorrow, but it's difficult to get confident after... last week. Gotta do the best I can, eh?

No letters this week.

Thanks for reading!

Twas two, for the price of one

Embarrassing Moment #6

You'll have to wait and see.

-----

Got a lot of ground to cover here, so bear with me.

Okay, so Thursday was a big day. Still heavily in a slump over the return of Friday's grammar test (do NOT ask), I needed something to pick me up. And the city of Kyoto was happy to oblige, with not one but two festivals in the same day.

First up was Jidai Matsuri (literally, Era Festival), a celebration of Japan's vibrant history in the form of a procession through the city of people in period costumes. The event started at the Imperial Palace at 12, and carried on until about 3 or 4 when the procession entered the Heian Temple on the other side of the river.

So, right after class, I searched in vain for the others before setting off by bike to meet with the front of the procession at Kyoto City Hall. A lot of this will be in video format today, and here is your first. As with, I think, all of the videos, I've tried to give a running commentary, but the camera hasn't really picked up my voice very well. Sorry.




Gets cut off right as I insult the No Show Trio, ironically because I get a phone call from Mark. At this point I am told that they were waiting for me (yeah, sure, bet they brought their unicorns and flying pigs with them too) and had since left for the Imperial Palace, where they were watching the later history bits of the procession. With plans to meet at Himatsuri that afternoon, the parade continued.



As it turns out the time periods are a lot longer than I thought, so Heian continues for the duration of all of these videos. There are photos on Facebook of... the next time period, which has a very different style to it.






Yeah, don't really know what that was...

Then something interesting happens, and I JUST miss catching it on camera.










And that's it. There were more time periods to see, I'm sure, but I had homework to do, and I needed to prepare for the second festival of the day:

Himatsuri. Literally translated as 'fire festival', this yearly festival takes place on Kurama, a mountain in the far north of Kyoto. I met up with Cosmopolitan at Imadegawa and we all got the too-small train to the too-far-away mountain, by which time night had fallen.




There, if you were able to spot it, was our first fire of the night. By the end, I was glad to be rid of the stuff. We gathered together briefly to think about what we would have to do to get to the main event stuff. The answer was walk uphill through the town of Kurama, practically ablaze, for 30 minutes, amidst what call only be described as a throng. Here's the next part.




As Sam pointed out, there were babies holding fire. We would see lots that night. We would also see lots of tourists and hear lots of megaphones. Still don't know exactly what the people were shouting, and would be shouting all the way up the mountain, but I'm sure it was something about power or heat or something. Anyway, next part:




You can't really tell all that well, but that black stuff you see? Those are people. They were everywhere, it was as much a test of agility as a festival.













And that, ladies and gentlemen, was Embarrassing Moment #6: me falling into a 'hora', a watery moat thing on the side of the road. It's dark, so you can't see it, and neither could I, but it was there. I guess that was my punishment for making a Dark Heresy joke. I liked that the crowd was pantomime-trained enough to gasp dramatically on cue, and also well-mannered enough to laugh at my accented Japanese.

Oh, and by this point Sam and I were well and truly seperated from the rest of the group. It would turn out that pretty much everyone was in the same predicament, and when we got to the top the others arrived in small clusters. Still, we did manage to meet up with Takuya and co. on the way up.




And that's festival 2. Up at the top, incidentally, were tents which sold beer, takoyaki (fried balls of octopus, really rather nice) and nekoshippo (literally 'cat tails') sweet pastry in the shape of, would you believe it, the tail of a cat.

Then we went home. That took about 2 hours. Incidentally, I hear Mark, Stephanie, Angela, Mimi and someone else made it too, but didn't get as far as us. Their loss, I guess, though it did mean I missed out on seeing a friend from church.

Okay, what next...

Ah right, today.

Oh no wait! In my rush I forgot to talk about Wednesday's meal! As nobody felt like cooking Wednesday evening, Mark, Angela, Stephanie and I all went out to Shijo to get dinner at a proper place. In the end we went to a French restaurant that Mark and co. recommended.

And they did fish and chips!!

And they were actually good fish and chips!!

Best meal I've had in ages.

Anyway, today.

Today was Friday, obviously, and with it came the weekend. And a very much awaited weekend it is too. Truly very happy to have the week finished. But there's something else I really want to talk about.

I got my JASSO money today!

Mark and Stephanie went to the office to ask for it directly, and were surprised to find it was there waiting for them. They phoned me, and I went to get mine, impatiant at the lack of phone call that should have told me where it was. After asking behind the desk, they said that yes it was right here, and were more than happy to hand it over.

Two hundred

and forty

thousand

yen.

That's over £1,200.

All in one go.

My wallet was near breaking point.

And they expected us to spend it wisely?!

Hah!

Finally got a chance to see the legendary Bic Camera, which is every bit as impressive as I was told, and celebrated our new found money with 750 yen of Hi-Zack Mobile Suit kit (that's £4, not bad eh?). Then it was off to the station underground for dinner, where we had big bowls of noodles followed by pitchers, yes pitchers, of parfait.

And now here I am. Zack is finished and standing beside the Gespenst, I'm typing this, and tomorrow is a free day. Unless Ben remembers we were going to Kinkakuji, which I doubt, as we've not discussed it in a couple of weeks.

Then it really is church softball the next day.

And that's me.

And now it's time for Letter Corner!

Today's letter comes direct from Mark: 'So when are you thinking of getting you Japanese PS2, eh?"

A very good question, and one that you may have answered yourself. Up until now-ish I'd thought that it would be great to get a Japanese PS2 in Tokyo, the heartland of technology. But thinking about it now I'm not sure it'd be all that feasible. I mean, I'd have to carry it with me on the Shinkansen, not to mention the subway on the way TO the Shinkansen, with all the kit and everything. Doesn't sound safe, or fun.

But on Wednesday Patricia gave us leaflets about all kinds of Kyoto stuff, and one was a flier for a Duty Free Technology shop, allegedly on the south side of Teramachi. Worth a look, methinks.

Now here's problem two: if I get a Japanese PS2 now, I will undoubtedly fail my next test. And I don't want that. But Mark has pointed out that November holds the Doshisha Holiday, which gives us Wednesday to Sunday off at... some point. And that would be perfect. Sounds pretty good, eh? That's when he might be getting the PS3 too, which means we'd have a funky gaming holiday planned. I like the sound of that.

Right, it's 1 o'clock and I'm shattered.

Thanks very much for reading.

Glyde, ikimasu!!

Embarrassing Moment #5


And I was doing so well. Actually collided with a young woman on my bike today. Didn't see her as she came out of her doorway and clipped her as I passed. It looked pretty painful to me, but she didn't seem too fussed. I guess I have to thank anime for my ability to reflexively apologise profusely, but I don't think it quite worked, as when I asked if she was okay, she responded by throwing my question back at me. It was pretty awkward. Then I did the whole one-handed-prayer gesture and rode off. It's times like this I wish the Japanese were a bit more aggressive. It'd have felt a lot better about the whole thing had I received some kind of reprimand, as I'm pretty sure it was my fault. But no, just an awkward, worried smile, and an apology. Stung more than any blow.

-----

Two posts in one day, eh? Lucky you.

I quite firmly don't believe in karma, but if I did I would say that the reason I had such a rubbish encounter was to balance out the fact that I finished another life goal today.

I played Mobile Suit Gundam: Senjou no Kizuna at the Namco Wonder Tower.

Not familiar with the name? No matter. Just watch this trailer and you will understand why this was such a big deal. It's in Japanese, but you shouldn't need to know any to appreciate it.

See?

Admittedly it was a bit pricey. You have to create an account first, which costs 300 yen, and that gets you this lovely pilot ID card:


This one tells me that my name is Glyde, I'm a... umm... I think that's 2nd Lieutenant, and that I'm fighting on the side of the Principality of Zeon. I've played once, and have 240 points to my name. Pretty cool stuff.

The game itself is a work of art. Here's the waiting area which is stage one of the playing process.

You've got a row of seats to sit on and watch the games currently taking place. Standard matches are 4 v 4, with 8 v 8 for the better players. Being an absolute beginner, I was in a 4 v 4. There were 8 machines in the Tower, but the games all play over the internet, so I was with 3 other complete beginners who also picked Zeon against a team of absolute beginners who picked the Federation. Being absolute beginners, we got suitably weak machines to play with, and because we were all so poor at playing barely anyone got killed. Except a guy called 'WILLSON'. I dealt with him.

Sitting in the cockpit it a terrifying, yet awe-inspiring experience. The guys at Namco have done everything to try and get it feeling like you're in a Mobile Suit, and the pulled it off spectacularly. You get 2 games for 500 yen (about £2.70, didn't I say it was pricey...), and each game lasts until a team wins or the 5 minutes of game time runs out. It was time out on both occassions, so winners were picked based on damage caused.

You get 2 levers with a number of triggers, and 2 pedals. Left lever controls melee combat, right controls ranged. Left pedal jumps, right dashes. The levers also control movement, and work in the style of Virtual ON or Katamari games. That is, both levers forward to go forward, both back to reverse. Both left to strafe left, and right for right. Left forward and right back is a rightwards turn, and you can guess the rest. Oh, and if you pull the levers away from each other you lunge forwards in a tackle.

I take pride in coming out as the top player on both occassions, I'll try not to let it go to my head! Don't worry, when I'm playing the game in a few months time I'll be having my pride handed to me on a silver platter by 10 year old boys and 30 year old salarymen alike. Regardless, I adored playing this game, and it was well worth the money spent.

Having said that, I think I'll wait until the JASSO fund is confirmed or denied before I do go back. And when I do I want to take friends. I know Mark will play, at least.

Whilst in town I also finally picked up a phone strap. Or rather, I picked up a couple of little Felynes from Monster Hunter on the PSP and realised they didn't have a strap attached so I bought one seperately. Finally I feel like my phone is complete! I also searched until I my vision blurred for the Baroque manga, to no avail, so decided on starting a new series I knew nothing about. Took a while to pick a book that looked like it would appeal, and finally settled on volume one of 'Steam Detectives', an old Jump manga about, well, steampunk detectives. It looks really cool, and all the books were a mere 105 yen (60p) so it may well end up as a good series to follow.

That's it, I'm tired and hungry. Tomorrow is church softball, so look forward to that. I don't know if I am... heh.

Thanks for reading!

The part of show where Pete comes out and sings... a geeky song

Went to karaoke last night, as I may have mentioned. Much bigger group than I was expecting, it had grown from Mark, Stephanie, Angela, Ben and myself to include Mae, Sarah, Ekka (did I spell that right?) and Angela's friend C...Caitlin...? It began with a C, or rather a /k/. Umm, sorry.

But memory loss aside, I can tell you one thing, and that is that karaoke

is

awesome!

Managed to complete a couple of life wishes that night by singing Tears by X Japan, and the Mikuru song from Haruhi Suzumiya in front of people that now think a lot less of me. I'd do it again, though, make no mistake. Other highlights of the night included a group rendition of Take On Me, Mark's falsetto in the Eurithmics and Ben's... umm... interesting choice of songs by a band aptly called Massive the Hormone. Heard of them? Then you'll know what I mean.

Don't want to upset any balances by putting up videos of some of the songs (oh, they DO exist), but here's a video of us going home at 1 in the morning, tired and with sore voices.




And now it's the weekend! Yeah!

Unfortunately, though I had planned to go out and wander the city center today it's started raining, so I may have to rethink. Oh, and Aaren couldn't join us today, due to pressing workloads (I can sympathise). There'll be plenty of other chances, I'm sure.

Also going to watch Pokemon movie... 7? Or am I on 8 now? It's Lucario and Mew, I believe. Been enjoying this little quest of mine, think I should make a habit of writing down my thoughts on films more often, remind me why I bothered watching them in the first place.

In other news, JASSO money is still a very real possibility. I apparently will be contacted some time next week when they've found out where it all is. But all is not well in JASSOLand, for news from further afield (i.e. Tokyo) is that JASSO money is being cut as of now, so the money we get here will be ALL we get. Mark and I have heard no such thing from the office, but alongside Nicole's story of last semester's students just not getting JASSO at all it's a tad worrying. And apparently they can do that, 'cos they're the government and it's their money anyway. Though, to be fair, that's a little bit like coming to the airport as we arrive with a squad of shiny new Gundams and saying "Greetings, travellers! These are your new mobile suits, and you will need them to navigate the fierce battlegrounds of life in Japan! You may find yourself presed between alien invaders, corrupt governments and your own friends betraying you, but with your new suits you'll be more than well-enough equipped to- Oh, sorry, I've just been told we actually don't want to give these to you. Nevermind. Umm, best of luck!" and then leaving.

Tch.

And now it's time for Letter Corner!

Today's letter comes from Home, nicely enough.

"What are the brakes like on your new bike? Are they like the European ones where you have to peddle backwards to use them?"

No, they are not. Thankfully these brakes are the normal sort. However, I can't speak for the rest of the nation's bikes, as I was told by the woman who sold me the thing that the brakes on mine are different to the others. Didn't say why, I didn't really care. I'll check.

That's it. Thanks for reading!

Not 'notte', 'nonde'!

It did it. I finally caved.

I bought a bike.

Didn't take long, either, and it was wonderfully hassle-free. I'd forgot how fun an experience riding a bike can be, along with forgetting how to ride the thing in the 5 years since the last time I'd tried. But it came back fairly quick, after a couple of hours between classes riding up and down the riverside and through the Imperial Gardens (never again, that place is burst tire heaven), so I should be set for using it constantly from now on. Pretty tiring stuff, though, particularly at night when you've got to peddle harder to power the headlights. I also managed to bump into a bush and accidentally bump into a pedestrian on the way home...

I also may have accidentally signed to say I received JASSO money when I don't think I have... Quite worried about that.

I mean, it's kinda their fault. They should know that putting a form in front of me and saying 'Sign.' will be enough to make me do it. That's right, they didn't tell me what it was for until afterwards. And I know that won't hold up in court, but it makes me feel better. Cheers, Nichibun office. I really want that money, though, that's 2 months' worth plus flights and stuff. It would have been nice, y'know? And maybe I'll still get it. It was due in my account yesterday, anyway, so maybe its making its way slowly through the system and into my paybook.

Wishful thinking?

And Patricia's talk in Japanese Society about Japanese officials screwing over gaijin for the simple fact that we are gaijin really didn't help, either. Way to boost my confidence...

But that doesn't matter! Because on Friday is a day of sushi, karaoke and overthrowing the government (not my words), which sounds awesome. And Saturday Aaren should be coming, finances permitting, and even if not I'm still planning on riding down to Shijo and searching the colony of bookshops for the Baroque manga. I'm looking forward to it. And Sunday is softball day down at Doshisha church (please come!!) which can at the very worst only be slightly humiliating.

Oh, but there's Friday's test to plough through first. Speaking of which, today's test went really rather well, and I think I only missed 4 or 5 this time. I was slow and careful, so they shouldn't deduct points for handwriting this time.

I'm SHATTERED...

Oh, and I made another, more successful okinomiyaki tonight, which was nice. Maybe that's what made me tired. That and riding a bike for, like, 3 hours today...

Well, I'm out of things to say.

Thanks for reading.

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan.

In continuation to last entry, I want to talk about how today went. In short, better.

Let's start with the big one, that test. I started the morning actually feeling quite positive, and this only grew when, 5 minutes before the start of class, Takeda-sensei came in and informed us that, due to a mix up, the second half of the test was on stuff we hadn't learnt yet, so hadn't been marked.

Result!

The bad side to this is that the grades we got are now in some way tainted, which me means we have to take the test

again

on Friday.

...

Oh no! we though, This means a kanji test on Thursday followed by a grammar test on Friday! But worry not, we were told, for this had been taken into account! For 2 tests in 2 days was surely too harsh, Thursday's kanji test has been moved

forward

to tomorrow.

...

Guess what I've been doing tonight.

In summary of other events, I got those 5 blasted tickets from that blasted machine (which didn't get fixed until lunch time! Hah!) and paid my fee, which I learnt is for the year's handouts. Fair enough, I think. Class today was pretty easy, but also pretty boring. I finished my essay, my longest yet. I actually tried looking for a specific manga in the Book-Off, and didn't find it. Bought myself another PSP -> USB cable 'cos it seems like I left mine at home, and downloaded demos of Patapon 2, Locoroco 2, Gundam Battle Universe, Prinny: Can I be a Hero? and Yggdra Union, and nearly bought a 600 yen copy of Baroque Syndrome, until I realised the kanji don't have furigana so it's be nigh impossible to read. This is Baroque, we're talking about, the game that had us decending to the bottom of a tower constructed in our minds whilst fighting monsters created of our innermost desires taken shape so that we can fire a gun that shoots bullets that a made from creatures that are the embodiment of pain to destroy the Absolute God who has gone mad and remake the world according to the whims of a blonde-haired bishounen with wings. I'm guessing the vocab will be a bit tricky.

Now I'm going to kill another Khezu, watch some anime and go to bed. Early one tonight, I think. Too much rice today.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

Gaaaaaaaan.

I apologise in advance if this post is something of a rant. I have not enjoyed today, and am intent on telling everyone I know about it in a bid to make myself feel better. Just warning you now, you might want to skip today's entry if you want to preserve those rose-tinted specs of yours.

So, here we go.

I regret saying anything along the lines on 'My course is easy' now that I've seen the results to last week's Kanji test. Okay, I may not have quite got what I wanted there, but that's no big deal. I work hard, and I'll improve.

But it really gave voice to the doubts I've been fostering over the last two weeks. I've felt so dense lately, like people will call my name and I won't even notice, or I'll have to have instructions repeated because it takes longer to sink in. And this is in English. I mean, I've done flipping '~n desu' constructions before, so why is it so hard now?! Why could I get it then and not now?!

Today's grammar test was a bit of a nightmare, too. It wasn't a straight 'here's a chapter, here are some questions on it' quiz, they were being sneaky and hiding the right answers in far from the obvious places. One question was about keigo, for crying out loud! We haven't done that yet! I gave it a good shot, but it really threw me, and as you may have gathered I'm feeling a bit vulnerable these days so it had double the effect. It was super effective, you might say. Yes, I'll get Pokemon in anywhere.

What really didn't help is that today's Physical Education Day, or something, so every school that isn't Doshisha (it seems) had the day off today! And look at that day:


Look at it! Look! It's beautiful! How on EARTH is this fair?! We get Typhoon day off, but when it's a day we might actually WANT off we have to sit in a stuffy classroom and go over transitive and intransitive verb charts!! What are the government doing?!

I am NOT happy about that.

But it only gets worse... Well, it kind of goes up a little bit first. InterCom had us watching a film that was sort-of funny, but was all in Japanese so not only did I feel weak as I watched the smiles of the people around me who got the Japanese word-play jokes, I felt weaker the more I had to try and decypher the ridiculous turns of events, and now I have a splitter of a headache! Culture was, y'know, normal, with a brief outline of the big Japanese festivals, such as the Daimonji one which I don't get to see 'cos it's at the start of term so I'll be in Edinburgh by then... I was really looking forward to taking a picture of the big kanji for, ironically, 'big' on the mountainside, putting it on Facebook and captioning it 'Charizard used Fire Blast!!' There'll be other chances, I daresay.

Then we started to go home, and this is where the fun really starts. Signed in as normal, and found a piece of paper in my locker that asked for 2,500 yen to pay for the start of classes. But they don't want it in cash. In a stupid, MMORPG-quest way they will only accept payment in tickets. TICKETS!! What's wrong with money?! And there's only one machine in the whole university that dispenses these golden morsels of education. Luckily it was close by and so I decided to get it over with. In goes 500 yen, out comes one fifth of my education in tickets (you see, yu can only buy 500 yen tickets, so I'd need 5). Easy, I thought, and put in 1000 yen to get the remainder of the tickets.

Blasted machine ate my money!!

Ate it!!

And I don't have it anymore!!

Big error message on the screen asking (I found out after checking with the DS dictionary) for technical help from a member of staff! Gives me a contact number, which was very kind of it.

Stood there like a muppet for THIRTY LONG ARDUOUS MINUTES while the phone rang and rang and rang and DID NOT GET PICKED UP!! What are they doing?! Gone home?! What if it was a real emergency?! Huh?! Like a bomb or something?! What then?!

Utter stupidity...

So I lost my patience and went home. And did my homework. And now I'm really not happy.

Well, I feel a little bit better now.

What I don't like about all this is that all of the things I praised Japan for now get flipped on their heads. Good-quality technology? Yeah, sure. Cheap video games? Still true, but it's salt in the wound to think that I just LOST half a copy of Dissidia Final Fantasy. One 15th of a PS2. Gone. Not coming back.

I can't help but feel, in situations like this, that God is trying to teach me something, and I believe now that He's telling me to stop being so miserly with my money. Need to try using it a bit more, though obviously on worthwhile pursuits. There are parables about that, you know. Tonight my life might be required of me, and what then?

Well, no need to be so morbid. Actually, on that note, I may as well talk about church yesterday. Which I went to alone. Cheers, Mark, you nanakimono. Seriously, though, a good service on Matthew 22:15. 'Give to Cesar what belongs to Cesar, and to God what belongs to God.' Well, I just gave the state of Japan a thousand of their precious yen, so maybe I've learnt something after all.

Sunday was quite nice, actually. Took the opportunity to Hunt some Monsters (bagged a Khezu! Yeaaah!) and sit by the riverside and take some photos of the usual Sunday crowd that gathers there. Here they are, look.



There's an embankment in the middle of the river where it joins together near Imadegawa, and you get a lot of people crossing the river via the stepping stones to bask in the sun. I'll try it some day, but I was afraid of inconveniencing the swarms of kids.



There is a river under all that grass, honest. Oh, and here's something interesting. You don't see many homeless people in Kyoto, at least not where I go, but almost every bridge has a veritable shanty town constructed from wooden poles and blue tarpaulin under one section. It's quite a sight.



So after all that I felt a little calmer. I also ended up watching episode 274 of Pokemon as well. I tip my hat to you if you know why that's an important episode, and I heartily say that it was definitely worth seeing. Very well done, though they could have strung the important part over a full episode.

And now I get to eat. Spagetti sauce tonight, simple and good. And then I'm going to watch episode 2 of Letter Bee and fall asleep, which I'm really quite enjoying so far. The whole heart-gun thing reminds me of Baroque, as does the world it's set in to an extent, and I loved Baroque a lot. Need to find and buy the manga for it. And any sequels. Ah, wonderful, nostalgic memories.

Right, food.

Thanks, honestly, for reading. Back on track next time, I assure you.

Gouzen Kousen!!

My hand's all better now, thanks, though there's a nasty red mark there. Made today a little tricky, my right hand was at about 60% efficiency.

Didn't stop me finding THIS:


Yes! 20 yen cheaper than previous records! And now I know where it is!

Anyway, a little bit to catch up on, so here we go.

Church on Sunday was on Matthew 19, or was it 20? The parable of the workers in the field. You know, 'the last shall be first and the first shall be last'. This sermon was a bit easier to follow, but then again I was told by a new friend in the church that my Japanese had really improved in the last 3 weeks. That was awful nice of her! There was supposedly a meal of udon at 1, but translation difficulties got in the way and so we couldn't find where. There will be other week,s and week after next is softball (repeating the call-out to anyone who can play!!) so events list is still full.

Monday was a KILLER. I mean, wow! Never had such a nasty headache in my life! Following on from last week's '~n desu' lessons, and that's not my strong point, so I was really trying hard to get it all in. I think I'm there now, and just in time, as tomorrow we move on to our next topic: verbs of giving and receiving. This, at least, should be a bit easier.

Then we had Japanese Culture, and a lesson on the history of Doshisha and its founder: Joe Neesima. And I'm sorry, but...

...duuuuuuuuuuuull.

Heard it ALL before, in the opening orientation meeting no less, and I honestly don't think Mr. Neesima and I would get on at ALL. I REALLY didn't care.

Sorry, Doshisha, but the spirit of education is lost on me.

THEN there was the mountain of homework.

Uuuuuurgh.

But I don't care, because today was easy as pie. No homework save yesterday's essay ('What does your position in your family say about how you interact with others?') and some done-before Kanji, and tomorrow's looking up. Got a sweet new bag, too.

Makes up for not getting to do karaoke because SOMEONE didn't check his phone.

I'm not bitter.

Oh, I'm watching (not that you may care) Umineko no Naku Koro ni at the moment, the new series by Higurashi's team. Another horror mystery thing, with a creepy kid and a distorted view of character deaths. Looking good so far. Oh, I'm also trying to watch all 12 Pokemon movies before New Year's Day. 1, 2, 3, 10 are down, the others are soon to come.

And that's it.

Thanks for reading!

Pikachu Day 2009

Up good and early today, yet despite my doing this every day for the last week and resenting it each time today it was a far easier task. Because today I was getting a Pikachu with Last Resort.

Met up with Mark down at the Karasuma Oike platform, where we took the Tozai further than I'd ever been before: the terminus at Uzumasa Tenjingawa. From there we crossed the street to the Uzumasa Ranzan Station, a much smaller affair than I had imagined. It took me a little while to figure out that we were on the right side, and that we paid as we got off as if we were on a bus. The train itself was a quirky little thing, a cross between a small train and a tram, but it travelled at a fair speed and we were at our destination in no time. It did not take long to figure out that 90% of the people on the train were heading in the same direction.

From the station near the film studio where the event was being held, we followed some Nintendo-brand clothing-clad guides (but who didn't give us gaijin a map because obviously we didn't possess the Japanese required the follow the big black arrows...) as well as a growing stream of people to set 1, and the start of the queue. Getting to the end of the queue took us another 5 minutes.


I have never seen so many DSs in one place. This is us at the far end of the queue. From here it took 2 hours to reach the front, so I felt sorry for Dan and Greg who turned up later and had to start their queuing much further back.

Well, not that sorry. I was too busy negotiating the terms of exchange of Pokemon with a 10 year old girl called Nihiro to really care.

The Wireless Union Room was packed to the infra-red rafters with Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold and SoulSilver players, it was difficult to move without some random fellow called Kyousuke or Theo or something asking for a trade. I got 2 new Trainer Cards today, people I'll never see again but will hear the exploits of in the game's TVs.

Trading with Nihiro got me an Aerodactyl (lv 25), Macargo (lv 52, stronger than anything else I have at the moment), Omanyte (lv 20), Anorith (lv 20), Cranidos (lv 20) and Cricketune (lv 25), traded for Bellsprout, Machop, Paras (she was well excited about that), Spinarak, Drowzee and Wooper. A good deal, I thought. You have to bear in mind that she was on Pearl, so the original 150 were out of reach for her until today. She showed me her fossil collection, she had quite the obsessive streak.

Pikachu was obtainable in the queue, a cute little Lv 30 fellow with Last Resort, Thunderbolt, Quick Attack and Slam (I think, haven't tried it out yet). He's coming with me to Victory Road.

Here's the front of the queue.


By the time we got in at just about 12, there was still no sign of Polly. Still, she had said to go in and not wait for her, and by this time we were very eager to see what was going on. Just inside we got a little exhibit on the history of Nintendo, with cased Famicoms, Super Famicoms, N64s, Wiis, Gameboys all the colours of the rainbow, and walls of the cases of the classic games that made Nintendo famous.






Good, nostalgic stuff. The exhibition was indeed small, and soon it reached into the main event. On the immediate right was the Pikachu corner, of sorts, which had a woman handing out cardboard Pikachu hats on one stall and a download corner for the PokeWalker's Yellow Forest course. Didn't take long to grab a copy of the course (and a hat) and move on.



The rest of the corners were taken up by game demonstrations for Pokemon Scramble on WiiWare (like an action-based RPG thing with super-deformed legendary Pokemon), Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics, and one corner for both Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus, each sporting a Nintendo staff member with a placard happily telling us that we should be expected to wait more than an hour for any game. Thoughts of gaming were put on hold, however, as we were taken in by the stage on the far side on the hall with the Pokemon Sunday logo on a screen, as well as a short podium with 4 DSs on it. We were told during our chat with an anonymous staff member (y'know, the kind in RPGs that only repeat one thing over and over) that at 1 (it was now 12.30) Pokemon Sunday would put on a show and ask some of the kids in the audience to have a four-way battle using pre-set Pokemon. Sounded like fun, and we didn't really want to be in a queue when that started up, so we took our places near the crowd waiting for 1 o'clock.


Oh, Pokemon Sunday is a weekly 30-minute program that has seasons on during big Pokemon events such as the release of HGSS. We found out today, much to our amusement, that it airs on Thursday afternoons.

The show started promptly at 1, with a highly enthusiastic Nintendo representative greeting the crowd as a part of Pokemon Sunday, and then we watched an actually slightly creepy trailer for the show. By that I mean that there was a really creepy Pikachu-dressed person in it. Creepy.

Anyway, 2 of the show's mascots turned up soon after; Lucario and Sableye. This was one of the things I truly wanted to have on camera, but we were told by the signs everywhere that we weren't allowed for some reason. Didn't stop everyone else in the whole entire crowd, though! And so it didn't stop us either.



The cameraman's backside, however, did stop us. Like how it looks like I've put together the guy in the middle of the 2 pictures? So not intentional.

The photo on the right shows Team Lucario going up to start the game. A father and son team, and the one I hoped would win. Let's see, their Pokemon were Chikorita, Slowpoke, Phanpy, Farfetch'd... umm, and 2 others.

Team Sableye was a pair of brothers who picked the same Pokemon as their favourite, and who had obviously done this before because they won with a decent degree of style. Not very enthusiastic about it, though, a trait I've noticed about most Japanese kids of a certain age. Anyway, they had Hoot-hoot, Teddyursa... and some others. I honestly can't remember.

Just to point out, I would have been more than happy to go up and participate, but it is a kid's game. And the prospect of fighting a towering gaijin like myself may have been too much for many kids, especially if Mark and I teamed up.

I'm going to put up a couple of videos of the match, but they're not great. First the camera on this thing isn't that good, and also it's on sideways...



Sorry. But I think you can get a good idea of how it worked. You may not be able to see, however, that it was awesome to watch. The sound quality was perfect, and the tension was actually pretty impressively high. I could watch Pokemon battles like Dad watches football, I think.

With the stage show over, we decided we were far too hungry and tired to stand in line to play the games, so headed out to grab some food in the cafeteria next door. More kitsune udon for me, thanks. I could, and may well, live off that stuff. Whilst eating, Polly showed up. Turns out she overslept. Huh.

Anyway, with the Pikachu Event over we decided to head to Polly's to see what it was like, then check out the nearby temples. Polly lives in International House II, owned by Ritsumeikan University, and its a nice little hotelly place that apparently lets the bugs in.

And what bugs they were.

We had been enlightened in an earlier conversation about the horrors of bugs in NW Kyoto, and the centipedes especially. Apparently there's a big fuss over centipedes that get into rooms through windows and bite people in their sleep. The pain has been likened to getting stabbed by a cigarette end, but constantly until you get the thing to let go, done by crushing the head and boiling the rest of it. Apparently. Let's hope I never have to put that knowledge to use.

Oh, but we did see one. Here he is.



This is at Nanniji Temple, a big temple about 20 minutes walk from Polly's. A nice place with some truly great architecture. Pagodas and the like. Here, I made this Cloverfield-esque video to show part of what we saw.



From Nanniji it was off on the bus then the train home, where I now learn that Mark just got SoulSilver. A bit late, my friend, but better late than never. Church tomorrow, nothing special there, and then a free day to relax ready for another week of work. Apparently there's meant to be a nomikae at 7 tonight but... it's 7.45 and outside is silent. Huh, another unfulfilled promise.

Anyway, that's me. Thanks for reading.

Long Days and Peaceful Nights

Well, it's been almost a week since my last post. That's a good measure of how busy I've been, I guess. Sorry for the delay, I'll do my best to make this one five times as interesting as the others.

Okay, so term is now well underway. Each day goes like so:

• Japanese language classes start at 9. We've been divided into ability groups, as I mentioned before, yet Level 3 is fairly big so is split again into classes 51 and 52. Rumours are circulating that 52 are the more skilled of Level 3, but as a member of Class 51 I adamantly deny that. I have a pretty good group, I'd say, made up of people at around my skill level which leads me to believe that I have been well-placed here.
  Each weekday we get a different teacher. This keeps things interesting but, well, the communication between teachers could be improved a bit. I mean, they all seem to know which page of the textbook we're on, but we had to explain the daily checkup tests to one of them. I mean, they're all fairly good teachers, but the differences between them are almost too great. That's not to say I don't enjoy myself...
  Anyway, moving on. We're working from 'Wakatta tsukaeru Nihon-go', a green and a yellow book that together should lead us through the semester. Work is pretty easy so far, though the pace is really picking up now that the end of the week has come.

• What follows differs between days:
  Mondays we have Intercultural Communication after lunch. In this we have thirty minutes of lecture on a certain topic to do with the course name, followed by an hour of discussion of that topic in small groups. This can get pretty complicated, especially when four of your six members don't speak English and only fragmented Japanese, and we're doing the topic of 'What does you culture mean to you?'. Homework for each week is a page of essay on the topic we discussed, which comes together to form a journal that becomes our full semester's assessment. Except this week. We got 2. Thanks, Professor...

• Tuesdays and Thursdays there's nothing after Japanese, which leaves me free to go home at the end of lunch! It's a good feeling.

• Wednesdays give us a loooong break of 3 hours between lunch and our last lecture of Japanese Society. Can't really say much about bit at this point, as this week saw us give a lesson-long self-introduction. Not to say it wasn't fun at all, our teacher's almost diabolically easy-going. Word on the street is that its a lesson of field trips and topic tangents. Sounds like a good lesson to me.

• Today is Friday, the last day. Unfortunately, I do have a lecture; Japanese Language Seminar B. This is something of a Japanese Plus course that prepares Levels 3 through 5 for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test - Level 2, a highly recognised certificate that we have been recommeded to get by the Edinburgh staff as well as people like the JET team. Pretty intense stuff, I can tell you, for today we learnt 7 brand new, highly complex (at least to our feeble minds) sentence structures, and over the course of the... course we will learn 100, and then be tested on them. Good, solid, meaty chunks of Japanese.

And now it's the weekend! Yeah!

Anyway, Doshisha life has a bunch of other aspects besides education. Lunch, for example. Lunch is very odd here. You grab a tray and head to one of 4 queues based on what you want to eat. There's a noodle queue, a curry queue, a salady queue and a posher food queue. One and three are my current favourites for the kitsune udon and spicy potato wedges respectively. You grab whatever you want and take it to the till and then pay. It's just the range of food that boggles the mind: whole fish on a plate, bowls of rice as big as your head, a veritable catalogue of parfaits all the colours of the rainbow! It's staggering sometimes. Average lunch for me comes to between 200 and 400 yen, that's £1 to £2, which I think is a pretty good deal.

Now, what else is there.

Oh yeah...

The bureacracy.

Every day we have to go to the tiny, crowded International Office and sign in, something I didn't realise until 3 days in... It's okay, I think I've been forgiven. On top of that, we have a pigeon hole each which is filled every so often with things like forms, forms, or if we're really lucky...

...money. I kid you not. They will refund you part of any taxi receipt you care to hand over, which kind of makes up for the bills they put in there as well. Rent bills, you see, as we do live in University accomodation.

Got a very scary note in mine today 'My. Swan, the bank called with something to say. Please call Mr. Amaza on this number.' Now, I'm not all that good at Japanese, so I hope you can imagine how terrifying it felt to be forced into discussing my finances, the means of my living here, in a language I don't understand.

I'm just thankful I've watched enough anime to understand the sentence constructions used when selling one's soul.

Anyway, turns out all they wanted to say was that the money transfer from home can't go through until Monday, as it's now the weekend and so everybody involved in that sort of thing is having a well-earned nap. Fine by me.

Phew.

So here I am, sitting at my desk, trying to tempt Ho-oh into staying in the Ultra Ball (actually called a Hyper Ball in Japanese, don't you know). Difficult stuff, let me tell you. I learnt from Diamond to not use up Master Balls (still called Master Balls in Japanese) so readily, so it's a long, bitter fight to claiming by giant flaming bird Pokemon. I'm just glad it doesn't have any recoil moves like Kyogre did...

And on that subject, tomorrow is Pikachu Day! Or so it shall be called in my diary from now on. Plan is to head to the Kyoto Cross Media Experience in Uzumasa with Polly and Mark...

2 shakes that time. Cheeky thing.

...where Nintendo will be dishing out the Pikachus to whoever has a DS with a Japanese version of Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold or SoulSilver. 'Pikachu?', I hear you say, 'He was in the original 150! He's no big prize!' Maybe not, but...

Argh! So close!!

...this is a proper Event Pikachu we're talking about! It may as well have come from the hands of Mr. Miyamoto himself! And besides, this one has the super-secret, never-before-given-to-a-Pikachu TM of Last Resort, an ultimate base attack Technique that can only be used once the Pokemon has used each of its other attacks at least once. Sounds pretty cool to me, though I would have prefered a Volt Tackle.

Have to preorder movie tickets for that one.

Is there anything else? I can't think of anything. Currently also paused in the middle of the anime film Sword of the Stranger, which is alright but not as good as I'd heard people say it was. Oh, I made myself yakisoba tonight, and it was nice. I made an okinomiyaki the other day, and that was nice too. Google them, if you're interested.

Well, thanks again for reading. Sorry for the no pictures, there's not really been anything else to photograph. I shall try my utmost to get ace pictures of Pokemon tomorrow. Oooh, it'll be just like Pokemon Snap!

Anyway, thanks very much for reading!