A beautiful example: Yesterday I took my brand-new CV, a gorgeous sight to behold, and stuck it in an email with something approaching a cover letter. That email was then sent to a company that will remain nameless, because this anecdote does not turn out well for them. I cannot stress enough how many times I checked, double-checked and triple-checked that email (actually it was just one of each); I even sent it to myself once just to make sure it would come through alright. Then, at about 1 o'clock in the afternoon, off it went to, hopefully, my new employer.
So imagine my ballistic rage (the guys on MSN at the time shouldn't have to) when, at 10 o'clock at night, I thought I'd just have a little check in the inbox, just to make sure, and found a new email. And email that I had written just that day! My own email! Attached to it was a brief message from the anonymous internet postman telling me that the email address I sent it to did not exist, and though it would ishhoukenmei try and send it again every few hours it wanted me to know chance of success was small. Small like my patience!
What kind of stupid company, one that prides itself on communication skills none the less, attaches the wrong email to their help wanted ad?! Not just that, to their own flipping website?! Or maybe this was just some elaborate hoax set up by the Osaka Immigration Center, get me enticed by a great-looking job teaching kids English for 4,000 yen every hour and a half, and then remind me that, as a gaijin living in Japan, good things are not allowed to happen to me.
Needless to say, new offers have been sent out, and I sit and wait for the inevitable, familiar voice of the postman.
So that's an update of one of my Big Spring Responsibilities, now the other one. I'm actually quite happy with how the dissertation's going, at the moment. After three solid days (minus the time I spent sleeping until the mid-afternoon, you understand) of reading through often quite interesting linguistics papers on audience design and the role of keigo in style-switching, I was able to write a full 1,200 words of introduction that I am very pleased with. It's a wonderful feeling, knowing it's two weeks into the eight-week holiday, I've only spent a week working on it (if that), and only have 6,800 words left.
Mind you, now comes the really tricky bit, and the reason I was out on my bike for about five hours. I was dictaphone shopping, you see, and those things are both difficult -
Just been invited to a movie night. Sweet!
- both difficult to find and crazy expensive. What kind of hedonistic moron would buy a dictaphone for forty thousand yen? Forty thousand! For that I could pay the rent, health insurance and phone bill for a month and still buy a copy of Heavy Rain on the PS3 (a console I don't have, but would be seriously tempted to buy for that gorgeous-looking game). On the other hand, it's still only half of JASSO for a month, so maybe I shouldn't be the one complaining. The other end of the spectrum was a two thousand yen model which was essentially useless, as the files were recorded onto the 'phone and stayed there. By which I mean you couldn't put them onto the computer. And as the board of markers for Honours Linguistics dissertations is sure to want proof that I really did go and make a royal fool of myself for the purposes of linguistic science that's not going to help one bit.
Not that it really mattered anyway, as Bic Camera had none of them!! Seriously, the whole lot sold out! What is this, buy-a-dictaphone... no hi? What are all these salarymen going to use them for? Ridiculous, I tell you. So I've just now made my own Amazon.jp account and ordered a nice, little middle-ground 'phone (something called an Olympus Voice Trek V-22) for five thousand yen (two thousand cheaper than Bic Camera would have had it for), and in true Amazon tradition it tells me it will arrive tomorrow. Which is Sunday, so I do doubt that. But the range of options for Japanese Amazon really did have me impressed. You don't need to put in a credit card number, you can opt to pay for it at an ATM near where you live. The same goes for address; you just have to put in a Lawson's near you and they'll send it there instead. Incredible.
So I won't be making a fool of myself until Monday at the earliest, which is actually a bit of a shame as o-Hi-sama was out in full this morning, and I can think of no better conditions to be harassing the local populace in. However, church tomorrow, and I'm hoping that resident linguistics lecturer Rie-san will be around so I can offload a few questions. Like, can I record some church-goers praying? Don't know how to say that without sounding like a bit of a nut, so I guess there's no helping it. As they say here in Japan, there is no ginger.
There we go, the two Responsibilities. I could feel a lot worse about where everything's going at this point, so I can be thankful for that. And besides, it's the weekend! What better time to do nothing than now!
And what a great time it is for we slackers! Heard of Google Wave? Louise sent me an invite not long ago, and that is one clever piece of kit. It's like an email, bulletin board, instant messaging thing, and it's also a lot of fun. Louise has big plans to run a Dark Heresy game over it, which I think should work stupendously. Also, I still have my eight invitations left, so anyone interested form a line and get your begging faces on.
Another fairly lengthy use of my time recently has been a not-that-recent anime, but one that I have neglected to check out until just now. It's called Kara no Kyoukai, and easily ranks up there as number one most brutal anime I have ever seen in my whole life. It's also the latest attempt by a studio to borrow the incorrect chronology method of arranging episodes from Suzumiya Haruhi (film out soon and I can't wait!), but pulls it off very well. It pulls a lot of things off very well, for that matter, especially episode previews. This show has the very best episode previews I have ever seen, they're just beautiful. Pity I really don't like the main character, but Kokutou makes up for her so it's still good.
And then there's a free, online farming game. I know what game you're all thinking, but you are wrong. This is a game called Mabinogi, which is easily one of the most popular online games in Japan at the moment. It's the one in all the internet cafes, anyway, and has its own magazine. Typical fantasy setting puts your dude into the shoes of pretty much whoever you want to be. Mercia, for example, is a swordsman who moonlights as a lute-player and sheep-shearer. You get experience for fighting, but also for composing, setting up camps, collecting eggs and sewing pretty patterns into clothes. Pretty much everything. Due to not playing it at the right time I am yet to see all that many people online as of yet, but I'm enjoying what I've played so far. Let's just hope it remains free when my character gets to old age and dies (does actually happen) and I need to have him reborn. I'm guessing not.
That's it. Pretty uneventful holiday, and that fact grates on me quite horribly most of the day, but I'll fight through that feeling. That and the bouncing emails, invisible dictaphones, complicated dissertation topics and not having a pen. Seriously, where did all my pens go? I'll just step out and buy some more.
Thanks for reading.
***
もうすぐ、レッド君。もうすぐ。そして…
倒す！！
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