純物語 二世 (original) (raw)

I always liked what a teacher of mine said once about how music is often for what we are unable to verbalize. In the last week and a half I've been listening to the soundtrack for "How to Train Your Dragon" (which has great music) and with a few tracks in particular, I'm struck by the sense of how the music sort of sounds like what idea of my imagination sounds like? I know, it sounds utterly ridiculous. I'm a bit embarrassed even writing it, but there it is. Or perhaps it's merely that I'm missing (acutely) that sense of adventure I had even on the worst, most boring days back in The Old Country. Although, I am the kind of person that listens to music and pretends I'm in that part of a movie where Everything is Going Right/exciting/flying with the boy and dragon (that is not a euphemism. Get your mind of the gutter!), so maybe Japan is relative. That is, even if I'd never gone to Japan in the first place, I'd likely still be listening to that soundtrack with the same reaction and the same sort of "Where is my adventure" feeling. It's just more acute, now >D But I didn't actually mean to write this to be a drag, just trying to work it out in my head. As I've kind of written about before, I suppose I'm still trying to work out my "new" adventure, as it were, as silly as that sounds.

But speaking of the aforementioned movie, can I just reiterate how unbelievably awesome I thought it was? I saw that damned movie three times in the space of ten days. THREE TIMES. Okay, that's less "impressive" when I consider that there are a couple movies I saw three times in Japan ("Howl" and "Touch", if memory serves), where the cheapest adult ticket is roughly 10,andtheregularticketis10, and the regular ticket is 10,andtheregularticketis18. Never mind that a local theater here shows matinees for $5.25, which is where I saw it the second two times but STILL. I dunno, I guess it just struck the right chord of adventure/friendship that I really feel the need for right now. It helps that that dragon is about the cutest damned thing I've ever seen (Am aware the co-director worked on "Lilo & Stitch", so it's no wonder Toothless looks so familiar). But the flying scenes? In particular the "test drive" part? Just evokes this weird kind of fierce happiness in me, watching it. I bet watching it in 3D Imax would have been amazing. This is why I take riding lessons, so that one day when I own my own horse, I can get as close as possible to riding my own dragon. I suppose by that thought process, however, I should probably be taking flying lessons as well. I'll just have to be content to be Atreyu, flying over the grass, I guess. I can deal with that.

25 February 2010 @ 02:49 am

So, I woke up around 1:00, made it to the bathroom and back before I started feeling light-headed and my vision went all wonky and my ears rang like I've never heard them do. Stumbled (literally) across the hall because I couldn't have dialed 911 if I wanted to (though I nearly made it. I had the 9 and the first 1 dialed). They let me sit there for 20 minutes and thank god everything settled down. Went back to my apartment, called Mom, she and Jon came up. I spent the 2 1/2 hours it takes them to get here Skyping with Sarah and Haruko, bless them both. Went to the emergency room where the doctor said, "Pretty sure you're okay. No CT scan, even! w00t!" (This may be my interpretation). Got home at 7:15, slept for a few hours and now TO WORK. My lower back and right leg kind of hurt like all get out, though D:

08 February 2010 @ 06:10 pm

So I've decided to get a cat. To be honest, I'd really prefer a dog (I'm a dog person at heart), but I grew up with cats and like them a lot. I just think a dog is a bigger thing to deal with than I really want to right now, but I'm a little tired of coming home to an empty apartment. It didn't bother me too much in Japan because I saw Chikage's dogs every week and feasibly, getting a pet would have been a bad idea (I had friends who got cats. One made the hard decision to leave theirs behind with a friend, another paid a large amount of money to take theirs home), but here, here I just miss my dogs and my cat and I can fix that. Thusly, I'm getting a cat. Planning on going to a few shelters this weekend to see if I can meet one I like and that (more importantly :P) likes me. I am dead set on using a Japanese name because I'm...well...me , but if you can convince me of a better name (I'm trying to come up with names, boys' and girls', now so that I'm ready to go :D), I might use it. The Japanese name thing is mostly because when we got North, Mom and Dad put the kibosh on using a Japanese name and ageha_ya came up with the name "Gryffin" before I could even think about a name, really, so. So yeah, here's your chance to participate in my Pet Adventure. You should totally feel honored.

10 January 2010 @ 08:44 am

So yesterday I went and bought the first book in English of the Spice and Wolf novel series. I've enjoyed the tv series and the first two comics, and I have the first three books in Japanese...but I thought I'd read the first book in English and take a stab at the rest in Japanese. So, I'm reading this book and I dunno if it's because I know it's a translation or what, because I can practically imagine the original Japanese of some of the sentences. I'm not sure they paid enough for their translators for it, because some of the language is a little painfully stilted. That being said, I came across a section that I think probably can't be blamed on translation and is, to my mind, just kind of weird, and I wish to share it with you. I'll just start by saying it's probably good to know the main character is a traveling and he's got a cart and a cart horse. Anyway, the passage is as follows: Still, having spent so many days alone with a horse, he started to feel that it would be nice if the horse could speak. Stories of carthorses becoming human were not uncommon among traveling merchants, and Lawrence had since the beginning laughed off such yarns as ridiculous, but lately he wondered if they could be true. When a young merchant went to buy a horse from a horse trader, some would even recommend a mare with a completely straight face, 'just in case she turns human on you'. This had happened to Lawrence, who'd ignored the advice and bought a sturdy stallion. The same horse was working steadily in front of him even now, but as time passed and Lawrence grew lonely, he wondered if he might'nt have been better off with a mare after all

Maybe I'm just weird, but the whole passage was odd. I blame the author more than the translation, but it made me laugh just the same.

05 January 2010 @ 01:12 pm

I had something of an, ahem, Xmas miracle :P Really what it was was someone at the post office not catching something but hey, I'll take it. I mailed a get well card to Sarah that ended up just having a 44 cent stamp on it (it had gotten mixed in with U.S. Christmas cards) and, somehow, it got there. I'm not sure if this makes me uncomfortable about our postal system or just happy it made it there. I had expected it to be a lost cause...that maybe I'd get it returned, but actually arrive there 54 cents below the cost it should have? Nope.

02 January 2010 @ 05:56 pm

Whaaaaaat! That's right. Here I am. Again. Even though I said back in October that I was going to start writing more. Well, this time I mean it. Really.

( In which I blabber about xxxHolicCollapse )

( In which I babble about Doctor WhoCollapse )

09 October 2009 @ 12:24 am

Okay, esteemed friend's list, I'm looking for a bit of advice from the lot of you. As many of you may know, I've been thinking about grad school. For a while, I was thinking of applying to University of Illinois' (Champaign/Urbana) East Asian Languages and Cultures Masters program. But I've just heard that the EALC department there is in the process of getting an MA in Teaching program involved, meaning that by going for that, you'd have both the EALC AND Japanese teaching certificate. The major drawback being, IF it's approved (that's the first hurdle), it would likely not be on the schedule for next school year, but the year after. That's two years from now before I could even start, and the information I received said that the actual degree could take as long as 3 years, meaning it's going to be another five years before I could really do anything with it. On top of that, even if I decided I wanted to go for the EALC MA (the one they have currently), I now have less than three months in which to get the whole application together, as it's due on January 1st.

I'm really stuck here. Should I just try to get on with my life and find a "career" job, or is it worth waiting the two years? I'm really, really stuck as to whether it's worth waiting that long to start school again, even though I know other people do do it. When I mentioned this to my mom, the first thing she said was, "That's two years away!". I realize that's time to seriously keep studying Japanese (JLPT jun-1kyu? :P), "bulk" up my resume (volunteering with I-House Students here at ISU, or volunteering with the sister-cities program, etc), save money...but at the moment it just feels so far off (topped with the fact I have no guarantee it will be approved), never mind the fact I may not even be accepted anyway. Just very frustrated, and talking to mom about it seems to be getting me no where. I'd like some more objective advice.

06 October 2009 @ 11:50 pm

No doubt ageha_ya will write up something on it, too, and even I find it odd that of all things, a movie should prompt me to return to my LJ, but there it is. At any rate, ageha_ya, Jason, and I headed over to the movie theater (my first since being back home and my first at home in five years...certainly I saw more than my fair share *cougclosetoeightycough* in Japan) this evening to see Zombieland, which I have anticipated for some time now.

My short review? Totally. And. Completely. Awesome.

( In which Jamie reviews ZombielandCollapse )

I really like Google Japan`s image for Tanabata! I wouldn't mind that being the image for Google Japan all year round. Although it has now served to remind me that I have totally forgotten about Tanabata completely. It would be such a help if it were a national holiday.

ageha_ya and I are trying to make arrangements for our stuff to be sent home via a shipping company called Japan Luggage Express and it is annoying. Not their fault, though. I'm just an idiot and things like this confuse and frustrate me easily :P It's actually pretty easy on the Japan end. It's the receiving my things on the US end that I'm concerned about. Well, to be honest, plus the money. I really should have been saving more money and I'm kicking myself now that I haven't been. Hopefully everything that's the most important will make it into the one cubic meter I can afford, at the moment, to send off :P I've already sent three boxes home, but that was by book/paper rate and was a special case. As you can guess, I'm sure, the "paper" in those boxes were not, of course, books or other paper, but comics. Silly it may be, but they're already home waiting for me and it'll be a big comfort to have them there (second to ageha_ya, of course)!

p.s. You know what starts tonight? THAT'S RIGHT. Vampire Boy. It is going to be AWESOME (read: horrible and awesome). 10 p.m. BE THERE.

I have really got to start updating more often. I dunno why I'm so lazy about it these days. I should write more while I've got more to say, considering things will probably get very, very normal once I get home (events in California notwithstanding).

Anyway, kikibatsu directed me to check out this series called Toradora which, while I had heard of, I'd never seen (not that that's surprising). "Trust me. You`ll like it"...which in kikibatsu speak where I or ageha_ya are concerned means, "Hey, there's a love story. It's right up your alley!". Before I say anything else, I just want to express that my tastes really are more well-rounded than just liking any old love story. That being said, Toradora is a love story, and an awesomely entertaining one at that, with incredibly likable characters (though I can't say much for the OP or ED theme. I'm not wild about either one of them).

In other news, ageha_ya, princesschii and I got to play with bow and arrows and water guns made out of recently cut bamboo. Mayumi and her husband have made all these structures in their yard out of the bamboo that grows on their land. Thus far they've made a "tea room" (a raised platform with walls on three sides and a roof), this wavy looking thing that's purely artistic, something that resembles a teepee without a cover, and three structures that look like wigwams. Only one has a cover at the moment. Plus they've hauled out the stove they usually put in the teepee over the winter and have it outside and are using it to cook. We made pizza with it on Saturday (with fresh bamboo shoots on it. FANTASTIC), and then Meg, Sarah and I messed around with the aforementioned bows, arrows, and water guns. Ok, it was mostly me that messed around with the water guns, and betrayed Meg when we had a "duel" by turning early and totally owning her. Not enough water to get her soaked, though, of course. Alas. Another time. But yeah, it proved to me that while I'd like to pretend that I'm young at heart, the fact of the matter is that "childish" is a much more apt description. Oh well, actually acting like an adult is overrated, in my humble opinion.

One month left. How did that happen. I can't believe I have been here for five years. And I'm even less able to grasp the fact it's nearly over.

Current Music: American Saturday Night: Brad Paisley