Back From Sabbatical

Okay, first off I need to apologize to anyone who still comes to this site…I’ve been absent far longer than is reasonable, and there’s really no good excuse for it. The same apology goes to those who’ve e-mailed me, as I likely haven’t responded to you either. The week coming off of break was, for reasons I’m not entirely conscious of, a bit odd, and thus I just haven’t felt the compulsion to post anything. Anyway, that’s over now, and I suppose I ought to at least mention the interesting end to my Hokkaido adventure.

As you may or may not remember, the last time I posted I mentioned that Joey and I were headed to Hakodate to spend a day looking at the various temples and museums that city has to offer. What I haven’t told you is that on our way there (from Wakkanai) I found out that the Postal ATMs were going to be closed from January 1st to the 3rd. For those of you who haven’t spent time in Japan, the idea of ATMs closing might sound really weird…indeed, it still does to me as well. However, after several months here I’ve come to accept that ATMs will close at 5pm in Japan. Knowing this, I assumed that the ATMs would close for New Years Day (which is a huge holiday in Japan) but I had no idea that they would remain in this state for three days. To make a long story shorter, when I arrived in Hakodate I had slightly more than one thousand yen (around ten dollars) in my pocket and no way to get more.

Knowing as I did that my last all-you-can-ride ticket would not get me all the way from Hakodate to Sendai, I knew that I had to do something fast. In Japan, almost no business establishments take plastic (credit or debit) aside from Japan Rail (henceforth referred to as JR). Since Joey still had around one hundred and fifty bucks, he stayed in the city (like I had originally planned) while I booked it over to the station and blew four thousand yen on a red-eye train through the tunnel to Aomori, which I knew I could get to Sendai from in one day. Being that it was around eight pm when we arrived in Hakodate and knowing that my train didn’t leave until three am, I hung out in the station playing Advance Wars 2 on my GBA and wondering if my limited Japanese was going to be enough to get my ass out of this situation (Joey knows far more than I).

Without going into gritty details, I managed to make it to Sendai Station by about five-thirty the next day and the kaikan itself by around six. Since I had awoken the previous day at around five am, I managed to stay awake for forty-two hours, which seemed like a proper number at the time. It’s not something I particularly want to do again, but it did serve as a useful “trial by fire” for my command of basic tourist Japanese.

Anyway, there is another aspect to this story that I haven’t yet related, but I think I’ll save that for tomorrow. Sufficient to say for now that it involves a life-size cardboard cutout of a particular Soul Calibur 2 character. Stay tuned.

//_Norm out

A Tale Of Swords And Souls

I suppose now is as good a time as any to explain the comment I made at the end of the previous post. You see, Joey and I were in Sapporo at the time, just sort of wandering around the city and seeing what sorts of things there were to do. We eventually came across a Namco-sponsored arcade on the sixth floor of a building near the train station. Being that Namco is the company behind a game whose virtues I have extolled upon on many different occasions, Soul Calibur 2. Thinking that they might possibly have an SC2 machine in there on which I could own some scrubs we headed up, only to discover (after a few minutes of searching) that there was no such console available. As I prepared to leave, Joey grabbed me and led me over to the back of the arcade with a comment like “you just need to see this, trust me.” Imagine my surprise when I was treated to a five-foot cardboard standup of Talim from, you guessed it, SC2.

Talim, in case you did not know, just happens to be the character I play with the highest degree of skill, and thus it might be asserted that I have a bit of a soft spot for her. Upon recognition of this element I was immediately struck with an intense desire to posses said promotional item, causing long-dormant devious sector of my brain to begin formulating all kinds of appropriation plans. After agonizing over the possibility for a few moments (and assurances from Joey that he would be of no help) I decided against any rash actions and we left to grab some ramen and then head back to our room at the local youth hostel.

Although gone from my immediate vicinity, the Talim cutout was in no way out of my mind. I still longed to own it, and thus Joey suggested that we pose the question to the other guys with whom we were rooming at the hostel: should I take the Talim? There were three other guys present, two guys from Singapore and one from Korea, and the Singaporians seemed to be neutral on the issue (likely because they would have been caned for this in their country) while the Korean was definitely giving me words of encouragement and, dare I say, challenge. Let me make one thing clear here: I do not normally steal things. It was a combination of verbal challenges to my masculinity and the fact that the poster was of Talim that pushed me in this direction.

Okay, so, finally we have arrived at the actually act of thievery itself. After returning to the arcade, I proceeded directly to the back and scoped the area out. Joey was along for the ride, although he made it clear that he would not be an active participant. There were two uniformed employees nearby, staked out like they worked at some Vegas casino or something. There was a small hallway that lead to a door marked (in Japanese) “employees only” just off to the left of the Talim, and I decided that this was the most advantageous area to make my egress. Then, all of the sudden both of the nearby employees turned and wandered off to some task or other that took them out of sight while a trio of guys dressed in normal streetclothes headed towards me with trash bags in their hands. Not about to waste this opportunity, I waited for them to arrive at my position and then calmly scooped up the Talim and walked with them through the employee door as though I were taking it to the trash. Joey followed, and we waited with the guys for one of the freight elevators to take us to the basement of the building. After following them towards the dumpsters for a few hundred feet we peeled off and made a beeline for the loading dock exit that let out onto a main road. After realizing that the signs covering the area strictly prohibited walking up this ramp, we booked it like the criminals we were and eventually made it back to the safety of the hostel.

To this day I have no idea just how much those guys realized about what we were doing…I have a feeling that they must have at least suspected, but much like I would have done had someone pulled this at Circuit City, they thought it was far too funny to mess with. For that, I thank them. Oh yeah, and as a treat/reward for reading all the way to the end of this boring story I present you with a picture of the actual Talim itself. You may now go about your business.

//_Norm out

Here I Go Again

This post is only sort of relevant, as the information I’m going to rant about is a bit out of date now. However, my Hokkaido trip and subsequent posting drought mean that I’m a bit backed up on things I wanted to shout about, so you get to listen to it anyway. I promise it’ll be quick (or as quick as anything I write ever is).

Basically, it’s fallen upon me and other like me to do the job that the news media is supposed to handle but, as always, entirely fails to do. You see, I’m sure you all heard something or other in the last few weeks about the latest ruckus over Grand Theft Auto 3 and the Haitians issue, or maybe just a general statement of some overly concerned mother who wants Wal-Mart or Target to never, ever again sell “murder simulators” or some other equally stupid rhetoric. On the other hand, I’m also reasonably sure that none of you, perhaps even those who are gamers themselves, have heard anything about Childs Play. Childs Play is, or was, a charity program setup by the boys at Penny Arcade to raise money and donate toys to Children’s Hospital in Seattle. Their donations weren’t just limited to videogames but included a full range of toys from Legos to board games. Since the drive was done almost exclusively through the PA website (and a few other gaming related websites) you can be reasonably certain that almost all of the nearly two hundred thousand dollars of toys and cash came directly from twenty-something gamers like myself. I’m going to repeat that number because it bears repeating: two hundred thousand dollars.

What makes the situation so irritating is not that you didn’t hear about it in the news; at this point, gamers (like skateboarders or metalheads before them) are used to a general feeling that our hobby is somehow offensive to the general public. One thing we haven’t gotten used to yet is the abject apathy and stupidity with which your average journalist will treat a shining example of gamers who aren’t murderers. I’ll quote Tycho himself, as he says it better than I can (be warned, this contains a few swears):

The first time the news dumbshits came out to talk about Child’s Play, though they were clearly told who was responsible for it they excised one of the people behind it. I consider this a fairly minor issue, but they’re still retarded. When they came to the Children’s Hospital itself for the toy delivery, there was no reporter even down there with us. A cameraman got some footage and then (I believe) ran away. I thought I heard him say “Ghosts!”, but that’s neither here nor there. When this footage was aired, I learned something new: that the toys had been donated by a local catholic school, and were valued at nearly a thousand dollars. Understand this. A single bin of GBA SPs was worth four thousand dollars, and we had four such bins. That’s above and beyond the seventy GameCubes the other twenty carts of toys, which at our best estimates come to around $175,000. Then there was a check for twenty-seven thousand. Here’s where the depression sets in.

What we – this is a grand We, which includes you – what we did was completely amazing. It was worth doing purely on account of its own virtues. But the other part, what we might call the “Secondary Objective,” was to promote the idea that we are not fucking murderers. This is an effort to combat media portrayals. Here’s the trick, the dark revelation, the Empire Strikes Back which produces our moment of darkness: we need to rely on that selfsame inept machinery to broadcast our new message as well. They’re simply not capable of it. I understand that there’s just no story in people being good to each other, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened from time to time.

This is in stark contrast to the New York Post [note: link goes nowhere, I can't seem to find that article] article I linked in the sidebar around a week ago…that got full media attention, complete with lines comparing violent videogames to the alleged actions of one Michael Jackson, which Tycho again illustrates better than I am able:

The money quote is thus: “This is 10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to a little boy.” Let us endeavor to approach greater understanding. I don’t know what the worst thing people think Michael Jackson did is, but I know what he was charged with – seven counts of child molestation and two counts of using intoxicants, drugs or alcohol, in order to get the other yucky thing done. I can’t believe I’m being made to enumerate these charges, to name that beastly procession like some perverse Adam. But there you have it, this is the reality that these articles have constructed: Producing – or playing? – a game where you portray a mobster is just as bad as drugging and then subsequently raping ten thousand children simultaneously.

What is it about videogames that invites such invective, such over-indulgent use of hyperbole? I’m honestly curious, to some degree or other, and I’m hoping that those of you on the “outside” of gaming culture would hit me with your opinions or thoughts on this subject. You can do so via e-mail or, preferably, you could talk about it in our forum.

//_Norm out

I’m A Traveling Man

For whatever reason it hadn’t really dawned on me until sometime in the last few days that I’ve been in Japan for a little over three and a half months now. It didn’t seem that long (although I might not have said that at other times) and it seems even shorter now since I’ve realized that I only have about two and a half months less. Although this might seem like a lot of time, pretty much every spare minute from mid-February to the end of March (when I’ll likely be returning) is gonna be booked solid with traveling. As it stands now, I’m trying to arrange a hop over to Beijing courtesy of Zen and his benevolent grandparents who have offered us free lodgings for the time. In addition, I’m attempting to stick a trip down do Okinawa (by air) and a subsequent rail trip north from there through various cities on the way back to Sendai. Money permitting, I hope to be able to do both, but the timing is somewhat of a bitch and I’ve got to make some decisions pretty quickly.

In other news, I’m desperately behind in my kanji class, so I think I’ll stop wasting time here and go back to trying to memorize a hundred identical-looking (to a gaijin) symbols that have two or three meanings and pronunciations each. I beg of you, lord, strike me down where I stand. Or type. Whatever.

//_Norm out

Boredom Relief

I don’t actually have anything intelligent to talk about, I’m mostly just trying to relieve the boredom as I sit for the fifth hour on a train going to Tokyo. Remember those tickets I used to go to Hokkaido? Well, turns out various people throughout the international student apartments had one or two days leftover that they wanted to get rid of. Since they expire on the 20th, we went about collecting them and now myself, George, Tim and Yuta are on our way to Tokyo. Because we have to use the slowest trains, we’ll really only get Saturday to do anything substantial, but I think it’ll be worth it if I can actually find a mod chip for my PS2 while in Akihabara.

The other interesting thing is the way the train has been, slowly but surely, getting more and more crowded the closer we get to Tokyo. This not surprising, but really just foreshadows how bad things could conceivably get…we’ve still got a solid two hours of riding time left, and if it keeps filling at the rate it has things could get quite cramped indeed. Probably we’ll end up spending tonight in a manga-kisa, so I’ll have both net and power connections tonight and I may post something later.

//_Norm out

What The Fuck Is Wrong With People

I’m sorry if the title of this post offends you, but I promise that I at least have a justifiable (to me) reason for voicing it in that manner. See, I do not consider myself easily angered…I do my best to have a fairly mellow, laid-back outlook on life and the generally stupid people who inhabit it (myself included). Although you may see me get worked up over various issues (like games, which I need to stop) I’m almost never genuinely angry at these times; I just like a good argument or discussion, and the best way to get that is to be contentious.

There are a few things that anger me, though, and one of them happened tonight.

I’ll try to keep this short but I do need to set the scene for those of you who’ve never been to the more populated parts of Japan. The Tokyo rail system is one of the most impressive feats of civil engineering I’ve seen in my short life, but it’s also the most crowded. You might think you know what I mean, but you don’t…when I say crowded, I don’t mean you have to stand and maybe be near other people. I mean that you are literally crushed between people, your breathing labored because of the pressure on your chest, and in most cases your appendages are trapped and completely outside your ability to use. When the train comes to a station you get off, regardless of whether or not this is your stop, simply because there is no way not to. When the doors open the people nearest literally fall out, and everyone behind them sort of rushes out like a shaken can of soda…like a leaf in a river, you are powerless to stop yourself or control your direction.

It is in this sort of atmosphere that a certain class of people in Japan have become famous, or rather infamous…the so-called subway pervert. These people generally (but not always) target females, and will use the close quarters situation to grope and fondle women who are completely powerless to stop them because they cannot even move their own hands to stop them. Japanese society being what it is, this is a torture that is silently endured by the victim and, if noticed, often ignored by those around her. It’s sick, terrifying, and something that I never dreamed I would come into contact with.

As you’ve no doubt figured out by now, I did.

George, Tim and I were on our way to Ikebukoro from Shinjuku on one of Tokyo’s more crowded JR lines. It was my first experience with this level of crowding, but I had be thoroughly briefed before hand and knew what to expect. After being pinned awkwardly, the train left the station and it was no more than thirty seconds into the ride when I heard a sort of sniffle from somewhere behind me. Now, a sniffle is a tough thing to classify…it can just be a nervous sound, or maybe something you do when you have a cold. This one was different, though…it had that feeling of emotion behind it, some sort of complex, ineffable harmonic that reaches right through your conscious brain and down into some primal human connection to jerk at your heart. It was obvious that this person, who I was fairly sure was a female, was doing everything she could to choke back tears. Had this been America, or perhaps even another English-speaking nation, I would almost certainly have asked if she was okay. As it is, I know how to say that in Japanese anyway, it’s a very simple phrase…daijoubo desuka. I didn’t say it, though, I didn’t even fucking turn around, because this is Japan and I don’t speak their language well enough. This is Japan, and people just sort of let this shit happen. This is Japan, and even in Tokyo I’m just a hulking white-man to be feared in this sort of situation.

I’d heard the stories of this kind of thing, I knew that on some Tokyo train lines there are cars for women only specifically to combat this problem, that’s how big it is. I also knew, somehow, that this person behind me was being violated and there wasn’t a god-damn thing I could do about it. It’s a terrible feeling, a sense of complete impotence and uselessness. She (as it did indeed turn out to be) got off with us at the next station, and when she did I knew immediately that I had been right. Tim had also noticed it, and even thought he knew who had been the perpetrator of this despicable crime. Lucky for him, and probably for me as well, as I wasn’t thinking entirely critically, there were way too many people for Tim to pick him out by the time I knew he had seen him. If we had, I don’t know that I would have been able to stop myself from creating an incident that would almost certainly have had my ass in handcuffs on a plane to LA. The only thing that made the situation even remotely palatable was that, according to Tim, the actual act had taken place pretty soon after she got on and the girl was able to elbow her way next to the three gaijin (us) and get some other, apparently decent men between herself and the assailant. I guess I was just hearing the after-affects of the groping, not the act itself, which doesn’t really make it any better but at least tells me there was little I could have changed anyway.

Not that it makes me fell any better about it.

//_Norm out

I Don’t Even Watch Much Anime

Here I am, back in a manga-kisa in Ikebukuro for the night. I’m still seething over yesterday’s events, but it’s more of a dark undertone than any real anger, so I think it’ll be alright.

First things first, we hit up the Tokyo Anime Expo, for no other reason than it was a few blocks from where we slept and we needed something to do. I know, I know, what the hell is wrong with me, right? Well, I’ve never been to any sort of convention, anime or otherwise, and I figured that so long as I came all the way to Japan I might as well see something of another side of geek culture. When I got there, I was almost immediately treated to the dark side of anime geekdome…cross-dressing cosplayers. For those who don’t know, anime geeks have this thing for dressing up as their favorite anime or videogame characters. This can be totally sweet, like when the cute girl at the check-in counter decides to dress like Yuna from FFX-2, but it can also be absolutely terrifying, like the white guy dressed as sailor something or other, it’s not important, sufficient to say he had a dress on and a blue wig.

Anyway, only two things saved me from going totally nuts: the relatively small attendance the con attracted, and the fact that Fred Gallagher of Megatokyo fame was there. He was doing some autograph thing, and so the three of us had him draw us little sketches while chatting with him about his other project, Warmth. Since Warmth takes place in Sendai, we were curious as to just how accurate his drawings were. It turns out they weren’t, but Fred is heading up to Sendai on Tuesday to rectify this situation, and upon learning that we in fact live there had us leave cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses in case he wanted some extra guides. I’m not much about celebrity type stuff, but it was fairly cool nonetheless.

We spent most of the rest of the day in Akihabara, which I am powerless to describe in detail in this short amount of time. Sufficient to say it was awesome and I’ll no doubt tell you more about it tomorrow when I’m once again bored on our six-hour train ride home.

//_Norm out

MegaSendai

I return again after yet another inexcusable posting drought…I promised myself that I wouldn’t let this sort of thing become a habit (or lack thereof) and yet I have. I am going to make a statement here and now: baring any time-zone stupidity, I will make a post every single day for the next ten days…which should put us to the end of next week.

We’ll see if that actually happens or not.

I still plan to talk about the second half of my stay in Tokyo (and Akihabara in particular) but I thought I’d hit up a more recent event today instead. As you may remember, Tim and I hit up ACen last Saturday more or less on a whim and ended up meeting Fred Gallagher, creator of the fairly popular comic MegaTokyo. He’s working on a new project that takes place in Sendai, and thus he was up here on Tuesday checking out the city, taking pictures and trying to get a feel for it. Having exchanged contact info the last time, Tim and I ended up heading down to hang out with him along with Andy, Jeshua and a high school exchange student (why didn’t anyone ever tell me you could do that?) named Beth for most of the night. Nothing spectacular, just hanging out and eating ramen underneath Sendai station, but it was cool to meet someone whose work I’d been watching for the better part of a year.

I was quite concerned that some of those present might allow themselves to degenerate into pointless (not to mention annoying) fanboy gibbering, but the night turned out to be just like hanging out with any other group of friends. Fred himself was personable and laid back with a bit of a cynical streak that I can identify with (yeah, it’s a stretch, I know) and an total lack of the artistic snobbery that would have earned my enmity. It’s nice to know that Regular Guys™ can end up doing something they love for a living.

//_Norm out

Technical Difficulties…Please Stand By

Just a little heads up: I’ll be making some alterations to the base code of the website over the next few days, and thus things may appear broken from time to time depending on when you visit. Rest assured that any errors you see are being actively repaired, but if you think I should know about them anyway feel free to e-mail me and let me know. Hopefully everything will go smoothly and you won’t even notice, and once the update is finished things should be faster and less likely to freak out under alternative browsers (read: not IE6).

//_Norm out

Akihabara

Right, so, at some point I said I was going to talk a bit about Akihabara and what makes it so cool. It seems that we have finally arrived at said point, and thus the talking will be done. Ready?

For those of you who don’t already have at least some background knowledge of Tokyo I’ll clue you in. Like many other large cities, Tokyo is divided up into many districts including Shinjuku, Harajuku, Roppongi, and others (think Manhattan and such in New York). Akihabara is one of these districts and is sometimes referred to as the “electric district” as almost all of the commerce in it (and there is a lot) involved electronic goods and services.

Akihabara is not just a large collection of major chain stores, either. In fact, while we were there I don’t think I saw a single major franchise; instead, there are literally thousands of small, independent shops selling everything from coaxial cable and capacitors to CPUs and mini-disc players. It’s all laid out in a marketplace or bazaar sort of fashion, with some vendors inside buildings but always with frontage that has tables laden with cheap CD media or used keyboards or something like that. There are also vendors who are strictly on the side of the streets, and these guys call out to you just like you would expect, hawking their wares and trying to make a deal. Even the more legitimate places have hustlers working the surrounding street trying to get you into their store. It’s not only computer parts, either…you’ll also find tons of stores selling movies and music (on all kinds of formats, from LD to VHS to mini-disc) and a whole host of places selling you anime and related merchandise (a lot of which is quite dodgy, but we’ll ignore that for now).

The entire place is like some giant geek fantasy, a little place in the middle of Tokyo where we can all go and not feel weird about pouring over stacks of motherboards or racks of Saturn games. Unfortunately, the back-alley areas that are normally packed with street vendors were largely unoccupied because of the cold, but I think I might try to stop back there again in mid-March when the weather should be perking up and they’ll be back out in force.

Coming up next: why staying in manga-kisas for an entire weekend is a bad idea.

//_Norm out

Manga-kisas

For those of you who do not know (and I imagine this is most of you) I’ll try to explain exactly what a manga-kisa is, although it might be tough to get your mind around since I don’t think there’s anything analogous in America. For starters, try to envision an internet café, back before those things ceased to exist stateside. Next, instead of just an open café with tables and net connections imagine that it has rows and rows of cubicles like an office would. Finally, picture these cubicles having a comfy chair (or small couch if it’s a double), PS2, and a computer with high-speed net connection and you’ve more or less got the idea.

People come to these to play games and read manga (both of which are available in large amounts), I guess, which is their supposed aim, but I think that the reality is that most people use them like I do: as really, really cheap hotels. See, many of the manga-kisa chains offer “night packs” where you can get a single cube at around a thousand yen for eight hours. The cubes are just big enough to sleep in, and then only barely, and only if you can handle sleeping in a sitting position. I can do that just fine, but it does cause interesting muscle cramps come morning and, let’s face it, you just don’t sleep all that well. The manga-kisas also offer shower facilities (further indicating that they fully support the hotel idea) and free drinks all night (none of which are alcoholic).

I thought we would try it out, because it seemed like the sort of thing students traveling on the cheap are supposed to do, but I think that doing two nights in a row was probably a bad idea…by the time Sunday rolled around I was quite tired and largely incapable of doing the studying I needed to do for my language class the next day. It also didn’t help that they were out of singles and Tim and I elected to split I double…Tim is a tall guy, and there just isn’t enough damn room for two people to actually get any sleep in those things.

//_Norm out

Do People Still Get Rabies?

The end of my classes for this semester is rapidly approaching. This is made most evident by the piling up of final papers I must write and the sudden realization that I don’t know jack about anything when it comes to speaking Japanese, which could be a problem in the classes that require me to do so. Either way, it looks like it’s time to buckle down and make sure that I know my stuff, both because I’d like a decent grade in those classes and because it would be nice to go back to the states and know something about the native language of the country I spent half a year in.

I’ve also confirmed the earliest details for my trips this break; China is a go, and the tickets have been paid for (plane leaves around 5pm on February 22nd, for the insatiably curious). It looks like most of the time there will be spent in Beijing and Shanghai, which is cool with me since both cities have a lot to do (consequently, if you have suggestions on what I should see please let me know) and Beijing itself is one of the locations from which you can tour the Great Wall.

Looking at the US travel advisories for China, Lane informs me that rabies is the number two problem on the list for foreign travelers…which, to me, seems absolutely insane. It does make it likely that I will pop over to the student health center for a vaccination, I would feel stupid dying of rabies.

//_Norm out

Watch Out, Spielberg

Although I’ve never mentioned this before, largely because my involvement is only peripheral, we [the international students] decided to make a movie. Or perhaps I should say, Mitsu decided to make a movie and dragged the rest of us into it. Not that I mind…I haven’t done any real “film” work since high school, and getting back into the art of camera angles and dialogue is actually rather fun. The details of the plot are largely opaque to me, as I have not actually read the latest script revision sitting in my inbox, but I can tell you that it somehow manages to parody The Matrix, Kill Bill and The Last Samurai with copious Soul Calibur 2 references tossed in for good measure. My part in the movie is mostly as a technical consultant and taskmaster (I try to reign Mitsu in when his ideas get overly grandiose) but I have apparently been cast as the rabbi in the opening scene were I believe I get killed, though I must request that you refrain from quoting me on this. I also have no idea where we can find a yamaka in Japan, but I’m nothing if not resourceful.

It has also come to my attention that the humans out there who read this site would like to have some faces to go with the names I have a tendency to toss out as though you should know who they are. I have begun work on this, and will try to have something posted by the end of the week, probably on Saturday. It’s likely that I won’t actually have everyone up at that point, but I should at least have most of them.

//_Norm out

Since When Am I Busy

There are good things and bad things about being busy. On the one hand, it feels nice to always have something to do, to never been sitting somewhere bored and wishing that you had something to occupy your mind. On the other hand, constantly having something that awaits your attention can get a bit taxing, particularly when it comes towards the end of a semester. I’ve got two final papers due at the end of next week, a third class whose project we still haven’t been told about, and two final exams for my Kanji and Japanese Language classes that I don’t really feel ready for.

It’s not really the finals aspect that makes me slightly stressed, though. For one, having gone to college for two years already I’m used to it, and two because I decided sometime last year to take a rather Zen approach to tests and homework that mostly keeps me from getting overly concerned. The bigger problem is that, in addition to the standard scholastic stressed, I have to deal with setting up two major trips (China and Okinawa), dealing with all the exit papers I have to fill out to leave in March, dealing with state loan issues and working on my lab project which is, probably, the biggest of the concerns. It’s one thing to write a program about a concept you don’t entirely understand…I’ve done that before. It’s another to have to do this in a language you don’t actually know, in a development environment whose features you don’t know and using math that’s at least two levels above you.

Anyway, don’t be too surprised if the rest of this week’s posts are somewhat devoid of exiting anecdotes (are the normal ones exciting? I suppose not) because of my workload. I’ll do my best to be interesting, however, so don’t write me off entirely.

//_Norm out

The Book Also Has A Picture From Osaka

I was originally going to write yet another post complaining about how much I loathe C as a programming language and extolling upon the virtues of Java and how if C did just a tenth of the compile-time error checking that Java does we wouldn’t have so many system crashes. Two things changed my mind:

One: with the exception of Pat and my dad, none of you care.
Two: Zen gave me a going away present.

It seems stupid, in retrospect, but I honestly think now that I hadn’t actually realized how many friends I’ve made here until that moment. The fact that the gift was a little aqua book for holding contact information only drove the point home even harder. Until now the prospect of leaving Japan for America had been more or less like the prospect of going the other direction…something I was going to do because it seemed like the right choice at the time. I think now I finally recognize the possibility that I might just miss some of these people when I do.

You’ll have to excuse me if a wax introspective for a moment, but I figure you can deal with it since I made sure not to burden you with the standard, trite sorts of new-year bullshit you might have expected. Up until now, I think I was viewing the relationships I have here in Sendai as temporary; they’re the sort of thing that I enjoy now but probably won’t think twice about within a few months of leaving. They were contacts of convenience, created because I was in a land where my usual circles were no longer available and because I needed to have a group of people who were in a similar situation for support. It was very much a pragmatic thing, although not consciously, and I think I’ve more or less treated it that way since the beginning.

Zen’s small act, though, along with a few statements from various other kaikan residents, has gone and thrown that all out the window. For better or for worse I’ve met a lot of people and made a few friends here that I’ll miss when I go, and I’ll be damned if I’m just going to let the contacts stagnate and die as I’ve done so many times in the past. These people aren’t just friends I made because I was forced to, as I’ve shown that I can live with people and manage to get to know very few of them (my dorm hall freshman year springs readily to mind)…instead, they’re people I’ve shared a lot of good times with and it would be stupid to just drop them once I go. It’s not every day you get a chance to become friends with people from Australia, Sweden, The Netherlands, France and even people from other states in my own country all at the same time. The fact that Zen added a personal picture he took in Osaka and an entry for “Soul Calibur” (in katakana) with a drawing of Talim’s tonfas and Ivy’s are small but poignant examples of the things we (and this is the royal we, not just me and Zen) have shared in the last six months.

I think I’ll fill that book with names, numbers, and e-mail addresses from everyone I’ve met here and do the best I can to stay in touch with them. I’m not going to get all weepy and emotional when I leave them, that’s just not the sort of person I am, but rest assured I’ll miss them all and, to a greater or lesser extent, which I’d been able to stay for the full year program.

But then, that would only have delayed the problem, not solved it.

//_Norm out

Two More Books You Should Read

I don’t really have anything specific or pressing to talk about today, so I figured I’d let you know about some books you ought to be reading because they’re just that good. For starters, you may remember that I got Snow Crash for Christmas, and I have to say it’s possibly the best gift I got. The book is totally outrageous in its portrayal of a future America, but at the same time it manages to weave intelligent social commentary and satire in a way that says something while still being funny. The plot was fun and unique, the characters where believable and the writing style itself was incredibly cool. At the very least read the first four pages or so…if Stephenson’s over-the-top descriptions there don’t get you excited I don’t think you’re reading in the right language.

Next up is Ender’s Game, a book that (despite being linked on the sidebar) I just recently finished. I had been avoiding this book for years because of some pretty poor reviews, but it turns out that those reviews were mostly, if not completely, wrong. It manages to bring up interesting questions of morality and the place of genetics and government in our future while avoiding the typically preachy nature such books tend to have. While I found Card’s portrayal of the kids to be a little bit too mature (geniuses or no) it hardly matters in the context of the whole. It’s a good book, one that even makes you think a little, but not so much that it detracts from regular enjoyment.

Sorry for the “book review” post, but I haven’t done one in a while and it’s rare that I read two books as good as these one after the other. Do yourself a favor and pick them both up (I even linked the Amazon pages, so not even laziness can be used as an excuse).

//_Norm out

I Still Don’t Eat Brussels Sprouts

Those of you who know me know that one of the [many] things I cannot do is cook. Maybe I lack some necessary gene, maybe I don’t properly stretch before hand, or maybe I’m just plain incompetent, I’m not sure which it is, but the important part is that anytime I try to make something it ends in disaster. This is why I was only too happy when Jason offered to cook stir fry with me today, since I though it would be a great chance to actually learn something about making food that doesn’t suck.

Jason is a cook on an entirely different level than I’m used to…first of all, he has a set of really nice knives, the genre of knife that lets you slice the tips of your fingers off and not notice until your carrots are gooey and red. Second, he actually has food in his refrigerator. Not that I don’t, but the type of foods he has are the kind that are useful in the act of cooking, things like carrots, cabbage, and other vegetables. He also has a cupboard full of various spices, sauces, and flour, something I can never claim to have owned at any point in my life.

Long story short, at his direction (and with him doing much of the work) we made a chicken stir fry that was entirely delicious and made me realize that being in Japan for half a year has actually changed a few things in regard to my palette. I am, or was, a picky eater…and when I say picky, I mean that I ate in much the same manner as a six year old. Vegetables? Yucky. What, why does that have a weird sauce on it? Oh no, the mashed-potatoes are touching the corn! Call the fire department, this is madness!

I knew, however, that when I came to Japan I would not be able to eat in the same way I did back home. Armed with this knowledge I have been able to force myself to eat things that, had they been presented to me in America, I would sooner have jumped off a bridge than eaten. Over time, I think my mouth has accepted the idea that it is okay to put things that are not cheeseburgers inside, and I think that this is better for everyone involved. I actually like cabbage and carrots now, enough that the stir fry was delicious not just for the chicken and rice but also for the veggies it contained.

I think that next we’re going to make some curry or something, which will probably also be good despite my attempts to foil it through stupidity. I’ll keep you informed.

//_Norm out

Quickie

You may remember that I mentioned a movie, probably only in passing, that was being actively developed here at the kaikan. This very same movie, despite the fact that the lead producer/director is leaving the country almost a month before I do, is currently being made at a furious (one might even say overly so) pace that is consuming most of the free time we have now.

This is my way of saying: you don’t get much of a substantial post today because I am a rabbi and I must portray myself as such about…now. That is all.

//_Norm out