I am so busy. I don't think I've ever been so busy in my life. Or been so happy with being busy either. Every day is so much fun! I truly feel like I'm using every minute of my day to its fullest extent, and it feels great going to bed every night knowing that there wasn't a single thing more that I could have squeezed into my day. Japan is wonderful.
Clearly, the blog updates in proportion to busy-ness rule still holds true. It's been far too long since the last time I posted up my life happenings for the world--aka the friends and family that care about me enough to read this blog--to see. Honestly, every day more exciting and fun experiences get added on to my list of things write about, and I keep putting off updating this thing for fear of being stuck writing forever. But I think that sort of defeats the purpose of having a travel/study abroad blog, so I'll just write a tad bit about everything, rather than exhausting myself going into depth about one thing and then stressing out about having neither the time nor energy to continue on in the same vein.
Starting from the most recent outing, I went to the Tokyo Game Show yesterday. Tokyo is not particularly close to Kyoto. Going was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I was hanging out at the zoo on Saturday afternoon with some friends, who I guess I should actually introduce because I will soon get really tired of writing "this friend" and "that friend." I was hanging out at the Kyoto Zoo on Saturday with Cecilia, Adam, and Andres. Just as we were buying tickets for the zoo, I got a phone call from Miao, asking if I wanted to go to Tokyo that night with Erica, Nate, and him. Since they were soon going to buy their tickets, I had about ten minutes to decide if I wanted to shell out about a hundred dollars for a round trip there, plus whatever amount I'd end up paying for the show itself, as well as for other diversions in Tokyo. Why the hell not? So my ticket was bought.
I returned home from my middle-of-a-typhoon trip to the zoo, shocked my host family by telling them I was taking an overnight bus to Tokyo that night and would be gone until Monday, and then did some homework before heading to Kyoto Station in time to catch the 12:10 am bus. Since I was a little late in responding, we couldn't all get tickets for the same bus, so we split into two groups of two. Nate and I arrived at Shinjuku at 6:30 am. We got to the convention center at 9 am. We waited in the blistering sun for an hour, and then entered the convention at roughly 10 am. I think we were both sleepy and hungry, so we spent the first hour in a slight daze, but after we finally located some food and regained our energy, we were able to wander excitedly around.
THEY HAD BLAZBLUE CONTINUUM SHIFT EXTEND. I mean, it's one of Japan's largest gaming conventions, so it's expected that they'd have a to-be-released-soon-ish, rather popular game, but still. I was very excited. Except not excited enough to wait in an hour plus line, so I watched, rather than played. I didn't mind too much; I was probably too sleep-deprived to gloss anything useful from playing anyway. Nate and I met up with Miao and Erica later, and since we were all way too exhausted to stay and deal with the crowds, we headed toward Akihabara for dinner, and then after that, to our bus stop so that we could catch yet another overnight bus. I actually still haven't gotten any real sleep since Friday night, which is probably why my writing is all over the place. Anyway, that was my Tokyo day.
I didn't ditch class; we had a three day weekend. We have another one coming up, so this day will be a three-day school week.
On Friday, I went to a no play, which is a traditional Japanese performing art. It was part of my class. Speaking of classes, I actually ended up in the C Japanese class, which is exactly the middle level, so I'm rather satisfied. I'm also taking a class on pragmatics--language use in context--which focuses on Miyazaki films, such as My Neighbor Totoro, and a class on no and kyogen, which explains why I went to the play. Honestly, it was kind of boring. Oh well. I've got quite a few more to go to throughout the semester, so there's no point in whining. I'm sure I'll eventually understand enough about no to enjoy the performances more.
Right before the play, I went to check out Doshisha University's calligraphy club. I was all stressed out earlier in the week from having to contact the club representative via email and use formal Japanese, which I have pretty much completely forgotten. But, everything ended up fine, so I went Friday to check it out. The atmosphere was really nice. The entire room had tatami floors, and there were books, brushes, and various other calligraphy-related items scattered all over the room. Since I really want to learn proper calligraphy, I asked the club representative to help me learn the very basics, so I spent my hour there practicing how to write the kanji for "one." Surprisingly, I had a lot of fun. Cliched as it may be, there was something extremely peaceful about concentrating super hard on simply making the correct brush movements. All the clutter in my head just kind of faded out for a while. I'm definitely joining the calligraphy club. I, awkwardly, didn't introduce myself properly to the members, but I'll deal with that the next time I go.
The day before that, Thursday, there was a BlazBlue tournament at the arcade near-ish my school. I entered and lost promptly. I was aware that was going to happen, however, so I didn't mind too much. My goal is to enter every BB tournament at that arcade, which take place every other Thursday, and to hopefully, by December, at least make it to the next round of eliminations. I'm trying to be as efficient as possible with my time so that I can semi-frequently drop by the arcade to practice. Actually, I'm trying to be as efficient as possible with my time so that I can just enjoy my time in Japan to its fullest. Homework is important, but I'm here to experience Japan, and spending all my time doing homework is not a good way to do so.
I kind of don't remember what happened before Thursday. I'm sure it was fun though. My commute to school is really not nearly as bad as I originally had thought. I just walk 30 minutes to the train station from my house, or skate 15 on my longboard, ride the train for 30 minutes, no transfers necessary, and then walk/skate some more from the station to school. It's quite simple, and I get a decent amount of exercise every day.
I could keep writing forever, but the sleep deprivation from two consecutive nights of bus sleeping is finally getting to me. Who knows when the next time I can update this is, but I'll make an effort to write at least sometime. I haven't even been taking many pictures, which is really terrible. I am forgetting the essential rules of always carry camera and always take a picture when the slightest urge to capture the scene arises. I just made the wording up on the fly, but the rough concept has been in mind. Well, except for recently. Blabber aside, the point is that my camera is lonely. I just got a new screen protector for my camera; protecting the screen from scratches is about the best I can do since I don't really want to keep my camera in a camera bag. I feel like if I keep a camera bag, I'll be too lazy to whip out my camera to take pictures. Since my screen is now safe, I guess I can feel a tad bit more at-ease toting my camera round my neck/shoulder, or when that gets tiring, shoving it into my backpack.
I'm totally rambling now. On a final note for this post: my host family is really awesome.
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