Day 63 (Osaka) : After the drinky boo

I got home a little after midnight tonight after a brisk eight minute walk from my classmates 1R apartment. I followed through on the mixed offer to go to the aquarium, which ended up being an obligation when Andy said he would buy tickets for everyone after class. It's easy enough to suddenly be busy when nothing is invested, but after the money is spent you're kind of tied in. The aquarium came in a package that included a subway pass we ended up using for the rest of the day to bounce back and forth between stations looking for a place to drink.

The aquarium itself was pretty blah, blah, blah. After you have seen one aquarium in Japan, you have seen them all. They start at one habitat in the world and each window you walk past is full of some fish or animals from a different place. The things you can count on seeing are dolphins, penguins, jellyfish, and whale sharks. They seem to be at every aquarium. At first I thought we would eat at one of the expensive restaurants in the aquariums connecting mall, but we ended up catching the subway to Shinsaibashi and going to the sushi tabehoudai that I missed the last time. (tabehoudai = all you can eat) The price for unlimited all you can eat sushi at this place was 980 yen (a little less than $10). The difference between this restaurant and more expensive places is the selection. I ended up eating 18 plates but they were amlost all salmon with maybe three tuna and a single crab salad.

Not to complain though, cheap sushi is awesome! It's hard to beat with a stick because the rice goes everywhere... At any rate, we had to walk around for an hour or so shopping before everyone could recover from over-eating and buy into my idea of going out drinking. That plan fizzled when we had a hard time finding a place to drink. The first place we went was a stick joint near our school but it was packed and the waitress told us that we might get in if we came back at 9pm. For reference, it was just after 6pm when we first showed up at that place.

After that I tried to re-enact the night I went out drinking with Hirokazu so I could find the two or three streets that were packed with plays serving beer for under 200 yen (about $2) which for Japan is pretty amazing. With that failure we decided to go to a super market to get cheap beer and go back to one of my classmates apartments that was nearby. I might talk more about that tomorrow becuase I'm kind of worn out tonight and I've written a lot already.

Day 62 (Osaka) : Pop quiz hot shot

Today was pretty messed up. We were supposed to play the kiddie version of softball but instead they canceled for the rain that never really came. It would have been kosher if we didn't end up taking Monday's kanji test this morning. I got a 21/30 which is damn good considering the five minute window I had to cram. I also go suckered into going to the aquarium which I had already planned on skipping. Somehow after I came back from lunch they decided to buy my ticket for me and I don't have the salt to blow their 2400yen (about $26) ticket by not showing.

Nothing else happening though. I may go out for drinks tomorrow night depending on how worn out I am from trekking around the fish tank. Working out was easier today since my arm has recovered. I'll have to stick to the motions that I'm more familiar with to make sure I don't get a more serious strain. Boredom consumes... I'm out.

Day 61 (Osaka) : Medic!

I finished my upper body work out tonight, even though I hurt my arm on the first set. At first it really hurt, but I figured it would hurt less after I worked it out a little. That's not exactly how it played out though. I'm going to drink some protein to speed up my recovery though so it should be good as new in no time. Besides, they're calling for rain tomorrow so it's not like I'll miss out on the big sports meet at school.

School was pretty average for the most part. Okumura sensei went on a couple of talking rants about how she is single, has no time for dating, and the salary for Japanese teachers is too low. We covered grammar topics like how to express your intent to do something and how it is different from talking about your plans to do something. It sounds easy in English, but it's kind of complicated to grasp when you're learning to unknowns from scratch. Old lady sensei (I'm bad with names) told me that there are fourteen Air Force cats in Wakayama doing some training and one of them is taking Japanese lessons.

I haven't been sleeping all that well lately, so I'm going to call it an early night.

Day 60 (Osaka) : Teacher students visitation day

Today's class went by pretty quick like. I'm not sure how I did on the lesson test but I'm not really worried. Since this is a language school there is no such thing as good grades or bad grades. The only real measure of my success here will be how much Japanese I can master in two years. That being said, I really need to work out a better habit of studying when I get home. Mostly I just blow off steam with an hour or so of Scrubs and start reading my book. While it is written by a Japanese cat, I have the English version so it doesn't really count as studying.

Okumura sensei invited some of the junior classmates from the "Japanese teacher acadamy" (not the real name of the school) that is directly across from our school. Most of the girls who came over were really young. I mean, really really young. The one who grouped up with the front of the class, where I sit now, was only eighteen. She taught us some Osaka-ben and the slang that kids are using these days. We ended up staying an extra hour to talk to each of the junior teachers. Funny thing is, there class runs until 4:20 and the whole time they were chatting with us it was considered to be part of their curriculum.

Our softball team leaders received the instructions on how to play. For some reason they came out of the instruction period with the impression that the rules were completely different from baseball. Everything they said was exactly the same though, except for one incredibly gay rule. When you hit the ball you're not allowed to run until the ball touches the ground. It's not like that extra few seconds is going to do much other than make the difference between getting to the base or not. I guess it's basically to further handicap the people who can hit so that everyone just gets a chance to swing the bat around but no one really gets to score.

Day 59 (Osaka) : Kanji is not so bad

I was surprised just how much an extra hour made a difference in my kanji studies. I set my alarm for 5:30 this morning and slept in until 6:00, but that's still an hour early. I feel like I got everything no the kanji test right. Now how well I will do on tomorrow's chapter exam, who knows. A lot of the material we are covering in a GTA fashion of hit and run before the stars start to build up. I'm wondering if they ever actually stop to review anything at this school or if it's going to be a two year flash card.

I'm at least relieved to have a routine to fall back into, though I dropped most of my good habits. I haven't weighed in lately and it's been so muggy hot that I don't exercise much more than lifting my weights for ten or so minutes. If it gets any more humid here I'll be able to swim in my living room. I packed away the last of the blankets yesterday and I'm down to just the single sheet for covering my futon. Summer is going to be rough. Some of the classmates want to go out to some aquarium park thing since I didn't go to USJ last Saturday. It's kind of sad but I can understand their point of view. Since they haven't been here for years like me they want to go from one tourist trap to another and take pictures. I just want to go out, drink, and chat up the locals to make my memories. I've seen enough US theme parks and aquariums for a few life times.

Day 58 (Osaka) : Kanji is the devil

I was up most of the night reviewing for the kanji test we have today. Since we had a whole week off and suddenly have to memorize all 18 kanji, it's pretty much a pop quiz kind of situation. Worst part is that we finally started reviewing kanji that I haven't been using on a regular basis for the last several years. I woke up early this morning to get in some extra cram time so this is just a filler blog.

We swapped seats yesterday because the teachers thought we would learn better Japanese if we practiced with different people in class. I don't really see the logic behind it but I'm happy not to be next to the chubby chick with ADD anymore. Yesterday she was actually doodling her own fingernails with markers that's how mature she acts on a good day. Unfortunately the teacher decided I couldn't sit in a perfect seat near the back with people in every direction to talk to because that wouldn't be good for her. So she made me move to a seat that no one used all the way in the front adjacent to the wall, a shelf, and two guys who can barely speak Japanese. If Rob is right, she did it on purpose just because she doesn't like us foreigners. I'm inclined to agree.

Day 57 (Osaka) : The longest week

This week of has been the hell of upside down, spiked, watery, death that they talked about in Big Trouble in Little China Town. I'm hoping school picks up like normal tomorrow but I haven't been following the news at all so it could go either way. I just find it really hard to believe that hundreds of schools closed for a week just over a little flu bug going around. That seems like an insane amount of over kill. Even if 10% of the students got sick, they could just recover at their homes instead of closing the school for everyone.

It's not like people stopped going out during that week. They just stopped having classes and learning. I read two more chapters in my book and started Season 2 of Scrubs, but those are pretty much the highlights of my accomplishments. Tomorrow should at least be a nice change of pace.

Day 56 (Osaka) : Nailed the recovery!

Yep, whatever bug I had yesterday is 100% gone today. Take that pig plague! I'm ten foot tall and bullet-proof! Well, maybe I'm 5'10" and slightly bullet resistant but that's not the point. Tomorrow is my last day before school maybe picks back up. At least I'm pretty sure they have no way of contacting all the students so even if they plan to cancel another week they have to wait until everyone shows up to do it. I guess that's as good a way as any to spread the flu around if anyone has managed to miss it so far.

Tomorrow I'll have to go on an journey to find an ATM that accepts American credit cards. It's pretty crazy to me, since Japan is big on tourism that so many ATM's only accept domestic cards. The goal is to withdraw enough funds to cover my rent which I have to pay at a different ATM which takes like fifteen different menu commands to finish and it's all in Japanese. I might hit up another takoyaki stand while I'm out just to see what's out there. Anyway, tired from all the nothing that's been going on so I'm turning in early.

Day 55 (Osaka) : Crouching Ninja, Hidden Irony

I just finished watching a few episodes of Scrubs season 1 and I'm hacking my guts up. All this joking about masks and what not and I might be coming down with a cold. It's not the pig flu or anything crazy like that just a little scratchiness in the my throat. I'm sure it will clear up by tomorrow so I'm just going to take it easy tonight and sleep in tomorrow. The weather lately hasn't been cold or anything so I don't think there is any chance of getting a real cold. On the contrary, it's been muggy hot for the last few days so it's hard to get comfortable even with the fan on.

I'm pretty tired of this extended vacation already. There really isn't dookie to do for a week on end and it's difficult to the point of being impossible to study Japanese for my class since every single character in the textbook is Japanese. With no English explanations and no guidance from my teachers, I can't know if what I'm doing is write or some confused mistake that I really don't want to learn into a habit. I noticed on my rent bill today that water and electricity are included in the rent fee. So the only bill I have to walk out to the convenience store is my gas bill. That's kind of convenient for the most part, I just have to hit up an ATM for the funds to make my payment before the 27th.

Anyway, feeling rough and getting late so I'm going to cut this short again tonight.

Day 54 (Osaka) : Late update part deux

This isn't actually a sequel, but an entirely new late update. I went out to 弁天町 (Bentencho) last night to meet up with Rob. I'm really starting to love the difference between Kansai and Kanto. We grabbed a bite to eat at a kaiten sushi joint that was having a special 90 yen per plate deal. For those of you who have never seen this kind of restaurant, check out this link. There deal wasn't as good as ours, but it's the same idea. The plates usually cost around 180 yen, about 2 US dollars, for the really common fish like salmon and tuna. The more expensive cuts and different fish can run up to $8 or more per plate. So a deal where you can eat everything for less than a buck is pretty awesome.

This is a different vid where they put their camera on the belt to travel the restaurant. (Video here)

That being said, I had all I could eat for about nine bucks which is a really good deal. Then we walked about thirty seconds form the station to an izakaya that was running a similar deal... kinda sorta. They were advertising 1,000yen all you can drink, but as it turns out you have to order a minimum of four side orders which aren't included in that charge. Still, we drank all that we could in 90 minutes and four plates of salted beans later the bill was about $16 a piece. If I were drinking back in Yokosuka anywhere except the chuhai stand, that would have only covered the first two drinks.

I'd like to say it was an exciting and eventful night, but the swine scare is in full affect. Everywhere was pretty much dead except the sushi joint. That place was overflowing with people trying to get their grub on. Maybe in a few weeks when the flu wears out we can actually find a place with other people to drink with.

Day 53 (Osaka) : Late update

Last night I was pretty under the weather. Don't worry, it's nothing like the swine flu that has hundreds of schools closing their doors. I guess I'm just completely sapped of energy since school is out and most of my classmates are busy. I can't even muster the motivation I need to study. I mean, I've written a single page of kanji since the break started and that's it. I should be covering new kanji today and the old kanji should be memorized by heart but I'm a little behind on those goals.

I'm not going to drag this out since it was late. On top of that, there really isn't anything to blog about. Having the whole city under some kind of semi-quarantine is just too much. That's it for now, I'm out like the fat kid in dodge ball.

Day 52 (Osaka) : Study buddies, woo!

Today was the first day off for the swine-flu holidays. I wanted to make the most of it so I invited everyone in my class who could speak English to study Japanese at my place. Chin, Helen, and Cho Fu Fun were the only ones who took me up on the offer though. We spoke about 40% English, 30% Chinese, and 30% Japanese so some practice took place. It was rough going over the homework though because we all read the text and had different ideas of how to interpret the grammar explanation.

Since the whole book is in Japanese it really is necessary to translate everything before you can understand what it is you're supposed to be learning. On top of that, we have all noticed that some teachers have different teaching ideas and explain the same rule differently. Sometimes they even tell us completely opposite things like we only use 上手 for ourselves and 得意 for other people, or vice versa. These words are basically "good/talented" and "special talent/pride" and are used to say things like, "私の日本語が上手じゃない。" My Japanese isn't good. The problem with pride is that it's supposed to be something you are exceptionally talented at, like Phelps and swimming. It's not the kind of thing you can make a blunt rule like "always use when you're talking about yourself/other people." So from the way I understand it, both of the explanations we've received from different teachers are off by a bit.

Everyone in Osaka is wearing the sanitary masks that they sell for colds and allergies. I can't help but wonder if it really helps at all when it comes to the swine flu spreading around. Since I'm leaning towards the pink elephant pills theory, I'm not going to bother trying to track down a mask for myself. They're actually sold out and these aren't some kind of special commodity in Japan. It would be like a news article saying that bottled water was sold out in all of Virginia. Besides, I think it's incredibly witty to tell people that I don't like cosplay when they ask me why I'm not wearing a mask. Everyone looks like they're dressing up to be ninjas to me.

Real mask:

Ninja Mask:

"How to" Ninja Mask:

Day 51 (Osaka) : Merry Swine Flu-iday

This is one of those "when pigs fly" scenarios. More than four hundred schools have been closed in Osaka because of an outbreak of about ninety cases of swine flu in the area. Normally having school officials tell you that you're off for a week vacation is great news. This time it's bitter sweet, because the week we take off now will be made up during the summer vacation. In addition they may take an additional week if the flu is still spreading around. In that case summer vacation will drop from three weeks to one.

Thanks to that I now have an abundance of time to find parks to practice softball at but no good motivation to study Japanese. The plan for now is to get some brave souls to venture out into the mist of swine flu for a study group somewhere. I got the kanji test back that I was hyped about earlier and yes, I did get my first perfect score. Woot! I broke out the shogi board last night but the rules are crazy hard. Unlike chess where the pieces move in a single fashion, the majority of pieces in shogi can be upgraded by reaching the opposite die of the board and their movement pattern changes. In addition, you can place captured pieces back on the board. It all seems very bad ass to me so I'm excited to get into it.

Day 50 (Osaka) : Happiness is a bowl of cereal

I had my first bowl of cereal in months today and it was delicious. Now if that sounds strange, you have to take where I live into consideration. My grocery store literally has two kinds of cereal. Sugar flakes or chocolate flakes, that's it. Normally cereal comes in ultra small, two serving boxes that run around four to six dollars a pop. So I was pleasantly surprised to find these medium sized boxes marked at about $2.75 today. I had gotten so used to Kanto pricing that I over looked just how much more affordable things are here in Osaka.

I think I mentioned it before, but the vending machines are a perfect examples. The pet bottles that would cost 150 yen(~$1.50 US) are 100 yen all over the place. It's a small difference when you think about the amount but it's 33% off and that adds up pretty quick if you grab a drink everyday on the way to school like I do. The food thing is getting more practical now that I'm getting used to cooking things that don't involve spaghetti or pasta. (Yes, I know they're practically the same thing.)

I literally accomplished nothing this weekend and was ditched on two different get togethers. Pretty lame all and all, but I have relaxed quite a bit. I started watching how to shogi videos so that I can pick it up sooner or later. Mostly it's difficult to recognize the pieces because I haven't learned the kanji for most of them yet. Oh, and I met my hero. This is what I want to do when I get really burned out from work and school.

Video of my hero!

Day 49 (Osaka) : Better late than never

This is my first late post in almost fifty days, I guess that's pretty good. I realized that I didn't update the blog when I was laying in bed this morning. I was on standby most of the night waiting for a call from one of the guys at school. He said he needed a wing man from around 9 and he would know by 8 but I never heard from him after his last e-mail. I was so caught up in the chance to get out and do something that it mixed up the habits that I've set up.

Not much else to it than that. I've gotta get out to buy groceries and start the rest of my holiday routine. (It's not really a holiday, but we called the weekends holiday routine in the Navy so it still makes sense to me.)

On a different note, I finally found the name I was looking for earlier. The Montauk monster is back. The new videos don't look as cool as the old one did, but the web page has moved it's game up. They're really in it to win it with the whole marketing a hoax.

Click here to see the Montauk video.

Day 48 (Osaka) : Hand shoes and horse grenades

I came pretty close to my first 100 today. Two of the tests that were handed back scored a 96 and an 81. Well, the 81 was pretty lame but the other one I just fell short by one mark because I didn't recognize the verb 噛む without the kanji, so I didn't know what kind of verb it was to conjugate it correctly. It was a nice boost to my confidence after the whole slump in understanding that I've been feeling lately. Now if I can just ride out this enthusiasm and get some legitimate studying done I might be able to improve a little.

One thing surprised me today. I realized I hate the sound of Chinese more than Tagalog. Not that I have anything against Chinese people or Pilipino people, it's just the language that gets me. 80% of my classmates can speak some form of Chinese so every break period ends up in some kind of Chinese rant about whatever. It really disappoints me because I literally go days without speaking English here and there are signs all over the class that says "speak in Japanese only" so it really doesn't make sense for them to slack off. That's the only explaination I have for why I'm not at the absolute bottom of the class. There are at least a few people who I'm trumping right now which is awesome for me.

There were some plans to meet up for all you can eat sushi tonight at Shinsaibashi, but I never heard from anyone. I have a lot of home addresses but not very many addresses for cell phones. The people I did have were on the, "Ah, I'm not going" list. No biggy, I'll see what happens from tomorrow.

Day 47 (Osaka) : Interview with the Vampire

Ok, so maybe she's not a vampire but the way some of the other students talk about her you would think that my teacher really was a creature of the night. The interview was basically a "how's it going" survey on whether the class is difficult, the teachers talk to fast, I can understand all the kanji, etc. She also wanted to know what my plans were after school and I reminded her that I intend to go to graduate school at Waseda. I've pointed that out on every form, interview, and class discussion where the question has come up. I guess I'm just not at the level to be taken seriously yet.

She also felt compelled to remind me that I won't be accepted to a graduate school without passing the level 1 exam in December this year or next year. It wasn't really necessary for her to point it out because I'm well aware of the requirements. I even let her know that I had applied to Waseda before so I'm a vet at the whole getting denied thing. We even covered 108 kanji so far, even though it's only been six weeks. A normal month with no holidays would cover 120 flat, so that should be about average ten monts out of the year. So at that pace I would eventually review 2400 kanji over the two years. Since that's way more than I need for literacy, I'm going to go ahead and assume that we will start breaking down into review sessions instead of covering the really rare kanji.

I have another kanji test tomorrow so I'm going to cut this post short. I've got a few key words to review and a homework assignment to write out by hand. Kind of lame since it was a team project but somehow I got suckered into doing it by myself. Ah well.

Day 46 (Osaka) : Swine flu is easy on the wallet

Lately the grocery store I go to has had a LOT more meat in the "less than fresh" mark down area. If they're criteria is the same as the convenience stores in Japan that means anything that was prepared and sealed more than 18 hours ago, which is pretty much everything in my fridge. Getting meat at the discount price is almost the same as I would pay for meat in America so I finally feel like I'm eating a healthy diet again. Since I started doubling the meat in my meals I've ended up with a lot more left overs, which isn't a bad thing at all. It's pretty nice being able to throw some food in the microwave and not have to mess with dishes or cooking.

Not much exciting to write about. An AU guy came by to swap my NTT provider for the phone line I don't use so I can use internet with an AU provider that I won't use so I can use internet. It's all pretty complicated so I'm going to have to see about making sure he doesn't really send people to change anything. Going to hit my book now, tried studying but it's confusing when I compare my text books to the school's explanations. Go figure.

Day 45 (Osaka) : White Man's Burden Redux

Today was the exam/kanji test combo. It's pretty impressive how quickly they grade assignments. To be honest, I don't even know how they get it done. I'm guessing during one of the ten minute breaks they take them down to an aid who does the grading because the teacher's don't seem to have time to grade everyone's work during class. I squeaked out a 64/100 on the exam and managed a decent 28/30 on the kanji test. My weak point right now is verb grouping and conjugation charts. It should be easy with only 3 groups, but the school doesn't use ~ru verbs and ~u verbs. They use their own Group I and Group II headings, so it really isn't clicking in my head even though I've studied it before.

I realized today that the difference in my Japanese level and my classmates is just a tad bit greater than I thought before. To put it in perspective, I would say that the gap between my medical knowledge and the average intern would be about the same. This was highlighted when I was giving my little speech on my hobbies at the end of class today. When I was listing off the author's that I read like Natsume Souseki, Kenzaburo Oe, Masuji Ibuse, Yukio Mishima, etc. the teacher would look at the class for a life line. I would say out of the 17 students in my class, a good 14 were stroking the kanji out in the air with their hands to help the teacher out. In Japanese the kanji used for names and places are especially difficult because they're often older kanji that is rarely if ever used.

So yeah , most of my classmates have an average of fifteen or so years of background studying kanji over me. I'm going to try not to think about it and see if that helps me get back into mix.

Day 44 (Osaka) : 1FTW!

The team captain and assistant captain for the upcoming softball match were assigned today. It's funny, even though I'm American and literally the only person who has even held a baseball bat they didn't force me into one of the positions. Not that I'm complaining, I'm resigned to playing and batting 4th since they think I have the best chance of hitting anything. On a cool note, I was able to name the team since each class has to make up their own name. Since I'm in class 1F I decided on 1FTW. For those of you who aren't particularly computer savvy it's gamer lingo that means "For the win" and people normally say it when they're getting ready to make their final move, action, or what have you.

I have to teach my class to stop reading it as "Ichi F" and read it as One for the Win. It sounds like a cool team slogan if you look at it that way. It's too bad that most of my classmates won't get the inside joke that almost everyone I talk to in America would get right away.

Tomorrow is a double-hitter for testing. We have a comprehensive Chapter 8 exam and a kanji test for page 13-15, which covers the typical 18 kanji. Still pretty basic stuff but there are a few tricky ones thrown in their like 髪 (Kami : hair) which are easy to read but hard as all hell get out to write. It's already after nine though so I'm running out of time to cram. I suppose I'll cut my reading time back to thirty minutes and make the most of my time to study. Speaking of which I'm on page 207, just shy of the half way point and my impression of the book has improved substantially. It moved out of his constant fighting days and into the period where he worked as a journalist and took over the family demolition business. It's also giving a first hand account of the bubble burst and the affect it had on businesses in Japan, which I find especially interesting.

Well, I'm going to get back to my studies while I have time.

Day 43 (Osaka) : Must find pulse...

I don't know why but I'm worn out more than usually today. Tons of homework aside, there really wasn't a lot accomplished. I even have dishes left to do before I turn in for the night. It makes me wonder how I can feel so tired when I did so little.

Pity party over, I went through two more movies today. Tom Cruise's Valkyrie and Underworld: Rise of the Lycan, however that title is spelled. Valkyrie was incredibly disappointing and the closing summary pretty much explains it. There were fifteen failed attempts to assassinate Hitler recorded. This movie was based on one of those failed attempts. The funny thing is that with all the cloak and dagger crap going on, there was very little suspense. Everyone they wanted to get in on the plan, got on board like over throwing a regime was no big deal. The fact that the failed attempt on Hitler's life with a brick of explosives failed in the movie because someone lifted the briefcase up and moved it two feet over is crazy. If it was that hard to do, they should have just taken a listen from John Wilkes Booth. You don't need a big conspiracy to get that kind of job done. (Disclaimer: I do not support Booth's actions, just pointing out the simplicity of it.)


Underworld was pretty and easy to watch. Actually, of all the movies I've been watching lately it was probably the best. The difficult part of watching it was the fact that it was a prequel and it's been so long since I've seen the other two that I couldn't really remember the references even when direct scenes were cut from the older movies. It's a good action trilogy if you're into that kind of thing. I'd rather watch the Die Hard quadrilogy or Lethal Weapon though if I was going to catch some action flicks.

Day 42 (Osaka) : Hoka Hoka awesome

A whole lot of nothing to report today. I didn't feel like cooking lunch so we went out to Hoka Hoka Te, this sweet fast food place that basically makes boxed lunches on the go. It's pretty reasonably priced but it still doesn't beat shopping for your own stuff. Thinking about it, I never really noticed just how expensive eating in Japan was until I started shopping at the grocery store everyday. I would drop almost twenty bucks on curry or forty bucks on pizza without really thinking about it when I had a job. That's one of the big differences between being a full time student and actually having a steady income.

Speaking of steady incomes, at the advice of the GI Bill guy I completed the enrollment package for the old Chapter 30 GI Bill so that I can exhaust the remaining 17 months that I have on it before firing up the new one for my Master's Degree. Now the two big obstacles to overcome are the language barrier and actually being accepted to a university for graduate studies. I guess I have two years to sort that all out.

On a side note I watched Poseidon which was pretty lame. I guess the sinking cruise liner has been done to death so that flick didn't really have a fair chance. It was strange to be that the one guy I didn't expect to survive through the whole film actually made it, despite having no character development. He is basically introduced breaking up with his gay lover and that's it. The rest of the film he is just following people around until the exit.



On yet another side note, I found more pictures of the hiking trip. Apparently my camera formats the card with new folders randomly. I had suspected that a new folder was created after a certain amount of time had passed and all my new pictures would be in the third and most recent folder. When I went back to format the card and pull of pictures of my Alien Registration card I found new pictures in the older folders. So I've added them to my collection. I was wondering why I took so many pictures and only had seven in the folder. Live and learn I guess.

Day 41(Osaka) : GI Billy Madison

I'm not even sure that I can say I went to school today. It was dark and rainy, so I pretty much zoned in and out through the whole lesson and didn't hear a word anyone said to me. I think we reviewed how to make verbs into nouns by using their normal form and adding こと at the end. There is that and we had the old lady that likes to teach very slow so that every single topic seems to drag on forever.

I finally got some paperwork for the GI Bill rolling. It's more complicated than it should be and the first person that we got on the line said that my school wasn't even on the approved list. Of course when the guy looked he found out that he was wrong and the post-it note next to the school reminded him that he's an idiot. At least that's the post-it that I would leave for the guy if I worked in his office.

They seem to be force feeding the fire sale approach where we have to burn through all of our existing benefits before we activate the new one. Anyway it's late and I've got tons of paperwork to get through if I'm going to activate my income.

Day 40 (Osaka) : MSN the world

Well, the real store is called "Doggy the World" and you can rent puppies or older dogs to walk around the park. It's kind of ingenious if you're a single guy who needs that extra something to pick up chicks but you don't want the commitment of keeping your own pet. Ah, but the class finally started sharing a few addresses here and there so I jumped from two to six classmates on my buddy list. Plus, I got some of the hiking pictures that my classmates took with their pimped out Nikon cameras. For this post the credit should go to Shou since he is the contributor of the pictures that are in focus and have had some post editing done.

Speaking of class, I bombed the kanji test. On top of using every possible kanji they can think of from the work book, we are also given a ten minute time limit. That must be a lot of time if you read at a native level and can skim through paragraphs for content but it's out of my league. On top of the handful that I didn't study I missed a few that I knew purely because time ran out. I still pulled a 42/66 or so, whatever percentage that breaks down to and oddly enough 66 seems to be a common test cap at this school. I guess they don't like the easy life figuring percentages for 10's or 100's.

Our teacher gave an interesting tidbit about Osaka. Apparently there is a izakaya type bar in Shinsabashi that has all you can eat and drink for a little under twenty dollars. She brought it up when I was talking about Rad Brothers 2 in Susukino. I'm sure that the teacher thought she one upped me with a lower price but I bet this izakaya is on the one hour or 90 minute limit plan. Rad Brothers 2 is literally the only place in the world that I've been that has an all you can eat and drink deal that only ends when you leave, get sick, or fall asleep. Plus their food wasn't really izakaya food, it was typical bar food. A bowl of fries, a Japanese style pizza, and chicken wings. When you're drinking that is the food you really need.

Day 39 (Osaka) : Last day off

The long vacation is finally winding down to an end. I'm almost out of movies to watch and if I have to write one more page of kanji, I'm going to ... I don't know what but it can't be good. Tomorrow I have school and an appointment to pick up my Alien Registration card. With that I can finally open a bank account and do some other cool stuff, though I'm not really sure what. I looked around at some el-cheapo DVD players but I think my best bet is to fix my old laptop with a Japanese Vista install and change the DVD region to Japan on that one. Then I can watch movies and rip copies if they're any good. I guess it would be a good idea to start tracking down some software for that project since I'm pretty sure I have a copy laying around somewhere.

Not much else to write about since I haven't been out to do anything lately. I'm going to get back to studies for tomorrow's test and see if I can't get a decent grade this time around.

Day 38 (Osaka) : SSDD = LDSB

Long day, short blog. There really isn't much to say about days off when I spend them lounging around studying and watching movies. I watched "Burn After Reading" this morning and "Traitor" just now. It's almost midnight so I have another reason to rush through this post.

My kanji review is still revolving around flash cards and rote memorization. The problem with this method is that I am only able to absorb a very limited amount of material through repetition and without some kind of context it's easy to get the meaning, reading, or form jumbled amongst the other two thousand kanji that I see on a regular basis. On the bright side I have finished Chapter 6 in Toppa Mono. Tomorrow morning I will work through another chapter of JFCS too. I haven't actually made it far enough to review any practical grammar. There is only so much you can convey with the "Noun は Noun です" sentence structure.

I found that the shoe shortage is a problem even with internet shopping. I did manage to score a new pair of sneakers and some casual boots since my other shoes are hitting the 3~4 year old mark. The Post 9/11 Bill has opened the doors for new applications, but it seems like they're still changing policies here and there at the same time. One of the other ex-military cats at my school mentioned that the housing allowance would be about half what I was expecting. Hopefully he is mistaken and if anything the allowance will be higher, but regardless it will still cover my living expenses better than nothing. Ah, come to think of it I'll have to make some time to work this out Thursday if the office ladies are free.

Day 37 (Osaka) : Dark Floors meets Rescue Dawn

Nope, not really. I just watched these two movies and ran through another day of vacation. I'm not even going to pretend like I'm writing movie reviews here. I'm mostly just pointing out which movies I liked and which ones sucked. Dark Floors was pretty and had some decent effects, but the dialogue was terrible. One of the freaktastic ghosts was called the "scream queen" and thewhole story revolved around a autistic girl in a wheel chair who could control ghosts with her mind. Rescue Dawn was a POW escape movie based of some real life events. It was kind of like Behind Enemy Lines mixed with Cast Away. It pretty much had the theme of any army POW movie with the length of Cast Away.

I went out to Tennoji to look for some new kicks too, but that wasn't exactly productive. For some reason finding a shoe in a size 10 is rare in Japan. They pretty much stop at 28 cm, which is 2cm short of the shoes I'm wearing now. I never really thought of my shoe size as being exceptional so it's pretty amazing to have a store give me the, "Umm, we don't have anything that big," response. Moreover, when I asked the guy if he had a nice leather Rockport shoe in my size he brought back a Vans rip off of the old Converse shoes because it was the ONLY size 30 in the store. Going from brown leather to black canvas is a little bit of a jump. What it boils down to is that I have to shop for my shoes on line if I want to find them in my size. That's great in America but it's kind of a drag with most Japanese distributors not having English on their web sites.

Tomorrow is another day off so I'm going to try to get some studying and reading done. If I hit up the kanji lesson really hard I might score my first 100 on the next test.

Day 36 (Osaka) : The Mist (No, not Sierra Mist...)

So the movie for today was the novel to cinema movie The Mist, based off of one of Stephen King's novels. Apparently, someone had told me the ending before even though I could swear I never heard of the movie before I saw it on YouTube. Even considering that I went in to the film with some spoilers in mind this film really earned no cool points. I'm not really sure there ever was a great movie re-make of a Stephen King novel. This film in particular lacked any real story development much like that other crappy horror movie, The happening.

The film is basically about a secret Army base opening a portal to another dimension to let aliens through that wreck a small village. None of this is explained in any detail it's basically forced out of one character in a three minute blip that happens about three quarters of the way through the film. The first hour and change you have to take for granted that some how it's supposed to make sense only to be disappointed by the "scientists opened up a hole to another dimension" line. I would have preferred a secret military weapon that got lose. At least that would have allowed me to suspend disbelief long enough to get through the cheesy dialogue. To be fair, I think the movie suffered from the same problem that every novel to film project has to deal with. You can't express even a fraction of a novel with a movie without making it some massive undertaking like the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Today was a good day for rest though. Ran through the Sunday field day routine and cleaned up the whole apartment clearing up all the lint and fuzzies that build up from hanging my laundry inside during the rainy days. Tomorrow I'm going to head out for some shopping and get back into the more serious studies. Flash cards and kanji review games haven't really given me a feeling of progress the last couple of days so I'll have to pull the books back out.

Day 35 (Osaka) : The Pick of Poo

Enjoying the start of my extended weekend with some movies and a TV special on rare genetic disorders like the guy who grew boobs. Watching Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny pretty much reaffirmed that Jack Black's entertainment value drops rapidly after about five minutes. This makes the guy perfect for skits and music videos, but terrible for extended movies like this one and The Holiday. To really enjoy the film you would have to be either a huge Tenacious D fan or really love Jack Black as an actor. How many people like that can there really be?



Other than the relaxing I've been reviewing flash cards and preparing for the kanji exam we should have Thursday when classes start back up. There really isn't a lot else going on since I'm still making do with no income until August. How lame is that? It's a pretty safe bet the next few days will be more of the same give or take a trip to the takoyaki stand or two. So for the lack of any other interesting material here is a clip in tribute of the new Wolverine movie that came out.

Funny Wolverine Skit

Plus this little bit, from some guy I've seen a few times before that trips me out.

The 12 Saddest World Record Attempts Ever Caught on Video

Day 34 (Osaka) : I enrolled in a middle school?

Today was the hiking trip that I've been blogging about on and off for the last few days. Apparently our language school and every single middle school in Kansai had the same idea to hike around this park. When they said hiking, I thought we would be going up some kind of mountain but it turned out to be a 5.0km track around Nishiori Park. The majority of the hiking was done from the train station to the park though a residential area. That didn't stop people from taking pictures of the different homes and pets that we passed on the way their. I thought it was kind of freaky. I mean, if a stream of people walked through your neighborhood and started taking pictures of your house it would be strange right?

We spent the whole day surrounded by little children in their school uniforms. All in all, it was pretty lame but taking pictures with my class mates was pretty fun. I realized that my camera really needs the strap to be effective though. I either had to carry it around in my hand the whole time or miss out on all the good picture taking opportunities. The whole experience reinforced my policy of not letting other people take pictures for me. These guys would hand seven or eight cameras to one person to take the same picture over and over again. The whole time the camera are dangling around like a bundle of fuzzy dice clacking together and making all kinds of bad sounds for cameras to be making.

I managed to get a sun burn so I'm going to soak it for a bit before I turn in for the night. Here are some of the pictures that I've been able to track down so far. Once I get the e-mail addresses of some of my other classmates there should be a few hundred more.