...and then they were deported

We're still in the past today. Stay tuned for gradual progress towards the present... this one's short so maybe I'll post the next post sooner than 24 hours. Also: find me on skype at odd times of day. I won't be on AIM because I've been having trouble connecting. I'm henrylatkinson over there.

Today I took the japanese language placement test in the morning. I don’t think I really did all I was capable of. I was only able to do the first three of five sections... I really don’t think I did very well, especially considering how much other people say they were able to do of the test, and how much of the test it said I should have been doing based on my level of Japanese in college. Kiiiind of beating myself up about it... I’ve never really done as well as I could have in Japanese classes, and here we go. We’ll see, maybe it will work out. None of the review I was doing was on the test. Oh well, it’ll still be useful.

I ate lunch and turned in some forms, and then everybody got squared straight with regards to Japanese law. They really do deport people, I guess, though not for my crime of choice, or at least they didn’t mention it. Drunk bicycling? Not a good idea, I learned. Every story the guy told ended in “and then they were deported.” Also, every semester there’s been an earthquake. We also met all the professors, who introduced themselves and their classes. Also: japanese fire escapes look really fun. You slide to the ground inside a big canvas tube! Apparently it's sown so that you go down in a spiral and don't plummet to your death. What if you're too big to fit in? Maybe you'd have to be pretty big.

In the evening I met my speaking partner, her friend and her speaking partner, a floridan who spoke very little japanese. I got to know my speaking partner (big, big disney fan) and showed her some pictures of home. We got along pretty well, but it was just as fun to overhear the floridan trying to explain (with a rather thick accent) the american slang he was using, while using even more american slang in his explanations. His speaking partner listened in rapt attention. We made origami... and then ate at the cafeteria, even though it was just closing. I thought I was ordering Gyoza, and got gyoza, but also received a huge bowl of something like rice pudding, which was far more than I could eat and resembled a bowl of coagulated elmer’s glue. Tasteless, almost, and very very hot. But the gyoza were good. The whole thing was a little awkward. I didn't know what to say, but I asked a few questions and the conversation did go some places besides the usual niceties. It's a really good sign, I think, when something has to be looked up in a dictionary.

I have trouble with pretty basic questions. What are your interests? What kind of music do you listen to? Why did you decide to study Japanese? First, I don't really know the answers to those questions myself, so there's that. Well, I know the japanese one: Because it seemed like the most interesting language the high school offered. That's what I've been telling people and it's true. But as for the others... it's kind of hard to find common threads through my interests. I like little bits of everything: some bands from some genres, some albums from some bands, some songs from some albums, some specific passages from certain songs. My speaking partner loves disney, and her favorite place is disney world, and she has disney dongs on her ipod, and she wants to work for disney. I don't have anything like that. Even things that I am a big fan of... say, a TV show. I don't know... doctor who. Or a movie. I saw Avatar recently, and enjoyed it despote its regrettable lack of airbending. But I hate, say, commercials advertising Avatar, or Avatar tie-in products. I would never play the Avatar video game, and not just because it's gotten terrible reviews. It's because Avatar should stay just a movie. And anyway, it's hard to guarantee I'll like something: it depends on something's... internal logic? Self possession? Creative spark? Anyway, this paragraph was a tangent.

I walked back to the dorms with the floridian, and bought an ice cream bar. He talked about how scared straight he was too by the police presentation this morning. We joked about the “and then they were deported” repetition. Jaywalking? And then they were deported. Didn’t say thank you? And then they were deported. Added captions to photos from the lyrics of a song you've been listening to (today: ashes of american flags, wilco, YHF) while walking around campus?

Deported.