Pre-Departure, Tragedy, Good Luck Charms

I leave today, in the sense that it is now after midnight. Bag is packed. Books to take, selected. Charge cables, wrapped into loops. Standard issue stuff, all of it. I... tend to pack kind of heavy - I took like two dozen books to Japan when I went in High School (I went to Japan in High school) and ended up buying far too much manga, and other things, and ended up donating them all to my Japanese HS library, whose only english books were Jean M Auel novels. Funny I even remembered her name, come to think of it. I never did read any of her anything. Anyway, I tend to pack heavy but I didn't take much with me this time.

I read my to favorite novels ever when I was away from home and needed something to read not so much to entertain me, but to... run away to is maybe the wrong way to put it. I needed a distractions from all the distractions. I read the Brothers Karamazov in Japan, and Les Miserables at summer camp one year. I'm bringing Moby Dick, another classic, hoping it will fulfill the same role. Also, it is a very small book (my copy, I mean) so there's that.

I'll be spending the night in the airport, because I arrive at 9PM, and won't be able to get to campus and sign in in time. I'll either pay to stay at a 24 hour internet cafe thing, or splurge on a real hotel room. We'll see, it'll depend on how tired I am.

Also, tragedy struck. I can't find any of my pictures from my HS trip to Japan - I was going to post some of them here. My parents got a new computer, and claim everything was transferred, but I couldn't find them on there for the life of me - it's still possible they're hidden, but I have a video I took with that camera when I was in Japan, of my host sister's appearance on local television (she appeared on local television) and I couldn't find any files with a similar filename... I was pretty upset about it. My computer has had hard drive failures too... I went through all our old CDs, trying to find a backup I faintly remember making. I had backups on my iPod at one point too, because I liked to carry all my photos of that trip around with me, even though I never really looked at them. I could take that old ipod, which no longer works, to a data specialist, if I ever have any money, I suppose. They were kind of painful to look at, in a way, I haven't gone through them in years... but I'm really bummed they're gone.

I did find, though, while I was looking, little relics from that trip: postcards I bought at the art museum, a one yen coin (how did it end up in the CD box?) and a card my older host sister wrote me when I was leaving, a little tiny round card... I'll be taking it with me as a good luck charm. It's very, very sweet.

One Week

One Week, people. Also I was hooked up with the speaking partner I'll have at KG, but have not corresponded yet. Studying Kanji. Woooooh.

Two weeks

I hadn't really finished up my fall semester like someone really should finish up a fall semester. I had gotten an extension on my final paper for Religion 300, which was an awful awful class in terms of workload. My final assignment was to write ten pages of my senior capstone, which somehow became about the Additions of the book of Esther present in the Septuagint. It's an interesting subject? I guess? I don't really even know any more and am sick of it.

Last night I finally sent it all off, and now the only thing on my plate is Japan. I've been going through all of my old textbooks and playing through mother 3 in Japanese. I've got a big flashcard deck going of... old words, new words, and kanji, which I have mostly forgotten how to write because last semester was all about reading.

Also: visa applied for, should be no problems there. Also... no, that's about it. Only, it is worth noting that mother 3 is an incredible, incredible game.

Also, Kansai Gaidai thought I was a woman at one point

I've tried to keep posts to a minimum until I'm in Japan. Still, once more, minor updates: I'm done with my semester and headed to Japan in exactly a month. I've applied to get a host family and been accepted on that front as well. Who? I won't know until days before.

The day before I left for Japan in High School, I learned that my host family would consist of three sisters, not three brothers. I'm pretty sure I learned that I was going to have host sisters only minutes after my backpack was stolen, though I didn't realize it was gone until I tried to put paperclips in it once I got home. Well, I had left it on the bench in front of the school and someone took it. My fault, but still, an awkward moment for it to happen. It was a damn cool backpack, too.

Accepted

We are happy to inform you that you have been officially admitted to the
Asian Studies Program at Kansai Gaidai University for the spring
semester of 2010.

Hoo-ray! One discovers that this blog is in fact not an illusion. Well, in one sense one discovers this. Perhaps, in other, more important senses (taste? smell?) it is in fact entirely illusory.

These will be pretty boring till I get to Japan, I bet, you bet, he she or it bets

Boredom: this blog will be it, until I get to Japan. Which seems more probable all the time. My application to Kansai Gaidai is confirmed complete. A week or two ago they sent an email addressed to me to a girl in Oregon also applying. So, worries, still, exist within myself. My emails, left unreplied to. My Japanese professor confirmed it, along with the applications of other Oberlin students.

I'll know in about 2 weeks if I got in, if I am getting in, if I will get in. Tenses.

Also: blog makeover!

Developments

I made this blog a few months ago in hopes that eventually it would give witness to adventures in Japan as an exchange student. I'll be going, hopefully, next year, spring semester. That's a long way off, still, but nonetheless there are developments. It's the end of this school year and I'm asking my Japanese teachers for recommendation letters for Kansai Gaidai, an Oberlin - affiliated program. So, for those of you that have been anxiously watching this space, barely daring to hope for some kind of content, dispair not. But you must wait a little longer.