the other side of strange

Thursday, January 3, 2002
IT'S SNOWING!!! :)

At last... REAL GREEN TEA!Wednesday, January 2, 2002
Sorry, sorry... just found a couple of places online that can feed my addiction to Asian food products. AND where I can acquire a decent teapot; I hate pouring tealeaves into my cup.

Sad that only NOW do I get to post whenever I want... but logical, after all. I mean, it's almost two A.M. here. I slept till four this afternoon, since Steph was being considerate and didn't pound on my door or rip the covers off me. New Year's passed in the usual fashion after all-- at Steph's house, watching Cartoon Network and simultaneously crashing around on her computer, laughing ourselves sick at various and sundry things. I think it's evolving into a tradition of sorts.

Which reminds me... Suikogaiden RULES. More specifically, the character designs. Those games have the most mindblowing openings I've ever seen. (Yeah, yeah, I have a teensy Nash fixation. Whatever.)

I just realized that Masterharper Robinton is the Pernese equivalent of Albus Dumbledore. No wonder I like Dumbledore so much!

And because I seem to be talking about a great deal of Nothing Important or even Related at the moment, I shall type a resounding HUZZAH for the English version of Ah! My Goddess! No matter how annoying I find other translated manga now, I can still pick up those graphic novels and while away several hours in a flash. (Which is a good thing, really, seeing as I own all but two of the books out so far.) Dark Horse has something very good going with that series; I hope they keep it up for a long time to come. And that reminds me, I need to pick up the movie soon...

It LIIIIIVES! (Animate's US shop)Monday, December 31, 2001
...which, to my chagrin and despair, does NOT have the X 2002 calendar. The one thing I really SHOULD have purchased in Japan. Nuts.

Oh well... if anyone comes across a copy, I shall pay whatever it takes, just so you know. ;) (I'm not kidding.)

Last day of the year... yeesh. It's been great; I even got a surprise visit from college buddies this weekend. :) Nothing better to make one feel loved than knowing your friends would go to all that trouble to surprise you. And now I am waiting for my best friend to arrive, parents and all, and I ought to go read some more of that McCaffrey book before it's overdue.

Is it just me, or are her Pern novels getting harder to take? The Skies of Pern seems to consist of sentences never longer than ten or fifteen words and they're all structured the same. The story, at least, is still intriguing... the writing style just seems to have lost its vitality. Sad as it is, I find myself hoping that this is /really/ the last Pern novel, ever. It deserves to end on a decent note, after all... not stretch out interminably like other *coughValdemarcough* series I've read.

On another note, Terry Pratchett's dragonrider parody in The Color of Magic made me laugh myself dizzy. :) Definitely not something one gets to poke fun at every day.

Happy (early) New Year!

Thursday, December 27, 2001
Tiff remarked that Gackt looks a heckuvalot like Jonathan Taylor Thomas.

::laughs herself sick:: ...Well, she's right!

Thursday, December 27, 2001
I've been home for over a week. Christmas has come and gone.

My brain still seems to think that this is a temporary situation, and Nara waits somewhere in the near future. I hope reality doesn't bite me /too/ hard when I get back to Greensboro. (Because really, we already know that we go to school in a hole...)

Three weeks ago, I was in Nara, barely starting to get comfortable with the idea of settling in. Three weeks from now, I will be back in Moore-Strong, back in McIver from noon till after dark... but no Japanese classes, for the first time ever.

And right now, I am sitting in my living room, where it feels like every other Christmas and none at the same time. It's more like a dream of being home; my reality is somewhere else in the world.

I think it will be wise to try and visit Japan again, as soon as possible. And then go somewhere else entirely.

::blinks:: Speaking of... MEL!!! Talk to me, girl! Gimme your mailing address so I can send you boxes of happiness! And keep me posted... because I miss it all just as much as I knew I would.

Strange, how the one thing that always gets to me the fastest, makes me the happiest and the most depressed, is spending a brief and hilariously wonderful evening with people my own age. People I barely know, who still are so damn sweet and welcoming and just like me-- and then I have to go. Four months to find that kind of company... but I'm not sorry. I just walked home by myself, and smiled.

Friday, December 14, 2001
I have the kindest, sweetest, most WONDERFUL sensei in the world. :)

Monday, December 10, 2001
Current music: Gackt - `Cube`

Wow. Today was AWESOME. I got back from Suchinda`s lab a bit after eight in the morning, and hopped in the shower and got ready just in time to dash to the I-office and note the distinct absence of Mary (again), and run to Kintetsu station and meet Yutaka, and off to Kyoto we go!

We went to Toji temple first; it boasts the tallest pagoda in Japan. I can believe it; it is even taller than Kofuku-ji`s pagoda, which till today was the largest one I have seen. It was COLD but very pretty; it actually snowed flurries while we were there! (The flurries later turned into frozen sprinkles which later turned to freezing drizzle, but I had too much fun to care.)

Then we met Yutaka`s friend Naoki and ate lunch in Kyoto Station, which is HUGE-- I`m talking airport-like-- and set off for Kinkaku-ji. We took a taxi to the entrance, and walked into this amazing garden. Kinkaku-ji is the Golden Pavilion; it is literally covered in gold leaf! I took some photos that I hope come out as fantastic as they looked in my viewframe. ;p I bought a couple of omamori (charms for various things), and Naoki bought some chocolate mochi... WEIRD, but actually very, very good when I tried one. And he bought me a keychain! A little gold Kinkaku-ji keychain. Beat that with a stick, eh?

Then we took the bus all the way across town (well, it felt like it) to Ginkaku-ji (Silver Pavilion, but not really silver) where we walked through another amazing garden. The theme seemed to be MOSS. Very cool; there were even some maple trees that had not lost their fiery leaves and they looked doubly spectacular against the brilliant green moss and the cedar trees.

By then it was really getting cold and wet and none of us had umbrellas! But we took the bus back close to Kiyomizu-dera, and walked up the hill to another temple, which turned out to be the same one Steph and I had discovered by accident on our last trip, but it was closed for the day already, since it was dark. So we called it quits and went to an izakaya for dinner. We had large quantities of chu-hi and Chinese food and nan-curry pizza, and then walked to the train station. Yutaka bought my train ticket (he had also paid my entrance fee to each temple and my ticket TO Kyoto) and he rode all the way back to Nara with me! Which was really really nice, because he is a student at Kyoto University and had to turn right around and buy another ticket back! So right now, I feel pretty darn special. :p It was sad to say goodbye to him, though; I do not know when/if I will see him again. I promised to feed and lodge him if he ever comes to America, naturally.

So, feeling loved and all, now I dash to class (LATE!) Yikes. But I feel all warm and fuzzy right now. In a week I will get to see my family and my friends and it will be Christmas for real at home, and my parents are wonderful and supportive and I have the best best friend in the world and I was in KYOTO all day, baby!

And now I REALLY have to run!

Thursday, December 6, 2001
Today`s music: Glay, `Shitto [Kurid/PHANTOM mix]`

For the curious, `shitto` means `jealousy`. :p And yes, that song and that song ONLY has been on repeat for two days running. ::sighs happily::

Stress, stress, STRESS! I /knew/ there had to be a catch somewhere... this was starting to feel too much like a vacation. BAM, hello reality. I started trying to wrap things up in the student office today, get my affairs in order, etcetera. Problem is, I have no idea what I should be doing, and they do not seem keen to tell me. GRR. Anyway, the relevant parties have been emailed and that is all I can do about that at the moment.

It finally feels like Christmas is coming... mostly, I think, because I am getting ready to go home. Here, except for the godawful commercial Christmas songs playing in every store and restaurant I enter, you would never know a holiday was coming. (I miss hymns and classical music something awful right now, lemme tell ya.) Christmas here is viewed as something of a romantic holiday, and marketing is aimed largely at couples. It can`t very well be terribly religious, since most of the population is Buddhist/Shintoist/whatevertheyfeellikebeing. But boy, are the businessmen smart... they still manage to turn it into a huge spending occasion. And as Steph remarked, the true genius of Kentucky Fried Chicken is that it singlehandedly has managed to convince the Japanese that a real American Christmas dinner is a giant bucket of KFC chicken. She explained this to me when I professed my ignorance as to the reason why all the Colonel Sanders statues outsided every KFC were wearing Santa suits. (A frightening thing in and of itself, really.)

I think I will go to McDonald`s for dinner. All this talk of fast food has made me hungry for hot french fries.

The employees here know me on sight. Wednesday, December 5, 2001
Today`s musical selection: `Boku no Soba ni` by Hideaki Tokunaga (and all of One Love, of course.)

I have done it. I have finished with buying CDs. I finally got my hands on L`Arc-en-Ciel`s `Heart` last night, and that was the end of that. My last music purchase. I was going to buy Bolero (Mr. Children) too, but it was just too expensive. I shall order it online later, because I know it is worth the money. In celebration, I blasted `anata` from my stereo and marveled at how much better it sounds when it is not coming from a third-generation cassette tape.

Today is cold. I have not been moving much; I went to Kofuku-ji with my sempai and we got our money`s worth, looking at everything there was to see inside the musuem. It was COLD in there. So now I am getting ready to go make some corn soup; I have not had anything to eat yet today. (I have to be careful to spend as little as possible on food now; things are getting hairy where money is concerned.) But there are good things ahead! Saturday I am going out again with Amano-san, where to I do not know. And on Monday I am going to Kyoto with Yutaka, a friend of Suchinda`s who is *gasp!* my own age. Woohoo! And maybe maybe, there will be partying in Osaka on Saturday night. ::Crosses her fingers::

It is four in the afternoon here, and cloudy and getting dark. The sky always turns this strange mauve color here just when the sun goes down. I really ought to be getting up earlier; at least then I could enjoy DAYLIGHT. Oh well; gotta run anyway. Things to do before X comes on. (And perhaps this week`s episode will contain as much Seishirou as last week`s did Subaru!) ^_^V

Yodobashi Camera Monday, December 3, 2001
That`s the shiny, wonderfully spanking-new electronics department store Steph and I visited on Saturday in Osaka. It is lovely. It was also very crowded.

I reiterate, I LOVE THE FOOD HERE! Suchinda and Maiko and I went out for late lunch on Sunday, to this Italian restaurant just up the street towards the Prefectural Office. I had the best penne gratin in the world, and we split this really cool little pizza with bacon and spinach on it and pesto mixed into the dough. Washed it down with white zinfandel. YUM. Then we went to the Ann-Marie Cafe which is in the street right next to the university, and had dessert. I had strawberry juice (kinda like a milkshake only not thick) and a huge slice of cinnamon-plum cake that was so light and moist it was like eating a cloud. With whipped cream. :) Aaahhh, bliss.

Back to reality: Today`s dinner will be corn soup and onigiri. >_<

I bought the new Glay album, One Love, yesterday. It is fantabulous. Not to mention over an hour long. I am a happy little fangirl, yes I am.

Two weeks left exactly!!!

Saturday, December 1, 2001
To quote Jamie:

I saw the Harry Potter movie. It was lovely.

So was Alan Rickman as Snape. *_* How can I resist my favorite actor playing my favorite character?

The new Glay album is out. It is also lovely. I shall purchase it tomorrow. :)

I am full and sleepy. And I have to do laundry. Ick.