Tokyo, 3:50 AM (6/11): Oh man, so many titles I could use for this post. I ultimately couldn’t decide on just one, so that’s why you see a double title. I didn’t get any sleep on the 13 hour plane ride over here, but by now I’m fully rested. By tonight I should be able to reset my schedule for the most part to being on Tokyo time, so when I make posts like this from now on, they should be more like 7 AM than 4.
On the agenda for today is going to a war memorial shrine, and we leave for that at about 8:30. I don’t think there’s anything officially planned after that, so we should just have some time to go exploring and see what else is in the area. So far I’ve only taken pictures with my phone, but I should take some with my camera today (and those are easier to pull off onto my computer) so there might be some pictures tomorrow. I say might because if it ends up being a hassle, I’ll just wait until I get home.
Japan, Personal - Dallas
Well, since every other post I make between now and the 21st is going to to basically have its AM/PM switch flipped, this is the last time that the blog and I will agree on the fact that I’m making a post in the morning. As for what I did last night, it mainly just consisted of finishing up my mini-notebook and then verifying that everything I wanted was packed in one of my bags. Chargers, books, and everything else was made sure to be included, as if I forget something, I need to find a replacement for it halfway around the world.
So, by the time I go to sleep “tonight”, it’ll be Tuesday night rather than Monday. I’ll make that day back up on the return flight though, so nothing too major to worry about there. As I said before, the streak may or may not live, but that’ll just have to be examined on a daily basis. After all, what else would you expect from a blog with the word “daily” in the title?
Personal - Dallas
Tomorrow morning I have to make a post at who knows when in the morning (but it’ll have to be before I leave for DFW), so in order for me to have something besides “I slept last night” to post about, this post shall cover the first part of my day today, and my morning post tomorrow will cover the other half. Actually, as far as my body is concerned, I’ll probably be making two posts tomorrow, but they will come on different days of this blog.
Aside from chargers and miscellaneous items like that, I think I’m done packing. The first season fo Heroes has been copied to my laptop in preparation for watching on the plane (and the whole trip in general), and I’m in the process of finishing up what will be on the pages of my mini-notebook. Rather than giving away what I’m going to be doing for the rest of the night, I shall make you wait in suspense until the morning!! *insert evil laugh*
Personal - Dallas
There is the very real, almost certain in fact, possibility that I will miss a post sometime while I’m gone to Japan. This will end my streak at a to be calculated later amount, but there’s not really all that much I can do about that. Something would have to give sooner or later, and it appears that in the context of right now, sooner is much more likely.
Just because the outlook isn’t all that bright doesn’t mean that I’m willing to throw in the towel. I’ve done my time calculations, and I have until 2:00 PM Japan time every day to make a post for the preceding day in blog time. This basically translates to me either making evening posts (which will equate to the same day) or morning posts (for the previous day) since I probably won’t be around my computer too much at 2:00 in the afternoon.
Personal - Dallas
Either The Chronicles of Riddick gets better in it’s second half, I was just really tired last night and wasn’t in the state of mind to enjoy a movie, or it isn’t nearly as good of a movie as I recall. I watched about half of it then decided that I would rather to to sleep than watch a mildly entertaining movie. There had to be something about it that I liked which made me want to get it on DVD; granted, I also watched its prequel when I was tired and hated it, so maybe it’s just that I need to be awake for that series of movies.
Taking advantage of our movie channels, I watched Click for the very first time tonight, and it was entertaining. I’m not sure I could name another Adam Sandler movie that I’ve actually watched all of, but this wasn’t really the type of movie that I mentally associate with his type of comedy. Think Jim Carrey and The Truman Show: still funny, but just a different type of comedy than normal. I guess I’ll go ahead and score it like other movies: 7.5/10.
The rest of my day has been extremely low key to the point where I probably didn’t get quite as much done as I should have. I did go get a pocket English-Japanese dictionary, but I still have the process of making my own little guide to complete. Just two days left to do everything in; ask me tomorrow night if I’m starting to panic or not.
Personal - Dallas
I have a headache (as my newly updated Facebook status likes to reflect), so I don’t plan on spending too much more time on the computer tonight. Instead, I’m going to move about 10 feet from my current position over into my bed, lie down (to prove my grammar nazi status, I just looked up whether the correct word to use was “lie” or “lay”), and watch The Chronicles of Riddick. That’s one of the few DVDs in my collection that I’ve never watched since I got it (the others being I think the LOTR movies), so I don’t remember that much of it. The one thing I do remember though is that I liked the movie a lot more than I expected to, so hopefully that still holds after who knows how many years.
Tomorrow I’ll get to work on my mini-reference guide for my trip and also do my searching for a pocket sized dictionary. I have a program I could use for my N800 but can’t get it to install, and my time can probably be spent more productively than troubleshooting that. Just three full days left before I leave; hopefully I don’t enter the inevitable anxiety phase of the trip until I’m at least at DFW on Monday morning.
Personal - Dallas
Back in 9th grade, the vocab lists we had to learn for Spanish were consistently 100+ words. For most of these units I would spend a good hour or two making flash cards, and over the course of the year (not to mention the Spanish 3 and 4 flash cards I made) I amassed a nice sized collection of multicolored half-index cards. Having made close to 200 Japanese flash cards over the past 2 weeks, it is definitely reminiscent of my Spanish flash card making days. Fortunately with my test tomorrow, I can go back to hoping that I never need to create flash cards on this scale ever again. Trust me, it’s quite tedious and not all that fun.
The next step over this weekend is to take all of the vocab, phrases, and grammar that I’ve learned and reformat it into a pocket-sized notebook that can be used as a “quick reference” guide while on the trip. I plan on dividing it up to some extent by unit or category, but I’ll probably duplicate some information so that it’ll be handy to reference in situations outside of what it might be best classified as. I should also probably look for an English-Japanese dictionary so that I can look up words that I might not know, so that could be another task for me this weekend. If I get one of those, however, it’ll probably be easier to find one locally rather than trying to do rush shipping from Amazon.
Personal - Dallas
For about an hour earlier this evening I copied into Word and Excel a significant amount of the vocab and grammar that we’ve been learning over the past week and a half. I don’t expect that it’s a complete list by any means, but it will at least be a great review/reference tool to have available. Our “midterm” is on Thursday, so hopefully not too much more can be added to it before then. As some of my tech students have told me, “The funnel is getting full”.
Software Engineering appears like it’ll be a big project class where we just apply the design methodologies that we learn about in creating the software that would be used to run a video store. I might end up working alone on the project rather than in a team due to the fact I’ll be gone fore two weeks, but that wouldn’t be a horrible thing. I’m familiar with everything that we should be using, and not needing to coordinate with other people is always a benefit as far as scheduling goes. Also, let’s face it, I always have and likely always will prefer to be in control of my own destiny, so if a project can be done by myself, I’ll typically want to do so.
Personal - Dallas
As you may (or may not depending on how much of a life you have) recall, on my birthday trip to Vegas I had the interesting quandary of being 21 in Dallas two hours before I turned 21in Vegas. This situation will be reversed in a week when I go to Japan and jump forward in time. Going from UTC -5 to +9 nets me an increase in 14 hours; man, if only Vegas was in Japan, I could have turned 21 over a half day earlier than here!
This text input box for WordPress is quite buggy, as my arrow keys and buttons like Home and End do absolutely nothing. I know that it isn’t my keyboard because those buttons work fine elsewhere on my computer, so I have no idea why this editor seems to have big issues. It doesn’t happen all the time so it’s obviously a weird bug, and life is definitely manageable without the use of those keys. Still, though, not being able to use the arrow keys? That’s just weird…
Personal - Dallas
Last night I decided that it would be a good idea to expand the category system that was being so woefully underused and create a few categories that I could use to catalog my posts made from elsewhere around the planet. Currently there are only two: one for Las Vegas and one for Los Angeles. I have created one for Japan but it won’t show up in the list until a post has been added to it. There is also a parent “Trips” category that nothing is added directly to, but viewing it will show all of the posts contained in any of the sub categories. I have some theming/appearance work to do with that, but hopefully I can rig something up as far as that goes before too long.
My criteria for adding posts to the categories are only ones that are actually made from that location (so at least so far, the ones starting with the “Location, Time:” text). I’m definitely not going to go back and add things like the Cedar Rapids trip since I’ll never be going there again, but any other mini-trips I’ve taken (e.g. going to Hot Springs) may get included if I feel like it. With Japan, Australia, and a skiing (or in my case, possibly snowboarding) trip within the next 12 months, I think that this system will probably see some good use.
Personal - Dallas