Christmas!

Christmas just kind of sneaked up on me this year, to be honest. I organized a family gift exchange again this year, and I didn't buy gifts until a week before. They didn't get to my brother on time. Well, one did, but his 9 pound cast iron skillet didn't - it's supposed to get there tomorrow. I'm still working on presents! My dad came to get me on very short notice due to weather conditions, and I went back to my parents' house. I cooked and baked for three straight days with my mom - I love cooking, but it was REALLY tiring. My dad was being kind of immature about things on Christmas Eve and so we ended up opening presents the morning of the 25th at his request, and after that he got better. I got an external hard drive from the gift exchange (yay I can back up my stuff!), a pink, brown and white plaid cashmere scarf (from when my brother and sister-in-law honeymooned in Italy), two pairs of much needed pajama pants from my other brother, money from my parents (it's going toward new clothes), and a DVD of Base Ball Bear's music videos from Ty (with an unreleased song on the credits!!), plus a few more surprise presents he's bringing home for me today. He also said he found me raspberry ginger ale, which I have fond memories of drinking when I was a little girl, and which I have not been able to find in any grocery store (but he did when he went home)!

Best part: Nobody made me go to church. I did hear about how my parents don't like that none of their kids buy into being religious despite their best efforts. My dad doesn't understand, though...he thinks "all those liberals" are out to "destroy Christmas" by calling it "the holidays" instead. I asked him if that was more Fox News brainwashing. I think my dad feels like he can unload all his political baggage on me because of who I work for. Just because I work for government doesn't mean I'm interested in hearing you talk about your political beliefs, especially when you don't let me explain why I believe what I do (which is very different from what you believe). I want to tell him that I don't subscribe to religion because it kills people - people do horrible things to each other in the name of beings that probably do not exist and that we have no way of proving the existence of. Everyone thinks their belief system is the best, and especially in the case of Christians, many try to push it onto everyone they know. Religion does not instill morality or control in society. People are dumb, but nonetheless smart enough to know that the wrath of an invisible man in the sky will not be wrought upon them the second they violate rules people have made up for themselves - and those who do believe it are scared. Take a family I know: the daughter is by far the most religious, and also the most disagreeable, maladjusted, and angry. My older brothers have proven to me that you do not need religion to be morally sound, have healthy and meaningful relationships, and enjoy life.

I read the majority of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood over the break - a typically sort of depressing Japanese novel, but I couldn't put it down. Now I get to start on Mother Tongue! I've always liked Özdamar's writing since a professor translated part of one of her books from German and read it to us in his class. Her writing includes a lot of the mundane but cute and happy things - the happiness of living in the moment, even in foreign surroundings. I think another reason I like her writing is that she writes about the experience of being foreign and exploring and adapting to a place new to her (she's Turkish but permanently moved to Germany when she was young).

It definitely felt like Christmas outside, with a foot and a half of snow on the ground and arm aches from shoveling the driveway. Ours is long and narrow, so we really don't have anywhere to go with it except the sides, which I realized yesterday is not even a good idea because I came back from my parents' house and found some of the musical equipment sitting in 1/2" of water in a pretty unlikely place. Thankfully nothing was powered on and the important parts were not wet, so I just got them up off the floor, cleaned up the cold water and hung up the rug. That's the nice thing about electronics - if they aren't powered on when they get filled with water, most of the time they will be just fine if you let them COMPLETELY dry out before powering on again.

I have been fascinated with Perfume lately, and am really glad they'll be on Kouhaku Utagassen this year (along with Mr.Children and a surprisingly large number of artists I like)! I may actually download and watch it this time! I do wish they'd picked a different song to perform, though. I think that I will always like Electro World. What I like about them so much is that they went through a LOT of hard work to get famous (as opposed to being entirely manufactured), and happened to catch some really good luck just as they were seriously considering throwing in the towel. I also like that they're pop stars who do their own dances for everything, unlike so many others that should dance and don't. I can sort of understand if you don't dance for live performances because very few people can breathe hard and sing well at the same time, but come on! You don't even have to sing well (if at all) for a video and you can't be more entertaining than standing still and doing those horribly contrived hand movements? In short, I believe Perfume has a lot more genuine credibility and talent than most singing groups out there, and they're a lot more deserving of attention, which I am glad they got before they decided to give up. In any case, you have to be decently tough to dance like that in heels for an entire evening. I'm glad they got some fashion direction (90% of their earlier outfits and costumes were crazy in a bad way), and they have one hell of a guy writing their songs. Now if only they would get their hands into writing some of their music or lyrics...

I will leave you with some pictures from Thanksgiving and Christmas at my parents' house.

あと少し

There's just a little bit left, for a lot of things. Only a few more days left to study for the JLPT. It's round 2 for me since I failed last year, and since I've been studying off and on for the last 3 months I feel like I'm better prepared. I'm planning to really hit the kanji and vocabulary hard, since that tends to stay with me really well in the short term. Ty's the only one of us with a car (and he's not even taking the test...) and he's taking me and Collin and Alaina, and we may even make a stop at Mitsuwa before the test! Yay :)

I feel like time's running out at my job too, since they've kept saying they're running out of work for us to do, and I bet once there's no more work to do we get the boot. Worst case scenario (not official, only in my head) is that they just won't have us come back after Christmas. In any case, I'm dead sure we won't be staying to the end of March as originally told to us. Guess it's time to hit the old job ads again...and prospects are looking pretty grim. But that can't stop me from trying!

I got my new rain boots after a little bit of a circus with the bank, and they're wonderful. They're smelly like rubber, but that should go away with use. I'm going to use them in the snow too, and have decided to make fleece socks to line them instead of paying $30 for a pair made especially for the boots. I come home every night with the best intentions, but don't really feel like making them again until I'm running to the bus at 8 AM and can't feel my toes.

This week I've had a couple of REALLY nice days. On Monday everything just seemed great - food tasted better than usual, I felt like socializing with my coworkers (and did), I exercised in the fitness room, and got a lot of shit done after going home from work. It was amazing. Yesterday was really nice too, even though I woke up feeling shitty. My favorite part was study group for the JLPT and Aki's little surprise birthday gathering. He had been wanting to try Greenbush Bakery donuts for a long time, and we got a dozen and brought him to our house to share them, along with Dave. Merlot and donuts - a classy snack. I don't like cake donuts but holy shit were the ones from Greenbush good! They make every kind of delicious there. We also had mugwort tea, funny videos and tarot card readings. I think the tea just made everything better.

Winter has officially come again and dumped a few inches of snow everywhere. I have things I like about winter and things I don't like. I've decided I really like outerwear (nice coats, hats, scarves and mittens) and winter is when you get to wear them all the time. I like how most people look in coats and hats and stuff. They look more warm and friendly somehow (in most cases). I like glowing lights and there are plenty of them outside and lots of dark to see them in. They're really pretty with snow too. I like the way snow looks on most things (but I don't like that it's wet and cold). I like big floaty flakes of snow and the really tiny kind that looks like glitter falling from the sky. Cold seems to bring people closer together, literally, mostly in the form of huddles, but being closer to people can be nice. I can really appreciate hot food and hot tea. I do not, however, enjoy that rooms are a lot colder, and even with the heat on I have to wear a lot of clothes, and when you just can't get warm enough, you burrow into your bed and can't do anything but try to warm up. I get scared sliding around on the road in a car when roads are not plowed.

I started this entry on Thursday, and it is now Saturday morning. Time to go and do things. Time for breakfast, possibly a haircut, and going to the new tea house on State Street for some last-minute kanji study before the JLPT. Then time for an amazing gourmet meal that I didn't cook :D

happy 2008だよ

Or so it should be. I have a good number of things to be happy about. I think once I actually get a job or start with school (whichever comes first) I'll feel much better. So I'm going to talk only about the happy things.

I got home from Seattle just fine, and was especially feeling lucky after all the crap that my brother and Jenny had to put up with to get here and back. My suitcases were filled as full as they could go without being too heavy for the plane, and I sent a 17-pound box of crap home. Talk about good packing. I'm happy to be gone from there. My job at the candy store was the best thing about it. Living with my brother was more stressful for everyone involved than I think any of us thought it would be, and I've come to learn that my brother is awful about helping people out. He won't say no because he doesn't want to seem like a jerk, but when you bug him about actually helping you when he said he would, he feels like he's being taken advantage of. Just say no if you can't, and save everyone some freaking trouble and stress, because either way you're going to end up seeming like a jerk. Lesson learned: don't ask him for help. Ever.

Christmas was happy, mostly. I was happy to see my family again, and we did a lot of our traditional activities (except going to church, and my sister put everyone's feelings perfectly - she snapped her fingers, smiled and said 'darn!' in a lightly sarcastic tone :D). I got some awesome presents from Ty and my sisters and my parents.

Cooper is such a troublemaking little dog, and he got into his share of fights with Oscar while they were both here (mostly about food). But he's so warm and fuzzy and affectionate. My favorite thing about him is the way he tilts his head when he hears unfamiliar sounds or isn't sure what something is. It's SO CUTE.

I also like it when he smiles. :) he just got done playing with balloons when this picture was taken. I always thought it was dumb when people get dogs and that's all they ever take pictures of afterward, but they're really like part of the family in that way. I mean everyone takes pictures of their new babies, and puppies are sort of like babies.

I've been on vacation for a little while with Ty in Madison, visiting friends and doing fun things together. It's been really cold so we've been spending time mostly inside, cooking and playing Wii games and watching movies. We did go to a theater to see Sweeney Todd though, and it was amazing. There are lots of good actors, they're all decent singers, the songs can be funny and kind of catchy, and it keeps you interested. Although it's depressing (it is, after all, about a serial killer) it's wonderfully executed (haha, I made a funny...), the best example of this being that it doesn't drag on unnecessarily like a LOT of other movies I've watched lately. It's very concise, tells its story wonderfully, and then gets out of the way, but stays in your head.

Out of all the new video games Ty got for Christmas, the one I like most is Super Mario Galaxy. This is because I have had a special place in my heart for Mario games ever since I was born. My mom used to play them and she's pretty inept with any form of electronics. That's how cool Mario is. It's cute overload, what with all the stars and penguins and the bee suit and themed galaxies. Even the ones that are supposed to be scary are really cute. The scariest part of the game is not always knowing whether you'll be able to walk upside down on stuff or if you're going to fall off or float away into oblivion.

I've also been learning bass guitar, or attempting. Ty has been teaching me a few things. It's not as hard as I thought, at least once you learn the notes you need to play. I can't read music and I'm not good with recognizing notes by ear, but I'm sure if I work at it enough I'll be able to tell what each string is supposed to sound like if it's in tune. I learned to play a couple of Blue Hearts songs (and it was no coincidence that we'd just watched Linda Linda Linda before this). :)

Molly's New Year's Eve party was also really fun, although I had a little too much fun and had to spend the next day recovering. I STILL don't think my stomach is fully recovered. ehehe. Yesterday we threw a ramen party, which was a lot more fun than it sounds because I spent all day cooking the soup and base myself (noodles I KNOW I'd have screwed up so I bought some), and we had a lot of toppings for it. We couldn't find kamaboko so we used chikuwa instead (they're both a type of fish cake), and it reminded me of my host mother and how she used to fill the hole in the chikuwa log with cheese and serve it as part of meals. :) The meal itself was really good, and a success in that we got a lot of our friends to try new foods...like fish cake and miso and seaweed. And they liked it.

Today we go sledding on lunch trays down Bascom Hill after Ty and Molly are done with work. Somehow to me that just embodies the spirit of college. I never actually did it before I graduated, so I better do it now :)

happy december, first snow

Happy December! I'm a couple of days late here but I said it to people on December 1st, so there.

Lots of things have happened lately, I feel like, but I can't remember much of it, and for no particular reason. I resurrected my iPod from the depths of hard drive failure hell on Friday, but the second the batteries wore down and I plugged it back in to charge, it was corrupted again. :( I have no portable music player. Hell if I'm getting another freaking iPod. There's got to be a kind that isn't rendered useless within two years.

This weekend was full of excitement, mostly revolving around the JLPT (which is not really exciting though). I went to another bridal salon Saturday morning with Jenny to look at wedding dresses, and then I went with her to meet Zach and a potential candidate for their wedding photographer. We went to a café called The Globe, and it was a really nice, relaxing place. I sat at a table by myself to study while they talked at another table. The table I used was right in the window and it was oval shaped with a really old blue map peeling off the top. It was awesome. I overheard bits and pieces of other people's conversations about snow, and when it actually did snow this guy yelled "IT'S SNOWING!!!!!!" and he ran outside with about six or seven other people, and they were jumping up and down and dancing. (Snow is a rare sight here.)

Sunday I got up and tried to be as relaxed as I could, and took my test. People came from as far away as Florida and Ohio. The test itself was not as horrible as I'd imagined, but it WAS hard, especially the reading section because they don't give you a whole lot of time. I spent too much time on the reading comprehension questions and ended up getting rushed for about half of the long-passage questions and the grammar part. Kanji and vocabulary was what I had studied the most for because those are the hardest things for me to remember, and I was surprised to find things on there that I actually knew. Listening really threw me for a loop. All in all, I really can't say if I passed. I'm borderline if I did, but I'm really just not sure at all. If I failed, I guess there's nothing else to do but take it again, but I'll still be disappointed. The test took place on the University of Washington campus in Seattle, where a teacher of mine from the Japanese department spent his undergrad years. It's a really pretty campus, and it was slightly inspiring being there and knowing this is where he started studying what I am effectively finishing up here. ^^

Zach took me out to The Duchess (it reminded me a lot of State Street Brats but it wasn't as dark inside) for a beer after he picked me up and we talked for a bit, and then we went home and I helped Jenny with dinner. We rented a couple of movies too.

I'm actually kind of excited to go home. The hardest thing is probably going to be quitting my job because I don't like making people unhappy. I was not lying when I had my interview and saying that I was planning to be here until Christmas Eve because that's what my plans were at that time. My plans have changed. Other than that it shouldn't be so bad. I get to plan the Christmas gift exchange for my family and I'm starting to get lists~ it's great. And I get to meet Cooper. He seems like such a little shit, but he'll be cute anyway.

konbini life

the owner of Konbini Life posts curiosities from Japanese convenience stores that he bought and tried. I must say that I visited convenience stores nearly every day of the 9 months I was there, and product connoisseurship was an entertaining hobby, if a slightly expensive one. But if I was already buying a snack anyway, I guess it wasn't that bad.
Maybe that's why I gained 10 pounds while I was there ^^;;

I've been thinking a lot about the JLPT lately, and the more I see practice questions and data from previous level 1 exams, the more nervous I get. Apparently there's about a 25% pass rate, meaning that only about 25% of people that take it in any given year receive a passing grade. You only have to get 70% to pass...so are most people that take it just kind of dumb and unprepared, or is the test just really, really hard? I guess all I can do is make sure I'm prepared. The sample questions on the kanji/vocabulary look pretty difficult, so maybe I'll start with those.

On the job front, I had an interview at See's yesterday that seemed to go pretty well, and the lady will let me know by Wednesday if they've decided to hire me. I kind of hope they do. A chocolate shop would be a nice happy place to work, even if only until Christmas Eve.

Christmas.
I know one thing I want, and I hope I can have it.

I also was in touch with a job recruiter today for people who can speak Japanese and they want to set up a phone interview for this week. Thank god it's not a face-to-face meeting yet because I still need to hem up the pants for my suit and get the thing dry cleaned. And I'm not good at interviews. :) Surprisingly, though, for the two I've been to this past week, I've been fairly calm once I get to where I need to be. And lately I feel like I'm not as bad on the phone as I thought I was. I just hope these things transfer to looking for a permanent job.