Friday, September 23, 2011

Mama's Visit

First of all I apologize for the lack of updates.  Thank you for reading this, I should really post more often, but I have lead quite the unassuming life since my last post.  My days recently have consisted of me waking up around 6:45 ish, getting to school around 7:30 and then staying there until 8:00pm or so every night.  Staying late really helps me get lots of studying in because when I'm home I just kill time on facebook or cooking or usually doing things non-Japanese related so I figure I should just stay at school and that would be the best for my goal of becoming fluent.  If I were to post more often, it would be of stories that are something like this;

"I went to school today, taught a few classes, ate some curry and katsudon, then studied a bunch and then around 6:30pm other teachers gave me a bunch of food and it was all delicious."

And lets face it, that's not exactly full of blog-worthy-content.

So since the last update, I guess there are a few things of note:

1) Mom came to visit and wrote nice big summaries of her trip on her Facebook account, and if you are reading this then that means you're probably a close friend of mine and therefore you might as well add my mama to your friends list if you are interested.

2) I spose climbing Mt. Fuji and getting my mother to love sushi are worth noting.

3) Also a decently big typhoon came through last week and I was out of food and so I biked from school to the grocery store in the typhoon, and was surprised to see two other bikes outside so I wasn't the only one biking around in the pouring rain and heavy winds.  My food got a little wet but 's all good.

4) Played another random baseball game or two.  Went to badminton and basketball a few times.  Lifted weights for the first time in Japan.

5) Bought a nice camera, but it has yet to arrive.  And by "nice camera" I mean "cheapest possible DSLR on the market."  Right now it is in Heather's possession, so once I get that, I will be posting much better pictures than what I have been with my relatively crappy video camera.  Don't get me wrong, the video camera is great for videos, but I wasn't liking how my pictures were turning out with it so I got a fancy-pants one.

Then the big thing that has been time consuming has been my kanji project.  My Facebook profile picture shows you where I spend about 8 hours every day and while I'm at the desk, I'm writing out these kanji mosaics for each of my teachers and also making a video on the project.  Each one of these pages takes me around 4 hours or so and I have to make 4 for every teacher plus a few friends, so it will take me the better part of 6 months once I finish it.  I'm shooting for a completion date around early December so I can focus on the video and finish it all up before Heather visits.  Below is a link to the bit of it.  I have most of it done, but I really only like the opening part here, the video really loses steam around the two minute mark so hopefully by December I'll think of something cool in it to add some shizzaz.  In any case, here is a blog-only-special-sneak-peak that only people who read this will be able to see.


WORLD-PREMIERE-SNEAK-PEAK to my kanji project!

Anyhoo, I hope you have a wonderful day.  You really are a great friend/family member and it is humbling that you are taking time out of your day to read this.  Thank you so much.  I'm not going to lie, if you had a blog I probably wouldn't read it unless Heather told me to, so you are a much nicer person than me.  As a reward, if you would like any crazy food or something from the dollar store here in Japan, send me your address (corcorantm28@gmail.com) and I will give you some candy/chips/sake/sauce/Japanese Rubik's cubes/whatever you want.  Thanks again.

Love,

Tom