Emi's Journal

Not as simple as my sick days though. :p But no dodge ball tournaments or anything exciting like that.

A typical morning…. Drag myself out of bed, get dressed, have breakfast…. Then go to school with the kids.
School this morning started with music! We have to play our song on Friday, so it’s time to practice practice practice! I’m on the tambourine, so I have it easy…. We (there’s another tambourine player) only have to go off our regular tempo twice. I think… It’s easy though… :p I need to get better at catching those two parts, though. Especially the first one…
After music we went back to the classroom and did sewing…. We sewed until lunch time…. Lots of sewing…. Sewing towels. I honestly don’t know why…. But we did. We folded old towels into quarters, sewed the edges, then diagonally through the middle… And we did two each. So lots of sewing.
Then we ate lunch. Yay for lunch! After lunch I wandered around with some of the other girls, then we went in for cleaning. We cleaned an entryway kind of deal on the first floor…. I wiped the floors… Not a very complicated job. :p
After that we went back to the classroom…. Some people did stuff, and I’m not sure exactly what…. Then we went outside. Apparently there’s ANOTHER competition next Monday…. A jump rope competition. They practiced the thing where you run through while the rope is moving…. Which I have never done in my life, so I pulled out of this contest…. I don’t want to make them lose. That would be sad. I haven’t really jump roped in YEARS, and I never was able to do the running in and starting thing…. That was always beyond me.

After that I came home. Used the computer, ate a snack, showed Grandma a newsletter-type thing we got…. It looks like the 13th may be my last day, because after that is just graduation stuff…. That means…. SEVEN more school days. That’s kind of sad…. But I can’t escape the “Summer vacation!” feeling, even though I’d be leaving not too long after that anyway…. It’s like instinct or something.
I haven’t done much else today, as usual…. Played some Boggle, some Master Boggle…. Kento didn’t play with me, but I played anyway.

I woke up today pretty late…. That’s me. :p Maybe about 10:30, though I can’t say for sure. I had a quick breakfast of fruit, then messed around on the internet for a while.
Later, Nanako and Yuutaro came downstairs. They asked if I wanted to go shopping, so I said sure. We went (with the adults too, of course) to the… I have no idea how to spell it, but I’ll give it a shot…. Jasco? It’s a mall kind of thing, anyway. The same place we went to back in January. Was it my first Sunday here? I’d have to go back and check, but it was one of the first.
First thing’s first… We had to get lunch! We went to McDonalds! McDonalds in Japan is OK. It’s better than the American McDonalds by far. I got a double cheeseburger meal, which was pretty darn good….. And that nostalgic grape soda…. Ah, the days when I’d get blisters on the fireman pole at that one park…… Good times. :p (don’t worry if you have no idea what I’m talking about…. It was a long time ago)

After lunch, the kids and I went to the place where they have…. DEKAGOCHIS! Those would be the giant tamagochis they have in the stores…. A market one and a games one. I bought a couple goofy things from the market one, and lost all the games I attempted on the games one…. Oh well. We hung around that store for a while, then Tomoko came and got us. We went to another store really fast, then headed home.
I got online again…. Boggle and chatting with Kento! We do that a lot now. I also went to Tamatown on my computer for a little bit…… I just did online stuff until dinner time.
Tatsuya made hamubagu, so I had some…. It was really good. Hamubagu is hard to explain…. Though you probably recognise the resemblance to the word hamburger…. OK, maybe not. Hamubagu is like a hamburger patty type with with sauce on it…. But it’s more than that. I just don’t know how.
It was good anyway…. And after that I was picked up for the Sunday night Bible study! They finished the Alpha course last week, so we were doing some other stuff…. By request, we were studying fulfilled prophecies. It was cool! There was lots of stuff I hadn’t gone into before. Of course there was some goofiness too, as there always is for some reason…. It’s lots of fun though, and we had some nice discussions. Long discussions…. It was kind of late when I got home….. And of course now it’s even later, and since I have school tomorrow I should be heading to bed. Maybe do some sudoku to wear me out…. I haven’t read in a while either, so I might do that.

Ugh…. Still mad at myself for getting so behind……. But I will correct this!

First off, I guess I do have something to write about for Thursday…. I wanted to watch the Olympics, specifically the figure skating. I wanted to watch the short program…….. Which NHK (by the way, I was wrong… There are quite a few more news channels, but they aren’t commercial free like NHK) was broadcasting live…. Meaning 3:00 AM our time on Wednesday morning. Well, I wasn’t going to school Wednesday…… So why not? I stayed up and watched…. In my room, of course. I really liked Kimmie…. The 16 year old skater for the US. She did awesome, but not good enough, I guess. I ended up going to bed after 3 hours…. “Short” program? Not really. I enjoyed watching what I saw though…… Then I slept in, and didn’t really do much on Wednesday……..

On to Thursday. Back to school after a week long absence! The morning was dull for me… I’m still not totally sure what was going on…. Going over the tests, it seemed…. But the day after the testing? Is it possible? I suppose. I just sat in the back working on my Japanese….
After that we went out to play dodge ball. Practicing for the big tournament. We had until 10:30 to play…. At 10:30 we were off on a trip! We walked to a nursing home to go visit the elderly people! Of course I really couldn’t communicate…. But that’s OK. I worked on some of those crazy metal puzzles that have two pieces and you have to get them to come apart…. Those are fun. There were lots of different ones, and I only mastered one. I also played Othello with this guy who I think had a really short attention span and didn’t understand the rules at all…. Oh well. I kind of felt bad about winning, but that’s life.
After that we walked back to the school and had lunch. After lunch I stayed inside and helped punch out these English flash card things. While I was doing so I was “found”. I don’t know if these 1st graders had been looking for me recently or not, but apparently they “found” me. I think it was the same girl (and friends) who were staring at me while we cleaned the bathrooms….. But anyway, they “found” me and hung around trying to communicate for a while. There was quite a bit of random talk about how to say things in English/Japanese…. And apparent surprise at me being able to speak a little Japanese…. That surprises people for some reason. Seems to me that if I’m in a Japanese school I should be able to at least speak a little, but I guess that isn’t as evident to the 1st graders….. Oh well.
After that I helped clean the classroom, then we did…. Umm… What did we do? Oh yeah! We went down to the computer lab! The slow slow PC computer lab! The whole 2-monitors-in-1 thing kind of annoys me, but then slow slow PCs do too…. But hey, it’s internet…. Some of the kids looked at my blog, but not being able to understand it kept them from being too interested…… I tried to post, but apparently blogger.com is blocked. So I played some networked typing game with some of the other people…. That was interesting. To our understanding you just punch 1, 2, and 3 really fast and hope for the bests. I also helped some people practice romaji… :p Really typing Japanese, but it’s kind of the same thing.
After that I came home, and not much else happened. Just the typical dinner, bath, and whatnot.

Friday…. This should be interesting. Friday morning of course I’m up and off to school, after breakfast… The figure skating medal ceremony was on…. Japan showed it with pride, as on of their skaters earned herself a gold (and she totally deserved it too! ).
When I got to school, it was out for dodge ball practice…. Why? Because it was the day of the TOURNAMENT! We played for a bit, then it was inside. People got changed into their gym clothes, then it was off to the gym for the games! Some people talked for a bit, then the gym was divided into two with a big net thing and the games began! I was on the girls 6-4A team…. I think I said before that the boys and girls don’t play against each other, and the 6th grade has 4 classes (I’m in 6-4). For dodge ball each class had two teams, and A team and a B team. That kept it down to 11 people per team and allowed everyone a chance to play (of course several people were on both teams). To keep it to 12 games the A teams only played against other A teams and B teams against B teams. 6-4A (girls) were in the first game…. We won, though I’m sure I was not very helpful. It was funny when I was running backwards to try to escape the ball, got hit, then fell over though…. The teacher behind me was laughing, and I was laughing…. Some other people asked if I was OK, which of course I was. Falling over is nothing new to me. I ended up out and failed to earn my way back in…..
Maybe now would be a good time to explain the differences between dodge ball in the US and dodge ball in Japan…. First off, there’s only one ball here. I love that part. Also, if you get hit, you go outside the boundaries of the opponents area. You basically have free roam outside their boundaries (as long as you don’t cross into the outside of your team’s boundaries!) and can play from there. It’s kind of hard to explain…. Maybe if anyone actually cares I can make a model. Anyway, you play from there and can earn your way back in by getting someone on the opponent’s team out. It makes it a bit harder, because you have people surrounding you on all sides… I think those are the only differences I’ve really noticed. Also, some people start “out”.
Anyway. I failed to earn my way back into the main game…. But we still won. I can’t remember for sure who we were playing against…. I think it was 6-3.
I didn’t really keep track of what games happened when, and who won what… I’m pretty sure 6-4B played a couple games before 6-4A was up again…. I sat back and watched those…. I was tired, though, and kept nodding off a little bit. When I wasn’t hacking, anyway. I still had my cough, and playing dodge ball probably wasn’t a huge help to that.
My team played two more games…. Not in a row, but we played two more games. I’m pretty sure it was 6-2 that we played against for our second game, and beat. I got out again (I am not a good catcher, and my reflex is to block…. It was an easy catch, but my reflexes didn’t agree. Grrr….), but was able to earn my way back in by pure luck…. An attempted and failed catch…. Yes! We won that game, which was awesome!
After that 6-4B played their last game…. I’m not sure if it was directly after or not, because I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to the order of things. But I know 6-4B won all their games! YAY!
Our last game was game #11 out of 12…. I think it was against 6-1. I got out pretty early on, unfortunately…. I was trying to grab the ball before the “out” person from the other team got it, failed, was hit while trying to get up to escape, and then tripped over myself and fell. It was a strange process that I still don’t really understand… I think I tripped over my arm, but I’m not sure how. It was an easy out though, for the other team…. Darn. I once again failed to earn my way back in, and unfortunately we lost the game. That put us at 2 wins and 1 loss, same as 6-3A.
Lucky for us, we already beat 6-3A!!!! That put us at #1!!!!! 6-4B also was #1, of course, because they didn’t lose a game! That was the girls, of course…. The guys weren’t as good. Both A and B teams were #3. Us girls are just better, I guess.
After that some people talked again, then we went back to the classroom…. I was cold, so that made me happy. I didn’t bring my coat to the gym for some reason or another, so I ended up being cold… But it was fine.
We did some math for a while…. Yay! :p I did some fraction stuff, then did some compound functions in my notebook, just for fun…… Then I realized I couldn’t remember for sure how to multiply polynomials, so I did some trial and error to see if I could or not (I could).
Then it was lunch time…. We ate lunch, then i stayed in again and we played a game…. It started as a game where we try to pull each other across a line…. But then some little kids came in, and it just became pulling people around and stuff.
After that I helped clean the classroom again…. Then they went to home ec. I went too of course…. We wrote letters to the people at the nursing home. I wrote one in English…. Because I could. I didn’t really know what to write, so I just wrote some stuff and went with it. The home ec teacher seemed impressed, or something…. I’m not really sure what.
After that we went back to the classroom, I got my stuff, and went downstairs. I found an umbrella in my shoe…. I guess Tomoko dropped by the school with umbrellas for us…. But umbrellas annoy me, and I had my coat (coats protect better than umbrellas, and are more convenient!), so I stuck it in my backpack…. I don’t know how many times I’m going to have to tell people I don’t need an umbrella…. Oh well.
So I got home, and of course basically did nothing for the rest of the day…. That’s me! :p Well, I watched a re-airing of the figure skating finals…. Awesome! And I talked to Kento quite a bit…. Got in quite a few games of Boggle too…. At games.com. That’s what Kento and I do while we chat…. :p I finally forced myself to go to bed at 1 AM, after talking with Kento for a while.

Got up today for Japanese class… Was forced up, really. I knew I had to go, but couldn’t convince myself to get up… Finally my grandma got me to get up. I ended up running a minute or two late because I had to devour some strawberries really quick…. Not that I mind devouring strawberries…
So I went to the class, and it went well of course…. We worked on some adjectives stuff from my text book.
After that I came home and had lunch….. With Nanako and Yuutaro. I also watched them play Nintendogs…. Fun stuff. :p I’ll have to see about getting a DS when I get a job…. :p I’m kind of sold now, especially when I found out there are DS/Nintendogs bundles for about $150…. Not as bad as I thought. I think I’ll get one when I go to OSU…. It wont be as fun or cuddly as Ret, but it can be my surrogate, I guess….
After lunch Grandma went to something…. Something about teaching Japanese, I guess. I talked to Kento, played some Boggle, talked to my dad… The usual. Until about 7:30…. Then it was DINNER TIME!!!!
I say that with such excitement…. You might be laughing at me now…. But you must understand, this was no ordinary dinner. This, my friend, was PIZZA!!!! But not just any pizza, but the best pizza of all…. Seafood pizza!!!!! From Pizza-La. Which is a funny name. But their pizza is fantastic. Expensive, but fantastic. There was a seafood pizza for me and a teriyaki chicken pizza for the kids… I had a piece and a half of the teriyaki chicken pizza, which was pretty good…. Not as good as the seafood though! I shared a bit with Yuutaro, and then there was some left over (that Ryusuke ate… And one piece my grandma ate), but I ate a lot of it….. I got pictures too, so when I get caught up on my pictures those will go up…. Then I played some Nintendogs (I played frisbee…. Fun. ), got a bath, then typed this up….. After researching the price of a DS….

Yes! I succeeded in getting caught up, and it’ before midnight, so I did it today… Yay! It may not have been as thorough as if it were more recent, but that’s OK…. I think this is plenty long. :p I hope you managed to read it all without falling asleep a time or two…. Which by the way I should be trying to do pretty quick…. Maybe I’ll do some sudoku then head to bed. I’m into the demanding section of my sudoku, so it’s getting tougher…. It’s taking me a couple days to do some of them…. I’m starting to fear the “Beware! Very challenging!” section…. It’ll be fun, I think…. :p Drive me insane, maybe, but fun. :p

Ugh…… Why am I so forgetful??? I forget to write, well, I guess it’s yesterday now…. UGH!!!! and now I need sleep….. Bad bad Emi.

I got caught up with some good games of Boggle, chatting with Kento…. And now I should head to bed. I WILL write tomorrow… Today? Whatever. I will! I have stuff to write about! Interesting stuffs! I will. I promise.

I almost forgot to post two days in a row! Bad Emi!

Sorry about that…. I guess yesterday I got caught up in finishing Movecast Episode 1, and the same happened today, because I didn’t succeed yesterday. Plus I was back in school today, and I was getting Movecast 1 published, and I was listening to podcasts….. I don’t know. Not much goes on, yet everything goes on. For some reason I remembered to post as I was having a cough attack while trying to fall asleep…. That’s nice.

I really do need to try to get some sleep, so I guess I’ll write about today tomorrow…. Tomorrow should be interesting, since we have our 6th grade dodge ball tournament.

In case you’re wondering, I really didn’t do anything on Wednesday…. I would have gone back to school, but they had school-wide testing (to my understanding), so there was no reason for me to go…. So I got another day off. Good deal. I worked on Movecast quite a bit…. I think that’s it.

My new AC adapter arrived shortly before noon today… Now that’s what I call express mail!
Sorry about yesterdays post being put up today (though it is dated as yesterday). Blogger was automatically in Japanese, so I guess that was the draft button…. Oops.
So, today…. Still nothing interesting. My cold is getting A LOT better, except at night when I go to bed…. For some reason when I go to bed is when the gagging hacking cough comes. Not cool.

Anyway, blogger is back in English, my battery is charged up nicely, I had to spend $90 on a new adapter…. I’ll pay Kanda back when I see her. Kento thinks I may be able to be reimbursed somehow though…. Maybe with Apple Store credits or something….. When I bring my fried adapter to them, of course. Probably do that on the way home from the airport…..
I really haven’t done much today…. Been using my computer, doing some kanji, working on Movecast (about 1/3 of the way done with episode 1!), relaxing…. I would be back at school tomorrow, but it’s school-wide testing, so I get to stay home. Yay! I’ll head back on Thursday…. Even though I intended to drop Thursdays….. One more wont hurt me. I may just decide to keep it up at this rate…..

Please excuse any typos I make… I am on my grandma’s computer and I’m not a fan of Japanese keyboards. I mean, why is the apostraphey shift+7…　Seriously! And + is shift+;???? It’s crazy!

I also miss my spell check… You’ll be able to tell when I’m off my Mac… Trust me.

Today for the most part was dull. Another sick day at home. Getting better though. A lot better. Crazy demented cold… But it’s going away, so I’m glad.
One interesting thing happened though. My battery on my laptop was geting low, so I plugged it in. I don’t know if I told you guys this already or not, but lately my AC adapter has had MAJOR issues. It has always overheated pretty bad, and a guy at the Mac Store said I should probably see about getting it replaced. I planned to do so when I go home. Well, sooner is better than later. A couple weeks ago the part that plugs into my computer started severing from the rest of the adapter. Very strange… I’m still not sure what was up with that. It kept getting worse and worse until a couple nights ago I used some electrical tape to tape it up. THe outside white covering was almost completely severed and all that remained was the gray covering inside. So I taped it up really well and thought it would last until I got home…. WRONG! Not long after I plugged it in it started smoking. NOT good. Scared me to death! I unplugged it, removed the tape, and saw that the grey covering had been completely burnt, as well as some of the white part…… My battery was already below 30%, so this was not good news. I immediatley contacted Kento, who talked to me for a bit, then I shut down computer. Did some sudoku and read a bit (in case anyone is wondering, I’m finally starting to really get into The Hobbit!), until my grandma got home. I then used her computer to look up the Apple AC adapter stuff, look the info page up in the Japanese store, then print it out. We faxed that to Kanda, who said she would try to get one in Akihabara today and get it sent our way. Until then I’m having to use this computer…. I’ll live. I wont be on as much…. But I’ll live.

THe whole Blogger in Japanese is bugging me though…. Why does it do that on this computer but not mine? Weird…. It:s not redirecting me eitehr… It’s still blogger.com. It’s jsut all in Japanese….

I just felt like finishing these off.

Bison are funny looking.

Reindeer!

That was a FAT camel.

Goat things… Boys and girls!

That’s some crazy hair!

How is this thing even real? It’s too cute!

Whatever that expression is, it’s awesome!

This elephant was crazy.

Organic elephant!

Awww…. It looks sad!

I got lots of good giraffe pictures,

Ostrich!

I really don’t know what this is….

It looks angry.

Kangaroos

Emu! It’s almost like Emi!

Flamingos are actually kind of pretty…..

Tapirs are fat and funny.

The reflecting is awful…. Sadly, it’s the best I got. A shoebill that wasn’t standing.

Some cute penguins.

There are some sea lion pictures too, but none of them are that great, so I’ll leave it at that. Finally I finished the zoo pictures…. Sorry it took forever and then some.

I basically spent the whole day hanging out in my room….. My grandma works on Sundays, so I was on my own most of the day. My aunt made spaghetti for lunch and brought some down for me… Yum! She also told me Nanako is running a fever too…. So I guess there’s two of us sickies now. Nothing really interesting happened today… So yeah.

One thing, I guess, I can talk about…. Have I talked about the bath system here? It’s pretty cool, and leads into my strange moment of the day…. So here they have pretty awesome bath rooms…. They are actually bath rooms. Or shower rooms…. I sometimes call it that too. Like half the room is this deep bathtub that’s pretty awesome… Nice and deep, so you can be almost completely submerged… Then the rest of the room is the shower, with a drain in the floor and all…. I like it… I think it’s very clever. The bath is a community bath kind of thing… You don’t drain it every time it’s used. At first this is a bit strange, but the thing is that you soak in it, then you get out and take a shower… So you get all clean. That and the water gets so hot (nice hot bath!) that it probably kills any microscopic icky stuff…. So it all works out well.
So anyway, my grandma gets the bath all set up tonight… I missed my shower/bath for a couple days because of my fever… So I got it tonight. Here bath salts are not uncommon, so when my grandma said something about citrus fruit, I initially thought she meant some sort of citrus bath salt… I guess the citrus scent is good for my cold thingy, or something.
Later, I go to take my bath…. After watching the English news. I rolled back the cover thing on the bath (to keep it warm), expecting it to be maybe orange or some citrusy color… And it wasn’t. So I was a little bit confused. So I got in, and then I noticed something at the end of the bath…. So I reach for it, and see….. Fruit. When she said citrus fruit, she really meant citrus fruit. So I took a bath with fruit… The poor fruit was all squishy and warm.

So that isn’t all that interesting, but something about taking a bath with fruit struck me as odd. Maybe it’s just me. Oh well. Nothing interesting happened at all, so that’s the best I got. Sorry.

I woke up feeling pretty darn awful. At least my fever was down…. Still got a strong cough which terrorizes my throat, though. I’m thinking with the fever down in the 99ºF range it probably isn’t the flu though. I’m hoping it isn’t laryngitis…. My voice was going off and on today. That’s not a good sign….
The worst part is this awful Chinese medicine I have to take…. I thought the first stuff was bad! The stuff I started on today is worse!!!! It is so unbelievably bitter, and the taste lingers. Ech! But at least I have my CC Lemon…. The vitamin C tablets and medicine drops aren’t too bad… The Chinese medicine is the awful stuff. Back in the states I’d just take something like Nyquil/Dayquil and be set for the day…. Vitamin C, medical drops, AND a general multi-symptom medicine seems a bit over the top to me, but I’ll deal with it. I don’t have to go to the hospital, so I’m happy…. I guess hospitals are cheaper here or something, but I guess that was a possibility for a short amount of time… I avoided that, so I’ll be fine. In my standards if I’m not better in 10 days, THEN I’ll go to the doctor…. Any sooner than that, unless it’s obviously something major, seems to be too much for me…. Of course I’m pretty good at getting sick, so that may be why.
So anyway, my day was spent sleeping, hanging out online, and hacking. Not much else…. A lazy, restful day. Didn’t go to the Saturday class (third week in a row! Ouch! Other two there just wasn’t class…) because my voice was going and I still had a bit of a fever…. Have one again tonight, but it’s not too bad. I’ll live. I’ve been through it all before…. If I do lose my voice that would be annoying, but it happens…. Seems to be whenever I’m in other countries (first and only other time I lost my voice was when I went to Mexico), but it happens. Hopefully it wont kill me….
Sorry for the boring life, but sickness usually isn’t all that exciting.

Here’s a random observation to hold you over until something interesting happens…. I noticed that 2 of the standard 12 channels in Japan are shopping channels…. I thought that was kind of weird. We’re talking BASIC channels here! And there isn’t a 7, so it’s really 2 of the 11…… Just something I found odd. And then I think there’s only one news company, which could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on if they put a spin on stories (as the media tends to do). Like the whole American beef thing…. Have I talked about this before? If not, I’ll just give a bit of a summary here….
America messed up and sent Japan ONE wrong meat part in ONE shipment after Japan finally started importing American beef again. The whole mad cow disease thing… Kind of ridiculous. They’re making a big deal about it… It’s been on the news for weeks. It may have been in the states for maybe a day or two…. I don’t know what they said about it there, so if anyone knows, feel free to tell me. Anyway, it’s a big deal here. It hasn’t been every day like it was a week or two ago, but it still shows up in the news every few days… Today being one of those.
What I want to know is who’s reporting Japan’s mad cow cases… There was, what? Twenty confirmed cases in Japan, I believe…. And something like three in the US. No human in America has had the human equivalent of mad cow, one person in Japan has…. So what’s the big deal????? Shouldn’t they be more afraid of their beef? It’s ridiculous.

There’s my mad cow/BSE rant and my strange TV observation….. The mad cow thing has been going on for weeks, so I may have mentioned it already. I can’t remember for sure…. Sorry if I have. It’s still going on though… Today they started reviewing America’s new beef import proposal…. To my understanding, anyway. It seems silly to get so worked up about ONE mistake…. Maybe they do need to change it a little bit, but completely altering the proposal? Yikes! Maybe it’s just me….. But it doesn’t seem like something to worry about.