Yes! (with a Door's quote)

Yes! I just practiced koto for about two hours straight! It was awesome! I went in having a basic idea of most of the song and now can play almost the whole thing pretty decently sounding and it's starting to sink into my muscle and normal memory. I am really happy and thankful that I was able to have such a good session today. I felt like playing more and more but figured I was at a good place to stop.

I even started getting my very first koto blister! I have never used my ring finger before to pluck out those softer notes as much as I do for this song, and it actually hurts a bit. Haha, I lightly dread those parts when I see them coming, but they are so beautiful the sound overcomes the pain. Actually, my guitar blisters started coming back too when I started playing my classical and the steel string left in the house by someone before me (?) music in which I moved my left hand around more, and before I started focusing on this koto piece. I feel like I have gotten into a musical mode, or a version of me that is more in touch with a certain part of my creativity. I like it. A lot.

Also, I started listening to Black Moon yesterday. Awesome.

Also, I'm excited by Obama being president in a way I can't remember ever being about something political. Maybe there is something more personal here. (What happens with the flip-side of the personal being political happens and the political is personal?...?) Watching his acceptance speech really moved me to excitement and optimism in a way that felt completely new to me. Ever since 6th grade, when I first started to become aware of politics, it's always been something to be cynical about, to get involved in to fight against a larger, evil power. Well, I'm sure things are still like that in a way, and it's good to always be aware, but watching Obama's acceptance speech, I felt something like pure optimisim, excitement and hope for what we, people who want to help, could do in the near and far future. I'm still really happy about things. After I finished watching his speech, I thought, hey, if I can live this way in my relationship to politics, I could live this way in my everyday life. How would that work? Just thinking about the positives in life, acknowleding the amazing things that are happening all around me and to me every moment I live. An idea I've been toying with in my mind for a while, but it really came to a new level of fomentation that night. I'm happy and thankful that Obama being the next president has, if anything, done that for me, and possibly changed for the better, in some subtle or basic way, how people think.

There are so many things going on that I have meant to tell you about but just never make the time to. Since at least a month ago up to now, I've just not uploaded or written about all the things I really want to tell you about, but I'll tell you now, they include: subverting through creative lesson planning the hegemonic notion in Japan that all English-speaking foreigners are white (that was fun, worked more on a subconscious level, but hey so does hegemony), the adventure of me having two kotos in my house now, and the terribleness of having a mukade crawl down the front of my shirt while I study Japanese. I can't wait to tell you in person when we meet again.

Oh yeah, I also talked to one of the English teachers at the middle school today. He saw me studying kanji and we started talking about Japanese and English proficiency tests. I've been getting a little antsy about taking the test the first week of December, even though I originally signed up just to motivate myself into a cool study schedule and see how I do. I don't know why. I'm behind the schedule (and re-schedule) I made for myself, but am still pretty sure I'll finish all my books and have time to review. I guess I just really want to do well? I don't know. In any case, I talked to my English teacher today and he said he had never taken an English or Japanese test before, which was pretty surprising to me because a) I thought as a professional English teacher he would have had to take the national English exam and place high and b) he's really knowledgeable about the roots and history of the English language and able to speak it far better than most Japanese people I have known. He said, "If you take the practice tests, you can pretty much gage where you're at on your own." That really hit me, especially because I had never even had any interest in taking this test before I got the idea in my head after I arrive here. It was a kind of comination between, "I'm here in Japan, now's probably the best time to take it, and I've got a pretty good amount of experience now, so it'd be cool to see where I am" and "Well, I passed the second level practice test, what's the point of taking the real thing and getting something I know I can do already, I'll just go for the top and if I don't get it oh well!" Actually, I don't regret signing up for it, though. I've learned SO MUCH so far. The day after the elections, I bought five copies of the largest Japanese newspapers, to have some history to look at in the years to come (oh my gosh I'm a history dork okay, but my whole family thinks that kind of stuff is cool!), and today, while I looked over one of the front pages, two of the kanji made up a word I had just learned how to read the week before, and two others made up a word I had just learned two days ago! ...I had to go back in the book and look up how to read the last one again but still! it was cool. So yeah, you get the drift. After the test, I suppose I'll still look at the books ever once and a while, and if I don't pass the test and take it again next summer I s'pose I'll be studying in a schedule again, too. That's one of the main reasons I bought them, to have a massive storage of pretty much the highest level Japanese they test for and that I can look at any time in the future. I just love the idea of having all this knowledge at my fingertips to look at.

Languages. I've been holding onto a better semblence of English this time, I'm assuming because I'm teaching it and speaking it almost every day compared to two and a half years ago when I was completely immersed in the language and culture 24 hours a day, in class, at home,...everywhere. I've also been able to keep my Spanish accent and understanding at a pretty good level, better than last time I was here, that's for sure. Besides the Daily Show, La Opinion's online articles provided me with up to date info on the election, a look into how a newspaper of its type covers the sort of phenomenon that has been taking place, and, most importantly, some good sharpening (or at least anti-dulling) of my Spanish. I'm excited to take on that language and realize more and more how much easier it should be than Japanese. Chinese, Korean, and French also keep floating through my mind. Assuming it takes two years of regular studying and a half-year of studying in the language's country to develop some kind of proficiency to communicate...hmmm....

That plus all the other things I want to do: music, law, medicine, history, all while keeping a good excercise routine...is this what being young is about - wanting to do everything all right now? Haha, I feel kind of like I did at the end of high school when I knew I was going to work for Human Rights Watch after I majored in political science in college. Or when I thought I could become fluent in Spanish and Japanese by the time I graduated. Now I question what "fluent" even means let alone its importance. Or maybe like when I first went to Japan, all the things that were going through my mind that I couldn't wait to find out about and experience. It's kind of like those times...but different. This time...I really want to do everything, haha. And every thing takes a huge amount of time and devotion to do the way I want to do it. I wonder if as I start to do the one of which I'm most sure, or sure I can start the best, the others will fall by the wayside and I'll realize something about my true calling, or something like that. But...I don't want to let all the other things go. Oh. Well, I suppose I'll just take things one step at a time. Take it easy baby. Take it as it comes. Don't move too fast, if you want your love to last.

Oh you've been moving much too
fast.

dry! or Tips and Tricks

So now you're at that part where you really want your clothes to be dry so you can wear them to bed and not freeze. They're still damp, so you have to figure out what to do.
Hint! Put them under the kotatsu with you while you study and read! It'll get them not only dry but also warm over the course of the entire evening! Now you're ready to move onto the next stage and attack those masses of elementary school students the next day with a full night of warm sleep!

Oh, I miss video games. And video game magazines. And reading video game magazine articles over and over again even when I didn't have the games they were about. Oh, strategy guides were a good read, too, even if I didn't have the game but my friend did (Banjo Kazooie). I never play them anymore because I'd rather do other things than put the amount of commitment and consistent play the good ones require, butttttt...maybe I should try out a cool-looking one or one I've been wanting to play (not Banjo Kazooie) for a long time. After I learn this koto piece. Which is getting cooler and cooler the more I get used to it.

still

Still, it makes a pretty good and tasty meal. It's pretty cool that one can have dinner from a convenience mart here two nights in a row and not pass out from sodium overload. Way to go onigiri and mini shrimp tendon. That's "tendon" as in the meal of rice with shrimp tempura on it, not...oh...ew.

busy

You know you're really starting to get busy
when you eat out of the konbini two nights in a row.

Oh man

Oh man, and Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do. Cool.

I'm also excited because I was missing some books in English and then randomly found a Mark Twain and Albert Camus book (not a co-authorship; that would be an awesome joined force of nature and twist of the space-time continuum) in the room I never go in because it smells like kerosene. I was looking for tools though. And I found them, in a cabinet-type thing in the doorway to the house. Not in the room. But I was glad I went in there. I wrenched up those screws on the kotatsu legs until they were good and sturdy. Not like before.

warm

Today I vacuumed my living room and was reminded of mowing a lawn, lining up all the mower tracks. I missed mowing the lawn. Hah, this happens to me sometimes when I'm not at home, though when I am at home, I don't mow the lawn as often as I should. Yet when I do, I really enjoy it.

With the room nice and vacuumed, I set up my kotatsu. Oh yes. For those who don't know what one is, it's basically a table with a fan on the bottom that puts out warm air, which is kept in an air socket under the table by long, thick, flowing comforters which fit in the table. Yes, it's amazing. Basically one of Japan's greatest inventions ever, if it was invented here as I thought. Pretty much all the JETs've been setting there's up, so I may be the last one, but last Halloween's movie-candy marathon spent completely under the kotatsu with four other people was...awesome. Plus, I realized I study kanji best when I can write directly on a table, rather than on my lap in bed, so voilah, another reason to set it up. A provider of a flat surface on which to study and the warmth that surrounds my legs while I do it. Speaking of which, I just finished the politics/international relations and disaster/crime sections of my kanji book. Five more sections to go and I'm done. Hurrah.

I'm listening to Billie Holliday now, gift of my sister. This is really nice. The stuff she's singing about and the way she's singing about it must have been so on the edge for the time. Flat out saying she wants a man to make love to her, and saying she's been a slave to her man, all set to a jazz band/orchestra background. Man, this is great. What a voice.

What a choice. I ate the last of my grapefruit today. It was good. I want to eat a ruby one though. It would be nice to have people I really know well close enough to able to be visit them with a phone call and a short drive. Or a bus ride, for that matter. "Short" being the key. Well, I'll keep listening to this music. It's really good.

Cleaning Day

Today, I woke up with a nagging stomach which served as a reminder to me throughout the day: I am not a candy-eater. Even as a child, after Trick-or-Treating, my sister and I would come home and check our candy, eat a few pieces with my parents, and save almost the entire haul from the night for later. Which meant we never ate nearly any of it and it just went bad, hah. We just weren't raised eating a lot of sweet foods and candies, so I don't really go it now. Which is why, when I scarfed down I don't even know how many chips and chocolates last night that some of the JETs had bought for our Halloween movie night, I felt fine and happy then, then oo and ouf today. And with no Sprite or 7-Up in the fridge...??

At any rate, I didn't let some little tantrum thrown by my stomach get me down! I practiced koto, hung my blankets and sheets to air out, and did two loads of laundry! I actually was a little reluctant to do much cleaning and organizing the house today, but by nightfall, just about half an hour ago, I had cleaned up my kitchen, including the rice steam goo brown stuff that had collected in the ridges of the rice cooker, cleaned the living room off any stuff (and I mean like really...there is nothing in my living room now except like a couch and a table), and made my room cozier. I also finally made that big empty room I usually just hang my laundry up in with a big table that I also just put laundry on my music room, and now a koto lays majestically across it's length.

Well, it's time to take a shower and start my day. Tonight.