space battleship yamato movie and other stuff

So yeah, this morning I straightened out my bank stuff. Yay.

Then I came home to play PP and wait to hear from Kon and Ian. Met up with them in Ikebukuro around 5:30; we got tickets to see Space Battleship Yamato's showing at 6:45pm, and then ran off to get curry for dinner (another one of these love/hate things about Japan for me: I love curry, but I hate ignoramous store clerks who gesture and point at the spice chart and can't even be bothered to say anything in Japanese. Jerk.) and then spent some time in the arcade before watching the movie.

I'm going to tell you something -- since I know there are undoubtedly people on my friends list who actually do care about Space Battleship Yamato -- it is one depressing motherfucker of a movie. I have to admit that I never actually watched Yamato as its true form of anime, though I did watch Star Blazers as a kid. Of course, they changed all the names and some of the plots and I don't remember that much about it anyway. I'm sure for the Yamato junkies and Star Blazers fans, there's more than enough to just watch and be taken with by how they brought lots of things to life on the screen.

But I spent a lot of the time during the movie thinking about death and mortality and being very depressed. I hate movies and stuff that make me think stuff like that. I'm not sure Yamato is supposed to do that, but it's the effect it had on me. I mean, I think it's supposed to be about hope and love and blowing up aliens, but for me it was more about all these people dying, and how we're all going to die someday.

( uh maybe spoilers but not really, I mean, if you know Yamato these shouldn't be )

So after the movie Konstantin declared himself too tired for karaoke, so there was no karaoke after all. Which sucks. But I did get him and Ian to do purikura with me. I am being nice and not posting any of them :)

Yawn.

Year-end evaluation

I don't have my resolutions/goals for 2011 yet. Those'll come in a separate post over the next day or two as I think about them more.

Here's my evaluation of what I set forth to do back in January...

1) PASS THE GODDAMN JLPT 2-KYUU
Well, shit. I think I'm just giving up on it at this point.

1a) Take some actual goddamn Japanese lessons already
Yes, I did this, at SJI in the spring. It was fun and I learned some things and I enjoyed it but it still didn't help me pass the 2-kyuu because I never had time to do homework.

2) Go to a baseball game in the new stadium in Niigata (preferably Hokushinetsu League)
Yes, I did this too, in June, and met a bunch of the Niigata Albirex! It was really fun!

3) Take the train to Hokkaido instead of flying
Yes, did this too back in August. Also lots of fun.

4) Go to Okinawa
No, still haven't been to Okinawa. Fuck you, Okinawa. You shouldn't count anyway since I can't take a train to you.

5) Go to as many prefectures as possible
Yes. I have now been TO 39, THOUGH 1 more, and never set foot in 7. And next week I am planning to cross off all of the rest of my unvisited prefectures except Okinawa. Again, fuck you, Okinawa.

(When I wrote that goal, I was at 21/9/17. So. 18 prefectures is pretty good.)

6) Get a new job (this kind of goes without saying)
Well... I mean... I got my old job back. Does that count?

7) Make some new friends -- preferably for karaoke and/or board games
Karaoke yes, board games no. I mean, I guess I got to see Doug and Ai a lot more before they left, and recently became pretty good friends with Kozo. I got to know a whole bunch of new baseball people this year. But in terms of having "call up to hang out with" friends I still don't really have many of those, which was what I hoped for.

7a) Have a board games party at my house sometime
Oops. Failed on this. Though I played a ton of board games at school...

8) Actually keep my japanese baseball code base up to date (and fix the Perl scripts I never fixed in 2009 because I was a huge fucking slacker)
Oops, total fail on this :(

8a) Have Westbay teach me cool baseball database programming tricks
Fail on this too :( Neither of us had time.

9) Write more baseball blog posts, and shorter blog posts
I kind of failed on this too; this year I wrote less posts than last year and I'm pretty much thinking I'll give up on the blog at this point.

9a) Do at least 2 player interviews this year
Fail on this too. Kind of. I mean... I didn't do any official interviews like I had in past years. BUT on the other hand I talked to a TON more players this year... if you count college ball players ;)

10) If I'm working at a JHS again: I want to actually work with a sports club on a real tangible regular basis, and I also want to have a 95% or better success rate on Eiken interviews again
Oops on the sports club, but my Eiken rate was 100%. I did manage to play sports a few times with kids and help out with the rentaikai and sports day and whatnot, at least.

11) Go to see a Broadway show here in Tokyo (well, a Shiki show but still)
Whoops on this too.

2010) Write my book already.
BIG WHOOPS on this :(

Another thing I'd really like to do in Japan, but I hesitate to make it an actual goal because it seems so totally unlikely, is that I'd really like to someday sit outside a train station and play guitar and sing music with somebody. Any volunteers? :)
No on this too. Alas.


Yeah.. so I guess I didn't do so well on those kinds of goals and stuff.

But I wouldn't say 2010 was a bad year. Actually, a lot of great things happened this year. Only a week or two after writing that entry in January, Mike and I got together, and then ended up spending the year in an LDR, which has been kind of difficult, but next year we'll get to see where things actually go when we're in the same city for the long-term. I worked at my JHS, starting off on a really bad foot, but in the end had an amazing year with some very unforgettable memories and students. I travelled all over the country and saw a lot of interesting things and watched a lot of interesting baseball and met a lot of interesting people and ate a lot of interesting food.

Overall, I do not consider this year a failure by any measure.

And I also find it nearly impossible to think about goals for next year, since who knows what the hell I'm going to do when I come back to the US? It's funny, but at least life in Japan is familiar to me now...