Yokohama Fun, etc
Here's a funny thought I had: I've been blogging about my life daily now for about 7.5 years (since March of 2000, even though it was just in an Emacs-edited text file on the CMU systems back then). I don't even know what it would be like anymore to NOT sit down and write about my day afterwards. If I don't write a journal entry at the end of a day, I almost pretty much know that it means "argh, you're going to have to write twice as much tomorrow".
Is that weird? Or normal? Like, the idea that I could have a day completely lost to the ages just really, really bugs me?
I didn't write an entry on Friday night because I was really tired. Basically, I spent the afternoon down in Yokohama Stadium for the Baystars Fan Fest. Yes, it was a lot of fun, although it would have been a lot more fun if I hadn't been there alone. I didn't get any autographs, but I did get tons of pictures (and a lot of funny looks from people; I only saw one other gaijin in the stadium all day and it was Yokohama's strength and conditioning coach John Turney, who I've seen leading pregame workouts several times during the season.
But, a lot of players were there and that was really cool. For the 2-3 people who know who any of these guys are, I got to see Saeki practically do stand-up comedy and lead a crowd of a few hundred people in crowd-wide rock-paper-scissors ("No, HONESTLY, if you don't have paper, SIT DOWN!"). Takuro Ishii called Kimiyasu Kudoh an old man up on stage. Little kids got to play catch with Yuuki Yoshimura and Daisuke Miura, among others. Hayato Terahara is adorable and charming. I almost got my calendar autographed by Shingo Nonaka but just missed him, sadly. The biggest downside was very little Kizuka time; I only saw him for a few seconds up on stage at one point, though I tried to hunt him down later to no avail. I did kick the pitcher's mound in his honor, though.
Afterwards I met up with![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alibash and Sophie at Kamihoshikawa station (that's spelled 上星川). On the way there, transferring in Yokohama Station, not only did I get yelled at in Japanese by some racist old Japanese dude who pushed past me on the stairs down from the platform and was basically like "quit blocking the stairs, we don't need you non-Japanese people around here", and I yelled back at him in Japanese, "you rude sonofaJapanesebitch, shut the hell up". A few minutes after that, I kid you not, some random dude started commenting on how big my feet are (also in Japanese), and I think he wanted to try swapping shoes because he wanted to see if his feet were as big as mine. I told him that it was a REALLY FUCKING WEIRD thing to ask in ANY language, and he apologized profusely for bothering me and said that I had nice feet and to not be offended. WHATEVER. Yokohama Station can bite me.
Krispy and Sophie and I got dinner at a yakitori-type place, about half stuff-on-sticks and half salad-and-rice-type things. Then we went to this... indoor theme park of sorts called JJ Club 100. Basically, the premise is, you pay 100 yen per 15 minutes you are in there, but you can do anything you want for that time for no additional charge. The one we went to had billiards, ping-pong tables, batting cages, golf ranges, basketball courts, an arcade with a bunch of old games (including DDR Solo Mix! Ha!), a fishing pond, an internet/manga cafe, and... karaoke booths. Sophie had wanted to go there for cheap karaoke, so after we did a few games of pingpong and I sucked at speed pitch, we did karaoke for several hours. They put up with me singing a lot of crap like Moeyo Dragons, and Sophie sang a lot of stuff in Chinese which was really pretty.
We played a game of pool which I lost horribly because I suck at pool, and then it was like 10pm and I had to go home because it'd take an hour and a half or more... from out there it's the Sotetsu line back to Yokohama, then I took the Yokosuka line to Tokyo station (and I fell asleep on the way and nearly ended up going all the way to Chiba), and transferred to the Keihin-Tohoku line to come home. Yay. I looked at some of my photos and pretty much crashed, because Saturday's an early day for me. Though, I woke up a few times during the night because I was REALLY FUCKING COLD. Argh.
I just realized that not only is there another one of those JJ Club 100 places really close to me (ok, like 3-4km) but I even rode my bike past it on my way up to Kita-Urawa. Wow. Of course, I don't think it'd be any fun to go there alone, but who knows.
Today, I swear, I was at GEOS all day and I literally had TWO STUDENTS. TWO. That's IT. My 11am is quitting, my 12pm was on a trip, most of my 1pms were away, all of my 2pms were away, both of my 6pms had to cancel, and one of my 7pms is in America right now. On the other hand, they're two awesome students. The one at 1pm is a PhD student in biomedical engineering and I have a great time just hanging out talking to him and teaching him useful words for being a grad student, like "procrastinate", and that "research" is an uncountable noun. He wrote a paper (in English!) that got accepted to a journal last week! He was showing me some of the papers he used in his research, which he can read in English just fine, and I'm looking at stuff about ligand peptides or some such thing like "Dude, *I* can't read this!" On the other hand, we did a grammar chain game that involved the construct of "If I hadn't ____, I wouldn't have _____". It ended with him saying "Hmm... If I hadn't studied English I wouldn't have met you!" AWWWWWW.
The guy at 7pm is just brilliant and funny. He's an older businessman sort, and we're going to do his classes at 4pm during December. I just wanted to get out of work earlier, and he wants to be able to go to more bounenkai (year-end drinking parties), so it works out well for both of us. Anyway, today was a tricky grammar concept and he just GOT it, which is great for someone who just moved up to Sprint 8.
Eri and I went for dinner after work... she had suggested earlier in the day that she wanted to eat something healthy for dinner and we should go hang out somewhere and NOT talk about work, so I suggested El Torito down in Ikebukuro, because, hey, Mexican food. I had a burrito combo again and this time noticed that sour cream is on the side menu. Eri had a mexican salad which was gigantic and she gave me some; it was really good. We actually did manage to mostly not talk about work, and I think she's going to come with me to see スマイル聖夜の奇跡 next month, even though she said she hates Japanese movies... this one has HOCKEY! AND KIDS! AND KIDS PLAYING HOCKEY! How can you possibly go wrong?
We finished dinner at like 11pm and had to wander through a deserted Sunshine City to get back to the station. It was seriously spooky, the entire mall was deserted and many places had the lights turned off but all the mall doors were open.
Now I have a weekend ahead of me, though I actually didn't really plan anything for Sunday at all. Unfortunately, I also seem to have some sort of vague tendonitis in my left arm. Argh. Not sure if it's from the speed pitch and pingpong, or from holding onto high bars on the subway, or what, but youch.
Is that weird? Or normal? Like, the idea that I could have a day completely lost to the ages just really, really bugs me?
I didn't write an entry on Friday night because I was really tired. Basically, I spent the afternoon down in Yokohama Stadium for the Baystars Fan Fest. Yes, it was a lot of fun, although it would have been a lot more fun if I hadn't been there alone. I didn't get any autographs, but I did get tons of pictures (and a lot of funny looks from people; I only saw one other gaijin in the stadium all day and it was Yokohama's strength and conditioning coach John Turney, who I've seen leading pregame workouts several times during the season.
But, a lot of players were there and that was really cool. For the 2-3 people who know who any of these guys are, I got to see Saeki practically do stand-up comedy and lead a crowd of a few hundred people in crowd-wide rock-paper-scissors ("No, HONESTLY, if you don't have paper, SIT DOWN!"). Takuro Ishii called Kimiyasu Kudoh an old man up on stage. Little kids got to play catch with Yuuki Yoshimura and Daisuke Miura, among others. Hayato Terahara is adorable and charming. I almost got my calendar autographed by Shingo Nonaka but just missed him, sadly. The biggest downside was very little Kizuka time; I only saw him for a few seconds up on stage at one point, though I tried to hunt him down later to no avail. I did kick the pitcher's mound in his honor, though.
Afterwards I met up with
alibash and Sophie at Kamihoshikawa station (that's spelled 上星川). On the way there, transferring in Yokohama Station, not only did I get yelled at in Japanese by some racist old Japanese dude who pushed past me on the stairs down from the platform and was basically like "quit blocking the stairs, we don't need you non-Japanese people around here", and I yelled back at him in Japanese, "you rude sonofaJapanesebitch, shut the hell up". A few minutes after that, I kid you not, some random dude started commenting on how big my feet are (also in Japanese), and I think he wanted to try swapping shoes because he wanted to see if his feet were as big as mine. I told him that it was a REALLY FUCKING WEIRD thing to ask in ANY language, and he apologized profusely for bothering me and said that I had nice feet and to not be offended. WHATEVER. Yokohama Station can bite me.Krispy and Sophie and I got dinner at a yakitori-type place, about half stuff-on-sticks and half salad-and-rice-type things. Then we went to this... indoor theme park of sorts called JJ Club 100. Basically, the premise is, you pay 100 yen per 15 minutes you are in there, but you can do anything you want for that time for no additional charge. The one we went to had billiards, ping-pong tables, batting cages, golf ranges, basketball courts, an arcade with a bunch of old games (including DDR Solo Mix! Ha!), a fishing pond, an internet/manga cafe, and... karaoke booths. Sophie had wanted to go there for cheap karaoke, so after we did a few games of pingpong and I sucked at speed pitch, we did karaoke for several hours. They put up with me singing a lot of crap like Moeyo Dragons, and Sophie sang a lot of stuff in Chinese which was really pretty.
We played a game of pool which I lost horribly because I suck at pool, and then it was like 10pm and I had to go home because it'd take an hour and a half or more... from out there it's the Sotetsu line back to Yokohama, then I took the Yokosuka line to Tokyo station (and I fell asleep on the way and nearly ended up going all the way to Chiba), and transferred to the Keihin-Tohoku line to come home. Yay. I looked at some of my photos and pretty much crashed, because Saturday's an early day for me. Though, I woke up a few times during the night because I was REALLY FUCKING COLD. Argh.
I just realized that not only is there another one of those JJ Club 100 places really close to me (ok, like 3-4km) but I even rode my bike past it on my way up to Kita-Urawa. Wow. Of course, I don't think it'd be any fun to go there alone, but who knows.
Today, I swear, I was at GEOS all day and I literally had TWO STUDENTS. TWO. That's IT. My 11am is quitting, my 12pm was on a trip, most of my 1pms were away, all of my 2pms were away, both of my 6pms had to cancel, and one of my 7pms is in America right now. On the other hand, they're two awesome students. The one at 1pm is a PhD student in biomedical engineering and I have a great time just hanging out talking to him and teaching him useful words for being a grad student, like "procrastinate", and that "research" is an uncountable noun. He wrote a paper (in English!) that got accepted to a journal last week! He was showing me some of the papers he used in his research, which he can read in English just fine, and I'm looking at stuff about ligand peptides or some such thing like "Dude, *I* can't read this!" On the other hand, we did a grammar chain game that involved the construct of "If I hadn't ____, I wouldn't have _____". It ended with him saying "Hmm... If I hadn't studied English I wouldn't have met you!" AWWWWWW.
The guy at 7pm is just brilliant and funny. He's an older businessman sort, and we're going to do his classes at 4pm during December. I just wanted to get out of work earlier, and he wants to be able to go to more bounenkai (year-end drinking parties), so it works out well for both of us. Anyway, today was a tricky grammar concept and he just GOT it, which is great for someone who just moved up to Sprint 8.
Eri and I went for dinner after work... she had suggested earlier in the day that she wanted to eat something healthy for dinner and we should go hang out somewhere and NOT talk about work, so I suggested El Torito down in Ikebukuro, because, hey, Mexican food. I had a burrito combo again and this time noticed that sour cream is on the side menu. Eri had a mexican salad which was gigantic and she gave me some; it was really good. We actually did manage to mostly not talk about work, and I think she's going to come with me to see スマイル聖夜の奇跡 next month, even though she said she hates Japanese movies... this one has HOCKEY! AND KIDS! AND KIDS PLAYING HOCKEY! How can you possibly go wrong?
We finished dinner at like 11pm and had to wander through a deserted Sunshine City to get back to the station. It was seriously spooky, the entire mall was deserted and many places had the lights turned off but all the mall doors were open.
Now I have a weekend ahead of me, though I actually didn't really plan anything for Sunday at all. Unfortunately, I also seem to have some sort of vague tendonitis in my left arm. Argh. Not sure if it's from the speed pitch and pingpong, or from holding onto high bars on the subway, or what, but youch.
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I cannot weigh in on weird v. normal with any credibility, but I do know what you mean. I have not kept journals non-stop. I have gaps, particularly during the busiest times - the times that were the most interesting - and those are also the times I tend to blur details. Chronic lack of sleep will do that. But then I go back to my calendar or email from that span and that's enough for me to remember what was going on down to minutia. I hope that LJ will do the same. There are also times I deliberately don't write things down, not just because they hurt too much at the time, but because I don't want to have to read about it again in a few years.