I Need a Hobby

I just had one of those moments, certainly neither the first nor last, where I sat here at the helm and went back and forth between my usual sets of websites, looking for something new, where I knew there would be nothing. I click through MySpace, Facebook, Christy's journal, and The Superficial basically every time I sit down at the computer, and tonight, around 8pm I just got so thoroughly bored playing games that I just flipped through each of them over and over knowing full well there would be nothing new.

Damned internet's turning into the fridge, where I do the same thing, going into the kitchen, opening the fridge, opening my cupboard, looking around, and knowing the whole time there's nothing in there to eat, or that I feel like cooking.

What's with that? I need more to do.

Kyoto

I'm back from Kyoto. I'm pretty much exhausted. I haven't walked that much since Italy, I don't think. I stink. I feel bad for the guy who had to sit next to me on the bus ride home, if not because I had my shoes off then because I had to keep throwing my legs up in the air to stretch my knees out, which for the record hurt like a motherfucker. But it's OK because he straight up farted in his sleep. Probably to get back at me.

I took 200 photos, used all three of my memory cards, and would have taken more had I had space. I visited 17 shrines/temples/famous sights, spoke a good deal of Japanese, met an olympic gold medalist (2002 women's skeleton) at my hostel, and got mobbedd by hordes of Japanese elementary school students, and overall had a pretty nice time.

It was drizzly the first day, cloudy the next, and sunny and gorgeous the last, so all in all it was decent weather. I'm glad it was how it was and not reversed. The weather couldn't have been better for all the hiking I did yesterday.

I saw almost everything I wanted to see, the notable exception being Saiho-ji, or Kokedera, the Moss Garden, which you need to have made a reservation for by mail in advance, which I blanked on and have only myself to blame for. Was it worth all the effort? Yes. Was it more or less expensive than I thought? About what I figured. Whole trip total cost me about 39,500 yen.

On my big list of things do in in life, I can now check off Kyoto as done. I still wanna see Kokedera, but, I'll live if I don't. The picture I took of Kyoto from the Shinkansen platform in 2003 has finally come full circle. I should have known then it was To-ji, but now I have pics standing in front of it, instead of admiring it from a distance. Go me.

Was I lonely? Not really.

Of Course It's Full

What's new? Hmm. Ok, so, I sent in my tax stuff, now that's taken care of. Woot.

I've been hungover for like a week now, due to a party at Christian's place, then Sammy showing back up in town for a night or two, going out with her and a group two nights in a row, then pulling an all nighter on Saturday night in Mito after Bryan, Richard and Nathan's show, then getting no real sleep and going on a date with Saki Sunday night.

Oh, yea, I went on a date with Saki. We met up in Kashiwa and I took her to Bora Bora for dinner, but come to discover that there was a wedding party going on, just my luck, so we played pool instead, which I would have wanted to do anyway, and talked and enjoyed playing pool. I ended up giving her some pointers since she, like most girls, doesn't really play pool. Funny how even outside of work once you've established a teacher/student type of relationship how it kind of permeates whatever you end up doing together.
Anyway, after we played pool for a few hours we decided to go grab something to eat, so I took her to my favorite Korean restaurant which was, of course, completely full, so we wound up going to Wara Wara instead. Which was fine, really, we just wanted to do some drinking and eat something and talk some more. We had some good conversation, joked around a lot, and tried to work our way through the language barrier as best we could.
It's a lot easier to communicate with someone who's level 6 when you can just speak Japanese when you need to.
I didn't end up getting home until 1:30am or so from a 7pm date, so that much was a success, neither of us really wanted to go home any earlier than we had to. Except that when I got home I realized that I had to be at work in Kashiwa at 10:50 the next morning and I knew that was gonna suck.

It wasn't as bad as I thought though, work. I just had a throbbing headache most of the day. Mayumi, the ever sarcastic level 2 who I love so much, gave me her card and asked me if I wanted to take Japanese lessons from her, which I do. So, I'll give her a call and see what I can do about starting to study Japanese again finally, and hopefully get better.

K, off to work. Just wanted to say I went out on a date really, and hopefully there will be more of these entries to come. Cool.

Wewt

I just got an email from SinHae confirming that I can stay at her place while I'm in Seoul next month. Sweet. That totally saves me from having to find a hotel, or worry about I dunno, 75% of the things I would have to worry about while travelling overseas. Now I just have to worry about arranging my days off.

Actually, speaking of which I still need to arrange my days off for my trip to Kyoto this month, and I have to do it fast because my only days I can swap are my next weekend, so I have to arrange that pronto. I picked up my return bus ticket the other day too, so everything's all set for that trip. I just need to do some more research about where I wanna go, and perhaps start calling places to reserve spots to come. Many of the gardens in Kyoto you must first call to see if there will be open spots. Interesting.

I picked up three days of O.T. this month, since I don't have to do a ton of swaps, but I made sure to leave my Sundays open because, well, they're better than Mondays to have off, and it makes my O.T. much later in the day, as opposed to 10:50am which I hate doing. I signed up for it as soon as it came out, because I knew if I didn't do it then I would never sign up for it, but I knew when I did it that I would of course hate myself for it, and here I am, Monday morning, getting ready to go to work, and I'm hating myself.

It's not that I really would have done much with this day off, it just seems like I am forever going to work. And the money I'll make never seems like that much. I get paid, I pay my bills, and I try to conserve money as best I can for the rest of the month. At the end of the month, I rarely have anything left over regardless of if I worked O.T., so it feels like I'm no better off for having done it. But I know that's not true. I need every penny I can earn this year with all my travel, and when I am in Seoul I will appreciate having worked the extra hours, because the three days will pay me more twice as much as my plane ticket over there, perhaps even the entire trip, if I spend wisely and don't get robbed.

ACK! Hey look, another entry about finances. What were the odds? Ugh. Anyway, it's a halfway decent day out, overcast, neither warm nor cold. Hopefully today will go by quickly.