Backlog 3

In June, well to be honest my memory of June is a little fuzzy, I can't really remember anything special going on in June, but I'll try to put something down anyway.

June....June...hmm. Ya. Got nothing. I'm sure I did something interesting...yeesh, this is embarassing. An entire month of my life, and nothing memorable enough to clearly remember 4 months later. Hmm. Guess we gotta skip to July.

*EDIT* Wait! I remembered! Starting in June, I became a member of Megalos, the gym that Saki and her family are members of. I decided it was finally time to, if only once in my life, get in good shape, and have a body I could be proud of. That, and, I suppose it's fair to say that I'm getting to bear near that age when I should consider taking better care of myself than I have in the past. So, Monday through Thursday after work I'd head straight to the gym, and I gotta be honest it's a weird feeling. Especially after hating on meatheads for so long, the last thing I've ever really wanted to be was that guy that goes to the gym and talks weights all day. So, I decided that, as with apparently all things in life, some degree of compromise was necessary, and I started working out. I don't want to get buff, I don't want to lift record weights, and I don't wanna be cocky about it either. I just wanna get some muscle tone and lose some of this gut. Well, the gut is dietary, so, I guess the point of the gym is just to get regular excercise. Anyway, ya, that's June. If I remember anything else, well, I'll just edit it in later. *EDIT*

On July 5th Richard and I went to try our hands again at the JLTP (Japaense Language Proficiency Test). Both of us navigated the maze of alleyways and residential sidestreets that made up the neigborhood near the test site campus, and somehow, as if by sheer luck or divine providence, found the place in time to take the test. After the first section, vocabulary and kanji, we both stepped outside to consult about our impressions. We both had the same look on our faces, that of the sheer exhaustion that only comes with spending a long time looking at a midterm or final exam and not knowing what on God's green Earth is written on the pages. It was hard. Much harder than the test we both took in December, even though we failed that one too. Richard looked about ready to give up and go home, I had to prod him to stay.

We finished it up though, and I think, at least for me, the last half of the test went much better than the first. The same though, cannot be said for Richard, unfortunately.

As it turns out, I passed the test this time around by the same margin with which I failed the test last time. Richard on the other hand, got the worst score of all the many times he's taken the test, and I wonder about the effect that's had on him. Maybe it will finally encourage him to study, or maybe it will discourage him and he'll give up. Maybe nothing will change at all. Who knows. But it appears that the time I put in studying in the months between December and July paid off. So now I am officially a Level 2 speaker of Japanese.

I'd be more excited about it except that for all intents and purposes you have to be Level 1 to really do anything. It used to be that you could get a job that required Japanese if you had Level 2, but increasingly 1 is needed to get anything halfway resembling normal. So, I guess from here it's back to the books to get ready for that nightmare of a test.

Backlog 2

Let's continue with the backblogging, yes?

May was the month of Golden Week, the famous set of consecutive public holidays that make up the Japanese equivalent of spring break. Er, late spring, pre-summer break. Now, I would say that I look forward to it, and that it's something to be excited about, but the thing is, the way things work around here, anytime you have a holiday, the entire country jumps on the opportunity to make up for lost chances to do anything. I think most people figure that on a regular weekend, you can't actually do anything meaningful. That and most people work 6 days weeks around here so a Saturday to Sunday trip is usually not do-able. But when Golden Week rolls around, it's a mad dash to go somewhere, anywhere, and wherever it is they (read: the entire country) choose to go, it's almost guaranteed to be exactly where you were thinking of going.

There's no avoiding the traffic. No matter the highway, road, alleyway, footbridge, whatever you decide to take, you're screwed. It's gridlock, 6am-10pm. The early risers get out on the road and maybe really can make some good progress, but they've only got about an hour before the entire rest of the populations joins them on the road. It's a controlled stampede. A very, very slow moving stampede. I figure if you lived outside Tokyo and wanted to visit there on a holiday, you'd have no idea there was such a thing as a traffic jam. You'd be going in when people are going out, and going out when people are coming back. But, sadly, no one seems to do that. Actually, I'm glad they don't cause I'd be tempted to throw things at them while I'm taking a walk on the shoulder for lack of anything better to do.

Take LA rush hour, extend it to and entire day, and expand it to every road in the state of California. That's basically the scope and scale of it.

Now, after reading all that, I'm sure you're thinking I had some miserable experience over Golden Week getting stuck in traffic, but to be completely honest, at the moment I can't remember for the life of me what I did over Golden Week. It's entirely possbile I did nothing at all, since Saki was working the whole time. Who knows. Sorry!

Backlog 1

I see my last post was in April, so since I'm free for the moment here at school I think I'll take a moment to update what's been going on in my life. So here is the first installment of what I'm sure will become a long and epic set of entries catching up on the past few months.

April marked the beginning of the new school year, and also the beginning of an emotional jounrey with Saki, exploring the effects her hormone therapy would have on our relationship. All in all, looking back, there was really nothing too major, but there were a lot of times when I ddn't know how to handle things. It took a lot of confidence, and I learned a lot about what it really takes to be there for someone. I leared that, to really support someone, it isn't just being around, it's being strong, and by that, I mean being the confidence and calm you hope to impress upon the person you're supporting. I learned a lot about myself in the process, and I think I have become better at controlling my own inate fears and insecurities. I can't say I'm not thankful, honestly, to have had this experience.
Saki has more or less recovered from her surgery, which she underwent to remove an endometriotic cyst that had formed on her left ovary, taking about 66% of the ovary itself with it.



Thought I never mentioned it here, in March, I said goodbye to one of the best friends I've ever had, Greg. He decided to go back to Oregon at the end of the school year to go to graduate school and make something more of himself. He decided in the end that the company for which we both work had no real opprtunity for advancement, and as such, made the hard decision to return home in pursuit of his future. I wish him the best of luck in that of course, and hope that at some point in his journey his road leads him back here, seeing as it appears I'm going to be here for quite a while.
But, as will prove to be the case increasingly over the next few months, last man standing gets the riches, and as a result, I inherited a great deal of Greg's old stuff, including but not limited to a loveseat, futon set, 5.1 surround speaker system, cutlery, a massive DVD collection, and, though it was partially mine to begin with, a Nintendo Wii, complete with a couple of fun games.

At this point, Ty had moved out as well, having moved in with his newlywed wife Aco in Bunga, a suburb of Kashiwa. Everything Ty left behind became more or less mine as well, including, but not limited to, the cat. "The cat comes with the apartment," he says. This'll come to play a little later on.

Somewhere along the line I got some new suits as well.

That's backlog 1, March/April.