japan.narnarnar.com

Nar3: Japan

So it ends....
Posted on Friday, July 9th, 2004 at 7:20am by Brett.
(Friday, July 9th, 2004 at 8:20pm Japanese Standard Time)

Well, the adventure is over. I arrived in The States yesterday around 9:00am Central time. It's weird having to get used to everything here again, but it's nice to see my family and friends again.

What's gonna happen to this site? I haven't fully decided. It's going to stay in its current form here for a while. I'm eventually going to archive it up and lock out commenting functions and stuff and it'll be preserved as it is. But that's gonna be not soon.

I'll probably continue some sort of personal site at brett.narnarnar.com...there's nothing there yet...

Anyway, it was a very enjoyable experience for me, and I hope the readers could enjoy what little I wrote about it. The 10 months I was there seemed to fly by, but hopefully I will be able to go back sometime soon.

Thanks for reading!

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No more class
Posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2004 at 9:58pm by Brett.
(Wednesday, June 30th, 2004 at 10:58am Japanese Standard Time)

Classes are over...One more report to write, and I'm done with this trimester completely.

I lose my net connection today, which SUCKS because I have over a week before I leave, so this may be the last post...definitely the last post from my room.

So, in honor of this, I have one more amusing story.

I've been tutoring these girls lately, and it's been actually pretty fun. Two of them are really cool, and one of them is, as far as I know, a filthy whore. That one doesn't show up for lessons often...

Since it's nearly time for me to leave, the two girls wanted to take me out for a going away dinner. We were going to eat unagi (eel) but the unagi shop was closed, so we ended up going to a restaurant that served Okinawa food. Everything was really good, and since it wasn't a lesson, most of the conversation was in Japanese.

I was sick a couple weeks ago, and the sickness progressed into what has to be a sinus infection. I was sniffling and little bit and coughing, and one of the girls asked me if I was still sick. I was wanting to explain that I had a sinus infection, so I grabbed my trusty electronic dictionary and looked up sinus, but it wasn't there. So ...(More)

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The end of the tunnel
Posted on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2004 at 1:10am by Brett.
(Wednesday, June 23rd, 2004 at 2:10pm Japanese Standard Time)

Yes it's been a long long time...

It's not that nothing is happening, it's that I'm so busy I don't have the time or energy it takes to write anything here. I only just have enough time to manage to do all of my homework and studying...

It's finals season here. Classes end for me next Thursday. I've finished one final presentation already, but still have loads more final projects to do and tests to take. If I make it through this next week without going completely mad, it will be a miracle.

I will be back in American July 8th at 1pm.

I'd like to stay longer to do all the things that I wasn't able to do this quarter because I was so busy, but because I need so many hours of teaching before OSU starts up in autumn, I need to return early to start getting those hours...

Anyway, that's what's going on, and why I haven't written much here.

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The Tokyo Adventure
Posted on Saturday, May 22nd, 2004 at 10:17pm by Brett.
(Sunday, May 23rd, 2004 at 11:17am Japanese Standard Time)

Hisashiburu ne...

Well, now that Angel has finished, we are living in a post-Buffy world. My life has no meaning.

It seems that canceling the show wasn't enough, but the WB had to add insult to...uh...more insult. They've decided to replace Angel's time slot with...no, I can't even say it. It's too horrible.

Moving along.

Yesterday I met with Yuki in Tokyo. As always, it's loads of fun. I had a fews things in mind that I wanted, and that were, as far as I was concerned, impossible to get in Tsukuba. I wanted a shakuhachi (an ancient manly wooden flute), a laptop cooling stand, a Japanese flag for Jason (they don't make these in Japan, apparently), and some T Shirts. I only managed to get one of the above--the shakuhachi. But it was an adventure.

Yuki and I met at Tokyo Station, and there we planned our day. She had no idea where to find a shakuhachi, so we looked in a bookstore for some ideas. She said that probably our best bet was to go to Asakusa or Nihombashi, both traditional parts of the city. She thought one of her friends might know, so she called her and asked, and her ...(More)

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Hello?
Posted on Friday, May 7th, 2004 at 9:59am by Brett.
(Friday, May 7th, 2004 at 10:59pm Japanese Standard Time)

Yes I know...Long time no post. I hope everyone is faring well in a post Friends world...

What's been going on? A lot of...nothing exciting. Classes resumed. I'm taking a lot, and it's causing me to spend lots more time studying that I would have liked for spring, but thus is school.

I got my hair cut. Yay. Barber-san of Barber Party fame cut it. Actually, one of the sl^H^Hgirls from the party cut it first, then he fixed it. It's short. I got about..oh...6 inches or off.

He was talking to me, and asked which girl that came to the party did I think was the cutest. I...honestly couldn't remember what they look like, and just remembered OLD, so I said that the one sitting directly across from me. He laughed, and said "naruhodo" which means something like "Ah, of course" or "naturally". He told me she was 31, then said that before I go back to America, we should "asobu", which means "play" or "hang out", and is just general enough so that I didn't know what exactly he meant. Then he said "date".

I didn't want to be rude, so instead of saying she was old, I just said "I think I might be a little young," but he assured me she wouldn't mind. He even suggested ...(More)

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Amen
Posted on Saturday, May 1st, 2004 at 7:33am by Brett.
(Saturday, May 1st, 2004 at 8:33pm Japanese Standard Time)

People (script kiddies) who think they're web page designers need to read this.

( Read More | 291 views | 0 Comments )

Schedule
Posted on Tuesday, April 27th, 2004 at 7:30am by Brett.
(Tuesday, April 27th, 2004 at 8:30pm Japanese Standard Time)

I have scheduled for classes at OSU next year. Check it out.

There are 3 more classes that I may take that are not represented:
A bassoon class at 8:30 (required unless I can test out) on Mondays and Wednesdays, and Japanese Linguistics 680 (if my linguistics course meets the prereq) at 3:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Another class that may go up there is my Japanese language classes at 11:30...bet you thought that was lunch....hah! I don't know which level I'll be placed into when I get back, so I had to leave the spot for it open "just in case" I place into the level that's offered that quarter...

Fun fact: What you see on the schedule right now is a whopping 16 credits worth of class. It's fun to be a music major!

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External Help
Posted on Sunday, April 25th, 2004 at 8:47am by Brett.
(Sunday, April 25th, 2004 at 9:47pm Japanese Standard Time)

Most people don't know that this isn't the only web page I am responsible for. Aside from maintaining the main nar3 server with Jason, we also work on the Jackson City Schools website.

Before I left the States, I was asked to help redesign parts of OSU's slightly outdated and rather...urm...ugly Department of East Asian Language and Literature's Japanese home page.

I've uploaded a beta of what I have in mind...a rough draft, if you will...and I'd like some feedback from users that aren't me and that are picky in different ways than I am.

It is at deall.narnarnar.com.

Please keep in mind that:
1. This isn't a finished website.
2. The images aren't optimized.
3. The colors are web safe and degrade decently well. They are not the exact colors I wanted, but they work. Let me know what you think.
4. The menu at the top is "funny". I'm working on it, but open to suggestions on how to make it look nicer.
5. Yes the links don't ...(More)

( Read More | 295 views | 1 Comment )

Classes
Posted on Friday, April 23rd, 2004 at 6:35am by Brett.
(Friday, April 23rd, 2004 at 7:35pm Japanese Standard Time)

New class wrap up:

Intercultural Communication (AKA "The Boring Class"):
This class sucks. The topic is interesting, but the delivery leaves much to be desired. It's a two-period class, so that's 2 hours and 30 minutes of fun. I do homework in this class.

Japanese Grammar:
This is your standard Japanese grammar class. The teachers seem to be cool this quarter, and since it's a level higher than I expected, hopefully I'll learn a good bit.

Kanji:
AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! The homework for this class is the most time consuming, least beneficial homework I have ever had to do. It is the physical embodiment of "busy work". I was in this class last trimester, but dropped out of it to save my GPA. I was hoping it would be better since they totally revamped the system. Nice to know some things never change...

Japanese songs:
This class is really cool. It's a couple levels lower than what I'm at, but I'm not complaining. We listen to songs, then have a change to make our own lyrics for them. It's a fun, low key class.

Japanese TV Dramas:
This class MIGHT be cool. It's more work than one might expect from a "watch TV" type of class, but it's not pointless ...(More)

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Echoes
Posted on Monday, April 19th, 2004 at 11:42pm by Brett.
(Tuesday, April 20th, 2004 at 12:42pm Japanese Standard Time)

I need a haircut. It's long...very long...

( Read More | 365 views | 3 Comments )

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