So Tuesday after class, I hopped on my bike to head home. It was lightly raining. It wasn't enough for me to bother with a rain jacket, or to worry about it getting in my eyes too much while riding. I didn't feel like getting too worked up, since I had a lot of homework to get done that night, so I was taking it pretty easy. Also, I've been riding more cautiously in the rain here anyway; my bike's brakes are pretty remarkably ineffective when they're wet. The tires still grip the road surface just fine, but it takes several wheel revolutions of full pressure braking before enough moisture is swept off of the rims for the brakes to start applying any deceleration to the wheels.
Topographically speaking, the route home goes slightly downhill, slightly uphill, flat, slightly uphill, downhill, uphill, and then downhill to the driveway. On the second to last downhill portion, the car ahead of me slowed down and stopped--I think the car in front was making a right turn and waiting for a traffic break (in Japan cars drive on the left side of the road), but that detail is a little bit irrelevant. There was a comfortable distance between me and the car, so I started applying the brakes, not really thinking too much of anything.
After the normal period of not doing anything, though, by brakes continued to not do anything. I realized that my options had suddenly become very limited. To the left of the car was a guardrail, and not enough room to walk by, let alone ride by at 30 mph, which is what I'm realistically estimating my speed at. To the right of the car was oncoming traffic. My rear brake is never powerful enough to lock the rear wheel anyway, and the plastic pedals on the bike are too slippery to allow it, so a move like a skater's hockey stop wouldn't work at all. Again because of the pedals, trying to bail out and just jump off the bike would probably just make me fall uncontrolled and piledrive my bike into the car.
Anyone who's squeamish and has an active imagination should skip the next four paragraphs...
Having gone through that many rejected options, I was out of time and simply ran straight into the car. My front wheel hit the bumper first, and I was launched off the saddle into the vertical rear door. I'm pretty sure it was my left shoulder that put the dent in the door panel; my mouth hit the glass. As I got up I was bleeding pretty profusely. I thought it was a nasty nosebleed.
The driver moved her car out of the intersection, and I picked up my stuff and moved it off of the road. Offering me tissues to try to control the blood, she first confirmed that I had insurance before calling the police and sentencing me to medical care. While she did that, I used the car's glass to inspect the damage to myself. I didn't have a nosebleed, I had a laceration between my upper lip and my nose that was being quite productive. I guess the force of the impact tore the skin open. Also, my braces did quite a number on the inside of my upper lip. My teeth were hurting quite a bit, but they were all there, and all still in the right position.
Shortly after the police showed up, Laura and Kate, two other students in my dorm, came upon me while walking home, and started helping with the information exchange. This was fortunate, as I wasn't thinking terribly clearly at that stage, and due to the massive swelling of my upper lip, I was barely intelligible in English, let alone Japanese. An ambulance was called for, and after establishing that a Japanese-only hospital was fine, I got a one-minute ride up the last hill before getting home, to the Utano Hospital. I thought this was pretty funny, because with as long as it took for the ambulance to be called for, get there, figure out what was going on, and deliver me, I could have walked there. It was something like 100 meters from where I crashed.
I got two stitches on the laceration below my nose and one in my upper lip, with tap to hold the other parts of the cut closed. My lip, since it was shredded in a particularly wonderful fashion, was the recipient of a snip for a dangling chunk. That took a long time to stop bleeding. After the cleanup, I got a CT scan to make sure there weren't any breaks. Then the doctor dispensed some instructions, and I was free to pick up my prescriptions and go.
My total cost for the ambulance ride, ER treatment, and prescriptions was slightly less than US$60. This really makes the US health care system look like an awful joke. I can't see that kind of treatment at a US hospital being less than a four figures even after insurance, and probably over $10000 before insurance.
More good news in terms of insurance: the information reached me yesterday that the driver does have car insurance. Even though there wasn't anything I could have done about it, I am legally at fault (that's fair--she was stopped, it certainly wasn't her fault), so the damage is on my bill. But now at worst I'll have to pay an insurance deductible. The way it was phrased when I heard it, though, I don't know if there even is a deductible. I'll find out more on Monday, when I go in to the police station for paperwork regarding the insurance. That should be fun.
I'll be meeting with the driver on the 28th this month. That's when all the payment details will get fully worked out. I'll be going with at least one person from the International Center at Ritsumeikan to help with the language barrier. My main job will be to apologize. That might sound weird to most Americans, since I got stuffed into an ambulance and she didn't get hurt, but the fact is that she didn't do anything, and then suddenly she had to deal with a damaged car, talking to a big, bleeding, and probably accidentally rude gaijin, and an afternoon full of talking with police and otherwise not doing what she had planned to do.
Anyway, I'm recovering pretty well. By the next day it didn't hurt any more, and I've just been needing more rest than normal. Today the swelling is mostly gone, so I look almost normal except for the cut. It did put a noticeable dent in my studies this week, and I'm struggling to work up the motivation to get back on track with that. But, things could have gone a lot worse, and I'm glad they didn't.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
Hectic week... now presenting last weekend's mountain climb!
Pictures!
My little mountain-climbing adventure turned out to be more than I had expected. I only managed to convince one other person to go, thanks to the last-minute nature of my planning - Dan Cerillo from New Jersey came along for the workout. I woke up on Sunday after four hours of mediocre sleep, got ready, and we headed out. Proving to me once again that my sense of scale here is completely thrown off, we arrived at the trailhead by bike in about half the distance I had expected.
The weather was wonderful. Nice and cool. We started up the trail and immediately noticed a key difference in the maintenance level between this trail and popular hiking trails to mountain peaks in the US. Namely, that at the start at least, this trail is literally paved. Since there's a shrine at the summit, they've probably been doing maintenance and improvement on this trail for four hundred years. The paving eventually faded out, but the entire trail was exceptionally well maintained, and the steeper parts had stone or wooden stairs embedded.
The steeper spots were the other key difference from all the other summit trails I've done: there wasn't a single switchback. Through tacit agreement, since we were both there for a workout and to make up for laziness, Dan and I both just plowed ahead at the same foot pace no matter how steep the trail got. The trail was almost entirely shadowed by trees, which also had the effect of blocking the wind. By the time we reached the top, we had plenty of sweat to show for our pace. It was almost twenty degrees cooler (Fahrenheit) at the top than at the bottom, and it opened up to the breeze, which felt absolutely fantastic.
Overall the trail goes up something like 2600 feet in less than two miles, which makes it the steepest average slope I've hiked up. I felt marginally bad at the start, really good at the top, and pretty rubber-legged when we got to the bottom again. All told, we went from the dorm to the top and back in under 4 1/2 hours. That was a good day. I slept like a baby that night.
Monday was nothing special, but Tuesday things took a different turn. I've been delaying posting because I've been trying to sort things out. My next post will finally bring everything up to date.
My little mountain-climbing adventure turned out to be more than I had expected. I only managed to convince one other person to go, thanks to the last-minute nature of my planning - Dan Cerillo from New Jersey came along for the workout. I woke up on Sunday after four hours of mediocre sleep, got ready, and we headed out. Proving to me once again that my sense of scale here is completely thrown off, we arrived at the trailhead by bike in about half the distance I had expected.
The weather was wonderful. Nice and cool. We started up the trail and immediately noticed a key difference in the maintenance level between this trail and popular hiking trails to mountain peaks in the US. Namely, that at the start at least, this trail is literally paved. Since there's a shrine at the summit, they've probably been doing maintenance and improvement on this trail for four hundred years. The paving eventually faded out, but the entire trail was exceptionally well maintained, and the steeper parts had stone or wooden stairs embedded.
The steeper spots were the other key difference from all the other summit trails I've done: there wasn't a single switchback. Through tacit agreement, since we were both there for a workout and to make up for laziness, Dan and I both just plowed ahead at the same foot pace no matter how steep the trail got. The trail was almost entirely shadowed by trees, which also had the effect of blocking the wind. By the time we reached the top, we had plenty of sweat to show for our pace. It was almost twenty degrees cooler (Fahrenheit) at the top than at the bottom, and it opened up to the breeze, which felt absolutely fantastic.
Overall the trail goes up something like 2600 feet in less than two miles, which makes it the steepest average slope I've hiked up. I felt marginally bad at the start, really good at the top, and pretty rubber-legged when we got to the bottom again. All told, we went from the dorm to the top and back in under 4 1/2 hours. That was a good day. I slept like a baby that night.
Monday was nothing special, but Tuesday things took a different turn. I've been delaying posting because I've been trying to sort things out. My next post will finally bring everything up to date.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Meeting people, eating sushi, and climbing mountains
We had a special session of class today, which wound up being one of the most difficult class periods I can remember, including any number of tests. Our teachers got some volunteer Japanese students to come into class and talk with us. We were to interview them about recommendations for improving at various aspects of learning the Japanese language, both in groups of four and one-on-one. I did get some good ideas out of this, but it's still quite hard to ask these sorts of questions, and frequently it's hard for me to understand the answers as well.
After going through the relevant class items, we could talk with them about whatever we wanted, as long as it wasn't in English--this part of it was much more fun, and quite a bit easier. I asked everyone for recommendations on books to read, and one of them is going to let me borrow books. In talking with her, I also found out this student spent a year studying abroad in Boulder, Colorado at the same time that I lived in Castle Rock, Colorado. Interesting.
In a little while tonight, I will be going out with a bunch of the students for sushi. While a couple of the students prepared sashimi for the potluck party a couple of weekends ago, I haven't gone out for sushi since I got here. This is actually the longest I've gone this calender year without having sushi. Clearly this must (and will) be fixed.
Meanwhile, probably due to my reduced level of activity compared to the summer, I've been having problems getting to sleep for the last week. In order to fix this, on Sunday I'm going to go climb a mountain.
The visible high point is 愛宕山 (Atago-yama, or Mount Atago), which is the highest point in this ward and the highest of the mountains immediately surrounding Kyoto. At 924m elevation (3031ft) vs my dorm's 71m (234ft), 7.08km or 4.4 miles away in a straight line, it should make for a decently tiring and scenic but short excursion. Unless I bring along slow people. Which I'll try to do because they'll whine and I'll think it's funny.
After going through the relevant class items, we could talk with them about whatever we wanted, as long as it wasn't in English--this part of it was much more fun, and quite a bit easier. I asked everyone for recommendations on books to read, and one of them is going to let me borrow books. In talking with her, I also found out this student spent a year studying abroad in Boulder, Colorado at the same time that I lived in Castle Rock, Colorado. Interesting.
In a little while tonight, I will be going out with a bunch of the students for sushi. While a couple of the students prepared sashimi for the potluck party a couple of weekends ago, I haven't gone out for sushi since I got here. This is actually the longest I've gone this calender year without having sushi. Clearly this must (and will) be fixed.
Meanwhile, probably due to my reduced level of activity compared to the summer, I've been having problems getting to sleep for the last week. In order to fix this, on Sunday I'm going to go climb a mountain.
The visible high point is 愛宕山 (Atago-yama, or Mount Atago), which is the highest point in this ward and the highest of the mountains immediately surrounding Kyoto. At 924m elevation (3031ft) vs my dorm's 71m (234ft), 7.08km or 4.4 miles away in a straight line, it should make for a decently tiring and scenic but short excursion. Unless I bring along slow people. Which I'll try to do because they'll whine and I'll think it's funny.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Exchange rates and a big breakfast
The exciting news for the day comes from a tip from a Earl. He's in all but one of my class sessions and lives three doors down the hall in my dorm, but was also here last semester. Last night he asked a bunch of us newbies if we wanted to go for breakfast on campus with him today, saying it's pretty cheap. This sounded good because it meant something different to eat. I've still been being pretty uncreative with what ingredients I'm buying.
So this morning we went to cafeteria in the Ikagakukan in the southeast corner of the campus. Every school day, from seven to nine in the morning, it's a buffet-style breakfast, all-you-can-eat style. You get one plate, one bowl of miso soup, one bowl of rice, and as much tea (hot, cold, or both) as you want for 260 yen. You can fit an awful lot of food on one plate if you've had practice.
I should note that the breakfast options are not the typical ones. There is more fresh fruit than there is at lunch, but the rest of the options have more meat in them than the lunch buffet. I've had chicken for breakfast more times than I can count, and I've been a big fan of it, but after having octopus and squid for breakfast I think my preferences may have changed. Octopus feels amazingly substantial in the morning.
Tomorrow I'm going to repeat this, except this time I'm going to bring a container along to stash save half of the monster breakfast for lunch.
Now, the annoying bit for the day: since the US economy is taking a nose-dive due to the panic bill, while this breakfast would have been $2.47 a week ago, it's now at about $2.60. Almost a 5% in change in a week, after the dollar and the yen were pretty much in lockstep for at least a year. That's not a good sign...
So this morning we went to cafeteria in the Ikagakukan in the southeast corner of the campus. Every school day, from seven to nine in the morning, it's a buffet-style breakfast, all-you-can-eat style. You get one plate, one bowl of miso soup, one bowl of rice, and as much tea (hot, cold, or both) as you want for 260 yen. You can fit an awful lot of food on one plate if you've had practice.
I should note that the breakfast options are not the typical ones. There is more fresh fruit than there is at lunch, but the rest of the options have more meat in them than the lunch buffet. I've had chicken for breakfast more times than I can count, and I've been a big fan of it, but after having octopus and squid for breakfast I think my preferences may have changed. Octopus feels amazingly substantial in the morning.
Tomorrow I'm going to repeat this, except this time I'm going to bring a container along to stash save half of the monster breakfast for lunch.
Now, the annoying bit for the day: since the US economy is taking a nose-dive due to the panic bill, while this breakfast would have been $2.47 a week ago, it's now at about $2.60. Almost a 5% in change in a week, after the dollar and the yen were pretty much in lockstep for at least a year. That's not a good sign...
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Getting serious
With my homework load fairly light over the weekend, I finally decided on something that I've been mulling over since I got here. Since I have discovered Anki, it sort of feels like any ridiculous goal for learning vocabulary is possible, so naturally I feel inclined to test this notion and try to learn all of the JLPT1 vocabulary. The Japanese Language Proficiency Test is a standardized test for certifying a foreigner's level of linguistic competence that's given once per year, with four different levels that you can attempt. The beginner's level, 4, tests knowledge of about 100 kanji and 800 words, which is supposed to be equivalent to about 150 hours of study. Level 1 tests about 2000 kanji and 10,000 words, corresponding roughly to a Japanese high school graduate's level of literacy. Somehow this is supposed to be reachable within 900 hours of study, but I have my doubts about that figure.
Anyway, I downloaded a flash card deck for it for Anki, and just had to work out the scheduling. The most obvious goal, and the one that would do me the most good, is to get this done before the placement test at the start of the next semester. This would go a long way into putting me into harder classes where the speaking and listening requirements also increase substantially; otherwise my main improvement will only be with the written language. There are two cards per word or kanji, one for recognizing the word and one for producing it, for a total of 17474 cards. To give myself a proper amount of time to review everything, I've worked this out to 160 new cards per day.
Everybody seems to think I'm insane. I'm ok with this. Now that I've told enough people my absurd plan, and nobody thinks I can do it, I have to prove everyone wrong.
Additionally, the amount of homework from my classes, while it's still light right now, is increasing. It might soon get to a level where I have to take it pretty seriously. So, I'm finally starting to get serious about studying.
Anyway, I downloaded a flash card deck for it for Anki, and just had to work out the scheduling. The most obvious goal, and the one that would do me the most good, is to get this done before the placement test at the start of the next semester. This would go a long way into putting me into harder classes where the speaking and listening requirements also increase substantially; otherwise my main improvement will only be with the written language. There are two cards per word or kanji, one for recognizing the word and one for producing it, for a total of 17474 cards. To give myself a proper amount of time to review everything, I've worked this out to 160 new cards per day.
Everybody seems to think I'm insane. I'm ok with this. Now that I've told enough people my absurd plan, and nobody thinks I can do it, I have to prove everyone wrong.
Additionally, the amount of homework from my classes, while it's still light right now, is increasing. It might soon get to a level where I have to take it pretty seriously. So, I'm finally starting to get serious about studying.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Mostly quiet on the Eastern Front
I've skipped a couple days' worth of posts due to school and other occurences, but this also has the effect of allowing me to make a full post. Hoorah!
Tuesday, I woke up early to go to the bank, withdraw money, and then pay my rent and class fees before the 10:30 am rent deadline. During mild rain I set out on my creaky bike. I got halfway between the first and second lights after Ninna-ji, standing and mashing the pedals as usual since the bike is too small, when suddenly the left pedal (which had more of a grinding feel anyway) starting feeling wobbly. I sat down immediately and looked down at my foot while pedaling. Within one more pedal revolution, the left crankarm of the bike fell off. Great... either the nut that holds the arm on wasn't properly torqued and I pedalled hard enough to loosen it, or it wasn't there in the first place and I finally managed to break the rust. Anyway, I got to do some extra walking, but still wound up getting everything done before the rent deadline. Although it's been established that there's nothing that happens if you don't pay on time, I wanted to get it done on time anyway.
After classes, I got the bike fixed at a nearby shop for a pittance. The bike no longer creaks with every pedal stroke. I got the third and last of my textbooks, the one for my conversation class, which brings my total textbook expense for the semester to 6210円, or about $59.14 at the current rate. After five semesters of buying textbooks for UNM, this is astounding to me.
Wednesday I had only one class session, and the weather was fantastic, so I went to Kinkaku-ji. While I didn't have the mental energy to make a blog post afterwards, I did do a pretty decent job of captioning my gallery of it. Here's a direct link to the gallery.
Anyway, I have now been to every class at least once. Out of ten 90-minute class sessions per week, one is taught in English. My language class teachers have demonstrated that they can speak English just fine, but without actually saying it they've conveyed that we should only bail out and cheat when we absolutely can't think of how to ask something in Japanese. So far the workload is low. I did one assignment during the week, and I did about half of my weekend's homework today in about an hour. This means I should be able to get a good amount of kanji study in over the weekend. For this semester's kanji, I already know 140 out of 252 of them reasonably well; over the weekend I could get to where I know all of them reasonably well, and if I review them enough I could know them all permanently by the end of the month. Because learning this amount of kanji sounds relatively easy to me, I'm going to up the ante and study the B class's kanji as well. I think it's worth the effort for me to try to bump up to A next semester instead of going to B like normal.
In other news, today, I got a friendly simultaneous reminder that it's good to be in Japan, and that it's also still a good idea to pay attention instead of being a retard. After my classes and buying a composition notebook for the weekend's homework, I noticed my keys were not in my pocket. After a moment of panic, I decided the most likely cause of this was that I left my keys sitting in the bike lock. I got to my bike, and sure enough, it was there, locked, with the key sitting in the lock, untouched. I wouldn't ever expect to see my bike again if I did that at UNM, but then, at UNM they don't have multiple bike parking lots like this:
The second floor.
The first floor.
A constant line of people going in to the 2nd floor - the first floor is closed and full. Since my shot of the first floor has an admittedly crappy exposure, to put this into proper perspective, there's parking room for approximately 6000 bikes on the first floor alone. There's another bike lot the same size as this one at the south gate, and a 2nd-floor-only lot that's not quite as big at the north gate. There are lot attendants almost always on duty making sure that the bikes are packed in nice and tight. The traffic, the attendants, and the fact that it's Japan probably all deserve credit for my bike still being there.
Admittedly, if my bike had vanished, I wouldn't have been terribly upset. But, I would have been disgruntled that my room key and helmet were gone. It would cost me at least 50% more to replace the helmet than to buy another bike of that caliber.
Tuesday, I woke up early to go to the bank, withdraw money, and then pay my rent and class fees before the 10:30 am rent deadline. During mild rain I set out on my creaky bike. I got halfway between the first and second lights after Ninna-ji, standing and mashing the pedals as usual since the bike is too small, when suddenly the left pedal (which had more of a grinding feel anyway) starting feeling wobbly. I sat down immediately and looked down at my foot while pedaling. Within one more pedal revolution, the left crankarm of the bike fell off. Great... either the nut that holds the arm on wasn't properly torqued and I pedalled hard enough to loosen it, or it wasn't there in the first place and I finally managed to break the rust. Anyway, I got to do some extra walking, but still wound up getting everything done before the rent deadline. Although it's been established that there's nothing that happens if you don't pay on time, I wanted to get it done on time anyway.
After classes, I got the bike fixed at a nearby shop for a pittance. The bike no longer creaks with every pedal stroke. I got the third and last of my textbooks, the one for my conversation class, which brings my total textbook expense for the semester to 6210円, or about $59.14 at the current rate. After five semesters of buying textbooks for UNM, this is astounding to me.
Wednesday I had only one class session, and the weather was fantastic, so I went to Kinkaku-ji. While I didn't have the mental energy to make a blog post afterwards, I did do a pretty decent job of captioning my gallery of it. Here's a direct link to the gallery.
Anyway, I have now been to every class at least once. Out of ten 90-minute class sessions per week, one is taught in English. My language class teachers have demonstrated that they can speak English just fine, but without actually saying it they've conveyed that we should only bail out and cheat when we absolutely can't think of how to ask something in Japanese. So far the workload is low. I did one assignment during the week, and I did about half of my weekend's homework today in about an hour. This means I should be able to get a good amount of kanji study in over the weekend. For this semester's kanji, I already know 140 out of 252 of them reasonably well; over the weekend I could get to where I know all of them reasonably well, and if I review them enough I could know them all permanently by the end of the month. Because learning this amount of kanji sounds relatively easy to me, I'm going to up the ante and study the B class's kanji as well. I think it's worth the effort for me to try to bump up to A next semester instead of going to B like normal.
In other news, today, I got a friendly simultaneous reminder that it's good to be in Japan, and that it's also still a good idea to pay attention instead of being a retard. After my classes and buying a composition notebook for the weekend's homework, I noticed my keys were not in my pocket. After a moment of panic, I decided the most likely cause of this was that I left my keys sitting in the bike lock. I got to my bike, and sure enough, it was there, locked, with the key sitting in the lock, untouched. I wouldn't ever expect to see my bike again if I did that at UNM, but then, at UNM they don't have multiple bike parking lots like this:
The second floor.
The first floor.
A constant line of people going in to the 2nd floor - the first floor is closed and full. Since my shot of the first floor has an admittedly crappy exposure, to put this into proper perspective, there's parking room for approximately 6000 bikes on the first floor alone. There's another bike lot the same size as this one at the south gate, and a 2nd-floor-only lot that's not quite as big at the north gate. There are lot attendants almost always on duty making sure that the bikes are packed in nice and tight. The traffic, the attendants, and the fact that it's Japan probably all deserve credit for my bike still being there.Admittedly, if my bike had vanished, I wouldn't have been terribly upset. But, I would have been disgruntled that my room key and helmet were gone. It would cost me at least 50% more to replace the helmet than to buy another bike of that caliber.
Monday, September 29, 2008
More new classes and Typhoon Jangmi
Today, I had my first sessions of my Japanese conversation and Japanese calligraphy, along with the second session of my Japanese grammar class with a different teacher (I have four different teachers for the grammar class). Apparently the homework that I was trying to do for so much of yesterday wasn't due today, it was to be started today. The schedule sheet didn't specify whether it was listing due dates or "do" dates, so I assumed the path of more work. I imagine it would have been much easier after today's class, but who knows. It might not be a bad thing to prove myself serious about things; I may wind up needing some slack later on.
Anyway, so far, I'm liking my language classes a lot. I got more speaking practice in my classes today than I usually got in a months' time back home. It actually does seem possible that I could hold a decently fluid-sounding conversation in a month or two. I will have to stop acting so shy about things outside of class though. But, an exciting thing that may help even more, even with that last bit: we can get free Japanese tutors! We just have to sign up for it and say when we're free, and the International Center will try to match us up with a tutor on-campus during class periods we have off. Awesome.
In other news, Jangmi has done its damage to Taiwan. Even now, I can't find any reliable news on the storm's effects. There are such conflicts of information as "Torrential rains and strong winds have detroyed more than 86 thousands households" vs another news source saying 86 thousand homes are without power. I can't find any two English sources that say the same thing as far as what effects there are, except that they all agree there are a lot of mudslides due to the island still being saturated from Sinlaku.
Apparently Jangmi is only the fourth most powerful storm to hit Taiwan this year. I'm starting to realize the extent to which American media sources keep us in the dark at home. If anybody reading this actually heard anything at all about Jangmi besides on my blog, please drop a comment and let me know. I'm curious.
edit: proving the news sources writing Jangmi articles in English are crap, the 4th most powerful storm thing should actually just be 4th storm. July 13th Kalmaegi as a tropical storm, July 23rd Fung-Wong and September 13th Sinlaku as category 2 typhoons, and September 28th Jangmi as a category 4.
By Wikipedia's stats, which sadly enough seem far more consistent and reliable than the general media's, the 2008 Pacific typhoon season has claimed at least 1612 human lives and "1.366 billion USD." The Atlantic season has done in 944 and "~52 billion USD." I guess that's the real reason the US media is ignoring the Pacific; they just don't know how to blow things out of proportion and defraud insurance companies over here yet.
Anyway, so far, I'm liking my language classes a lot. I got more speaking practice in my classes today than I usually got in a months' time back home. It actually does seem possible that I could hold a decently fluid-sounding conversation in a month or two. I will have to stop acting so shy about things outside of class though. But, an exciting thing that may help even more, even with that last bit: we can get free Japanese tutors! We just have to sign up for it and say when we're free, and the International Center will try to match us up with a tutor on-campus during class periods we have off. Awesome.
In other news, Jangmi has done its damage to Taiwan. Even now, I can't find any reliable news on the storm's effects. There are such conflicts of information as "Torrential rains and strong winds have detroyed more than 86 thousands households" vs another news source saying 86 thousand homes are without power. I can't find any two English sources that say the same thing as far as what effects there are, except that they all agree there are a lot of mudslides due to the island still being saturated from Sinlaku.
Apparently Jangmi is only the fourth most powerful storm to hit Taiwan this year. I'm starting to realize the extent to which American media sources keep us in the dark at home. If anybody reading this actually heard anything at all about Jangmi besides on my blog, please drop a comment and let me know. I'm curious.
edit: proving the news sources writing Jangmi articles in English are crap, the 4th most powerful storm thing should actually just be 4th storm. July 13th Kalmaegi as a tropical storm, July 23rd Fung-Wong and September 13th Sinlaku as category 2 typhoons, and September 28th Jangmi as a category 4.
By Wikipedia's stats, which sadly enough seem far more consistent and reliable than the general media's, the 2008 Pacific typhoon season has claimed at least 1612 human lives and "1.366 billion USD." The Atlantic season has done in 944 and "~52 billion USD." I guess that's the real reason the US media is ignoring the Pacific; they just don't know how to blow things out of proportion and defraud insurance companies over here yet.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Lazy Sunday
I woke up this morning and eagerly checked my mailbox for news of my new toy, not really expecting anything since we're not supposed to have a manager in on Sundays. But, the manager was here, as was a note saying that I had a package waiting for me in the office.
My first internet order in Japan! Somehow that makes it seem more exciting.
There it is, the ultimate quick reference for learning a foreign language. A writing pad for characters, variable speed text-to-speech, and tons of other useful things will make it a worthy replacement for the two dictionaries I've been toting around.
The only snag is that the interface is entirely in Japanese. This is Japan, after all; these toys are made for the Japanese to more easily learn and understand English, Chinese, Korean, etc. Still, it contains all the information I need to know, it's just slightly more difficult to learn how to use it.
With that in hand, I finally felt some motivation to do some homework. Even with the help of my new gadget, it's slow-going and difficult. There are a couple of new grammar items in there, and trying to figure them out with the usual English narration I'm used to was difficult. The guided compositions are also significantly harder than what I've been doing in Albuquerque, requiring a lot more creativity to do without sounding completely amateur. I have been surprised and pleased to run into and be able to use a lot of the new kanji I learned last weekend. Being able to remember them was also surprising, since I haven't been reviewing like I should since last Monday. I think that says a lot about the spaced approach Anki uses.
I took a break from my homework due to hunger, and fixed up some curry and rice. As an experiment, I sautéed an onion and added it to the beef curry sauce, then decided to throw in a healthy portion of crushed red pepper to give it some kick. The idea was sound, but the execution was flawed... I cooked way too much rice, and added way too much pepper. I really need to get these basic cooking things down so I can move on to learning how to make awesome Japanese things.
In other news, Typhoon Jangmi's position as of about 2 hours and 20 minutes before this post was about 100 miles southeast of Taipei, moving NNW at just shy of 14 mph--the eye is going to hit within a few hours of now, and the storm is already over the island. It's been 17 days since Typhoon Sinlaku hit Taiwan as a much weaker category 2, and caused massive flooding, moodslides, and agricultural damage from over 5 feet of rain. I doubt they've recovered from that one yet. This one is expected to hit as a category 4 and currently has waves around 30 feet. This is not going to be good.
The only snag is that the interface is entirely in Japanese. This is Japan, after all; these toys are made for the Japanese to more easily learn and understand English, Chinese, Korean, etc. Still, it contains all the information I need to know, it's just slightly more difficult to learn how to use it.
With that in hand, I finally felt some motivation to do some homework. Even with the help of my new gadget, it's slow-going and difficult. There are a couple of new grammar items in there, and trying to figure them out with the usual English narration I'm used to was difficult. The guided compositions are also significantly harder than what I've been doing in Albuquerque, requiring a lot more creativity to do without sounding completely amateur. I have been surprised and pleased to run into and be able to use a lot of the new kanji I learned last weekend. Being able to remember them was also surprising, since I haven't been reviewing like I should since last Monday. I think that says a lot about the spaced approach Anki uses.
I took a break from my homework due to hunger, and fixed up some curry and rice. As an experiment, I sautéed an onion and added it to the beef curry sauce, then decided to throw in a healthy portion of crushed red pepper to give it some kick. The idea was sound, but the execution was flawed... I cooked way too much rice, and added way too much pepper. I really need to get these basic cooking things down so I can move on to learning how to make awesome Japanese things.
In other news, Typhoon Jangmi's position as of about 2 hours and 20 minutes before this post was about 100 miles southeast of Taipei, moving NNW at just shy of 14 mph--the eye is going to hit within a few hours of now, and the storm is already over the island. It's been 17 days since Typhoon Sinlaku hit Taiwan as a much weaker category 2, and caused massive flooding, moodslides, and agricultural damage from over 5 feet of rain. I doubt they've recovered from that one yet. This one is expected to hit as a category 4 and currently has waves around 30 feet. This is not going to be good.
Typhoon Jangmi
Typhoon Jangmi is about to nail Taiwan. I know Pacific Storms get no coverage whatsoever in the US, so I thought I'd call attention to it. Currently it's on the border of a category 4 or 5 storm; winds at 155 with gusts to 190. Its appearance on satellite is as flawless as Hurricane Andrew was. The current computer model shows that the storm might do a funny U-turn and hit Japan, but that it would be a tropical depression by that point. Meanwhile, Taiwan is about to get smashed, and I doubt too many people in the US will hear a single thing about it.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Bike hunting
Today I went out for a bit to see if I could find a bike that's the right size for me. While I appreciate my freebie bike, it is about six sizes too small for me. As comical as it looks, it's not too much fun to use, and it's unbalanced enough that quick manoeuvres are pretty difficult to pull off. Plus it's got some mechanical issues. I didn't have any intention of buying today. I just wanted to see what my options are.
So far, I have yet to find any options. I asked to see the biggest bikes in two stores, and while they were better than the one I've got, they were still very small for me. After paying attention to what brands the stores had, I came home and checked on their websites to see what the biggest sizes I can order are. The longest top tube I could find on a bike is between the lengths of an XS and a Small of the mountain bike I've got; I ride a large.
The bikes I've found that I can get in the right size are all being imported from the US (despite being made in Taiwan for the most part), and are priced around $200 higher than what they're worth. Generally speaking, they're at minimum almost the same cost as it would be to ship my bike over and mostly a lot higher, and I already know that one fits me.
It might take a while to figure this one out.
So far, I have yet to find any options. I asked to see the biggest bikes in two stores, and while they were better than the one I've got, they were still very small for me. After paying attention to what brands the stores had, I came home and checked on their websites to see what the biggest sizes I can order are. The longest top tube I could find on a bike is between the lengths of an XS and a Small of the mountain bike I've got; I ride a large.
The bikes I've found that I can get in the right size are all being imported from the US (despite being made in Taiwan for the most part), and are priced around $200 higher than what they're worth. Generally speaking, they're at minimum almost the same cost as it would be to ship my bike over and mostly a lot higher, and I already know that one fits me.
It might take a while to figure this one out.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Potluck party and first day of class
Last night after the whole orientation and registration stuff, we residents of the I-House II had a potluck dinner party. I was looking forward to it as soon as I heard about it; we have students from something like 14 different countries here, and it seems like all but a few of us US students know how to cook pretty well. It took quite a while for everyone to get ready, as there are quite a few more of us than there are stove surfaces, and some people's dishes needed two or more burners at a time. We wound up started an hour and a half later than the proposed time, so by the time we could start digging in, I was starving. Generally speaking the food was amazing. I didn't get seconds on anything or even try everything... there were just too many choices, and I got full before I could try it all. The green chile stew I made turned out to be quite a hit.
A lot of us wound up staying up pretty late playing cards and chatting, which of course was completely stupid since today was the first day of class. I managed to drag myself out of bed in time, but not in time for such niceties as breakfast. Opening my curtains revealed it was pooring rain. I grabbed my rain jacket and headed off for class in style. I wasn't the only one to ride in the rain, but I was the only one (that I saw) doing it at normal speed instead of slowly with an umbrella. I got to the right building, changed, and then made it into class about one minute late because I was looking for the classroom on the wrong floor. Room 730 is on the 3rd floor, apparently indicated by the three. I have no idea what the seven signifies.
I attended the Japanese Economy and North-South relations classes. I'll keep the Japanese Economy class, but the other didn't spark my interest. After North-South relations, it was lunch time. I had already eaten, but Ritsumeikan uses a block schedule, and there simply are no classes from 12:10 to 13:00. After so many times running through UNM's student union trying to grab a meal in the 15 minutes I had between classes, or having to change what classes I was going to take for a semester because their times overlapped by 15 minutes, I have to say that this school got it right. Also during this time, the campus PA system got switched over to the college radio station. Relaxation time with music provided is cool.
After that, it was the class I came here for: Japanese language. As I entered the room I thought I was in the wrong place. The classroom was three rows of chairs deep and about 20 or so chairs wide, but at first I saw only empty desks, as my five classmates were sitting in the center of the room. A class of six! That's wonderful for a language class.
During class, not a single word of English was spoken. The only English words in or on our textbook are part of the publisher's mark.
We had to take another placement test just to make sure they got the first placement right. Between the test and the entirely Japanese dialog, I walked out feeling wiped out and pretty intimidated. I had been wondering before whether or not this program would be intensive enough for my liking. With a name like "Intensive Language Track" it seemed like it should be, but the general description of Japanese college difficulty tends toward "really easy," so I wasn't sure. Based on the program information during the application process, I certainly wasn't expecting that the classes would have a non-English basis, so I wondered how intensive it could actually be. Now I can worry about keeping my head above the water instead.
One thing our teacher said (and put on the syllabus) was that since there are no definitions in the book, just vocab lists, we should always have a dictionary with us. I was the only one in there who did not have an electronic dictionary. After seeing enough models of them, particularly the new ones the other I-House students have been getting, I decided I needed to get one. The feature that sold me, which I hadn't seen previously, is a writing pad and stylus so you can just write a kanji or word and get the meaning and pronunciation. If I'm going to have to look things up even to understand the class itself, I certainly need something faster than a standard paper kanji dictionary.
So tonight I went onto Amazon and started shopping for one. I had a baseline: most of the students were paying between $300 and $400. I ordered a Sharp Papyrus PW-AT770, which has all the features that I wanted or even thought were minorly nifty, with expedited shipping so it'll get here Sunday, for $167.43. The shipping was $3.23. The best part is that I was able to just use my Visa, which I can pay off directly from my bank account online, instead of dealing with cash or any complicated stuff. I'm excited... it should help with my homework that's due Monday. :)
A lot of us wound up staying up pretty late playing cards and chatting, which of course was completely stupid since today was the first day of class. I managed to drag myself out of bed in time, but not in time for such niceties as breakfast. Opening my curtains revealed it was pooring rain. I grabbed my rain jacket and headed off for class in style. I wasn't the only one to ride in the rain, but I was the only one (that I saw) doing it at normal speed instead of slowly with an umbrella. I got to the right building, changed, and then made it into class about one minute late because I was looking for the classroom on the wrong floor. Room 730 is on the 3rd floor, apparently indicated by the three. I have no idea what the seven signifies.
I attended the Japanese Economy and North-South relations classes. I'll keep the Japanese Economy class, but the other didn't spark my interest. After North-South relations, it was lunch time. I had already eaten, but Ritsumeikan uses a block schedule, and there simply are no classes from 12:10 to 13:00. After so many times running through UNM's student union trying to grab a meal in the 15 minutes I had between classes, or having to change what classes I was going to take for a semester because their times overlapped by 15 minutes, I have to say that this school got it right. Also during this time, the campus PA system got switched over to the college radio station. Relaxation time with music provided is cool.
After that, it was the class I came here for: Japanese language. As I entered the room I thought I was in the wrong place. The classroom was three rows of chairs deep and about 20 or so chairs wide, but at first I saw only empty desks, as my five classmates were sitting in the center of the room. A class of six! That's wonderful for a language class.
During class, not a single word of English was spoken. The only English words in or on our textbook are part of the publisher's mark.
One thing our teacher said (and put on the syllabus) was that since there are no definitions in the book, just vocab lists, we should always have a dictionary with us. I was the only one in there who did not have an electronic dictionary. After seeing enough models of them, particularly the new ones the other I-House students have been getting, I decided I needed to get one. The feature that sold me, which I hadn't seen previously, is a writing pad and stylus so you can just write a kanji or word and get the meaning and pronunciation. If I'm going to have to look things up even to understand the class itself, I certainly need something faster than a standard paper kanji dictionary.
So tonight I went onto Amazon and started shopping for one. I had a baseline: most of the students were paying between $300 and $400. I ordered a Sharp Papyrus PW-AT770, which has all the features that I wanted or even thought were minorly nifty, with expedited shipping so it'll get here Sunday, for $167.43. The shipping was $3.23. The best part is that I was able to just use my Visa, which I can pay off directly from my bank account online, instead of dealing with cash or any complicated stuff. I'm excited... it should help with my homework that's due Monday. :)
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Placement results
Today started with a big group of us new students going to the recommended bank, 中央信用金庫 (Chuu-ou shinyou kinko) to open up accounts. This particular bank is recommended because it qualifies us for a monthly rebate on the national health insurance. We started filing in, and I got to see something I rarely see, but find amusing every time: some of the poker-faced bank employees slipped and showed emotion. I can't say I blame them, as the customer count went from 2 to 50-something within a minute. They all quickly regained their composure, and then it was the waiting and paperwork game. I had prepared my paperwork ahead of time, but had to redo all of it, as I goofed up and wrote my name in the standard western order, instead of last name first as my alien registration and school id showed. But, mostly it was just waiting, and after two hours I finally got everything. Now I just need to figure out how to transfer money from my account at home, and quickly, because rent is due on Wednesday.
After eating lunch it was time for class registration and placement test results... meaning more paperwork. There was a lottery for the Shamisen class, and I didn't make the cut, so my only traditional arts course will be calligraphy. As far as placement goes, there are six different levels of classes, Seiki and from A to E. Seiki students get to choose classes from the general catalog, alongside the normal Ritsumeikan students. I was expecting, based on my impression of the test, that I would be placed in C for the general class, and D or maybe even E for the speaking and listening class. I got placed into C for both, which is really surprising. After I asked around and found out who some of my classmates for the conversation portion will be--especially after having heard them speaking, and knowing how I sound--I was even more surprised.
I should probably be happy about my placement, since I actually did better than I thought, but I can't help feeling a bit disappointed. Perhaps it's just because I'm tired from repeatedly staying awake far too late, or perhaps it's because the letters feel like a grade and I hate C's. The program's expectation is that students move up one level after one semester, so I can expect to get to B for the spring, but depending on the workload and pace of the classes, I might try to learn enough to get to A.
After eating lunch it was time for class registration and placement test results... meaning more paperwork. There was a lottery for the Shamisen class, and I didn't make the cut, so my only traditional arts course will be calligraphy. As far as placement goes, there are six different levels of classes, Seiki and from A to E. Seiki students get to choose classes from the general catalog, alongside the normal Ritsumeikan students. I was expecting, based on my impression of the test, that I would be placed in C for the general class, and D or maybe even E for the speaking and listening class. I got placed into C for both, which is really surprising. After I asked around and found out who some of my classmates for the conversation portion will be--especially after having heard them speaking, and knowing how I sound--I was even more surprised.
I should probably be happy about my placement, since I actually did better than I thought, but I can't help feeling a bit disappointed. Perhaps it's just because I'm tired from repeatedly staying awake far too late, or perhaps it's because the letters feel like a grade and I hate C's. The program's expectation is that students move up one level after one semester, so I can expect to get to B for the spring, but depending on the workload and pace of the classes, I might try to learn enough to get to A.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Today: More orientation
Today was the welcome ceremony for the Study in Kyoto program, which we were all dreading as it sounded like it would be painfully boring. We were pleasantly surprised when the day's schedule was passed out, and the ceremony itself only took up half an hour of it. It was survivable.
Directly after the ceremony was a crime and safety presentation, which was an hour. Again, we were all instantly dreading it, because it sounded like it would be an utterly boring bit about how to avoid getting your stuff snatched and getting told the laws for biking around and whatnot. That's actually exactly what it was, but some women from a volunteer group took the majority of the time up on the first part, modelling different ways of being dumb and smart for us. It was a presentation fit for a kindergarten class, except it was presented very enthusiastically, and I think seriously. I was having a very hard time keeping a straight face through it, but I was doing ok. Then I realized that sitting between two Irish people is a bad thing when you need to keep a straight face; John on my right lost it and keeled over laughing, hiding his face and shaking with laughter. That was all it took to push me over, and I wound up laughing enough to cry. Even through the police address on bike theft and safety I was still trying to stifle my laughter. We all agreed afterwards that it was an hour well-spent, generally described by the UK students as "brilliant."
Next on the agenda was lunch. The cafeteria once again exceeded all expectations I could possibly have for a cafeteria, let alone at a school. I had two types of fish, some potato-cake-like thing, soup, and a bowl of rice with a little bit of flavoring ingredients thrown in. It was all superb, with one of the fish items standing out as spectacularly good. I really need to learn the names of all the dishes.
After lunch, we met back up for the earthquake simulator. This is a truck belonging to the Kyoto fire department, which opens up and has a little kitchen setup and seating for four. After a bit of talk, they had us go in in groups and get a simulation of an earthquake of the same magnitude as the one that hit Kobe in the 90s and killed over six thousand people. All I can say is holy crap. The simulator itself was incredibly cool and impressive, but thinking about that kind of movement from the earth itself is mind-boggling and frightening.
Then, the orientation stuff was over, and for me and a lot of other students, it was off to the ward office to pick up the certificate proven we started the alien registration process, which we need to open bank accounts and register with the immigration bureau to work part-time. From there, I went on about a six-mile detour with Pernilla to a kendo store. She's a self-proclaimed kendo nerd, and had ordered some stuff which was ready to pick up. She's in the Japan World Perspectives course and can only speak and understand a small sliver of Japanese, so she wanted me to come along in case she needed language assistance. One of the staff members there was much better at English than I am with Japanese, so thankfully I didn't have to do too much--past saying she was there to pick up her stuff, all the dialog would have been way beyond my vocabulary level. I looked around and got an idea of how much material cost would be involved in starting with kendo; expensive, but not horrific.
Then it was homeward bound once more, and the end of the day. I've spent my time since playing with pictures. Unfortunately, Windows Vista has sinned once more, and this time instead of just annoying me with crappy performance or crippled and bloated interfaces it has made me furious. It decided to go screwball on my SD card when I deleted some of yesterday's pictures off of it, before I had pulled today's off. The files that I told it to delete remained with a file size of zero, so I pulled and reseated the card and ran scandisk on it to repair the file system. This had the effect of deleting everything on the card. I had pictures of the ceremony, the presentations, the cafeteria and its food, pictures and video of the earthquake simulator, and pictures of stuff in the Kendo store. All gone. I'm changing operating systems as soon as I can get some external storage to back up my stuff.
Directly after the ceremony was a crime and safety presentation, which was an hour. Again, we were all instantly dreading it, because it sounded like it would be an utterly boring bit about how to avoid getting your stuff snatched and getting told the laws for biking around and whatnot. That's actually exactly what it was, but some women from a volunteer group took the majority of the time up on the first part, modelling different ways of being dumb and smart for us. It was a presentation fit for a kindergarten class, except it was presented very enthusiastically, and I think seriously. I was having a very hard time keeping a straight face through it, but I was doing ok. Then I realized that sitting between two Irish people is a bad thing when you need to keep a straight face; John on my right lost it and keeled over laughing, hiding his face and shaking with laughter. That was all it took to push me over, and I wound up laughing enough to cry. Even through the police address on bike theft and safety I was still trying to stifle my laughter. We all agreed afterwards that it was an hour well-spent, generally described by the UK students as "brilliant."
Next on the agenda was lunch. The cafeteria once again exceeded all expectations I could possibly have for a cafeteria, let alone at a school. I had two types of fish, some potato-cake-like thing, soup, and a bowl of rice with a little bit of flavoring ingredients thrown in. It was all superb, with one of the fish items standing out as spectacularly good. I really need to learn the names of all the dishes.
After lunch, we met back up for the earthquake simulator. This is a truck belonging to the Kyoto fire department, which opens up and has a little kitchen setup and seating for four. After a bit of talk, they had us go in in groups and get a simulation of an earthquake of the same magnitude as the one that hit Kobe in the 90s and killed over six thousand people. All I can say is holy crap. The simulator itself was incredibly cool and impressive, but thinking about that kind of movement from the earth itself is mind-boggling and frightening.
Then, the orientation stuff was over, and for me and a lot of other students, it was off to the ward office to pick up the certificate proven we started the alien registration process, which we need to open bank accounts and register with the immigration bureau to work part-time. From there, I went on about a six-mile detour with Pernilla to a kendo store. She's a self-proclaimed kendo nerd, and had ordered some stuff which was ready to pick up. She's in the Japan World Perspectives course and can only speak and understand a small sliver of Japanese, so she wanted me to come along in case she needed language assistance. One of the staff members there was much better at English than I am with Japanese, so thankfully I didn't have to do too much--past saying she was there to pick up her stuff, all the dialog would have been way beyond my vocabulary level. I looked around and got an idea of how much material cost would be involved in starting with kendo; expensive, but not horrific.
Then it was homeward bound once more, and the end of the day. I've spent my time since playing with pictures. Unfortunately, Windows Vista has sinned once more, and this time instead of just annoying me with crappy performance or crippled and bloated interfaces it has made me furious. It decided to go screwball on my SD card when I deleted some of yesterday's pictures off of it, before I had pulled today's off. The files that I told it to delete remained with a file size of zero, so I pulled and reseated the card and ran scandisk on it to repair the file system. This had the effect of deleting everything on the card. I had pictures of the ceremony, the presentations, the cafeteria and its food, pictures and video of the earthquake simulator, and pictures of stuff in the Kendo store. All gone. I'm changing operating systems as soon as I can get some external storage to back up my stuff.
Yesterday: 東本願寺 and 京都駅
Yesterday was a national holiday (Fall Equinox), so there were no school-related activities to be done, and everybody made plans to go out and about. I was initially going to go to the Kyoto National Museum, but after talking with a bunch of people decided to go along with Aoife, Alysson, Bob, and Pernilla on a bike trip to Fushimi-inari-taisha, a shrine in the southern part of Kyoto photographically famous for its hall of gates.
The original plan got changed when Alysson's rear tire decided that holding on to air was too high of a demand. We started asking people if they knew where any bike shops are, but had no luck. Since it was a national holiday, all the bike shops, as far as everyone knew, were closed. So eventually we got to a service station (with Alysson pushing her bike almost the entire time), and got some air shot into the thing... which did no good at all.
So, we modified the plans to fit the situation, and went to nearby Higashi Honganji, another of the big, famous temples. This one is specifically famous for being big: the Founder's Hall is one of many buildings that is claimed to be the biggest wooden structure in the world (there are other temples in Japan even that claim the same thing). But my typical luck seems to have followed me across the Pacific; we managed to pick the one temple in Kyoto that's under restoration construction work. The Founder's Hall was wrapped in a gargantuan temporary metal building to protect it during the restoration effort, and will remain as such until some time in 2011. Because of this, the Founder's Hall was closed, although we could still go on the rest of the normal tour. It was still interesting and impressive, but of course I felt that it would be quite a lot nicer without scaffolding and orange cones.
After the temple, we started going to Kyoto Station, but got distracted by a restaurant and stopped for lunch. It looked like a perfectly average noodle shop, and had a food bar on the ground floor, but since there were five of us we got seated upstairs at a traditional table. I decided I would order something I've never had, and went with ジンギスカン (jingisukan) - mutton, or, as the menu put it, barbequed ram. It was amazingly good. I neglected to take any pictures of the food, but some of the others thought of it, and I may append the day's album later.
Stomachs full, we started once again toward Kyoto Station, which is the biggest building in Kyoto and the second biggest train station in Japan. It has things like department stores, a movie theater, an amphitheatre, a bunch of restaurants, and who knows what else, in addition to being the city's central bus and train hub. I didn't know about the size of the place ahead of time, and it took me a while to figure out that the train station wasn't near what looked like a row of really big buildings, it was what looked like a row of really big buildings. It has about the same volume as Ritsumeikan's Kinugasa campus. We made the long ascent to the roof, passing alongside an amphitheatre with about 11 floors of seating, which was mostly full of people watching a high school band exhibition or competition of some sort. The roof offered pretty good views of Kyoto in most directions; after a bit of orientation I was able to pick out the school campus in the distance. The bulk of the building was also open-air. I'd like to see it in rain or snow.
After that, it was homeward bound. Alysson left her bike at the station unlocked, hoping someone will steal it before she goes back to retrieve it so that she has an excuse to buy a nicer bike, so she took the buses home. The rest of us rode. Between riding through the city and the view from the station, I have a much better sense of the size of the city and the overall character of it. Just seeing the city and riding around in the cooler weather would have been a good day; the tourist bits and the company made it even better.
Direct link to the photo album of the day
The original plan got changed when Alysson's rear tire decided that holding on to air was too high of a demand. We started asking people if they knew where any bike shops are, but had no luck. Since it was a national holiday, all the bike shops, as far as everyone knew, were closed. So eventually we got to a service station (with Alysson pushing her bike almost the entire time), and got some air shot into the thing... which did no good at all.
So, we modified the plans to fit the situation, and went to nearby Higashi Honganji, another of the big, famous temples. This one is specifically famous for being big: the Founder's Hall is one of many buildings that is claimed to be the biggest wooden structure in the world (there are other temples in Japan even that claim the same thing). But my typical luck seems to have followed me across the Pacific; we managed to pick the one temple in Kyoto that's under restoration construction work. The Founder's Hall was wrapped in a gargantuan temporary metal building to protect it during the restoration effort, and will remain as such until some time in 2011. Because of this, the Founder's Hall was closed, although we could still go on the rest of the normal tour. It was still interesting and impressive, but of course I felt that it would be quite a lot nicer without scaffolding and orange cones.
After the temple, we started going to Kyoto Station, but got distracted by a restaurant and stopped for lunch. It looked like a perfectly average noodle shop, and had a food bar on the ground floor, but since there were five of us we got seated upstairs at a traditional table. I decided I would order something I've never had, and went with ジンギスカン (jingisukan) - mutton, or, as the menu put it, barbequed ram. It was amazingly good. I neglected to take any pictures of the food, but some of the others thought of it, and I may append the day's album later.
Stomachs full, we started once again toward Kyoto Station, which is the biggest building in Kyoto and the second biggest train station in Japan. It has things like department stores, a movie theater, an amphitheatre, a bunch of restaurants, and who knows what else, in addition to being the city's central bus and train hub. I didn't know about the size of the place ahead of time, and it took me a while to figure out that the train station wasn't near what looked like a row of really big buildings, it was what looked like a row of really big buildings. It has about the same volume as Ritsumeikan's Kinugasa campus. We made the long ascent to the roof, passing alongside an amphitheatre with about 11 floors of seating, which was mostly full of people watching a high school band exhibition or competition of some sort. The roof offered pretty good views of Kyoto in most directions; after a bit of orientation I was able to pick out the school campus in the distance. The bulk of the building was also open-air. I'd like to see it in rain or snow.
After that, it was homeward bound. Alysson left her bike at the station unlocked, hoping someone will steal it before she goes back to retrieve it so that she has an excuse to buy a nicer bike, so she took the buses home. The rest of us rode. Between riding through the city and the view from the station, I have a much better sense of the size of the city and the overall character of it. Just seeing the city and riding around in the cooler weather would have been a good day; the tourist bits and the company made it even better.
Direct link to the photo album of the day
Monday, September 22, 2008
Interview, Food, Boredom, and Bikes
So this morning kicked off with the placement interviews to determine what level of conversation classes we'd be going into. Apparently, when my name was up and I was walking from the waiting room to the classroom where mine would be held, I looked terrified. To say that I am currently shy about speaking in Japanese is an understatement, and I expected the worst. My fears were by no means assuaged when I saw that I had two interviewers instead of the one that everyone else reported, nor by the fact that they were reading my (Japanese) essay from the application to the program. Being generous to my speaking skills and humble about my reading and writing skill, I'm about 10 times better at the written aspect, and I spent quite a lot of time working on that essay, with a lot of dictionary use. So my immediate thought was that they were going to hold me to that level, and that I was completely doomed.
But, the interview was surprisingly gentle. They asked me to introduce myself. When I ran out of ideas for what to say, they prompted me with questions--why I wanted to come to Japan, whether I like Japanese food, how Kyoto and Albuquerque compare, what my hobbies are, etc. They asked follow-up questions that flowed directly from my responses, which usually lead me into language dead-ends where I didn't have any idea how to answer. But they were always very friendly about it. In the end, it wound up being not nearly as bad as I had expected, despite the fact that I did just as poorly as I had expected. I once again feel like they got enough information in the right way that I'll be placed exactly where I need to be.
After that, I decided that my 3-egg breakfast had been entirely insufficient, and went to the cafeteria to obtain some much-needed protein. A quick tour of the options, as with so many other things at this school, put UNM to shame. The cafeterias are all run by the Rits Coop, which is a coop in the truest sense of the word. Members' desires run the show here, and profit doesn't seem to be a factor. I decided on the buffet after noticing the sign that said "1 gram = 1.05¥" and heaped a plate high. That price works out to $4.53 per pound, and it included plenty of meat, with everything cooked and absolutely delicious, in a country where meat is usually several dollars more per pound.
This leads to an interesting side note about how good Google's calculator has gotten. A search string of "1.05 yen per gram in dollars per pound" gives you the answer directly. I'm impressed.
Anyway, there was also free tea, both hot and cold. On first impression, the Rits cafeteria gets an unreserved two thumbs up.
After food, it was paperwork and info sessions, both of which were mind-meltingly dull and stretched for five and a half hours. After that, some of the other students at the I-House asked me to show them a couple of biking shortcuts I found while getting lost, and I got to play guide. I got to enjoy the perverse pleasure of a guide enjoying people complaining about a little bit of a hill (heh), and the less-perverse joy of being told someone else thought it was fun and amusing too.
The last note for the day is that I upgraded my Skype subscription, and now have a US phone number that people can call to reach me. If and when I get a cell phone, I can also forward calls straight to it. So my connection to home just got much stronger. My girlfriend called tonight, and while we've been talking almost every day, her being able to call me again is making me all warm and fuzzy. If anyone reading this wants my phone number, leave a comment and I'll get it to you (providing I know you and whatnot).
But, the interview was surprisingly gentle. They asked me to introduce myself. When I ran out of ideas for what to say, they prompted me with questions--why I wanted to come to Japan, whether I like Japanese food, how Kyoto and Albuquerque compare, what my hobbies are, etc. They asked follow-up questions that flowed directly from my responses, which usually lead me into language dead-ends where I didn't have any idea how to answer. But they were always very friendly about it. In the end, it wound up being not nearly as bad as I had expected, despite the fact that I did just as poorly as I had expected. I once again feel like they got enough information in the right way that I'll be placed exactly where I need to be.
After that, I decided that my 3-egg breakfast had been entirely insufficient, and went to the cafeteria to obtain some much-needed protein. A quick tour of the options, as with so many other things at this school, put UNM to shame. The cafeterias are all run by the Rits Coop, which is a coop in the truest sense of the word. Members' desires run the show here, and profit doesn't seem to be a factor. I decided on the buffet after noticing the sign that said "1 gram = 1.05¥" and heaped a plate high. That price works out to $4.53 per pound, and it included plenty of meat, with everything cooked and absolutely delicious, in a country where meat is usually several dollars more per pound.
This leads to an interesting side note about how good Google's calculator has gotten. A search string of "1.05 yen per gram in dollars per pound" gives you the answer directly. I'm impressed.
Anyway, there was also free tea, both hot and cold. On first impression, the Rits cafeteria gets an unreserved two thumbs up.
After food, it was paperwork and info sessions, both of which were mind-meltingly dull and stretched for five and a half hours. After that, some of the other students at the I-House asked me to show them a couple of biking shortcuts I found while getting lost, and I got to play guide. I got to enjoy the perverse pleasure of a guide enjoying people complaining about a little bit of a hill (heh), and the less-perverse joy of being told someone else thought it was fun and amusing too.
The last note for the day is that I upgraded my Skype subscription, and now have a US phone number that people can call to reach me. If and when I get a cell phone, I can also forward calls straight to it. So my connection to home just got much stronger. My girlfriend called tonight, and while we've been talking almost every day, her being able to call me again is making me all warm and fuzzy. If anyone reading this wants my phone number, leave a comment and I'll get it to you (providing I know you and whatnot).
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Rainy weekend
So yesterday I mainly behaved myself and studied. However, I decided to take a break from it at one point in order to go buy a headset for use with Skype, since everyone I talked to using my laptop's built-in microphone accused me of generally sounding like had had a sock stuffed in my mouth. So, I looked up where an electronics store is. That alone took some effort: I kept finding distribution companies, or design offices, or service stores, but finally I did find one that had a web site that clearly displayed that they are a store.
So I hopped on my bike and scooted down there, not bothering to bring a map since I now know the area well enough to do such nonsensical things safely (yay!). The building was exactly the kind of thing the ADA eradicated from the US: the bottom floor was a small cyber cafe, and the store was upstairs, with no elevator of any sort. It was filled with a cornucopia of electrically powered gizmos, including personal computers, external hard drives, Skype-certified headsets (oh, good), light fixtures, refrigerators, rice cookers, air conditioners, TV's, mp3 players, and digital cameras. They even had my exact camera there:
That actually works out to being about the same price as I paid for it, surprisingly enough. Anyway, I got the headset and a game pad so I can twiddle away at some non-soul-sucking games that still manage to be more engaging than solitaire and minesweeper. Need some entertainment here and there.
On the way home, I stopped by a grocery store and got some more food items. Shopping by bike seems to necessitate pretty frequent store visits, since I can't carry much home at a time. I continued home in a light rain and passed by a bike shop... hey, they have US brands! Maybe they have helmets! Most Japanese, you see, do not wear helmets, so most Japanese bike shops don't even carry adult helmets. I've seen five bike helmets being worn since I got here: two on Japanese guys decked out on European-branded, very-high end road bikes and all the matching attire, and three on infants being carried around by a biking parent. So helmets for adults seem to be considered attire. Anyway, this shop did have two types of helmets, both the same brand, and the first one I tried was quite comfortable, very ventilated, and weighs approximately nothing, so I dropped the approximately US $72 on it and rode home feeling much less nervous.
Since I wound up spending way more than I had planned, I was feeling somewhat broke and skipped on the karaoke outing that a big group of students here were going on. Yup, only because I was feeling broke, definitely not due to any other factor.
The rest of the night and pretty much all of today, I continued studying kanji. It rained pretty steadily for quite a while today, so I didn't have much incentive to go out and about.
My brain is pretty much toasted now. I did relocate to the downstairs lounge for a while, and half-studied while chatting with other people, showing off pictures of Colorado and the Boundary Waters, and watching Japanese insanity on the TV. We were all trying to figure out the rules for the bizarre game shows, and not having much luck. I'm closing out my day after having learned 86 new kanji today. In the morning I'll probably have forgotten half of them, but that's okay, because I'll get to be distracted by the placement interviews first thing. Those should be terrible. :)
So I hopped on my bike and scooted down there, not bothering to bring a map since I now know the area well enough to do such nonsensical things safely (yay!). The building was exactly the kind of thing the ADA eradicated from the US: the bottom floor was a small cyber cafe, and the store was upstairs, with no elevator of any sort. It was filled with a cornucopia of electrically powered gizmos, including personal computers, external hard drives, Skype-certified headsets (oh, good), light fixtures, refrigerators, rice cookers, air conditioners, TV's, mp3 players, and digital cameras. They even had my exact camera there:
On the way home, I stopped by a grocery store and got some more food items. Shopping by bike seems to necessitate pretty frequent store visits, since I can't carry much home at a time. I continued home in a light rain and passed by a bike shop... hey, they have US brands! Maybe they have helmets! Most Japanese, you see, do not wear helmets, so most Japanese bike shops don't even carry adult helmets. I've seen five bike helmets being worn since I got here: two on Japanese guys decked out on European-branded, very-high end road bikes and all the matching attire, and three on infants being carried around by a biking parent. So helmets for adults seem to be considered attire. Anyway, this shop did have two types of helmets, both the same brand, and the first one I tried was quite comfortable, very ventilated, and weighs approximately nothing, so I dropped the approximately US $72 on it and rode home feeling much less nervous.
Since I wound up spending way more than I had planned, I was feeling somewhat broke and skipped on the karaoke outing that a big group of students here were going on. Yup, only because I was feeling broke, definitely not due to any other factor.
The rest of the night and pretty much all of today, I continued studying kanji. It rained pretty steadily for quite a while today, so I didn't have much incentive to go out and about.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Orientation begins
The first thing that I feel like I should mention is that Sinlaku did pretty much nothing here. The tracking maps show that it passed as close as the forecast had said it would, and it actually strengthened back to a category 1 typhoon from a tropical storm while it was about even with the Kansai area. We got a negligible amount of rain, cloud cover that wasn't thick enough to make it look gloomy, and a breeze that was just strong enough to feel good. I was kind of looking forward to things getting hectic, but it just didn't happen.
Anyway, yesterday's activities kicked off with the placement tests, listening first and written second. I have no idea how I did on the listening portion; for a good deal of that, I felt I was on the edge of understanding, and I think I got the meaning right, but there was a good chance I misunderstood a lot. The written section was much more clear-cut and less stressful. It was in several successive sections that got harder and harder, presumably each one representative of what you should know at the end of a semester of language study here. So, the test was easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, and then suddenly I didn't know a single thing. Past the first question that I had to guess on, I think I knew one question without guessing. So, as far as placement tests go, I think it was quite well-designed.
While we won't know our placement until Thursday, I'm happy with how I did. There wasn't anything on the test that I felt I should know but forgot--after generally neglecting to study or review over the summer, I was worried about that. Ironically, if I hadn't done my massive study session Thursday, I would have done exactly the same on those tests. Oh well though. I should get placed right where I need to be.
After the test we got a free lunch at the cafeteria. The food was spectacular. I had pork, fried rice, a bunch of things I don't know names for or what they were made of, and some orange slices and pineapple. I met a lot of people and promptly forgot most of their names. There are somewhere around 80 or 100 students in this program, so it'll take me a while.
After food, we went back to boring things--handing out information and whatnot. I've got a bunch of paperwork that I need to do, and right now I don't even remember what most of it is for. Following that and a campus tour, we all headed back to our dorms, and then post-test festivities kicked in. The people here are really fun. There was lots of laughter, and everyone is getting along quite well. This should be a good year.
I put up a few pictures from yesterday in my Picasa gallery, in the Orientation album. I'll continue adding photos to that one as the orientations continue. I've now got a permanent link to the gallery up, just below my profile on this page.
Anyway, yesterday's activities kicked off with the placement tests, listening first and written second. I have no idea how I did on the listening portion; for a good deal of that, I felt I was on the edge of understanding, and I think I got the meaning right, but there was a good chance I misunderstood a lot. The written section was much more clear-cut and less stressful. It was in several successive sections that got harder and harder, presumably each one representative of what you should know at the end of a semester of language study here. So, the test was easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, and then suddenly I didn't know a single thing. Past the first question that I had to guess on, I think I knew one question without guessing. So, as far as placement tests go, I think it was quite well-designed.
While we won't know our placement until Thursday, I'm happy with how I did. There wasn't anything on the test that I felt I should know but forgot--after generally neglecting to study or review over the summer, I was worried about that. Ironically, if I hadn't done my massive study session Thursday, I would have done exactly the same on those tests. Oh well though. I should get placed right where I need to be.
After the test we got a free lunch at the cafeteria. The food was spectacular. I had pork, fried rice, a bunch of things I don't know names for or what they were made of, and some orange slices and pineapple. I met a lot of people and promptly forgot most of their names. There are somewhere around 80 or 100 students in this program, so it'll take me a while.
After food, we went back to boring things--handing out information and whatnot. I've got a bunch of paperwork that I need to do, and right now I don't even remember what most of it is for. Following that and a campus tour, we all headed back to our dorms, and then post-test festivities kicked in. The people here are really fun. There was lots of laughter, and everyone is getting along quite well. This should be a good year.
I put up a few pictures from yesterday in my Picasa gallery, in the Orientation album. I'll continue adding photos to that one as the orientations continue. I've now got a permanent link to the gallery up, just below my profile on this page.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Study day
I'm proud of myself. I actually did study most of the day. Since I woke up 14 hours ago, I spent about 4 hours doing things that were not studying. I drilled away with Anki the rest of the time. I have pretty intensively studied 266 kanji within the last day, and 495 flash cards total (some of them are just words). This is way past what the designers recommend. I also cut down the intervals a lot; instead of waiting 8+ hours between viewings of harder kanji (meaning ones that I either didn't know, or forgot/screwed up), I told it to show me again within half an hour. Even easy ones are set for a 2 hour interval. So it took a long, long time to get through the card deck, as I was constantly reviewing along the way. I'm at a 73% correct rate for reviews, so it's working as a cramming tool.
Perhaps it was the caffiene after having basically weened myself off of it for the last month or so, but I was actually getting really excited while studying. Every time I learned a new kanji well enough to get it right, it felt like a huge victory. If I had known about this program earlier, I could have been studying and reviewing like this (but at a more sane pace and schedule) all summer, and made huge progress. Alas. Anyway, in the realm of immaturity, I have a new favorite kanji: 脱, ね (nu) in ねぐ (nugu), which means to take off clothes. The left component of the character by itself means moon, the right component by itself means one's older brother.
So far Sinlaku has produced only very light rain, and not very much of it. The forecasts keep bumping the onset of the winds by more and more, but they also now forecast higher winds than they did previously: 57 mph, up from the previous 31 mph, which was down from the initial 46 mph forecast for today. The storm did strengthen; right now its sustained winds are 70 mph, with gusts to 85, so it's just shy of being called a typhoon again. All I know is that unless I get an email from the school saying otherwise, I'm not allowed to be late for my test tomorrow. :)
Perhaps it was the caffiene after having basically weened myself off of it for the last month or so, but I was actually getting really excited while studying. Every time I learned a new kanji well enough to get it right, it felt like a huge victory. If I had known about this program earlier, I could have been studying and reviewing like this (but at a more sane pace and schedule) all summer, and made huge progress. Alas. Anyway, in the realm of immaturity, I have a new favorite kanji: 脱, ね (nu) in ねぐ (nugu), which means to take off clothes. The left component of the character by itself means moon, the right component by itself means one's older brother.So far Sinlaku has produced only very light rain, and not very much of it. The forecasts keep bumping the onset of the winds by more and more, but they also now forecast higher winds than they did previously: 57 mph, up from the previous 31 mph, which was down from the initial 46 mph forecast for today. The storm did strengthen; right now its sustained winds are 70 mph, with gusts to 85, so it's just shy of being called a typhoon again. All I know is that unless I get an email from the school saying otherwise, I'm not allowed to be late for my test tomorrow. :)
Amusement
From an email I just received regarding tomorrow's orientation and placement test:
Due to the typhoon that is approaching the Kansai area, there may be a good deal of rain throughout the evening and into tomorrow morning. This may make it take longer to get to campus than you expect.After being in Albuquerque, where the city shuts down for a snowflake, I find this highly amusing.
Please be sure to allow extra time to get to campus for orientation. DO NOT BE LATE FOR THE PLACEMENT TEST.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Alien registration
Today a group of 10 of us went to the school and to the ward office to get our 外国人登録証 (Alien Registration Card) paperwork taken care of. Since we were going as a group, I had to play along and take public transportation. We took the bus to school, and did the paperwork there, with the SKP Buddies checking to make sure we did the paperwork correctly. Then we walked to the train station, and took the train to the ward office, then after that was done repeated the route in reverse. The train cost 200円 each way, and the bus 220円; all together, for probably less than six miles, it totalled 840円, which at the current rate is about $7.96.
I think I'll stick to my bike and my feet for daily errands, and definitely for going to school. Taking the bus every day I need to go to campus this semester, assuming I don't take any weekend trips, would cost 19580円: $185.42. I can think of a lot of things I'd rather do with that amount of money.
Anyway, I hadn't met any of the people in the group yet; most of them got here in the last couple of days. In no particular order: Alysson and Bob from London, Aoife from Dublin, Peter from Australia, Stephani from Seattle, and a girl from Soeul whose name I forgot (hey, I'm trying). We met three more of the SKP Buddies. SKP Buddies are Japanese Ritsumeikan students who help us lost new international students around. I had already met Yuki and Miho, who live in the I-House II. Today I met Asako, Tomoyo, and Yo-chan. They're all really helpful, and Yo-chan in particular was loads of fun. She asked us if any of us were in the Japanese World Perspectives program, and when we answered that we were all in SKP (Study in Kyoto Program, the intensive language track), she gave a delighted laugh and refused to speak any more English for the rest of the day, and tried to keep us talking as much as possible.
I did bring my camera, but my attempts at candid group shots pretty much all completely failed, and I didn't feel like asking for a posed group shot. Pictures with people will come sooner or later.
One thing of particular interest I learned today came from Eva: a program called Anki exists that does a lot of the things I've been looking for in a program. It's got kanji and word information and does intelligent progress-based flash card quizzes. I'll still write my own program, since this still doesn't have a pretty major aspect of what I have in mind for what I think would be the best kanji and vocabulary learning software, but for now this has the very distinct advantage of already being written and working. I'm going to be pretty much studying all night tonight, and all of tomorrow, in preparation for the written placement tests Friday morning. They don't really care how well or poorly people do on the placement tests, as they have classes ranging from almost pure beginner to completely fluent, so I don't need to stress out about it... but I want to get placed into a level that challenges me. The better I do, the harder things will be, so I'm aiming high.
I think I'll stick to my bike and my feet for daily errands, and definitely for going to school. Taking the bus every day I need to go to campus this semester, assuming I don't take any weekend trips, would cost 19580円: $185.42. I can think of a lot of things I'd rather do with that amount of money.
Anyway, I hadn't met any of the people in the group yet; most of them got here in the last couple of days. In no particular order: Alysson and Bob from London, Aoife from Dublin, Peter from Australia, Stephani from Seattle, and a girl from Soeul whose name I forgot (hey, I'm trying). We met three more of the SKP Buddies. SKP Buddies are Japanese Ritsumeikan students who help us lost new international students around. I had already met Yuki and Miho, who live in the I-House II. Today I met Asako, Tomoyo, and Yo-chan. They're all really helpful, and Yo-chan in particular was loads of fun. She asked us if any of us were in the Japanese World Perspectives program, and when we answered that we were all in SKP (Study in Kyoto Program, the intensive language track), she gave a delighted laugh and refused to speak any more English for the rest of the day, and tried to keep us talking as much as possible.
I did bring my camera, but my attempts at candid group shots pretty much all completely failed, and I didn't feel like asking for a posed group shot. Pictures with people will come sooner or later.
One thing of particular interest I learned today came from Eva: a program called Anki exists that does a lot of the things I've been looking for in a program. It's got kanji and word information and does intelligent progress-based flash card quizzes. I'll still write my own program, since this still doesn't have a pretty major aspect of what I have in mind for what I think would be the best kanji and vocabulary learning software, but for now this has the very distinct advantage of already being written and working. I'm going to be pretty much studying all night tonight, and all of tomorrow, in preparation for the written placement tests Friday morning. They don't really care how well or poorly people do on the placement tests, as they have classes ranging from almost pure beginner to completely fluent, so I don't need to stress out about it... but I want to get placed into a level that challenges me. The better I do, the harder things will be, so I'm aiming high.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
The calm before the storm
I'm in the group of students that get to go in for their Alien Registration tomorrow. It'll take a few days to get a temporary, and then about a month before my permanent card is here. Once I have the temporary, I can open a bank account, which will help to ease my mind and let me have a little bit more fun. I brought probably way more than enough cash to hold me over, but until my account is actually open and I can wire money over from the US, I'm living like I'm unemployed (appropriately). So once that's taken care of, I'll be a little more willing to do things like ride a bus around and see more of the city. Most of the interesting sights have admission fees, too.
Friday, the orientations and placement tests start, and continue on Monday. Next Wednesday sees the welcome ceremony and info sessions. Thursday, placement results and class registration. Friday, classes begin.
But, possibly complicating this schedule, Sinlaku is supposed to hit Thursday, a day later than the original forecast. The winds are supposed to be the highest Friday. But, it's not supposed to be a direct hit; the forecasted winds are 46 mph. I don't yet know how this will affect the orientation schedule, or everything in general. I've ridden my bike in worse wind before, but it sounds like this storm is packing a lot of water, and I'm not sure how resilient the plant life is to wind here. If I do have to ride in it, at least the rain will hurt a lot less than Albuquerque's dust.
For now, I feel like I'm in the calm before the storm, figuratively as well as literally. I'm looking forward to getting things started.
Friday, the orientations and placement tests start, and continue on Monday. Next Wednesday sees the welcome ceremony and info sessions. Thursday, placement results and class registration. Friday, classes begin.
But, possibly complicating this schedule, Sinlaku is supposed to hit Thursday, a day later than the original forecast. The winds are supposed to be the highest Friday. But, it's not supposed to be a direct hit; the forecasted winds are 46 mph. I don't yet know how this will affect the orientation schedule, or everything in general. I've ridden my bike in worse wind before, but it sounds like this storm is packing a lot of water, and I'm not sure how resilient the plant life is to wind here. If I do have to ride in it, at least the rain will hurt a lot less than Albuquerque's dust.
For now, I feel like I'm in the calm before the storm, figuratively as well as literally. I'm looking forward to getting things started.
Google StreetView
I had the brilliant idea of checking whether or not Google Maps's StreetView had run the streets of Kyoto or not. Well, they have. Click here for a StreetView start right outside my gate (click the little yellow person icon).
Other places that are relevant to me are the nearest grocery store and the north gate of the Ritsumeikan campus.
Coverage doesn't extend into most of the smaller roads, but poking around on this ahead of time might have given me a much better idea of what to expect, and kept me from getting lost a time or two.
Other places that are relevant to me are the nearest grocery store and the north gate of the Ritsumeikan campus.
Coverage doesn't extend into most of the smaller roads, but poking around on this ahead of time might have given me a much better idea of what to expect, and kept me from getting lost a time or two.
Monday, September 15, 2008
A ride to campus
Today I rode to campus and brought my camera along with me. It was quite overcast, and occasionally drizzling a little bit, but I still took lots of pictures of the route there, and of the campus. You should have a pretty good idea of what my daily ride will look like from it.
A lot of things seemed to be closed or much less busy than I had expected for a Monday. Turns out it's a national holiday, Respect for the Aged Day. I guess I should try to keep track of these things...
After I finished my campus camera tour, I stopped by a 7-11 to buy more eggs. I bought a ten-pack and stuck it in my bike's basket and headed home. Unfortunately, the road is a bit bumpy, and the carton is not very cushioned. Five out of ten eggs broke. Bah.
Anyway, go look at the pictures.
http://picasaweb.google.com/bmhelm/RideToCampus
A lot of things seemed to be closed or much less busy than I had expected for a Monday. Turns out it's a national holiday, Respect for the Aged Day. I guess I should try to keep track of these things...
After I finished my campus camera tour, I stopped by a 7-11 to buy more eggs. I bought a ten-pack and stuck it in my bike's basket and headed home. Unfortunately, the road is a bit bumpy, and the carton is not very cushioned. Five out of ten eggs broke. Bah.
Anyway, go look at the pictures.
http://picasaweb.google.com/bmhelm/RideToCampus
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Getting organized
I finished unpacking and actually getting organized. My room is clean, and I even made my bed. Yay!
I went on a grocery run to add a bit more food to my pantry. The other students recommended going to a farther grocery store than the Kyoto Coop, and pointed it out on the hand-drawn map. After verifying its location on a better map, I headed out. When I got there I realized it was the same one I had found when I got horribly lost on Friday. This time, though, I got there and back without any wrong turns, despite taking a different route.
I went armed with a list, and got everything on it except for potatoes. I had put rice on it, because I actually know some things I can do with rice. The rice here is really expensive... the cheapest 5 kg (11lb) bag was over 1800円, about $18. That wound up being half of my overall bill. At least it'll last me a long time. I also splurged and spent about two bucks on some ice cream and the same on some soda... I'm allowed some weakness.
I went on a grocery run to add a bit more food to my pantry. The other students recommended going to a farther grocery store than the Kyoto Coop, and pointed it out on the hand-drawn map. After verifying its location on a better map, I headed out. When I got there I realized it was the same one I had found when I got horribly lost on Friday. This time, though, I got there and back without any wrong turns, despite taking a different route.
I went armed with a list, and got everything on it except for potatoes. I had put rice on it, because I actually know some things I can do with rice. The rice here is really expensive... the cheapest 5 kg (11lb) bag was over 1800円, about $18. That wound up being half of my overall bill. At least it'll last me a long time. I also splurged and spent about two bucks on some ice cream and the same on some soda... I'm allowed some weakness.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Finally, some success
After copying down my map in even more details, I finally met with some success in my hunt for the シャープ99. The reason I didn't see it before made me feel a bit better: it was actually a Lawsen 100, which looks exactly like any other Lawson shop, which looks a whole lot like a 7-11. Not exactly what I thought I was looking for. Anyway, between that and a department store I found later along the way, I got a pen, a mechanical pencil and a bunch of lead, some sauce for my udon noodles, a big jug of sports drink stuff since it was quite warm out, some TP, and fingernail clippers. I spent about twelve bucks' worth of yen. It's such a random assortment of stuff I really can't tell if it counts as cheap or expensive, comparing it to Albuquerque, but my guess would be more expensive.
After the shopping, I went to the Ritsumeikan campus. It's well-hidden by trees, like many other things, so I rode past it the first time; all I had noticed was a big bus stop that said 立命館大学前, which I incorrectly read as meaning the stop was before the school on the street. After the road straightened out, mismatching what I expected, I turned around and saw a familiar-from-Google-Earth-photos building, and realized the sign actually meant the stop was literally right in front of the school, at the main entrance.
So, I started wandering around campus to check it out, and immediately started wishing I had brought my camera. The campus is beautiful; the pictures I've seen don't do it justice. Unlike UNM, all the buildings look to be in excellent condition. Despite being the oldest college in Japan, everything looks fresh, neat, and new. The campus is about the same size or maybe smaller than the south (non medical/law) portion of UNM, but somehow feels more open--maybe that's just from the contrast with the rest of the parts of the city I've seen. The landscaping is quite nice, too. Having rain probably helps with that.
The first thing I found on campus was the kendo club. I heard them while I was parking my bike. The sound of it is pretty unmistakable, which is odd because I suppose I haven't actually heard it before. After watching them practice for a little bit--crazy footwork!--I explored the rest of the campus. I found the international building where I need to check in for the first orientation next Friday. I found the cafeteria, the libraries, and the general store, then decided it was time to head back home and take a shower. It's not terribly hot out, but it is quite humid, and I'm not used to dealing with that.
Speaking of weather, Typhoon Sinlaku is supposed to hit Wednesday as a tropical storm. That should be amusing.
Anyway, today's foray went much better. It was helped by wearing bike shorts and gloves this time, and things are starting to make a little more sense to me. Now it's time fo a late lunch.
After the shopping, I went to the Ritsumeikan campus. It's well-hidden by trees, like many other things, so I rode past it the first time; all I had noticed was a big bus stop that said 立命館大学前, which I incorrectly read as meaning the stop was before the school on the street. After the road straightened out, mismatching what I expected, I turned around and saw a familiar-from-Google-Earth-photos building, and realized the sign actually meant the stop was literally right in front of the school, at the main entrance.
So, I started wandering around campus to check it out, and immediately started wishing I had brought my camera. The campus is beautiful; the pictures I've seen don't do it justice. Unlike UNM, all the buildings look to be in excellent condition. Despite being the oldest college in Japan, everything looks fresh, neat, and new. The campus is about the same size or maybe smaller than the south (non medical/law) portion of UNM, but somehow feels more open--maybe that's just from the contrast with the rest of the parts of the city I've seen. The landscaping is quite nice, too. Having rain probably helps with that.
The first thing I found on campus was the kendo club. I heard them while I was parking my bike. The sound of it is pretty unmistakable, which is odd because I suppose I haven't actually heard it before. After watching them practice for a little bit--crazy footwork!--I explored the rest of the campus. I found the international building where I need to check in for the first orientation next Friday. I found the cafeteria, the libraries, and the general store, then decided it was time to head back home and take a shower. It's not terribly hot out, but it is quite humid, and I'm not used to dealing with that.
Speaking of weather, Typhoon Sinlaku is supposed to hit Wednesday as a tropical storm. That should be amusing.
Anyway, today's foray went much better. It was helped by wearing bike shorts and gloves this time, and things are starting to make a little more sense to me. Now it's time fo a late lunch.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Lost in Kyoto
I was considering, when it came time to naming this blog, entitling it "Lost in Kyoto" instead of the completely boring title I actually gave it. But I decided, based on the amount of movies whose titles start with "Lost in," that that was kind of trite.
Anyway, I grabbed my new bike and my carefully written down directions and map, and went to go to the nearest 99 yen store, シャプ99. After getting back and looking at the actual map, I can pretty confidently say that I went past it six times without seeing it. Worse, I got completely and utterly confused while trying to get back home; I got completely and honestly lost.
Part of the problem is that most of the streets here don't have names or numbers. Part of the problem is that they don't have zoning here as they do in America; industry, commerce, and housing all mix together everywhere, so that nothing looks terribly different from the other parts. The streets are narrow, twisty, and lined by houses on hills, so the visibility is short. I don't know the layout of the different villages yet. My Japanese is just good enough to really get me in trouble with local directions. But the very worst thing... one of the roads I already know of in the area is 50...
...but this sign doesn't mean the road number is 50.
That sign means the speed limit is 50 kph. Whoops...
Anyway, all I have to show for my two hour trip is a package of udon noodles and some shrimp and naruto to mix them with. After looking at the location of the supermarket where I got the stuff, and looking at the roads, it looks like I simply missed turning left where I should have, because I had no idea what road I was on. I wound up going northwest on 162; the sun was just slightly left of straight forward, so I figured I was going west, and at that point was worried because some village signs showed me as being on 162, and my conception of going west on a north-south road made me really uneasy (it was actually more like west-northwest, and farther north on the map than I thought it was). Eventually I saw an enormous building ahead, which really stood out from the crowd of small houses and buildings, and made my way to it, thinking it might be the campus. It turned out to be the 北都クリーンセンター (North Kyoto "kuriin" Center). I have no idea what that is, but there was a police officer out in front of it who gave me directions back. I once again missed the turn onto the road with my dorm, but wound up next to the store where I bought food last night; finally recognizing something, I managed to make my way home--but not before one last wrong turn that had me going back up the hill I just came down. That's the surest sign that it's time to regroup....
However overall flat Kyoto may look on a map, there are certainly hills, and they're steep. The road back down from the whatever-it-is center had a 400 meter stretch that goes down 40 meters. Going up that kind of pitch on a too-small single-speed cruiser bike is no easy task. I wound up getting pretty tired. I've also decided that however long I think the trip is going to be, from now on I'm bringing my riding gloves. My hands are a bit grumpy with me right now.
Although it was a perfect opportunity for taking a lot of pictures of the city, I didn't take any pictures outside. I was a bit too distracted with not knowing where I was. Too bad, because I really did get to see a lot of the place... although to be honest so much of it looks so much the same from the road. More pictures will come in time.
I don't mean to sound like I'm distressed or unhappy about this. Getting lost is part of getting used to a new place, and I did it in Albuquerque too. This place is simply different from what I'm used to, so the strategies I've used for getting unlost in the US didn't work so well. I got to see a lot more of the city than if I hadn't gotten lost, and that will probably be useful later on. Also, especially having studied the map afterwards, I think it has helped with my sense of the scale of this place. Because of the proportions of this place and the size of the roads, it's difficult for me to synchronize my impressions of distance between the map and reality. Anyway, it was a learning experience, and it was actually pretty amusing, too.
Now it's time to put those noodles I got to good use.
Anyway, I grabbed my new bike and my carefully written down directions and map, and went to go to the nearest 99 yen store, シャプ99. After getting back and looking at the actual map, I can pretty confidently say that I went past it six times without seeing it. Worse, I got completely and utterly confused while trying to get back home; I got completely and honestly lost.
Part of the problem is that most of the streets here don't have names or numbers. Part of the problem is that they don't have zoning here as they do in America; industry, commerce, and housing all mix together everywhere, so that nothing looks terribly different from the other parts. The streets are narrow, twisty, and lined by houses on hills, so the visibility is short. I don't know the layout of the different villages yet. My Japanese is just good enough to really get me in trouble with local directions. But the very worst thing... one of the roads I already know of in the area is 50...
...but this sign doesn't mean the road number is 50.
That sign means the speed limit is 50 kph. Whoops...
Anyway, all I have to show for my two hour trip is a package of udon noodles and some shrimp and naruto to mix them with. After looking at the location of the supermarket where I got the stuff, and looking at the roads, it looks like I simply missed turning left where I should have, because I had no idea what road I was on. I wound up going northwest on 162; the sun was just slightly left of straight forward, so I figured I was going west, and at that point was worried because some village signs showed me as being on 162, and my conception of going west on a north-south road made me really uneasy (it was actually more like west-northwest, and farther north on the map than I thought it was). Eventually I saw an enormous building ahead, which really stood out from the crowd of small houses and buildings, and made my way to it, thinking it might be the campus. It turned out to be the 北都クリーンセンター (North Kyoto "kuriin" Center). I have no idea what that is, but there was a police officer out in front of it who gave me directions back. I once again missed the turn onto the road with my dorm, but wound up next to the store where I bought food last night; finally recognizing something, I managed to make my way home--but not before one last wrong turn that had me going back up the hill I just came down. That's the surest sign that it's time to regroup....
However overall flat Kyoto may look on a map, there are certainly hills, and they're steep. The road back down from the whatever-it-is center had a 400 meter stretch that goes down 40 meters. Going up that kind of pitch on a too-small single-speed cruiser bike is no easy task. I wound up getting pretty tired. I've also decided that however long I think the trip is going to be, from now on I'm bringing my riding gloves. My hands are a bit grumpy with me right now.
Although it was a perfect opportunity for taking a lot of pictures of the city, I didn't take any pictures outside. I was a bit too distracted with not knowing where I was. Too bad, because I really did get to see a lot of the place... although to be honest so much of it looks so much the same from the road. More pictures will come in time.
I don't mean to sound like I'm distressed or unhappy about this. Getting lost is part of getting used to a new place, and I did it in Albuquerque too. This place is simply different from what I'm used to, so the strategies I've used for getting unlost in the US didn't work so well. I got to see a lot more of the city than if I hadn't gotten lost, and that will probably be useful later on. Also, especially having studied the map afterwards, I think it has helped with my sense of the scale of this place. Because of the proportions of this place and the size of the roads, it's difficult for me to synchronize my impressions of distance between the map and reality. Anyway, it was a learning experience, and it was actually pretty amusing, too.
Now it's time to put those noodles I got to good use.
Gallery is online!
http://picasaweb.google.com/bmhelm/
This will be where all my pictures will wind up. Galleries are up for the airport adventure and for a quick stroll in Kyoto. I went off looking for a stamp shop to get a personal signature stamp made, and failed completely, but I got some pictures of part of the neighborhood anyway. Several people offered me directions, but I still couldn't find the stationary shop I was looking for. I'm going to try again in a bit, now that I've written down such trivial details as the name of the store I'm looking for and its address. Duh....
I now have a bike that I can use at least for a while; it's too small, but it blends in, it has a wheel lock with a key that looks like an old can opener, and it has a basket and a generator light. I'm probably going to take the generator light off, since it rubs on one side of the front tire, so it feels bad and makes noise; I did bring a battery headlight and tail light. Oh, it was free, too. I still haven't properly photographed it or most of the I-House, but all things in due time. I'm leaving in a bit, as mentioned, to look for the stamp shop, but also for a 99 or 100 yen store (aka dollar store) to get better slippers (the freebies are about 4 sizes too small at least) and a few other things. Then tonight I need to plan some meals so that I can eat decently and cheaply.
This will be where all my pictures will wind up. Galleries are up for the airport adventure and for a quick stroll in Kyoto. I went off looking for a stamp shop to get a personal signature stamp made, and failed completely, but I got some pictures of part of the neighborhood anyway. Several people offered me directions, but I still couldn't find the stationary shop I was looking for. I'm going to try again in a bit, now that I've written down such trivial details as the name of the store I'm looking for and its address. Duh....
I now have a bike that I can use at least for a while; it's too small, but it blends in, it has a wheel lock with a key that looks like an old can opener, and it has a basket and a generator light. I'm probably going to take the generator light off, since it rubs on one side of the front tire, so it feels bad and makes noise; I did bring a battery headlight and tail light. Oh, it was free, too. I still haven't properly photographed it or most of the I-House, but all things in due time. I'm leaving in a bit, as mentioned, to look for the stamp shop, but also for a 99 or 100 yen store (aka dollar store) to get better slippers (the freebies are about 4 sizes too small at least) and a few other things. Then tonight I need to plan some meals so that I can eat decently and cheaply.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
One journey ends, another begins
I have arrived.
Both Malaysia airlines and China Airlines were very pleasant and efficient to deal with in handling the rebooking. Both flights left the tarmac precisely on time and arrived precisely on time. Both had wonderful service, and the food was... well, ok, not everything can be perfect, right?
I maintain, however, that LAX is a nightmare. I did get some chances to practice what little Chinese I knew. One group of Taiwanese women seemed to think I was amusing, since I spent so long trying to discuss the simplest of matters with one of their husbands, who was only a little bit more proficient in English than I am in Mandarin. They also apparently thought my height was amusing, since they asked me to be in a few pictures with them--I don't think any of them were five feet tall.
The transpacific flight was uneventful. Thank goodness; I had been getting quite sick of things being eventful. The in-flight entertainment options were pretty decent, but except for the GPS views and occasionally the very puny games available, I ignored them. My seatmate was part of a group of CS students from UCSD going to Taiwan for a 2-week vacation; I had some decent conversation when we were both feeling bored. I must have gotten some ok sleep, too, since he said he watched both Iron Man and "some Ashton
Kutcher movie" and I only ever noticed the last 5 minutes of the former. I read A Wizard of Earthsea, listened to some music, but mostly just tried to sleep. My new in-ear headphones actually did a better job of comfortably reducing the noise level of the plane than earplugs did.
The Taipei airport was impressive in many ways. It was huge, clean, efficiently organized, uncrowded, and quiet. The terminals looked like malls; the employees of each store stood ready and waiting for customers in their entryways, but didn't harass anybody like mall employees in the US tend to do. The variety of expensive gadgets you could buy there is surprising.
Gadgets weren't on my mind, though. Food was. I found a noodle shop where I again got to practice my Chinese; I ordered a beef noodle soup that was $7. It was a big, filling bowl, and came with mango juice and a side of vegetables that I can't name. It was also delicious; it qualified simultaneously as the cheapest, most filling, and best meal I've ever had in an airport.
I didn't have long to linger, though, and quickly made my way to the gate lounge, where I was again impressed by the poshness of it all. My flight was completely boarded within 5 minutes of the first boarding announcement (LAX took an hour), and off we went in our Airbus. This time I watched about half of Iron Man, and then it was touchdown in Kansai International. That's when the reality of my trip finally caught up with me, and I started grinning like an idiot. With the extra day's wait, I had been in zombie traveller mode for long enough to lose track of the duration; the idea of an actual destination had started to elude my mind as I just went from one place to the next in airports and planes.
After calling Kelsey, my dad, and my school to announce my safe arrival, I headed off to the shuttle service to get to my dorm. After a 45 minute wait and then a three hour ride, I was there. I'm going to hold off on my initial impressions of the city. Right now I'm overwhelmed and exhausted. The most obvious bits of news to share, though, are that I found my dorm, and the internet works (and it's quite fast, actually).
I'll have plenty of amusing pictures (at least I think they're amusing) once I get settled in enough to spend time on that--hopefully tomorrow. For now, it's time to sleep. Tomorrow the real adventure begins!
Both Malaysia airlines and China Airlines were very pleasant and efficient to deal with in handling the rebooking. Both flights left the tarmac precisely on time and arrived precisely on time. Both had wonderful service, and the food was... well, ok, not everything can be perfect, right?
I maintain, however, that LAX is a nightmare. I did get some chances to practice what little Chinese I knew. One group of Taiwanese women seemed to think I was amusing, since I spent so long trying to discuss the simplest of matters with one of their husbands, who was only a little bit more proficient in English than I am in Mandarin. They also apparently thought my height was amusing, since they asked me to be in a few pictures with them--I don't think any of them were five feet tall.
The transpacific flight was uneventful. Thank goodness; I had been getting quite sick of things being eventful. The in-flight entertainment options were pretty decent, but except for the GPS views and occasionally the very puny games available, I ignored them. My seatmate was part of a group of CS students from UCSD going to Taiwan for a 2-week vacation; I had some decent conversation when we were both feeling bored. I must have gotten some ok sleep, too, since he said he watched both Iron Man and "some Ashton
Kutcher movie" and I only ever noticed the last 5 minutes of the former. I read A Wizard of Earthsea, listened to some music, but mostly just tried to sleep. My new in-ear headphones actually did a better job of comfortably reducing the noise level of the plane than earplugs did.
The Taipei airport was impressive in many ways. It was huge, clean, efficiently organized, uncrowded, and quiet. The terminals looked like malls; the employees of each store stood ready and waiting for customers in their entryways, but didn't harass anybody like mall employees in the US tend to do. The variety of expensive gadgets you could buy there is surprising.
Gadgets weren't on my mind, though. Food was. I found a noodle shop where I again got to practice my Chinese; I ordered a beef noodle soup that was $7. It was a big, filling bowl, and came with mango juice and a side of vegetables that I can't name. It was also delicious; it qualified simultaneously as the cheapest, most filling, and best meal I've ever had in an airport.
I didn't have long to linger, though, and quickly made my way to the gate lounge, where I was again impressed by the poshness of it all. My flight was completely boarded within 5 minutes of the first boarding announcement (LAX took an hour), and off we went in our Airbus. This time I watched about half of Iron Man, and then it was touchdown in Kansai International. That's when the reality of my trip finally caught up with me, and I started grinning like an idiot. With the extra day's wait, I had been in zombie traveller mode for long enough to lose track of the duration; the idea of an actual destination had started to elude my mind as I just went from one place to the next in airports and planes.
After calling Kelsey, my dad, and my school to announce my safe arrival, I headed off to the shuttle service to get to my dorm. After a 45 minute wait and then a three hour ride, I was there. I'm going to hold off on my initial impressions of the city. Right now I'm overwhelmed and exhausted. The most obvious bits of news to share, though, are that I found my dorm, and the internet works (and it's quite fast, actually).
I'll have plenty of amusing pictures (at least I think they're amusing) once I get settled in enough to spend time on that--hopefully tomorrow. For now, it's time to sleep. Tomorrow the real adventure begins!
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
A boarding pass!
Things are now officially turning for the better: I have a boarding pass to hop the pond, I'm officially booked for the Taipei to Osaka leg, and my suitcase is apparently already waiting for me in Osaka.
Time to go head through security!
Time to go head through security!
LAX
So one thing I've noticed about LAX, which has been confirmed by just about everyone I've talked to, is that there are lot of very friendly, helpful employees who are all very quick to answer any question you may have. Even if they have no idea and the answer has no basis in reality.
Malaysia airlines opens at 9:40 pm, not noon or 9 am. I took a 7-hour nap and a shower though; I do feel much better. I'm about to head back to the airport. Hopefully everything goes a lot smoother this time...
Malaysia airlines opens at 9:40 pm, not noon or 9 am. I took a 7-hour nap and a shower though; I do feel much better. I'm about to head back to the airport. Hopefully everything goes a lot smoother this time...
Delayed
My flight taking off from Albuquerque was delayed by 3 hours and 37 minutes. My layover in Los Angeles was supposed to be 4 hours long. I got into the gate at the far end of LAX at 12:45, and my next flight was at 1:15, with one minor glitch: since it was an international flight on China Airlines and I had paper tickets, I needed to check in at the front of the International terminal 45 minutes before the flight. Do the math, and if you guessed that I didn't make the connection, you win.
United has been pretty decent to deal with, except for the hours. Their ticketing and customer service was closed when the problem popped up; I had to wait three hours to talk to someone, and I hadn't yet found a spot where I could get free wireless here at LAX. But, the agent there rebooked things for the same time but a day later, and gave me a couple of meal vouchers and a hotel for the day. But, China Airlines and Malaysia Airlines (with whom the reservation was booked, so they have the final say) will not be open for customer service type stuff until noon. I have to talk to Malaysia to make sure that I'm not going to get screwed in some creative new way--if they try to go that way, I can sign over control of the whole thing to United and get a 1-stop, 1-plane flight from here to Osaka. I have to talk to China Airlines because they have my bag. It's 9:45 now; I've been awake for almost 28 hours and I'm drooping badly, but I have no intention of leaving the airport or going to sleep until this is sorted out.
I have been taking pictures here and there; expect a gallery link highlighting the journey to Japan sometime after I get there.
United has been pretty decent to deal with, except for the hours. Their ticketing and customer service was closed when the problem popped up; I had to wait three hours to talk to someone, and I hadn't yet found a spot where I could get free wireless here at LAX. But, the agent there rebooked things for the same time but a day later, and gave me a couple of meal vouchers and a hotel for the day. But, China Airlines and Malaysia Airlines (with whom the reservation was booked, so they have the final say) will not be open for customer service type stuff until noon. I have to talk to Malaysia to make sure that I'm not going to get screwed in some creative new way--if they try to go that way, I can sign over control of the whole thing to United and get a 1-stop, 1-plane flight from here to Osaka. I have to talk to China Airlines because they have my bag. It's 9:45 now; I've been awake for almost 28 hours and I'm drooping badly, but I have no intention of leaving the airport or going to sleep until this is sorted out.
I have been taking pictures here and there; expect a gallery link highlighting the journey to Japan sometime after I get there.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
A note on travel agents and shipping
Do. Not. Use. cheaptickets.com
I booked my flight with cheaptickets.com. My original itinerary was to take off from Albuquerque to Los Angeles, three hour layover, LA to Taipei, Taiwan, two hour layover, Taipei to Osaka.
They managed to lose my flight from Los Angeles to Taipei. The other two tickets were still valid, but a few days ago the Malaysia Airlines flight from LA to Taipei got cancelled. The agents at cheaptickets gave me a call and said that I was being switched to a different flight. Well, when I got to the airport tonight, I found out that they hadn't actually done that. The ticketing agent for United (who was absolutely wonderful) managed to fix it, but there was a lot of phoning, holding, and stress involved. I finally had a connecting flight again an hour before the scheduled takeoff of my departing flight.
As a side note, cheaptickets's hold music is Pachelbel's Canon in D. About three or four minutes of it, and that's it. Between the ticket fiasco and trying to find out about an extra checked luggage item earlier, I spent about two and a half hours on hold today--they are completely inept at getting anything resolved, let alone quickly, and will put you on hold "for a moment" after one or two questions, where "a moment" really means thirty minutes. I'm still too frazzled at the moment to properly describe their sheer incompetence.
I booked with cheaptickets because they had the cheapest ticket price. I saved maybe a hundred dollars because of it. My first lesson to pass on to any other first-time international travelers: buy from a name you've heard of before. A big company that's been around a while might be worth the extra money in the event that something goes wrong.
On a completely separate note from the airline, one of the things that I had planned all along was to take a bike with me to Japan. I have a pretty decent road bike--nothing too flashy, but it was worth a lot more than I paid for it--and a while ago I had gotten a UPS shipping quote for it saying it would cost me something like $171.80 to ship it directly to my dorm in Kyoto. That was a little bit more expensive than the cheapest new bikes I can expect to buy on the Japanese side of things, and not much more expensive than shipping a bike to some places in the continental US, so I was quite excited about that.
I went to print the shipping label today and it was $645.23. I decided not to do it. All indications after speaking with their customer service say that the rate calculator on the web site must have been completely screwed up, because no combination of mistakes we could think of gave us anything less than double the old figure. I suppose the lesson here is not to check a shipping estimate until something is actually boxed and weighed, so that if the price seems too good to be true, you can run with it right there.
I booked my flight with cheaptickets.com. My original itinerary was to take off from Albuquerque to Los Angeles, three hour layover, LA to Taipei, Taiwan, two hour layover, Taipei to Osaka.
They managed to lose my flight from Los Angeles to Taipei. The other two tickets were still valid, but a few days ago the Malaysia Airlines flight from LA to Taipei got cancelled. The agents at cheaptickets gave me a call and said that I was being switched to a different flight. Well, when I got to the airport tonight, I found out that they hadn't actually done that. The ticketing agent for United (who was absolutely wonderful) managed to fix it, but there was a lot of phoning, holding, and stress involved. I finally had a connecting flight again an hour before the scheduled takeoff of my departing flight.
As a side note, cheaptickets's hold music is Pachelbel's Canon in D. About three or four minutes of it, and that's it. Between the ticket fiasco and trying to find out about an extra checked luggage item earlier, I spent about two and a half hours on hold today--they are completely inept at getting anything resolved, let alone quickly, and will put you on hold "for a moment" after one or two questions, where "a moment" really means thirty minutes. I'm still too frazzled at the moment to properly describe their sheer incompetence.
I booked with cheaptickets because they had the cheapest ticket price. I saved maybe a hundred dollars because of it. My first lesson to pass on to any other first-time international travelers: buy from a name you've heard of before. A big company that's been around a while might be worth the extra money in the event that something goes wrong.
On a completely separate note from the airline, one of the things that I had planned all along was to take a bike with me to Japan. I have a pretty decent road bike--nothing too flashy, but it was worth a lot more than I paid for it--and a while ago I had gotten a UPS shipping quote for it saying it would cost me something like $171.80 to ship it directly to my dorm in Kyoto. That was a little bit more expensive than the cheapest new bikes I can expect to buy on the Japanese side of things, and not much more expensive than shipping a bike to some places in the continental US, so I was quite excited about that.
I went to print the shipping label today and it was $645.23. I decided not to do it. All indications after speaking with their customer service say that the rate calculator on the web site must have been completely screwed up, because no combination of mistakes we could think of gave us anything less than double the old figure. I suppose the lesson here is not to check a shipping estimate until something is actually boxed and weighed, so that if the price seems too good to be true, you can run with it right there.
Preamble
This post is meant to lay down the basis and intent of this blog.
As my brief profile indicates, I am a computer science student at the University of New Mexico, and am currently departing to Kyoto, Japan for a 2-semester student exchange program. This blog is meant to cover my experiences in a broad sense. I will try to address a lot of the questions that I faced when pursuing this, to try to enlighten other people who are considering studying abroad. I will update this with things that catch me off guard, things that turn out better or worse than expected, and things that are just plain different, in regards to the study abroad. I will also just generally do a fairly normal joural-like blog between the rest of it.
I will also, of course, show lots of pictures. I got a new camera for this trip, and I intend to use it.
If anybody has questions regarding studying abroad in Japan, feel free to ask me. If I can, I'll answer it on here.
As my brief profile indicates, I am a computer science student at the University of New Mexico, and am currently departing to Kyoto, Japan for a 2-semester student exchange program. This blog is meant to cover my experiences in a broad sense. I will try to address a lot of the questions that I faced when pursuing this, to try to enlighten other people who are considering studying abroad. I will update this with things that catch me off guard, things that turn out better or worse than expected, and things that are just plain different, in regards to the study abroad. I will also just generally do a fairly normal joural-like blog between the rest of it.
I will also, of course, show lots of pictures. I got a new camera for this trip, and I intend to use it.
If anybody has questions regarding studying abroad in Japan, feel free to ask me. If I can, I'll answer it on here.
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