Archive For The “Life” Category
うつくしま ふくしま Just looking around on Yahoo Maps and happened to come across the Fukushima airport. I found it cool that they built the aforementioned slogan out of shrubbery. 詳しい地図で見る Once again, EXPLANATION FOR THOSE WHO DON’T UNDERSTAND: うつくしま ふくしま (utsukushima Fukushima) apparently is a common motto around here for the city (prefecture too?). It’s a play [...]
I happen to play Team Fortress 2 in my free time, and oftentimes I end up playing on Japanese servers. For obvious reasons, the ping tends to be quite low. I also found it amusing when I noticed that at the beginning of most every round most of the people mic on and say 「よろしく。」 or [...]
I was trying to update every Friday, but that didn’t work out. Too bad. Anyway, for those who don’t know (which is probably most everyone reading this), as of a few months ago I put my unicycle to the side and bought a new bike. I’ve been wanting to do more distance stuff, and as [...]
Shhh
By Rodent | May 2, 2008
I’ve noticed a trend. In nine months I’ve been here I’ve gotten quite a bit better at Japanese. I’m still an extremely long way from where I want to be, but looking back to my initial arrival I see that I’ve come quite a decent distance. But… I talk less to students now. I talk [...]
Wii
By Rodent | April 24, 2008
I gave in and bought a Wii. I played a decent amount of Wii at Alex’s back in the US. While it was fun at first, once the novelty wore off I realized it really lost its appeal to me. That all changed when Smash Brothers came out, followed by Mario Kart. I’ve been itching [...]
This past weekend I went down to Tsukuba to visit Beth, and as usual, on the way back we took the Tsukuba Express back to Tokyo so I could catch my bus back to Fukushima. Now for the few people who don’t know, Japan tends to pride itself–and with good reason–on having reliable, always-on-time trains. [...]
Tonight I had about two of the most confusing hours of my life. I shall relate, but first there’s lots of pre-story to get up to the interesting stuff. It all started about halfway through the workday today. This particular school is about a 25 minute bus ride away from the city. The particular bus [...]
To my dismay, today I found out that I failed 3-kyu of the JLPT. For those who don’t know, JLPT = Japanese Language Proficiency Test. There are four levels, from 4-kyu being the easiest to 1-kyu being virtually fluent. With the amount of time I’ve been studying Japanese, there isn’t really a good reason for [...]
Today (as in February 3rd, today) is Setsubun, which means it’s time to cleanse the evil spirits from my home. Unfortunately, I like my evil spirits, so instead I went around and cleansed some of the other JETs places. Usually what happens today is that the father of a family puts on an oni (demon) [...]