Category: Life

Sometimes, I feel the need to talk about me (imagine that).

While giving blood is a noble thing –and something that everybody who is able to do should do– giving it while you’re suffering from jet lag is perhaps not the smartest idea that I have ever had. I had been feeling back to my normal levels of awareness at work, until I gave blood yesterday. Then it was suddenly like I hadn’t slept at all and I was wasted for the rest of the day. This was particularly bad because when I got home I remembered I still had to write that final journal entry for my Japan trip/class. Damn. I guess I’ll just get it written up tonight and suck up the drop in grade for being late.

Oh and if you’re reading this AWelkin; this is not a plea to be excused from any “late fee” on my assignment. I knew the rules and I broke them; so I’m willing to pay the penalty.

I’m back from Japan now. I have 2 more days of Japan to write up and a brief journal/paper that wraps the trip up, but I’ll get to that tomorrow. I’d also like to mention that I’ve started reading a book that was written by a friend of mine. That book is called Twilightners and is available from Amazon.com or from Lulu.com. For the record, while I may seem to complain about the trip a lot; I did enjoy it immensely. I plan to have some photos of it posted soonish but that might take a while as I still need to figure out how exactly I want to post them (e.g. what web-image gallery do I want to use). Once I have that all figured out; I’ll try to add appropriate images to the posts I made abotu Japan and will see about making an announcement that the images are available.

Another day of raising from bed far too damn early; only to hop on trains and run like the wind to make all our train/plane connections. *sigh* The day started off poorly as one of the students spent the night in S-sensai’s room and another had the key to her room with him at the station. But after that got storted out, things went relatively smoothly until Narita. Then there were massive lines to get through security and customs and somehow AWelkin, Bryon & 2 of the other students didn’t see us waiting for them after customs so we were running behind when we finally decided to hurry up through immigration and to meet them at the boarding gate. Though we did see them as we waited to get through immigration, confirmed that all students were accounted for and made our flight to O’Hare without a problem. Our next problem was that 3 students went missing and nearly missed the flight from O’Hare to Cedar Rapids. Since that was the last flight of the night to CR; AWelkin (doing that responsible teacher thing) was planning on staying behind to find them but they showed up pretty much as the boarding was finishing up. So we all got home safely; Ariesna and I ate out with AWelkin and Bryon that night and my lovely finance ever so patiently listened to all of us bitch our anger and frustration out about the trip. *sigh* I’m too damn lucky for words to have a fiance like her.

Then we went home and I gave Ariesna all the souvenirs that I’d gotten for her on the trip and off to bed I went.

Today we went to Kyoto. We’d been warned that it was one of the hottest places in Japan, but I hadn’t paid too much attention to the warnings thinking that I wouldn’t really notice the difference after the heat I’d already been dealing with. Boy was I ever wrong! It was the single most brutal day of heat and misery that I’ve ever experienced. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d been wearing shorts, but AWelkin had mentioned prior to the trip that it was one of the more conservative areas of Japan and we shouldn’t wear shorts there because it’s just not done1. I have to say that if I’d known in advance how brutal the heat would be there; I would have ignored that cultural advice and worn shorts. It was horrific and it make matters worse, the main temple we’d come to see was more than just a little ways from the train station and all the walking was uphill. Before we got there though, we rode the local bus system which wasn’t too bad, except when it got crowded2. Once the bus desposited us at the base of the hill to the temple; we started the climb, ignoring all the shops on the way up. When we finally made it to the top of the hill; we found we had to go up a set of steep stairs to get to the actual temple area. I think we’d already visited another temple that day (I’ll have to go through all the tickets and scraps I saved from the trip to double-check) and so AWelkin allowed those students who wanted to; to rest at the base of the temples. Only about 5 of us (3, if you didn’t count AWelkin & Bryon) actually went in. It was the most beautiful temple we’d seen yet and had a view of the valley area below which rivalled (but didn’t quite beat) the view of the ocean at the one previous temple. Again, words fail me here so I’ll have to hurry up and see about posting some pictures.
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Today we had to get up and check out of the hotel by 6:00 AM (or 5:45 AM if you had phone charges to pay for like I did). Then we ran to catch the early morning train and made some exchanges to get over to Takarazuka, where we visited the Osamu Tezuka Museum. The walk to the museum from the train station would not have been so bad; if we weren’t carrying our luggage for the next 3 days with us1. The museum wasn’t as big as say the Ghibli museum had been but it was packed with stuff about Tezuka and his work. Also in the basement level, they ran an hour long “animation course”2. The course ran off a set of computer built into little desks with built-in lightboxes. You were supposed to follow along with what they were saying via your computer, but we didn’t speak enough Japanese and none of us read any Japanese, so that part was hard. Fortunately, some of the museum employees spoke enough English that we were able to participate and make our own little 2 frame animation. Mine was of my CoffeeBear character waving and it received the Astro Boy Seal of Approval3 *grin* Oh and one of the other nice things about the museum was that they allowed you to take pictures inside. So, I’ll see about posting some of those later.
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