the blog i never update

I've been told off from home for swearing too much here, oops. My apologies to the people it offended, I'll try to keep that to a minimum from now on.

So yesterday morning was the start of the running club! We run four times a week in the morning: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Well, the term "run" is probably a bit misleading since we're really only jogging ... really slowly ... but anyway. Weekdays runs start from 7, Saturdays I think a bit later. (Luckily the meeting place is right outside my dorm.) The early factor isn't so bad, because since my class schedule was re-arranged, I now have no sleep-in mornings anyway (all my classes start at 9 or 10 now). For a 9 AM class I'd be waking up at 7:30, and for the running club I'm waking up at 6:45, so... it's not that much earlier. Plus, on the days I have 10 AM classes, it means I have a little extra time to get to do my make up and get to school or do any last-minute homework I forgot to do the night before.

The runs themselves aren't very strenuous yet, we're starting out pretty easy, and I was fine after yesterday's run. But today's was a bit harder and now I'm totally feeling the burn, ahaha. Also I need to go into the city today to attempt to find a sports bra because OW, my boobs. They hurt.

What else has been happening...

In my Japanese speaking class I was told to give a 2 minute oral presentation today on "anything I liked". The last two people who did them gave their presentations on things like their pets, and their winter vacation, which was kinda dull and sleep inducing, so... I decided to do mine on Austarlia's Dangerous Animals (Drop Bears Included). At the beginning of the speech, before you start you're supposed to write on the blackboard any vocab words that the class probably doesn't know, so before I even started the blackboard behind me was filled with things like:

"carnivore"
"to die a horrible death"
"to stomp on the ground"
"to be scared away"
"to drop on you from above"
"to be bitten to death"

And so on and so forth. It was pretty entertaining!


That's the end of this entry, so I'll leave you in total envy of what I'm cooking tonight: Pure deliciousness. Mmmm, omurice.

It has-- somewhat ridiculously, I realise-- only just hit me how completely dependant I am on my journal as an emotional outlet or as a source of talking through my problems or crowing about a good day, etc. I still haven't got internet on my computer over here, and even if I had I don't think I'd be updating any more than I already am because every day just seems busy from start to finish. When I'm not at school or studying (because there are tests almost every day) or doing homework (something I suddenly have a LOT of again; I feel like I'm back in school, only it's been way too long since I studied this much for anything) or sorting my shit out (cleaning, doing laundry, cooking, shopping for groceries-- which I have to do every second or third day because my pantry and fridge is TINY), I'm ... actually having a social life or experiencing as much of the country as I can on my weekends. The second one I can understand, but the first?

Yeah, I'm just as shocked as you are. The words "Cass" and "social life" don't really seem to belong in the same sentence.

Don't get me wrong, that's not to say that I'm going out every night and partying or drinking or anything like that. Socialising here with the international students is a bit different to what passes as socialising back home. For starters, I do most of my socialising in the kitchen. Basically, after class finishes most days around 5, I go grocery shopping for whatever I (or someone else) is making for dinner that night. (If nobody is cooking and I don't feel like it, I buy a veggie, a fruit and a riceball. Or dumplings of some description if I want meat.) Then we get home around 6 and start cooking. The rice cooker takes 45 minutes to do rice, for some reason, so we spend around an hour in the kitchen just preparing the food and talking and then sit down to eat around 7. (By we, I mean the girls that I'm friends with and I. We're a group of around 5, though sometimes we eat with other girls too. The boys' kitchen is on the level below and it's fairly grody in comparison to ours, so we don't venture down there. Mostly they venture up to ours instead.)

After dinner we'll sit around in the kitchen and talk or watch whatever hilarity is on the TV or play cards and then do the cleaning up. By about 8 everyone settles down either in the (now clean) kitchen/dining area or the common room to do their homework or study or surf the intenet on their laptop. (Or in my case, do my homework and study intermittently by helping other people do their homework. Of course, it doesn't help me study for my class, but it helps me to remember more basic grammar points that I might otherwise forget. I don't really know how it happened, but I kind of like suddenly being known as being someone people can go to for homework help, it makes me feel useful and competent again 8D.) The work gets done pretty slowly though because everyone's chatting inbetween homework questions. So by the time I'm finished that, it's 11pm and time for bed, because I have to be up ay 7:30 bright and early for class the next day.

And as for a typical weekend, well, that usually consists of going out sightseeing on both days with my group.

So as you can see, I still don't have a lot of time for the internet even if... I actually had working internet! Which I still don't, but am hoping to get fixed tomorrow. (Along with a cellphone, hopefully, a sports bra, and the ingredients for cream stew! Since I finish class early tomorrow.)

On the down side, I'm feeling pretty emotionally and mentally drained. I'm busy every day and while I am absolutely 100% LOVING every second of it, the introvert in me is really screaming for some quiet down-time, just being alone. And I haven't been really able to update about the emotional side of things and get stuff off my chest because I don't have the time, which then in turn feeds into feeling further emotionally drained! So I'm going to have to make time for that soon. Like the title of this entry (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) states: I JUST HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS.

As it took me five seconds to realise what was wrong with what I had just previously typed ("cheek-in-tongue" by accident), I'd say it's time for em to go to bed. My English gets steadily worse with every day that I'm here, but I'm not sure my Japanese is improving at a steady enough rate to keep up with it. Hrrk.

I'm also joining the running club next week to get fit and lose all the weight I've put back on from eating so many bloody carbs over here (they're unavoidable). Wish me luck! I shall try not to die. (Before that, though, I need to find a sports bra. Maybe wish me luck for that instead.)

AAAAAAAAAUGH the internet here is driving me crazy. It's soooo sloooow. It's fine in the morning! But then at night you have like 200 international students all trying to access the same network at once? And it craaaaaaaawls. It takes me like, five minutes just to load gmail. Ffffff.

In other news: I love being in Japan, you guys, but sometimes you Just Have A Bad Day. Today was one of those days! I:

1) Overslept by 40 minutes
2) Lost one glove-- not both, but just one!
3) Managed to SOMEHOW get ready in time to make it to class by bike despite the massive oversleep, only to-- in my haste-- somehow jam my bike key in the lock and get it stuck, thus rendering the bike unusable (it was fixed this evening, no worries)
4) Realised that standing there and swearing at my bike was not going to get me to class any faster and that I had better start running and promptly did so, and again SOMEHOW made the 30 minute walk to class in a 15 minute near-dead-run, a feat which I would not have been able to do two weeks ago
5) Promptly nearly gave myself something akin to an asthma attack after the fact
6) Somehow arrived in class on time with exactly 30 seconds to spare (I should note here that they take being on time to class here VERY seriously-- even 30 seconds after the bell can get you marked as late, and 3 tardies counts as 1 absent and 3 absents means you fail the class), only to realise that there was another test I hadn't studied for :D!

AND THAT WAS JUST IN THE FIRST HOUR OF MY DAY \o/

We had ceramics in the afternoon, which somewhat unsurprisingly, was also an umitigated disaster. Fun! But a disaster.

So we learnt how to throw on the wheel today, which as it turns out, is exceedingly much harder than it looks! In four hours I only made two pieces, both with sensei's help. I mean, I made countless others but they were all invariably stuffed. It doesn't help that sensei insists on explaining everything-- even all the technical ceramics terms-- to me in Japanese because "my Japanese should be good enough to understand" and I just ... don't ... so I kind of have to guess from the context. On my last try I VERY nearly completely made a third piece all on my own, right down to the finishing step, until the very last part where you disconnect it from the wheel, at which point I screwed up and dislocated the bottom unevenly and it all fell apart \o/. HUZZAH.

So that was moderately embarrassing.

Came home. Had dinner. Studied (for another test tomorrow). Realised that I can't remember anything I just studied. Got on the computer and couldn't load my email because the internet is so slow. Decided to cry a bit on here and shall now just throw in the towel and go to bed.

GOOD NIGHT.

STILL in the process of writing up what I've been doing in the last two weeks, still don't have photoshop on this computer so it may be a while. HOLD TIGHT. Also fair warning: it's late and I have a LOT to write so I'm not really giving much thought to how I'm writing, this is all pretty much 100% uncensored brain-blather.

But I've had an eventful last two days so I figure I should at least update about those. (Sans pictures.)　Yesterday was SUPER GOOD and then today was SUPER BAD, cry. And so the wheel of fortune continues to turn!

SO we'll start with the good! Yesterday evening, violetsquirrel took me to see

ABINGDON BOYS SCHOOL

IN CONCERT!

キャアーーーーー
キタ━━━(゜∀゜)━━━!!!!!

It was so so sooooo good! I know there's a lot of people reading this who are in fandom but not up-to-date on J-Rock stuff (I'm not either), but basically it's T.M.Revolution's side band |D. And if you don't know who T.M.R is then you are probably my parents and therefore you can have a link to Wikipedia. Anyway. Can I just say, HOLY CRAP do they EVER know how to put on a show *_*!! Like, wow. WOW.

Okay I should probably preface this with saying that I've never been to a rock concert before this. はじめての！ Baby's first! Before this I've only ever really been to uh, classical music concerts and... The Whitlams... who are a GREAT BAND in their own right but really not rock. (For starters, they perform in a concert hall with seats and everyone is ACTUALLY sitting down because the average age of the average person in the hall is 40. Whoops.)

So yeah, first time at a rock concert! And even though I've never been to one before, I think it'll be pretty hard to top this one in the future, ahaha. Anyone who says that Japanese people are quiet has never been to a J-Rock concert, wow. I'm talking real head-banging stuff. Like, the band themselves were totally head-banging along with us. They know how to ROCK IT OUT \m/. It was great. (My parents would be appalled.) But I'm getting ahead of myself, let me start from the beginning.

We got here at about 6pm to start lining up (the concert started at 7), and waited in line for about half an hour in the freezing freezing freezing cold (Yahoo! Japan temperature page says it was 1 degree celcius, brrr) until we were let in. The tickets cost about $65 AU, which were all organised thanks to dilettantka or so I am told, so thank you hon!

Anyway, we finally got in and found an okay spot to stand as close as we could get. We weren't near the front but we weren't near the back either, we were pretty much smack-bang in the middle, haha. I have never been so glad to be tall in Japan as I was just then. So yeah, I could see the stage just fine |3. Everyone was standing up and jumping around and waving their hands in the air and-- well, I SUPPOSE THAT'S ALL STANDARD STUFF for a rock concert?? But like I said, it was a first for me, so I found it pretty exciting!

As for everything else-- well, the light show was SPECTACULAR *-*!! Flashing lights, so pretty. And of course, being a rock concert, the music was pumped up so loud that the vibrations in the room made the vibrations from the T-Rex in Jurassic Park look like a hand tremor in comparison. Literally, I felt like the drum beat had become my own heartbeat!! Of course, forget being half deaf-- by the time the concert was over I was fully deaf! Mum seems to think that the biggest danger to my hearing while in Japan is riding a bicycle without a helmet on, but I think going to too many rock concerts is the bigger danger here!! But it was worth it.

T.M.R is a pretty good entertainer too, and such a flirt, *g*. At one stage of the performance he lifted his shirt pretty much all the way up to flash the audience, pfft. Cue the fangirls going wild, of course. He talked to the audience inbetween some songs but I only understood about half of what was said. But then he threw the plastic cups he'd been drinking from on stage out into the audience, which of course all the audience fought eachother over to get. I should probably explain for my family that in Japanese culture there's a line of thought where if your lips touch something that someone else's lips have touched, it's an "indirect kiss". So yeah, that's him being a total flirt. The costumes were awesome too-- I can't really describe it here but they were awesome. Imagine a marching band coat left open over a t-shirt, with jeans and a kilt over the jeans. (One of his talk-segments involved him talking about how they TOTALLY WEREN'T SKIRTS, YOU GUYS!!! Haha.) But man, total respect, he's FIT. He did pretty much scream his lungs out for an entire two and a half hours, and I do mean scream, not sing. (His voice is still amazing though, mmmm.) Not to mention jumping all over the stage like an acrobat.

Anyway, mostly for the benefit of the people reading this who aren't familiar with J-Rock, have a youtube video of abingdon boys school so you can get a better idea of what I'm talking about. Obviously the concert I went to last night is still too recent for there to be a youtube video of it (and they're very strict about the whole no-cameras-in-the-concert-hall thing), but I found a video of another live they did for comparison. I don't think this one's as good as the one I saw last night though!! In terms of atmosphere or performance or light show or costumes or choreography |3. But maybe I'm biased. ANYWAY.

Also I didn't realise how SHORT T.M.R is until right at the end! When all the band members came up on stage to bow together and they were holding hands together up in the air, they were practically lifting him up off the stage! Wiki doesn't give me a height, but I'm pretty sure he's not taller than 5ft. TINY. But still hot. And ripped. But TINY! Stupid tiny hot old Japanese men. (And he IS old. I didn't realise but he's 39 now, fftttt.)

So yeah, that was Thursday night!

THEN THERE WAS TODAY.

Today was MODERATELY horrible. I woke up to go to class and of course there's a test in class which I totally didn't study for because I was at a concert, durr hurr. But even if I had studied, I don't think I would've been able to get more than 50% of it, because most of the time I couldn't even understand the instructions on the test (which were all in Japanese), which is kind of an integral part of... answering questions! So totally failed that and was practically in tears by the end of it and went up to my teacher and was like "Please please put me down into level 5, I really can't hack it in level 6," and so she eventually relented.

So yeah was in a pretty crappy mood after that, because wow blow to the ego much, only to realise that I'd ALSO lost my ear-muffs (you don't realise how important ear muffs are until you come to a COLD COUNTRY) and I'd forgotten my scarf too and no wonder I was so cold!! Baw. But it was okay. KATIE WAS THERE TO CRY ON :Db.

Finally after that I met up with the girl from whom I was going to buy my bike from, and that all went smoothly and I got my bike registered with the authorities which was all cool, and then I went back to school to register my bike with the school too, except then I... ended up leaving my registration there! A fact which I only realised until I got in tonight, when our dorm Okaasan asked to see my new bike's registration so she could give me a parking sticker. Derp.

Also ended up spending about $100 on textbooks today as well as $40 on the bike, so am feeling a bit sorry for my wallet too.

Ended the day with my crazy manga class, which requires a bit of an explanation because I now realise that I haven't updated about it before this. But well actually not really, because basically it's just that everyone in it is, well, crazy. And you can tell I'm getting tired because I really am just babbling now but I'm nearly done. And really, I'm not sure what I expected from a class on manga, but I thought maybe there'd be SOME sane people in it but no. Not really. The most notable is a girl I have dubbed "Overshare Girl", because... well, that's what she does. Overshares. Every single class. (Well we've only had two so far, but I can kind of see this becoming a trend.) It's like, wow, THANKS FOR SHARING WITH THE CLASS BUT NOT REALLY, BECAUSE I DIDN'T NEED TO KNOW THAT. If I didn't try to place myself on the opposite side of the room from her, I would totally be strangling her. So really it's probably a good thing I don't sit near her, because I don't really want to be deported for committing homicide.

I also got my Japanese classes changed around since I went down a level, which means my Ceramics classes have changed too (because the ceramics schedule is arranged around your other classes), which basically means now my entire timetable is now different. Hurrah! ( I'll leave you with my new schedule under the cut. )

Oh yeah, I didn't get into the Pop Culture class :(.

Sadfacing forever.

(Kaza says, as she reads over my shoulder as I type this, "There's still a week!" but I don't really like my chances. If nobody's dropped out of the course by now ... they're probably not going to.)

ANYWAY.

That concludes my long-ass update. Sorry I've been sparse lately, I don't know when that's going to change either. I'm busy pretty much every day, even on the weekends. Hopefully I'll be able to come off internet hiatus soon.

THIS IS A PLACEHOLDER ENTRY.

Big update coming soon with my Project 365 photos, but this is just an update to say that yes! I have arrived safely in Japan and yes! It is awesome!

I still haven't gotten my laptop registered for using the internet here, so when I do is when I'll probably resume internet-life. INTERNET HIATUS until then, because using the dorm computers to do other stuff is just awkward and strange and they don't have any photo-editing programs on them so I can't resize my photos to a respectable size for the internet ANYWAY.

ANYWAY. The short version is: moved into my dorm, have made friends, have broken my diet like a million times in 24 hours because Japan Can't Do Good Salad (and we're not allowed to use the kitchen until the end of the week when the home-stay students meet their host families and move out of the dorm, except the microwave, the kettle, and the fridge) but that's okay because Japanese cuisine is DELICIOUS and more importantly CHEAP, but stuff is otherwise great! Still can't believe I'm actually here.

IT IS VERY COLD but not unbearably so. Around 6 degrees celsius.

I also got lost twice in one day (today), which is usually more than I can manage in a year, but whatever. IT IS AN ADVENTURE. I am having fun and taking the scenic route, etc. I'm actually pleasantly surprised how much Japanese I've been able to understand and I've mostly had no trouble communicating in Japanese so far, but then I've only really been here for a day. I did have an amusing moment in the supermarket trying to get fat free milk, because I didn't know what the word was for "fat free" (or even for [food] fat), so I had to ask the attendant "Um, sorry, which is the milk that won't make me put on weight?" Fun times. Also, hilariously oatmeal is in the health food section of the supermarket, not the cereal aisle. The more you know!

Anyway, that's all for now, longer update later \o/.

ETA: oh yeah, someone said I looked like Idina Menzel today. I was pretty flattered! Even if it's not true.

ETA^2: I just discovered that I burned the roof of my mouth on dinner. (Delicious okonomiyaki -- japanese pancakes. They're savory, not sweet. Meat and everything.) Not sure how I missed that! Weird.

Starting on writing up my packing list for Japan now, yes, 6 weeks before I'm actually scheduled to go. Don't give me that look, I like lists. Lists are very orderly! They maintain a modicum of organisation in my otherwise very unorganised life. ... And they ensure I don't forget things. It wouldn't do to be writing this the night before I leave only to realise that I put holes in all my socks years ago.



... Still, sometimes even I have to admit to myself that I can occasionally go a little overboard.

(Uh. Belatedly, that's a huge image. For those of you on dial-up.)

This entry is probably going to offend someone, somewhere, so if you think it might, please don't read it? I'm not looking to stir shit up, I just want to get my thoughts out somewhere, and I'm not going to apologise for doing that on my journal that I have... specifically for dumping my more personal thoughts and not having to bother with filters.

Anyway.


I really can't relate when people tell me that they don't know what they want to do with their lives. In one sense I get kind of jealous of them, because if you don't know what you want to do, then hey, you can be anything. (Well, within reason.) There's a wide range of choices open to you. If you pick one and fail at it, no sweat, you can pick another.

In another sense I also become kind of bewildered when I hear that, because for as long as I knew the meaning of the phrase "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I always had an answer. Sure, that dream may have changed over the last two decades of my life (though admittedly only once), but I always had something very firmly in mind that I was dedicated towards working towards. (From the age of about 4 until 13, it was acting, and from then until now it's been drawing.) So people saying that they have no idea, well, that's just crazy talk, surely! You've had at least two decades to think about this, right? And even if peope change their minds, everyone has things they like doing that can be applied to a professional field, so why aren't they pursuing them? I don't even know. I mean, okay, maybe that's not entirely fair-- I know that sometimes there are extenuating circumstances as to why they aren't or can't, such as dropping out of education at some point for various reasons, but sometimes there just isn't any excuse at all.

And that's when there's another part of me that gets angry when people say that. I don't show it because I know that's a problem on my end, not theirs. Well, not really angry at them, but angry at how unfair it is. The thing is, I know exactly where I want to go, but it's probably going to be a struggle to get there all my life. Drawing, art, comics, conceptual design, and so on and so forth, everything under that umbrella is a really hyper-competitive field, and I'm very aware that I'm nowhere near even the top 50% of that group in terms of either skill or creativity. But this isn't a whinge about that, because I'm still working on improving those things, and have been for years, so I know I'm doing what I can there. But it's a slow process. I know I've made a lot of progress in the last few years, but it isn't enough. My illustration teacher gave me an HD for my final project and though I was happy for that, I know that the only reason he gave it was because he was marking it by student standards, rather than by pro standards. If that project had been marked by pro standards, I'm fairly certain it would have only gotten a C, if that, if we stretch it. So I'm still not there yet and I have a long way to go. Because you do have to be in that top 20% bracket to even have a chance.

And even if I make it? It's still going to be a struggle, because as everybody knows, artists of any kind (unless they're DEAD :Db) are just not paid that much. (And that is a big if, because there are several other things that stand in the way before that too, such as living in godforsaken Australia which is the dead-end of all dead-ends for the creative industry.) But you know what? At the end of the day, that's probably not even going to be the main problem, because the main problem is this, and the statistics all agree:

The reality of the situation is that it's entirely likely that I'll never make it in the first place. In everybody's opinon, including my own, I am pretty much setting myself up for failure and a hard fucking life :Db. They don't even have to say it, I can see it in their eyes when I say what I want to do with my life, even if they wish me luck or say (insincerely) that they believe in me. I'm used to it but it still cuts every time, to the point that I'm reluctant to answer that question anymore for fear of seeing that look, or worse, being met with derision or disbelief.

And all those problems are... realities I've come to accept, and... while they don't make me any less determined, it really just fucking sucks.

And the question is, really, why? Why do I have to accept that piece of horse shit, when I'm devoting my life to it and can't see myself doing anything else and just want to be able to draw for a living more than anything else in the world, when there are people out there who just wander along aimlessly and eventually just slot themselves in somewhere contentedly? It's not fucking fair, but hey, life's never fair, so maybe I should just get the fuck over it.

So... that is why I get angry.

I'm sure that people in that position have their fair share of problems too, but if the situation makes me angry, I find it difficult to sympathise with the problem. And that... is the end of why I can't relate!

"I just had the worst day today, I just-- like, everything went wrong from beginning to end, and my period's due soon so I'm getting all upset over everything and nothing, and I'm so stressed out about everything that's due, and I managed to injure myself twice and--"
"..."
"--aaaand you don't care, nevvvver mind!"
"Well, it's in the past now, what do you want me to do about it?"
"Nothing, I just-- god, never mind. And I thought Dad was unsympathetic."


And she wonders why I'm an uncaring selfish bitch?

AAAAAAAAUGH

WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?!?!?!?!

SERIOUSLY

FUCK ME


everybody please kick me tomorrow if i look for a second as if i'm doing anything other than working. no i mean it. no excuses.

eta: oh hello there monthly bout of utter self-loathing! boy i did not miss you. go away.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA



Eta: Fuck it, I'm not going to waste my emotional energy on this. I henceforth wash my hands of it entirely.