Hey all,
Yup I'm still still here. Had a rough week with many tests, but they went reaaonably well. Here's the scoop!
As for my camera, it's irretrievably lost, and I'm not going to be upset about it anymore. As for my computer, I'm mildly upset but I know I can get it working again eventually and the data is not lost. But, one more piece of technology failed on me that I absolutely can't stand....my contacts!
It seems that even precisely manufactured cups of plastic don't like to associate with me. After TWO DAYS with my brand new pair of 3-month contacts, my left eye one became caught in the lid of my contact lens and ripped. There's a nice hole right smack in the middle of it, and I cannot wear it at all. This means I will have to wear glasses for the rest of my time here, and probably for the next three months. Words cannot express my frustration.
On a lighter note, I will describe the Shana movie escapade that we had on Monday. After a half hour of wandering around the station, Haley and I finally went into a hotel to ask directions to the cinema. Due to the super duper map of the area that hotels usually have, we found it no problem. I picked a showing in the middle of the afternoon, so only people around our age ( and some old men) showed up. It was kinda cool, to be among the real otaku!
Well, after munching on some stale unbuttered popcorn, we entered the theater (in a very orderly manner, according to the order in which tickets were purchased). Again, it was a small screen.
The movie was mostly recap, but it was nice to see Shana on the big screen. With that ticket, which cost 1500 yen, we also got to see two other half hour anime movies. One of them was so funny, omg! It was Inukami the movie, and it was so undescribably funny that I won't even try. Suffice to say that I enjoyed it.
As we left, we stopped by a game center and played DDR. Surprisingly, there are not many DDR games left here, it has gone out of style. Instead, the Taiko game is really big right now, so we played that. You have to hit a drum in time to the music, its rather fun. Then we left!
Enough of that. Other than tests, there is not alot of stuff going on. Some news not related to Japan: I've got a job at college this summer, so I'll be staying at college for most of the summer. Also, during room draw I had my friend Kristen pick for me and she got me the biggest female single on campus! How about that?
Well, you may be asking, "What does the title of this post mean?"
I'll tell you- Golden Week is a (nearly) week-long holiday almost equivalent to the stretch of days between Christmas and New Years that alot of people have off. It is like and yet unlike to April Vacation, seeing as it occurs in the beginning of May and is a series of national holidays, not school vacation. And, it's about to start!
I'll let Wikipedia do the explaining for me:
"The National Holiday Laws, promulgated in July 1948, declared nine official holidays. Since many were concentrated in a week spanning the end of April to early May, many leisure-based industries experienced spikes in their revenues. The film industry was no exception. In 1951, the film "Jiyu Gakkou" recorded higher ticket sales during this holiday filled week than any other time in the year (including New Year's and Obon.) This prompted the managing director of Daiei Films to dub the week "Golden Week" based on the Japanese radio lingo “golden time” which denotes the period with the highest listener ratings.[1]
Many Japanese take paid time off on the intervening work days, but some companies also close down completely and give their employees time off. The longest vacation period of the year for most Japanese jobs, Golden Week is an extremely popular time to travel. Flights, trains, and hotels are often fully booked despite significantly higher rates at this time. Even some foreign destinations (such as Asian Countries, Guam, Saipan, Hawaii, and cities on the U.S. west coast such as Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco) are affected during this season by large numbers of Japanese tourists."
-Wikipedia.comYes, Japanese people do actually say "Goruden Ueeku" (Golden Week) when they talk about this vacation time. Here's the holidays of which it is comprised:
April 29
Shōwa Day (昭和の日, the Emperor Show's Birthday)
May 3
Constitution Memorial Day (憲法記念日)
May 4
Nature Day (みどりの日)
May 5
Children's Day (こどもの日) also known as Boys' Day (端午の節句)
Since April 29th is a Sunday this year, Showa Day gets observed on Monday. Which leaves Tuesday and Wednesday as "normal days" when schools and businesses operate, only to be closed again on Thursday and Friday.....huh?
I find this schedule to be ridiculous in the extreme! I mean, who is going to come to school or go to work for only TWO DAYS during a week that's mostly holidays and prime vacation time! I mean come on, why not invent some special meaning for the other two days and give them off too. They did it for "Nature Day" because it was sandwiched inbetween Constitution Day and Boy's Day and therefore according to the law, had to be made into a holiday. From the Wikipedia article and from what I understand from talking to people, I think most companies do just that and make it into a full week of vacation.
Here's a side note on Japanese vacation holidays:
Apparently, in 2000 they implemented a holiday date change called "the Happy Monday System (ハッピーマンデー制度)" (yes that's right, Happi Manday Shistemu) which moved a number of national holidays to Monday in order to have a long weekend. In America, that is a matter of course! What took the Japanese so long, I wonder.
The very fact that it is prime vacation time is the reason that I am not going to go anywhere. Plus the facts that I have no money left and finals are rapidly approaching, along with the myriad papers and whatnot that must be completed before that time. Therefore, I intend to stay close to home during Golden Week. Perhaps I'll go stay at Haley's for a couple of days to watch their big screen TV.
Speaking of Haley...tomorrow is her 21st birthday! To celebrate, we are going to DenDen Town tomorrow ( place where they sell all electronics/anime/video games in Osaka). We will also visit a keeki baikin (All you can eat cake restaurant) and at the end of the day, go karaoke-ing! Personally, I wish it was MY birthday. You can't ask for a better birthday than that!
Maybe on Sunday I will go to an event in Intex Osaka that is for "Akiba-kei" (anime geeks) and maybe I won't, cause I don't really know what's there. Perhaps I'll go to that manga museum in Kyoto...I don't know. My plans are very vague at this point, the only thing certain is Haley's b-day plans tomorrow.
Well, that's all for now, I'll make another post as events warrant.
Leave comments, tags plz!
Hey folks,
Well, here's another quick update. Just to let you all know how I'm doing.
Unfortunately, this update has some bad news. As mentioned before, I lost my camera on the train. I simply do not know what happened to it; it's as if it disappeared from the inside of my backpack. And it was such a nice and expensive camera too. This means, no more pictures or videos for the rest of the semester. Ugh..
And if that wasn't enough, my secondhand laptop chose this time to break. It's as if something is slowly exiling me from all electronics...the laptop slid out of my lap (not very far) and the power jack in it got bent. Now it won't charge at all, and to preserve it's precious amount of remaining batter power I have turned it off. I won't use it for the rest of the semester. At least the data's ok - it contains all the pictures I took this semester BEFORE my camera was lost!
So I'm sans pictures and sans computer. It may be no surprise that I will probably not update too often now. But I will sure as heck try to do a little more than I've been doing.
Interesting things in the past/future that I have not yet mentioned:
1. Last week there was an EARTHQUAKE! I was at Haley's homestay house, still in bed about about noon last Sunday. All the sudden, I head this sound like someon turned on the washing machine. But it kept getting louder and my bed sharted shaking! I kid you not, it felt as if someone was shaking my bed.The whole house seemed to be moving. It was totally unreal - to someone who's never experienced an earthquake before, this was unbelievable. To have the very ground undearneth you start moving is an unsettling experience. It only lasted probably thiry seconds. Then Haley and I talked to each other about it, and I looked it up on the internet. Here's the info:
Magnitude
5.4
Date-Time
Sunday, April 15, 2007 at 03:19:30 (UTC) - Coordinated Universal Time
Sunday, April 15, 2007 at 12:19:30 PM local time at epicenter
Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location
34.78N 136.27E
Depth
16 kilometers
Region
WESTERN HONSHU, JAPAN
Distances
25 km (15 miles) WNW of Tsu, Honshu, Japan
70 km (40 miles) SW of Nagoya, Honshu, Japan
70 km (45 miles) E of Osaka, Honshu, Japan
330 km (205 miles) WSW of TOKYO, Japan
Location Uncertainty
Error estimate: horizontal +/- 4.6 km; depth fixed by location program
Parameters
Nst=176, Nph=176, Dmin=262.2 km, Rmss=0.77 sec, Erho=4.6 km, Erzz=0 km, Gp=107.5 degrees
Source
USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
Remarks At least 12 people injured and 63 buildings damaged in the Mie-Nara-Shiga area. Recorded (5U JMA) in Mie; (4 JMA) in Nara and Shiga; (3 JMA) in Aichi, Fukui, Gifu, Ishikawa, Kyoto, Nagano, Osaka and Wakayama; (2 JMA) in Hyogo, Shizuoka, Tottori, Toyama, Yamanashi; (1 JMA) in Kagawa, Kanagawa, Kochi, Okayama and Tokushima Prefectures
I'm in Osaka prefecture, btw. Visit here for more info:
http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/neic_beaf.html
Now that I've experienced an earthquake, I'm perfectly happy. It was just enough for me. No more, thank you.
2. This weekend we went to a Zen Buddhist temple as part of an art class field trip. It was really pretty and tranquil, but I get fed up with that kind of stuff after awhile. We saw the Genki Priest! (very energetic old monk guy) and he chanted stuff at us. We saw the famous 500 yr old Zen rock garden. It was full of rocks....our teacher told us that most of the rocks were not original ones from 500 years ago. During the wars, the temples would fight each other and stole each other's rocks! They were apparently quite valuable commodity...the value of the current rocks in the garden is priceless, probably running into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Pics:
-The remaining artifacts from the great Rock Wars between the Buddhist temples...
-the Genki Priest~!
3. Tomorrow, Haley and I are going to see the Shakugan no Shana movie! Yet another otaku-ish event that we are going to do. I'm running out of time to do them all...basically, it's an anime movie that I wanted to see, since I watched the series. I knew it was coming out while I was here, but you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find movie airing times/places etc. Everything's in Japanese, plus anime movies are not advertised that well. It appears that the Shana movie is only showing in a limited number of theaters around the country, and only for a time period of two weeks. It shows that even here, anime is not mainstream. After much hassle and searching, I found the nearest theater and the best time. So, we're going tomorrow! I'll post a report later.
-Pic of Shakugan no Shana.
Well it's all very exciting. I'll post again when I am able!
Dewa~
As always, leave comments/tags plz.
