A long-awaited first ! And second !

Yeahhhh last week I finally had my first karaoke experience. And second! First on Monday, with tutor Ryu and his buddy whose name I still can't remember. Unfortunately, Tareq and I were the only ones out of our group to join, so it was presumably less fun than it had potential to be if everyone would've come. Anyway, it was still great. Karaoke is really awesome. There's like 10^10 songs from around the world (English, Japanese, Chinese and Korean), so it ranged from Ryu's buddy's Chinese pop to my Jpop to Tareq's enka(!) to Ryu's voice being actually quite nice (in a girly way). Didn't make it too late...and the next day was Titinart's birthday (the girl who's leaving in 2 weeks to prepare for her studies in Europe after having been here in my identical situation for the same amount of time), so I convinced a couple of us living in Oubaku to get up before 6 to give her a nice surprise breakfast (a tradition I've had since I can't remember when).

Since Wednesday was actually a day off because of the university's birthday, Tuesday was perfect for celebrating Titinart's birthday, and we did so in contemporary Japanese style - first to an izakaya-kind of place for drinks and food, and then to karaoke with all-you-can-drink included for about 2 hours. Then the last train home, and a small afterparty in my room, until drinks were gone and people decided that it might be a good idea to sleep a bit before having to be at an academic workshop in Kobe at 9 am the next morning. Hehehe...

Which songs can you make out on the karaoke pictures? ;)

Ah, and the first pic is an illustration of the rainy season, which has now officially begun...most days are upwards of 70-80% humidity and a lot of rainfall; today was dry though.

Finally, before I head off to town, the choreo for our show is done! We practiced for about 7 hours last Saturday and at the end it was born. Cool stuff, I hope I can get a nice video recording for you all to see.

Exam update!!

This just in: prof. Sasaki talked to several people who know more about my situation than he does, and it is now most likely that I won't need to take the entrance exam in Japanese, but will "merely" have an oral (English) exam! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAwesome.

(the only problem now is the date - he was thinking first week of September, which is around the normal exams as well, but there's an Ego trip to Hiroshima on Sep. 4th-7th and of course I rlllly wanna go, so let's see if I can manipulate fate and make my exam happen before the 4th).

Oki, off to karaoke now ;)

Those green specks coloring the nightscape - it's the first time I see them

Just watched Tae Guk Gi, a Korean movie with a predictable, bitter, and stimulating ending about the Korean war and two brothers who get caught up in it in the worst way. After it finished, Tareq gave me the update on the Iraq war, since I really didn't know that much about it. Simply put, there are about 5 groups who largely overlap in terms of one aspect (religion, ethnicity, nationality) but are opposed to each other in another of those aspects, and all of who are out to get control of the oil, so they all fight each other. Yay! In other olds, about 70% of the world population is opposed to 'the' Iraq war, Mugabe = sad, and it's cloudy with 18 degrees Celsius in Kyoto at 3 am.

Back to my daily life, everything is 'koek en ei' (literally, 'cookie and egg'; I really need to pick up on English proverbs/figurative expressions .. if anyone has any links or recommended reading, I'm all ears).

Thursday, my keyboard came back from Tokyo and in the same state as it was when I first bought it - working with old firmware. Waiting for the new firmware to be published before I update now, on the distributor's recommendation. Also played with an expression pedal for the first time ever, after having Ari and Tareq cut the cable and switch the red and white wires to fix the polarity (there is an occasional incompatibility between different brands of keyboards and pedals), and it is FUN! Friday, drinking tequila with mates in Sanjo, and then meeting Misa and a friend of hers in another of those Japanese restaurants I'd never find or enter without her expert guidance. I'm so grateful.

Yesterday morning I went to my lab to attend some lectures on conceptual issues in the field I'm specializing in, string cosmology. Among the speakers were Andrei Linde and his wife, who are kind of like celebrities in the field, so it was interesting to hear them speak about this stuff. Though the technicalities were way beyond me, it gave me a good idea of what I'm heading for with my studies, and I got a much-desired boost of motivation.

After that, I was quite exhausted (barely slept the night before) and just chilled at the riverside with Misa, eating Japanese and American-style pastries. Then to Ego (the dance circle), where I joined in the monthly battle for the first time. I was paired randomly to a guy who's more or less my polar opposite as a dancer, a guy who dives to the floor as soon as possible and does headspins or flares for the larger part of the duration of the battle. I suppose we were quite a funny team to behold. Anyway, we lost in the first round, but that was fine, because I had a great time in that round, and the response I got from the other dancers (especially the 20-30 people who know me by name) was REALLY great. I totally didn't expect them to be that excited, and at the end of the entire event one of the judges (the guy at who's place we always have afterparties) made a comment about how one of the things that people in generally need to focus on is their personal expression through the rhythm of the music, something which he apparently thought I was good at since he used my name as an example. I can't wait for my first show in two weeks!!

From there, about ten of us biked/ran to Shimogamo Jinja, where we drank beers and watched the fireflies (and felt the mosquitoes) on a bridge over a stream in the forest next to the shrine - a genuinely Japanese moment, and one of complete happiness with my fate. Misa also joined us there, and after an hour or two we slowly headed for Akio's place, where we made merry until around 4 am. Twelve hours later, I woke up at Misa's, went home, and that was my weekend. Very satisfying indeed.

One last remark: if you write me a comment/e-mail, you *will* get a decent reply. I value personal contact very much, and as much as I am enjoying writing this blog because I know some of you read it regularly, I will definitely get around to writing more personal things as well, to each of you individually. I miss all of you and am always very happy to hear from you.

Beheaded Comfort Dream

Before I forget, let me write down a dream I had today, which felt like a recurring dream (do you know that feeling?), though this is the first time I remembered it after waking up. I was in some house (feels like Transvaalplein now but might have been something else), had to get out of the front door, but I was too tall for it. So I just removed my head from my neck with my hands (sort of a click-mechanism), took my head in my hands, went outside, and put it back on (which came with the comfortable sound of liquidy goo being squashed). Inconsistencies with ordinary reality I felt I'd lived before: I could still see but I was worried about bumping into things because I thought I couldn't see; if I touched the beheaded part of my body I felt something like brains and not the inside of a neck.

Currently speculating about the meaning...if you have any suggestions, be my guest.

Fast Energy Flow

Recently, I've been using every spare minute in the rare boring class to study useful things, cooking most of my meals (saves money), listening to Japanese conversation podcasts instead of music while commuting, watching 2-3 episodes of One Piece/South Park/docu's per day, sending e-mails to my friends in Tokyo to find out about their summer plans (I have to start buying tickets if I wanna do anything cheaply), downloading a ton of old and new music (King Crimson, Nightmares on Wax, Voivod, Elephant9, Los Amigos Invisibles, Scott Henderson, Jazz Liberatorz, Bootsy Collins, Junkyard Scientists, Yellowjackets...), reading Digg regularly, sleeping good amounts (had a nap dream today involving the movie Top Gun, which I've never seen), making new friends, chilling with old friends, getting drunk with all of them at different parties and gatherings, gathering a ton of study materials (websites, software), indulging in 30-degree afternoons, worrying about the entrance exam, e-mailing my professor about the details of the entrance exam, choosing songs for my first dance show (in less than 3 weeks from today), planning a Gion Matsuri kimono date with Misa (I'm borrowing one from her parents, hand-made by her great-grandmother (who is obviously still alive at 93!)), and feeling slightly impatient with regard to the progress I'm making conversation-wise. I'm TIRED!

Here's an interesting article I found on Digg: Is Google Making Us Stupid?.

I also went to Osaka for the first time a week ago with Misa, to see a friend of hers and her Spanish fiance. Osaka has a very different atmosphere than Kyoto - more fashion-conscious, faster, bigger, less old people. Looking forward to going there again many times!