hey hey

livejournal is too long

i just figure out how to use twitter (maybe)

let's be twitter friends! search my real name or my lj name...

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I'm glad that we don't have to go to work.

And it's okay that my middle school students are always tired from practice, because it's a cultural tradition.

But every month payday is on the 12th, right?

And this month the 12th is a Sunday so it goes to the next day, right?

But the day after that is a holiday so it goes to the next day again.

I can't accept the fact that payday is gonna be 2 days late due to a holiday wherein elementary school students make human pyramids.

Hello~ Sorry for the extremely late e-mail. In order to prevent myself from procrastinating any further, I am sending out a blanket e-mail, so sorry for the impersonalness...

So right now I'm living in Osaka, Japan teaching English at an English conversation school (a company). I teach children of all ages and adults of all levels. The adults are a lot of fun, and the kids are okay sometimes too.

I'm also having fun living alone for the first time. I'm still trying to master things like cleaning and cooking. I can make fried eggs, omelettes, spaghetti, stew, and taco salad. I'm currently on the lookout for any really easy recipes you can make with one hotplate-thing. I'm about to try to make rice in my secondhand rice cooker for the second time. I'm scared. :(

I'm making a salary and this month I have a surplus of money for the first time and I'm really confused. What did I forget to pay for?

I have some Japan pictures here:
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/elbudzowski/Japan

And some videos here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/squeekzoid

Our 2.5-week-long summer vacation has just started, so hopefully I will be able to upload some more cool pictures soon. I have one on my camera right now of a giant cicada--those things are really loud.

Summer in Osaka is terrible. I have never experienced this kind of heat and humidity in my life. It's inconceivable! I think it's almost over, though...

I've been taking Japanese classes at the YMCA, but I don't get a chance to use Japanese much. We're not allowed to use it at work and almost none of my friends speak it. Most of my Japanese practice these days comes from watching TV. The Japanese love their variety shows.

For Osaka being such a big, famous city, it's kind of hard to find postcards with views of Osaka on them--what's with that? I found them in one place: in the middle of the insane shopping district in the center of Osaka. At that time, I was low on money, I only bought five postcards. During this break, I'm gonna find my way back to that place, hopefully, and buy many more. If you would like one, let me know what your address is.

Anyway, I'll send another e-mail soon, and the next one will be more interesting (maybe)! I haven't been blogging at all either, so I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm not dead, in case you were wondering. I'm sorry it took so long.

Let me know how you're doing! Your life is probably more exciting than mine right now...

-Elsa

Still in Japan

Still don`t have internet

Job`s pretty good

Don`t particularly like the kids` classes

Running out of money but payday is in 9 days

Signing up for internet in Japan sucks hard. I`m back in Media Cafe Popeye now. There are free drinks! And miso soup! I really like these otaku places here. That`s probably a bad sign.

Anyway, I am running out of money (stupid rent), but I bought a ticket to go see Anipara Extreme Live on the last day of Golden Week break and am making preparations to ｂｕｙ night bus tickets to get to Tokyo (which are way cheaper than I thought they`d be--whew!). I don`t need to eat, right?

So we finished training yesterday, yay! Everyone made it except for the two who quit! (They're going to spend their year and a half until grad school traveling overland back to America instead, so that's a noble goal I guess.)

So yesterday was the big wrap-up day on dress code and work and all that boring stuff. We're substitute teachers until April, so we have to call in to headquarters every day and receive instructions on where to go, and we could be sent anywhere in Kansai on short notice. But when we got to talking about business trips and travel reimbursement, the guy went, "On that note, the [only] school in Hiroshima needs some help for the end of the year! If you're interested, tell me like today!" And a bunch of people were like, "Sure!" And then he goes, "We actually need someone to go starting Monday!" And everyone was like, "Um..." But I was like, "Sure, what the hell?" So tomorrow I leave for Hiroshima! I'll be there until Thursday! I'll take the bullet train and live in a hotel, and I'll get reimbursed for it all within five days, and I'll have Wednesday off, and I'll get to do my first three days of teaching in stability instead of running all over the place! Then another guy from my group will come down to replace me Friday-Monday. I went to Hiroshima once before, it was awesome. Swe~et.

So today I did a lot of laundry in preparation. I might be going to the Tennoji Zoo with the 3 others who live in my building soon. Yay!

This is Jero. He came from Pittsburgh to Japan specifically to sing enka, and just released his first single in February (I saw him on TV and looked him up). Of course Japan has to exploit his image, inadvertently creating a pretty damn funny video.



Big-ish news later for me, will write later, must do laundry.

Joy has spread throughout the Chateau Oji, for some kind soul has unlocked his internet connection. Judging by the speed (or lack thereof), however, I am far from the only person in the building attempting to use it. Oh well. I'll get on and post this and stuff at some obscene hour of the morning.

Of course, I'm still going to get my own connection, and I want to get BBTv too so I can have more than 6 channels to study Japanese from. That should come out to like 8,000 yen/month all together, whenever I get around to getting it ordered and installed.

Only a few more days of training! It's a lot of fun, but it's pretty intense. I think I'm going to like teaching, but it's scary to think of how soon they're gonna stick me out there.

The married couple in my training group decided to quit over the weekend! That's sad because they were really nice! But the worst part is that now I'm the only American in my training group! After Kansai Gaidai, that's a really weird feeling.

I had a kind of a complaint/minor freak-out about training stuff, but it's a problem that a lot of people would probably love to have, so I won't even go into it.

Here's what I wrote Monday night:
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Last night I found a 100-yen shop and bought a shower curtain and a hair-catcher for my shower, and some towels (some of which are now serving as my pillow, which is only slightly better than my bag of clothes), and one of the songs they piped into the store was a terrible Japanese version of "Rehab," which was hilarious.

Oh, and some guy who said he was from NHK came to my apartment last night, and when he saw me he was like, "Oh, crap," and I couldn't figure out what he wanted, and he finally said someone who spoke English would come back later, and I e-mailed my friend and she said that he wanted money from me but that I should just say "I don't watch NHK!" and not give him any, so now I'm scared that the NHK is going to start stalking me.

I spent so much money today already and half of iｔ was on a train ticket to a place that I couldn`t even find and back. I finally got a half blanket for 2000 yen at a mall that was near my 2000 yen at a mall that was near my train station anyways. I got some good food though. Now I`m back at Popeye because no way do I want to drag my laptop to Tsutaya and after I`m done I think I`m gonna go home, pick up some snacks on the way, and just stay for the rest of the day because it`s only 12:30 and I feel like crap already.

Here: pictures of Japan!

And here's my flight story.

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I'll post about yesterday later.

Hi! I made it! I wrote a big entry on my laptop about my flight over but as I don`t have Internet access in my apartment yet (I`m in an internet cafe kind of thing near my apartment now), you`ll have to wait to read it! Too bad! Right now I`m contacting people via the internet (I have about 45 more minutes left), then I`m gonna go shopping for things like shampoo and garbage bags. Hooray! TTYL!

I just noticed that the Perry Bible Fellowship has the full name, address, and phone number up of a man who owes him money (he owes $150 and lives in Media). That is amazing. More people should utilize this collection technique.

EDIT: Reason and consequences

So the poison ivy on my arms has gone from "OH GOD ITCHY POISON IVY MAKE IT STOP" to "OH GOD ITCHY POISON IVY + SCABS KILL ME NOW" and is now at "OH GOD DRY CRUNCHY SCABS THAT ALTERNATE BETWEEN ITCHING AND BURNING WHY GOD WHY." I tried to take pictures but they didn't take very well. So you guys lucked out.

However, the process is starting all over again (in teeny little spots this time, not the gihugic patches that my arms are covered in) on my right elbow, my right hip, the tops of my feet...and on my sister. Uh oh. Where is it coming from?!

In less grody news, I have been watching this video all night. It makes me happy. (The cool part starts at about 1:30, but the theme song is cool too.)



Doesn't that look like so much more fun than that Hare Hare Yukai crap?

Alright, here I go, AGAIN, running the recovery disk I just got to wipe my computer, AGAIN.

I've been playing with the Eagle Fire Garfield Randomizer and I got a pretty funny one, but you can't see it because I don't feel like uploading it anywhere just so I can post it on here.

Also, I posted in my anison translation blog (I dunno why I keep plugging it, I know none of you are interested) that I would translate JAM Project's new song, "No Border," if someone found me the lyrics. Well, I got a comment today that somebody did! It was on a Hong Kong JAM Project blog (the author of which may very well be the one who left me that comment). So I had the translation up within an hour (no work today + quite a bit of time home alone due to a gym meet = strong productivity in all of the wrong things). The single doesn't even come out for two more days. Mwa ha ha. Yes, I do feel special.

I wonder if I should go post something about that in the JAM Project community on mixi. That would mean writing in Japanese. Coherently. Meh.

I have poison ivy. Stupid freaking cats.

Wanna see my new desktop background? Look look!

On a completely unrelated note, I still completely hate all of the dogs in my neighborhood, and it's a million times worse at night when I can't see whether they're on a leash or not, or even where the hellshrieks of doom are coming from.

81% Chris Dodd
81% Barack Obama
80% Hillary Clinton
79% Joe Biden
78% John Edwards
74% Dennis Kucinich
74% Bill Richardson
73% Mike Gravel
54% Rudy Giuliani
43% John McCain
36% Mitt Romney
35% Mike Huckabee
30% Tom Tancredo
29% Ron Paul
24% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

I'm not making any commitments until the primaries are over and there are fewer choices...

I just got my placement offer from ECC. Kinki starting March 5. Cool.