Monday, December 29, 2008
Visa and Certificate of Eligibility.
Last night I received my Certificate of Eligibility from the immigration office. In order to pick up my new Working Visa, I need to present it to a Japanese embassy or consulate somewhere outside of the country. My current visa expires on the 7th, so I need to be out of the country by then. I have purchased a ticket to Seoul, South Korea, so...heck yeah. I am globetrottin'.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Well, I thought Christmas Eve was bad...
My Christmas was so horrible that it was actually almost comical. If it hadn't been so horrible, that is.
I woke up at precisely 7:05, having gone to bed a little late and a little drunk on Christmas Eve. 7:05 is an important time because it is the exact minute that the last train that I can catch to make it to work on time leaves Ichikawa station, which is no less than a 20 minute walk from my house. So, I started Christmas with the knowledge that I would be 20 minutes late for my first class. Lovely.
On the train to work, I noticed that I was nauseous. REALLY nauseous. Now, this in itself wasn't that weird, because I had, after all, been drinking the night before, but I really didn't think that I'd had THAT much to drink. Something was amiss. I quickly noticed that I was also having fairly terrible stomach cramps. Joy.
While teaching my classes, my nose started running like a gasket had blown somewhere in the back of my head. Awesome. I kept excusing myself to go blow my nose outside of the classroom...it's considered rude to blow your nose in front of people. I don't really care when I'm on my own time, but I want to be respectful when I'm teaching, at least. So, I was increasingly feeling god-awful. In my last class, my student kept asking if I was OK and I kept insisting that I was cool. Until, that is, the horrible stomach cramps cranked it up a notch. My face was apparently registering quite a bit of pain because my student finally insisted that we should continue later. I grudgingly said OK, and we stopped. It was a good thing that we stopped, because 5 minutes later I was in the bathroom vomiting with the force of a pretty large firehose.
This story is a little too big for one post, so I'll just continue in a day or two. Wheeee....
I woke up at precisely 7:05, having gone to bed a little late and a little drunk on Christmas Eve. 7:05 is an important time because it is the exact minute that the last train that I can catch to make it to work on time leaves Ichikawa station, which is no less than a 20 minute walk from my house. So, I started Christmas with the knowledge that I would be 20 minutes late for my first class. Lovely.
On the train to work, I noticed that I was nauseous. REALLY nauseous. Now, this in itself wasn't that weird, because I had, after all, been drinking the night before, but I really didn't think that I'd had THAT much to drink. Something was amiss. I quickly noticed that I was also having fairly terrible stomach cramps. Joy.
While teaching my classes, my nose started running like a gasket had blown somewhere in the back of my head. Awesome. I kept excusing myself to go blow my nose outside of the classroom...it's considered rude to blow your nose in front of people. I don't really care when I'm on my own time, but I want to be respectful when I'm teaching, at least. So, I was increasingly feeling god-awful. In my last class, my student kept asking if I was OK and I kept insisting that I was cool. Until, that is, the horrible stomach cramps cranked it up a notch. My face was apparently registering quite a bit of pain because my student finally insisted that we should continue later. I grudgingly said OK, and we stopped. It was a good thing that we stopped, because 5 minutes later I was in the bathroom vomiting with the force of a pretty large firehose.
This story is a little too big for one post, so I'll just continue in a day or two. Wheeee....
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Xmas.
It's 12:40am on Christmas morning and I just opened my only Christmas present, which my parents sent about a month ago. I worked until 7:30 tonight and I have to get up to go to work at 6:00am.
To say that it's hard to be here right now would be a massive and almost stupidly obvious understatement.
Tonight on the train home, I looked so angry and put out such a terrible vibe that no one touched me on the train. You have to understand...private space does not occur on the trains. It just doesn't. People push and jostle and ignore the most basic normal conventions of the usual space bubble. Crowding is incredibly normal. Yet, my level of "do-not-fuck-with-me" vibe was so huge that no one encroached on my space in the slightest in an incredibly crowded train. I realized that I must look fearfully terrible when I looked across the train and saw people crammed into one another at every other door...except mine.
So, I got home. I drank a couple of chu-hi's on the way. They are basically vodka drinks in a can. I found my roommates in a state at least as sorry as mine. They wanted to watch "A Christmas Story," which I had downloaded a couple of days ago. We did.
I attempted to cheer them up, and, in the process, reminded myself of what I am doing here and why such a small thing as a shitty Christmas will not ever...ever...stop me. I told them the story of my ex-girlfriend's father, who died slowly of ALS, and how every day that I could get out of bed and walk was a very good day, indeed. I reminded them that we didn't come here because we thought it would be easy...we came here because we had shit to do. I reminded them, and myself, of the menial jobs that we might be doing in our home countries, and that here we are very well compensated for skills that would be worth little to nothing in our home countries. I told them that they were a couple of the baddest motherfuckers that they knew, and I cheered them up, and I didn't even delve into my darkest, most horrible periods of my life to do it. A bad day here is not so bad.
It seemed to cheer them up. It cheered me up, too. I am doing all right in the world.
To say that it's hard to be here right now would be a massive and almost stupidly obvious understatement.
Tonight on the train home, I looked so angry and put out such a terrible vibe that no one touched me on the train. You have to understand...private space does not occur on the trains. It just doesn't. People push and jostle and ignore the most basic normal conventions of the usual space bubble. Crowding is incredibly normal. Yet, my level of "do-not-fuck-with-me" vibe was so huge that no one encroached on my space in the slightest in an incredibly crowded train. I realized that I must look fearfully terrible when I looked across the train and saw people crammed into one another at every other door...except mine.
So, I got home. I drank a couple of chu-hi's on the way. They are basically vodka drinks in a can. I found my roommates in a state at least as sorry as mine. They wanted to watch "A Christmas Story," which I had downloaded a couple of days ago. We did.
I attempted to cheer them up, and, in the process, reminded myself of what I am doing here and why such a small thing as a shitty Christmas will not ever...ever...stop me. I told them the story of my ex-girlfriend's father, who died slowly of ALS, and how every day that I could get out of bed and walk was a very good day, indeed. I reminded them that we didn't come here because we thought it would be easy...we came here because we had shit to do. I reminded them, and myself, of the menial jobs that we might be doing in our home countries, and that here we are very well compensated for skills that would be worth little to nothing in our home countries. I told them that they were a couple of the baddest motherfuckers that they knew, and I cheered them up, and I didn't even delve into my darkest, most horrible periods of my life to do it. A bad day here is not so bad.
It seemed to cheer them up. It cheered me up, too. I am doing all right in the world.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Tokyo Jedi.
Awright. I have spent a lot of time over the last couple of weeks cobbling together a bunch of footage that I took of myself mostly while walking to work. So, this footage was entirely taken with my crappy camera and then edited together and layered with various effects. The basic story behind the movie is that my mom wanted me to take a lot of pictures of Tokyo...I thought the easiest way to do that would be to take 30 frames of movie per second. That's a lot of pictures, Mom. All of these locations are very close to my house or work and I see most of them almost every day.
Anyway. I like the idea of creative Christmas presents, and I thought I'd give my friends and family this small gift instead of tangible stuff. It kind of fits in well with some of my ideas about intellectual property, as well. I hope you like it. It's not great, but I did the best I could with the tools that I have.
Enjoy:
A Tokyo Jedi from Ryan on Vimeo.
Anyway. I like the idea of creative Christmas presents, and I thought I'd give my friends and family this small gift instead of tangible stuff. It kind of fits in well with some of my ideas about intellectual property, as well. I hope you like it. It's not great, but I did the best I could with the tools that I have.
Enjoy:
A Tokyo Jedi from Ryan on Vimeo.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Weekend:
Soooo. On Friday night, I went to my friend Rebecca's house. She was having a party. When I first got there, all was quiet for about 3 minutes, until the first huge trainload of party-goers arrived. It basically went from totally dead to totally hopping in about 35 seconds. The apartment was fricking sweet, and I was reminded again on the way there that not all of Tokyo is filled with kilometer after kilometer of horrible architecture.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
This is funny.
I was perusing the LSAC (they administer the LSAT pre-lawyerin' tests) website, and I came across this gem: Factors such as the campus atmosphere, the school’s devotion to teaching and learning, and the applicant’s enthusiasm for the school also are very important. Remember that the law school is going to be your home for three years. Adjusting to law school and the general attitudes of a professional school is difficult enough without the additional hardship of culture shock.
Hilarious. You want culture shock? Try moving from Portland, OR to the biggest city in the world where you are functionally illiterate and barely functional linguistically...not too worried about law school culture shock.
Hilarious. You want culture shock? Try moving from Portland, OR to the biggest city in the world where you are functionally illiterate and barely functional linguistically...not too worried about law school culture shock.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Weekend update.
Last weekend was interesting. On Saturday night, I went out with some friends to one of the local watering holes. It's one of the Irish-Pub-In-A-Box bars that have become so popular, apparently all around the world. Lots of dark wood and dim lighting, and it had flat screen TVs for the soccer fans, of which there were many. These things are literally shipped abroad, from Ireland, as kits that will be put together by guys from
It was a relief to be in a western-style bar, frankly, because I've become a little worn out by the izakayas, or Japanese-style bars. Sometimes I just want a fucking beer, and not an endless stream of food that I didn't order and usually can't identify. Don't get me wrong, it's (usually) delicious, but it also involves an unfamiliar cultural and linguistic ritual that can be a little stressful, under the best of times, let alone with the addition of lots of alcohol. Although, speaking Japanese can be a little easier with the application of a little booze, strangely enough. Maybe the relaxation has something to do with it. Anyway.
I went with a married couple and one of their friends. It was fun. I'll probably head back there sometime in the near future.
On Sunday night, I went to an izakaya with some of the Wayo girls, and we gorged on spectacular Japanese food and chased it down with a little beer and sake (considerably less than the night before). It was also fun.
I've been working on a secret project that will be unveiled in the near future, but it has distracted me from my mission to teach myself Python, a coding language. Usually, I find myself getting bored by these sorts of things and loose interest after a while, but I think that it would be pretty useful to be able to write code in at least one language, especially if I end up in intellectual property. On that note: I verified that I can take my LSATs in Tokyo, which is a big, big relief. Aside from the expense of traveling to the U.S. to take the exam, the stress of the trip and terrible jet lag would be a shitty, shitty way to set myself up to take a pretty big-ass test that will have a serious impact on my life. So, yeah. Big things are a-coming.
It was a relief to be in a western-style bar, frankly, because I've become a little worn out by the izakayas, or Japanese-style bars. Sometimes I just want a fucking beer, and not an endless stream of food that I didn't order and usually can't identify. Don't get me wrong, it's (usually) delicious, but it also involves an unfamiliar cultural and linguistic ritual that can be a little stressful, under the best of times, let alone with the addition of lots of alcohol. Although, speaking Japanese can be a little easier with the application of a little booze, strangely enough. Maybe the relaxation has something to do with it. Anyway.
I went with a married couple and one of their friends. It was fun. I'll probably head back there sometime in the near future.
On Sunday night, I went to an izakaya with some of the Wayo girls, and we gorged on spectacular Japanese food and chased it down with a little beer and sake (considerably less than the night before). It was also fun.
I've been working on a secret project that will be unveiled in the near future, but it has distracted me from my mission to teach myself Python, a coding language. Usually, I find myself getting bored by these sorts of things and loose interest after a while, but I think that it would be pretty useful to be able to write code in at least one language, especially if I end up in intellectual property. On that note: I verified that I can take my LSATs in Tokyo, which is a big, big relief. Aside from the expense of traveling to the U.S. to take the exam, the stress of the trip and terrible jet lag would be a shitty, shitty way to set myself up to take a pretty big-ass test that will have a serious impact on my life. So, yeah. Big things are a-coming.
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