And now the cool-down.

I'm back in America; regrettable it is.

It's boring here, really. But that's Japan's fault more than anything.

You know, they say that Japan appreciates the transience of things. The 儚さ (はかなさ) of things.

A few days ago, well, no, more than a week ago; two days before I left Japan, or was it the very day before? Or 12 AM of the same day? Very early, anyway, I was riding with Shouhei over to Tiki's house, when he thought I said 儚い when I was really saying something in English. It's really funny he thought I was saying that, because it's a word that's apparently only really used in novels. But if you look at jisho.org, and you see the list of meanings it gives for 儚い, you get: "fleeting; transient; short-lived; momentary; vain; fickle; miserable; empty; ephemeral." Notice that a few of these meanings aren't synonyms with the rest.

Between Japanese and English, especially with adjectives, there are few one-to-one relationships between our separate words. Even the word "word" requires different Japanese sometimes, it seems. 単語 and 言葉 can both have "word" as their best translation in separate contexts, but actually, the former is more accurately "vocabulary word." Whatever; it's confusing. In any case, many of the definitions I had to memorize for Reading and Writing Japanese were lists of words that sometimes seemed to not have much in relation with each other. I remember the definition for 届く (とどく) in my "textbook" (which was really just a packet) was this: "reach, get, carry." What? Those are like three separate steps.

とにかく (In any case), I feel like I haven't had time to appreciate the transience of my experience, the experience itself, or anything. Too much to let roll over my head, so it's not rolling. The last two weeks in Japan went way too fast because I had too much to get done. But しょうがない: there was no way for that to not happen. And then I had about 96 hours in Vancouver, no more... no, it was more like 67 hours. What? Then home. Christmas was underwhelming; but, the good thing, as usual: hanging out with my friends saves me. And now I have to get a French visa, re-energize the French part of my brain by reading, play Santa, try to secure a math job for the summer or an REU internship or something, and leave again. (adj-i) fleeting; transient; short-lived; momentary; vain; fickle; miserable; empty; ephemeral

I meant to paste "儚さ" actually. I don't think English is appropriate for this.

儚い。

Thank you, Shouhei, for the coincidence that gave me that word. Thank God for the coincidence that was Japan. Or for whatever led me there.

I guess something told me not to go back. I'm still trying to figure out what that is.

Until then,

さようなら。

9 days,

I initially was going to put a period at the end of the title but chose a comma instead. Things don't really end after those 9 days.

I'm really, really tired after these past two weeks, so I think I'll have a half-hearted effort at studying for my final oral exam and my sociology final quiz. Whatever, whatever. Whenever, wherever. You remember that Shakira song?

The song "I Want You" is an addicting drab daze. I don't know why those words come to mind when I want to describe it, but... Yeah. Oh, man, that was the best song transition ever: "I Want You" (which is by Common featuring will.i.am) to "Saturday Night Love" from DDR Extreme 2. Excellent.

There's one line in the song that I really like, and it's part of a really good stanza although it stands out on its own. "Hope the stars and the gods align me and you."

And when I'm tired, that's the hope I cling to.

FREEZE! Like me

Nothing has been more fun here than saying 「フリズビーをお送りします。ご注意ください。　[I am (humbly) sending the frisbee. Please (honorably) watch out.] って言ったりする [among doing other things]. How great is frisbee in Kansai? It's pretty damn great. Except that random-as-hell field featuring metal grates and bricks and artificial turf and basketball hoops and people playing soccer. But the dirt fields are nice. Plus, when am I going to be able to yell commands in 敬語 (keigo, honorific formal speech) again and have people get what I'm saying? Never, perhaps. But I will try to visit in April. We'll see. One last time (for Kansai frisbee) with you and me. Maybe.

Yeah, I'm about to (hopefully) complete my registration for Paris, which involves making a résumé, which in French is not "résumé." Rather, it's "CV," which means curriculum vitae coming of course from Latin. Okay, so, I have to upload a résumé to get a visa. What?! I don't have one; this is because I did not need one to work either two summers ago or this past summer. So, now, I have to make my resume (enough with the accents), for, of all things, a visa to France. Wow.

Que c'est bon que les français n'espionnent pas sur les américains qui veulent entrer dans leur pays. Ou peut-être que j'ai tort. (It's a good thing that the French don't spy on the Americans who want to enter their country. Or maybe I'm wrong.) Si c'est vrai, ne me tue pas!!! (Don't baise me in the cul, France. [Not giving a translation.])

I went to Nagoya today with my economics class. It was pretty すげー (sugee, hyper-masculine for "great"). I'm really happy right now too, and satisfied. Don't know why. Maybe it's because my body is finally 100% behaving and I wasn't dripping snot like a melting snowman, like I had been all week. Good.

And now plans are set for my mom to go to Kyoto tomorrow and have a good time seeing temples and stuff with my host mother and me. Except it might rain. Dammit.

That's okay. From here on out it's only finals.

I acted too late to be able to send gifts home; now I have to choose from the stuff I don't need until 3 weeks from now. Think about that; that's 21 days and that's December 29 when I can expect my shit back. Not great. And that's of course assuming I send it today, I mean tonight, which is obviously not happening. And I have to send stuff home because I simply have too much crap that I don't need, like summer clothes and random pages of random stuff that I got back from my classes and need to show to the Japanese department at Tufts to get the credit I want to get. And I get this.

Ah, Borat, I miss referencing you.

Yeah, and I have to buy a Playstation so that I can play the DDR games that I bought. Also, I have to make sure it ships rapid/express or whatever the option is. But it's only about 60 dollars.

I know, I could possibly get a better deal. But I don't want to have to install a modchip, against which the games might possibly have a mechanism built within. That's what happened with the DDR games I bought 3 years ago; didn't quite work with my good old modded Filipino Playstation. And unfortunately, they don't sell PSOnes in stores anymore (Go ahead and try. Even in Den Den Town, el primo electronics-district in Osaka, they didn't have any. Why???), so my only option is Amazon. Luckily, my experience with Japanese used products is that the Japanese don't even use the products they sell off, or at least it doesn't seem like it; they're all in pristine condition when I get them, the goods are, that is. Excellentそう. (It seems like it might be excellent.)

God, why wasn't my writing this vibrant over the past two months, when my life was so vibrant with everyone else? I guess it's more vibrant now, that is, my life. And even as my Hirakata life is coming to a close, at least for this year, anyway.

Hey, but 2009 starts real soon. A new year.

And something else to go on to. Man, I'll miss you.

ひまですか。NOという感じです

I learned something new and very important today. Attention all gaijin Japanese speakers!!!

When you say ひま (hima), it means "having absolutely nothing to do." A corollary remark to this is that when you're talking to or about someone and you have to be ていねい(teinei, polite), then don't ask them if they're ひま. That's rude because it implies that they haven't found anything to do and they are seeking out something to fill their time like a beggar. Yes, thank you 日本語 for having yet another word that's so commonplace with your friends but impolite otherwise and which has a sticky translation into English (generally translated as "has free time"). The correct term for this if you want to say or ask whether a person has "free time" is 時間がある (jikan ga aru; "there is time (free for someone to do something)").

My mom's coming to visit on Tuesday (she's currently in Tokyo for a business conference) and I'm going to go to Kyoto with my host mother who will show her around Kiyomizuderu or something like that. We're gonna talk about that this morning. Yes, yes, yo. Saves my host mom the trouble of cooking dinner but it also creates the trouble of going around Kyoto with my host mother. Wait, wow-- I just realized I haven't spent time out with my host mother at all! (Because she's never 時間がある.) That's why I found the idea so odd at first, and the experience something I'm not used to. Whoa...

Exciting.

Tomorrow I'm scheduled to go to Arashiyama and then Monday to the Toyota factory in Nagoya. And I thought I was going to be severely cutting down on traveling for the next few days. Whatever, more happy for my camera.

My route

And one more today about my route. My route here and away from here. From America, to Canada, to Japan, and eventually, after repeating the first two backwards, to France.

Over the past few weeks I've been really focusing on too much, and really focusing on whether to return to Japan next semester or to go to France. And I'm trying to console myself for having decided to do the second. Well, to convince myself that I made the right decision anyway.

But even more than that I came to debating on whether I had spent my time in Japan the right way. One thing that sticks out in my mind is that barbecue we had about halfway through this semester, the barbecue that ended up giving me ridiculous food poisoning; well, more specifically, something this girl said to me there. I was floored by how fluent she was at Japanese, and told her so. She said something along the lines of "if you want to get good, just completely immerse yourself; just watch Japanese TV, bring your 電子辞書 (denshi jisho, electronic dictionary) with you all the time and look up words you don't know, listen to Japanese music, and keep speaking with Japanese people." So I was at some point thinking to myself, well, why didn't I do that?

I'll agree with one thing: I probably should've bought an electronic dictionary. But always operating on the knowledge you already have in your brain is the way I'm used to learning languages, so I don't think I would've carried it around with me all the time like that anyway. I at least should've bought a dictionary that goes two ways instead of relying on both this stupid Japanese-to-English-only dictionary that I for some reason bought a long time ago, not noticing that it didn't go the other way, and on jisho.org, which requires me to turn on the computer any time I want to say an English word in Japanese that I haven't before.

So that's okay. But what about full immersement in the environment? Wasn't I too eager to cling to my old familiar lifestyle? Frisbee, my regular music playlist consisting largely of American songs (but with a decent international selection including Japanese music), no anime, no new Japanese music, no manga, what's up??

Well, you know what? When it comes to the media, I can get keep up with that anywhere around the world through the wonderful method of piracy. (Well, that's obviously what everyone else did before they came here, and what they're still doing now.) Anime and manga weren't my thing before, and watching TV and reading have become less of my thing, so would I really learn anything by forcing myself to watch anime and read manga? As for the music, I looked at what I've been missing lately, and, well, it's really just generic as always. I think I might've found one more good song from Mr. Children, but apart from that, like my mom says, "forget it."

And as for wishing I hung out more with my Japanese friends-- well, I've found myself in the most unique social situation I think I've been in in recent times. There's no other place I know of that really brings together international students and students of the host country so well. Also, I'm not usually this social, as far as hanging out with large groups of friends goes. I had to be shy eventually at one point. That happens occasionally. Usually my tendency is to eventually hang out more with one small, small group of people than with anyone else. But that didn't happen this time, really. Not enough time for that to happen.

That's the reason that had me wanting to stay the year the most: for my friends. If that wasn't obvious already, which I hope it was.

But in any case, my mom is really social, while my dad is basically the opposite although he sure loves to talk sometimes. I'm a combination of the two. It's understandable that I would mess up somewhere along the line. My social situation will probably not be nearly as easy in France, where I have to go way out of my way to meet French people my age (do they play Ultimate over there? that's basically how I met everyone I'm friends with here), and where instead of enjoying speaking the language they're there to study the people there will probably be like "ugh, I'm SO tired of French" all the time instead. I hope not. That was one of the things that was so relieving about being here: I, of all people, would get tired of speaking the language before anyone else. Japanese was fun to speak and you can always speak it here without bothering anyone. 日本だから日本語で話すことだ。 (nihon dakara nihongo de hanasu koto da, it's Japan so you speak Japanese) And I enjoy speaking French more than I enjoy speaking Japanese because I'm better at French and so I can make jokes a lot more easily and much better, much more ridiculous jokes. Thanks to Marius for years of practice, albeit most of it in purposely bad French. But yes, that's one thing that's good about France, among many others that I don't want to miss.

I don't want to miss Nihon either. But I'll miss you. And what Nihon means to me is not just the geographical concept of country nor the concepts of culture and traditions and language but more like the total, amazing experience I've had here with all you people and everything you guys have done to make this dream of awesomeness come true for me. And I'm wordless.