Close, but not quite tentacle porn

So, after nearly 20 hours of flying, I've made it to Japan. The school (Kansai Gaidai) and dorms are on the outskirts of Hirakata City, in Osaka. For the first week, I'm set up in Seminar House 4, one of the dorms, until I meet my host family next weekend. SH4 is the newest of the dorms, and so everything is shiny and fancy in here. All the toilets are the space-age Japanese ones with bidets and such.

In the wait to meet my host family, I've got to make my own food here at the dorm. The problem is, I can't use any of the kitchen stuff during orientation week. Which is the duration of my stay here. So, I'm left with going to the convenience store and buying ramen bowls there, and bringing those back to use in the microwave. Also, I've found that all the milk here is whole milk, but whatever -- looks like I'll get used to it.

So on my first full day here, Nicole (one of the 3 people from SU going to KG), her roommate Mette, and I went looking for the electronics store, so that I could pick up a power converter for my laptop. Afterwards, we met Nicole's friend, who teaches English here in Japan, and she helped us out at the Softbank and AU branches. Softbank and AU are two of the three major cell phone carriers here in Japan. We also went to grab some ramen for lunch and took a quick stop into Book Off.

Now that I'm back in the dorms, I'll likely just relax/pass out in a bit. It's 6:20pm here, and I guess the jetlag is finally starting to hit me. I'm hoping to finish up The Road, and maybe watch an episode of Spice & Wolf or something. 'tis all for now~!

Being a college student -- a History major at that -- I find it near impossible to actually read a book that I want to. Somehow, I've managed to fight through things and have actually read TWO WHOLE BOOKS this semester, and I'm 1/3 of the way through a third.

So far I've gotten through Battle Royale and the first book in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, entitled A Game of Thrones. I'm currently working on the second book, A Clash of Kings. All of the books have been amazing so far.

Battle Royale, for those of you who don't know, is an alternate universe where Japan forces a "game" on junior high students where they have to kill their classmates to survive. The book goes between utterly depressing and action packed, and was truly a page turner. It goes into so much more depth than the movie, and really allows for you to understand the motives of everyone.

The Song of Ice and Fire series is a medieval fantasy world, dealing with political intrigue and family wars. It's really a complicated plot, but is unbelievably addicting. Pick. It. Up.

A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1)

A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 2)

Battle Royale

Managed to get it done with about 15 minutes to spare. Now, I need to have 45 pages by next week. >_>

So far, though, my group really likes it. I'd post it for y'all to look at, but, y'know, I'm a little paranoid about it...

417px-SakokuJunk

So, in an hour and ten minutes, I've got 15 pages of a screenplay due. When I woke up this morning, I thought I only had 5 due, and prepared accordingly. So, since 2pm I've been writing like a madman to produce 15 pages. I'm half way through page 13 at the moment.

The story takes place in Japan in 1640. A dutch trader has come to Japan, and has forced his son to come along as well, and act as a translator. So, he's here unwillingly, and runs into this girl. She's not too friendly towards him, but drops her fan. You can guess some of the stuff from here about how it turns into a romance.

That's what I've got written thus far, and I'm planning to turn it into something a bit more epic later on. I'll give an update once I'm back from class and how that all went.

Going to Japan has become this issue that is slowly getting more and more irritating for me. I mean, yeah, I'm getting to go to Japan, but nowhere near where I want to be (3 hr bullet train ride, overnight train otherwise to Tokyo).

The whole "reason" why I can't go study through Temple University by taking a leave of absence is because my parents feel that they won't have any sort of safety-net in terms of who to talk to if something goes wrong. Hey, it's going to be the exact same way if I go through SU, but the school's not going to tell them that! So instead, I'm stuck at a school halfway between Osaka and Kyoto, instead of getting to go to otaku paradise. Shinkansen (bullet train) tickets are something like $130 to go, so it's not like I can hop on every other weekend.

I'm hoping this won't make too much of a difference in the long run, and that everything will end up just fine. It's just that I made the better choice here, but because of some weak agreement between my school and Kansai Gaidai, that's where my parents' loyalties lay. I mean, hell, I'd prefer to take classes that were actually interesting instead of two of the three history classes they offer and some Japanese writing and reading stuff.

Goddamn. Either way, I'm coming back with a fuckton of photos.

OK, I've been so damn lazy with this

Week 1/3

Research Dirty/Dangerous jobs

Casting

Week 2/3

Research Dirty/Dangerous jobs

Otakon - skipped out

Week 3/3

Research for the Caveman special on History channel

Editing room - watched them go through script and discuss how things need to be redone after the first cut of the show

Tuesday

Started researching and writing critic bios for a reality show that tests the mettle of bloggers and amateurs by putting them up against veterans in the industry. I researched tech and video game critics, since I knew that they were going to be underrepresented (or just forgotten).

Thursday

Researching information on the Carbon County jail system, trying to find old photographs to be used in a demo tape for an episode of Weird U.S. Also, continued critic bio work.

With yesterday's digg, some fun with friends, and a personal revelation, I'm really glad that yesterday happened. Thus, I present to you some Vampire Weekend:

Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma

Vampire Weekend

Man, I'm really not using Vox for much else than these silly posts...I should change that, soon.

Week 4

Tuesday

First day of the new office, where I did research on lost technology for the entirety of the time there.

Thursday

More research on lost technology, and then a bit on sunken cities.

Week 5

Tuesday

Trascribing tape logs for Extreme Homes

Thursday

No work.

Tuesday

This day was filled with research for more "extreme homes." Really nothing much happened.

Thursday

This is when the heavy lifting began. I worked all day moving boxes and furniture that was supposed to be thrown out. We also cleaned out the prop closet and started organizing and categorizing master-tape boxes.

Week 4

Tuesday

Went to Pac-Man World Championship.

Thursday

Finished with the cleaning and moving duties. Cleaned out supply closet and labelled 94 tape boxes.