(no subject)
It occurs to me that I haven't posted here since returning to Japan!
On the 31st, I ended up at the Vortex with a bunch of Atlanta friends, where I ate a hamburger covered in bacon, fried bananas and peanut butter. From there, we were to go to our friend Billy's New Year's party, but I started feeling too drained and awful to head out to Acworth and back before three AM, so I just headed back home and fell asleep around eleven. On the plus side, though, the hamburger was surprisingly fantastic.
On the morning of the second, I bid my family goodbye and got on an airplane. Moments after said airplane got off the ground, an engine exploded and filled the cabin with smoke, so it was a pretty short trip. That flight had been a little late, and then the replacement plane's crew was rather late, so what was supposed to be a 9:45 flight left Atlanta at about 2:45.
This would have been fine, except that as a result I missed the last Shinkansen that went to my stop. Fortunately I worked out an alternative route just in time to buy another ticket and make that last train, which got to Kyoto just in time for me to catch yet another last train to somewhere local. Yuka (the lady it turns out I met after all) was not only willing, but actually volunteered to give a very tired me a ride from that station back to my apartment.
Since then, things have been pretty low-key. Work started back for the semester last week, but today is the first day I've had classes; last week was largely administrative/ceremonial, and yesterday was a holiday (Coming-of-Age Day or Adult's Day or whatever the preferred translation is these days). The long weekend kept me busy, though. On Saturday, Yuka and I went to see the new "The Day the Earth Stood Still," which was entirely salvaged by a self-imposed challenge to read and comprehend the Japanese subtitles before each spoken line was finished.
On Monday, I was invited to participate in a tea ceremony by who I assume are the pillars of the local tea ceremony community. I felt tragically underdressed and eventually gave up sitting in seiza (after I lost all feeling in my toes and the old ladies around me, either picking up signals I didn't know I was sending or guessing very astutely, assured me it was okay if I relaxed a bit) but all told it was a lovely throwback to last fall's halcyon days of "hey, let's bring the gaijin along and give him a bunch of food, why not?"
It's snowing a lot these days. I'm typing this up during a slow period at work to post later (cleaning time is over but I'm honor-bound to my desk for another hour or so) and looking out at a soccer field that's solid white, save for a few footpaths where certain students have stomped out their affections in kana legible from third floor windows. Over the weekend, any snow that fell overnight melted away fairly steadily, but today it seems pretty persistent.
On the 31st, I ended up at the Vortex with a bunch of Atlanta friends, where I ate a hamburger covered in bacon, fried bananas and peanut butter. From there, we were to go to our friend Billy's New Year's party, but I started feeling too drained and awful to head out to Acworth and back before three AM, so I just headed back home and fell asleep around eleven. On the plus side, though, the hamburger was surprisingly fantastic.
On the morning of the second, I bid my family goodbye and got on an airplane. Moments after said airplane got off the ground, an engine exploded and filled the cabin with smoke, so it was a pretty short trip. That flight had been a little late, and then the replacement plane's crew was rather late, so what was supposed to be a 9:45 flight left Atlanta at about 2:45.
This would have been fine, except that as a result I missed the last Shinkansen that went to my stop. Fortunately I worked out an alternative route just in time to buy another ticket and make that last train, which got to Kyoto just in time for me to catch yet another last train to somewhere local. Yuka (the lady it turns out I met after all) was not only willing, but actually volunteered to give a very tired me a ride from that station back to my apartment.
Since then, things have been pretty low-key. Work started back for the semester last week, but today is the first day I've had classes; last week was largely administrative/ceremonial, and yesterday was a holiday (Coming-of-Age Day or Adult's Day or whatever the preferred translation is these days). The long weekend kept me busy, though. On Saturday, Yuka and I went to see the new "The Day the Earth Stood Still," which was entirely salvaged by a self-imposed challenge to read and comprehend the Japanese subtitles before each spoken line was finished.
On Monday, I was invited to participate in a tea ceremony by who I assume are the pillars of the local tea ceremony community. I felt tragically underdressed and eventually gave up sitting in seiza (after I lost all feeling in my toes and the old ladies around me, either picking up signals I didn't know I was sending or guessing very astutely, assured me it was okay if I relaxed a bit) but all told it was a lovely throwback to last fall's halcyon days of "hey, let's bring the gaijin along and give him a bunch of food, why not?"
It's snowing a lot these days. I'm typing this up during a slow period at work to post later (cleaning time is over but I'm honor-bound to my desk for another hour or so) and looking out at a soccer field that's solid white, save for a few footpaths where certain students have stomped out their affections in kana legible from third floor windows. Over the weekend, any snow that fell overnight melted away fairly steadily, but today it seems pretty persistent.