I've had a lot on my mind.  New job, current job, school in Canada, school in Tokyo, grad school, etc.  I have always had 3 main interests in my life; things computer-related, music, and my Japanese language studies.  At all times at least one of these 3 pursuits is my primary focus and the other two sort of get put on the back burner.  Last month ( Read more... )

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Yes ladies and gents, we are now up to a record high four colours at a time!!  When I arrived at the salon my stylist Alisa informed me that the purple we were going to do was a no-go since the purple had been discontinued by their supplier.  She did offer to attempt to custom-make a purple colour for me, but warned me that she couldn't guarantee ( Read more... )

The speech contest is this Saturday at U of T. Unfortunately, Rob will be in North Carolina presenting his research at a conference, so it looks like I'll be travelling with Tsugumi or possibly by myself.  Last time I participated I was in the Intermediate category.  This year, I will be in the advanced category.  My speech is just about memorized ( Read more... )

I was plodding along through my Monday morning preoccupied with the things that can easily get a person down.

Then I read this:

こんにちは。
ご無沙汰しておりますがお元気ですか。

今日は残念なお知らせがあり、みなさんにメールを送らな
ければならなくなりました。

本学が留学生を受け入れ始めた当初から、留学生の日本語
教育に携わってこられました
沢木恵美子先生が、病気のため本日午前2時に永眠されま
した。
2月初旬に他大学で勤務中にお倒れになり、一時は回復さ
れるかと思われましたが、今回の結果となりました。留学
生の日本語教育に熱意を持って取り組まれ、私個人も先生
( Read more... )

I enjoy putting stickers on my things. It took me a while, but policy eventually expanded to include some of my more expensive electronic items, like my Nintendo DS and my laptops. The habit extended to my laptops back when I was living in Japan. One day while using Wicket (my now linux-only laptop) I ripped that stupid "Designed for Windows XP" ( Read more... )

I felt like posting yesterday, but alas, we lost internet service at the house for a significant portion of the day and I found myself doing readings for next week's classes instead of traversing my usual internet addictions.

I've started writing my speech for the Ontario Japanese Speech contest.  Ideally, I should try to finish writing it this ( Read more... )