traffic/ラッシュ

（前回のブログ「new format」から英語と日本語両方使うようにしていたから、よかったらfacebookのノート、あるいはposterousのタブを見てください）
 
A couple of weeks ago, I watched an old episode of Twilight Zone with William Shatner that took place on an airplane. It surprised me to find that I had become so unused to people smoking on planes that the scene looked strange to me, even though I distinctly remembered flying to Taiwan as a child and having my mother ask to be seated as far away from the smoking section as possible during the 14-hour flight. I had all but forgotten that smoking had ever been allowed on planes, but it had only been banned within my lifetime. Granted, I'm not as young as I used to be, but that's still only within the last twenty years or so since I can remember it so clearly :P
 
As I commuted to work for the first time in over five years in L.A. rush hour traffic, I thought about how, soon, people talking into their cell phones while driving would seem as outdated as people smoking in airplanes in old Twilight Zone episodes. I remembered how all the cool people seemed to be able to drive and talk on their cell phones at the same time (all while eating breakfast and changing lanes, as seemed to be the case sometimes). The further I drove into L.A., the more people there seemed to be trying to look important and busy while stuck in bumper to bumper traffic by talking as conspicuously on their cell phones as possible.
 
I lived in Japan for over two years after my last regular commute, and when I came back, the morning rush hour looked a little different. Now the handsets have been replaced by bluetooth headsets and in-car wireless systems, and it makes me feel like we've lost a part of L.A.'s culture, however dangerous it may have been. Of course, just because there's a law in place now making it illegal doesn't mean that people will stop using their cell phones while driving, but now kids my sister's age who have yet to experience L.A. rush hour may think twice before trying to imitate Brad Pitt in that old movie during their first commute.
 
数週間前、いとこの家でウィリアム・シャトナーが出てた飛行機の中で喫煙できる時の古い「トワイライト・ゾーン」を見た。なんか、変な画面だと思ったけど、自分の目で見たことあると思い出した。小さい時、台湾へ行く１４時間の便で母が禁煙席を頼まれたことだった。でも、今もう飛行機の中の禁煙はごく当たり前のことになっただろう。
 
先週、インターンシップを始まって、５年ぶりのロスのラッシュだった。最近、ロスは運転中携帯を使うのが禁止になったせいで、大げさに携帯で話す人がトワイライト・ゾーンの飛行機の中のタバコを吸う人のようになっちゃうかもしれない。以前、ロスの中心に近づけば近づくほどもっとそのような人が見られた。かっこよく見られたかった人がハリウッド映画気分をとりすぎた可能性があったけど、それもロスの魅力の一つだったと思う。
 
それで、２年ちょっと日本に住んでいた。帰ってきたら、朝のラッシュはもう変化した。携帯はもうブルートゥースのヘッドセットや車内システムに代わったから、なんかロスの文化の一部分が失っちゃった気がした。もちろん、法律があってもその法律を守らない人がいるけど、妹のようなラッシュの未経験者は初ロスのラッシュで簡単に何年前のアノ映画のブラッド・ピットの真似できるわけないだろう。

new format

A new year, a new computer, a new job, a new church... almost four years after graduating college, I'm pretty much where I should have been when I just graduated, if I had actually known what I wanted to do with my life at that point. A few years and countries later, I only have a slightly better idea of what that is, but I have gotten better at taking things in smaller steps and trusting that God will have something for me to do afterwards.

Anyway, I need to type more to get my hands used to the spread out keyboard of my new macbook and try to post here more often. Again. I don't make new year's resolutions or goals or anything, but now seems to be as good a time as any to at least make a goal for myself of posting at least once (twice?) a week. I like to set goals I can reach, and I know I won't be able to go straight into posting every day, but I'll see how my new schedule goes after it settles down.

新年、新しいパソコン、新しい仕事、新しい教会…　もうすぐ大学卒業してから４年だけど、また卒業したばかりの気分だ。何年も経って、何国にも行ったけど、まだ自分の道がはっきりわからないから、小さな目標を目指して、神様が後を教えてくれると信じてるから、何とかなると分かってる。

とりあえず、この新しいMacBookのキーボードに慣れるためにもっと使いしなきゃと思うから、もっとこっちにブログを書きたい。まぁ、新年の決意とかはしないけど、今こそ新しい目標を決めればいいんじゃない？週一回（二回？）ブログを書くことにしている。目標は実際にできるものの方が効果があると思うので、少ないほうから始まる方がいい。いきなり毎日は無理と分かってるけど、この新しいフォーマットがよければ、もっと書くかな…

december update~

I can't believe it's already December! I finished my novel on the 22nd, way earlier than I've ever been able to finish it before. (need to update that sidebar sometime before the next nanowrimo comes around this time...) Since then, I've been trying to recover from writing until (past) midnight instead of going to bed and reviewing grammar and vocabulary for the JLPT. My grammar has gotten a lot better since I first came back to Japan ^^ My vocabulary has gotten better, too... but is still hovering around 60%... The Level 1 passing grade is 70% (it's 60% for the lower levels). Still, if I can get over 70% on the other sections, I probably have a good chance of passing ^^; I just hope the actual exam isn't too much harder than the practice ones I've been taking for the past two months......

Anyway, my parents got me a JR rail pass as an early Christmas present, since I'm on a tourist visa this time~ So I'll be going to Tokyo the week after the exam, and then visiting Kyoto for a couple days at the end~ And then I'll be back in Okayama to pack and do the Christmas show for my church, and then I'll be back in the States indefinitely from December 22.

The older brother of one of the kids in the youth group goes to the University of Tokyo (Todai), the top university in Japan, and he said he'd show me around if I came to visit, so I was looking at the website to see if I cared which campus I went to when I found a link for the Todai-Yale initiative. It was really strange to be back on Yale's website after so long, especially when I was researching what I wanted to do in Japan. I knew without looking at the address that I was on Yale's site, though :D It was just weird seeing Richard Levin with all those Japanese professors XD;

Happy Pocky Day!

Apparently, November 11 is Pocky Day because when you write the numbers out, 11/11 looks like sticks of Pocky XD Unfortunately, I didn't end up being able to really celebrate it, but my friend inspired me to post at 11:11pm with her post at 11:11 pm (which ended up being at 23:11 because most Japanese blogs go by the 24-hour system). I actually missed 11:11 by a few minutes, but I changed the time stamp just for today :P

In terms of nano-ing, I'm now more than five days ahead and am still on track for finishing around November 20. I thought I would escape Week 2 blues by being ahead and at the part of my novel that I wanted to write from the beginning right now, but the fatigue part of keeping a steady pace of 2k words a day was starting to get to me, and I really didn't feel like writing anything yesterday (although I still churned out my 2k). It was taking me longer and longer to write my daily quota, and I was going to bed later, but having to wake up at the same time, which didn't help. Today was better, and I feel like I'm getting back into the groove again. Or at least, I was able to get my 2k done before midnight. I was also able to pass the halfway mark today, which helped with getting me back into writing.

The next big number is 30k, then 40k, and I'll practically be done!

p.s.--I added the badge that tracks my progress on my blogger template, but for those of you following along on facebook, you can see how I'm doing on my profile ^^

nano update - day 6

So far, I'm off to a pretty good start. I've been consistently writing more than 1667 words a day, with about 3000/day over the weekend and 2000/day during the week. I'm about three days ahead so far, and I may be able to get another day ahead over the next weekend. And surprisingly, I'm only a day later turning in my homework than usual ^^; Before, I would do my homework on the bus and during my breaks at school, but I've been writing during most of my breaks, which gives me a good 500+ words for when I get home to type it up.

I don't have the rushed feeling as much because my writing time is broken up by the rest of my day, so I don't feel like I have to get 2000 words in one sitting. I try to get about 500 in the morning at school and 500 before dinner, and then finish up with a thousand before bed, which has been working out pretty well. Before, when I got a day ahead, I would use that as permission to give myself a day off from writing, or from writing as much, but this time, I'm trying to keep up my pace of 2k words a day and just finish early to give myself more time to study for the JLPT at the end of the month.

And somehow, I may actually have a chance of passing...? My grammar's gotten better, I think. I still can't figure out how to learn all the kanji and vocabulary I need to know, but if I do well enough on the other sections, I can maybe make up for it. Although I'm not doing as well on the listening as I'd like in order to use it to make up for my kanji and grammar... ><;

one more day (and a few hours) until nano08

I've been spending so much time this past week clearing my schedule and getting ready for a month of nano that I almost completely forgot about it. We've been taking tests every day at school, so I haven't been taking notes as much, either, which means I never know what the date is. So when I saw that yesterday was the 29th, I was a little surprised that nano would be starting in just a few days... Now that it's starting tomorrow night, I'm getting worried that I don't remember the characters and scenes that I started plotting just a couple weeks ago.

I was trying to remember my past novels just now and had a hard time remembering what I wrote about for the second one ^^; I think it's because I was trying to write it while working, and I had no time or inclination to think of a plot beforehand. Since every year I've been in Japan I've decided not to do nano before actually deciding to do it, it's been a pretty spur-of-the moment decision every year. I guess I should just stop telling myself that I'm not going to do it, since apparently it's become something of an addiction... It's strange to be able to say that it's my fourth year doing nano, as I never expected to keep it up this long, and even more strange to me that I've done more nanos in Japan than I have in L.A. (I only did my first year in L.A., but I still affiliate with the region).

On a completely unrelated note, I'm glad that I was able to go back to Taiwan for the elections this past spring, because it's really been helping me talk about the elections now in Japanese. Since a lot of the vocabulary is the same, I just have to kind of figure out the Japanese version of the Chinese or Taiwanese words that I heard a lot of while I was in Taiwan. It's not very smooth, since I end up using a lot of vocabulary I'm not familiar with in Japanese, but I can usually at least get my point across.

I'd love to go back again next spring since I've decided that it's my favorite time to be in Taiwan ^^ And I would eventually like to match up all the kanji I've been learning for Japanese to Chinese since I'm learning them anyway. Also, I think I'm starting to pick up a little bit of a Beijing accent from my seat mate in class... just a little. I never really picked it up from my professor in college, but most of my class was Taiwanese...

Off to finally watch Ironman in the theater, and paying more than 12 bucks for it at the current exchange rate >>; Ended up watching a Japanese movie instead... Ironman next time? I may as well just buy it off iTunes at this rate ^^;

the american movie..

I just got back from watching Wanted with one of my Japanese friends, after watching Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea and Paco and the Magic Book within the last two weeks. Japan's not really a good place to get back into watching lots of movies, what with a "cheap" late show ticket being 1200 yen, and the regular price being 1800 yen. But my friend (who happens to live practically next door, so we can go to late and early shows without either of us getting home too late or having to wake up too early since we live really close to the biggest movie theater 'in' the city) wanted to practice her English, and I wanted to watch more Japanese movies, so we decided that we'd alternate between Japanese and English movies, which basically means I've watched a movie a week since I've been back (although Ponyo was with a different friend).

But having the jolt of watching a Hollywood blockbuster after not really watching any American movie other than Dark Knight recently... I definitely had to get used to them again. Japanese movies tend to be a lot more minimalistic, more concerned with the scenery and the character struggle than explosions and crazy camera angles. Even Paco, which was packed with a lot of sensory information for a Japanese film, still felt like the complete opposite of Wanted. Even the use of "nothing" is different. The silent moments during an American films tend to only appear so that the next sound will seem louder, while the silences in Japanese films are there so you can think about what's going on in the story. It didn't help that the other two were "family" movies, either, although I probably wouldn't recommend Paco to young children...

I guess since I'm setting up to write for Nanowrimo, I'm paying a lot more attention to how to tell a story--the devices used, the cast of characters... once I start planning it, I'm always excited to start writing my novel, but this year, I hope I can keep the excitement through the middle of the month when I'm wondering how I got myself into this... Or at least have enough plot points and things to write about planned so that that feeling doesn't last very long...