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Metamorphosis

Friday, March 10, 2006

Streaky

I'm a streaky person. I tend to latch onto things with great ferocity and intensity, but only for short spurts. I notice this phenomenon with games, anime, books, endeavours into learning certain computer stuff, and of course, this blog. Why did I start this blog? Keep in touch with friends, family. Probably lost sight of the goal at some point. Thanks to all those kept in touch through e-mail. Hopefully this spurt will last me into the home stretch.

Speaking of streaks, another unrelated sort of streak i've noticed is the way in my Japanese skill fluctuates. it's very streaky. I'll have a stretch of days where I'll feel like I don't understand anyone and no one understands me and then another string of days of the exact opposite. On the whole though, when I look at the big picture, it's sort of like a one step back, two steps forward sort of deal.

Another way I've found to gauge your profiency in Japanese is to see how frequently people compliment you on your Japanese skill. When I first got here it seemed like everyone, when they first met you, would praise you for saying the simplest things - "watashi wa lorenzo desu."! It's almost as inevitable as being complimented on your chopstick-wielding skills. I haven't heard anyone compliment my Japanese in months.

I finally got a bike and my life feels so much more complete with it. One of my co-workers lent it to me. I'll buy him a drink before I leave. It's one of those foldable ones. These babies are actually a lot easier to ride than they look. I've been riding for over a month now, to and from work (10 km. one way). Switching to riding on the left-hand side of the road took all of about 2 minutes to get used to. It's just like riding one of those mirror courses in a racing game. After realizing how much of Matsumoto remained undiscovered before biking (essentially, everywhere besides a 1 km radius around each of the four stations), I've made it my new policy to say I don't really know a city until I've biked down its streets. speedo

I was one of the crazy people to get up early on March 2 to line up for a DS Lite. And even take a day off work. For once I felt lucky to be stuck out in the countryside - only around 20 people lined up outside Toys R Us here - and they had plenty more units. People in Tokyo didn't fare so well. Anyway I figured, hey, if I'm in Japan I met as well experience lining up for a console launch. Except, this wasn't even technically new hardware, just a redesign...

[ posted by asynchro @ 12:02 am | Permanent link | ]