Some more track pictures, from a meet two weeks ago (11/3). Probably not my best, in some ways better than before, sometimes worse, but overall decent, I guess.

So. Running:



[As usual, new pictures to the right.]

...In convenient videoblog form.



Well, not my videoblog, it's jariten's, so I didn't have to do any work. But it will do, oh yes, it will do.

Yeah, there's Barbie Girl.

Today's minor annoyance... On a much easier kanji test (where I'm fairly sure I got all the actual usage stuff right), I probably only got a low A instead of having a (good) shot at a perfect score -- all due to poor time management on my part. I really needed to spend (probably significantly less than) another hour studying, because I forgot some of the readings (where I'm generally rock-solid -- it's been keeping my grade up all this time).

Ah, well. If it isn't a (much) better result than the first time, at least it's encouraging -- Last time I got a high B when I knew every single word on the test, I just had trouble actually parsing the sentences they were supposed to go in... Keeping "contrast" and "compare" straight is hard enough in English (well, it was once, not anymore so much), but in Japanese it's just plain evil.

...On several fronts (thanks, guys). Still can't run very far, but what I can run I run a whole lot better (and faster). People in track club have been commenting on that. Still suck at Japanese, but I suck a whole lot more comprehensibly -- I occasionally have gotten comments about that. I'm still frustrated, of course, I still feel deeply uncomfortable speaking Japanese (that is, I have trouble at the beginning of conversations, or in brief exchanges, then I kind of relax into it. Occasionally I even start spurting copious amounts of nonsense at high speed, and sometimes people even seem to understand it. But other times I just get derailed and can't seem to make any sense at all, when I'm lacking vocabulary or grammar or whatever).

Writing continues to get easier, but it was always kind of easy. It's mistake-filled writing, naturally, but now my mistakes are more complicated.

I'm still exhausted, and I'm still getting a B (only question is high or low -- it's pegged right in the middle right now), but I'm more resigned to the whole thing. At any rate, the one thing I'm not complaining about it the Sophia program, which is pushing me, and hard, and is chock-full of excellent teachers. Recent poor test results aside, I suspect I'm actually learning something. I guess I'm fairly happy with it so far, and I know should give the process more time. I'm just tired, and I still think it's just slightly too fast for me, I do get lost occasionally. And somehow I need to find a way to relax -- just not yet, I have another test tomorrow. And next Tuesday. And midterms starting at the end of that week and, and, and... Yeah, it sounded good in theory.

One thing though, I seem to be attacking Japanese with vocabulary. It's not exactly helping to produce natural-sounding Japanese (oh, god, no), but it does seem to be helping with the comprehension, putting me in approximately the opposite position from where I started. I do need to start attacking the model sentences, but, well... I'm trying to get ahead on vocabulary (where my current efforts have ironically left me behind; I just finished creating electronic flashcards for the entire semester's vocabulary plus a bit -- we only recently started the current kanji book and don't finish it this semester).

I think I was worrying about the wrong thing. At least I didn't get a D. Barely.

I don't think I'm really keeping up anymore.

ETA: that said... Eh. I had a bad day (an exceptionally bad day, there was more), but... I'm learning stuff, but I'm still worried. And I can feel the burnout coming, I really am having trouble maintaining the pace and you don't want to know how much time I already commit to this. I'm doing just fine on everything that I can do with brute memorization (yay?), and I get almost as much spoken practice as I can handle before my brain shuts down, but it's really exhausting. And the trends are bad.

What does it say that I (usually) dread going to track practice, but (practically always) am really glad I went? There's an obvious disconnect there.

Class is less good. Once again, I was the last person to finish the test, which worries me. I don't know how I did, though. (Also, why do they always push the difficulty up a few notches right when I think I've got things under control? Got completely thrown for a loop by the kanji stuff Friday.) I'm kinda worried about this semester again, but at least now I'm just worried that I won't do that well (instead of failing completely).

Also, there was an M5 earthquake during the test, which was interesting.

Anyway, some new iPhone pictures I finally got around to uploading:

Behold! The Windows 7 Whopper, it's... Yeah:



And photo contest proof:



[Links are, well, at the biggining of the new pictures, rest are off to the right.]

Wah.

Actually, thought, really good year for them, overall. Progress!

It feels like my Japanese communications skills are finally turning a corner; they still suck, of course, but it's gotten to the point that it feels like practicing my conversation skills isn't a frustrating (and completely enervating) waste of effort. I had to pick up a fair bit of grammar and (especially) a lot of vocabulary to get here, but I'm starting to be able to actually communicate (if not competently, at least effectively) on a relatively wide range of topics. Not everything (mind you), but more than (say) travel, food, and studying Japanese. I still sound like an idiot, of course, but that goes with the territory.

In other news, I found out the results of the 上南戦 (jounansen) photography contest... I got second place with:



First place would have been nice, of course, but despite a fair number of people saying "you'll win for sure" I never actually expected it (I mean, really, there are a lot of students here, I'm sure there are plenty of competent photographers). I'm happy about it.

I have a grammar test tomorrow, though, so I can be happy about it some more later after I'm done.

No practice today; six people out with the flu. There were a couple people in my class, before, too, but so far the wood-knocking has been effective.

I had a feeling, actually, before I left. I had a much stronger feeling when I got there and saw a sign (even if I couldn't quite parse it). But I decided I'd wait around a bit, surf the web on my iPhone, and see if no one showed up... Someone did and told me.

I don't particularly mind; I don't have to run and got back a few hours of my time. One of the advantages of a fifteen minute commute is that going to campus is a now a fairly minor time commitment.

I think I might take a nap.

An amusing moment from class today... After explaining そちらは、もう紅葉も終わったころではないでしょうか ["the leaves have more or less already finished changing there, haven't they?"] while we were doing the whole reading comprehension thing by drawing a tree with red leaves on the board (using the black and red markers), then a tree with no leaves, he then wanted to explain how it was currently different in Japan (it just so happens that the letter we were reading was supposed to be written right about this time of year), so he drew a tree (in black marker) then looked around for a green marker, and not finding one, grabbed a blue one and said 日本では青ね before drawing the leaves.

野口先生 cracks me up sometimes. He seemed really strict and humorless before we started, but he's really hilarious. And a good teacher, besides. I'm pretty happy to be here.

それに先週の文法のテストでいい成績があって、とてもびっくりした。難しそうだったが、違ったかな。嬉しいで今から心配しない。もちろん今からまだ頑張らなくてはいけないが、安心してる。けっこうと思ってる。

Yay!

I'm going to go with this as definitive.



Decent speed, better ping.

そうして…

今朝試験を受けたばかりだ。もちろん成績がまだ分からないが、よくなくて、もう困るようになったと思ってる。

62272kbps down, 32904kbps up. Suffice to say, it's snappy... Oh yes, it's snappy. (I'm not actually quite sure how snappy, precisely, the speedtest almost seems to return random numbers between 25Mbps and 65Mbps, mostly in the 35Mbps range).

Also, up and running within three days of taking possession of the keys.

Not bad at all.

Some old pictures from the Red Spider Lily festival I went to a few weeks ago (in Japanese, the 彼岸花). I didn't take that many pictures by my standards, but enough.

Is it strange that I go to a flower festival and mainly end up taking pictures of spiders?



[As always, click through for the rest, newer pictures to the right.]

The second typhoon I've experienced in Japan came through last night. Like the first one, it came through mostly when I was sleeping. Like the first one, didn't get the full brunt of it (first time because it had weakened by the time it hit Hokkaido, this time because it had veered off a bit to the west -- the eye went right over Anders, though, right after landfall). That's kind of convenient, I suppose. I still haven't been through a real one.

They canceled classes today. I guess it makes me a curmudgeon to be annoyed instead of glad. But the trains were kind of snafu this morning -- I've never seen 24 pages of train delay notices on the screens on the Yamanote train before -- I think my previous record was four.

The weather's nice, even if it was really windy this morning (and still a bit windy right now) -- I went out when we were still in the 50kt circle, but the rain bands were all past. The clouds were moving pretty fast too, but the weird part is how they were actually going fast enough to make the sun seem like it's winking in and out almost instantly when the clouds covered it and then passed a couple seconds later. The effect was even more noticable when I was still inside, with the (frosted) windows closed so you couldn't see what was causing it.

In other news, the apartment is nice. Inexpensive, convenient, reasonably large, and in a totally kick-ass neighborhood. Got the keys yesterday, the aircon installed today (it was delivered yesterday), will be getting internet on Saturday, my bed and desk on Sunday, and Ai's apartment arrives (wholesale) on Tuesday. Time to update the FB info, I suppose.

Yay!

So, on the trip, I played around a bit with HDR. Honestly, I didn't produce much of anything decent. But I posted a few of them anyway.

This one's my favorite -- it'd be darned near "perfect" if it wasn't for the lens flare:



[Click through for the set past the link.]

One last set from Colorado, from a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park with Chris and Laurel. Of course, all but two of these pictures are of various critters (I also got a pond and a waterfall).

Here's a bumblebee (cute, huh?):



[As always, click through for the rest, newer pictures to the right.]

And also Red Canyon next door... Finally, the road trip set is done.

Bryce Canyon is made of rocks:



[As always, click through for the rest, newer pictures to the right.]

And then we made it to the Grand Canyon. (Finally?)

While this was how I pitched the road trip ("go see the Grand Canyon, and catch some other parks on the way"), by the time we got there, it was almost an afterthought, and we didn't spend all that much time there. Be nice to go back and hike around and stuff someday, but (for me at least) it's a low priority compared to a number of other parks. It's only my fourth favorite canyon, after all.

Ai blocks a view of some rocks:



[As always, click through for the rest, newer pictures to the right.]

Back to the photo blog (eventually I'll catch up with all the pictures... Four more sets now? I think so, including the flower festival when I got back). Anyway... Second day (next morning) in Canyon de Chelly before we continued on.

More canyon:



[As always, click through for the rest, newer pictures to the right.]

So, apartment hunting.

The original plan was: take a look around Yoyogi. Give up. Settle for something in Komagome. Be happy. But you know, first we had to look around Yoyogi, just to say we'd tried.

First place we went to gave us something totally awful and inconvenient. Not so bad for me (at least it was near the Chuo line), but pretty awful for Ai-chan. So we moved on and tried another agent. Turns out... Well, turns out they had something that had just been vacated the day before -- decent size, quite inexpensive (considering), and most importantly... three minutes from Yoyogi station. Um, yeah -- oh, yeah -- we wanted to look at it.

Today, pending a final bit of paperwork and such (all the parties have now already agreed), we got it. Probably helps that Ai-chan could do all the negotiating in Japanese. Probably helps that we could drop them the deposit on the spot. I'm sure it had to have helped that a Japanese friend is acting as guarantor -- I dunno if the agent went to bat for us or not, but didn't hear a thing about them being reluctant to rent to gaijin.

It's not the nicest place in the world (couldn't possibly be perfect for what we're paying -- the building is almost as old as me) but not bad, reasonably large, and, oh yeah, three minutes from Yoyogi station.

So far, so good.

Finally, we reached my favorite canyon in all the world, Canyon de Chelly. We arrived late in the day, when it was raining, but fortunately as we entered the park, the rain broke, and we got some nice views, a little sun, and lots of rainbows.

A full rainbow over Spider Rock (not my actual best picture or anything, just a full rainbow. Which I'd had my tripod by then, would have maybe looked a little better in HDR with those shadows):



[As always, click through for the rest, newer pictures to the right.]

Driving through Arizona, we got caught in a dust storm. It was actually very cool, but mostly because we were safely protected in the car. I was more director than photographer for the last couple of pics here, which were actually taken by Ai while I was driving.

It was a bit dusty, even towards the end of the storm:



[As always, click through for the rest, newer pictures to the right.]

After Moab, we headed south to Arizona. The first place we hit (really on the Utah/Arizona border, so not quite entirely Arizona yet) was Monument Valley.

There are a lot of buttes in Monument Valley, one might even say that it's quite butte-i-full:



[As always, click through for the rest, newer pictures to the right.]