New years

Basically, this is a response to an e-mail from a friend.
I started typing it on my cell phone but my thumbs started to hurt.

New years was fun. Me and a friend inadvertently paid 7000 to get into a club and then just danced and drank. unfortunely no midnight kiss/new years sex Tokyo girls are cold as iceeeee

as for nudity, on the 3rd there was a big festival at 筥崎宮 called 玉せせりthat a friend of mine invited me to. I thought it was just to watch but no-no they want me to *participate* in it. So i strip naked in some random house in 箱崎 that I suppose my friend has some relation to, and some half-deaf japanese granpa puts on "traditional japanese underwear" which is basically a poor-mans sumo belt-just two pieces of thin, white cotton. I guess its a good thing he tied it tight, being the only thing between my manhood and the outside world, but-i kid you not-my balls are still sore today.

Then we all march outside barefoot, to the shrine to PRAY TO GOD YOU WONT GET KILLED and then to the street in front of the shrine to discuss strategy and wait for the だませせりto begin while having buckets of "力水" splashed on us by "supporters." It was a warm day with a cloudless sky, which is a good thing because apparently last year it was snowing.

Basically the だませせり is one guy gets on top of another guy's shoulders who are then supported by one guy in the front and two in the back. "You'll get it when you see it." As close as I could tell, the goal is to get the tama-a wooden ball a bit bigger than a basketball, and put in a hole somewhere in the shrine. "Where's the hole?" "Down there" "K, thanks." Oh, and by the way,When you get the tama you also have to raise it towards the heavens and praise the Kami and your ancestors for not having gotten killed. yet. And don't take your eye off it, because if someone drops it and it lands on yer foot, it hurts. a lot.

We waited for about 15 minutes, and down the street, I could see a brown ball on top of a clump-well actually "clusterfuck" is a better word-a ball on top of a clusterfuck of maybe 20 men, and soon it was my turn to join in the excitement. i mean join the CULTURE! I first started in the front as the kind of driver and we bumped around the clusterfuck for a few minutes before the "horse"-he was in fact called the horse- got tired and we switched. This went a couple rounds, and we got the ball a couple of times, but soon-guess who's number was up? So, I mount up my faithful steed-a japanese man I had no more than an hour ago and was now placing my nuts a cotton cloth's width away from his head.

Now, more then ever I felt the tightness of the belt, but quickly forgot as my steed rose and carried me forward toward the clusterfuck. The Tama is near. Now, it is within reach. I grab it and pull it away from my foes. I lift it in the air. Oh my god I have the Tama! I have the Tama! Now what? Ok, pass it to the next guy!

This experience was not unlike many middle school PE classes. "Oh i have the ball! Finally! I got the ball! I don't want this responsibility; get this fucking ball away from me!" I could have held it longer, being relatively taller and longer limbed than most of the Japanese guys participating, but I was told later that at that shining moment when I had the Tama in my hands, the camera shutters went crazy-the one white in an orgy of japanese men. INTERNATIONALIZATION DEKI-motherfucking-MASHITA!

Anyway they let me down, and next it was my turn to be the horse. Japanese men are not big, but carrying any grown man on your shoulders is no easy task. Especially barefoot. on gravel. Reaching for the ball, he thrusted his pelvis to thrust forward, into the back of my head, forcing it forward so I couldn't lift it to see the Tama. To support my neck, I put my forehead on the shoulder of the man in front and trusted him to steer. All I could see was his bare shoulders, and within ten seconds I was about to fall over from the weight. All i could do was hold on and chant with the rest of the clusterfuck "yo-SHOI yo-SHOI." words of power. I don't know how long had passed, and i tapped my head to indicate to my teammates I needed to change. As the three men in front and back of me moved away, my legs crumpled beneath me and i went down on my side. My rider fortunately, got away fine. I stood up, disoriented. "Daijobu?" "Un, Daijobu."

We were nearly at the gate of the shrine, and someone dropped the ball. The man who picked it up carried under his arm like a football and made a break for the gate-only to be rebuffed by the cluster. Now I could see where the goal was--through a square hole in the door, I could see a priest, dressed in his sunday best, standing behind the door waiting to recieve the tama. Everyone is gathered in front of the gate, packed in like a tokyo subway, some people even standing on the wood beams of the gate chanting yo-shoi, and grabbing for the ball. We passed the ball around the group a few times before we put it through the hole to give to the priest, and every time someone grabbed it, the cluster of men let up a cheer. After a few times around, someone finally put the ball through the hole and the cluster let up a big cheer, and began to move away from the gate, back where we came.

Walking back was a relief that it was over. As we walked, the crowd started singing a traditional song that marked the end of the matsuri. As we were walking, i noticed how cold i was, as I had been continually splashed with "力水" throughout the ordeal. Next was the remedy-a nice traditional japanese bath-with about seventy other dirty sweaty men. The bath house was a tiny shack on the grounds of the jinja. After waiting in line, i hopped in the bath. The bath itself was maybe about 1 meter square and about 1 meter deep. The bath water, already quite dirty from the groups who had gone before me, only filled up half the bath when empty, but was overflowing when you 20 men got packed into it. One more round of the song to make how long we took a bath before it was the next groups' turn.

Afterward, we walked back to the house, and after taking off the Fundoshi (magic underwear), took another bath, this time with only one other japanese guy, and then ate a big lunch and got really drunk with the girl who invited me and everyone in our group.

It was fun.

New Years Resolutions

Jeez its fucking January. Ive been off the rag for a couple weeks cuz they took the internet away at work :(. Lame.

Ok so relating to my post on goals here is a little more concrete list of goals for this year. Once again one thing at a time.

Basically, I think the whole life project deals with my tendency to procrastinate. It may be oversimplification, but basically my difficulties with Japanese, waking up, and otherwise getting done what needs to get done can be boiled down to a tendency to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse-off for the delay.
I don't wake up on time because i can always wake up later and always rush out the door. I don't go to bed on time because whatever i'm doing at the time seems more important than sleeping, or at least more fun. Anyway I'm being too vague. Basically, I'm gonna learn some time-management techniques and learn to put those into practice.

Mental tools. Here's some books that I'm gonna read to learn some time management. these seem like the best place to start: Getting things Done and The Now Principle.
First, buy those books.
Second, read those books. 20 minutes a day until they're done.
Put the stuff in the books into practice right away.
Record progress in a notebook - using a spreadsheet-type calendar.
I hope that I can get one of those done in english and then the other one done in Japanese. Depends on where I'll be with the RTK

That Brings me to number 2: Sleeping, waking up, and being on time to work.
My goal is to, by the end of the year, wake up not just on time, but early. Early enough to meditate for 20 minutes in the morning. Possibly early enough to do SRS for about 20 minutes.
Despite seeming simple, this has been very hard for me up to now, which probably means the goals have been too many, too big and far away, or too fuzzily defined. So I'm gonna break this shite down right here and right now.

Going to bed: Stopping work at 10:30. This is tough. Just stopping when my alarm goes off. I have a tendency to just continue to work until i get tired. I'm not tired at 10:30, but if I don't go to bed around then, I'll be highly tired the next morning and feel awful and fall asleep at work. So here's the system: at 10:30 when the alarm goes off, look at what you are doing. Figure out the next best place to stop. Finish the sentence you are reading. Finish the SRS item. If whatever you are doing is "not completely finished" at that time, fuck it. This is important. Fuck it. Writing an e-mail; it can wait until tomorrow. Watching a movie or show? Turn off the TV. Reading the Interweb? Shut down firefox immidiately and turn off the computer. Its not importatnt. Talking to friends on Gchat? Sorry everyone, sorry mom. Gots to get da sleeps. Type the magic phrase: Sorry, but I have to go. Talk to you later. I know, I know, I want to keep talking to you too. Yes yes, I know its the middle of the afternoon there and its only 10:30 here. But it's bedtime. Sleep leads to good health, good health leads to long-term happiness. Talking to friends and surfing the internet bring short term rewards, but I gotta think about the bigger picture cuz I'm an adult now :(.

Ok so 10:30. LET IT GO. STOP. DROP.
From there, there is a pretty set order of operations to follow:
Turn off computer
Put computer and power cable in bag.
Prepare other work bag: Only one book per day, notebook, ds, pens.
Put both bags by the door.
Turn on heating blanket
Take melatonin (natural sleep aid, to get me in the rhythm)
Decide on tomorrow's work clothes
Gather tomorrow's work clothes.
Put "pocket stuff" on the bookshelf
Change into pjs
Brush teeth/wash face
GO TO BED

This whole thing should really only take like 15-20 minutes, so I'll be in bed by 11:00, and if I wake up at 6:35 that gives me like 7.5 hours of sleep. That should be enough, but eventually I'll aim for more sleep, and an earlier waking time.

Ok i need to continue this so i'll post more later...

December

Jeez its fucking december.

Projects: One thing at a time.

So, in my effort to improve my life, I've decided to edit out a lot of the things I do. I mentioned this in an earlier post, that I have a lot of things weighing me down. Lots of things I'd like to do, that I theoretically have time to do, but that in reality just end up being overlapping commitments. Aikido and Kyudo. Japanese and English. Meditation and working out. Photography. Vegetarianism. Learning to cook. Girls. Friends. I want to do it all. I *should* do it all, but I cant. At least, not to the point where I can make everything a "priority." So this semester, i'm trying to tackle one thing at a time. Keep a few obligations, and the rest is just stuff to do in my free time. So, for now I'm working on three projects:

First, the sleeping and waking up project. This is my demon, i guess, something I've been working on since I got here. how to sleep enough and wake up on time. I go through periods of being good about it, and being bad about it, but at the end of the day, the goal of this project is to learn how to go to bed on time and how to wake up when I need to, habitually. From there, the sub-goal of getting to school on time *should* fall into place. I haven't really been late this year much (maybe about three times) but in the past few weeks its been getting more and more giri-giri, that is, close to the bell. This project could last the rest of my life, i suppose, but one thing I think I'm going to re-implement is a chart system for monitoring my progress on this project. Of course, I'll have to make it. we'll see. I need to think more about this project, since it's only now that I'm labeling it a "project," and think about how to break down these goals even more.

Second, Excercising (Swimming.) This is the easiest of the three. The only goal is to go to the gym for a 1hr 15 minutes 3x/week. So far, I've been pretty good about it. If i go on MWF, then I don't even have to do anything when I go to the gym. There's a class and someone tells me what to do. I do it. No problem. I love being told what to do. Thinking for myself is a pain in the ass. Or rather, not so much thinking for myself, but deciding for myself how to act is a pain in the ass. Unfortunately, that, apparently, is what "real life" and "adulthood" is all about. "freedom"
is doing what you want to do. What about when deciding what to do becomes a burden? Ok, thats a tangent.

Third. Nihongo. The goal of this project is to kick japanese's ass. Completely and thouroughly. The barrier shall fall, and this language shall crumble at my feet before me. It is only a matter of time.

So, only three things. Unfortunately other important things. Meditation, Aikido, Photography, etc. Have to fall by the wayside until i get better at these three things. Not to say I'll stop doing them, they just won't be priorities for now.

Unfortuately these three projects really have no deadline. I should get that worked out, i suppose. Without a deadline, I could just go on forever without bringing the other stuff back into my life. Like, I'd like to be more serious about meditation. I want to eventually do some more english reading, I want to do the stylelife challenge. I want to learn how to cook better. But im putting that off until I can manage these three things first, the basics. Just the doing of them, showing up, (on time) as khatz sez. In fact, even having three things is probably too much, but that can't really be avoided. And I should mention that the priority above all of these is work. Doing what needs to be done at school. (and also figuring out what needs to be done) Ok, enough for now. Back to work.

A few quick notes

So, i tweaked anki a bit today. One problem I'm having is that if I fail a card, I'll often want to go look up a story, or write one down . This is pretty time consuming, and takes me out of the rhythm of doing the cards. I would like to be able to do all my card edits at the end of my anki review, rather than during review. I thought if I set the "failed" interval high, i would be able to see which cards I failed during that day's review at the top of the edit window, and then go back and edit them all at once. Unfortunately, this means I don't get a quick review after I've failed a card. Does anyone have a better solution to this problem?

Here's another editing issue: when I close the edit window, it shows me the same card again, usually, because until now I've been doing this: see card, hit answer button, edit card, close edit window. I would like to be able to answer that card (if I need to edit it, its usually a fail), rather than have to see it again right away. Is there a simple solution to this? It seems like if there was some like, update button in the edit window that could update the card without having to close the edit window, it might be one solution to the problem.

Another issue: I'm rocking a Mac, but the keystroke I use to switch between Japanese and Englsish is apple+1, which does something else in Anki. Or at least, it won't change between Japanese and english while anki is open. Any solution to this problem (that doesn't involve me changing my keystroke settings)?

Ok, here's another issue: Say i fail a card. It comes up again in a few minutes. How should I answer it? My current recollection of it is pretty strong, but only for the moment because I just saw it. Obviously, my longer-term recollection is weaker. I'd like to answer it using the same "grading standard" i use for all other cards, but i worry that that will space it out too long. Is this a problem to be fixed with the "failed interval" and the "again" duration? Or do I need to have different grading standards for cards that I've failed? I hope my questions make sense...

Ok nevermind this was just a rant for the Anki forum.

Tommy

More Japanese notes

So, i pretty much set aside the whole day for studying, but, relative to days at school, I didn't get much done. I got some other stuff done, which is fine, but i guess the studying got pushed to last. Its weird, like on days when I'd put studying first, it goes last, but on days when work should be first, sometimes work seems to come last. I don't intend to do it that way, it just kind of happens like that. hmm... action + intention have a very interesting relationship.

My studying today was to go through last year's JPLT. I haven't graded it yet. Some stuff was easier, mostly the vocab part, but the reading was still pretty fushigi.

umm what was i gonna write? About mnemonics... well i should ask the forums at RevTK, but anyway, going through the test today I saw a bunch of kanji i had learned in RTK. Some of the older ones i kind of glanced over.. not really noticing them, or taking into account their "meaning" or trying to actively remember the keyword. Some, the keyword came out and it was the same kind of "synasthetic" type of understanding that I hadn't ever really felt with Japanese before - i.e. some shapes on a page have an image-a story-meaning linked to them like never before. That, i think, is the ultimate goal of RTK. But then, with a bunch of newer characters, either the stories wouldn't come at all, and I may only recall the primitives. Or, I recall the primitives and the story, but not the keyword. I have a suspicion, that if I had seen the keyword first, i could have gotten the character. I guess I'm still fighting against the Keyword>kanji only study method. Well, i suppose its part of the process

So, I just wonder what makes a good story? I think one reason i have trouble with some characters is with weaker stories. I think, when I'm making my own story, i tend to shortcut it, and just come up with an image that links all the elements of the kanji together- the keyword and the primitive all kind of jammed together in a single idea. I think it may be important that each primitive has an image-and that each image is linked together with the story. That's a little abstract, but what makes a good story?

And maybe more concretely, how much of my reviews should be aimed at producing the story, in addition to producing the character? I guess the book is called "remembering the kanji" not "remembering the mnemonics" but it seems like if I want to remember from Kanji>keyword eventually, I should focus on remembering the story more. That is to say, with Kanji I'm good at, I'll just skip the story entirely during Keyword-kanji review. But that seems to lead to less recollection when I see the kanji in context.

ok thats all

well its well past bedtime and i still haven't done a single review.

Bells

The temple bell next door is ringing. One thing that i've noticed recently, maybe it's happened because I haven't been meditating at all recently, is that I've been much jumpier. Like super jumpy. Anytime some loud sound happens its like a little surprising. Maybe it's just my state of mind. I've got all these alarms in my life nowadays. Class bells, wake up alarm, go to sleep alarm, not to mention that I've been giving this "timeboxing" thing a try-i.e. setting time limits for various tasks (especially for flashcarding/studying, but it can also be applied to other stuff-washing dishes, showering i suppose). as for timeboxing, i think im going about it the wrong way, i think im doing something wrong with it. right now, its just a good idea, but i don't really understand the principle behind it, so the execution is sloppy. another reason for the jumpiness might be that when im missing all these alarms-i always do-wake up late, go to bed late, late for class, i always beat myself up for it-feel bad about it. so i think, like pavlov's dog, my self-deprecation (or whatever) has led to me being, in a sense, afraid of alarms- and by extention loud sounds in general. yeah. it makes me wonder if these productivity tools are doing more to damage me than to make me more productive? hmm...