I just added a link to the RSS feed for the site at the left–add it to your favorite reader to make sure you never miss a post.   If you’re not familar with RSS here’s a video explaining it in plain English:

And if you do know what RSS is but aren’t too sure about the undead, here’s some info on zombies in plain English:

You know, just in case.

I started a new page for my 101 in 1001 effort.  You can find it here or under “Info” to the left.  The idea is simple–list 101 things you’d like to do in 1001 days (~2.75 years).  I was stuck in a rut last spring and thought having some defined goals would help and man, has it.  I didn’t get to everything I was hoping to in San Francisco (no walking tour or night trip to Alcatraz, oops) but that’s what return visits are for!  I’ve completed 23 items and parts of others and feel like I’m on pace to finish on time.  I don’t know what foreign country other than Japan or Canada I want to visit (#88) but I’m sure I’ll find someplace!

1.  The food.  I’m looking forward to tracking down the best places for okonomiyaki, takoyaki, and convenience store oden.  Mmmmmm oden.

It’s really good. Trust me. Photo by Mori Chan.

2.  I’ll be able to use this language I’ve been studying with all kinds of people and in all situations.  I’ll be able to work towards true fluency.

3.  Japanese IQ shows!  The language based questions stretch my brain while the spacial problems make me feel smart.

4.  Location, location, location.  Five minutes from two JR train stations, 10 minutes from Yokohama, 30 minutes from Shinjuku, Tokyo.  Beat that!

5.  I’ll be able to see a bunch of friends I studied abroad with.  I would say that over half of the people in my circle of friends have made it back to Japan, which is an insane percentage if you think about it.

6.  These friends make an instant posse for all-night karaoke.  Wooot.

7.  I feel like I’m finally moving forward professionally after spinning my wheels in San Francisco.

8.  Not planning on moving for three to five years–I can buy stuff and keep it!  It’s okay if I get something bigger than my suitcase!  I can shop on Amazon again.

9.  I will be truly financially stable and spend some money on travel and fun without worry.

10.  Living and sharing experiences with the love of my life.

~not so patiently waits for her visa to arrive~

Sure sure, as soon as I leave it pops up all over the place.  And not in a Fisherman’s Wharf/Golden Gate Bridge kind of way.  It’s more subtle.  Like in this ad:

See that bus shelter?  San Francisco.  Everything else in the ad looks like it could be anywhere, and that’s the point.  This can be aired nationally and it’ll still look like your downtown, your financial district.  There isn’t a strong “SF” accent so the people you’re likely to run into won’t ruin the whole Anytown USA effect.  And prices are so high in San Francisco people are more likely to be surprised and appreciative of a five dollar sub.

It’s a really good idea well executed.  The cityscape makes me nostalgic–I knew the FiDi pretty well.  And I have to admit looking at that weather is nice–we’re expecting 7-10 inches of snow on Wednesday.  Break out the snow shovels!

It was a bad experience.  I’d rather not revisit it.

All in all things have been going pretty well though.  Finally got “real” internet today so I’ve been catching up on my podcasts and skyping with the boyfriend.  Internet video chat goes right up there with the best things ever, I think.  Just ten years ago we would have been stuck writing letters that would have taken a week to mail each way.  The world is so much smaller now.

I’m starting to finalize the move with all kinds of lovely paperwork.  Yesterday I changed out my Cali license for a NYS one and man, the rigmarole you have to go through!  I brought every kind of ID I could think of but still missed the one they wanted most–my Social Security card.  The original.  So we drove the half hour home, dug out the card, drove the half hour back and after lots of pictures and staples I received my interim license.  The thing that surprised me most is that they took away my California license.  Stapled it right to the application form.  And I thought California punching a hole in my old license was bad!

It’s getting late so this will be all for today, but with real internet you can expect to hear from me before too long, yea!

The apartment is basically empty now and quite echo-y.  After a desk and the bed were gone Ken and I were like, “Hey, this room is actually quite spacious!  What did we need a double bed for, anyway?”  One night crammed on an ancient twin mattress reminded us.  My shoulders are sore and I haven’t even flown anywhere yet!

Tomorrow’s schedule isn’t too bad.   Normally when I head back east I take the earliest flight I can manage, setting an alarm for 4 am.  There’s only one ANA flight to Narita out of SFO each day, though, so a 6:30 am wake up call it is.  I’ll be home by 11 pm but it will feel like 8 to me.

I definitely get the good end of the deal, though, with an eight hour trip back to Upstate New York.  Ken will be on an airplane for 11 hours and then on a train for four more.  Ick.  My own trip to Japan will be worse, but I don’t even want to think about that right now.

So what does one do in a room with a desk, a light, a bed mattress, and little else?  Do crosswords and read.  Oh, and Ken and I might play some head-to-head Tetris later.  It’s been a nice last day.

Oh, and did I mention that it hit 70 degrees in San Francisco today?  I was wearing a t-shirt and was still hot.  Crazy.  Oh, and the high in Albany tomorrow–9.  I wish that were a typo.  Thank goodness mom is bringing my winter coat to the airport.  Maybe I shouldn’t have packed that scarf so tightly into the bottom of my suitcase…

This is always a weird time for me before a move.  It’s the point where you can truly start to say it’s your “last” of everything–last Thursday in town, last time in a particular neighborhood, last time seeing friends.  I’ve also been making a bit of a restaurant tour, getting final fixes of great bistros and taquerias.  I love Albany, but man, good Mexican is not to be found.

As a result of all the crazy moving everything the updates are going to be a little sparce.  Not only that, but until my mom upgrades to cable internet all she has is dial-up.  Like, 16k dial-up.  I didn’t think it existed, either.  So, until the nice cable guy comes (or the nice router arrives in the mail) I’m going to be running a 16k life.

I’ve heard rumors that some planes have internet now… if I should only be so lucky!  A blog update from the clouds would be very cool, indeed.

Going to Japan is a shock in many ways, but as an American I had the additional shock of the metric system.  I’ve visited Canada and did all my high school lab reports in metric so I didn’t think I’d have a problem.  Thing is, putting 50 ccs of liquid into a beaker and reading “Today’s high:  30°C” are two completely different experiences.  One affects your grade, sure.  But the other determines if you’re going to wear shorts or winter gear on your way to school.  (Hint:  leave the parka at home.)

Today the great online comic xkcd highlights the very coping mechanism I used–finding landmarks.  If you know a few set points it’s easy enough to fill in the blanks.  For example, here’s how I remember temperature in Celsius:

30C ≈ 90F

20C ≈ room temperature

0C ≈ cold

In Osaka things rarely get below zero so this scale worked well for me.  As for meters and kilograms learning your height and body weight in metric is a great start.  I’m 172 cm tall… and nice try, but no weight out of me today.

Two miles is roughly three kilometers, so if you’re good at mental math you can get a general idea of how far you’re walking.  Km/h is best memorized by looking at speed limits, especially since that’s the only time you ever use it.

Maybe the oddest thing was the reverse culture shock of coming home.  When the newscaster said today’s high was 70 degrees I ended up putting it back into Celsius!  Silly brain.

Okay, it was kind of mean to make that my title.  I don’t have any resolutions.  Not one.  I haven’t done any for quite a while, either.  Will Shortz (editor of the New York Times crossword) said it best on NPR this morning–if I find a chance to improve myself at any point during the year, I do it then.  No reason to wait until January to get things done.

Amen.

That being said, I’m going to continue working on the 101 in 1001 list I started last year.  The concept is simple–make a list of 101 things you’d like to do and give yourself 1001 days (roughly three years) to do them.  I’m making great progress and I’m not “behind” at all, but there’s no harm in focusing on particular areas for the coming year:

4.  Complete Irtfa’a shawl

I’m knitting the edging on another shawl so I can use that needle to finish up this shawl, if that makes sense.  The sooner off my needles the better–I love both projects but I’ve been working on them so long they’ve become a drag.

17.  Try 20 new recipes (0/20)

I picked up the basics when I was in Japan last time, but that was it.  I want to learn how to cook more side dishes along with healthy traditional entrees.  Luckily there are tons of cooking magazines, just like here.  There’s even one named “Three Minute Cooking”.  Beat that, Rachael Ray!

64.  Go to 7 different museums (1/7)

I’m going to be a half hour from Tokyo and ten minutes from Yokohama, for goodness sakes.  No excuses.

82.  Move.

87.  Return to Japan.

Givens.

103. – 106.  Finish a Tuesday-Friday New York Times crossword.

Last month I started doing  the crossword in earnest and it’s even more fun than I thought it would be.  It’s kinda like studying for the SAT all over again with all the vocab, so I collect all the weird words in a notebook (WADI, STOA, and BOSNS are all from today).  It should also be a good way to keep my English sharp while I’m neck deep in Japanese.  How else am I going to learn a word like NEWEL (banister post)?

Did you ever play Memory as a kid?  You know, that game where you try and match cards before your opponent does?  Well, it turns out the Japanese had the same idea, only in the 13th century and with much more panache.  It’s called 百人一首 (hyakunin isshu) or literally “100 people 1 poem”.  It’s traditionally played on New Year’s Day, and some shrines, like Yasuka Jinja in Kyoto, hold a game each year.

Photo by ionushi.

Instead of trying to match pairs of identical cards you grab the card related to a poem a non-player is reading aloud.  Only the last part of the poem is printed on the card so if you want to be any good you have to memorize the 100 verses and recognize them from the first few syllables alone.

Photo by ionushi.

I love the determination on these ladies’ faces.  Sure, they’re dressed up in many layers of silk and have more ties going around their midsection than you can count… but they’re going to win, darn it.  Many also have their grabbing hand at that exact angle.  Whether ceremony or simply the best angle after hundreds of years of trial and error, I don’t know.

Luckily there’s another version of the game for us mere mortals, comprised of 48 proverbs, one for each letter of the Japanese syllabary.  Elementary schools use it to teach letters and the oh-so-important phrases every educated citizen should know.

Photo by Gilgongo.

I know I have no shot of mastering the “full” version any time soon, but proverbs, this I can do.  I’m using this list as a reference and slowly adding the phrases to my studies.  Today’s favorite:

灯台下暗し (toudai moto kurashi):  The bottom of the lighthouse is dark.

The image makes sense but I still didn’t understand what it means so I asked Ken.  He explained it like this:  when you lose your glasses you look everywhere for them, in the most unlikely places… when they’re actually on top of your head.  At those times you’re blind to what’s right in front of you.  The bottom of the lighthouse is dark.  Pretty neat, eh?

Time to get back to my studies so one day I can beat seven year olds at their own game.  Me, competitive?  Naaaah.