I found out today that the monthly mansion I’m staying in won’t have Internet. Compound that with the fact that I’ll have to install Internet at my next apartment once I get there (a long and arduous process in Japan), and it all means that I probably won’t have Internet access again until at least mid-May and as late as early July. Yikes. I’ll try to figure something out, but yeah… sucks.
Well, see you when I see you, I guess.
I made a huge mistake and drank two cups of espresso coffee at around 7:30pm. This means that my sleep schedule is totally shot for the week. Not only that, but I have to wake up early tomorrow morning. Augh. It’s 3:30am right now, and I have to leave at about 7:30, so I figure I might as well just stay awake and try to smash my way through the day with more coffee. What a great way to start my last full week at Aeon, huh? Oh well.
On the bright side, I managed to get a lot of chores done, as well as practice with my camera some more and clean up some photos that I took during the afternoon. Most of the pictures ended up being overexposed and terrible though. Gotta keep at it. I’m thinking of setting up yet another photo dump specifically for these kinds of test shots to encourage myself to keep practicing without cluttering up my existing photo dumps. But I doubt anyone really wants to see all of my awful test photos anyway except for me, so I don’t know. I’m planning on bringing my camera with me to work this week to take photos of my students, staff, and school, so I can get even more practice time in. Maybe I just need to keep myself motivated by doing stuff like that instead.
It still hasn’t sunk in that this is my last full week at Aeon. Well actually, this week we’ll be doing special lessons, so to be more accurate, last week was my last full week at Aeon. I really want to leave already, not because I hate my job or because I don’t want to see my students, but because it’s just so hard to say good-bye to everyone. This might sound really terrible, but sometimes I’d almost rather not see my students ever again than to have to tell them I’ll be gone in just over a week. I’m not moving back to America or anything, I’ll still be here in Niigata, but it’s just not the same.
On the bright side, Daiki is planning on moving to Tainai as early as April or May. When he does, I’ll be able to visit him by train in about an hour! That blows my mind. It’s kind of weird having a boyfriend who lives over two hours away by car, and who (because he lives in a company dorm) can’t ever let me visit him. I’m probably more excited than he is about this whole moving thing. And of course, I’m also looking forward to April 30 when I can also start moving into my new apartment.
These next few months are going to be exhausting, interesting, and life-changing. I can just feel it.
I added another photo gallery. This one isn’t of anywhere in Japan in particular, I was just practicing taking pictures of some flower arrangements in my apartment with my new tripod. It was pretty cheap since I got it at a secondhand store, so I’m pretty happy about that; even if I made a mistake and bought the “wrong” tripod, it’s not like I can’t afford to just buy another one later on.
My “studio” consisted of a small bookshelf and a coat rack with a (wrinkled) white sheet hung over it and held with clothespins. Not the ideal setup, but hey, today was just to fiddle with a tripod for the first time. I also tried to get as much natural sunlight in as possible, but after a while I realized it was just too overcast and dark, so I turned on a nearby lamp. It’s pretty much impossible to get nice, natural sunlight in the middle of winter in Niigata anyway.
Daiki gave me both flower arrangements. The first one (the pink bouquet) was a Christmas present (and can also be seen here). The second one (the blue rose) was a six-month anniversary present that he bought from this online store. It’s a real dried blue rose that will apparently last forever, as long as I don’t damage it or let it get wet.
While I was at the secondhand store today, I saw a Nikon D40 and starter lens for about ￥36,000 total. My current budget for a secondhand camera is ￥20,000, but I doubt I’ll find anything decent for that price. I promised myself that if I got the job with Interac, I’ll buy the camera as a reward. If I don’t get the job… well, I’ll use the money to throw a pity party for myself at the local izakaya.
I’m back from Akita, which means there are new pictures up! Hooray! I admit, I didn’t take nearly as many as I should have. There were a lot of great photo ops on this trip which I opted not to use because I wanted to enjoy the moment instead. I had a really great time!
I updated the photo dump once again. I didn’t upload new pictures, but I tweaked the layout a bit. It looks more template-y than ever before since I got rid of the photo at the top and reverted it back to the default color scheme, but I don’t care. It’s a lot easier on the eyes, doesn’t take ages to load, and no longer scrolls forever just to get through the galleries. I’m pretty happy with it. I also cleaned up the tags, deleted some galleries that I felt didn’t really belong there, added an archives page, and added descriptions and tags to a lot of entries.
I’ve added a few links to the main index.html, namely to my Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as a link to this blog’s about page. I’ve also uploaded pictures from today’s snow-filled adventure to the photo dump. I still need to tag and caption the pictures and write a description, though. I’m also working on a whole lot of backlog. 2010 is coming up and I’m a little crazy about cleaning things up for the new year…
I’ve recreated this blog for possibly the millionth time now. This place will no longer be a stagnant heap of nothing. I’ll actually post here… well, maybe.
I’ve also created this photo dump, to compete with that older photo dump. What’s the difference in content? ARBITRARY PRETENTIOUSNESS.
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