hi all,
So the shopping, tailoring, etc is now mostly done. There remain a few random things to take care of, such getting a physical, but not too much else.
I stumbled across something on wikipedia claiming that scientists have been researching Viagra as a jet lag cure (I'm not looking forward to the 14 hour time change) for Hamsters. I'm sure that eventually they'll be testing it on humans, but in the meantime their labs have got to be over run with baby hamsters.
Merry Ridiculous-mas.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Hayai desune
Ok, so things are still moving really quick. I just learned that they want me in Japan by March 16, which is about a week and a half earlier than I had thought. I've got my flight booked, and I've got my international driver's license, which is actually something of a joke. It is paper, with my picture glued to it, no lamination at all.
The last few days have been shopping expeditions and trying to get things set for the trip. The early date means that I'll actually be going over without a visa, and I'll just have to change my status once over there. I've been shopping because I don't have much in the way of formal wear, and I also foresee a tailor trip.
Cheers
The last few days have been shopping expeditions and trying to get things set for the trip. The early date means that I'll actually be going over without a visa, and I'll just have to change my status once over there. I've been shopping because I don't have much in the way of formal wear, and I also foresee a tailor trip.
Cheers
Monday, February 16, 2009
Stuff To Do in the Interim
hey there,
So there are several things I should get done before heading off to Japan.
As a linguistic side note, these are actually kind of interesting. Often times what the Japanese would do is take a Chinese character (as a made up example, the character for water) that was pronounced similarly to a native Japanese word, or that at least had the same initial sound, and use that character for that word (for instance, the Japanese word for love). So the character used (water), and the Japanese word (love), have nothing in common other than (initial) sound. Compound these kinds of borrowings over several hundred years of iterations, and you have kanji as they exist today.
Some, of course, still make sense: the kanji for "rest" looks kinda like a person leaning against a tree (it is literally the kanji for "person" scrunched next to the kanji for "tree"); the kanji for "go" is basically "person" plus some motion lines (like in a comic book or cartoon), etc.
Somewhat frustrating is the fact that my family is currently undertaking a kind of living Zeno's paradox experiment. Each day of traveling, it feels like we are only going half of the total remaining distance, so although technically we get closer, we never actually get there.
Cheers
So there are several things I should get done before heading off to Japan.
- Doctor check-up
- Buy plane ticket
- Get International Driver's Permit
- Get Visa
- Continue Studying Japanese
As a linguistic side note, these are actually kind of interesting. Often times what the Japanese would do is take a Chinese character (as a made up example, the character for water) that was pronounced similarly to a native Japanese word, or that at least had the same initial sound, and use that character for that word (for instance, the Japanese word for love). So the character used (water), and the Japanese word (love), have nothing in common other than (initial) sound. Compound these kinds of borrowings over several hundred years of iterations, and you have kanji as they exist today.
Some, of course, still make sense: the kanji for "rest" looks kinda like a person leaning against a tree (it is literally the kanji for "person" scrunched next to the kanji for "tree"); the kanji for "go" is basically "person" plus some motion lines (like in a comic book or cartoon), etc.
Somewhat frustrating is the fact that my family is currently undertaking a kind of living Zeno's paradox experiment. Each day of traveling, it feels like we are only going half of the total remaining distance, so although technically we get closer, we never actually get there.
Cheers
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Setting The Scene
hi there,
As my first post, I'm going to give my background info. I went to college at Michigan State, where I majored in linguistics. I studied Arabic and Japanese, though I'm by no means fluent. I have a MA from the Universiteit van Amsterdam.
I was really unimpressed by grad school, like in truth I was bored out of my mind. When you're in high school, everyone tells you how hard you're going to have to work in college, right? Bull. I think college definitely offered more subjects, and yes some of them were tough, but most were not. The same thing happened when I went to grad school. I thought for some reason this would be intense: that I'd be reading hundreds of pages every week, writing papers, hanging out and discussing semantic and syntactic properties of SOV vs. SVO languages and doing cool things with Currying, type-shifting, etc. Instead, I was greeted with a slow program, and classes that were all easy and not even very interesting. I discovered that the university wasn't even particularly geared towards my major research interests, despite what I had heard from others. I had traveled over 4000 miles and gone 30,000 dollars in debt in order to be bored.
Needless to say, that experience turned me off of continuing my studies anywhere. My brother was just about to begin his grad studies at the University of Virginia. He asked me to tag along so I could help keep his rent low, and as I had no long term plans, I agreed. Shortly, I was introduced to his fellow grad students, who promptly offered me a job at their lab. Since some of the RA's and others there (hi guys) will no doubt be reading this, I'll omit my time there: you all know what I did.
Two incidents changed my plans. The first was my brother and I had a tragi-comic falling out at the beginning of January. The second was several hardware-software failures at the lab. The falling out made me start thinking about seriously moving out, and the problems at the lab began costing me serious money due to lost hours.
So I applied to several companies that hire people to teach English in Japan. I had been putting in entry-level applications to video game companies for months, but had heard nothing back from them, and figured these applications would be the same. But within less than a day, I had been contacted and asked to set up the first of several phone interviews.
Things moved pretty fast, and soon I was offered a position. I'm currently waiting for some paperwork to be completed, and then I can move forward with my Visa application. As I complete amazingly tantalizing forms and bureaucratic procedures, I'll be updating my progress here.
Once I get over to Japan, I plan on updating this with grocery shopping, setting up an apartment, and what the job is like.
Cheers
As my first post, I'm going to give my background info. I went to college at Michigan State, where I majored in linguistics. I studied Arabic and Japanese, though I'm by no means fluent. I have a MA from the Universiteit van Amsterdam.
I was really unimpressed by grad school, like in truth I was bored out of my mind. When you're in high school, everyone tells you how hard you're going to have to work in college, right? Bull. I think college definitely offered more subjects, and yes some of them were tough, but most were not. The same thing happened when I went to grad school. I thought for some reason this would be intense: that I'd be reading hundreds of pages every week, writing papers, hanging out and discussing semantic and syntactic properties of SOV vs. SVO languages and doing cool things with Currying, type-shifting, etc. Instead, I was greeted with a slow program, and classes that were all easy and not even very interesting. I discovered that the university wasn't even particularly geared towards my major research interests, despite what I had heard from others. I had traveled over 4000 miles and gone 30,000 dollars in debt in order to be bored.
Needless to say, that experience turned me off of continuing my studies anywhere. My brother was just about to begin his grad studies at the University of Virginia. He asked me to tag along so I could help keep his rent low, and as I had no long term plans, I agreed. Shortly, I was introduced to his fellow grad students, who promptly offered me a job at their lab. Since some of the RA's and others there (hi guys) will no doubt be reading this, I'll omit my time there: you all know what I did.
Two incidents changed my plans. The first was my brother and I had a tragi-comic falling out at the beginning of January. The second was several hardware-software failures at the lab. The falling out made me start thinking about seriously moving out, and the problems at the lab began costing me serious money due to lost hours.
So I applied to several companies that hire people to teach English in Japan. I had been putting in entry-level applications to video game companies for months, but had heard nothing back from them, and figured these applications would be the same. But within less than a day, I had been contacted and asked to set up the first of several phone interviews.
Things moved pretty fast, and soon I was offered a position. I'm currently waiting for some paperwork to be completed, and then I can move forward with my Visa application. As I complete amazingly tantalizing forms and bureaucratic procedures, I'll be updating my progress here.
Once I get over to Japan, I plan on updating this with grocery shopping, setting up an apartment, and what the job is like.
Cheers
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