09.21.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:05 am by Acorns
It happens. After one has been up for a full 24 hours. One begins to consider the truly deep and profound questions of living in Japan. Why do they only sell taco flavored Doritos? Why do three hambuurgaas + fries and a drink cost less than the hambuurgaa meal? How does Sanko make umbrella sales when they are selling an umbrella (the same umbrella) as Meets (they are in the same building) for 4 times as much? Why is there a balloon in my sink?
……
When such times arrive you must sit back and remember that none of it will matter in the morning. Mornings are for grumpily studying Katakana. Hmm. Hiragana rocks.
I do believe I shall get some sleep.
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09.18.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:48 am by Acorns
The remaining part of the orientation week week was busy, but not as completely filled as the first day. Having not been able to buy an umbrella on the first day (I went at 5:00 after all the meetings had ended and found the shop to be closed) I almost had to walk to the school in the rain again. Fortunately my Seminar House keeps a set of umbrellas (’kasa’) on hand for such cases and I was able to borrow one; the first thing I did when I got to campus was to buy my own! Despite the umbrella I was still soaked; the rain always manages to fall at just the right angle to avoid the umbrella. Oh well.
Having done most of the required things on the first day the biggest event on the second was class registration. I took a long time deciding on which courses I wanted; in the end I decided partially based on schedule (I can’t take two classes at once, and didn’t want a class that lasted until 5:20). Since I don’t need any credits towards my major I focused on classes that looked personally interesting and would increase my understanding of the Japanese and their culture. The first and most obvious for me was “Popular Media and Culture in Japan” - a class about anime, manga and tv dramas! Unfortunately this class conflicted with two others that I wanted to take; oh well, I’d rather take it and find other classes. Next came “Inter cultural Communication: Social Experience”. I chose this because it sounded interesting, but also because I liked the professor’s introductory speech (given on the first day). Finally was “The Body and Communication in Japan” - this last class was the most interesting that fit my schedule but I still debate it; I love learning the meanings and different interpretations of body movements but have very little interesting in learning Japanese Sign Language (which the course focuses on more than I would like).
Registration itself involved lining up in the order of the numbers we had drawn the previous day. I was 98, a somewhat good number; all of the classes I wanted still had open spots when I arrived. They didn’t like the “proof of insurance” I had printed off before so I had to sign an agreement agreeing to give them a proper “proof of insurance” within the first week of classes. After signing this form it was simply a matter of handing them the sheet with the classes I wanted checked off; they entered them into the computer, handed me a student ID card and ushered me out. I wish class registration procedures at UNI were ever that simple for me!
The rest of the day was supposed to be spent in safety meetings, however we had a two hour break between registration and the first meeting. Never give students a 2 hour break; they tend to wander off. Alisha and I thought it would be a good idea to check out the ‘100 yen’ stores around the area and promptly left to find them. As you can probably guess, we didn’t make it to any of the safety meetings :/ I’m told we didn’t miss anything, though.
Alisha did make it back in time to take the banking session offered that day. I was planning on buying a bike and attending the bike registration session but as I hadn’t bought one by the time the meeting started I didn’t end up going. The rest of the day was spent grabbing dinner and then organizing my room. The first week I didn’t talk much with any of my housemates; I had tried to serveral times without much success. It wasn’t until later that I even learned all of their names.
I slept just as well as always; keeping the room at a nice 20c. Everything here is in Celsius; I usually love metric over English but in this case I think Fahrenheit is better. A system that went from 0 (either freezing or human-dies-if-they-stay-out-in-it/coldest it reasonably gets without going too far north/south) to 100 (around 120 Fahrenheit) would be perfect but Fahrenheit at least approximates that. Celsius is better mathematically but for room temperature it covers an arbitrary span without enough depth. Aka, I am constantly wishing I could increase/decrease the temp by .5c or perhaps less.
I was going to include the opening cerimony in this post, but I will do a short one on it instead later. It will have more pictures; there was a lot to take pictures of! Hopefully with the freetime I have tomorrow I can get at least one more post done.
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09.04.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:11 pm by Acorns
It has now been almost a week from the time I am writing about so unfortunately I will not be able to write near as much detail as I would have liked. It is hard to keep up with this blog when most of my time is taken elsewhere! I will be condensing most of the rest of the week into the post after this one, so hopefully I will be able to blog in real time soon.
The first day here was amazing. After a sound nights sleep in my futon I woke up at around 6:00 AM, for the most part refreshed. I expected to have a lot more trouble sleeping (due both to futon and new place and jet lag). I think because I can’t sleep on planes I was just exhausted by the time I got here. After waking up I stayed up, wrote a little in this blog, and prepared my bags. They had given us an orientation manual the previous night and I hadn’t had time to read much of it so I read it through. It is pretty comprehensive, although there are a few additions I will suggest to Kansai Gaidai.
After being given a small breakfast by my to-be-homestay roommate (thanks much!!!) I followed a group of people to Kansai Gaidai. A few things on the walk there; it is not 10 mins as said in the emails, not 20 mins as said on the site but more like 30 mins. If you jog you can get there in 20 mins. Also, as my first “Rule of Japan”, is the rain and when it rains: “It will always rain when one heads out for classes. If it is raining before one starts out and they choose to wait for the rain to stop it will rain all day. If, however, one forges ahead and goes to class in the rain it will stop raining right after one gets there”. You know how in all the animes it will thunder once, a few drops will fall, and then it pours while everyone runs for cover? I thought it was unrealistic; just a method of showing that it started to rain. I no longer think this. It is exactly how it happens. Just that quick; we even got the little single bit of thunder. No one had brought an umbrella, it had been sunny outside before we left. Silly gaijin! We all got soaked through and through, and all swore we would buy umbrellas as soon as we found a shop that sold them!
Arriving soaking but not unhappy I sat down for the first general meeting. As expected this was mostly an introduction to Kansai Gaidai with the main focus being on what we were supposed to get done that day. The orientation manual was discussed briefly, but for the most part they said we needed to: Pay fees, go to the registration lottery and attend the introduction meetings. There was also a banking session later that night.
Unfortunately, Japan is very humid. I spent the rest of the day quite wet because one simply doesn’t dry out, even in an air conditioned building. We spent the first part of the day in the “media center”, and it was only later that I realised this building wasn’t the international one (if I had looked a my map a little closer I would have noticed it quicker).
After the first meeting we were sent off to pay fees and then go to the registration lottery. Fortunately someone knew where they were going and we could simply follow the huge crowd of students. I’ve never really realized how large an amount of people 450 are! The international students alone can provide quite a bit of life to the campus, although it is supposed to become downright busy once the Japanese term starts. There were two lines leading into the building when we got there; those of us at the back of the line (incorrectly) assumed that both lines were for the same thing. Fortunately for me I guessed the correct one; they had us pay one bill, then go to the other line to pay the other bills. One of the very few completely illogical things I’ve seen in Japan so far; they could have run us through a single line and it would have gone much quicker. The same people were servicing both lines, at the same endpoints.
My fees were lower than most peoples because I am a “full exchange” student; I pay more things through my home University. Because of this I was able to get in and out somewhat quickly without filling out the additional forms necessary for most everyone else in the line. The registration lottery was another story; the line was HUGE by the time I got there. Everyone in it was frantically trying to decide which classes they wanted; there was a “class registration” listed for tomorrow but no one has explained what in the world a “registration lottery” might be. As it turned out it was just drawing a number, the number determining your place in the line the following day for registration. Low numbers could get in the classes they wanted, high ones had to take whatever scraps were left. I was 98 out of 500, low enough to get me into every class I wanted to be in.
When I was finally finished waiting in the lottery line (it took almost an hour!) I went off to find something to eat. Although there are cafeteria on campus that serve Japanese food they are quite intimidating to use for the first time; I looked at one and then chose the only restaurant on campus. Which is a McDonnalds! My first real meal in Japan, and I get to go to McDonnalds! Oh well; it was familiar, and I was hungry enough I didn’t care what I ate. The layout of the McDonnalds is not at all similar to what we expect; normally we expect to order and then sit down/wait for the meal. In this McDonnalds you grab a tray, go down the line pickinh up whatever food they have premade that you want, then order whatever food you want that they didn’t have premade and finally get to the pay spot and pay for what you have/have ordered. They then hand you a number and call it when your food is ready. Since they call the numbers in Japanese I still have to take 10 seconds to recognize which number it is; hopefully I can start using Japanese numbers without translating them soon! The food on the other hand is identical to that from an American McDonnalds with one exception; a teriyaki burger. It is good, but I don’t think they soy based sauce and mayonnaise go well together! The Japanese use mayo on everything though.
The later part of the “school” day consisted of going to various meetings. First another general meeting which had almost no information, then a meeting for people living in the Seminar Houses which focused entirely on what we should and shouldn’t do. The final meeting was one to open a local banking account. Most people say this is the worst meeting you will have to go to, and they are probably right! It is frustrating for both the students and the people hosting it. Because the bank people can not read English and we had to fill out our names exactly as shown on our passports we had to be extremely careful when writing. The difference between ‘Y’ and ‘y’ wouldn’t be recognized, for example. Misplacing a comma or inserting a comma where one didn’t exist before would result in rejection. Your signatures had to match exactly. Not fun, but it only took me two tries to get it right! Some more unfortunate people took as many as 15 tries.
The banking session ran over its expected time by almost an hour, so I was late getting back. I hadn’t eaten, and had no clue where I might go to buy food. The convenience store above McDonnalds closes at 5, apparently, so I wasn’t able to buy an umbrella and some ramen as I had planned! I wasn’t extremely hungry so I thought I would just go back, sleep, and get breakfast in the morning. After finding a few students to walk back with (I wasn’t the only clueless one; there were several hanging around the gate waiting for someone to guide them!) I made the long walk back to Seminar House 3.
I should mention that it is quite humid and hot here; every time I walk into the dorm I feel that I need to shower/rinse off. Fortunately we have plenty of showers! After showering and writing a little on my blog my housemates decided to go out to get food. Initially I wasn’t going to go, but my to-be-homestay roommate encouraged me to tag along so I could get to know the rest of the people living here better.
Even though I was tired I am glad I went! We waited at the front gate of Seminar House III for almost 30 minutes, and while we waited we collected more and more people. Gaijin Army! It is no wonder Japanese people think of us as loud; the gathering was certainly not quiet. As we walked I tried to start conversations with several people, unfortunatly, and as usual, that didn’t go so well. As we reached the far side of the park though someone started a conversation with me! We talked the entire way, hanging slightly behind the rest of the group. By the time we finally reached a restaurant that could handle the entire group (and the owner was soooo happy! It was honestly funny to watch how happy he became as 20-30 people walked in) we had discussed quite a bit. Since we were at the back we would have been the last two to be seated; and there was no more tablespace! Alicia isn’t one for large crowds of unknown people any more than me, so we decided to head back and eat at the okonomiyaki restaurant right beside our dorms. Of course, it was full. It is always full! But we didn’t have to wander to far to come across a different restaurant.
The restaurant we came across was a “do it yourself” grill; you ordered a tray full of different meats and then cooked them on the grill in the center of the table! It was quite an experience; not something you would find in America, our food almost caught on fire several times. Alicia is great fun and speaks Japanese extremely well; we had no problem ordering! I think this was much more Japanese then McDonnalds, it made an excellent second meal. When we were ready to leave we paid (quite expensive, 2000 yen each or almost $18 each; but well worth it) and I discovered something that all of the “how to eat in Japan” guides had missed: you never tip!
All in all it was a busy and exciting first day. I returned to my apartment to sleep on the futon and slept extremely well.
Pictures will be uploaded soon! Then more articles; the rest of the orientation week, the first few days of classes and some thoughts on various things I have discovered about the Japanese. I don’t have time to read over this again before leaving, so I may correct a few errors here and there later today.
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08.31.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:26 pm by Acorns
I promised I would post these pictures. I will incorporate them into a post as soon as I catch up to this point.
Note: To save the pictures first click on the thumbnail then right click on the image and click save as or save image as… you will get the full quality image, not just the scaled down one.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 6:07 pm by Acorns
After arriving and being told where my room was I had no trouble finding it. The first thing I noticed about the apartment is that the outer door doesn’t lock; instead it opens freely into the lounge/kitchen/baths area of the apartment. The next thing I noticed was that it was HUGE. The pictures don’t do it justice; we could hold a major DDR party here and not be short on room. We can fit everyone in the apartment + 3-4 guests on the seats in front of the TV. If this is Japan’s “modestly sized but cozy” living areas then they don’t fit my idea of cozy! Of course, because I am in Semester House III - for which you pay a little extra - my apartment area is probably larger than the other Semester Houses. I havn’t seen more of them than the lobbys yet.
The storage areas for each tenant (right inside the door) I don’t expect to be much use. They could be stolen from easily, and are segmented wrong for storing almost anything. Oh well. My next view was of the bathroom area. There are doors to close off the entire bathroom area. Inside the bathroom area are sinks, two toilet rooms, and three shower rooms. I was surprised at the large number of shower rooms, but honestly it is needed! Every time I walk into the dorm rooms I need to take a shower. Unlike the other semester houses the showers are true showers; you turn them on, shower, then turn them off. The toilets are very, very interesting! Instead of being flat on top there is a sink of sorts. When you flush the water must be refilled; so it poors through the sink! Back in the main bathroom area there are 4 sinks and a huge mirror. You arn’t supposed to leave anything in this area, but so far I’m the only one with few enough bathroom items that I havn’t needed to (in my apartment).
The dining room/kitchen area are again huge. The table can seat everyone in the apartment plus guests (although we would be short on chairs). There are two fridges, two large sinks, and a cooking area (which we arn’t allowed to use yet). I honestly don’t spend much time in this main apartment area; I try, but I’m not good at mass socializing! There is one other computer-savy person in my apartment (named Andrew as well!) who I hope to get to know better, but the rest enjoy things I consider a bit too “rowdy” or movies like ‘300′. Unfortunately I am different from them in such a way that it is hard to just hang out!
The final part to my apartment is my own room. This can be locked, and we have a key to it. The key is temporary, we will be given a different one once orientation week is over (also, we will be given a gate key; currently the gates are locked at 11 so we must be back before then. This really hasn’t been a problem). Inside the room you step up onto the tatami matted area. Here are futons, and access to the closets. I put my suitcases inside the closet as you arn’t supposed to sit them on the floor. They said we would be extremely crowded with three people, but it doesn’t feel crowded. The room is large, about the right size for two people; for three there would need to be another desk. You can open a sliding door and step out onto a small balcony; the view over the city from here is nice.
I think my favorite part of my room is the futon. I had been equating it to sleeping in a sleeping bag, or maybe on a couple sleeping bags piled up but it isn’t! It is extremely comfortable; although I didn’t put the covers on in the intended order! I like using the heavy padded… thingy as my main blanket. It is ment to be put on the base and then the sheet used as a cover. My only current roommate (my third roommate is Japanese, he is still living off campus despite his stuff being here) loves it as cold as me and is doing the same. The air conditioner is nice! It took a while (even with the handy Japanese-English how-to-work-the-remote) to figure out how to control it. The hardest part was (embarrassingly) realising that the remote was IR and not RF/similar. You have to take it off its stand and point it at the right place before any button will work. The Japanese used on the remote is impossible to read, as the small LCD doesn’t have enough pixels to fully create the characters. Everything ends up looking like a black square with one or two blank pixels. It does cool nicely though! It seems that while most Japanese houses provide little or no insulation our Semester Houses are insulated quite well.
My roommate, who will be moving out after orientation to go to a homestay, is from Canada. He speaks French as his first language, then English quite well as a second. He is very, very kind; he has encouraged me to socialize and attend student gatherings (which helped me make a friend!). He allowed me to use his Cat5 cable to connect my wireless router up; this way we could both connect even though my Cat5 cable was in my lost luggage! I am going to try to keep in contact with him even after he leaves for homestay.
I am so far behind in my blog writing! I will soon we writing about my first day, second day, trip to Kyoto, etc. Hopefully this weekend will be as free as it appears and I can catch up! Pictures coming to this post soon.
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08.29.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:25 am by Acorns
I would have written here sooner, but today was packed; the times which I had free I didn’t have internet access or the will to sit and write. It has been very busy, but in a calm and organized manner. Registration, housing, etc at UNI seemed hectic. Here, it seems much less so.
There is far too much to write about! I will have to make 4 or 5 posts just to cover today, and the new experiences won’t stop anytime soon! The post I can make tonight I mostly wrote on the final leg of my flight. Pictures are being uploaded now, and should start appearing within 12 hours as I have time to link them in.
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The night before the trip we went over to my father’s apartment in Waterloo. He is renting it from the college because he and my sister are constantly in Waterloo and always need a place to stay there. For beds they have blow up air mattresses, which I have spent a lot of time on but still find uncomfortable. Between the sleeping arrangements I wasn’t used to and the excitement of setting out the next day I was only able to sleep for about an hour and a half. Not good when your next day will be a 22+ hour one! (27 hours, as it turned out)
We left the house at about 5:30 CST and arrived at the airport shortly after that. We were one of the first few people to arrive for the only flight going out that morning. One of my luggage pieces was held back for a hand check, but they were quick and we were on the plane in plenty of time. With two rows on each side it was rather small, but the flight only lasted a little over and hour. The flight attendant didn’t even have time to serve everyone drinks.
Since the plane was a small one we had to check one of our carry on pieces of luggage; this would have been fine, but apparently my piece got loaded with the normal checked luggage. When we arrived in Minneapolis the bag was no where to be found. First they looked over the plane, then sent me down to baggage claim to retrieve the bag. After spending an hour there, I had to leave and hurry to make the next flight. They said that they would forward the luggage if they found it with the rest of my checked items. I’m writing this while on the last plane, so I don’t know yet if I will ever see it again. (Note: It didn’t arrive, of course. The person at the baggage counter barely spoke English, and I had to meet up with the Kansai Gaidai people so I didn’t make a claim at the airport. This probably means the bag is lost to me for good.)
Fortunately (I think) the second plane was delayed by almost an hour. The odd thing was that it was in the NWA computers as delayed but never showed up as delayed on the screens. At 10:45 it was still showing ‘On Time Departing 10:10′. After finally boarding we took off quickly. With two seats on one side and three on the other this plane was quite a bit larger, and had multiple sections. For the first two flights I didn’t even have time to take out my laptop, just read a bit of a book on a PDA. After landing I was only a short walk from my next gate, so I took the extra time (of which there was plenty, even with the delay) to buy a set of cheap headphones and grab something to eat. The best deal was McDonnalds, which was serving food for their normal prices. I hadn’t eaten in several hours so I bought a large lunch; this turned out to be a mistake as the final flight would serve a good sized meal shortly after boarding.
The final flight from Detroit to KIX was on a 747-400, which dwarfed the other planes. I think it is amazing the amount of fuel this plane must consume, and more than that how much it must be able to carry to fly 13 hours nonstop. Unlike the other two planes this one had armrests for each person, although the seats were still quite cramped. I can’t complain about the food though, they served plenty of it! With five hours and 30 minutes left in the flight currently it is starting to get a little long. I was able to doze off for a while, but can never really sleep while in a plane/car. After arriving I still have a two hour ride to Hirakata city.
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The rest of the flight was mostly uneventful. They had us close the plane windows so people could sleep, and put some movies on the front screen. I disliked this; before the movies the screen was displaying various info about the plane, including altitude, distance traveled, distance to go, etc. It also showed a map with the location of the plane, the route flown, and the planned route.
I can never sleep on planes, and this flight was no exception; I do not, however, have any problems sitting for 13 hours. Must because I sit at the computer so much. Instead of sleeping or watching NWA’s crappy movies I watched the movies I had brought with me on my PDA and laptop. I also re-read ‘The Deathly Hallows’, and worked some on one of my websites.
I was wide awake and alert when we arrived at Osaka. The city is different from any I have seen from the air before; I think I will save this discussion for a later post though. After disembarking (the pilot kindly thanked us for flying with NWA; from his tone I don’t think he enjoyed 13 hour flights any more than the rest of us) we followed a series of signs and boarded a monorail which took us to the main terminal. The airport serves a lot of traffic, but is very compact building wise. The buildings are also spread quite widely apart. The first step was to pass through the foreigners line, showing passports and some little slips we had filled out while on the airplane. This went quickly, and we proceeded to the baggage claim area. Osaka airport provides carts to carry baggage, but I chose not to use one (for which I would later be glad). People crowded around the baggage pickup, although everyone was good about standing behind the red line. I missed my bags the first time they went around, due to not being able to get near enough to the conveyor. I retrieved them the second time with no problems, only one had been opened and inspected (the one with almost nothing in it, at that). Unfortunately, my previously lost bag never came around. I tried to inquire about it at the baggage desk, but the person there spoke very little English. It was probably a mistake to not stay and try to file a claim; there is a lot in that bag I will miss!
After retrieving the baggage I could I proceeded to customs. There were huge banners stating that “intense” inspections would be made to help prevent terrorism. Unfortunately I was not allowed to take pictures in this area of the airport. Fully expecting a 20 minute wait and an extended search, I went to the customs line and took out my PDA to stand there and read. Much to my surprise, it was my turn within 2 minutes. The person behind the counter took my slip, read it briefly, looked at my passport and stamped the slip. He then waved me through without so much as a glance at my luggage. If only everything was this easy!
After going through customs I was immediately met by someone holding a “Kansai Gaidai Students” sign. It was a great relief that they were there, and I was in the right spot! We stood around for a few moments, and then proceeded out to the bus. I was glad I had not used a baggage cart as everyone who did had to stop, unload, and then carry their baggage normally anyway. The bus was air conditioned, had comfortable seats, and best of all had people who we knew were exchange students (I had met several I suspected were on the plane; but very little was said while flying. The Japanese passengers seemed to prefer complete quiet, and none of us wanted to break the silence). Another interesting thing on the bus was the seatbelts, which rolled up into little cylindrical containers when not in use. The 2 hour ride was quite exciting, my first true look at Japan. All the roads are brightly lit! Like so many other things that are actually done here, lit roads are something I have wanted in America for a long time. When we finally arrived we first went to seminar house 4 (which is separated from the rest of the houses) and then walked for roughly 10 minutes to the other houses (which are all grouped together). The neighborhood is amazing; I will describe it in my next post, or the one after that.
Check in was short; sign here, take a key, and go. We were led to our individual houses, shown where to put our shoes, given the floor number of our rooms and then bade goodnight. Not quite what I was expecting, but I appreciate it a lot. I found my room with no problems, unpacked a little, took a shower, attempted to connect to a few wireless access points (none of the ones I could would serve me pages, for reasons I would learn the next day) and then went to bed. Unlike everyone had warned me, I slept fine. Either I was not affected by the “jet lag”, or it hasn’t kicked in yet. I’m perfectly used to keeping insane schedules though, and adapted to the one I am on now easily. The apartment is…. huge, and I will post about it next.
There is a lot I meant to write up to this point which I have forgotten, I may remember some later but tonight I must get to bed.
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08.28.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:53 pm by Acorns
I arrived in Japan safely last night. It is 7:55 AM here as I type. I’ll write a longer blog post this evening!
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08.26.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:41 pm by Acorns
Since I’m not taking any type of phone, I needed to get Skype working in order to have easy conversations with people back home. Skype is amazingly easy; a quick, no-extra questions signup through the client (for which a .deb exists) and it is ready to go. Didn’t even really have to tweak it. Getting the microphone to work was quite another story.
The first thing i tried was using the built in volume control gui. I enabled the microphone, enabled “recording” and turned the capture volume up a bit. Of course, nothing can be that simple in Linux; every sound app would simply freeze the moment it was told to record audio. After a little googling I found that most users solved this problem by enabling the microphone boost, which supposedly can be done through any alsa control app (like Ubuntu’s volume control). My control didn’t have a mic boost. /sigh. A little more googling found alsamixer, a terminal app to control sound. Mic boost was present here, but could not be enabled. It still seemed a little weird that boost -had- to be enabled or else apps would freeze.
After fiddling for several hours with config files, restarting the alsa service, upgrading the alsa service and trying most of the recording apps known to man I stumbled across the site at http://geekybits.blogspot.com/2007/06/microphones-skype-on-ubuntu.html . The lucky google search involved Skype, I tried this because I figured others would have had the same problem and been wanting recording soley for Skype (although I would have thought my first few searchs involving the E1505 would meet with more success).
The alsa package listed at the bottom compiled and installed fine. Immediately after installing recording worked; didn’t even have to reboot. Mic boost can be enabled, or not. During the course of my researching I found that the Sigmatel audio device my laptop uses doesn’t support stereo muxing by default, a “hack” had to be used in the windows driver to get recording/playing at the same time to work. I’m guessing that the alsa package I downloaded included something of this type, although I don’t know this for sure. For now, I’m just glad it works.
Will be heading to bed in about an hour, then getting on the plane to Japan; not very much time for troubleshooting!
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08.25.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:27 pm by Acorns
Since it is now only 2 days before I will leave for Japan, I thought I should probably get this blog up and running. Hard to believe I’ll be flying there so soon! I’ll be posting here about my Study Abroad trip in Japan, as well as misc technical things, anime reviews, etc. I’m not sure if Wordpress is here to stay or not; it seems to do everything I need done for the moment though. I’ll try and post lots of images, starting right after I arrive in Japan (I should have internet immediately after I get to the dorm I’m staying in).
My flights over will take almost 20 hours all said and done (including layover times). I’m leaving from Waterloo, IA on a CRJ and flying to Minneapolis; we were very lucky in being able to find a flight out so close to where I live at a good price! From Minny I leave on a 320 and fly to Detroit, where my longest layover is. For the overseas flight I will be taking a 744; I hope it is a comfortable plane as I will be on it for 13 and a half hours! Fortunately I am in an aisle seat on all three planes.
The pages describing what you are allowed to carry on and bring with you are starting to resemble law books. Very soon the airports will probably have to hire lawyers dedicated just to explaining to everyone what they are allowed to bring! I’ll be taking a carry on bag containing some clothes and chargers as well as a laptop in a smaller laptop bag. Hopefully no problems will arise! I’m not expecting any problems with my “checked” luggage at least (it’s just clothes).
I’ll be taking several of the electronics I regularly use on the flights, including a laptop (E1505/6400 Core 2 Duo @ 2.0Ghz, 2GB ram, 160GB HDD, ATI X1400), three PDAs (X51V, Jornada 720 and iQue 3600), and my just-arrived-two-days-ago camera (a Kokak Z612). All said and done with the batteries I have I could have two devices turned on for the entire duration of the trip. Now if only they had in-flight internet! I’ve installed apache/php/perl/mysql/curl/gd on Ubuntu so I can spend the flight time working on one of my websites; I’m not sure if I will be able to concentrate enough to get much done, but developing sounds like more fun than sitting there watching movies!
Overall, packing for a four month trip has been much less time-consuming and difficult than I thought it would be. By far the most time was spent on “electronic packing”; getting everything I might want to watch, listen to, or use put on my laptop. I also spent a bit of time looking for maps of Japan for my iQue, the best I found were from http://www011.upp.so-net.ne.jp/mametaro/index-e.html. They don’t show as much detail as I am used to, or have routing capabilities but they are far better than nothing! For the X51V I found a Japanese<->English translator; might come in handy, or might not be worth using. It does have an easily search able list of common phrases.
I was intitally worried a bit about using my electronics in Japan as they use different standards than us (100V, 50-60Hz) however it seems that everything I will be taking will work with this just fine. The only thing I won’t be able to use is my cell phone; I’m counting on skype and phone cards for talking with everyone! My apartment will have a phone but it can only take incoming calls, not make outgoing ones.
I might make another post before leaving. If I don’t, then I will try to post by Wednesday (which might still be Tuesday in the states!)
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