International Surface Mail from the US not existing anymore makes me angry. In the back of my mind I'd known about this for months, but I suffered amnesia in about May or June. It's not really that I mind paying extra because I'm not sending that much (*cough*afewbooks*cough*), it's that I don't really NEED my things to get to Japan in 2-4 weeks. 2-3 months on a boat would have been just fine, thank you.

Thank goodness Japan still has the sense (or more possibly the financial solvency?) to keep sea mail.

I think my thesis is done.

I'm doing the last story analysis for my thesis (it's about cats...) and I just realized that it takes place on my birthday (9/22) about 123 years before I was born. :3!

(I swear I'm making progress on thesis.)

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded.

Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

( Library meme )

DUN-DUN. It's the last week of classes. Today would be the last "Monday" of classes, but they're making us do it all over again on Thursday. I've finished all the other class papers as of today, so there's no choice but to work on my thesis(and study for finals).

I played a lot of hanafuda online today, which earned me a hug from Rachel while I was procrastinating on a paper at the LRC. And then I came home and played the real thing with Jen! <3 Hopefully, I haven't learned the rules incorrectly and I'll be ready for gambling night sometime during finals week. The online hanafuda doesn't include tsukimi ni ippai or hanami ni ippai, which is unfortunate because it's the coolest dekiyaku of them all!

It's time for House! :D

I have 9 1/2 pages of rough draft thesis bits! (Yes, bits. Most coherent, others not so much. But, they are necessary bits, I swear.) Must not fall into false sense of security. >.><.< Keep writing.

Unfortunately, my computer has been destroyed by a horrible virus and is now being restored by tech. I realized that I completely forgot to make the installation CDs like they told me to last semester if this happened again. *headdesk* Thankfully, I put all my school stuff for this semester on my USB drive and I've still got everything else sitting on my H drive from last semester. I'm just sad that I can't be in my room to do work. ;-;

I GOT SHORTLISTED WITH JET. WHICH MEANS I'M IN. :D

[insert thesis angst here]

And moving on without much excessive whining/complaining/rationalizing/excuse-making/self-demoralizing...

EDIT: Teehee. Someone wrote an academic article using Sujata Massey's work to talk about Japanese American detectives. My mom and I read Massey's first four books in the Rei Shimura series back in the day. There also seems to be more academic papers about her. I'm kind of surprised.... and completely procrastinating. STOP IT.

EDIT 2: This website is amazing. It basically has everything I ever wanted to know about Okamoto Kido, including CRITICISMS and stuff about HIS LIFE drawn from journals I could never hope to have access to. Interestingly, Kido also wrote Kaidan stories in the Edo-style...which pretty much guarantees that I will be stealing a certain book from Dani. :p If only this whole thing was a published work and not a website. ;_; Still, AMAZING.

I am going to finish this annotated bibliography today if it kills me.

---

I was amused by this article from Japan Times:
A purrfect place for fanciers of felines

Isn't there a place like this near Shinsaibashi? ...or maybe that was dogs.
The amusement factor for me was that they even have nabe for the kitties! XD;　For more information regarding the neko-nabe phenomena see one of many youtube videos here. Oh, NHK...is there *anything* you can't take way too seriously? LOL.

I'm going to make a prediction that although "Safety and Security" has changed it's name to "Public Safety" it's still going to be called SnS by the student body for years to come. I do think they were right to change it, but seriously I don't think in casual speech "SnS" is going to disappear easily. Just look at Servo.

I passed 1-kyuu with a 78%!

I'm so glad and really happy that I was somehow able to go from passing 2-kyuu to passing 1-kyuu in one year. I went crazy last semester, but it was worth it.

Having said that...this isn't the end, JLPT. Oh no. We're not through.
Time to get started for taking it again next year!

EDIT: JET interview in 43 hours! I'm really excited.

<3 BUT NOW TAKAWIKI'S BACK <3

LET THERE BE THE LIGHT OF THOUSANDS OF CRAZY SEQUINS AND SPARKLES.

( Rumbly (in my tumbly) about thesis/other things... )

I would like to point out that none of the above helped me accomplish my actual course work, although it certainly looked like I was accomplishing something. Yesterday I did read for theory on Wednesday, but I'll probably forget everything by then so it's really a moot point as to whether reading ahead accomplishes anything at all.

AND NOW I FLY HOME TO DEPART FOR...Mansaku and MAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNSAAAAAAAIIIIIIII</a>.
(I'm really hoping he's going to be there. :D <3)

I'm restless. I know JLPT scores are out in Japan, but not yet for those of us who took it in the States. The website says the reports will be sent at the end of February. I'd really like to know before my JET interview if I managed to either pass 1-kyuu somehow or got really close. I'm taking it again next year without a doubt, but...I wanna know! *kicks feet up in the air*

---

Airoots.organic blog: I was doing research about Arjun Appadurai and happened upon this blog yesterday. The pictures are really good and I like how Mumbai and Tokyo are weaved throughout kinda as a comparison. It shows off the versatility of a good blog. As for the written content, it's interesting, but maybe more so since I know hardly anything about cities.

Happy Chinese New Year (soon)!

Petty little thing-->I completely forgot to go to Servo for the Chinese New Year dinner. Not that I was counting on the food (okay...the duck might have been good), but the decorations I saw them putting up yesterday were quite intricate. The utensil caddy was being transformed into a Chinese-style cart (I don't know what to call it). Oh well.

Yes, I'm listening to Carmen Sandiego. It brings me joy.

The Obakemono Project
This is a pretty cool site about Japanese monsters, ghosts, spirits, etc. While the information is a summary of the cited material and the formatting is a bit wonky (at least for my computer), I think the best part is the style of the pictures of the Obakemono. I'm kinda curious about who made this page and where the images came from, but there's no information. I've looked at other sites that catalogue obake like this one, but they didn't have consistent pictures in a similar style. *shrug* If you've got some time to procrastinate...the random button at the top of the page is recommended.

Well, I'm done with finals for better or for worse. Tomorrow afternoon I have to get in my car and drive home, never to return until January 13th. While I'm kind of surprised we have less than a month, I'm still hoping winter break will go quickly. I feel like a slug when I'm at home. I've got to find something worthwhile to do with myself. I've got a pile of books to read, but I've got to leave the house sometimes...I'm already dreading the cabin fever.

...and I'll miss my suitemates. ;_;

Go to the Wikipedia home page and click random article. That is your band's name.
Click random article again; that is your album name.
Click random article 15 more times; those are the tracks on your album.

( 15 tracks is a lot for one album... )
If I had any idea what half those things are this meme might be amusing.