Monday is the day of the moon as well as much snow

Good morning.

Last night I had the last Kendo pratice of the year. It actually wasnt a practice, it was a mini-tournament. Even though I had the sheet of paper and my Kanji Code-Breaking Sk1llz are getting better, I still didnt know thats what was going on.
"oh well, thats cool" I thought. I'll just warm up with them and then I can sit and watch. Turns out the middle schoolers were short once person, so I got to compete with them. It was my first time doing shiai with the middle schoolers. It was awesome.
I lost all three of my matches, however I did manage to come to sudden-death rounds twice, and I think I scored a total of two points, so that was awesome. Everyone was really impressed by my Ki-Ai. I got a round of applause when I ki-aied and then threw a Men strike, weather it landed or not.
Afterwards we went out to a dinner complete with Bingo rounds and delicious food. I had the priviledge of sitting next to the highest ranking sensei. He was World Champion at least once. Hes a very intimidating looking man but actually he was extremely nice, as most martial artists of his caliber are. He wouldnt let me pay for my dinner, because "your ki-ai was number one strongest".

I was honored.

He spoke Engish suprisingly well. Hes traveled for a month by himself all across the USA to train with Kendo dojos. I am glad I got to know him better because before today I hadnt said much else beside "Good evening sir" and "Thank you very much".

I got my plane tickets. I cant wait. I know I keep saying that but its true. I leave in TWO days. Two.

Ok, I have to go to school now.

Yawn

Japanese floors are nice and comfy and one of my favorite things to do when I am bored is stare at the ceiling. Actually my favorite thing i like to think about when i stare at the ceiling is whether or not its made out of asbestos. Its a nice thing to think about, because its important, and ive spent a good chunck of time just laying there, mouth half open, wondering if that ceiling really IS made out of asbestos....well, maybe its just foam or something....hmmmm i should touch it....but then id have to get up.... i wonder that stuff is? .....it looks like it could be lose concrete....but then how would it stick up there?

(ahem)

yeah instead I should be doing something productive like studying Japanese.

Im awake Im awake

Ugh.
This is what I get for staying up till 1am and getting up at 6am. Whats that, like 5 hours of sleep? Awesome. I have to teach Elementary School kids all day today too. Jesse not smart.

I found out what has been so stinky in my Apartment. Soy Souce, and lots of it, slowly leaked over a period of weeks. Its nasty, its gross and I havent cleaned it up yet. I'll post some picks.

Did I mention I love Kendo?

More on that later.
For now, gotta get ready for school.

Today is Wednesday Pooh.

In Japan, Winne the Pooh is called "Pooh-San" and hes is both revered and loved by everyone. Even that punk kid in your class who spikes his hair and walks around punching his favorite nerds has a brilliantly renderered Winne the Pooh folder.

Because Pooh-San is so succsessfull, or maybe in spite of it, many of the drawing and things that abound are not at all original artwork from the creator. This makes for some really cool stylistic art work that only after a while do you realize "Holy crap, Im looking at Winne the Pooh. I hope no one saw how cool I thought that was...." Got me thinking today that its like Open Source Pooh. Kind cool. I wish more things were Open Source, like Money, Time & Airline tickets.

I was amazingly sick today. It started with a persistent headache that grew by 6th period to a throbbing pain everytime I did something exertive, like move or look at things. By 3:00pm I was both Hot & Cold, as fevers go. But I didnt have a fever my temp was normal. That comforted me some. However the headache was becoming unbearable because the lights in the teachers room are florescant, the worst kind of light known to man. Those self-same lights began to slowly bore holes of hot liqiud pain into my eyes and directly into my brain. I had to get to someplace dark as soon as possible.

I stuck it out and finished my work for class preperation tomorrow and then gathered my things and left. Just moving made me feel sick. As I was leaving I thought about what one of the teachers asked me earlier today:

"Do you think its a migrate? migrane! Do you think its a migrane?"
"No, I dont think so. I'd know for sure if it was."

Well now I know. Even the 200 yards from the front door of the highschool to the front foor of my apartment building seemed to take ages. As soon as I got home I didnt even turn on any lights. I simly oozed into bed and laid there while my head was holding a Taiko Drumming festival called "pain & suffering". Sleep allowed me to not feel, which is a nice blessing. I had a very pleasant dream about thanksgiving and friends and stuff. As always my dream was in English and Japanese. Its strange because the Japanese I speak in the dream is the same I speak in real-life. I often wake up and remeber everything I said. Whats weirder though and what amazes me is that sometimes, people speak Japanese to me that is correct but that I dont understand, because I dont know it. Then when I wake up I remember it and look it up and realize what they were saying to me.

Thats rare, but it happens and it kinda freaks me out. Everyone knows that their brain is doing amazing, hidden things, and I am usally OK with that. But when you glimpse it, as such, its a frightening thing because you know its the just tip of the iceberg.

Anyways I woke up at like 5:40 to a phone call. It was my neighboor Yuuki; we were scheduled to have dinner tonight, and she called to tell me that her husband got home earlier and would I like to come at 6 instead of 6:45? I started to explain how I was feeling very aweful and possibly had a cold. They have a little girl of 1.5 years named Makoto, or "faith", and I explained that I didnt want to get her sick. I felt really bad because I had been very much looking forward to go over to there house this week. They are some of my only friends...the only ones of which I regularly contact and do stuff with after school hours.

So after I explained all this Yuuki said that she would make me up a plate of dinner (shes an excellent cook) and bring me some medicine. I didnt really know what to say, so I just thanked her best as I could. When she came up there was a huge plate of Sukiyaki (one of my favorites), Onigiri (also one of my favorites) and a whole bottom of juice. She gave me two kinds of medicines too. I was very greatfull and told her thank you about a 1,000 times. They are such a nice family. Always very generous to me. It wasnt till know that I really realized that they care about me. I had one of those molments, where you stand there and think "Wow, Friends are awesome".

So its really nice to know that someone is thinking about, cares about you, when you are far away from people who love you. I would even venture to say this is essential to your peace of mind, well being and even sanity.

I tried to eat some of the food. It smelled so good but I started to feel sick and my headache had only gotten worse. I went back to bed and now I am up and wake, feeling %100 better. Its about 10:00 oclock at night. I am going to try and go back to bed in about an hour and get up early to work on some things for elementary school. I think my migrane was triggered by my cold. Also the last night had our big "Bounenkai" or "End of the Year Party". I didnt drink hardly anything but we stayed out really late and everyone was smoking, which I second-handly inhaled. That always makes me sick. I was also really tired that day too from School, so it all snowballed into me having a crapping today.

Hopefully tomorrow I will feel Genki and ready to go. Ive got so much to do before I leave. Oh my Gosh I cant wait to go. 6 days! Wow.


Ok, Im off for now.
Peace peeps.

Its like email, but only its not.

Hello One & Everyone.

My email-dispatch is more or less moving here (the sound of spell-checkers everywhere weeping). Oh dont think youve escaped my inbox-cluttering dispatch. I found however that waiting till a bunch of stuff happened and then trying to type a coherent and edited essay was simply too time consuming. I want to record my brain whilst here and to do that I have to be more spontaneous and less formal, like popcorn.

If I keep waiting to get stuff together for an email it never gets done.

Please come here often and much. Use the bookmark feature of your browser, even though I know you wont. Bookmark this page. Dont just leave it in the history cause you know how long those things last.

Can I recomend something? Firefox 1.5 has some awesome skins and amazing extensions. used in combination with a "mouse" and "keyboard" and "internet connection", you can really do a lot. its quite amazing.

More later. This my first post and I still have to play around with all the nice GUI (wipes drool)