Date: April 12, 2000 Time: 10:31pm Right now I'm feeling:Tired! This past weekend I went to: A Hanami Party These days I'm reading: The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan. I'm itching for the next book in the series!! and The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. Quote of the Day: "A wise man never loses anything if he have himself." -- Montaigne Hanami Wow. Got a lot to tell you folks. Been an eventful few days. Earlier this week saw the last of my precious school-type spring vacation days. Sigh. It's like having to get up out of a hot tub into cold night air. But you just got to do it or you'll shrivel like a prune. In my case, if I only had vacation, I've no doubt that I would get sick from eating greasy frozen pizza every day, I'd become so lazy I wouldn't ever wash my clothes or study Japanese, and my person would be such a sloven mess that no one would want to get near me. But, hey, you never know, that might just be the thing which makes me happy. Anyway, so when last I was journaling I was talking about the beautiful cherry blossoms, the sakura. I went to a hanami party Friday night and met up with a bunch of JET's I hadn't seen since the last ice age (and some I'd never met before). It was great. The castle grounds looked sooo cool because of all the sakura, really beautiful. I brought some scones I made and they seemed to go over well. A Japanese man from the local NTT office (bloodsucking monopolizing phone company in Japan) came over to us and in very broken English asked us to join his company because they had so much food left over and wouldn't we like to have some and chat with them for a bit? Of course we would! Some of us were over there for quite a while and I ended up talking to an old man about what I thought of Japanese women. I must have used every Japanese word I know about two or three times. I left around 9:30, but those hanami parties last until way late. I know some of the JETs left at 1:30... am! I wanted to take some pictures, but waited until Sunday when I thought I could wake up early (9am or so) and get over to the castle before they flocks showed up, but instead rolled over at 11! AAHH!! I put on the previous night's clothes and raced over only to find that everyone and their mother was already there. I still got a few good shots, though. Those should be up soon by the way, as soon as I get them developed. (You can see last year's pictures of sakura by clicking on the picture in today's hidden layer). Now, only a few days later, all the cherry blossoms are starting to fall off... bummer. You know, there's so many scientists trying to crossbreed fruits to get them just the right flavor, getting seeds out of oranges and watermelons and such, a couple should put their heads together to engineer sakura trees which stay in bloom for much longer. Now that's a worthwhile pursuit. I'm sure that's what biotechnology will come to. I've been having those test dreams again. Hate those dreams. The ones where you're taking the SAT or your big final and you either overslept and missed it or something like that. I was taking the SAT last night, only I didn't have a #2 pencil and they kicked me right out. And just like that my entire future was washed down the drain! Sometimes I think I'll be having those damn test nightmares for the rest of my life. Please, someone out there tell me they stop at a certain age... please?? First day of school was on Monday. Actually, that's not entirely true. That was Entrance Ceremony day. But the first day of school wasn't Tuesday, either. No, that was Opening Ceremony day. Ceremonies, ceremonies, ceremonies. Ritual, socialize, ceremony. It's almost like a drug for the Japanese. I am convinced that they sell a videotape of opening ceremonies for Japanese people who travel abroad. So when they come back, right when they come through the door, they pop that baby into their VCR and it's like their fix. Ahhhh. Yes, the Japanese opening ceremony. I've been to approximately 9,146 of these so far and I can safely tell you good people that opening ceremonies here are about as much fun as cleaning out navel lint. To top it all off, when I got back to the teachers' room from the ceremony on the second day I discovered that my desk had shrunk by 25%. Or my legs and chair had inexplicably grown wider. Those bums gave me a smaller desk to fit in with the desk block in that section, and because I'm only there a fourth of the time. Oh, well. There's a few chain smokers nearby so I think I'll end up spending most of my time in the library anyway! Still experimenting with Macromedia Dreamweaver. You can really do some cool stuff with it, though the biggest roadblock to me right now is Netscape. Arrr... Netscape. There's a number of things I want to do that are only viewable with Internet Explorer. I remember when I only used Netscape, but the only reason I use it now is to check to see if my page is viewable _with_ Netscape!