Darlos' Web Log and Gallery

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Update to music. First of all, I got rid of the remix. I basically decided that remixing isn't for me... I'll just stick to coming up with my own stuff. Therefore, I put up a new work that's something totally original.

Pictures from a trip to Tokyo coming soon...

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Well, I'm done blogging, really. The only people I care to tell my experiences to at the moment are people I talk to on a regular basis, so this isn't really necessary.

But of course I'll still post here if I update the site. At the moment, the photo galleries have recieved some updates, to the Everyday Life and Weird Stuff folders. Also, my site is getting a new wing so I have somewhere to put my musical remixing/composing efforts. I put up a work-in-progress on the original Final Fantasy battle theme.

So, until next update...

Sunday, December 17, 2006

I just thought of something recent worth mentioning: I know a Japanese girl here who's decided to study abroad at NC State!

There's this girl named Megumi who kinda hangs around our group of international fools who decided she wants to come study abroad in NC State University, my home institution. I'm not entirely sure why she chose my university, but now I'm starting to feel that I've been given some sort of responsibility. I mean, Japan and US are two different places, and there may be some things she doesn't realize. Before I came to Japan, I had already immersed myself in quite a bit of its culture and done a lot of learning and research, so I was prepared for many of the differences. She doesn't really have that luxury. Since we already sort of know each other, she'll probably end up looking to me for some answers. Of course, I'll feel obliged to help, at least until she makes other friends who can help her more easily.

I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but I've been bowling with friends a lot, usually on Friday or Saturday evening. I must say, it's a fun game, but I haven't been that great at it. I have yet to break a score of 100 (which seems to be the typical benchmark), and I just seem to get nothing but gutterballs. Luckily, I figured out that I need to stand up straighter. For some reason, I started bending over at some point and its been throwing off my aim. At least, I got two strikes in a row immediately after trying to stand up. Though that was at the last frame of the last game, so I didn't really get to try it out more.

That's it for today...

Thursday, December 7, 2006

My. It's been a while, hasn't it? Over a month. Man, I'm really no good at this "journal" thing. I never really have been, though. I really don't feel a need for some way to "release" my thoughts, probably because I either talk to somebody or just talk to myself (which my family will inform you that I do often. Don't worry, I have yet for anyone to talk back when I do it). Well, really, talking to myself is just a sort of "practice" for when I actually talk to somebody on whatever subject it is I'm talking about. Basically, it just helps me get my thoughts together. It still helps me vent sometimes, though.

My galleries have been somewhat inactive as well. My artwork gallery hasn't been updated in forever. This can be blamed on the fact that the only scanner that's around for me to use totally sucks. If the picture I scan is kinda light, then it blurs it out weirdly and focuses on it wrong, and I don't really know what to do to make it scan correctly. Plus, the photo-editing program on the computer is complete crap. It's Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition. Don't let the "Adobe" and the "Photoshop" parts fool you: this thing is worthless. I can't even re-size anything!

As for my photo gallery, that's just not been updated due to simple laziness. Sorry.

After realizing that I'm not learning Japanese very well, regardless of the course they put us in, I decided to take some measures to counteract this and actually get used to the language once and for all. First, I approached the tutor that the Engineering Department here gave me and I haven't really talked to yet. We decided that I'll come in now and again and we can just speak Japanese. Her English is really good, so if there's any misunderstanding, she can explain it plainly.

The other thing I'm gonna do is play a Japanese game. There's this Super Nintendo game that I've been wanting to play on an emulator for a while, but couldn't because its in Japanese and nobody has bothered to translate it. So, I went and got that and a Kanji dictionary. Unfortunately, though the dictionary was helpful, it was rather slow going for the large number of Kanji that the game was barfing at me. So, a guy I know told me about this nifty "game" you can get for the Nintendo DS thats actually a Japanese/English dictionary. The thing thats really cool about it is the fact that you can actually draw a Kanji (or any Japanese character, really) into a box using the stylus, and the game will recognize it and give you the translation. Even if it just gives me the Japanese word it represents, it's still a LOT easier to find the meaning for. So, with this thing, I no longer have to sift through a book. I can learn a lot from just a video game at a rather quick pace. I plan to get on that this Saturday, as I've been pretty busy since I got this idea.

But man, isn't the DS cool? Between its touch screen and its built-in wireless internet, it has a lot more utilitarian potential than you might initially expect from a game machine. I hope that we see more stuff like this in the US. I'd actually have a reason to take the thing around with me a lot more.

Well, I need to eat and do some homework. So, later dudes.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Alright, I need to stop promising photos before I actually upload them to the gallery. I really need to start taking lower-resolution photos (which I can do), because uploading these huge photos is a pain. I could use a program to re-size them or something, but that'd be pretty painful too to go through them all to do it.

Luckily, I put up some photos from when I went to the Nagoya Festival and visited Nagoya Castle (did I even mention that before...?). Unfortunately, I sorta missed the bulk of the parade. But at least I got pics of some guys dressed as samurai on horses. That and the castle pics should tide everyone over until my next batch of photos. Next time I get to the computer, I WILL upload the stuff from the Architecture class. Then I'll just start taking random lower-resolution photos of campus and such.

See you then.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Well, the Japanese Langauge courses started here this week. I'm not entirely sure why the language courses started so late. I mean, that's pretty darned important in a foreign country, knowing its language and all.

One issue in particular was that we had the choice between a standard course and a special intensive course. I chose the standard course, and I'm SO glad I did. Others who chose the intensive course are now rather swamped with work every night, whereas I idly draw or play games. Go me.

So, Friday my Civil Engineering and Architecture class had its first actual meeting and site visit. We went to the Nagoya City Hall, and saw various official-looking things, like the big meeting room and the press-meeting room. Since its an architecture class, we took note of, what else, the architecture. The place looks mostly like any modern-ish important building you might find in the US, but occasionally has a random thing that looks blatantly eastern. Like certain parts of the roof have this eastern-looking pattern to them... I took photos, so check them out in my gallery. No, seriously, they'll be there, unlike the Air and Space museum photos I promised at first.

Well, last night my dorm - thats right, my entire dorm - had a party. These guys here can seriously organize some stuff. I mean, we gathered in the first floor and there was cooked food and a stage on which people contested in weird games. I failed miserably at the "eat three bananas as fast as possible" challenge. But hey, I've been missing my banana quota for the past few days, so I guess that made up for it.

The festivities on the first floor ended with everyone getting in a circle and singing the "Dorm Song." You know how schools in the US have songs? Yeah, in Japan, so do the dorms. Crazy. Of course it was all in Japanese, and the paper they handed out was written mostly in Kanji. So I just sorta stood there and looked like a deer in the headlights.

So, following that, each floor had its own little party, complete with free food and bottles upon bottles of booze. We all sat in a big circle in a common room and people just randomly stood up and talked for a while, punctuated by randomly getting others to stand up and drink with them. I got called on two times, and drank a bit more than I usually do. Though, oddly, I didn't feel it much.

Which brings me to something I've noticed and pondered here. The Japanese seem to have a relationship with alcohol thats a bit more... thought-out than in the US. It has to do with the typical Japanese way of thinking about relationships with one another. It was explained to me that the Japanese are afraid to speak their whole mind to each other out of a fear of offending each other. So, their "honest time" is basically whenever they're drinking together. The alcohol causes them to become more open, and allows them to speak their minds more, apparently.

So, I couldn't help but instantly call this bullshit. I've never been a fan of recreational drinking. But this is a bit much for me. I mean, it seems pretty sad that people need an excuse to be honest with each other. Oh, and then of course there's that great fall back thing where if they DO say something particularly offensive, whether they mean it or not, the next day they can just say "well, I was drunk." I mean, really. My friends at home and I are typically pretty honest with each other and don't ever need an excuse to speak our minds. But then again, we're not the typical "drink on the weekends" group of friends, either.

But really. If a friendship can be ruined just by speaking one's mind about something a friend may not fully agree with or like, then it's not really much of a friendship, I say.

This drinking thing is almost a bit disturbing, because it kind of has this placebo-like quality. Like, they start drinking, and just think "well, we're drinking. Time to act more honest" before the alcohol even seriously kicks in. So, they really are just fooling themselves. I drank quite a bit more than I usually do last night, like I said, and I never acted different than I usually do.

I need to find some people who DON'T drink... consuming alcohol in and of itself, with the proper mindset of it just being something else to drink, or perhaps that being inebriated just feels good, isn't intrinsically wrong. It's just all this damn stigma that's around it wherever you go, that one needs it to change their mind and feelings. That's what messes it up for me. I'll drink a little socially, but thats it. I don't need to be more "myself" like so many others seem to.

lol, society.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

This week was actually rather uneventful. I got my memory card for my camera in the mail, so now there's some actual photos up in my gallery.

Also, the artwork has been flowing pretty good as of late. In the first week, somebody pointed out that my manner of drawing was a bit too "textbook." I hadn't really thought about it, but they're right. I used too many guidelines, and it made the drawing process kinda slow and klunky. Now I don't use as many, and its a lot more fun to just bust out with a figure. I guess I didn't realize how familliar with anatomy I really am. Hopefully I can move onto something more complex than just people standing there.

Tomorrow, the language courses start. So hopefully my brain will kick into full gear when it comes to speaking Japanese. Also, we set up our bank accounts tomorrow. The scholarship should come rolling in quite soon.

Well, that's all the imperative things I have for today.

Saturday, October 7, 2006

Well, classes here in Japan are pretty interesting. It seems that a lot of courses you take in Japan only really meet once a week. My language course will be every day of the week, but it still won't compare to the workload at NC State. Things are gonna be pretty easy here. I just go to class, read some stuff, and write a paper now and again.

As for the classes themselves... the first one, on Monday, is called Gender and Development. It's about how gender roles work into international relations, wartime, and post-war. It doesn't seem quite as interesting as I thought it might. Also, the teacher is requiring the NUPACE memebers of the class to write a paper about gender issues in their country. She'll use those to determine whether or not we'll be allowed in. The reason for this is that there were a lot more students in the class than she expected. I might drop this one, as I'll still have plenty of hours leftover.

The one on Tuesday is Law and Politics of Japan. It's taught by a british guy, so it's not exactly difficult to understand him. The subject matter seems interesting, plus its a course that could go towards my culture minor. So I'll be sticking with that one.

Wednesday is sort of messed up. The first class, an engineering class, overlaps everyone's language course time. Since the course is mainly for NUPACE students, it'd be pretty silly to keep the class at the same time. So, we might end up having it on Fridays instead. After that, I went to a class about the socioeconomic development of Japan. This was followed by a visit to another class that I wasn't planning on, which is a class put on by a certain newspaper and is just about... Japanese stuff. In this class, we get speakers from the newspaper, and had one this week already. Unfortunatley, the bulk of his vocabulary was "uuuuummm..." and he was VERY boring. Oh well.

Thursday has an interesting class called Intercultural Communication. It's actually taught by Misa Fudeuchi, who is a big cheese here in the internatinal department. It's not hard to figure out what the point of the class is from the name. I'd say that, despite my poor Japanese skills, my general "Intercultural Communication" abilities are alright. I have yet to point at something or someone here in Japan and go "THAT'S CRAZY!" and totally flip out. I can typically talk to and understand foreigners. Actually, they're not THAT different... like, Europe is funny, because it's almost like its just one big country with big states that are wildly different from each other. Yet they still interact and get along constantly. It's not unusual for a European to be brought up knowing at least two of English, French, Spanish, German, and/or Italian. Usually its their native language plus English. Often they know a third. I guess those who play Soccer together, stay together. I'm actually really sad that the US isn't big into Soccer (or Football as the rest of the sane world calls it. They also call Raquetball "Smash", which I think is an infinitely superior name). It seems to me that it'd make people in the US a bit more internationally aware. And I must say I enjoy this whole being "international" thing. I feel like I'm more connected to the rest of the world already.

Friday I have a class that actually only meets twice a month. It's about Architecture and Civil Engineering. When we meet, we do a site-visit somewhere around Nagoya to check out... well, something's archetecture. It sounds like fun. Since I'm checking out Japanese things in this class, I wonder if I can get it to count towards my minor...

Well, aside from checking out some classes, I've also been hanging out with various people. Often in the evening I end up playing Ping-Pong with some of the guys. That game can be pretty intense. Watch out for the Chinese! They're born to play it, it seems. I've gone to an arcade a couple of times, and I must say that they are still "in fashion" here in Japan. In the US, the arcade seems to have gone the way of the dodo, which sort of irritates me. There's certainly a rush-factor when somebody completely random that you don't know just walks up and challenges you to a game. Of course, where I live in the US there isn't an arcade that I can just randomly walk to quickly like I can here. Maybe others in the US have the same problem. Not everyone lives in such close quarters there like they do here in Japan. And I guess it's easier to just play games over the internet.

Thursday, in the intercultural communication class, I met two guys who are friends named - get this - Yusuke and Yosuke. It was funny, because they were impressed that I was able to pronounce the difference between their names easily. Well, Yosuke ended up showing me around Nagoya in his car a little bit, while we listened to his copy of Dragon Quest III Symphonic Suite. He's a gamer, so I'm pretty happy I met him. He's big into fighting games, but has never been introduced to Guilty Gear! What a shame... I'll remedy that soon.

Well, now I have some stuff to go do. So I'll probably catch you next weekend, if I don't think of something imperative to say beforehand.

Saturday, September 30, 2006

So. My first week in Japan is drawing to a close. I'll try to remember everything I wanted to say, but it might take some doing.

I guess I'll start with the plane flight. After parting ways with my parents, I went through airport security. Now, I've heard a lot of complaints about airport security these days. I don't know if it's gotten better recently, but I can't say I had much of a problem with it. Sure, I had to take my shoes off, but I was through so fast that I didn't even bother putting on my protective sock things.

The ride from Raleigh to Detroit was suprisingly brief. I think it took a little over one hour. I ended up next to this Japanese girl who was returning home after an extended stay at the US. She kept falling asleep and nearly flopped over on me a couple times.

Once at detroit, I went to transfer to the next plane. It was a long walk! Airport terminals are quite lengthy. Eventually, I got on the plane and settled in. I had a window seat, and the aisle seat was occupied by what I assume was a Japanese man. We never really spoke, as he didn't seem to have much interest in anyone around him. In front of me was a couple with a baby. The husband was American and... the wife was Asian of some sort. I know they transfered to another plane at Nagoya to go somewhere else futher into Asia. Their baby was rather quiet, thankfully.

So after a 14-hour plane ride, I arrived in Nagoya. After getting my slightly abused luggage, I came out front to find a Japanese girl with two other American guys. With her decent English skills, she guided us through a train and the subway system to the dorm, the International Ohmeikan. It has both Japanese and international students, so it's pretty interesting there.

After figuring out my tiny room (but hey, it has its own bathroom and is all mine, so whatever), I went down to the reception/lounge area and ended hanging out with some of the other students. There were about three French guys, some American guys, and a Japanese guy with a fairly decent grasp on english. Eventually I went to bed at about 12:30...

... and woke up at, like, 7am. Hello, jetlag. Well, this first day ended up being a hell of a day. We started off with an orientation meeting, where we got a bunch of paperwork and were told about the scedule for getting our aline registration, getting insurance, getting a bank account, and all this other stuff. After that and some lunch, I got ported off to the Ward Office with a bunch of other students to get our alien registration done. And man, we had to go through so much paperwork. But everything went fine and now in a few weeks I can return there and get my alien registration card. The thing that made this all difficult was the fact that we had to go through the subway system to get to the Ward office, and walked everywhere else. By the end of the day, I was beat. I went to bed at 10:30pm or so.

The next day involved more orientation stuff. This time we listened to the big cheezes of the university and departments say "hello" in 1000 words or less. This was followed by us being taken to our individual departments in order to register with them. I, being a Computer Science major, ended up in one of the many Engineering buildings to register with the Engineering department.

Afterward, I was pretty much free to go. I ended up following this other student (a girl from Poland, also a Computer Science major), because I thought she was just going to return to the dorm. Instead, we ended up following a faculty member to a room that appeared to be a computer lab. Out from a cubicle came this other faculty member who greeted me briefly. Then the other student and the first faculty member just up and left me there. So I was left with the guy who ran the room as well as some other Japanese students that seemed to keep the placed in order, who all began gathering around me. Now, at this point, I'm afraid to say that my Japanese is rudimentary at best. Despite my rather decent knowledge of grammer, all of my vocabulary has gone right out the window. And I was never really that great at listening comprehension either. I can get the first few words, then they lose me. So, two of them knew some rather basic english. And we all communicated rather crudely. For some reason, though, they started saying that they were going to set up a computer just for me (they even asked me what operating system I wanted. I guess there's plenty of Linux users here as well), and that I was welcome back anytime. The computer that I'm currently working on is a network computer that doesn't really let me do too much besides surf the web and edit things in notepad like I'm doing right now. So, I may want to take them up on their offer... overall though, it was a somewhat akward situation.

After I got back to my dorm, I met up with one guy that I've made friends with and we went to a big shopping center (one of the legendary Japanese department stores) to get food and supplies. Luckily, though also an exchange student, he'd already lived in Japan for 9 years, so he was pretty helpful in figuring out what to get. After we returned, he and I and some other guys ended up playing a rather wacky game of ping-pong in the 1st floor lounge where we all ran around the table while taking turns hitting the ball. Eventually, a drinking party started in the same place, which had been planned for a while and I intended to take part in. Aside from re-enforcing my distaste of beer, the party was fun and I ended up having a lot of conversations with different people, like talking about politics with a guy from Uzbekistan. Nobody drank to excess, which I gather is how alcohol is handled normally in Japan. It's more "European" in that sense, I suppose.

After that party I went to bed, and this morning I attempted to make myself some eggs that I had bought yesterday. They came out alright, except that I put in too much salt I think. The eggs here are a bit different in that their yolks seem to be a bit more orange/red. They taste the same though. Now, here I am at the computer, updating my website.

So, now that that's done, I must be off to study up on my Japanese vocabulary. I seriously need to do this if I hope to communicate with people and do at least somewhat decently on the Japanese language placement test...

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Well, the gallery is set up, and the main page looks a bit better. I have yet to customize the gallery much, but you should be able to see some photos from my trip to the new annex of the Air and space Museam, as well as some newer artwork.

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Hokay. So. This is my website. Daymn, this is a sweet website. ROUND.

... maybe you get that reference. Maybe you don't. Well, not only is this my first website, but I'm also re-locating myself to Japan for a year very soon (on the 25th, to be exact. So, I hope to make this a site for a log of my activities there, post photos, and, of course post my own artwork. But first, I have to figure out how to arrange it all to look nice. So... gimme a week or two.

In the meantime, look at the pretty news box.