The Future

So, the polls are closed and the votes are in! I had 3 people vote (かなしい) and the verdict is 2 for Daily Life and Personal Life and 1 for Japanese Study.

I'll start with my Japanese (since it hasn't got too much better). I've still been playing this "My Japanese Coach" game - which is awesome. And it helps a lot... But I don't play it enough for me to remember what I'm learning くそ. So I'll need to step that up a little bit!!

There is less than 3 weeks until I leave and it's starting to feel like I'm going soon. Today I told my boss my last day of work will be the 2nd. I want to have a couple week days to be able to do anything I need to do (that I can't do on the weekend). He said it sounded like fun going overseas to teach, so he wasn't upset at all... I don't think haha.

And it was Hime and my 2 year anniversary on the 18th!!! Can you believe it??? 2 years hehehe. I'm sad I'm not in Japan right now though. Hime and I decided not to send each other presents in the mail (since I'm going there so soon), so we'll be exchanging presents when I get there, so probably expect some kinda update about our "anniversary" stuff around the 8th-10th of December. I hope she likes my present hehe.

Tomorrow it's supposed to rain in Penticton. I'm not looking forward to that hahaha. I guess I'll need to bring something to work that won't get so wet.

Well, that's it for today!!

大神 (Okami)

So I finally managed to find a copy of this game to buy again since my last one was never returned. I've been looking on ebay and checking all the stores but Ebay is fairly expensive and no stores have them anymore because they're not in production and the people who own them don't want to give them up haha.

So the other day I was in Electronic Boutique and there it was!!! Sitting on the wall! So I grabbed it and carried it around with me while I was looking at the other games. I was so excited to be the owner of this marvelous game once again. My heart has been pained since it's been gone haha. I probably won't have much time to play it since I'm going to Japan soon but I don't feel so guilty for losing a game my brother gave to me now (even though it's not really the same). It's also been reased for Wii (though I've heard it's better on PS2) but go give it a shot (if you can find a copy).

I also finally got my Class 5 drivers liscence so now I gotta apply for an International liscence so I can drive in Japan. I hope I can get it :) I'll be doing that after work on monday probably.

Hime and my anniversary is coming up soon too. Two days from now! This year I'm not sending anything from Canada, I'll be giving it to her when I arrive in Japan. I hope she likes it!!

Ralph Lauren

My first piece of real brand name clothing (or accessory I guess). Hime sent this to me from Japan for our anniversary. I've been using it but I always have this sense of "what if I lose it?" haha. The wallet is worth more than what I keep inside it probably lol. It's a super nice gift though and I'm glad she gave it to me hehe. It's not exactly like in the picture to the left but its the same color and a really similar style. It's really cool haha. Thanks hunnie!!!! I hope you like my present as much as I like yours ^_^

About the poll I got going on. If you read my blog, you've probably seen it (unless you read it via RSS). Anyway, please vote!! You can vote for more than 1 thing too if you'd like. I just want some kind of idea what people like reading about so I can better tailor my blog. I see right now the only vote is for "Daily Life" which I like writing about the most anyway (even though this post isn't about daily life at all hahaha).

So yeah uh.. that's it! I've been really busy lately. I'm working on something special at the moment and it's taking up quite a bit of my time. Okay, see you next post!!

Working Holiday Visa!

So, I just got back from the big town of Vancouver last night. I was applying for my Working Holiday Visa. I'm not sure how exactly it all works... but it seemed like I was going to get it, they just had to process all my info and actually make the visa for me which might take a couple weeks. So they're going to give me a call when it's all ready to go then I'm going to have to go down there again to pick it up.

It was a long weekend though. Highway 97 from Penticton to Kelowna is closed right now so the buses weren't running as often as usual, and were also taking a different route - through Princeton to Hope. I got on the bus at 8:15 Sunday morning and arrived in Vancouver at 5:00pm. REDICULOUS!!! 9 hours?! I couldn't believe how long it took. I was so greatful for the wonders of laptop computers, iPods and Nintendo DS's haha. Without those 3 things I would have gone crazy. Anyway, I went to a nice cafe with wireless internet so I could work on some stuff and get my Visa all ready to go. I got some coffee and a tasty beef wrap. The next morning I had food poisoning -_-' So far it was turning out to be an awesome trip haha.

I got everything done for my Visa though then headed on my way to go drop it off at the office and lo and behold, when I was walking up to the building was my buddy who was already supposed to be in Japan with a Working Holiday Visa. Apparently his Visa came in late and he had to change his flight. Sucks :( So, he came up to the consulate with me and sat as I finished filling out my paper work the he and I walked up to Robson together. He had to meet a friend and so did I so we parted ways and hopefully I'll see him in Japan!!

Food poisoning is a real bummer. I didn't want to eat or drink anything when I was with my friends so it was kinda lame. *sigh* But the rest of the night was alright. I stayed with my old roommates and we talked for a couple hours then played games for a bit then it was sleepy time.

When I woke up I felt a lot better so I walked with my roommate to work and got a wrap since I was pretty hungry, then we got on the skytrain together. We said bye at Stadium Skytrain (where he works) and I headed off to the Greyhound bus depot.

When I got there they told me there was no bus that left at 9:45 to Penticton. WTF!? The lady in Penticton told me specifically that there were only 2 buses... one at 6:15 and one at 9:45. Stupid. So I had to go to Westbank, then catch a bus there down to the "water taxi" then take the "water taxi" to summerland, THEN call for a ride to Penticton. In the end I got home at 8pm. So that was 10 hours and 30 minutes. So sad.

Then I had to work the next day!! (this morning) I ended up sleeping through my alarm somehow but still managed to get to work by about 7:30 thanks to my mom haha. Phew, that was a long weekend.

結構悪いやつだぜ、俺は

I just started playing a game called "Yakuza 2". I've never played the first one, but it wasn't in stock and I've heard a lot of good things about the series. It's all in Japanese with English subtitles so I figured it would be an awesome game for Japanese practice too. After I started playing I realized it might not be the best game to practice my Japanese since every character in the game are Yakuza and they all talk the part haha. I haven't really learned too much useful Japanese yet. Most of it is all Yakuza (gang) style. But it's an awesome game - I'm really enjoying it. My newest (and apparently completely useless) sentence 「結構悪いやつだぜ、俺は」 "I'm a really bad guy". I know it sounds cheesy in English, but in Japanese it does sound pretty cool and... ちょっとださい if you're not Yakuza I guess lol.

I also just bought a different game called My Japanese Coach which is absolutely amazing!! I would suggest this game to anybody who is studying Japanese whether on their own, in class, or by any other means. This game is definitely not to be used by itself though, but as a compliment to some other meathod of study. It doesn't really go very indepth into grammar or sentence structure (though, it does skim along the surface). It mainly focuses on vocabulary building through small 10 word (usually) lessons packed with an assortment of different minigames like word search, multiple choice, memory games, flash cards, sentence descrambling and a bunch of others. 10 words a day is an ideal amount for anybody to remember and if you do a lesson a day your vocabulary should increase quite fast. It has options to play all the minigames with the words you've already "mastered" as well, but you don't have the choice of which words those are. I would suggest using this game with Anki as help for memorizing those more difficult words. I've been using Anki to enter the words I think might be a little bit more difficult to remember (since Anki remembers which words I remember whereas My Japanese Coach does not). All in all, this is a wonderful study aid, and for $30 it is an invaluable tool for your Japanese.