Killing Time

So it's been a while since I wrote anything on my blog (Japanese text excepted, but that's not that much good to my readers. It was more of an exercise for myself, but may be repeated later on.) so I should probably do so.

So what has been happening in the world of EsonLinji? Some stuff, but not a lot.

Work continues much as it has. This month I get a second kids school, and am doing help shifts at another school on Saturdays (This has the advantage I get to sleep in a little on Saturday mornings). The extra kids school and help shift is due to another school having half the teachers quit in a period of about a month with no new teachers arriving. Sometimes it seems NOVA is a sinking ship with the rats jumping ship (although since I'm a teacher I don't really like referirng to teachers as rats).

Recent sightseeing. Last week on Tuesday I went to a Mummy (ミイラ) exhibition in Kobe. It was pretty good. They had a 3d video looking inside the mummy based on CAT scans of the intact mummy. Rather interesting. Then there was a number of Egyptian artifacts (jewelry, statues, etc). There were three human mumies as part of the exhibit (the one from the video, and two others), plus a sampling of other mummified creatures (cat, crocodile, bird, and others I don't remember).

Then on Wednesday I went to Mino-o with my new housemate Carl and a guy he met on the flight to Japan, Chris. It was a pretty good walk, but we messed up finding the place at the start. We initially went up this giant elevator, which we thought would help us get to the top of the hills. Unfortunately, the lift only lead to a health spa type place. We followed a rather steep road up from the spa for a little bit, but it only lead to the tennis courts. So we went back down and found the actual entrance of the park, and followed the walk. At the other end of the walk was a nice waterfall. Also, as promised there was a monkey getting into mischief. The monkey tried to steal a tray of food from one of the shops , and was then chased off by the shopkeeper. I managed to get two photos of the monkey from a distance.

On Sunday was a work party, which was OK. Nothing too amazing or dreadful occurred. The novelty of the night was everyone wrote a haiku and recited it. I managed to write three, which I will now reproduce in order of composition.

The weather is fine
I am in my box teaching
Why oh why oh why?

カツ丼を
めちゃたべました
すきですか？

(translation (not in haiku)
Katsudon
I eat it a lot
do you like it?)

first five syllables
then there's seven syllables
last line there's five more

So, I'll never make poet laureate.

This Tuesday I went hunting down the Ice Cream Festival that was allegedly happening in Osaka. I saw an article about it in the paper a few days before, and thought it was going to be something big and exciting. I was greatly disappointed. It turned out to be four small booths in a food court. However I did try the stretchy Turkish ice cream which was a bit bland, but the serving of it was done with a modicum of style and panache.

Wednesday was spent trying to remember how to use Blender. With the recent update to 2.44, I've downloaded the mac version and started playing with it again. I've started up the second project I'd thought of back in Oz to practise with. It's a scene of a spaceship traveling through space. This is going to be expanded into a large battle scene as I get better and can manage more objects. The source material I'm basing it on requires 386 ships (385 will look remarkably similar). Anyway, it will be a challenge bringing the ROU Killing Time to life.

In a few weeks I'm heading up to Tokyo as I've sorted out a 4 day weekend. This will be my first time to Tokyo, so I'll spend most of the time sightseeing. I still have to sort out where I'll stay (hostel or capsule hotel) and how I'll get there (shinkansen or night bus). I do want to find the Godzilla statue. I think I'll have a look through the lonely planet and see what else looks interesting.

Anyway, it's about time I start getting ready for work, so I'll finish up here.

End Post
Writing time: 46 minutes
Time since last post: 6 days
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