Three day weekend...

I went all Home-Depot on my house today, cleaning and organizing, and took out the sliding doors that seperate my thre contiguous rooms. This was, i see now, a very good decision:
Look how ROOMY it is now.

Dear mom: this is clean. There just happens to be a little clutter and some laundry hanging. When viewed room by room, the clutter is less copious. The farthest room, in fact, is quite well organized and clean. Don't worry.

I get Made

This thursday, some of my co-teachers asked me if I had given myself kanji (that is, the chinese symbols that make Japanese impossible to read) for my name. I said I didn't, so they helped me pick some out. No. That's not right. Name-kanji, I feel, are like nicknames: you can't choose them, otherwise everyone will think it's lame and repeatedly refuse to call you "The Professor." Such things must be bestowed.

Here is the given Kanji:

Let me explain a little more. Japanese is a syllabic language made up of a consanant followed by a vowel or single vowel sound, like ka, ta, ra, shi, or ah. Each of these sounds has their own symbol.

You with me? Ok.

Since this si phonetically limiting and the Japanese language doesn't use spaces (like this: ), Kanji make things easier(ish) to read, since each kanji has a meaning. For example, kee-tay-mah-soo (usually romanized to kitemasu) can mean both "listening" and "coming." In written Japanese, only the Kanji differentiate between the two.

So. My name, usually, is pronounced Ah - da - mu Ru-oo and written in the five syllabic symbols of those sounds. My co-workers foudn kanji with these sounds, and chose the ones they liked.

Let's look at that kanji again:

The first is ahda, meaning "vengeance." The second is mu, representing "dream." The third is Ruoo. It can mean "the flow of a river" or "style/manner/custom" as a suffix. My name, therefore, is "In the Style of a Vengeful Dreamer."

Which is wicked. fricking. cool.

Oh, and here is a shot of the cabin we stayed in last weekend at Hakkoda-zan


Note the presence of comfortable beds, chairs, and easy-to-use plumbing, none of which is in my house.

Snow? No snow? Snow.

Past week was... fine. Did a lot of cleaning. Mixed it up a little by switching over to "mending" at times, occasionally going all the way to "fixing." Didn't really hang out with folks. Read two books.

Until Friday. It was Mexican food night with the locals, so we gaijin got our fiesta on. Had this get together with the folks who we teach English to recreationally, the SIFA folks. People came all the way from Oma and Rokkasho for this one, so we knew it was big. Real big. And real delicious.

Saturday, headed down to Aomori city for the weekly visit to Hakkoda. Except we couldn't go again because the wind was too strong. Went shopping for new snowboarding gear instead. Bought some boots (less leaking) and new snowpants (less sagging, more freezing). Might buy new bindings. Maybe next week. Not sure.

Check back later for updates on the bindings situation.

Crashed at a cabin near Hakkoda-zan. "Cabin" is an extremely deceiving word: this place had a full kitchen, central heating, all sorts of plumbing in the bathroom, and a heated hardwood floor. Compared to my house, this "cabin" was pret-ty swanky. To make up for the unusually comfortable living situation, I slept on the couch.

The next day was windy. Very windy. I pretended to be Korean to get a discount on lift tickets. Couldn't ride the gondola, but the lift was working. Still had fun. Didn't fall as much. Snow was more packed, more like home, easier for me. Plus I had changed my stance a little to be more helpful in these conditions. True story. Went home, fell asleep, that was that.

Tonight i watch the superbowl.

I'll upload some pictures later, not that I have any good ones. Nobody likes this text-heavy stuff.