Almost home

So we are packing before checking out.
I have not blogged the last two days, even thou I have had bloggable experiences.

On Friday we had dinner at this awesome sushi place called Haiku right off Strøget. It was run by Japanese people, which is rare when it comes to sushi places. And we got "omakase" (this might be me remembering wrong thou, but it was called something like that), which was basically chef's choice. We got to decide what we generally wanted, and me being absolutely addicted to maki (rolls) I got a plate full of maki.
There were all sorts of maki, including California maki with real crab, and desert maki with mango and strawberries on it. Which sounds weird, I know, but whatever was in it was neutral enough it didn't taste weird, and so tender the slice literally melted in my mouth.
Definitely a place to visit if you are ever in Copenhagen.

And then yesterday was my exam. I think I passed, not with flying colours but a pass is a pass. And I think I passed. I met this guy, also Norwegian, who we ended hanging until he had to catch his flight. He was very nice^^,

Then we went and saw "500 days of Summer", which was a cute romantic indiewood comedy.
It dared be dark and depressive.

And then we went and saw some dancers. Which was spectacularly uninteresting. Sunday is not the day for such thingsXP

And then we missed the last train home. So we walked to the metro, and took it some of the way, because they had troubles on the line. Then we stood and waited for the replacement. There was this drunk (and probably high as well) man there who had apparently been in a fight where he beat the c**p out of everyone. He was bugging the woman who was there to keep things safe.
But she took it in very good humour, we even made faces at each other when he was telling his story to this other man. Complete with waiving of every limbXP

I am gonna post this when I got home, 'cos my 24 hours of internet just ran out. So this will be posted about 8-9 this evening.=D

I have the coolest birth date ever

So. During the Japanese class we started discussing what we were going to do during Easter break, and me being born on April 8th, and this being on Ash Wednesday this year, I told them I was celebrating my birthday. And the Japanese teacher thought this was so cool, which I didn't understand squat of, she asked me about three times if it was for real, and kept saying "sugoi" (cool) and the whole class was very confused. And then she told us that in the Japanese Buddhism tradition 8th of April is Buddha's birthday!
How cool is that? I am born on the same day as Buddha! すごいですね XD


Word of the day:
大仏 - daibutsu - large statue of Buddha

About the importance of pronounciation

So I messed up in Japanese class todayXP
We were doing comparative sentences I managed to say "バスのほうが新幹線よりやさいです" instead of "バスのほうが新幹線よりやすいです". Prompting a mini lesson in the importance of pronunciation.
To clarify I said "the bus is more vegetable than the train", when I was supposed to say "the bus is cheaper than the train"XP
Seeing as Japanese is a language based on syllables one syllable (or vocal really) wrong can have horrible effects.

Other examples that she told us is for example the one about the foreign student that has to push his way through the masses of people to get of a crowded train and manages to say "ころしてください" when he means to say "おろしてください". He of course means to say "please let me through", but ends up saying "please kill me". Which must have caused a whole lot of horrified looks. XD

Or the poor tourist at the beach who wants to sit down next to a pair and have a chat but confuses the verbs すわる and さわる, and ends up saying something along the lines of "can I feel you up?" instead of "can I sit here?".

So as you can see, pronunciation is crucial. Or else you can end up getting shot on a train or being smacked down by a jealous boyfriend XP
Or you can have long conversations of which item in a store is more vegetable than another XP

Words of the day:
やさい - yasai - vegetable
やすい - yasui - cheap
ころす - korsu - kill
おろす - oroi - (in the context I have used it here: move, get out of the way)
すわる - suwaru - to sit
さわる - sawaru - to touch, to feel (or to harm actually)

First dag of Japanese Class

So it was my first day of the new Japanese class yesterday. Level 5 now peepsXD
I LOVE Japanese^^, It was so much fun, and the people remembered me. (I was in this class last fall of 07, but then I took a brake to focus on exams.)
I'm a little behind, but I will catch up in no time, seeing as it's only a chapter and a half. Easy-peasy^^,
There were a lot of new students, and two of them speak very little Norwegian, and the poor teacher speaks almost no English. Poor thing, she struggled along thou, trying her best. She is the sweetest little Japanese woman.^^, She was really upset thou, 'cos we use Genki, that being one of the best books on the market. Just that FU Oslo, which runs the class, wants us to use Japanese for Young People. Which quite honestly is crap. So FU Oslo sends mail to everyone to tell us that we need to buy JfYP 2 and 3, text and workbook. Even thou Reiko (the teacher) sends text messages to everyone telling them to wait to buy the books, some of the students went ahead and bought them anyway. Reiko was so upset, they had to try and exchange them, and she kept apologizing. Poor thing=j

We are repeating quoting and guessing at the moment, which I have actually learned myself already, so I'm covered for the moment. I think I will be up to speed in about two weeks, give or take.^^,

We've had a week off in math. Our math teacher has taken pappaperm, which translates roughly to daddy-leave. It's maternal leave for men. You get a child, and then you get 6 weeks off basically, to take care of your little infant bundle of love^^,
So we get a sub for the 6 weeks he's on leave, just that this first week there wasn't any available subs, so we got to work at home. I better get around to doing thatXD

As a sidenote, I'm halfway through New Moon, the sequel to Twilight, and it's depressing and weird. But I'm almost done, so I am forcing myself through^^, Her narrative skills are painfully slowly improving thou. Some of the things in the book just does not make any sense. If they don't by the end of the book, await rantsXD

Word of the day:
学生 - gakusei - student

Tendencies in present day vampire literature

You know, I am reading the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris. The one Trueblood is based on for anyone who's heard of that, and it occurred to me, in all the present day vampire series the underworld has gone public.
Take the Hollows series, which were the first one I read who did this particular thing, there the underworld (witches, vampires, werewolfs, pixies etc.) have been known since the 60's I think... I always found the idea captivating. What if there really are supernatural beings? I really think that if they exists they should be out in the open.
Anyway this is really a trend, in the Kitty Norville series we get to experience the whole coming out process. The beginning of laws for the supernatural, and legislation regarding them, and supernatural celebrities coming out as celebrities. In the Anita Blake series they are also out in the open (at least as far as I could tell, I haven't really gotten all that far yetXP).


I think I should write a tad about Dead Until Dark, the first book in the Sookie Stockhouse series. At first I did not like it one bit, the hillbilly language drove me mad, and I thought it was told really amateurish, but the story itself was really captivating. I decided it must be her first book, which it turned it wasn't, she has been a published author since 1981, and I guess it's just her style of writing. But I must say, the story is really good, and the hillbilly language really grew on me. And, oh my, she can really write the indecent scenesXD The trick is not to have too many and not to tell too much^^, It really is all in what you don't spell outXP

And now for the Japanese. I am currently struggling with te-form. It's actually the first time I have encountered anything (except kanji, but that just takes cramming) I have found hard. You use te-from when asking someone to do something, or asking if you can do something. It's not that I don't understand it, it's just that it's a bit hard...=j

Word of the day:
ヴァンパイアの本 - vanpaia no hon - Vampire novel

The post about everything

First of I wanna talk about a very unfortunate man called Christopher Handley who right now is in danger of being prosecuted for owning child pornography. Only problem is; he doesn't. What he might go to jail for is owning yaoi and lolicon manga. Now, I don't know all that much about lolicon, but I know that it is not child pornography. Yaoi on the other hand I have read, and I even own some, and that is not child pornography at all.
You can read more about this case here: Splash Page
Yaoi is homoerotic manga (japanese comics) mainly written for a female audience. It's not really porn, as it most often focuses on the feelings between the two guys, and the tension, and all that emotive business that often sail way over the heads of many men. The point of it is really that the girls who read it can be attracted by one of the men. Many yaoi manga get at least as many fangirls as regular manga squealing over which guy is cutest. And of course there is the occasional more or less explicit sexscene, but no less that regular manga. And as far as I know yaoi characters that have sex have to be of age, which means they have to be 20 or older, and thus does not fall into any kind of definition of a child. It's just the style they are drawn in that makes them seem younger. (I might be wrong about the age thing thou...)

On to less sinister business I saw an amazing movie yesterday. Okey, maybe not less sinister...
I saw Snakes and Earrings, which as you can probably see has a non-existent imdb entry. I'll see what I can do about that.XD
It's about a girl named Liu who meets a boy named Ama, who could be a needle pillow for all the piercings stuck in him. Ama takes Liu to meet Shiba, who could be a porcupine (he has sharp-looking objects protruding from his faceXP), who is a piercer and a tattoo artist. He gets her tongue pierced and decides to get tattoo on her back. She starts a relationship Shiba, even thou she is with Ama, and Ama kills a yakuza to prove his love for her. And all that goes along with things like that.
The movie is mostly about being lost and trying to find oneself. Liu uses bodymod and abusive sex as a way to not lose her self, she only feels alive when she is in pain.
I absolutely loved it. Fiancé was less than impressed howeverXP It's not that he didn't like, it's just not his kind of movie. He said something funny thou, that I usually like movies with "damaged" leading characters. And I started thinking about it, and it turns out, in almost all my favorite, non-childrens movies the main characters are damaged in some way. In Interview with the Vampire, Luis is totally torn, and Claudia is positively frightening sometimes. In Sweeney Todd most of the characters are just about deranged. In Sabrina Audrey Hepburn in torn apart by her love for David, and in Breakfast at Tiffany's she certainly is a bit damaged. Marilyn Monroe is one of my favorite actors of all time, and she certainly wads damaged.
And I started wondering why it is that I'm always drawn to the broken ones? That's one for the shrink to be sureXP But I guess it's because I'm broken myself, and it's easier to relate to the broken ones. I've always been sort of drawn to the underdog, which has landed me with some pretty crappy friends occasionally. (This does not include any of my present darlings BTW, but if you know me I bet you have heard all about themXP)
Anyway, it was a great movie (and it's based on a great book by Hitomi Kanehara), and as long as you don't have problems with needles, nudity or sex I really recommend it.




Oh! And I am skipping a grade in my Japanese class. I just finished grade 3 today, and my teacher told me she really thought I should skip a grade, because I am so talented. Now I must say, compliments are nice, but if you want to really make me happy, tell me I'm really good at something. I don't really care how I look, and I'm not gonna change myself for anyone, but I really like to be complimented on my mind, seeing as I consider that my greatest asset=D
I am really psyched right now=D I'm gonna go home and get my Japanese books tomorrow to start get up to their level=D=D

The glory of logical learning

I have been struggling long and hard to learn kanji. To me kanji just isn't logical, and I have some problems learning things that aren't logical. That is all changing. Yesterday I made a wonderful addition to my Japanese text-/work-book arsenal: "Let's learn Kanji", (the blue book, number 3 from the bottom of the left pile on yesterday's picture). Suddenly kanji is logical to me^^, Due to the introduction of the radical. I have had a idea of what a radical is from before, because I had to be able to identify the radical to be able to look up kanji in kanji-dictionaries, but up until now I have never understood the significance of the radical on the meaning of the kanji. I have never realized the connection between several kanji with the same radical and the similar meanings of these kanji. But now I do, and now kanji are so much more logical^^, And therefore easier to learn. So if you are having problems, this book is great. I have been contemplating getting myself a heisig book (heisig is a method of learning kanji that bases itself on association patterns), but I will hold of on that for a while to see if this book works better...

Word of the day:
好き - suki - liking, fondness, love
(word of the day is chosen because I like the kanji portion, which consist of the kanji for woman and child, and I like the way it implies that women and children are likeable^^,)

Heavy books

These are my Japanese books (sorry about the huge picture, seems I have removed my image editing program, so I was unable to shrink it). We were talking at the Japanese class about how many books we had, and I just thought I'd find out. Each stack measures about 23 cm. Which means I have about half a meter with Japanese books. There are the ones I have bought on the left and the my notebooks, the box under the binder is full to the brim with cuecards. And of course I had to weigh them>.< The left ones weighed about 6,4 kilos, and the right ones weighed about 5,2 kilos.
That's a lot of paper that is>.<

Word of the day:
多大 - tadai - heavy, much

Can someone please take the moth out of my computer?

So Playground has a bug. Something about the size of a South American Longhorn Beetle I think. I can't seem to find it thou, but Playground keep doing things she is not supposed to do. And quite frankly it is making me rather sourly. On top of that the internet decided it didn't like me and stopped working about Wednesday evening, so I have been unable to put Playground back the way she is supposed to be. But now I am at the fiancé's place and he has internet, and now I am doing me best of fishing out the beetle from the depths of Playground myself, and if that doesn't work fiancé will take his über awesome beetle removing landing net (or as normal people would say: über awesome computer skillXP) and go hunting for it. (Or he ain't gettin' anyXP) I will let you know how it goesXD

I started Japanese class last night^^, The other students are super nice^^, I am so happy about that^^, I migth make friends^^, I'm a tad better than them thou, but that's just becuase I am a super nerdy study geek>.< When I am in the mood I can sit with my precious Japanese books for hours on end, so I am a tad good. We got this chart over verb conjugation (present and past), which ofcourse I knew how to do. But about half the rest of the class found it hard, which is kind of frustrating, because that means the teacher spends a lot of time explaining things that I know backwards. But it's fun anywho. And I don't know everything either, I am not saying I am supersmart in comparison. I have a huge advantage seeing as I have gotten to chapter 13 in the book we are using, and the class is at 11, so I literally read from my notes to answer the questions instead of constructing the sentences. Which showed bigtime whenever I had to construct something.
And ofcourse we had to write out all the kana on this form at the very start of the class. Now, I can write and read fluently, there are about 6-7 characters that I have to look up (a rappidly decreasing number mind youXP), and I remembered tham all the moment I started writing, but I couldn't fill up half the form. *grumbles* I couldn have done it 5 minutes after we were done, when I had started writing thou. We are getting the form again next week thou, and I am going to ace it, damn it! (even if we aren't getting gradedXP)

I have joined a gym. Woohoo........... Thus far all I have gotten out of it thus far is achy arms.... But I am going to get in super shape. Yup... Steel abs comming to a blog near you in the near (or very distant) future^^,
This is not really interresting thou, but I just had to write a short note on the appearance of the gym. It had the feel of a well lit, sleek, silvery torture chamber. Not really because of the pain I knew was in store, but high tech workout machines are really scary looking. They look like if you painted them black they would do very well in a dungeon, and not the BDSM kind, the real mideveaval "I am going to pull your fingers apart joint by joint while you are awake"-kind. The device from training the small of the back would look really good next to an iron virgin. I kid you not>.<

I am going off to perfect my romanji to kanji exelence^^,

Word of the day:
金亀子 - koganemushi - scarab beetle, goldbug