Adventures in Japan… (Part I)

My friend Jen and I arrived home last night after a 10-day adventure in Japan. Since I still have a week of vacation left with nothing planned, my next few posts will be re-capping my trip. Right off the top, let me say that I had a fantastic time and very much enjoyed the break. However, there are a few things I hope I will never ever do again…

1) Never start a vacation in a typhoon with a pair of canvas running shoes and a broken umbrella. Before we even reached the ferry terminal we were drenched and cold. By the time we arrived at the terminal, all the clothes I’d packed in my backpack were soggy, and we were dripping all over the floor.

2) When you board a ferry 2 hours after a typhoon has passed by and soaked you, don’t think “Hey, a nice hot bath would be great right now.” We were in the Japanese-style bath house onboard when we left the shelter of the harbour and hit open water. With a single heave, 1/2 the water in the tub splashed out onto the floor. Clinging to the side of the tub, we were tumbled and tossed and rocked and sloshed until we were queasy. I spent the rest of the night in my bunk willing my stomach to ride out the storm. By morning, the sea had calmed and we pulled into Fukuoka harbour around 8am, ready to catch the train to Kyoto.

3) After a night on a stormy sea, and a morning on a bullet train, don’t expect your lunch menu to stay still when you finally sit down on something that doesn’t pitch, toss, rock, sway or bump. By that time, my stomach was hunky-dory, but trying to convince the rest of my body that it was stationary was a bit tricky.

Adventures in Cognitive Leaping…

I couldn’t sleep the other night, thanks to too much coffee, too much heat and too many neurons performing their synaptical dance. Instead of thinking of things to sooth, calm and lull myself, I ended up thinking about things that fascinate me. Not regular things like belly buttons and dryer lint, but things that really really fascinate me.

1) Cuneiform. Yes, that ancient stepping stone between expressing oneself through pictorgraphs, and expressing oneself through phonetic symbols. Imagine the cognitive leap between “I want to preserve information about a horse, so I’ll draw a [stylized] representation of a horse” and “I want to preserve information about a horse, so I’ll use a few arbitrary lines to represent it”. In itself that’s a pretty big leap…but then you’ve got to get all your educated buddies to recognize and conform to what your doing. Then, from that, comes the realization that by agreeing on arbitrary symbols, you can represent things other than nouns. All of a sudden you can start recording concepts like love, faith, adoration, and pride, for posterity. It’s really amazing when you think about it.

2) Historical Fashion. In particular, the 18th and 19th Centuries can keep me occupied for hours. It’s fun to make connections and see how changes in the political or social events of the time affect changes in fashion. Also, what moron invented the cinched corset, and why did women agree to wear it? And to think that the hoop skirt was actually considered a practical solution. Interesting.

3) Why on earth didn’t I go into Museum Studies at university?

Adventures in Hecticicity

Yes, I said hecticicity. You know, when hecticification has occurred, resulting in a state of hecticicity. The word describes the final two weeks of the semester perfectly. Between setting, administering, grading and recording exams and scores, it’s been a busy couple of weeks. The last two days have been especially busy with time divided between mind numbing paperwork and dealing with disgruntled students. (“I know I’ve earned a ‘B’, but why can’t you give me an ‘A’ anyway?” or, worse yet, “I’ve earned an ‘A’, why did I get a ‘C+’?”). I hate having to grade on a curve. Students with lower scores think they’re entitled to a higher grade, just because there’s space left in the ‘A’ section, and students with higher scores are punished with a rotten grade, even though they’ve earned an ‘A’. Grrrrr.

After all that (and a lousy night’s sleep on Thursday – stupid fighting alley cats) I didn’t make it out of bed at 4 o’clock this morning to watch South Korea lose their chance at a spot in the Round of 16 in the World Cup. I woke up around 5, but didn’t get up to watch the match. Campus was too quiet, so I knew we were losing. The first game we played was at 10pm, and we watched the game on a big screen in the Amphitheater. The next two games were at 4am. I got up to watch the first one, and ended up drifting off during the 2nd half, only to be awakened by a deafening roar coming from all the dormitories as Korea scored a tying goal. I didn’t hear any roaring last night, so I knew South Korea bowed out of this years tournament with no goals in their final game. Luckily, England is still in the running, so I’m not left teamless in the next round. I’m still hoping Canada will eventually make it to a World Cup…haven’t decades of dedicated Soccer Mom’s been able to produce a winning national team yet? The first batch of ’em should be all grown up by now! C’mon guys, don’t get your moms up at oh-dark-thirty in the morning for years, only to leave your nation stranded 18 years later!!

Since it’s the fist day of my holidays, I’m still lounging (faffing, as my South African friends would say “faff” what a fun word.) in my pajamas contemplating a magnificent breakfast. I should let you in on a little secret though…I usually spend so long contemplating, that I get too hungry to make a magnificent breafast and end up with a bowl of cereal or a fruit smoothie. Sad, but true. Darn, and it just happened during the typing of that last paragraph. I think it was the parenthetical inclusion of ‘faffing’ that did it. Now I’m too hungry to make crepes with blueberry coulis. Cornflakes it is.

…why on earth do you guys keep reading this stuff????