Free advice, you get what you pay for.
-Morphine

Unsolicited Advice. Unless someone is hurting themselves or others, I don't do it.

Remember fuckedcompany.com? If you were in IT before 2001, it was the quintessential sarcasm-infused, pre-bubble site to visit. My co-workers used to check it literally every 30 minutes. No wonder the bubble burst.

Japanese has adopted many words from English, but the meaning are a little different. "Saabisu" (サービス) was taken from "service", and has that meaning ("...this new service begins Friday"), but it is also used to mean something is provided as complimentary, like chips at a Mexican restaurant. (Bad example, but it's the last time I heard it in Tokyo). Often, at school, if a teacher gives me credit for a somewhat incorrect answer, there will be an arrow and "サービス!!" written next to it.

Last year, after spending nearly 13 seconds thinking about a name for this blog, I chose "Late Night Musings..." after remembering a book I read by Lewis Thomas called Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's 9th Symphony. It's small book of essays and I highly recommend it, as he represented to me what is a dying breed of modern philosophers.

春風の
花を散らすと
見る夢は
さめても胸の
騒ぐなりけり

The blossoms scattering in the spring wind
It was a dream
but when I awoke , they were still moving in my breast.

Ohayo!

京にても
京なつかしや
時鳥

Even in Kyoto, I long for Kyoto, at the cuckoo's cry.

The writer, Basho is maybe the most famous Haiku artist in Japan.

Do you ever crave the situation you are in? As I type, it's spring in my little Tokyo neighborhood, I can hear kids playing through my open windows.

My trip is 2/3 over. I am here until late September, but I want things to stay the way they are forever. Is that too much to ask?

I was on the train, and there was an American talking to his Japanese friend in English about 5 feet from me. We briefly made eye contact and he suddenly switched to Japanese.

I smiled, because I do that too. It's a totally pride-fueled maneuver. But, I feel better knowing that there are people out there as petty as I am.

Actually, it's totally cheesy.

But as a feeble attempt at a disclaimer, I always try and speak Japanese in public. But for some reason, when I am with Japanese people, I become conscious of other Westerners.

I am a sentimental goof at times.

When I came to Japan in 2005, I listened to this over and over. This video is a slightly different version then the version on my iPod, but the feeling is still the same. When I listened to it back then, I had no idea what she was singing. I wanted to do a translation, but I don't think I'll have time for a few days. This song reminds me of Kyoto, Ochanomizu, Hanami, and Shinjuku.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=10543249697274628]

I haven't really talked about Japanese in a while, so here's a short one. This week is all tests. Ganbarimasu.

Memorizing words is hard, but also what verbs and direct objects go together is tricky. In English, you tell a lie, in Japanese, you can use 言う (iu-to say), but also used is 吐く (tsuku) which is the same verb for "breathe" or "vomit". By the way, tsuku is one of those verbs that has like 8 different Kanji, and different subtle meanings associated with them, so most people just use hiragana.

There's more. Which make more sense?

My class has three teachers; the main guy teaches 3 days/week, and then we have women on each of the other two days. That's how it's been since I started at the school. Also, even if it took me a while to warm up to the teachers, I ended up really liking all of them. Until now.

Well, my experiment was to see how much Japanese I could learn in a year. I have been in school for 12 months at ARC Academy, a private language school. Ironically, today is the first day that I missed, because my throat is raw with a cold or strep or something. I am looking back to see what worked and what didn't, and what I can do better in the future. I am here for six more months.