Oceans. Sand. Trees. Owls. Shadows. Tears. Love, and pain. Slow Motion. Dreams. Nightmares. Slow Motion.

It's nearly 5 am, I've been up all night re-doing my schedule, finally finished, read One Piece and found the new Epik High album and now I'm waiting for itunes to back up the files -- I upgraded because I had to for my shuffle to work, and I hate it... so slow -- so it looks like I might not wake up at 8:45 like I want to. For some reason it seems like my body is kind of used to this, getting too much sleep one day and going without it the next few, eating all day one day and eating nothing the next, despite exercising and all that. Can't say it's healthy.

What I can say is, like I've heard, Epik High has pulled another genius talent from somewhere. I was so worried they would collapse when they went independent, but the quality of music has only improved, and hopefully big names will be able to collaborate with them soon so they can get the recognition they deserve. They're pretty inspiring.

I've still only watched about 30 mins of Okuribito, but I'm still stunned by the camera work. Still haven't bought mine, that will come when the class does as well I guess, but it makes me really want to try. There are cell phones here with HD cam recorders built in, others with 15 megapixel cameras, others you can use like a Kindle and read books on, and even the cheapest you can watch t.v. on. What's with the huge difference between here and the US? So much for the benefits of capitalism when people are complacent with what they have, or just lazy.

My schedule is gonna be pretty close to what it was last year in terms of class hours; I'm a little worried about the work, whether it's what I have to put in to catch up or not, even though everyone tells me not to worry. Regardless, I have Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays off, so hopefully I will be taking a lot of trips. I had considered going for no class Thursdays too, but that would have been too much work and cut off too many interesting classes.

I'll have to remember to read all the directions whenever someone gives me something in Japanese now, cause this is at least the second time it's cost me a lot of effort from not fully understanding the directions, and one where I struggled on trying to correct my own mistake. Guess it's still kind of weird for me to ask people... hmm... regardless, here's my classes:

Topics in Sociolinguistics: Language policy/planning, multilingualism within communities, etc
Reading Comprehension 6 (numbers are on an 8 scale)
Comparative Cultural Studies: something about Europe and Japan, I forget though
Yoga
Kanji 6
Translation Advanced Theories (I've never studied translation, only attempted it in class and almost as a reflex when listening to people or songs, so I don't know how this will go...)
Judo for Self Defense (I really wanted Folk Dance, but it's not offered this semester...)
And hopefully, something like "Japanese society through popular song" from the post war era to the present day; it was so hard (boring, tedious) searching through the course lists -- in Japanese -- to find this so I hope all my effort was worth it.

As you can see it's a lot of playing for me, and I need to email back home and see if I will be able to get any credit for this. It's completely different from what I had planned haha, but then again I'm taking a lot more actual classes than I thought I would be. The Waseda schedule is kind of awkward... there is an hour or so between 2nd and 3rd period, so it leads to some awkward gaps in my schedule... There were a lot of interesting classes that I cut out or didn't even consider, because of their awkward times (one class I really wanted was on Saturday at 2 pm or so!!! wtf??), but hopefully they'll get better times next semester.

Itunes is almost done so I'll be cutting it short. I am hoping that I really put my weekends to good use; I'm excusing myself today because I just got it, but it's extremely easy to spend the entire day in front of the computer...