When opportunity knocks, you either answer the door, or you light up your internet connection and spank away your sorrows.

 This is from 30 Sleeps, which has some really good writing and inspirational stuff. Even talks about meeting girls, contrasting the pick-up artist methodology with a "get a life first" mode that makes a whole lot of sense.

Great articles on language learning over at Fluent in 3 Months, one very breathtaking post on comfort and tips that I need to apply to my everyday (actually resonates with the social skydiving post mentioned on 30 Sleeps), and another one that I will need to muse on, "Stop being shy!" Reminds me of all the people who introduce themselves as 人見知り over there. Entertaining thoughts of doing my first serious E->J translation since that translation class at Waseda with this.

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Why We Procrastinate

1. Fear of success.
 Success comes with its own strings attached. Landing your dream job might involve relocating to a new city. Your promotion might alienate some of your co-workers. And dedicating yourself to the pursuit of happiness might require letting go of the people in your life that drag you down.

Definitely felt this one when it comes to job searching... and house searching... and email replying...

Procrastination is the Governor of the State of Boredom. It wants to rule you, hold you down, and keep you from reaching your potential. It feeds on your fears and encourages you to keep talking in tomorrows. But by accepting that now is never the right time, you’ll start leveraging your present circumstances for future gains. By acknowledging that you might make mistakes, even making failure a requirement, you’ll experience the benefits of imperfection. And by using action to clarify your goals, rather than ready-aim-aim-aiming, you’ll have taken the most crucial step towards living your ideal life.

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Reading an article from here before I go to bed.
Creating a "currently reading" list on Wordpress
Go through this blog for particle physics in Japanese
Hilarious commercial on Shuukatsu -- gotta prepare for interview in both English and Japanese though!
A couple more Japanese blogs that I wanna keep an eye on.
Collection of Japanese folk tales with interactivity! -- still gotta listen to those kids stories and pick out good ones to tell the kids! This is actually really baller!!!
Start a lang-8 account and rack up some points to trade for corrections.
Livestation apparently has around 15 Japanese tv channels!

This post from Tofugu has some interesting ideas about role-playing in language learning situations -- kind of ironic that there was just a colloquium series about this type of thing. :)

I always meant to watch this "English Teacher" series  but never got around to it. That and catching up with Wong Fu (dunno if it's worth it anymore...)

全日本コール選手権. Look this up on youtube for some interesting calls hahaha. 


Going to have to keep a better eye on the Japan Subculture Research Center and Jake Adelstein (as well as Polaris Project Japan...) 


Interesting article on development of cute writing in Japan in the 70's, and a throwback to learning to read squiggles in Classical Japanese class.... wonder what came in between and now, after them! Wonder if there's anything interesting going on at Neojaponisme...

More Take-Home Lessons from Madoka Magica

This time from The Final Message of Madoka Magica

 I feel that the final message Madoka is offering is that although there will always be negativity and tragedy in this world, even a single act of hope can seem like a miracle.

 I liked the fact that Madoka did not wish for despair to disappear, as some would suggest that she should have. It is a balance thing. In order to have hope, one must suffer or have some form of despair. To have courage, one must experience fear. To love, one must also feel hate and indifference. That is the nature of balance... Madoka is smart enough (or Buddhist enough) to know the effect that her wish can have.


I also loved how this makes Madoka the precursor to all the magical girls we know in anime — without Madoka, there would be no Sakura Kinomoto, no Pretty Cures, no Sailor Moons, etc. More than a world reset, this was in some ways a genre reset, and a pretty brilliant one at that.


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Onto my main point, for all the theorizing about the ending from bloggers all over, genre comparisons, claims for deconstructionism, religious references, and general fandom fervor digging out every cipher and mystery in the series, everyone seems to be confused as to why Homura at the end of the series is one of the few to remember Madoka.*


I believe it is in the fourth episode that Homura herself says that, Mahou Shoujo who die in a witch's realm are forever missing persons, lost and forgotten to the rest of humanity. Madoka is adamant that she will never forget Mami, to which Homura replies that is the happiest thing a Mahou Shoujo can hope for, and that she is fiercely jealous. Madoka, in a crazy instance of foreshadowing, instantly and without hesitation extends this to Homura as well.


Homura's wish, as vaguely as I have gathered, is something along the lines of protecting Madoka. Protecting her image and her memory, I would argue, is the only thing left for Homura to do once Madoka makes her wish at the end of the series. More detail once I've actually watched the episodes.


*I read somewhere that her brother apparently remembers her too, and her mother has a vague sense of "if I had a daughter..."; parallel world theories aside,^ 


^I'm not quite ready to call whether Homura's time travelling resulted in parallel worlds or merely rewound time. If the former is true then, barring a cross-dimension spanning level of omnipotence granted Madoka, the series is only truly "solved" [ie Madoka's wish only comes true] in one branching of the universe. Such branching, however, could possibly resolve the seeming paradox that is the breadth of power granted Madoka by Kyuubei.), 


Omake From TV Tropes:

Fun fact: priority one for someone with an interest in extending the life of the universe would be shutting off all the stars, which throw away vast amounts of energy just to light up dust and dead rock.

Lessons from Madoka Magika

On the show's ending, in the comments of Madoka's ending leaves something to be desired. Emphasis mine.

"The more important/salient points to take from that though are to make sure you know what you’re really wishing for, and to be prepared to pay the cost for it. If you’re willing to accept that responsibility and those burdens, then the show’s theme is indeed that no, it’s not wrong to hope and believe in things."  

Although this rebuttal

"If this is truly the case though, why does the show depict the girls falling into despair after they've made their wish? Clearly they weren't ready to accept the consequences..."

scares me a little.

“But when Madoka wishes for everyone’s safety, she gets that wish. ”
It’s possible that she doesn't, in one interpretation of the final scene. Homura’s wish was to protect Madoka, a girl who’s existence has been negated. So unlike any other magical girl who ever lived, Homura’s wish can never be fulfilled — and so she can never be saved. In a universe where witches cannot exist, Homura becomes the Last Witch, and her barrier fills the sky.

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All of the responses to this show only makes me worried about delving too deep into the realm of anime blogging (although that may change if I find someone fluent in Japanese blogging on the subject and some of the linguistic relevancy, or at least writing their PhD on fansubs? Have yet to find one), and although it is tempting, I will definitely NOT go browsing forums.

That reminds me, I had a joke to tell about that one guy's Tsundere is bad in real life and that anyone who watches anime or is fluent in Japanese language and culture needs to read it. Said joke being that the two are, for all intents and purposes, mutually exclusive.

Whenever I get around to that Durarara!! analysis maybe I'll wash my hands of this...

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On a side note, as a result of all this searching, I found a guy who is traveling the world with a cutout of bridal Holo* and feel incredibly disturbed and violated. Not only because of the attraction I feel for the dynamics of the Holo-Lawrence [why aren't they trying to call him Rawrence hahaha] banter-relationship, or that she has been inducted as one of those nijigen maidens who are used to define my tastes in real girls [funny that the Tsundere article referenced above really struck home! Maybe it's that, like girls with romance novels, I've learned to be too picky and unsatisfied.]. It's that, for heaven's sake I had just thought of going to the Wolf Sanctuary to commemorate my newfound fandom and determination to read the light novels and, if possible, play the games. Luckily the gap between seiyuu and character is still an incredibly wide chasm for me, and the radio shows do not hold much interest other than socialization (as in sociolinguistic stuff) and plain-old Japanese practice.


*I came upon a controversy as to whether her English name should be Horo or Holo. Anime geeks can be so infuriating sometimes! R and L are fairly indistinguishable in standard Japanese, but dammit Holo sounds much better! And I actually prefer the way Holo speaks in English rather than her Oiran language. Dunno if that's one of the accursed artifacts of being a native English speaker or what, but regardless damn western otaku need to get a grip!

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Add to the list of things I need to write about:

Learning how movie sound effects are made -> I Saw the Devil & Man from Nowhere -> Who's Camus, Anyway?

And the need to discuss this with my friends in film studies.

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Funny how I can write this much but I still have admissions essays to get cracking on! To-do-list for tomorrow:

Purpose essay, mail fin aid form and fee letter, update resume and upload

And whatever else I'm missing.
Gotta be productive!

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Absolutely fascinating, but why the hell are there other people doing this???? DAMMIT

Looks like I'll be going to Urbana-Champaign in March.

Better get cracking on JET and Hopkins-Nanjing application...

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Also cereal guy for good measure, just because I like the picture.