No but seriously, come into my den, grab a pen, and let's get on with it.

[mugen_edamame]

OUTSIDE BY THE BINS-

Would be a lie. Yeah, it's a raccoon, no, it's not alive. Last Friday we went on a school trip to NHK's Studio Park  

(NHK is the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation; they broadcast TV and radio publicly) to experience what goes on behind the scenes of making news, dramas, that sort of thing. The raccoon was part of the Nature Documentary exhibit, to show the application of night-vision cameras. There were interactive remote controls for you to move cameras to zoom in on bird statues and shiny glossy plastic bugs stuck onto trees. Or control a little camera stuck on a littler tank to zoom in on this gorgeous Monster:

 
Yeaaaaaaaa man. The head moves side to side and the tongue comes out to lick the air all sexy-like and altogether it's much more lifelike than it had any right to be. I want to work on nature documentaries. I want to be camped out somewhere remote with a stick and an umbrella and a camera and then run after things while whispering furiously to fellow researchers who inevitably have grizzled short curly hair about how the thing with the rice the natives had us eat yesterday's given me indigestion but running after the komodo dragon is fixing it all right up right up. It was a tiny exhibition, but it was marvelous c: 

Another section that I found interesting was the anime section. 'course, most of the anime you and me are familiar with are made and distributed by their respective companies (sunrise, etc.) but Bakuman for example is, I think, an NHK production. There were booths with two microphones, and you sat down and could select a scene from an anime. The spoken words are written at the bottom of the screen, karaoke style, and the actual voice actors' voices are removed so that once you've hollered down the mike, it's you and your partner's voice that comes out.

Theoretically, this would've been an excellent and mildly serious exercise to see how good we'd be at emoting our feelings via voice, you know? And I'd be lying if I said I never considered being a voice actor (one of those 'face perfect for radio' kind of things), so I was all PUMPED UP YEAH!11!111 LET'S DO THIS mode, on. 

Then it started, and it was basically "fine fine fine fine fine GARBLELAKJSDJ KANJI ASLKJDAKLJ GARBLE fine fine fine" because we can't read kanji well to begin with, and are even shittier when we're supposed to do it live, and spent most of the time just laughing hysterically into the mic while sobbing gently. So our teacher was all, oi, don't overextend yourself, go for an easier scene with all the words that you can read, then pour your Heart and Soul into it.

So I bring you, this masterpiece.

I'M THE MAN. So basically all I did was go 'Ojyaaaaaaaaaa' while my sister professionally bluffed her way through lines neither of us in any way registered or understood. If I'd left the camera on recording longer, you'd just hear the shrieking laughter of three adults, wheezing away in our pink booths while school children lined up and waited for their turn to have a go. Till now, my sole regret of the trip is not just staying at that booth and doing all of the scenes until we passed out from lack of oxygen due to hysterics. They'd have to pry me from the mic by my cold, unresponsive fingers, man. It was bloody amazing.

Bloody. Amazing. I'd do it all again, I tell you.

Then we went to Denny's and I had udon and tenpura and it was delicious but if I start taking pictures of meals as plaid as that I would never stop so I didn't start. But it was delicious, honestly, and not too expensive either. Denny's has an excellent selection of desserts! 

And, next up. 

I've moved house! The old house was tiny and cramped, and so's this current one, but it's less tiny and less cramped and severely lessens travel time to get to school and the train station! And restaurants! And grocery stores! There's more space for luggage, and there's somewhere to hang clothes outside. I hate dryers, they make clothes not smell right. So having somewhere to hang my clothes really, really makes me happy c:

But it's not like, a small building cramped with people, ten kids to a bathroom stall style affair. It's more an actual apartment, with two bedrooms, a kitchenette and a bathroom suite. Creepily, this is my first time staying somewhere like this. Usually it's the standard student-y thing, with lots of us in a small space, and an all-encompassing feeling of lack-of-alone-ness. Sometimes of course it's irritating as hell to hear people screaming or parties or too loud chatter, but it's never quiet (except when everyone went home on long holidays and creeped me the hell out), which felt safe. In this new place, it's just me and one other girl, but she's away on holiday for the time being, so it's just me. Yeah, Japan's the safest country ever and I'm notoriously paranoid about making sure everything that needs locking is locked and fastened securely and all that stuff. Logically, there's nothing to fear that wouldn't be also worth fearing in a big shared house.

Actually, it's scary as all crap. I had trouble falling asleep, keeping my ears peeled for any odd sound (of an intruder trying to jimmy the front door, but of course). It's lonely and gloomy and it's probably got as much to do with the weather going from hot and startling sunny summer-yness to rainy and gloomy and dreary autumn, but still! 

Still!

It takes a bit of getting used to. I'm adjusting by way of loudly playing music wherever in the apartment I go to. Oddly enough it reminds me most of staying in the tent by myself while I was on that field trip in Belize. Yeah, there're loads of people within screaming distance, but if an axe-wielding murderer jerks the door open it's still going to be just me staring at him, probably with my music player in hand,

Can't imagine moving out and into my own apartment, where this'll be the way of things until I get a partner to stay with (me). SUCH COWARDICE. But such factual cowardice. Alone-ness is a terrible thing, you know.

That said, it'll be October in a bit, and then I'll be 21 and more likely than not freaking out about other things to do with being alive and pretty happy and wanting to stay that way.

I dunno, man. Maudlin weather puts me in a hell of a mood. I should be studying, or eating proper meals, but I haven't moved foodstuffs over yet and for now it's whatever I can mooch off my sister and nearby restaurants that we're slowly but surely getting sick off.

2012 (and possibly, and I use this term loosely, the rest of the world) will be over so bloody fast.