日本からの手紙

Today I had the pleasure of opening my mailbox to discover an envelope from my friend Kimura-san, who lives in Aki. Kimura-san speaks English well, and we became friends at Shobukan (my dojo). Even though I don't practice kendo there right now, I still very much think of Shobukan as my dojo. So, I have two dojo now. Shobukan, in Japan, and Tucson Kendo Kai, in Tucson. Both places are filled with wonderful people. I look forward to opening my mail!

日本語　（文法はまだ下手ですがよろしくね）
皆さん、こんにちは！いつもお世話になっております。　お忙しい所んですが、お手紙を書いてくれまして、誠に有難うございます。すーごく喜んでます！　勉強はちょっと忙しいけど、ごゆっくり読みたいと思います。後で、もう一度、段級審査の合格おめでとうございます！また一緒に剣道を練習する日が来ることを信じてまってます。皆さん、お元気で下さい。　　
平成１９年１月２９日
－慈志香より

いろいろ

A lot has been going on lately. I'm full-up in my classes and jobs, so I've been reading quite a few things. However, I do get a bit of free time, so here are some of the things I've been doing.



First, Nancy graced my doorstep just this week. Tracy, as expected, was exciting to get her Deluxe Librarian set. She called me and thanked me at least 5 times for it. She's also told me about the wonderful adventures Nancy has had at her house.



Then, on my last journey to Costco, I picked up this cookbook. It's full of delectable delights for people who want to eat nice food, but don't have time to cook elaborate things or buy a million ingredients. It's been great so far!



Finally, last Sunday, we had the pleasure of receiving a rare snowstorm in Tucson. This doesn't happen all the time here, as one can imagine.

Superhero Quiz

Check this out, I was almost definitely Hulk. Ha ha.

Your results:
You are Hulk

Hulk 90% Spider-Man 80% Green Lantern 75% Iron Man 75% Supergirl 65% Superman 55% Robin 37% Wonder Woman 35% The Flash 30% Batman 20% Catwoman 15%

You are a wanderer with amazing strength.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Deluxe librarian action figures

Tonight I ordered deluxe librarian action figures sets for me and my friend Tracy. These are definitely cooler than cool, as the plain sets just have the shushing librarian. Tracy's ubercool, though. She has the library jacket, which has 'library' stamped on the back kinda like the FBI has jackets with 'FBI' stamped on the back in big official yellow letters.

But with action figures like these (every U of A librarian I've seen has one of these on their desk, I'm not kidding, but only the 'plain ' ones), Tracy and I are bound to get on the social pipeline. We don't have to be ringers at Barnes and Noble book discussion groups anymore. Well, we don't even go there. The one time we went out, we went for sushi. Good times. The second time was for a nice inexpensive breakfast at the B-Line.

I'm taking 12 credits, and will graduate in May. It means a lot to my parents to see me walk, so I'm bound and determined to do it for them. I was kind of sad, though. At Christmas my Dad remarked that I sure turned out well, considering I came from a family of 'losers' with mere high school diplomas. That was the word he used. But that's not quite right.

It isn't about diplomas or certifications. It's how hard a person is willing to work, and how hard a person is willing to push themselves to meet a goal. Hard work goes a long way. I learned this from my parents, and I learned this in Japan too. My senseis (I consider the English teachers I worked with my senseis, although they would probably be shocked to discover I learned something from them) worked hard too, and didn't give up. This is a big thing in Japan, the principal of 'ganbare' (perservere). The concept of 'gaman', or 'endure' is also a big thing. Even when things, in the American lingo, suck, you keep at it.

So don't fret. 12 credits is doable. English lit. was my undergraduate concentration, and that was a lesson in time management. I learned that to be successful meant to stay one step ahead. I'm already roughly 3 class periods ahead on the reading.

Which brings me to my next point. My Japanese Literature professor is somewhat famous. His name is J. Philip Gabriel, and he's translated a lot of well-known works. I finally put 2 and 2 together, and was pleased to do so.

New Desk

My roommate Haruka graduated this semester and is moving back to Japan, so I got a great deal on her desk. The desk can be taken apart, fits perfectly in the tiny and inadequate spot in my room, and only cost me $15 for the whole set. 有難う!

(But now I have no more excuses... I have to study...)

If you wonder, only one more semester for me and I'm done!

久し振りなー

So I've been off trying to finish the rest of my semester (which ended today), and I don't have any final exams. Good on me.

A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks. Last Tuesday I was hired to be a Graduate Assistant (GA) for my department. I'm really excited, because I get paid tuition, insurance, and 10% off at the bookstore. If only this opportunity had come about last semester, then I wouldn't have had to have been poor for 3 months...

So getting a new job means that I can spend a bit of money once in a while. I've enjoyed being a student for the last week or so. I've eaten out once, bought some nice food at the store, and did a bit of early Christmas shopping.

I'm working on quitting my current jobs at the library. I didn't think it was fair to leave the one department where I was working a lot all of a sudden, so I'm trying to phase out gracefully. Fortunately I could do so because the finals schedule starts tomorrow, and other people picked up a lot of the hours I had signed up to work. I am starting at my new job as an hourly employee, but I'm getting almost twice what I was making.

I'm going to work in Japanese collections next semester, but I can't get any money because being a GA and a student are on two levels of hiring, so I'm going to work and get credit instead. Which is cool, because those credits are being paid for.

Last weekend I went to the theatre on campus and watched Little Miss Sunshine. It's this hilarious movie about this rather dysfunctional family that goes halfway across the country in a VW bus to take the little girl to a beauty pageant. It was awesome! I want to watch it again. Perhaps I'll bittorrent it...

I engaged in a bit of self-indulgence after being hired for a better job, and picked up two awesome deals for scuba gear. I bought a brand new pair of fins from another diver, only used once on a 30-minute dive and with spring straps for $40 (spring straps alone cost at least $30), so with shipping came to $54. Then, thanks to the generosity of my mom, I got a new wetsuit for my trip to Mexico in a couple of weeks.

I modeled for the camera--check it out :)

Thanksgiving Fun

So here I am, finally with a day off. Or was it?

Having been reprogrammed to get up early, I was awake at 7.30. Hey, it's better than 6.30 am. Up at 8 to catch up on e-mail, finally reading all those things that "I'll save and look at later" and printing the things I don't want to forget about.

Then off to work on my campaign statement for LSO. I am running for the Distance Student Liaison position, and my major project goal is to create/update, in a team effort, the SIRLS student guide which is not well-advertised nor comprehensive.

I'm listening to Old School Rap, Tribe Called Quest's album The Low End Theory. I recently found two sites where I can download some Bollywood music. Bollywood's kind of fun.

Haruka and I plan to venture out to find something for Thanksgiving dinner. Boston Market is open, and they offer a turkey dinner of sorts. We'll run around a bit and decide what we want.

Washing my clothes, as my bag was overflowing.

No, I'm not a bit lonely on the holiday. In fact, it's nice to stay home for a day with absolutely nowhere I have to be.

Weekend Warrior

Today was the last day for my IRLS 588 class. This was the one called "Native American Perspective in Museums". I had a great time this semester, and met some wonderful people. Some people weren't even SIRLS students, but were taking the class because it sounded great.

As part of our final project, we had to build a webpage for ourselves. The work was just for us, and wasn't being published on the Internet, but our group used Geocities. So you can go look at our work--just follow the link. http://www.geocities.com/kingfan666

Tomorrow I'm going to Sells, Arizona, with the visiting Japanese librarian. In preparation, I made some business cards. No, they're not the absolute best, but they're not bad. I found a box of business card sheets in the SIRLS building today, just sitting there unattended in a pile as though they weren't too important, so I borrowed a couple of sheets to make cards. Now, before you lecture me about taking things that don't belong to me, I can argue that they *do*. After all, I've paid a King's Ransom to the college thus far, and didn't see the need to purchase a box of 100 sheets for $16 when I only needed a few cards for now and forgot to look at Walmart for a smaller box when I was there last, so there...

Yes, I know, it's sort of basic, and not the most professional of cards, and usually cards have more contact information. But it's more useful in case my contact information should change, so that's why I only included an e-mail address. At the conference, I saw two other students who had made their own business cards, and they were like this too. Only Tracy used a book, which makes sense since we're librarians, but I wanted to step away from the norm. I liked the pagoda because then people might remember me a little more easily. And it's just something different.

AzLA Conference

I just returned from a two-day conference in Mesa, Arizona. It was the 2006 Arizona Library Association (AzLA) annual conference. This was my first professional-level conference for my chosen field (well, maybe my first professional conference in general, as I'm not sure that I would consider all of the JET stuff I had to do professional).

I stayed in Phoenix with my friends Tracy and Chuck, and I was treated like absolute royalty. The level of hospitality was definitely 5-star in my book! Tuesday we went out for sushi and beer to this wonderful place called Moto http://mrmotorising.com/ . Then Wednesday we drug ourselves back to Phoenix to find the welcoming smells of homemade chili eminating from the kitchen courtesy of Chef Chuck. I don't normally eat chili, but this was so delicious I had two bowls full, and had to force myself to stop eating! Kudos!

The keynote speaker this year was Mr. Ridley Pearson. He has written a number of "scary" books, but he has recently wandered into children's fiction (yes, I know, quite a change). His popular books are a recent collaboration with Dave Barry (the newspaper guy) which tell how Peter Pan became Peter Pan. The keynote speech he gave was hilarious, and his later talk on literacy was very inspiring. Ridley plays in an author rock band called the Rock Bottom Remainders http://www.rockbottomremainders.com/ ,which tours to raise money for literacy causes. You find that authors are some of the biggest advocates for literacy, and many share Ridley's attitude: it doesn't matter whether a person reads their books or not, it's just wonderful that they are reading at all.

While I'm not too familiar with Arizona authors, quite a few were at the conference for signings and presentations.

I attended some wonderful presentations on topics including manga (Japanese comics), literacy, technology in libraries, Myanmar and Palestinian librarianship, finding a job, and creating displays.

And, of course, I met a lot of nice librarians and networked a bit.

Naturally I splurged and purchased a couple of books to be signed. One was the first book in the Peter Pan series, and the other is a book by James Rollins called Map of Bones. I had never heard of Rollins, but he intrigued me because the program described him as an outdoor adventurist and certified scuba diver. It was fun to talk to him about diving.

I had a great time, but the next few days are busy. I currently have 45 e-mails to process from my Arizona account alone regarding college business, and other things like that. I'm working all day tomorrow, then I have class this weekend. Monday I have another business trip, as I'm accompanying the visiting Japanese librarian to see two libraries in Sells (no, don't really know where it is, but I know it's Southwest of Tucson. In the desert somewhere, I guess.). Then I'm working all day Tuesday, I'll have Kendo, then working all day Wednesday too. I *might* take Thanksgiving off, but Friday will be project work, then I'm working Saturday and Sunday to make up the days I'll miss because the library is closed on Thursday and Friday.

The semester is over soon...

Bushisms

I enjoyed a few Bushisms today, including my favorite one "Fool Me Once"

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5794981655673893019