I had a couple of games of chess with Roger, my co-worker in the International Office, over lunch on Wednesday. We played by the clock since we wanted to keep the games within the noon hour. I did fine in the first game as I had Roger on the ropes but ran out of time. I don't play with the clock much and didn't quite understand the rules which said I would technically have lost on that basis so I decided to try playing the second game with less thought and more instinct. It didn't work. I lost that game pretty badly.
I closed the week with a poker game with my friends in the student village since it was going to be what I thought was the last chance they were going to have at my money (they may try again one more time before I leave on the 19th). During the games we sometimes get into debates about betting strategies during the games. A couple of the players talked about how they bet heavy early in the game based on the strength of their first two cards (out of seven) or to challenge the other players' confidence in their cards while I try stick in the game as long as possible to better identify and pick my opportunities. That strategy worked well that night. I double what I started with by the end of the night.
It's an obtuse way of saying a couple of simple things - when it comes to a trip like this, it takes good planning and thought to make the most of it and it helps to be patient to better assess the situation before acting. To the first point, I can say though that I feel good that I planned this trip as much as I did beforehand. Overall, it's been very smooth. Three months may be the longest trip I've ever taken but now that it's almost over, it feels like it's gone by pretty fast. While I haven't been able to do everything I hoped while I was here, it's hard to figure how much more I could have done with my time. To the second, when I first started exploring prospects for this trip, Yamasa did quickly come up at the top of the destination list but while at first, I was looking at participating in the Internship program, patience and diligence got me this workstudy position.
It's comforting to know you have help when you need it. Roger's been very helpful for me from finding a shodou teacher to fixing computer-related problems, even getting me a big moving box for me to pack my books for the trip home. He's a better chess player, too.
Speaking of computer-related problems, a co-worker back home asked me if I was having any problems working with the keyboards here. Most of the layout for computer keyboards in Japan is the same as back home with the QWERTY alphanumeric design but they are also designed to type in hiragana. Many of the basic symbol, editting, and scrolling keys are in different places on the keyboard, like @ and _ which made it an adjustment when working with e-mails, and there are also a few extras for changing typing modes. I haven't asked or really tried to figure out how this all works since I've been mostly typing in English, especially for my work in the International Office. I even have my keyboard set-up to type the same way as back home though it means that some of the keys didn't match with what was being typed. The only real thing that bugs me about the layout here for some of the keyboards is that the Delete key is very close to the Enter button. It's a good thing the computer still looks to confirm deletions before executing because there have been a few times where I've accidentally hit it.
I did come here to experience things differently, though. I guess you can argue that, in some ways, Japan is backwards to life in Canada with cars with drivers on the right side travelling on the left side of the road, traditional handwriting going down and to the left, reading books from right to left, but this one took me by surprise. I finally got my bike fixed at the Asahi shop between the school and the village. When I picked it up, I did a brake check and found that the brake lever on the left handlebar wasn't working. It turns out that was the one for the rear tire that was being fixed. Back home the left brake is for the front tire. I'm glad I've never had to slam on the right brake up to that point or else I would have flipped over the handlebars.
Declan was away the whole week for a Discovery tour, including a few days at the Sapporo Snow Festival, so while I had a little work to do on a couple of Destination pages, I was able to catch up with my journal work this week. Of course, it's one of those things I need to complete before I leave. A good chunk of them I just had to type in since I had most of my missing journal entries handwritten up to that point, including the ones I wrote in the van on the way back from the Nagano Discovery tour weekend a few weekends ago which surprised Declan (what else are you going to do for six hours?).
I don't agree with him on one thing - to me, inserting photos on the web page takes just as much time from start to finish as it is to write the text. Of course, when it comes to writing a journal entry for something like the Sapporo Snow Festival, putting together forty photos and programming them into a web page is going to take some extra time. Then there's the videos that I took with the digital camera to put into the journal page that Declan hasn't yet taught me how to do.
Despite the almost weekly poker games, because of my work schedule, I still feel a little out of touch when it comes to life in the student village. Tuesday and Wednesday were a bit odd because of the holiday on the 11th, Constitution Day, which I worked to make up for the day I took off to fly to the Sapporo. The rest of the village took the opportunity to unwind so it was especially lively Tuesday night after I got back late from work. Like a few of the other national holidays that occured while I was here, I saw little sign of related activity other than a few of the schools workers taking the opportunity to get in a day of skiing. Me, with the Sapporo trip over and done with, it was time to start cleaning up shop and get packing. Also, since I decided it was better if I left for Tokyo next Thursday afternoon rather than Friday, I put in a few extra hours in the office to pool up more time so I could leave work a half-day earlier than originally scheduled.
I did watch another DVD, a slightly odd romance/comedy called Dog Star about a seeing eye dog who is granted a wish and decides to become human to find the young woman who raised him as a puppy. Again, didn't understand it completely but it was a good movie with a nice bittersweet story. I also got in another hour of 'screaming therapy' at the karaoke box.
Overall, it was a pretty long week, especially after flying back late last Sunday from Sapporo. Of course, playing poker Friday night until 3:00 in the morning after doing a ten-hour work-day does tend to tire out the body and mind.