Takefu here we come.

Word is just now trickling out on placements for our prefecture. I found out that we are going to Takefu. That's about all we know so far, but we expect to be contacted by our predecessors before the end of the week. I was hoping to be able to post a map giving a precise location of Takefu but about the best one I could find is this one. Which is on par with the type of map you would get from an amusement park. So I'll keep looking for a good map. I think it's interesting that we will only be in Takefu until October 1st, then it will be known as Echizen. It seems like any wikipedia page I see for Japan has all these city mergers listed.

LOTR:The Return of the Peach.

The wife returns tomorrow. I'm thrilled, the cats will be thrilled when they find out. I have yet to succeed in explaining her return to them. I realized that when she isn't around I do weird things. Not like put my underwear on my head and run around the house weird. I guess I mean lazy things.

For instance: The trash in the kitchen is full. I realized that I have a full 24 hours, or so to take out the trash before Peaches gets here. We are in the middle of packing up the house and there are a lot of boxes around. Rather than take the trash out, or even take the sack of trash out of the can, I have elected, instead to put a trash bag in a box -pulling the top of the bag around the lip of the box- to act like a makeshift trashcan, until I actually have to take the trash out. It also dawns on me that we have lived here for almost 2 years and I have no idea when the trash is taken out. I want to dump some large items, but I don't want them blocking up the alley for a couple of days. Hmmm.

I imagine my diet will return to normal. I've been up since 7am and I have eaten two cookies, a Hershies treasure, and a small frozen Pizza. Oh and Iced Tea! We have this box of tea that I am working feverishly to use up. I'm trying to drink only tea before now and the trip to Texas.

Land of the Dead was Pretty Good.

My plans changed over the weekend. I did not end up going to NextFest as I had planned. My friend Fouad was not feeling well on Saturday and today I didn't feel that great myself. On Saturday the Wankercounty boys called me up and asked if I wanted to see Land of the Dead.

Land of the Dead is pretty good. It's nice and gory with some really great visual gags. Dennis Hopper was really great in the movie, although he doesn't really come off that great in the preview. Really the whole movie doesn't really come off that great in the preview. Don't get me wrong I like a good George Romero movie, but I thought he might have lost his touch. This movie proves that he still has it. I can whole-heartedly reccomend this movie to any zomibie lover.

I guess its good that I'm catching up on the movie front since I hear movie theaters in Japan are expensive. They are also a bit behind on most hollywood movies.

Batman was great.

I am reluctant to share my thoughts about Batman. Randy and I were talking about expectations for movies. How you can build them up so high that it is unlikely that the movie would ever live up to your imagination. If I were to share my exuberance on the subject of Batman begins I could very well paint a picture that could ruin the movie for you.

And that would be a shame.

I will say this, it is the first movie in a long time that I am eager to see again, and considering that I paid full price $9.50 for the movie, that is saying something. I usually attend the matinee.

Of course, you can't very well talk about a Batman movie with out comparing it to the previous Batman movies. It's easy to say where this one fits in the Batman movie hierarchy: Its the best. It was kinda funny, I thought, that here I was excited to see a Batman movie, just like I was nine again, and there was a trailer for Tim Burton's version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and that movie seems so dumb to me. Well, I could spend an hour talking about what I think of Tim Burton these days, but instead how about you do your self a favor and see Batman Begins.

Home Alone

My wife, Peaches, has been in Texas this week for a wedding. That means I have had the chance to spend my evenings home alone eating Trader Joe's burritos and playing Civ III for the Mac. Tonight though, I have plans. I'm going to see Batman Begins with my friend, Randy. Then tomorrow I'm going to NextFest with Fouad.

The Nextfest seems like the perfect opportunity to take a ton of pictures, but the missus took the digital camera with her to the wedding. I am not terribly enthused about luging around our Cannon Rebel SLR with me. Aside from the weight, I think I would be very reluctant to take as many pictures with the ol' 35 mil as I would with a digital.

Monday Peaches returns from Texas. I expect the next 2 weeks to be a whirlwind as we say good bye to our friends here in Chicago and then move our belongings down to Texas.

Thanks for the help guys.

The Tiny Jerks have been helping me pack.

Craming It In.

Peaches and I have been taking a Japanese Language course at the Japanese Consulate. The class only meets for an hour a week, which means that I have had to cram a lot of information into my brain every week. Currently I am having a hard time speaking about the location of objects. For example if the book is on the desk I would say:

Tsukue no ue ni hon ga arimasu.

Basically this reads directly into english as: Desk at on book exists. I think its the word order that really gets me mixed up.

Trying to keep particles in order is hard as well. Japanese uses particle to indicate what the word or phrase before it is. In this sentence you use the particle ni to indicate that you are talking about a place or location. While the particle ga indicates that hon -or the book- is the subject of the sentence.

I felt a little better about learning French because for the most part it was about learning vocabulary and conjugations. The entire sentence structure wasn’t completely different from English. There are, of course a few exceptions. Reflexive verbs I’m looking at you.

Counting is a whole different problem. The Japanese have these things called counters. In order to properly count something you have to know the type of counter to use. For instance: minutes are counted like so: ip-pun(1 minute), ni-fun(2 minutes), san-pun(3 minutes), while days are counted thus: tsuitachi (the 1st), futsuka (the second), mikka (the third). Of course there are counters for all types of things not just time. There are counters for people, vehicles and machinery, floors of a building, small animals and fish, then there are the counters for large animals. My favorite is that there is a counter for flat objects like plates or paper, which would seem to apply to magazines and books but they have a whole different counter.

Whew.