Entries this day: Denki_nihongo Diploma Gateway_data Japanese_labor My_labor damn

Denki nihongo

2006年9月 1日（金）13時24分

さっき、おばーさんの店ででんきを4っつ買いました。しれは環境でやさしいでんきです。

Diploma

8:22am JST Friday 1 September 2006

My diploma arrived along with 3 copies of my transcript! Super thanks to Fred for getting them sent.

1. uh oh: no cars in parking lot = post office closed!	2. well, maybe they'll have an envelope i can put them in, at least	3. hmmm, what's this!
4. i can send it anyway, and i won't have to talk to a *single person*! it won't have insurance, but i'll only have to write out the address once!	5. no internet, but i left the email open so i could copy down the address	6. here's the original
7. here's the copy	8. do you think it will get there?	9. off you go!

Gateway data

CD/track             Wave II / Threshold 2: Problem Solving
body position        lying down with knees bent
CD player            Panasonic SL-CT510
headphones           Audio-Technica ATH-T3
ambient temperature  23 C
clothing             underwear, plus sleeping bag
working nostril(s)   right
emotional state      fine
physical             fine
head                 fine
stomach              happy with a new banana
pain/soreness        none
phone/door/window    off/closed/closed
time allowed	     hour
ambient light	     screen saver
ambient noise	     not much
date/time            10:07am JST Friday  1 September 2006
location	     Sakurashinmachi apartment

11:27am JST Friday 1 September 2006

I hadn't made a plan for a problem I want to solve, so that was a bit less than optimal, but I did reach Focus 10 quite well. I think a key is for me to do this in the morning when I'm much less likely to fall asleep.

However, I feel asleep at the end; at the beginning of the exercise I got into my sleeping bag (as the humming part started) and didn't restart the exercise to give time to relax more fully. But I relaxed plenty overall and zonked out after the exercise.

Japanese labor

9:38am JST Friday 1 September 2006

I just got a comment on an old description of slogging through Japanese bureacracy.. Funny to go back and read it now; I can tell how little I knew about how deep the bureacracy runs. But this guy, Mike, appears to have even more experience:

Weird as it sounds, these stamps like they tried to sell you for \4,000 is the normal way to pay for
things like visa renewals, re-entry permits, registering documents, etc.

If you go to the office where you need to get the paper you are after (like a visa renewal), they
will usually send you upstairs where you buy a stamp, get a receipt (so your employer can reimburse
you if they are your sponsor), then go back downstairs to the clerk that started jerking you around
in the first place.

Why couldn't the first clerk sell you the stamp? Somebody once told me that this is the form
Japanese social welfare works, making sure that there are always three people hired for a job that
one could do in his spare time. Buy somoething made in Tokyo. It will first be shipped from the
factory to a warehouse somewhere, then trucked to an area distributor and finally to your store. And
at each step along the way, the cost increases to pay for these services. In the process, a lot of
truck drivers and warehouse workers (who never got enough education to do anything else) have a job
and vote for the LDP. The Japanese man in the street knows and supports this as 'doing his part for
Nihon'.

Registering your 'hanko' takes about 10 minutes for '600 or so at you local post office. I lived
here for almost 20 years before I registered mine, I just couldn't get my head around the idea of
using something for accessing my bank account that any person who knows my name could by at any
hanko maker shop.

I only use my hanko at government offices and such, but still insist on using only my signature for
my credit cards, bank account, etc. The ony person I know who can duplicate the spider scrawl that
serves as my signature is my teen-age son, after a lot of practice. Scary idea.

My labor

1:25pm JST Friday 1 September 2006

Specifically am not bringing my power supply to work so I'll be more likely to use free time to study than to read/write on my computer.

damn

1:21am JST Saturday 2 September 2006

I just realized this.

After I had a fight with my ex-gf, I posted one of her messages here to document her pov. I got a comment from one of my friends soon thereafter, suggesting that it was in poor taste to post such things. I had realized this, and taken down the post before I saw the comment.

It turns out

the comment was written by my ex-gf, impersonating my friend.

- - - -

I hear you, angels. Just one at a time. Thank you.