Japanese 101

So at the end of last week I started taking my first Japanese class. So far it is easy, not that I thought the first day would be super hard. We talked about what Japanese words everyone knew and the professor asked that we learn seven words all of which are very easy: iie, hai, Sayoonara, Knonnichiwa, doomo, doozo, and desu. Lucky for me I already know all of those so I decided to learn most of the Japanese sounds and started learning some Katagana. So here it is A,I,U,E,O:

I hope that at the end of the semester I can look back at this and feel embarised about how poorly I wrote it. Ahh well my next class is tomorrow I hope that I learn lots! well everyone take it easy!

Gender specific food

So I went to the Asian food store today to get some fun food. Here is what I got :) Hot curry mix (my favorite), Noodle soup base and Soba noodles (for a delicious treat), and Men's Pocky? what? Now don't get me wrong the pocky is delicious but I don't understand. There is no women's pocky that I know of. It's dark chocolate so is that a literal translation of what dark chocolate is in Japanese? Anyone know what this is all about?

The new year

ok so I have reviewed what all has happened this year like so many crappy end of the year shows and I have discovered that it has been a great year! here is what has happened and I have learned in a nut shell:

1. So at the beginning of the year I started going out with my current girlfriend. she is a trip and then some. Lots - O - Fun!

2. I was able to have my Bachelor of fine arts senior show. its a nice addition to my artists resume.

3. I got my first "real" good pay, benefits, insurance, job at the McWane Science Center.

4. I graduated from college. Finally after 7 years.

5. I learned that Taco Bell Fire sauce is good on almost anything. Hot dogs and cup of noodles to name a few.

6. Finally I have a goal that I really really really want to accomplish. Having something that I really want to do is a great thing to happen to me. I find that in these scenarios the best comes out of me and it always seems to change my life for the better. which brings me to my goals for the year.

This will be the first year for me to do new years resolutions, and I want them bad enough that I think it will be easy to keep to them.

1. Learn to speak Japanese well enough to talk to a five year old with only a little difficulty.

2. practice singing so I don't completely embarrass my self at karaoke.

3. save up enough money to pay for my plane ticket to Japan and save enough money to pay my student loans for a year assuming I get the position.

4. and I guess I'll throw in some exercise for the year so I can have a little more energy.

finally I found this great quote. I think my last resolution for the year is to attempt to live by it.

I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
-Pablo Picasso

Getting ready for karaoke

So I have spent every minute while in my car today singing Misfits songs and the top of my lungs. All I can say is that this has been one of the best days in a while and I owe it all to my horrible singing. There is nothing quite like going horse singing about murder and monsters. As I was doing this I was thinking about the fact that Karaoke is a super popular way of spending time in Japan and while I listened to myself I started to think that I really need to get better at singing if I am going to represent my country well. More over my friend Yosukei told me that I should attempt to learn Japanese songs to assist me in getting use to pronunciation in a fun way. So I think I will. That is one more thing to add to my new years resolutions

The Person. Part two.

So I have lived a fairly interesting life. I think my parents are to thank for that because they were so liberal with my two siblings and myself when raising us. People say that you can do anything if you put your mind to it but that was a way of life in my upbringing. My parents encouraged and supported pretty much anything that we became interested in. They let us do what we wanted, even if it was a little frowned upon, with out interfering unless we managed to get ourselves in to deep. Mom and dad called it benevolent neglect. What ever it was, I allowed to grow up how I wanted with out being smothered by overbearing parents.

Being raised with this out look allowed me to pursue what ever was interesting. This has blessed me with an odd resume that started when I was around thirteen. I have worked in several plant nurseries, I have been a kennel worker and eventually became a veterinary technician, I installed school networks in New Orleans until Hurricane Katrina destroyed my apartment and all the work we had done, I wired and installed security and home automation equipment, I have worked at an advertising agency where i started out doing data entry and eventually was required to become a web design intern, I taught high school computer classes for four years, I was an art gallery assistant and today I am an exhibits fabricator at McWane Science Center where I get to build, assemble, maintain, improve, and deconstruct kick ass science exhibits. I have been at this most recent job for about eight months. It is a great job; I wake up not dreading to go into work like most of my friends do. It has good benefits and I get to work with intelligent and interesting people.

Unfortunately for me, I have such a wide veritey of jobs because I become bored over time and I think life is to short to be bored. So, I stay at a job for a few years, some times up to six, and then I move on to learn the next trade that seems cool or useful. That is one of the reasons that I have already set my sights on the goal of getting into the JET program over the next year or two.

I realize that the background that I have given is some what sporadic and I'm sorry for that. from now I will only reveal little bits about myself in sections of the blog instead of paragraph after paragraph. I just wanted to establish a base line. till next time!

The Person. Part one.

As of now I have finished the first major step to getting in to the Jet program. Last Saturday on the 13th of December I graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham or UAB. I have spent the last seven years working towards a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree focusing in Sculpture. Some people ask me why it took so long. My general response is because I wanted to enjoy college. There are several other reasons though. First is because a BFA degree is an advanced degree that usually takes an extra year to complete. Second is that I have a wide variety of interests and when a class popped up that looked interesting I took it. I don't regret the time it took to complete my degree. Actually I think that I am one of the few people that squeezed everything that I could out of college and in doing so I have made many valuable friends, contacts, and I have learned lessons that can only come with experience.

So what did I make as an art student? Because I did not know much about art when I began taking classes I started off with the basics and took many of the intro classes. At first I became interested in printmaking but after a few classes I was bored of it. Then I became interested in ceramic sculpture. This seemed to be a natural progression, I have always been drawn towards 3-D thinking and was never very good at abstracting into a 2-D format. I took enough ceramic classes to make it my concentration in school but became bored with it so I moved on to regular sculpture. After taking one semester of it I felt slightly more drawn to it than I was ceramic but not overly so. It was not until I decided that I needed a chair for my apartment and did not have the money to buy one that I found where my place was in school.

I set to work one night and made an incredibly cool but very uncomfortable chair, the response was unbelievable. One of the beauties of art is that no one expects it to be functional and the idea of it being interactive was a hit in my department. I set to work making one piece of furniture after another changing the design to become more functional with every piece. Below are a few of my works and as time allows I will make more in preparation for a show in April that I need to get ready for.

The Project

I have always had a fascination with the country of Japan and the Japanese culture in general. I study their architecture, use their electronics, listen to their music, watch their cartoons, eat their food and much more. Not a day goes by that this culture dose not affect me in some way. Despite all of these things I have never been to Japan. The only stuff I know about the culture is what I can pull from my surroundings. This leaves me feeling like I only understand a very small amount about the Japanese and I would like that to change. There have been several quotes to the effect of: you can only understand someones culture by experiencing it. I don't know if it is possible to fully understand another culture without growing up in it but I would like to find out how much you really can gain by living in another country. I have only one problem... How can I get there and afford to stay long enough to gain the understanding that I am looking for? Enter the JET program! This program takes people from all over the world and invites them to go to Japan to teach their native language. They pay you a salary and have a support system to get you acclimatized to your surroundings. You don't even have to know Japanese to be eligible for the program.

So I have decided to apply to the JET program, But I need some time to get a few things done before I do. First, I would like to stay at my job a little longer in order to learn more from it and to foster a strong recommendation when I need it. Second, I need to save money so I am sure that my student loans will be taken care of while I am gone. Third, I would like to learn the language so I can communicate with the locals, making it easier to learn what I can from them. I think it will take about one and a half years to accomplish these things. In that time I will take classes in Japanese and learn what I can to prepare my self. This blog is designed to follow my progress reaching these goals. So as I learn I will post what I can and would enjoy any feed back from readers to assist in my learning and preparation. In the end of this blog my hope is that I can present it along with my application process to show what I have done to prepare myself and that I truly am interested in the Japanese culture.