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Hello Blog, I’ll bet you thought I forgot about you. Well actually I did, but only because I’ve been doing a lot of stuff in the past week since returning to Japan. Let’s look at a quick summary of that stuff in a nice bulleted list:

• remembered how to speak Japanese (harder than it sounds)
• played a lot of DS
• slept a lot
• organized a 新年会 (New Years Party) at Lockup, almost killed half the people there with the Electric Shock drink
• finished reading Beach Road. Ending was disappointing.
• found the joy and convenience of delivery curry from Coco Ichi’s
• re-watched the entire run of the highly under-appreciated Judd Apatow series Undeclared
• dropped a valuable thing of deodorant into the toilet. Don’t worry, I threw it away… reluctantly*.

Of course that’s not a complete list, but I’d say it covers the highlights. I also managed to teach some people English somewhere in there so that I can afford to enjoy the things in the bulleted list. But the greatest discovery I made during the past week was, wait for it, the library. That’s right, shut up now, the freaking library. I had never been to the Chiba Chuo Library before, but one of my students recommended it over the weekend so I went to check it out. The library is right next to Chiba Park, which I had also never been to. Both places are huge and a lot nicer than what I would have expected. The park has a lot of walkways, baseball fields, playgrounds, and a huge lake. The library has, of course an impressive selection of books, magazines, maps, and those little golf pencils, but most importantly for me, they have a passable section of English books and magazines. I’m almost done with Dave Barry in Cyberspace. I think I found a new hobby. Oh, and the best part is that it’s free. Now I’m starting to sound like one of those hokey PSAs they’d show on PBS.

I guess that’s the biggest update. For two days in a row I rode my bike about 7 miles exploring Chiba, mainly going to Chiba Park and stuff. I’ve lived here for a while but am still exploring and figuring out how all the roads and stuff fit together. Good times.

*Hey, Old Spice Pacific Surge deodorant doesn’t grow on trees here in Japanland.

I think American always overbooks their flights in hopes of people not showing up. Of course this and last time when I saw it happen, they have to offer someone $300 in travel vouchers to wait for the next flight. I decided not to volunteer since I’m planning on hanging out with people in LA tonight.

The last blog entry was written almost completely as a mind barf.

Whoa; I just saw a guard in the airport ride by in a Segway!

Anyway, when I blog direct from my brain to the keys, the posts end up really long. I suppose I should work on making things more concise. But hey, like I always say, this blog is more for myself than for others.

I’m waiting at St. Louis Lambert Airport right now, on my way to LA for a few days before heading back to Japan. This has been a great trip back home. It seems like it was much longer than the October visit. It was longer, by a few days, but that’s not what I mean. Saw a pretty good number of people, ate lots of good food, and most of all relaxed. Even on days when I do absolutely nothing back in Japan, it feels like I’m always worrying or thinking about something – getting a job, making more money, scheming some new plan, etc. I should still be worrying about those, but I think sitting around at my parents house made it actually feel like it was a vacation rather than just being jobless for the day.

Visited Bloomington on Wednesday and Thursday. It was the first time I’d been back since visiting in August of 06, and for the most part things haven’t changed. But in a good way. There are of course some things that were different or new: the old Ashton building where IUSTV used to be is now a grass field. The new science building, Simon Hall, is done and it matches almost perfectly with the neighboring limestone buildings. The construction next to the Auditorium was finally finished. I saw IUSTV’s new office layout and was very impressed – the exec cubicles and editing stations were swapped and re-done into a new configuration that was much cleaner than what I had put together.

I saw a few people in town, mainly Frank and Nick who came to hang out. Also made some visits to other people and university staff. But without all the friends and stuff in town like “back in the day,” Bloomington was very different. I don’t even know how to explain it, but while on the surface things seemed the same, of course the rest was really different. But anyway, it was a fun trip and a nostalgic visit, so although driving 4 hours each way was a pain, it was worth it. I’ll post pictures and stuff when I get back to Japan in a few days.