Quite a few people were talking about yesterday's suicide today. Although I learned a bit more about the person, it was very little beyond what had been printed in the morning paper. (Which, having read it, was pretty much next to nothing.) One of the teachers was kind enough to give me the page where the story was printed, so here's the (loose) translation:

Jinryo Station Traffic Accident

On the 27th around 3:30pm, on the grounds of the JR Chuo Line station, Jinryo, in Kasugai City (Aichi Prefecture), an unemployed woman (30) from Seto City (Aichi) was hit by the "Central Liner #14" bound for Nagoya Station from Nakatsugawa.
According to the Kasugai department, from what the conductor witnessed of the woman who jumped, they are currently investigating but the possibility that this was a suicide is very high. In both directions, 14 trains were delayed for 1 hour and 47 minutes and affected 21,600 people.



Original article:


神領駅で人身事故

二十七日午後三時半頃、愛知県春日井市のJR中央線神領駅構内で、同県瀬戸市の無職女性（三〇）が中津川発名古屋行き「セントラルライナー14号」（三両編成）にはねられ死亡した。
春日井署によると、運転士がホームから飛び降りる女性を目撃しており、自殺の可能性が高いとみて調べている。上下線十四本に最大一時間四十七分の遅れが出て約二万千六百人に影響した。

Life sucks. Goodbye cruel world...... D:


































Just kidding. ^_^

Actually, today some dude apparently decided to off himself by jumping in front of the train. While it's not an uncommon thing here in Japan, the fact that it took place at one of the stations on the line I use to go to and from work, really irritated me. Because of that person, things got really messed up. Here's how bad:

I boarded the 3:32p train at 4:40p and had to wait until it was finally ready to depart at 5:20p.

What was really surprising, however, was that it happened at one of the stations I usually get off at. To see all the workers who had cleaned up everything as I passed by them on the train was really something to see. Not sure if the local news will have any information, but I'll ask the staff at school about it and see since I'll be working in that area tomorrow. I'm hoping that they will be able to tell me all about it; I'm quite curious about what happened to cause the whole situation in the first place.

I really hope that nothing like that happens again, though. With how many people had been waiting, the train was really packed -- much to the point that it was quite painful.

Anyway, time for me to go to bed. I caught a nasty cold last Friday and I'm still not fully recovered. I really wish I could take a day off so that I can get enough rest, but there's not much time left before the end of the term so I can't afford to be taking holidays. Just have to hang on until Sunday, I guess. (I work on Saturdays, in case you're wondering.)

Ever since the second school term began in September, lesson preparations have really gotten out of hand. In order to make sure that I got everything done on time, I've been spending more time at the school and even using the free time while at my apartment working on everything to make sure it all gets done. Although I've been playing around quite a bit the past few days, I will need to spend a few days of the vacation taking care of preparations for the next term.

The textbook's flaws have really made things quite difficult for me. In the book, there are about 8 lessons total. For each lesson, the teacher is expected to cover all the materials within three days worth of time using only the games listed and the materials provided. Unfortunately, the creators of the book fail to really meet the needs of all types of students, not just the ones that they had done surveys on. Some of the things that I've found to be problematic:

-- The same games are repeated quite often, much to the point that the students get tired of them.
-- A lot of the flash cards are ugly as sin and don't even match what's in the book.
-- One lesson will be easy, but then the next lesson will suddenly use a lot of difficult stuff that takes a lot of time to learn.
-- Not enough lessons for the first level book. (Meaning I will be making a lot of lessons up on my own once the book lessons run out.)
-- Songs provided in the lessons are difficult to do since the 6th graders are shy.

If I could complain to the publishers of the book, I definitely would. The book is supposed to make one's job easier, not harder.

Anyway, all that aside, I've been doing what I can in order to improve my drawing skills in the little time that I have. With all the flash cards and whatnot that I've had to draw, I've made vast improvements in that area, but I still need much work in terms of illustrating characters as well as backgrounds/landscapes/cityscapes/et cetera. Despite how things are looking for the new year, I'm hoping that I can continue to make improvements in my style. Still too early to tell, though, so we'll see how things go.

Happy New Year!

Wishing you all the best in 2010.

I made the upgrade to a PS3 just recently. At the moment, I only have one game so playing co-op is probably out of the question, but if you want to add me as a friend, here's my information:

PSN ID: RisenBlade
Online ID: Ceta

I got an invite just a little while ago. If you're reading this and want an invite, just let me know. I can invite up to 8 people. If you're already using it, just let me know so that I can figure out how to add you to my contact list. ^_^

At 5:07a, a little over 10 minutes ago, there was an earthquake in Shizuoka Prefecture. In some areas, the earthquake registered a 6.6 on the Richter scale. Thankfully, I'm far enough away that, although the earthquake was felt all the way out here, it registered only a .5 -- enough to cause my apartment to shake quite a bit, but nowhere near enough to do any damage.

It's amazing to see the news reports going on right now. Some stations had video coverage of the quake, so it was quite interesting to see how bad it was in the other areas.

Not sure if any of you have had this problem, but lately it seems that whenever I'm browsing the internet, there'll be some sort of web advertisement on a page that will cause my browser to crash. It's been happening quite a bit lately that it's become quite frustrating. Not sure if it's just due to an incompatibility with Safari or bad scripting, but regardless of the reason, it's enough to make a guy want to start punching small animals.

*Browser crash*
Take that adorable puppy! *Punch*
*Browser crash*
It's to the moon for you cute little bunny! *Punch*
*Another browser crash*
Say 'Sayonara' LOLcat! *Shoryuken*


*Grumble, grumble*

Went to Nagano yesterday to see Matsumoto castle -- one of the four original castles left in Japan. The weather as of late has been incredibly rainy (it was even raining all morning), so I was worried that it would be bad all day when we got there. Thankfully, albeit cloudy, the weather was just fine, allowing me to get some decent pictures of it. How they turned out, though, I'm not sure since I haven't uploaded them to my computer yet.

On the way back, the rain started to come down really hard, which was pretty worrisome considering the fact that many trains tend to stop at the stations for long periods of time when this happens. Luckily, the trains continued along and we made it back just fine. Even better was knowing that it had finally stopped raining in Nagoya.

Right now I'm currently on summer holiday. Which basically means I'll be spending almost 7 weeks wishing I could go back to work. While I like holidays and all, 1) I'll likely end up spending a majority of the holiday doing nothing, and 2) a 7-week holiday makes my wallet want to cry. (While I do get paid, the amount I receive is small and reduced to almost nothing once I've finished paying the bills.) I do plan on going out of town at some point, but I have no plans at the moment.

Anyway, this December I plan to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. For those of you who don't know, the test is broken up into 4 levels. The fourth level is easiest since it is for beginners while the first level, if you pass, means that you're on the same level as a native Japanese speaker. This year, however, the creators of the test decided to release a new third level and make the current third and fourth levels the new fourth and fifth levels, respectively. My plan for the summer, when not working my part-time job at the coffee shop or traveling, was to spend my time studying Japanese so that I can take the new third level test and -- with luck -- pass.

Unfortunately for me, I just found out a little while ago that the new third level test has been postponed until summer of next year, so I've been fairly lost on what I should do. I mean, one year is a pretty long time to wait and it's possible that by the time next summer rolls around I'll be to the point where I can aim for a higher level instead. So, I've decided that I will study harder and take the second level test to see where I'm at. At the moment I'm not too sure I can pass it considering that I still have a long way to go and a ton of stuff to study. Although I have a few months to go, how much I can accomplish is hard to say. I guess the only thing I can do is just try my best and see how things go.

I'm kinda worried, though. One guy I know who took the test scored in the 80 percent range for the level three test but then scored in the 20 percent range for the level two. With how large of a gap that is, I can only imagine how tough it's going to be for me if I take it. (;_;)

Since I hadn't recovered by the time work started on Monday, I was sent home to rest. Sadly, my condition hadn't changed at all yesterday so I ended up having to take another sick day. I went into work today since my fever had finally gone away, but it was still pretty difficult due to the fact that the body pains were draining my energy like crazy. As soon as my last class for the day was finished, I was allowed to go home early, so I took the chance to finally go to the hospital -- something I should have done on Monday but didn't (because I'm a retarded).

As it turns out, all the symptoms I'm currently troubled with -- headaches, bodyaches, etc -- are due to a virus which has caused my stomach to become inflamed. It should take only a few days to make a full recovery so long as I take the medicines that were prescribed, so I'm happy. What also makes me happy is the fact that the powdered medicine I received this time around tastes more like whey than than ass (which is the main reason why I hope never to catch the flu again).

Anyway, I look forward to recovering soon. Constantly feeling like someone has drop-kicked me in the abdomen really sucks.

Feeling horrible and very warm, so I decided to buy a thermometer. Right now my temperature is over 103ºF. (T T)

Man, this sucks.

....did you hear about this?


DETROIT (AP) -- Police in Detroit have ruffled some feathers after they cracked down on an organized pillow fight at a downtown park. The Detroit News reports that police at Campus Martius Park prevented the feathery fight Saturday by disarming pillow-toting participants. The bout was part of a worldwide event organized on social networking Web sites. Michael Davis of Hamtramck says police confiscated the 32-year-old man's pillows but returned their cases. He says he was told that he needed a permit. Scott Harris of Ferndale told the News that it's "not illegal to own a pillow." Detroit police spokesman James Tate says cleanup was the issue.

Find out Which Movie Villain Are You at LiquidGeneration.com!

Which villain are you?

Things have been pretty hectic since the last time I posted, but as of Monday I now have a bit of free time to get stuff done. Or at least, I would be if I hadn't managed to get my hands on a copy of Final Fantasy Dissidia....

Monday marked the end of the second school term, so there's been much to do in order to prepare for it. Nothing that I couldn't handle, but had I been in perfect health, I wouldn't have had any difficulty. With the students catching colds and passing them around so easily, it's been a little difficult to keep my health up. To make things worse, I had an accident about a week-and-a-half ago. I don't know what happened, but I received a bruise on the lower right side of my back, an enormous bruise on the back side of my left leg and sprained my left wrist. The bruise on my back is gone but the bruise on my leg is still in the healing process. My wrist is almost back to normal as well, but I've still got a few days left to go. I've been doing rehabilitation exercises in the shower, so I think that's helping quicken things. I really need to be more careful, though.

At the moment, I don't really have any plans for the break. Everyone has been suggesting that I head to Kyoto, but I think I'll do that another time since I went there in the summer. By the way things are looking, I may just end up hanging around my apartment for most of the vacation. I've been considering going to an onsen in one of the neighboring prefectures, but I haven't looked into it at all yet so we'll see how things go. There are travel brochures in the local train station, so I'll pick one up the next time I'm in the area.

Anyway, if you're wondering how Dissidia is, it's a must-have. Seriously, when they start taking preorders, get yourself signed up for one asap. It's freaking awesome.

Went to tennis camp last weekend in order to work on my serves. Kinda overdid it a little, though, and after about 4-5 hours worth of practice on the first day I pulled a muscle in my shoulder. Since I had played a few games as well (grinding my shoulder to hell and back) I was completely sore throughout my entire body. I had thought I was doing fairly well with my health via gym classes with the students and whatnot, but sadly it seems that it wasn't enough at all.

Thankfully, I had the day off on Monday due to the students going away on a one-day school trip so I was able to take some time and rest after heading out to the store to pick up some medicine wraps for injured/sore muscles. Although my body has recovered quite a bit over the past few days, my shoulder is still not faring too well. I can move it fairly decently as long as I have the medicine wraps and bandages on, but it starts to hurt quite a bit without some sort of medicine applied to it.

Anyway, I decided to take a break from participating in gym classes until I've managed to fully recover and, instead, watch the classes from the sidelines. Quite heartbreaking, really, considering the fact that the boys are practicing judo right now. I'd love to practice judo as well. For the girls, they're doing hurdles, which I figured would be fairly doable since my injury is in my arm and not my legs.

The goal was simple: Run the 50m hurdle dash as fast as possible.

The only problem that lay ahead was the fact that I've never run hurdles consecutively before. I learned the jumping technique last week, but due to the fact that it was raining we had to practice in the gym. Since the gym isn't that large, the most we could do was practice jumping over one hurdle. So, for today, it was a learn-as-I-go type of situation.

Things were looking fairly decent as I crossed the start line, but a problem arose as soon as I went over the first hurdle. The muscles in my arm began responding strangely to the movements of my body and threw my balance off. Luckily, I was able to recover fairly decently, but there was still the problem of the six more hurdles in front of me. Although it probably didn't appear that way to the students (since most of them were also doing this for the first time), for me it was a total awkward mess; completely off from what I had practiced.

In the end, my time was 9.6 seconds. Not bad considering what had happened, but I think I could've done better. Oh well.

Dunno if there'll be gym classes tomorrow or not, but I think I'll be taking a break from the gym classes to rest a bit more. While I don't think the students saw it (at least, I hope they didn't), my arm started to spasm a bit after the class ended. Definitely a good sign that I need to take it easy for a little while longer.

今日、三年一組女性達と高飛びをやった。いつも道り楽しかったのに、本当に上手くできなかったんだ。女生とやったら、できそうだろう。でも、男性とやるなら、全く違うよ。本当の高飛び方を使えないので、前向きでやらなくてはいけない。その飛び方で、１３０センチだけ飛べる。（T　T）

もっと運動しなくてはいけないナァ、僕は。