December 23rd, 2007
I slept till around 10 this morning. It was still too wet to go anywhere exciting, and since I just did the library yesterday, I decided to skip that today. It was time to pull out my growing “To-Do” list. Not of exciting adventurous stuff, but of basic chores.
My Book Report
One of the things I have been meaning to do for weeks now is to gather together all my blog posts into one big file. I’ve said all along I was gong to turn this trip into a book, and I mean it. It may or may not be interesting or saleable, but I’m going to do it anyway. Prior to coming to Japan, I entered all my stories and reports directly into the blog, since my computer was always online back in the States. That means I didn’t have “text” copies of that stuff on the computer itself. Yesterday I downloaded copies of all the blog entries I had made prior to coming to Japan; the TEFL and Exchange Student stuff mostly. Once I came to Japan, I had to start typing everything in Word and then posting them into the blog whenever the opportunity came up.
So I spent a good deal of time this morning getting everything merged into one big file. Essentially, it was a lot of cut and paste work, although the stuff that came from the web required significant reformatting. I was shocked at how much material I had. My time in Japan is a little over halfway finished, and including all the stuff from the summer, I have 281 pages. Wow.
Granted, a lot of that stuff needs to be edited out for a book. Every day seems to start with “I woke up…” which is something a reader can usually assume. Also, most posts end with “Tomorrow I will…” which isn’t necessary either, since “tomorrow” is just a few lines later on the page. I think I will keep the “Daily Diary” format, at least for now, but there is a huge amount of repetition and daily junk that won’t make it into a book. What can I say? Overall this trip is fun and exciting, but there is a lot of boring daily routine mixed into it as well. I figure between the rest of December, January, February, and half of March, that’s around 90 more days here. If I continue to write at my usual daily volume, that will give me another 180 pages for a total of 460 “raw” pages. Yes that’s single-spaced and not including any pictures. I think I’ll have quite a lot of cutting to do.
And The Rest of The Day
After getting all that organized, I figured it was a good time to head to Happy Town. I’m getting low on supplies, and want to get stocked up so I don’t have to go out on Christmas. My understanding is that most stores will be open, but I probably won’t want to go out anyway. After returning, I did a load of laundry. See? This is one of those exciting days that I’ll be editing out. Ha!
After returning to the apartment, I started up a game of Civilization and played it all the way through. These games seem to take about 4 hours each, much less than the games from the previous version. Maybe I just need to play it on a higher level, but I have also never lost yet. Time to kick it up a notch, eh?
By the time the game was over, it was 7:00 and I watched TV for a bit. They are having some kind of stand-up comedian competition the last couple of days called “M-1” I have no idea what they’re saying but quite a bit of it is funny away, just watching their expressions and the audience reaction.
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December 27th, 2007 at 9:31 am
By now you are in Koyoto.
I hope you get to see all the castles/monastaries that you planned, and that the weather agrees with you.
A good Christmas was had here, and every Transformer has now been fully recognized in ‘its workings.
(I don’t know how a five year old can figure out the complexities of those things)
Weatherwise warm (Chinook)
Have a good time!