Jet lag stinks...

Guess who is "not" writing this from Eastern Standard time, hehe. I got back on Tuesday evening and started my first exam today. We won't review the unpleasantness of that experience except to say...it did go better than I expected. I believe Japan has officially become one of my other "little worlds". A place where I'm quite familiar with, is easy to get to, and I'm quite fine moving about it without getting lost. Well, maybe not Japan but tokyo at least. I mean, it's just so easy. You get someone to drop you off at the airport, you sit for X amount of hours, customs is a joke, and I already know the trains here (from loads of jpop concert going). I didn't even need help with the delivery service that took my huge bag to school for me. It's nice to be familiar with a place in Japan.

Right, so I've been back for 2 days, and I realize...I know a lot of people here. Yesterday, I went to school and stopped to chat with so many different people, it must have tacked on an entire hour to my trip to the library to study for my exam. Far be it for me to pass up human contact for important study time. Of course, now I do have the word "shiken"(sp?) in my memory, so I can properly ask someone if they have finals. That was basically the theme of conversation starters for the day besides being wished a Happy New Year. A formality which seems to be way too...er...formal. While we Americans just throw out a "Happy New Year!" from across the parking lot, the Japanese actually have two full sentences worth of greeting to say (maybe it was more). Complete with a slight bow depending on who you're talking to. Unfortunately, all their efforts only received a confused pause and a "Happy New Year!" with no bow being that I'm not familiar with that ritual or the response I should give.

O, I'd I've brought my PS2 back after wrestling it out of the clutches of my older brother. You can't turn your back on that boy for a send or you'll find something of yours missing. I'm not kidding. I left my blue hoodie in Japan when I came back for the holidays because I was planning to use my gray one that was in my closet. Yeah, guess what he was wearing when he showed up at my apartment. *shakes fist*

Anyway, now that I have a game system I can play, I've decided to start out by corrupting as many children as I can. Starting with my Chinese friend. She came to visit on Wednesday, and I got her playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Ah, learning the finer points of car theft, turning pedestrians into road kill, hazardous driving, and evading the law. I'm quite proud of her for running over a police officer even if it was by accident. I couldn't stop laughing while I watched her play. She didn't even know what a playstation was, so she was having a lot of trouble with the controls. Simple tasks like getting out of a burning car and running away before it explodes were near impossible, but she did ok.

Changmo (I have no idea how to spell his name) was more than overjoyed by the six butterfingers I brought back for him. I came downstairs Thursday morning, and he was sitting in the office with Mr. Yokoyama and Kim. I chatted with them through the window for about 2 minutes then there was a slight pause. Changmo's hand suddenly darted out basically saying "give it to me", lol. He had a present for me, too, so it was an even trade. O, and Kim now knows what a Candy Cane is which, by the way, is not sold in Japan from what I could tell. Neither are Butterfingers which is why Changmo begged me to bring some back.

O, and I found out why the internet in the dormitory shuts off every 5 minutes and you have to log back in. Some stupid jackass sent a virus to the school from the dormitory, so the folks in the computer office at school decided the best way of dealing with it is to screw every student in the entire building over by giving us this ridiculous time limit. "But why can't they just check the login ID and password of the user who did it" you probably are thinking. Me too. It turns out the ID and password which I thought was mine and mine alone is actually shared by everybody in the dormitory according to my friend. Over 100 students have the same ID and password...I don't even have words to express the stupidity of that. So, basically, if I wanted to send malicious emails to a teacher/member of the faculty/fellow student, I could log in from a computer on campus, and they'd never know which student it was.
But that's probably because they don't care. Why waste effort making sure that you can catch the culprit when there's a simple solution? Group punishment...which is why we all have to put up with the 5 minute time limit. The dumb thing is you can actually get around it. As long as you keep a browser open to the log in page and re-log in before it hits the time limit, whatever you're doing won't be interrupted. I know this because I download Hello!Morning every Monday, and 5 minutes isn't enough time to complete the download. So if their intent was to stop people from uploading a virus to their server or, however you do it, they're out of luck. Of course, if it was simply to punish everyone, which it most likely was, they're right on the money.

If I had the ability, I would definitely give the folks at the computer office a piece of my mind. How do you think I feel when I, the kid who left her family and flew 14 blinking hours, am talking with my mother on msn, whom I won't see till August, and msn shuts off? Let me give you a hint, it's the opposite of "good". Actually, it's more like the opposite of "calm". I should give my mom the phone number to that office. She'd have us back online in no time even if no one in the office spoke english.

All I know is, if they ever find out who did it, somebody is going to have a 6 foot black girl round house kick their head straight through their own computer screen. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go log back in so I can upload this post.