décembre

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皆さん、最近日本語で書きませんでした。すみません！今年の終わりはもうすぐので、皆さんは忙しいですね。ホームページで、日本の旅行について書きたいけど、最近時間がありませんでした。今日、書いて始めます。日本の友達にメールを書きます。彼らは千月書いたけど、忙しすぎました。遅くなったね！このエントリは英語だけけど、私の最近色々なした物についてので、ホームページとミクシィで友達に見せています。写真を見たいんですか？

Actually, it isn’t. It all depends on the way you see it. I’m talking about a typical Sunday, after all. Since I have some free time, I thought I’ll write to people and finally update my neglected journal today.

This morning was long. I didn’t even want to shower — the little rain and the +3°C gray weather outside can take care of me. I went to Tim Hortons at the corner of my street and got annoyed by a homeless person again. Some homeless people are good, some not. It happens often that I don’t have change on my way in, but I do on my way out! Sometimes I give something. It’s not much, but it makes the person’s long voyage to his or her next coffee a bit quicker. But the girl this morning… Some homeless people no longer ask for just change in general. They ask for a certain amount instead. While dashing toward me, the girl asks “Excuse me, sir. Do you have two dollars so I can go buy a coffee?” “Sorry, I don’t have any change.” I had a ten-dollar bill, that’s it. I guess I’m not that generous. Then she goes, speaking to herself with the intention that I overhear her, “Huh. But you got enough for yourself though…” When someone speaks to me like that, I really feel like punching the person in the face. You know, when they speak like that, you turn around they say “What was that?,” when you heard perfectly what the person say and he or she replies “Nothing!” I always say after “Well, if you have nothing to say, shut the fuck up.” I was doing that with my sister in my early days and to a power-trip Tier 2 guy at Sympatico. It’s always priceless and gets your point straight. Be a somebody to say it out loud, or shove your foot in your mouth before I shove mine in your arse.

That’s something I miss about Japan. (Actually, I miss Japan. Period.) There were no want to beg you for change. You’d expect otherwise in a town like Shibuya where crowds people cover the pavement of ever street! Though, I had a lot of people handing me small packs of paper tissues with an advertisement card within. You just ignore them and you’ll be fine.

I bought a medium hot chocolate, a wheat-and-honey bagel with light cream cheese, and a breakfast sandwich without meat. I’m not a big fan of meat to begin with — I mostly eat chicken and sometimes beef — and I don’t want any meat for breakfast. It’s cheaper without the meat too! But each time I ask for a breakfast sandwich without meat at any Tim Hortons, it’s like I’m asking for them to do extra work instead of less! “What kind of meat, sir?” “None.” “Okay, but what kind of meat?” “Er… None! No bacon, no sausage!” “Oh… So you mean, just the egg and the cheese?” How clearer can I be? I feel like answering, “Yes, and don’t forget to put them in an English muffin. I hate it when the cheese melts on my thumb down to the hair on my arm while my dry and dirty finger nails sink down the egg.”

My room. Click to enlarge. (1.5MB)

There are things in this world more disgusting than having to lick cheese and cooked eggs off your arm, like my room, for example. There are reason why I rarely clean my room. First being that I’m somewhat lazy. Second, I’m often not home. Third, when I finally arrive home, I’m too tired and go straight to bed. I took a picture of my room this morning. Click the preview to enlarge the picture, and see if you can find the following:

• 3 1L bottles of water
• 1 WiFi transceiver
• 1 old laptop with its wireless card sticking out
• 1 pile of CD packs
• 3 small cartons of instant breakfast drinks
• 1 vertical fan (come on, that’s easy)
• 1 bathrobe
• 1 closed alarm clock that strangely looks like a tricorder
• 2 paper bins
• 2 VHS tapes
• 1 pile of MiniDV tapes
• 1 MiniDV camcorder
• Cables, cables, cables
• 1 pile of bags including store plastic bags, Tim Hortons brown bags, and other brown bags from the nearest shawarma place
• 4 cups of Tim Hortons hot chocolate (may still contain week-long expired hot chocolate)
• 1 pencil pouch
• 1 box of chocolate from Nara (a town near Kyoto)
• 1 set of old student cards
• 1 VGA-to-RCA converter box (Kenny’s property)
• 1 air vent
• 1 yellow bag from Tower Records (music store in Shibuya, Tokyo)
• 1 set of 4 Tower Record-brand batteries (this is tough)
• 1 cup of cold muscle-pain gel
• 1 pile of shiny brown pennies
• 1 VoIP router
• 1 paper kanji dictionary
• 1 pair of jeans
• 4 rolls of toilet paper
• 9 or 10 socks
• 1 folded map of Tokyo
• 1 VHS recorder

Between the time I took the picture and wrote the above, I cleaned up the pile of bags and bottles. Just that alone made a big difference. I can now see 20% of my room’s floor space instead of 5!

Eating some Mexican food in Toronto, on Baldwin St., near the place I stayed at. I had a smirk when I noticed the small salsa bowl had the Japanese word oishii (delicious) written on it.

The Chinatown in Toronto, at night.

A girl among a dozen of people I’ve met during my stay at the Sweetheart B&B. The staff and most of the guests at that B&B are Japanese. Perfect practice for just before my JLPT!

I went to the Japan Foundation on Bloor St. and accidentaly found this page in a magazine about a maid café to which I went with a friend of mine and three of his friends in Akihabara, the “electronic shop” town in Tokyo. Really childish cashmere-soft porn, if you ask me. I’ll write more about that later.

People pounding rice with huge wood hammers at the mochi tsuki.

Japanese women doing a traditional dance. The one on the left is the principal of the OJLS.

One of the new guys at the office is playing with the sex toy one of our bosses received as present. I think he’s enjoying it too much.

I’m trying to strike a sexy pose while licking the chocolate off my fork. Maybe I should have taken my glasses off.

Everyone from the company was at the Christmas party, except one who had to be somewhere else. Thanks goes to “piledhighcurls” for taking these three pictures. She has more on her Flickr account.

People are unwrapping their door prizes at the Japanese Meetup group party.

Even more unwrapping! More pictures on the Meetup Web site.

My classmate in front has that evil look in her eyes.

That guy loves his shrimp!

It’s our last class of the year at the Japanese school, so we’re playing at grabing cards which text matches to what the teacher is reading.

All the three students and the teacher of Advanced 2 joined the fun in our Advanced 1 class. I think two are pictured in this one. We also have a genuine proficient kid!

Two classmates, one having a soft spot for Kumi Koda (it’s the cleavage, I’m sure), signing at the karaoke.

Me and all of us at the karaoke. I’m at the front row, on the right, and my teacher is next to me. My friend is behind the camera. (She always does that. However, she got a few more friends for her my mixi network.)

Car riding with NoMez. Unfortunately, just some parts of Ottawa and Gatineau are decorated for Christmas, like the Lac Leamy Casino.

A tall Christmas tree outside the casino.

Everyone is busy at the end of the year. My colleagues and I are really pulling our hair out at work right now. We have more projects than the amount of fingers and thumbs all of us have put together…

I wrote that I went to Toronto to do the level 4 of the annual Japanese Language Proficiency Test at the York University. I’m waiting for the results in February. But I can say in advance that I’ll have no problems. It was the first time in my life that I’ve ever been comfortable and confident to do an exam. It was a bit too easy and my only regret is that I didn’t do level 3 like I wanted to do previously. I heard that the level 3 and 4 are quite similar, so I may as well go for level 2 next year. (The JLPT has four levels, the first being the highest.) I just need to learn more Chinese characters and more about the polite language of Japanese. I have twelve months to know that.

This reminds me that I should not only start writing about my trip to Japan today, but to also write my speech for the upcoming 18^th Japanese speech contest in Ottawa. I participated last year, unprepared. But next year, I really want a finish my speech in mid-January, which will be about my first trip to Japan last November, and start practicing it and memorize it. I heard the 2007 contest in Ottawa will happen on March 3^rd at the Japanese embassy. The national contest will take place at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, at the end of the same month (or the first Sunday of April). I may go for the Advanced level instead of Beginner.

I wish I win first prize at the Ottawa contest, because it will be a free trip to Edmonton and I’ll be able to see my sister there, who’s been living there for a little while and who I haven’t seen since more than a year. I’m planning to go to Edmonton, Calgary (maybe), Vancouver, and Seattle in 2007, and if I can win 1^st prize, I could go there for free, while needing to participate at the national contest. Just flying to the west of Canada is really expensive — almost as much as Japan! I may also go to Massachussets and in my hometown in New Brunswick later next year, to attend at friends’ weddings.

I also finished Japanese school for the year, although two more classes for the first semester remain in January. After yesterday’s class, the teacher, some classmates, a friend of mine, and I went to the karaoke on Rideau street. Good times, though most of us just stared at three classmates who are actually good at signing Japanese songs. I tried, but the text, filled with sometimes undecipherable Chinese characters, fly too fast. And my voice is too deep to sign with!

Three Christmas parties last week, if I don’t include the event I just mentioned. The first one was the annual Japanese mochi tsuki (rice pounding) at the St-Anthony Soccer Club on Preston Ave. I was too tired to make mochi (pounded rice) this year, so I just settled helping my colleagues at the Ottawa Japanese Language School (OJLS) stand while being dressed in a long-pants jimbei I bought in Asakusa. (I’m part of the administration committee, so that’s the least I could do. Asakusa is another town within Tokyo, in the northern area.)

The second one, on Tuesday, with my colleagues at work, and the bosses. It was really a good time. The food is good and the presents are always great. It was also nice to get acquinted with the new faces at the office. The highlight of the party was when one of our bosses got the surprise gift: a sex toy. All of us wanted to squeeze that damn lubricated thing! It’s like we were kids again!

The third party, on Friday, was with the other common people from the Ottawa Japanese Language Meetup Group. Although, in our case, bõnenkai instead of Christmas party could be more appropriate. Again, great food, wonderful people, and fun prizes. Drinking is also good! Me and a friend of mine couldn’t stop laughing at each other exagerating our own laughs. That’s dangerous — someday one of us will get his or her jaw dislocated! We were also talking about our favourite moments on the Têtes à Claques, a French Web site with many videos getting quite famous these days. You don’t need to understand a lot of French to have a good laugh. I recommend you check it out!

The parties are not over. I’m going to my NoMez’s fiancée’s parents’ place for Christmas and I’ve been invited to another friend’s place for the 28^th. Wonderful! NoMez says hi, by the way.

Well, I guess I better stop writing here. It’s past noon, I’m hungry, and I want my almost-daily shawarma. I need to write e-mails to friends today. I’ll also write, finally, about my trip to Japan. And, I need to wrap gifts, send them, as well as doing the laundry. What a great day of accomplishments!