music:::Merry – Tokyo Telephone

Just some quick notes cause being on dial-up is expensiiiiive:
-I got less than 5 hours of sleep during the last two nights (each) due to whoever’s living in the apartment above mine’s utter inconsideration. They’re partying till 3 in the morning every night. Uni is so damn exhausting, it would be really great to get some sleep. I have to get up at 7.30 every day because my Japanese course starts at 9… I look like a zombie at the moment zz_zz
-All the media courses (at least the ones I’ve already been to) are absolutely awesome. The people there are really cool. It’s like, the people in my Japanese courses are nice and friendly but slightly out of touch with the ‘real world’ because two thirds of them are anime otakus; and the people in my media courses are just cool. Of course, I haven’t really got to know many of them but they all seem to be really interesting and creative.
-I’m homesick. And the first days here were sort of terrible cause I’ve never felt so… broken-hearted. It just hurts to be away from the people you love.
-I got a phone call from my sister earlier this afternoon ♥
-Despite having broken up with my b/f only a few weeks ago (due to geographical distance and all that crap… don’t ask), I think I’m developing a crush for someone. I don’t know much about him but he has great taste (/me loves his clothes -_-;;) and a very… comforting sort of voice.

music:::Feeder – Comfort in sound (album)

My day started at 6:30; exactly one hour later, my bus to uni didn’t stop at the bus stop and just drove past it o_O Had to wait 10 minutes and was almost late for my first ever Japanese lesson. Which was awesome.
It’s been 6 years full of madness for everything Japanese and now I’ve finally started learning the language and everything concerning Japanese for real. My head is still spinning from the happiness I felt inside the classroom. Katsuki-sensei, my Japanese teacher, is brilliant. (She actually wrote the Japanese book we’re using to learn the language.) It’s so cool, even if I can already understand most of the texts in our book. It will be interesting nevertheless. …I know that memorising all the Japanese terms for the word types will be a pain in the arse, though, but oh well.
Learning to write is so much fun. I’ve never written Japanese before because, well, I never had to. (Typing Japanese on computer doesn’t count.) So I’m having a great time laughing at my crippled a’s and u’s. After all the practising and the homework I did today, my a’s look quite good actually. The Hiragana u looks simple but I hate writing it…

I’m so tired and my eyes are burning. Oh, I forgot to tell that there are quite a few really cool people in the Japanese class. I hope everything’ll go well in the intro to media studies tomorrow. I don’t expect any nice people to be there because all the people I’ve seen taking media studies were… not particularly interesting.
I hope I survive tomorrow… but hey, I have my Japanese classes from 9 to 11 and Japanese history and culture after that horrible media class. So I have things to distract me before it and to make up for all the pain *coughs* afterwards.

I’m no less excited than the day before yesterday, about being back here that is. It feels nice to have a place to come back to, to have somewhere that feels familiar even though my ‘outside’ life has changed so much in the past two weeks.
My apartment is small but pretty. I’m getting the best of nature each time I look through the window next to my desk. The trees and bushes glow red and orange, even when the sun isn’t shining. Which, unfortunately, seems to be the case for most of the days. I moved in in the pouring rain, all the boxes with my personal things got soaked and I was scared for Junya’s life because he obviously doesn’t like being carried through water that keeps falling from the sky.
I instantly felt home, especially after I got my lazy arse around to unpacking all the boxes.
Oh look, there’s a squirrel running across the meadow outside. Now it vanished between the trees. Nevermind.

One day after I had moved in, I had to go to the residents’ registration office. I love German bureaucracy, I really do. Anyway, two hundred and twenty-six forms later I got my new passport, making me a citizen of the city of T. (Oh and remember how I complained about T. being 600 kilometres away from my home? Well, it’s even 740 km away. The first time I’m leaving my family and it has to be this far away. My mum said I should’ve started with smaller distances but to me it doesn’t really matter whether I’m 70 or 700 km away. Gone is gone.)

T. is nothing I’d call a buzzling city. Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely not boring. There are plenty of nice shops, though you’ll be disappointed once you find yourself looking for something special or have a taste different than 80% of the population. Which means I’m still stuck at ordering most of my CDs and clothes online. But hey, that’s what I’ve done for as long as I can think so that doesn’t make T. less attractive.
You have lots of shops, traffic in the morning and later afternoon/evening because of the thousands of commuters, lots of rain and wind, vineyards (not exactly in the city but surrounding it), students and last but definitely not least hords of tourists. When you walk through the city you can be sure that the person walking in front of you is a) a student if they’re younger than 30 or b) a tourist if they’re older than 30.

So what’s so beautiful here that makes the city so attractive for tourists from Germany, the Netherlands, China, Britain, Australia, France and dozens of other countries? Who’s to blame for me not being able to walk faster than 20 steps a minute because said tourists have to .look. and .stare. and generally .be in my way.? It’s the Romans. Yes, the old folks from the sunny Apennine Peninsula had to conquer rainy Germanic valleys because obviously, there was no better place in the whole Roman Empire to get drunk and relax than Augusta Treveris. Well, the only Romans you’ll find here nowadays are the cook and the waiters of the local pizzerias, they don’t even necessarily are from Rome or as much as have been to Italy. It’s the things their ancestors left behind that makes T. the tourist magnet it is today: ruins of thermal springs and a amphitheatre and also the famous Porta Nigra (which I’d only heard of before because I took Latin in school and that building was on the cover of all of our Latin books).
There’s plenty more to be seen here, not just Roman junk er, ruins. But it’s nothing that keeps your eyes popping out if you’re passing it by bus for the 373th time. But it’s definitely worth a visit if you’re into history and culture. Enough ‘advertising’ for T., I’m getting carried away…

I’m still terribly nervous about university. All these classes in all those rooms; not knowing anyone there yet to help me through the hassle of the first weeks doesn’t make it easier. Yes, I don’t know one single person in this city, but of corse, I’m hoping to get to meet a lot of interesting and intelligent people in my classes. *blinks*
Oh well, I might sound optimistic but deep inside I’m not at all. I’m constantly afraid of doing something wrong or making a wrong decision that might affect my studies here in a negative way. They didn’t teach us how to be a university student at school, it’s all learning by doing here, try, fail and try again hoping to do it right this time.

I guess I’ll be able to tell more about uni tomorrow… One positive thing to cheer me up though: I have already pre-ordered merry’s new maxi. Yes, I’ve ordered it with the two Kagrra maxis weeks ago from Brand X, but I simply forgot about it -_-; (I knew I had ordered something with the Kagrra singles but I wasn’t sure what it had been. So I checked and it’s the merry maxi, yay!)

music:::Richard Ashcroft – Check The Meaning (album version)

Hey, I’m back. Well, not really because life’s a mess right now -_-;; Coming back after 2 weeks is strange and exhausting, there’s so much to catch up on.
Uni hasn’t fully started yet; classes, lectures and the like will begin on Monday. The uni itself is enormous, but after 5 or 6 visits I’ve stopped getting lost between the buildings.
Sorry if this comes out with loads of typos and such, I haven’t typed or as much as used the computer for just as long as I haven’t been online.
I have to make two huge complaints: I missed pre-ordering merry’s new maxi. (Yes, I’m an idiot, but sometimes there are a few slightly more important things in my life which make me forget stuff like preordering.) Is anyone able to help me get a copy? Okay, this was my complaint addressed to myself. (-_-;;) The other one goes out to OCS, my trusted Japanese bookstore, who have managed to forget to send me my copy of Asuka 11! Argh, and they have the nerve to tell me just now, when issue 12 is already out in Japan >_< If someone else has a Japanese bookstore around them that still has a copy of Asuka 11 (the one with DNAngel on the cover, I believe), please please email me! I’ll pay for the mag plus shipping, of course, or I’m willing to trade for everything except my life and my Harry Potter books.
Yes, Harry Potter. /me has a new obsession. More on that as soon as my online life gets back to normal which will be no sooner than November 7. That’s when the gracious German Telekom will grant me access to their awesome DSL. Until then, I’m stuck on Junya’s slow but functioning modem. And as dial-up connections are damn expensive over here (as in the rest of the world, I s’pose), I won’t be able to spend much time online till that day at the beginning of November which has already been marked red in my calendar. ^-^;
Well, I’ll slowly read all the lj and blog entries I missed and will start to reply to emails this weekend. I’ve really missed you guys! I’m quite happy with my life here, T. is beautiful and I promise to write more about everything here as soon as the excitement of being back online vanishes.
PS. `kane, I haven’t forgotten about burning you .hack! (Do you still want it? Maybe you’ve already found someone a bit faster than me… ^^;;) Well, if you’re still interested, drop me a line or something ne.

music:::The Libertines – Up The Bracket

Haha, I got an apartment, on my last day here! However, I won’t be able to move in until November 1 but I hope to be able to apply for internet access ealier so I’ll be able to come back online right when I move in.

I packed all my stuff. There’re a lot of things I can’t take with me due to limited space in our car -_- But oh well, I’ll be able to take them there around Christmas or something.

This feels so bizarre because I’ve been waiting for this moment – to move, to go to uni – for so many months and now it’s here. I’ll be leaving at 8 in the morning tomorrow, an ungodly hour for me. But I’m really really excited. I’m not even nervous in a negative way which is a very good thing for me because I usually have a negative attitude towards new things and changes and such.

I’m making plans… I’ll be a good student, I won’t slack. Yes.

The lack of any sort of internet will be quite hard but I’ve finished downloading all my favourite anime shows up to the final episode each (RahXephon, Chobits, .hack//SIGN plus the first two subbed episodes of the .hack OVA). This way I’ll be easily distracted from internet deprivation.

I’ll miss you all so much. Keep on writing, blogging and livejournaling so I can read loads and loads of things when I get back online ^-^ I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I get my internet access. Bye-bye ♥

music:::Feeder – Love pollution

My mood is still indescribable. I really don’t want to go. I want to stay here with my family, my friends. (And having to part with that special person is far from easy, especially if you’re listening to cheesy love songs all day long *points to music above* How am I going to survive this?)

Amy, my Kagrra singles won’t be here till late November (I’ve ordered them with the new merry maxi) and what you said about the present video makes it extremely hard to wait for the package ^-^; Ah yes, I read about the tracklists on the official site (posted it in my LJ awhile ago); it’s kind of bad that we don’t get to hear any new material before December ;_;

hitsugi has a blindingly beautiful new layout that I forgot to comment on because my mind is somewhere else these days (-_-;;).

I can’t wait for the new Feeder album, comfort in sound, to come out. It’s a really really good album, there are a few songs I’ll skip but there are also absolutely beautiful songs on it that make up for the not so good ones. The cover artwork must be one of the cutest I’ve ever seen.
Hm, so I’ll add that to my things I’m waiting for list along with my Japanese magazines (Fool’s Mate, Shoxx, Crimson and Asuka; I don’t know what kind of problem OCS has again, why does it take so long to mail my stuff? ;_;).

music:::Feeder – The power of love

I’m not sure how the hell I’m supposed to blog regularly when I can’t even type correctly because my hands are shshshaking. Yes, I’m nervous. As in: Can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t concentrate on anything.
I’m moving next Saturday ;_;
I’m such a pathetic sissy but I’ve never been the kind of person who’s confident about herself or finds it easy to meet new people. Plus I hate change, any sort of change. Hell, I get mental when my mum buys a different brand of … toilet paper than usually, can you imagine what a different city, the whole university experience, all those people I don’t know – a totally different environment might do to me?
Pathetic sissy, yes.
So, I’ll have to start packing soon. I’m not sure what I want to take with me. All my CDs, my favourite books and the ones I haven’t read yet, my Japanese magazines minus the manga mags because they’re freaking bricks – these are the things I need. I’m not sure about computer equipment, like the printer and the scanner. My mum won’t let me take the printer because she needs it herself; I think I need to take the scanner with me though because I can’t make layouts and stuff without new pics.

I’ve already found a cheap ISP for the time I’ll be stuck with my slow dial-up modem. I’ll try to get DSL as soon as possible.
I won’t be able to go online during the first week though cause there are so many things I need to get done. Let’s see how I get though the days without the internet. Yes, I’m sort of addicted because there are a few people out there I want to keep in touch with but a week or two offline isn’t all that long. Right.

I need to order a few CDs before moving, though cause I’m afraid they might be sold out already when I get back online. And once my new living situation is ’stable’, I’ll take care of my personal domain. The domain itself was registered some time ago, I forgot to mention. It’s coinlockerbaby.org (there’s nothing there yet, you’ll get redirected to yt.net). A few days after I got that domain, `kane wrote that she’s bought Ryu Murakami’s Coinlocker Babies, the novel I got the name from, and krys commented that she’s read that book, too. I never knew the novel was that popular outside Japan. But it’s a really good book and it’s nice that more people know about it too so I won’t have to babble to myself about how nice it is.