Happy Halloween

I've always loved Halloween. Maybe it's partially due to it's close proximity to another fav Holiday, namely my birthday, but I've always looked forward to the later half of the month of October when I could see that Halloween spirit coming out. The wonderful joy of letting yourself enjoy the darker side of our ego's for a season, where ghosts and ghouls, and my personal favorite, vampires, can come to life in our imaginations.

So the traditional way to celebrate Halloween I suppose would be to go trick or treating. Yet, this generally doesn't last into adulthood, and I despite being an avid fan of the Holiday, never really cared much for trick or treating. Yes I went a few times as a child, but I didn't care too much for candy and probably around 8th grade I found a much better way to celebrate the Holiday. I volunteered to scare the crap out of people in the annual Haunted Labyrinth.

For years since I looked forward to hiding in the shadows of that dark maze and pop out at the expecting yet unsuspecting victims (guests) who stumbled their way into my room. I was often able to scare the same group of people five times, popping out or dropping down and finally playing the dummy, before they moved on to the next room.

Yes those were good times. I hope one day I'll be in Chicago again for Halloween and I'll be able to volunteer again.



But now in Japan I've had to come up with new ways to celebrate my beloved All Hollow's Even. Last year I had a party at my apartment and also went out to eat at Lock Up, a restaurant where they put you in a cell and have monsters break lose in the middle of your dinner, with a few friends.



I dressed up and went to Harajuku last year too, thinking that maybe there would be some Japanese dressed up for Halloween, but all I saw were a few foreigners dressed up in Shibuya. Oh keep in mind when I say that I "dressed up" I don't mean I wore a costume. I just downed my Goth clothes and breathed in a little night air.
Even though they don't seem to do anything special for Halloween the atmosphere in Harajuku is always welcoming to interesting clothing styles and it feels good to go down there from time to time decked out in clothes a little less like what you casually wear. Although now that I am becoming a student again and won't have the binds of having to wear suits to work everyday I imagine those lines of what I usually wear and what I wear when I feel a bit expressive may become a bit blurred.

Anyway I digress...

I have another tradition I have taken up for the Halloween season, and that is the Halloween movie. I think two years ago I watched my favorite Disney movie, A Nightmare Before Christmas with the church youth group and then last year I bought a copy of Queen of the Damned which I watched for the second time as I had seen it before, and this year I have watched it again.

I projected it in my apartment for the last time as tomorrow I'll be moving. I began the movie with my two other roommates but one disappeared halfway through and the other watched to the end but was kinda squimish about some of the scenes. I didn't see what the big deal was. I mean it's not a horror movie or anything. Just a little blood sucking here and there, oh and then that part with the ripping out of the heart and biting it (my roommate hurried out of the room at that scene).



But yeah I enjoyed the film. Although compared to the book the story is really simplified, so of course I recommend the book over the film, but it was nice seeing the scenes I imagined in my head performed in the flesh. Aliyah did a really good job and I like this Lestat better than Tom Cruise from "Interview with a Vampire".
Plus I love the music from the film.

If you don't know about Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles or any of these movies I may be boring you right now, but I would recommend you look into them if you get the chance. Lestat is such an intriguing character. And the sort of dark mythology Anne Rice builds around him is simply enthralling.

So Halloween is actually tomorrow, but I may not be able to go out at all since I'm moving. But we'll see. At least I got my movie in and I did go to Lock Up again the other day for my Birthday.

Next year I'll probably watch the Underworld Movies, and if possible I think I'd like to go to a Visual Kei Concert or something. I just need to find someone to go with me, cause it sucks going out alone and my current friends seem a bit to squimish to join me.

So anyway no real point to this post, accept maybe to encourage people to enjoy the Holiday.

So to all I'll just say...

"Happy Halloween"

Japanese/Admission Test

So the admission process is more or less complete.

Application for early admission... accepted
Interview... passed
Application for enrollment... accepted

Only thing left was a Japanese Language Test to show that I would be able to attend classes in Japanese, which I just took this Sunday.

I haven't spoken a lick of English any of the times I visited the schools, so the teacher's kept telling me that the test should be a breeze, but I still get a little nervous taking tests, especially when I don't know what they're going to test me on.

I wasn't really that worried, but I was a little worried that there might be a writing portion where I would have to write Kanji. See I can read most Kanji, but writing them is a different story. Since the computer pulls up Kanji for you when you're writing emails or what not it's easy (even for native Japanese speakers) to forget how to write kanji.

So anyway I came to the school in some comfortable jeans and casual clothes, and after arriving I was brought to a room filled with other applicants,
who were ALL WEARING SUITS!!!

I felt a little out of place, and I started to wonder if in Japan you're supposed to wear a suit to take a test, but then I realized (and later had it confirmed by a teacher) that all the other applicants hadn't done the early enrollment and still needed to have their interviews.
I already passed my interview so I was all right. But yeah was still a bit shocking at first.

So I received the test alone in a room with a teacher watching over me. The first part of the test was on proper use of Keigo (the super polite form that I don't use that often in my regular life).
Luckily I had read a copy of
"Chibi Maruko's Keigo Classroom"
about a year ago and new enough about keigo to work out the questions through a process of eliminating which answers I knew weren't right.

Next section was the kanji. This was what I knew would be on the test so I was ready to work out kanji backwards and forwards and even tried preparing just in case I had to write from scratch (no multiple choice), but actually this section was quite easy. None of the kanji were higher than the second level JLPT and it was just multiple choice "How do you read this kanji?" type of questions. Much more straight forward and less tricky than the 1st level JLPT kanji section.

Next I think it was reading comprehension. These weren't too hard but there were a few questions that were a little tricky. I really wonder what the answer for the last question was. It was this article on the Japanese dependency on foreign imports and the last question was asking what the author felt would happen if trends continued as they are. The first two choices were way off so I eliminating those and then had to choose between...

1. Japan will lose it's ability to farm it's own resources.
2. Japan's economy will collapse.

Now the author mentions both of these things but he doesn't say it in exactly those words. If I remember correctly it was something like...

"...this will effect Japan's ability to produce it's own resources, and the Japanese economy may be in danger of collapsing."

So they don't actually say the economy WILL collapse, or the ability to produce resources WILL be lost. It just says there will be an EFFECT, and there may be a DANGER. So neither one's really correct, so I have to try to guess which one's closest. This is what I don't like about some multiple choice tests.

Anyway, I went with the last one.

After the test I stayed around for the Open House and took part in a sample class for Maya 3D software. 3D feels so strange to me, but they say the more you do it the easier it gets.

After class my supervisor congratulated me on my test. He said, "I can't tell you what score you got, but you don't have to worry. Good job."

I guess that means I pass.

Now I just have to wait for the card in the mail, and keep working on my portfolio.

If I have a good enough portfolio they said I may be able to skip the first year and start as a second year student. That translates into me saving a lot of money and having a better chance to get into a company (they like hiring people under 30), so I think that's what I want to do.

Oh and in other news, I have to move by the end of the month.
If I renew the lease here it'll be for two years, and since I'm going to school next year it wouldn't make sense. I'll probably move in with a friend for the time being, so no big, but packing is taking more of my precious time that I need to be using working on my portfolio and stuff.