Mission: Acquire Binder's Board
Aug. 31st, 2007 06:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unforthAs Sept. 1st approaches, as in it's tomorrow, I find myself in (to make a terrible pun) a bind. I've set my "end of vacation" as the last day of August. That was supposed to mean that on 9/1 I would start my Ni90 again, start working with my binding supplies, and generally start settling in to a more standard daily life than I had thus far been keeping.
This week has been generally interesting. I was pretty down right after![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
claireon left; it seemed like a reminder that I was in an alien place where I didn't know any one to be by myself again after a few days of company. I forced myself to do a few things, exploring Ikebukuro (which ultimately made for an unfortunately lousy day over all, though that wasn't really Ikebukuro's fault), and by the end of Monday I was feeling distinctly sorry for myself - not a good state of affairs. The only thing that I even vaguely got some pleasure out of was the discovery of yet another cheap manga store, and the reading of entire volume of Japanese manga - a volume by the rather pornographic author Mayu Shinjo, author of Kaikan/Sensual Phrase. (I didn't understand it all, since I wasn't using a dictionary, but I got the gist, and I don't just mean the sex scenes. :) ) As I faced Tuesday morning, it dawned on me that I REALLY didn't feel like doing ANYTHING. Normally, I see this as a sign of depression and would immediately go out and do something. This time, though, I decided to go with it. I slept in. I installed Zoo Tycoon 2 on my computer (Civ 4 WON'T WORK! DAMN YOU UNIVERSE! Maybe I'll try to find a Japanese copy) and played it, basically all day. I read some manga. All in all, I did absolutely nothing except what I felt like doing. I didn't take a shower; I didn't brush my teeth; I didn't change out of my pj's...okay, I felt a little gross, I'll admit, but whatever. I went to bed early, and didn't worry about when I'd wake up the next day...
...and I woke up on Wednesday morning feeling like a million bucks. Nothing had really changed, and even hearing about Keiko couldn't really bring me down - I was sad about it, obviously, but my overall mood was so generally improved that it didn't do more than that. I didn't do much on Wednesday either; some shopping I meant to do, a little wandering around Asakusa. However I was starting to have a pressing problem: I couldn't start binding on Saturday if I couldn't find a source of binder's board. Binder's board is thick, non-corrugated card board used to make the stiff covers of books (forgive me if this is painfully obvious) and while there are ways to do thinner paper bindings, there aren't manner western binding styles that don't use hard covers (though traditional Japanese binding uses paper covers, definitely a piece of my problem). I'd checked lots of stationary stores and the like and, well, nada!
I put of dealing with it on Thursday, instead opting to go to the National Museum of Western Art and the Tokyo National Museum, both of which were quite nice if a bit smaller than I expected - the National Museum (which is Japanese and Asian art and archaeological objects) in particular had an amazing collection that wasn't nearly as time consuming to view as I had been led to believe. Maybe that's because I've never founded excavated bits of pottery to be all that fascinating, and they didn't actually have all that much Japanese art. Still, both were quite lovely, and I took lots of pictures which I really need to get around to posting some time soon. I headed home and played more Zoo Tycoon (which I'm getting rather good at despite it's annoying tendency to crash anytime window's decides to open up another window) and read more One Piece.
I'm well pleased, by the by, with my reading progress. I read through the first volume of One Piece (chosen for three reasons: 1. because I didn't think it would be terribly difficult; 2. because I've read a chunk of it before in English and therefore know what happens in a basic sense for the first 14 volumes; and 3. because I've only read the first 14 volumes - there are over 40 out in Japanese - and I like it and want to know what happens!! ;) ) looking up the words I didn't know. I got through it, but it was slow and I didn't feel like I took all that much in of the vocab. After some internal debate, then, I decide to do the unthinkable: I decided to write in a book. I reminded myself that there is nothing wrong with annotating works, and that I could replace the damn thing for 100 to 200 yen anyway, and therefore have a clean copy also. With that in mind, I started scrawling down the English next to the words I didn't know. This has helped me immensely, I must admit, and I'm into the third volume. It's slow going, but I think it's getting faster - I've definitely learned some words, and I think that if I can just keep at it and remind myself that I'm not stupid even when I KNOW that I've looked up "that word" about 10 times, maybe the 11th time I'll actually learn the damn things (I still can't remember what tobasu means, or is it tsubasu?, even though I've looked it up enough that I can think of it. ;) Mezasu, though, which I've looked up at least half a dozen times, means to aim for. YAY!) However, I tried to read Slayers (which is a novel) and realized immediately that this wasn't going to happen, and decided that I should tackle a novel I'm familiar with, and so decided that I would try to find a copy of the ubiquitous Harry Potter to tackle. I've also started leaving the TV on in the background while doing most things. This actually doesn't really help at all, since I seem to just phase it out, but I have seen some awesome commercials. (My favorite involved a respectable late-middle age suited gentlemen playing in his yard and shouting "dare" (who) at everyone who went by, and generally acting more and more obviously like a dog, like chasing the mail man, and rolling in the grass...it was hilarious, and turned out to be a commercial for security systems).
Still, none of this found my binders board, though I did get to see an episode of Naruto and another of Pokemon. And so when I was deciding what to do today, I decided to investigate Ino-ya, a paper store mentioned in my guide book located in Ginza. First, though, I did another test: I took my iPod, for the first time since I had gotten here. And OMG did having music improve my mood. I had been starting to slip again, but with the addition of some music, I nce again felt great. In high spirits, I started out the day going to the Hama-rikyu gardens, which were beautiful if a constantly interesting counterpoint between the tranquility they attempted to establish and the city beyond - I got an interesting picture with this traditional home on an island with arched bridges and carefully tamed trees...behind which Tokyo tower stands, flanked by two cranes. It was a strange balance, really. From there, I walked up to Tsukiji, which is the fish market, and had the freshest, most delicious sushi ever - I could still taste the salt water! - they had so many kinds I didn't know how to pick; I eventually settled for my three favorites plus a couple of new ones, which were both tasty.
I had checked ahead of time which stores in Ginza I wanted to check out other than Ino-ya. Ginza is a major shopping area, and it was worth sticking my head into some places. I went to Sony's gallery and saw the awesomely clear TVs...I'm gonna have a hard time resisting a TV that nice when I go back to the states and need to get a new one...and then failed to find two places I was looking for (a chopstick store and an English bookstore). Mildly irritated, I wandered over to a jewelry store that had an interesting museum in it's top floor and some amazingly beautiful (and not TOO terribly ludicrously expensive) jewelry. Then, it was Mitsukoshi, for my first Japanese department store experience. The place was almost too much to take in, with 11 floors full of stuff. Fortunately, it turned out to be ridiculously expensive (an interesting counterpoint, because most of the clothing I've seen has been at small neighborhood places which actually were pretty cheap by my standards) and so I wasn't too tempted...until I got to B1. B1 was an ENTIRE FLOOR of deserts. It was torture in sweet form. I managed to escape, some how, with two things of Harrad's tea (I think this officially makes me a weirdo, by the by) and two mini-cheesecakes, but damn was it tough. From there I wander over to Matsuya, another of the great department stores and only a block away, and was thrilled to find (rather expensive) gnocchi among the import foods they sold. I got a small array of goods I hadn't managed to find elsewhere yet, including saltines (always a good thing to have around!). Meanwhile, I'd managed to track down Japanese copies of the first four Harry Potter books (I found all of the others except for the newest ones, but they were only available in hard cover and were too expensive). I also resisted copies of the Hobbit and lots of other interesting translated young adult fantasy. I figure I aughta see if I can manage this first. The nicest thing about the department stores, though, was confirmation of a theory. I had wondered if I would be able to communicate effectively if I could find some who spoke some English. The thing is, I can speak fine in Japanese. Understanding the reply, on the other hand, is almost impossible for me, which is utterly maddening. Today, one of the ladies working at Mitsukoshi came and spoke to me. I couldn't really understand her Japanese, and she couldn't really understand my English, but by speaking her (passable though limited) English and me speaking my (passable though equally limited) Japanese we held a perfectly serviceable conversation. Needless to say, this was INCREDIBLY reassuring and means that to make friends I just need to find people with about as much English as I have Japanese, maybe even less, and we'll be able to manage.
Finally, I came to Ino-ya. I went up to the paper floor, didn't see it, and went and asked someone. They failed to understand me, though, and I got sent to the wrong place. Frustrated, I stood in front of the floor directory until it started to make some sense, and discovered that what I needed was actually in their sister store across the street on the 2nd floor. I went there...and nothing. I was starting to despair, when I spotted a book on the 1st floor about binding. Since I had been unable to explain what I needed, I instead found a picture of it in the book. With that and what I did know, the man directed me to what I needed!! I never would have spotted it, it was on the bottom shelf of a kind of out of the case and it looked different than it "normally" does - it was gray instead of brown, for one thing. Still, it was pretty cheap, and so I bought a whole bunch. It was heavy, and I had a bitch of a time getting everything I'd accumulated today home...but it was totally worth it.
So, in conclusion, Mission Accomplished! And in case it wasn't clear from how much detail I went in to over stupid little shit, let me just say that today has been a great day. :)
This week has been generally interesting. I was pretty down right after
claireon left; it seemed like a reminder that I was in an alien place where I didn't know any one to be by myself again after a few days of company. I forced myself to do a few things, exploring Ikebukuro (which ultimately made for an unfortunately lousy day over all, though that wasn't really Ikebukuro's fault), and by the end of Monday I was feeling distinctly sorry for myself - not a good state of affairs. The only thing that I even vaguely got some pleasure out of was the discovery of yet another cheap manga store, and the reading of entire volume of Japanese manga - a volume by the rather pornographic author Mayu Shinjo, author of Kaikan/Sensual Phrase. (I didn't understand it all, since I wasn't using a dictionary, but I got the gist, and I don't just mean the sex scenes. :) ) As I faced Tuesday morning, it dawned on me that I REALLY didn't feel like doing ANYTHING. Normally, I see this as a sign of depression and would immediately go out and do something. This time, though, I decided to go with it. I slept in. I installed Zoo Tycoon 2 on my computer (Civ 4 WON'T WORK! DAMN YOU UNIVERSE! Maybe I'll try to find a Japanese copy) and played it, basically all day. I read some manga. All in all, I did absolutely nothing except what I felt like doing. I didn't take a shower; I didn't brush my teeth; I didn't change out of my pj's...okay, I felt a little gross, I'll admit, but whatever. I went to bed early, and didn't worry about when I'd wake up the next day......and I woke up on Wednesday morning feeling like a million bucks. Nothing had really changed, and even hearing about Keiko couldn't really bring me down - I was sad about it, obviously, but my overall mood was so generally improved that it didn't do more than that. I didn't do much on Wednesday either; some shopping I meant to do, a little wandering around Asakusa. However I was starting to have a pressing problem: I couldn't start binding on Saturday if I couldn't find a source of binder's board. Binder's board is thick, non-corrugated card board used to make the stiff covers of books (forgive me if this is painfully obvious) and while there are ways to do thinner paper bindings, there aren't manner western binding styles that don't use hard covers (though traditional Japanese binding uses paper covers, definitely a piece of my problem). I'd checked lots of stationary stores and the like and, well, nada!
I put of dealing with it on Thursday, instead opting to go to the National Museum of Western Art and the Tokyo National Museum, both of which were quite nice if a bit smaller than I expected - the National Museum (which is Japanese and Asian art and archaeological objects) in particular had an amazing collection that wasn't nearly as time consuming to view as I had been led to believe. Maybe that's because I've never founded excavated bits of pottery to be all that fascinating, and they didn't actually have all that much Japanese art. Still, both were quite lovely, and I took lots of pictures which I really need to get around to posting some time soon. I headed home and played more Zoo Tycoon (which I'm getting rather good at despite it's annoying tendency to crash anytime window's decides to open up another window) and read more One Piece.
I'm well pleased, by the by, with my reading progress. I read through the first volume of One Piece (chosen for three reasons: 1. because I didn't think it would be terribly difficult; 2. because I've read a chunk of it before in English and therefore know what happens in a basic sense for the first 14 volumes; and 3. because I've only read the first 14 volumes - there are over 40 out in Japanese - and I like it and want to know what happens!! ;) ) looking up the words I didn't know. I got through it, but it was slow and I didn't feel like I took all that much in of the vocab. After some internal debate, then, I decide to do the unthinkable: I decided to write in a book. I reminded myself that there is nothing wrong with annotating works, and that I could replace the damn thing for 100 to 200 yen anyway, and therefore have a clean copy also. With that in mind, I started scrawling down the English next to the words I didn't know. This has helped me immensely, I must admit, and I'm into the third volume. It's slow going, but I think it's getting faster - I've definitely learned some words, and I think that if I can just keep at it and remind myself that I'm not stupid even when I KNOW that I've looked up "that word" about 10 times, maybe the 11th time I'll actually learn the damn things (I still can't remember what tobasu means, or is it tsubasu?, even though I've looked it up enough that I can think of it. ;) Mezasu, though, which I've looked up at least half a dozen times, means to aim for. YAY!) However, I tried to read Slayers (which is a novel) and realized immediately that this wasn't going to happen, and decided that I should tackle a novel I'm familiar with, and so decided that I would try to find a copy of the ubiquitous Harry Potter to tackle. I've also started leaving the TV on in the background while doing most things. This actually doesn't really help at all, since I seem to just phase it out, but I have seen some awesome commercials. (My favorite involved a respectable late-middle age suited gentlemen playing in his yard and shouting "dare" (who) at everyone who went by, and generally acting more and more obviously like a dog, like chasing the mail man, and rolling in the grass...it was hilarious, and turned out to be a commercial for security systems).
Still, none of this found my binders board, though I did get to see an episode of Naruto and another of Pokemon. And so when I was deciding what to do today, I decided to investigate Ino-ya, a paper store mentioned in my guide book located in Ginza. First, though, I did another test: I took my iPod, for the first time since I had gotten here. And OMG did having music improve my mood. I had been starting to slip again, but with the addition of some music, I nce again felt great. In high spirits, I started out the day going to the Hama-rikyu gardens, which were beautiful if a constantly interesting counterpoint between the tranquility they attempted to establish and the city beyond - I got an interesting picture with this traditional home on an island with arched bridges and carefully tamed trees...behind which Tokyo tower stands, flanked by two cranes. It was a strange balance, really. From there, I walked up to Tsukiji, which is the fish market, and had the freshest, most delicious sushi ever - I could still taste the salt water! - they had so many kinds I didn't know how to pick; I eventually settled for my three favorites plus a couple of new ones, which were both tasty.
I had checked ahead of time which stores in Ginza I wanted to check out other than Ino-ya. Ginza is a major shopping area, and it was worth sticking my head into some places. I went to Sony's gallery and saw the awesomely clear TVs...I'm gonna have a hard time resisting a TV that nice when I go back to the states and need to get a new one...and then failed to find two places I was looking for (a chopstick store and an English bookstore). Mildly irritated, I wandered over to a jewelry store that had an interesting museum in it's top floor and some amazingly beautiful (and not TOO terribly ludicrously expensive) jewelry. Then, it was Mitsukoshi, for my first Japanese department store experience. The place was almost too much to take in, with 11 floors full of stuff. Fortunately, it turned out to be ridiculously expensive (an interesting counterpoint, because most of the clothing I've seen has been at small neighborhood places which actually were pretty cheap by my standards) and so I wasn't too tempted...until I got to B1. B1 was an ENTIRE FLOOR of deserts. It was torture in sweet form. I managed to escape, some how, with two things of Harrad's tea (I think this officially makes me a weirdo, by the by) and two mini-cheesecakes, but damn was it tough. From there I wander over to Matsuya, another of the great department stores and only a block away, and was thrilled to find (rather expensive) gnocchi among the import foods they sold. I got a small array of goods I hadn't managed to find elsewhere yet, including saltines (always a good thing to have around!). Meanwhile, I'd managed to track down Japanese copies of the first four Harry Potter books (I found all of the others except for the newest ones, but they were only available in hard cover and were too expensive). I also resisted copies of the Hobbit and lots of other interesting translated young adult fantasy. I figure I aughta see if I can manage this first. The nicest thing about the department stores, though, was confirmation of a theory. I had wondered if I would be able to communicate effectively if I could find some who spoke some English. The thing is, I can speak fine in Japanese. Understanding the reply, on the other hand, is almost impossible for me, which is utterly maddening. Today, one of the ladies working at Mitsukoshi came and spoke to me. I couldn't really understand her Japanese, and she couldn't really understand my English, but by speaking her (passable though limited) English and me speaking my (passable though equally limited) Japanese we held a perfectly serviceable conversation. Needless to say, this was INCREDIBLY reassuring and means that to make friends I just need to find people with about as much English as I have Japanese, maybe even less, and we'll be able to manage.
Finally, I came to Ino-ya. I went up to the paper floor, didn't see it, and went and asked someone. They failed to understand me, though, and I got sent to the wrong place. Frustrated, I stood in front of the floor directory until it started to make some sense, and discovered that what I needed was actually in their sister store across the street on the 2nd floor. I went there...and nothing. I was starting to despair, when I spotted a book on the 1st floor about binding. Since I had been unable to explain what I needed, I instead found a picture of it in the book. With that and what I did know, the man directed me to what I needed!! I never would have spotted it, it was on the bottom shelf of a kind of out of the case and it looked different than it "normally" does - it was gray instead of brown, for one thing. Still, it was pretty cheap, and so I bought a whole bunch. It was heavy, and I had a bitch of a time getting everything I'd accumulated today home...but it was totally worth it.
So, in conclusion, Mission Accomplished! And in case it wasn't clear from how much detail I went in to over stupid little shit, let me just say that today has been a great day. :)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-08-31 12:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-31 06:17 pm (UTC)YAY!! Clearly you needed some YOU time. Take it and enjoy yourself.
I think you are brave and awesome to go to a new country and live. Go you! Be gentle with yourself and keep talking. I know you will find some good friends soon.
And like wow, adult (sexual) manga? Oh my.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 04:41 am (UTC)-- Gerardo
I did absolutely nothing except what I felt like doing. I didn't take a shower; I didn't brush my teeth; I didn't change out of my pj's
There are days when I feel like this too. Those are usually the days when I ignore the opinions of others, or, more appropriately, the days when I just don't leave my hole.