These past few days I've been watching the anime Angel Beats. It's already been a while since the anime came out - that was back around April to June 2010 - which is typical for me. I tend to watch older anime first and then gradually work my way up to more recent animes, so I guess I've been making pretty good progress if I'm able to watch some 2010 animes from time to time. (I think there still might be a couple of 2007 animes that I haven't watched yet, like Shattered Angels. Funny that its name is also about angels. :p)

Well, as is the case with me and most animes I've watched, I wasn't particularly intrigued by the beginning, but it got better as it went on (I felt that way about Durarara!! too). I'll try not to spoil it for those of you who have not seen it and might want to see it in the future.

I've heard it mentioned before that Yuri Nakamura, one of the protagonists of Angel Beats!, resembles Haruhi Suzumiya from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (otherwise called Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu).
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Labels: angel beats, anime, art, characters, chronological order, comparison, existence, haruhi suzumiya, life, meaning, my soul your beats, nico nico douga, pattern, proof, similar, song, time, yuri nakamura

I can assure you that the President Abraham Lincoln and his story was much more melancholy than Haruhi Suzumiya could ever be. (Anyone recognize the name of that series? I think the anime was pretty known at one point.)

I didn't know much about Abraham Lincoln before I watched a film created by the History Channel in my history class at school. I could recognize him when I saw a picture, and I knew his nickname was Honest Abe, but besides that I had no idea at all...About what kind of life he had lived.

Abraham Lincoln lost many of the people dear to him when he was still young. I believe he lost two sisters (one of them to childbirth) and his mother. His father didn't treat him too well, seeing as he wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and become a man who used his strength to work, but Lincoln wanted to go and get educated and live the city life.

Abraham Lincoln also fell in love with a woman, but she may have already been engaged to someone else, probably making him feel guilty about the relationship. And then she died during a wave of sickness that swept through the town they were in. Lincoln was very depressed, thinking thoughts of suicide, and his friends tried to keep watch on him to make sure he wouldn't really kill himself.

What was especially unusual was that in the movie, it was mentioned that Lincoln could have had a happy life with a family if the woman he loved hadn't died, and thus might never have become the President. It's pretty bad for him seeing as if he hadn't been unhappy he wouldn't have been a great President there.

I thought it was awfully rude since they said he was ugly (my mom said that too). At least he's recognizable. I probably couldn't tell apart most of the Presidents. I can only recognize the more recent ones and George Washington. I don't have much idea about how the rest of them looked...

And what was also strange was that Abraham Lincoln dreamed of seeing his dead body before he was assassinated. Talk about a creepy premonition.

Whenever I feel down, I think about Lincoln's life and then I can say to myself, "I don't have it that bad." (Sorry, Lincoln, to be using your misfortune, but it does help to have something worse to compare myself to sometimes. I try to avoid it for the most part. I used to care more about my grades in comparison to other people but I don't want to be someone who is always asking others "What did you get?" or someone who keeps on panicking when a test comes. I don't even check my grades online anymore, so when people ask me what my score was, I can only say I don't know. XD)

I've kind of been thinking that I really don't know much about most famous people. I can't say I think about them much except for if I'm studying them in school. (For instance, I don't think I know who most of the musicians I listen to look like.) I've never been someone with celebrity crushes since I feel like they live in too different a world. Little to no hope of meeting them. Being as distant and far from my mind as they usually are (except for maybe voice actors/actresses for animes, but that's a different story), I know very little about their personalities, and so it is hard to picture them as people like who I see in my daily life. And I suppose perhaps as a celebrity it might be hard to really get to know people. How do you know that someone doesn't want to get close to you for your fame or money? (Unless, of course, it was someone you had been friends with before you climbed to the top of the pyramid.)

Labels: abraham lincoln, care, change, comparison, depression, dream, fame, famous, friendship, glory, grades, guilt, haruhi suzumiya, money, people, personality, president, recognize, score, suicide

Recently I attended the birthday party of one of my friends. It wasn't actually her birthday, but I think she decided to have it early since her birthday is during the winter break. I was looking at the light fixtures in her house and thought, "Hmm, they look kind of Japanese."

The pattern is like the one in the above picture (which is a "shoji lamp", apparently) except the light was kind of a flat rectangle, and it was on the ceiling. I did see some pictures sort of like the lamp I'm trying to describe but nothing quite right.

And then there were other lights that looked sort of like what I saw when I was in Japan. I couldn't find the right picture for that either. But I saw those kinds of lamps in my hotel rooms when I was in Japan. Perhaps there are such lamps in people's homes too. I'm curious about it, but I doubt I will get the chance to return to Japan soon. (I wanted to go again so I can see Hokkaido, and the Sapporo Snow Festival, but it's in January and I have school. Ugh, school. A lot of good cruise ship routes are only during the months when I'm in school so I can never go)

Well, my friend does not have Japanese lineage, as far as I know of, but I believe her father had been in Japan for a while, so maybe he was fond of Japanese-style things and decided to buy a house that had such features in California. That's why my friend knows that if a few letters were taken out of her name, then her name would be the Japanese word for flower. Speaking of which, I didn't think my name really had a meaning (besides famous cities being named after me - though the truth is that I'm named after the city), but then I looked it up and apparently my name is from Old English and means "wide meadow". Hmm, not bad.

While I am on the topic of Japan...Sometimes I take a look at the bonus features on anime DVDs. I've watched an interview with Yui Makino and a day in the work on The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (that one featured Aya Hirano, who was Haruhi's voice and sang the opening and ending songs - note I am talking about the original anime and not the re-release). I thought that their singing sounded different from their normal speaking voices. Do people always sound different when they sing than when they are just talking? I've been curious about it ever since.

Speaking of music, I started watching an anime called Da Capo, and now I'm on the second season. (I think the name Da Capo is cool since it is a musical term) When I was watching the opening sequence I listened to the song and realized that it was strangely familiar to me. In fact, I discovered it was a song on my playlist. ("Sakurairo no Kisetsu", sung by Yozuca*, #37 on the playlist at the bottom of this page)

Also, Abba must be after me for some reason. My playlist is on shuffle and autostart so it automatically picks a random song on my playlist. Two times in a row, when seeing my playlist, I was given an Abba song. (Yes, I know, Abba is old and isn't even singing anymore nowadays, but I thought they were sort of catchy. I guess I really am an old person after all.)

I learned something about Harrison Ford recently. Harrison Ford played Han Solo in Star Wars and was Indiana in Indiana Jones. I had never known for all this time that he was an actor in Star Wars until my dad told me...I guess I'm not that knowledgeable about actors. (Refer to my post in June 2009, "definitely hunting season for drivers", there's a part about my lack of knowledge about Angelina Jolie there)

Labels: abba, cruise ship, da capo, harrison ford, haruhi suzumiya, hokkaido, indiana jones, japan, japanese, lamp, meaning, music, name, round, sapporo snow festival, shoji, star wars, sydney

As of late, we've been studying the Constitution in my history class. In one of the articles, I saw the phrase "yeahs and nays". I thought it kind of reminded me of the neighs of horses. I mean, the people at the time were kind of like horses anyhow. They even wore wigs which sometimes have "ponytails" on them.

Nowadays, instead of yeah and nays, it would be thumbs up or thumbs down, or just raising your hand to vote for something (while everyone's heads are down on their desks so they can't see who's voting what), wouldn't it? It might be fun, though, to be asked an opinion, and then to have everyone say either "Yeah" or "Nay" all at once. I suppose it would be considered a waste of valuable class time, though.

Speaking of which, I caught sight of something which I wasn't supposed to have seen. It's not something inappropriate or anything, so don't worry about that. I forgot to print out my homework for language arts class, but I had my USB drive, so I asked my teacher if I could print it out with her laptop. While I was preparing to do that, I noticed she had a Skype window. She was chatting with my history teacher. At first I thought, "Oooh! Busted!" but then I realized it was probably work-related since there was some mention of a meeting. Besides, I'd be in trouble if the teacher realized I was snooping, hehe. So I guess that rumor about my history teacher spending time chatting with his girlfriend (who is a teacher as well, in a different school, wouldn't they both be fired then?!) is not true, it's just my language arts teacher.

For a long time I was meaning to post a drawing that I made, except I kept on forgetting about it, so now I'm only posting it practically a month after I drew it. XD (If you've been actively checking up on my DeviantArt you may have seen it earlier) This is a drawing, or, two drawings, of the character Haruhi Suzumiya. I am currently working on a piece of Hatsune Miku (using GIMP to digitally make lineart and color it in). I will post the original sketch and the finished version up when I'm done.

Just the other day it was my mom's birthday, so we went out to eat at a buffet called Tatami. It's in a mall, and it used to be called Todai, but apparently it was sold. D: My mom got her food free since it's her birthday. (You have to be accompanied by two "paying adults", though. But I count as an adult now, so it's fine. Too bad there's no more kid discounts. I have to wait until people believe I'm old so I can get the senior discounts on things like museum membership) I am a plain sort of person, so I just like to eat kappamaki (cucumber sushi) and Philadelphia rolls (basically, sushi with salmon and cream cheese in it).

Ah, but what I really liked was the cookies they have there. When I used to visit Todai, I always ate those cookies. The light-colored ones are the best. I thought they were supposed to be sugar cookies, but I'm not sure. My parents say the smell of milk is strong, so maybe they're just "milk cookies". I would like to be able to buy them, but I have never found them. (They're not Nilla wafers, anyhow) My mother thinks that they could be a personal recipe of the restaurant that was passed on when the owner sold Todai and it got changed to Tatami.

The restaurant has a chocolate fountain and a vanilla fountain now, you know, those miniature ones you can plug in. It's pretty cool. The kids were fond of it, of course. I tried dipping the milk cookies, bananas, and big marshmallows into it. What was funny was a sign that says, "Please do not dip your ice cream into the chocolate fountain". It must mean someone actually tried to put their ice cream cone in there. I wonder how they reacted when they were trying to hold the cone and there was chocolate sliding down it.

I have been thinking that although the town I live in has a hefty population, it's still not all that exciting, because of something we were talking about in French class... My teacher said, "We don't really have a downtown here, do we?" And another student replied, "The library!" If the library is our downtown, then we can't say much for ourselves, can we? XD All over the USA, though, not many people go to the library regularly, it seems. It's kind of saddening. My parents say more people go to the library in my town because they're frugal and don't want to buy books. (Rather, they waste their money on brand name things and cars. -_-;; )

Labels: birthday, buffet, chocolate fountain, constitution, cookie, downtown, drawing, gimp, haruhi suzumiya, ice cream, library, skype, spending money, sushi, tatami, teacher, todai, yeahs and nays

This is meant to be a play on the song "Leave the Kids Alone" by Pink Floyd. In this case it applies to a fly instead, as la mouche is French for "the fly". I know I talk too much about French class nowadays, but the class has been having problems with mouches.

We usually have at least one fly in our class. The students, including myself, become distracted when the fly is near us. The teacher eventually said that we should leave it alone and not be distracted by it, and she brought out her mouche assassin (apparently one of the words for killer is the same in French as in English, scary!), in other words, a fly swatter. I think she has a total of three fly swatters. We once used two of them to play a game in class to use our vocab. The teacher wrote some French words on the board and two people would stand up there at a time, facing away from the board. The teacher would then call out a word or phrase in English. The two contenders would then try to swat the correct word first. I actually played a similar game in Japanese class in the summertime. I guess this is a universal way to learn languages or something.

Sometimes I have some panic when I forget something in a certain language. It seems like it is important to me and so I get stressed even though it's not a big deal. For instance, I was going over Japanese in my head because I am worried I am losing it. I can't speak it at home since no one understands, I can't write or read it so I can't practice by reading manga, and I haven't been watching much anime lately (except for The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which I already watched - and this is the original season, not the new Haruhi Suzumiya no Yuutsu) and so I have started to forget here and there. I was trying to remember the word for "You're welcome" and I couldn't get it and I was getting mad because I kept thinking of the wrong thing. Eventually I remembered by accident. I was really relieved.

Learning a language such as French, which has relations to English, is easy but at the same time confusing, because sometimes words that mean one thing in English mean something else in French. Examples:
1) In French, collège is high school.
2) Crayon is pencil. (So "crayons de golf" is golf pencils. It's weird since we used golf pencils in cooking last year.)
3) Chat is the word for cat.
4) Singe is the word for monkey. (And singe is an English word that means burn... o_O;; Maybe...it's because monkeys are troublemakers! And they can be found in train stations in India? So I hear)
5) This I found out using Google Translate (I know, not reliable, but oh well)... Apparently "chic type" could be used to describe a prince. XD Though chic type really means more "nice guy" than prince necessarily, as not all princes are nice.

But anyways, the point is, I am wondering, does anyone have those times when they forget the specific word they were trying to think of? This could be in your native tongue (which is English, for me at least). It happens to me often and it's really annoying. I suppose I ought to be glad that I even have enough brains to think, though. My dad said he once heard, "You complain about wanting new shoes? Some people don't even have feet!" It's the kind of phrase that sounds like the reason for Thanksgiving.

Something has been bothering me lately about Blogger. Earlier you could only put ten labels on your posts, I think, instead of the previous twenty? And not only that, but when I start typing a label in, it doesn't automatically come up with a small...window? (dunno what to call it) that shows some possible options based on what you have already used as labels. It's really bugging me and I hope Blogger will return to what it used to be. I am not fond of change in general.

Labels: blogger, chic type, crayons, english, flyswatter, forgetful, french, games, grateful, haruhi suzumiya, insects, japanese, la mouche, label, language, monkeys, prince, quote, school

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