mDuo13

So today on my way home from work I stopped at SVGL, where I was planning on meeting Spiritsnare for some DJ Max Technika. As it turns out, he was at dinner so I had the machine to myself. I figured I'd play a game or two and wait for him to come back; Matt's an abnormally fast eater, after all. Well, something like 8 games later, neither he nor anyone else wanting to use the Technika machine was on the premises, and it had gotten quite dark. I was riding home, so I left (and made great time, taking a trip that normally costs me an hour in 45 minutes flat), but not before beating Stop, Blythe, and a few other things. I planned on throwing some money in the Pop'n machine, too, but that didn't happen. As it was, I'm nearly too tired to blog about today's kanji.

• 車 - kuruma, sha - "car" as in 車 (car), 自転車 (bicycle), 救急車 (ambulence).
• 学 - gaku, mana - "science" as in がっこう (school), 科学者 (scientist), 学ぶ (learn), 学生 (student), or just as a suffix meaning the study of (e.g. 文学, literature).
• 教 - kyou, oshi as in 教会 (church), 教える (teach), 仏教 (Buddhism). This one looks kinda hard. I'm gonna have to study it more when I'm more awake.

But as I can barely keep my eyes open as it stands, it's goodnight for now.

It's funny how long simple things take. I had been upset with the way my room was arranged for ages (especially how my computer was in the corner behind the door), but I never really was able to do anything about it. Now, recently, my grandmother died (she went peacefully and in good spirits) and that means that our family's patio is currently overflowing with furniture and things. I happened to come home one day earlier this week and spot a particular round table that had spent many years in my grandparents' living room, which prompted a nostalgic, affectionate feeling. So I decided to take the opportunity and use what furniture I wanted to improve my room.

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Well, yesterday was a thoroughly unproductive evening. I got home to find the back patio cluttered with furniture from my late grandmother's house, including a particular round table of which I have more vague but fond memories than I realized. That got me thinking that I would like to rearrange the furnishings in my room, whose layout has frustrated me for a long time. I ended up puzzling over it for quite a while without coming to a conclusion, and without getting anything else done, either. Which means, I forgot to blog yesterday's kanji practice (the entry yesterday was for the day before). Thus, I'll be going through an extra large portion today:

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I slacked a bit yesterday and didn't get around to blogging the daily kanji - but that's not to say that I didn't study them! It just happens that I was busy hanging out with some friends playing some Tales of Symphonia 2: Knight of Ratatosk and whatnot. It just happens that while on the way to dinner, my friend Tsubasa was repping the Bakemonogatari ending theme (by Miku artist Supercell, with Nico Video singer Nagi). Well, it happens to be very typical of compositions by ryo (woo, piano rock!), which makes it pretty dang listenable. The fact that it has a skilled singer rather than a computerized voice (even a computerized voice as charming as Hatsune Miku) only works in its favor. The song is so good it even made me watch the anime (actually I had been debating watching the show for a while; it just pushed me over the edge).

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I am actually kind of remiss in not mentioning this until now, but I guess technically today is the "official" release date for my talented friend Ty's new album, We're All In This Together. I've been listening to this album pretty much nonstop since Friday, so I can attest firsthand that it is good music.

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In association with my resolution to work on my Japanese more actively, I have decided that my next project will be to play Little Busters! in Japanese, using Rikaichan and AGTH to help me out. I started out with Blitzwing's assisted reading setup, but quickly ditched Wakan in favor of a simpler Rikaichan-only setup. I also found it cumbersome to go and open all the different applications and things in the right order, so I wrote a Windows batch file that launches them in order. Here's how it works:

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