Japanese High Technology

Hello there, dear devoted readers.

I lost my room key the other day, and because it is nowhere to be found, I now have to pay 10,000 Japanese Yen to get a new one. Meanwhile, I get to use the spare-key from the security office to get into my room, but I cannot leave the building with that key, and I have to sign in and out of the dorm. They're monitoring me.

Have I ever told you about the wonders of Japanese technology? All technology gets born here, in the Land of the Rising Sun, so we have all the newest, coolest, sweetest stuff here. But bear in mind that technology is like human babies, they need time to grow and develop. That's why we have a lot of used-to-be-cool-and-new stuff, that the West has developed more and made better. Things like ATM. What is the point of an ATM if it has opening hours?? Then there's computers and the internet. If I want to download the readings that I have to do for class, I have to sign in to the university home-page. Ok, that's normal. But then I have to sign in again to get to see the list of teachers. Then I have to sign in again to actually get to the downloading. And when I want to look at the syllabus, I also have to sign in about three times, and when I do, I cannot just press the Enter key, noooo, I have to move the mouse and click on the button that says ロギン (also on the English version of the page, that one button has to stay in Japanese).
And the internet here is SLOW. In our rooms, in the internet rooms, in the media rooms, in computer classrooms...
Maybe the Japanese don't care. Maybe they don't realize how slow it is. It is an actual problem here, in Technology Country that the young generation is computer-illiterate. Imagine that. Everything is upside-down here.

I hardly ever take the elevator. I prefer the stairs (as my friends will attest to). The elevators here talk to you. Some speak in English, others in Japanese. They say things like 'Doors are closing' (ドアは閉まります), and 'First floor' （１階でございます）. I live on the third floor, but I have a feeling that Lady Elevator actually says 'Thirth floor'. Because she always makes me think that we're on fourth.
Other things that talk to you here include ATMs ('Please be careful of things left behind'), and toilets (ぺらぺら、ちょっとわかりません)。

We took a trip to Mt.Aso the other day. Me, Nika, Tonya, Annastína, Yuhei, and uh, a guy from Vietnam, I think :S I had never met him before, and only seen him once since (help me out here Nika-chan). Yuhei is Japanese and told us the funny story of how people would turn around when his dad called his name when they were in New York, because it sounds a bit like 'you hey!' Anyway, Mt.Aso is an active, smoking volcano that you can climb and look into the crater. It was cool. Couldn't really see anything because of all the vapor (yeah, it's not real smoke), but it was cool all the same. The landscape there is interesting, but I still haven't got any pictures from the people who took some, so I can't show you. I'll just tell you what it looked like. There was black sand, aaaand.... that was int. Rock. Ó, svo voru vörður þarna. It felt like home. It was even cold. It was the first time I wore my winter jacket since I came here. Yeah, that place really looked and felt like home.
More about volcanoes. I don't think I ever told you that one of the mountains here where I live is a volcano and if it erupts, it's bye bye Beppu. There was an earthquake the other day, less than 3 Richter and at 5 o'clock in the morning, so I didn't feel anything. Although some people woke up. As I have said before, The school and the dorm is planted on the top of a mountain, and that means that to get here, we have to cross several bridges, and that means that if there is a big earthquake, and the bridges break, we're stuck. So we were advised to stock up on safety-food, like cookies, and snack.
Why do they tell you these things after you get here? *sigh*

It is the end of the semester quarter now. Classes are over. Next week is Final exams, then free. Bart is going to Tokyo to have lunch with rich old Japanese salarymen in black suits. Rina and some people are going on a four-day bus-trip to see the country. Someone talked about a trip to Hokkaido. I wonder if they have snow already in Hokkaido. I'm not going anywhere, because when I ask around, no one has heard of any trip to Hokkaido, and I don't have money to go to places I've already been to. (does that make sense to you?)

Et si je continue comme ça, je ne ferai jamais mes devoirs de japonais... alors, chô!