There's a First Time for Everything

In my previous post I described my efforts to replace the shoji paper on the slides in my Japanese style room.  Here are the final results:

The two slides on the left have ironed on shoji paper.  The two slides on the right have glued on shoji paper.  It may not be possible to see in the photo but the shoji paper on the left hand slides isn't quite flat.  I've tried to get them to go taut by misting them with water but that wasn't enough to do the trick.  Oh well...fix it up next year I suppose.

I showed the above photo to an acquaintance and she thought I had done very well.  "When I do it there are bumps all over the place" she said.  Okay.  But I still think I have a bit of room for improvement.  Though with the tools I have this may be as good as it gets....

Here's a work in progress shot of the centre right slide:

Time Goes By....

I obviously am not doing very well on my intention of posting a blog entry at least once a month.  It's the middle of Obon and the middle of August and this is my third post this year.

My initial title for this entry was "Time Flies..." but I decided against that.  I just finished giving a sparrow a burial.  It was lying dead at the end of hallway that runs past the doors of all the apartments on my floor.  It either succumbed to a fatal injury incurred from flying into a window, the passageway is lined with windows, or the heat wave we've been experiencing the past few weeks.  The property my apartment stands on doesn't have a square centimeter of open soil.  So I discreetly dug a hole in the patch of weeds behind the neighbouring newspaper distribution office, placed the bird corpse in the hole, and covered it up.

-*-

Today I went about replacing the torn shoji paper of the sliding partitions of my Japanese style room.  I chose the type of shoji paper which you can secure by heating it with an iron.  After completing two sliding partitions I've realized that 1) the stuff doesn't necessarily stick very well on the wooden frames, and 2) it's not an easy task getting it to lie completely flat.  Getting it taut like the paper I'm replacing appears to be beyond my abilities.  Given that, I will head back to the hardware store to purchase some shoji paste.  I'll use it to secure the loose edges where the heat treatment was enough to get the paper to stick to the frame.  All in all, the paper I've laid down looks pretty bad but, on the plus side, it doesn't have any holes or torn panels...yet.

Start of a New Era...A Very Brief Update

Yeah, it's upside down.  It's just that when 

posted this way Menhera-chan is pointing 

in the correct direction to indicate the 

end of the Heisei era posts and the start 

of the Reiwa era posts in this blog.

So the Heisei era has ended and we're now in Reiwa.  At least one person I know asked out loud why Japan hasn't switched to counting the years using the Western method but I figured that the idea wouldn't fly to well in certain circles in this county. 

Aside from a few people saying "Ake ome", which is normally reserved for use at New Year's, there wasn't too much of a big fuss about the event in these parts.  The post office threw me for a loop when they started putting entries such as 01/05/03 in my bank passbook...okay, what year was that?  My next car inspection expiration decal will sport a big "03" instead of "33".  The list goes on....

Game Log #2 - Lost in Evoland...2!

Last December I obtained a new iPhone.  I said "obtained" because I'm going to be paying for it in installments for 4 years(!).  Similar to when I got my iPhone 6, I went hunting for a few new games to grace my new piece of hardware.

What I stumbled upon was a little gem called Evoland.  It's a short little game in which player works their way through a kind of history lesson of computer games.  The player starts off which graphics and music typical to the 8-bit gaming era and ends up in a 3D style game environment circa mid 2010s.  The game was amusing on account of its self-effacing commentary and variety of game play styles.

"You got a star".  Okay.  What's next? ;-)

As it turns out, that game spawned a successor... creatively named Evoland 2.  Unlike the games which I spent a fair bit of time playing on my previous iPhone, this one has turned out to be somewhat addictive...or perhaps not.  It's the part of me which says "How about trying this?" which has led me to spend a rather large amount of time focused on the game.  Proof of that is nonsense like this...

That 333 equals 333 bouts in a fighting tournament...yes, you can roll your eyeballs.

The purpose of that nonsense?  To get to level 50 of course... >.<

-*-

A while ago I was using a news article related to the topic of Brexit in a lesson.  The focus of the article was an EU statement where Gibraltar was described as a British colony.  The UK government took offense to that and was quick to issue counter statement.  One of my students was a bit puzzled about the word "colony".  I was about to explain its meaning when another student offered up its Japanese equivalent.  The first student still looked a bit confused.  Then he had his "Eureka!" moment.  The problem wasn't with the meaning of the word.  It was the context.  He only knew the word from its context in the Gundam anime universe.  Ah, hah....  No, Gibraltar is not a space colony.

 -*-

I have a kids class where three girls have now entered junior high school.  The other member of the class is a boy in 5th grade.  When I asked the class if they had gone anywhere during spring break, one girl quickly replied "Okinawa!".  So my next question was "Where did you go?".  Her reply was "A hotel!".  Ah, yes.  Of course.  So I asked what other places she went to.  "Suizoku-kan" was the reply.  "What's that in English?", I asked.  She was stumped but that was okay since I was sure it hadn't popped up in their textbook yet.  The girl sitting next to me quietly said "Aquarium".  Okay.  Next question.  "What did you see?".  Answer..."Fish!".  Ah, the first year of junior high school.  They're not kids but they sure as heck aren't teenagers.

 -*-

Yes, this photo was taken in April.  Not as much snow the previous week, but it's still snow in April....