I felt my first earthquake last night. I was reading on my bed, when suddenly I felt everything tremble. My bed moved back and forth slightly. Quickly, I turned on my television, and it said that a 4.7 size earthquake had happened in Mie Prefecture.
That’s enough for me. Feeling the shake of an earthquake 5 hours away is as much earthquake experience as I would like to have.
Today I am not doing much… well, actually, I’m really busy. I have a lunch date, and I need to collect my flight reinbursement from the office, and pick up another box at the post office, and get my final HPV vaccine at the clinic, and practice Awa Odori, and try and arrange my packing again….
…but other than that, I am not so busy.
I went to Komatsushima to the Immigration office last week. You know, because everyone says “Oh you should apply at least a month in advance”. But when I called them, they said on the phone “Well, next week is too soon. Maybe the week after?”
So I went at that time. But, they took my application, and then told me, “Come back next week”. ”On Monday?” I asked. Monday is two days before my visa expires.
“Monday… Monday is probably too soon. Come on Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday.”
Oh, really.
I don’t mind too much. I went on a holiday, so I will only spend vacation days on this week. Also, I had an errand at Akaishii, the next train station down the line. So it was not a problem. But still!! I know it can be done in a day.
They say it’s because we can’t be here on a working visa and a tourist visa at the same time, so maybe it’s best to change on the day of expiration. OH WELL!
I’m working hard writing farewell letters. I bought most of my farewell gifts already…. thanks to the money I won, getting second prize in the speech contest. It’s good, because I didn’t want to spend the money on myself… I don’t need more things! I have too many things already! (Please look at the many packing boxes on my floor as evidence) Luckily, I needs buy presents for folks here. Everything works out fine!
I’m going along fine in “Dance of Dragons” on my iPad. I’ll buy a paperback copy when they come out, but for now, electronic reading is OK.
(If you’re not in the loop, “Dance of Dragons” is the latest, long-awaited 5th book in the Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series by George R R Martin. The TV drama of the first book, “Game of Thrones”, just wrapped up on HBO.)
So far, DoD is really…. slow. Ha! The 4th book was split in two, with half of the narrating characters in the 4th book, and the other half in the 5th. So the events of the 5th book are happening at the same time as in the 4th book, and although I was really looking forward to the 5th’s characters (because I missed them so much in the 4th), nothing is really happening! A lot of folks are talking about situations to each other, and making general plans. Sometimes somebody rides a boat from here to there.
But there just aren’t any good villains floating around, or super insane deeds being done, or just… the general madness that happened in the last book. Mostly, it’s just a pile of characters jumbling around the kingdom, and I can’t tell who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. There is nobody I love to hate, only a bunch of unpleasant people that I wish would stop their silly torturing and murdering. Everyone else is very ambivalent. I’m only 400 pages in (it’s 1400 pages on my iPad), eveyone has only had 2 or 3 chapters each, so…. we’re still getting warmed up.
I’ll stick it to the end, of course.
