Time's running out!

I have two weeks left in this country. That, you may notice, is not a lot of weeks at all. In this two weeks, I have to finish up my coursework, write an 18 page paper, move out of my apartment, and find a place to live in Japan.
A lot of this stuff is actually busy work, to an extent. Taking the time to put all my CDs into my extra harddrive, deciding what clothes I have can go to Goodwill, etc. Other things are just currently somewhat impossible to do -- for instance, I can't get an apartment til I know how much I have to spend on it, which depends on whether or not I get a little extra funding, which I won't know until...actually, no one even knows when I'll find that out.
This leaves the most intellectually draining and tedious stuff to be tackled first. Like reading a few hundred pages of Kant's Critique of Judgment, writing two page reviews of books I read two months ago, work work work. Which is good, in a sense -- being busy is good, falling asleep tired at the end of the day is good, sitting in the library or sitting on the bus reading is good. Or, as Kant would say, they are "agreeable to me", but this isn't something I need to get into just right now.

The problem is, though, whether or not I will have time to finish all of this. For instance, between now (2pm) and tomorrow at 11am, I am supposed to have read approximately 400 pages of theory and philosophy in total. Thus far, I have read...40 pages. Not really a significant dent, now is it? It's the same case every Friday, as I carry on with the World's Worst Theory Class, and to be honest I will probably only be able to get through about half the required reading...but that feeling of disappointment in not being able to meet the classes (ridiculous) demands really has me down, as it has all quarter. I'm eager for that to end.

And eager, I think, to leave this city. Even though I don't know at all what I'm getting myself into. I don't have enough money to make it through the summer in Japan yet, I don't have any place to be through August, and I'm moving to a foreign country, when I have never stepped foot on foreign soil besides Mexico and Canada. There is not a single stamp on my passport, folks. What am I getting myself into?

I was lying in bed this morning before starting the daily grind, and it was a sunny morning, with the light filtering in through the white shades I stuck up in my room to cover the venetian blinds. And I was very comfortable and happy, just lying there, in my own bed in my own room, enough so that it's sort of impossible to realize I have only a dozen nights left sleeping there. The bed and the blinds and the city will sit in storage til I come back for them, older and possibly smarter (and probably thinner, as this seems to happen when everyone moves to Japan).

Good things about this: Finally learning Japanese, living somewhere with snow and rain, having my own crazy-Japanese-subway stories, high probability of Beard Papa cream puffs within walking distance, aforementioned losing of weight due to walking more/no shitty american food,
new fancy cell phone that will put all american phones to shame, plum blossom and cherry blossom seasons, finally seeing all those places/things I've been having to read about in literature and poetry for the last six years, meeting friends of friends, meeting up with old friends, going to concerts/learning about Japan's indie music scene, cheap Hello Kitty things to send to the sisters.

Bad things about this: Starting over with the friends thing again, leaving behind all my nice things (my coffee mugs, my bookshelves, my cactus), having to speak Japanese all the time, being really tall, getting lost on the train/subway, trying to find good fresh coffee (who knows how long this might take), having to explain in Japanese how I want my hair cut, living in a very tiny apartment, paying a lot of money for things that should not cost very much money (like apples), people in my program might be douches, people might try to make me do karaoke, possible drinking too much beer, getting lost all the time, mosquitos, humidity, losing contact with people in the States, finding new free wireless "hotspots", not having a dryer for my clothes apparently, need to shave legs/wear skirts all summer due to ridiculous heat, my mom coming to visit me in my tiny apartment and driving me insane, anime, white people who are in Japan and like anime, having to be friends with white people in Japan who like anime because there's no one else to be friends with, maybe not being capable of learing Japanese after all.


Hey, that really helped!