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ltgmarsGot back from Boston (yes, yes, most of you didn't even know I was gone, though I'm sure you all missed me terribly)...
For the record: MIT is the fscking coolest college EVAR. It's going to take some work, but I'm going to try to get in. ;_;
Yeah, so after a horrible Thursday of driving (half-dying in the car... guess who got absolutely no reading done because she suddenly got diagnosed with horrible, Claire-like carsickness!), Friday was spent going on the MIT tour with the tourpeople, eating dim sum in Chinatown (;_; shiawase desu...), visiting the MIT museum, and watching random people chess it up in Harvard Square.
Saturday was our drive-back day, but first, I convinced my parents to take me to the one and only Sasuga Japanese Bookstore! Open only on Saturdays, 12-6... how lucky was I that it fit right into our schedule?
It was in a nice neighborhood, but it was a bit shady because it was on the basement floor of some water plant/building. ~_~ I was impressed, nonetheless, by the breadth of what was there. My brother didn't really like it ("This store is completely useless!" he cried as he dragged around a random copy of Excel Saga) since the entire bookstore, save a corner or two, was filled with untranslated Japanese tankouban, artbooks, TV guides, etc. They didn't have Nakajima Atsuko's Tsuya (I asked the cool Japanese guy at the front desk, and he was like, "Ahh, Nakajima Atsuko... sold out!") nor did they have the Sutepri Premium artbook I wanted ("Ahh, sold out, too! You know Otakon? We take all we have, sold out!" Damn you Otakoners...), but they did happen to have the lufferly FMA TV Animation Artbook I'd had my eye on. I'd scan the cover (not going to rip the sucker up just to scan the inside... not until I have a second copy, at least), but alas, my scanner's broken. -_-
My mom laughed when I told her that two of the three books I wanted were sold out, but she said we'd order them online when we got home. ;_; I luff her. I'll pester her about them when she wakes up today.
The only downside to that trip was that I, in fact, could not read a word of Japanese. -_- I know random kana here or there (I could translate A-ZU-MA-N-GA, even though it was freaking obvious what it was since there were pictures on the spines), but other than that, I was lost in a sea of katakana, hiragana, and kanji, with some random English titles here or there (saw the hardcover version of Tsubasa Resevoir Chronicle 6... O_o I really have to start reading that series). There were, of course, some things I recognized just because of the design of the logo (e.g. Mahoromatic has a distinctly cutesy logo, and Ah! Megami-sama was a quick find since it has ああ！ at the beginning), but really... O_o
Next time I visit Boston, I'll make sure I have working knowledge of Japanese characters so I can try to find stuff I've actually heard of before.
Oh, I spotted some Groundwork of Evangelion artbooks... I was so very tempted to get Volume III, just because it has some uber-sexy pictures of Kaworu on the Japanese front cover (the right-to-left cover; Shinji's on the left-to-right cover), but really, those artbooks are only for fanatics, since it's plainly a collection of animation sketches (a heck of a lot of them, too), and since money was limited (and not my own), I figured I'd save up my credits and hope that my mom wouldn't mind the $30+ pricetags on those two books we'd have to order online.
Heh, most amusingly of all, I think, was that my mom got some cookbooks there. My book was (as listed on the website) $12.20, but the total cost of the trip (excluding tax... it was a statewide no-tax day, I think) was over $75.
So yes, after that lovely excursion, we headed off home. During the trip back, I realized just how funny the Indonesian language is. "Dingin bukan main" is often used to say "It's so cold!", but how it translates is pretty funny. Dingin (DEE-NGEEN) = cold, main (MAH-EEN) = playing/play, bukan (BOO-KAHN) = the negation. Therefore, "dingin bukan main" translates, literally, to "It's cold, and I'm not playin'." Well, something like that.
And so we arrived. 4:00 AMish. Just enough time to check e-mail goings-on, LJ goings-on, fansub goings-on, and crescent goings-on before heading off to bed to wake up an hour later, eat tomato soup (I'd had a craving while I was sick one day last week, and my mom bought me, like, eight cans), and get crackin' on one of those damned summer reading books. I definitely won't finish all five, but I'm hoping to get at least Walden and the rest of How to Read A Book finished.
For the record: MIT is the fscking coolest college EVAR. It's going to take some work, but I'm going to try to get in. ;_;
Yeah, so after a horrible Thursday of driving (half-dying in the car... guess who got absolutely no reading done because she suddenly got diagnosed with horrible, Claire-like carsickness!), Friday was spent going on the MIT tour with the tourpeople, eating dim sum in Chinatown (;_; shiawase desu...), visiting the MIT museum, and watching random people chess it up in Harvard Square.
Saturday was our drive-back day, but first, I convinced my parents to take me to the one and only Sasuga Japanese Bookstore! Open only on Saturdays, 12-6... how lucky was I that it fit right into our schedule?
It was in a nice neighborhood, but it was a bit shady because it was on the basement floor of some water plant/building. ~_~ I was impressed, nonetheless, by the breadth of what was there. My brother didn't really like it ("This store is completely useless!" he cried as he dragged around a random copy of Excel Saga) since the entire bookstore, save a corner or two, was filled with untranslated Japanese tankouban, artbooks, TV guides, etc. They didn't have Nakajima Atsuko's Tsuya (I asked the cool Japanese guy at the front desk, and he was like, "Ahh, Nakajima Atsuko... sold out!") nor did they have the Sutepri Premium artbook I wanted ("Ahh, sold out, too! You know Otakon? We take all we have, sold out!" Damn you Otakoners...), but they did happen to have the lufferly FMA TV Animation Artbook I'd had my eye on. I'd scan the cover (not going to rip the sucker up just to scan the inside... not until I have a second copy, at least), but alas, my scanner's broken. -_-
My mom laughed when I told her that two of the three books I wanted were sold out, but she said we'd order them online when we got home. ;_; I luff her. I'll pester her about them when she wakes up today.
The only downside to that trip was that I, in fact, could not read a word of Japanese. -_- I know random kana here or there (I could translate A-ZU-MA-N-GA, even though it was freaking obvious what it was since there were pictures on the spines), but other than that, I was lost in a sea of katakana, hiragana, and kanji, with some random English titles here or there (saw the hardcover version of Tsubasa Resevoir Chronicle 6... O_o I really have to start reading that series). There were, of course, some things I recognized just because of the design of the logo (e.g. Mahoromatic has a distinctly cutesy logo, and Ah! Megami-sama was a quick find since it has ああ！ at the beginning), but really... O_o
Next time I visit Boston, I'll make sure I have working knowledge of Japanese characters so I can try to find stuff I've actually heard of before.
Oh, I spotted some Groundwork of Evangelion artbooks... I was so very tempted to get Volume III, just because it has some uber-sexy pictures of Kaworu on the Japanese front cover (the right-to-left cover; Shinji's on the left-to-right cover), but really, those artbooks are only for fanatics, since it's plainly a collection of animation sketches (a heck of a lot of them, too), and since money was limited (and not my own), I figured I'd save up my credits and hope that my mom wouldn't mind the $30+ pricetags on those two books we'd have to order online.
Heh, most amusingly of all, I think, was that my mom got some cookbooks there. My book was (as listed on the website) $12.20, but the total cost of the trip (excluding tax... it was a statewide no-tax day, I think) was over $75.
So yes, after that lovely excursion, we headed off home. During the trip back, I realized just how funny the Indonesian language is. "Dingin bukan main" is often used to say "It's so cold!", but how it translates is pretty funny. Dingin (DEE-NGEEN) = cold, main (MAH-EEN) = playing/play, bukan (BOO-KAHN) = the negation. Therefore, "dingin bukan main" translates, literally, to "It's cold, and I'm not playin'." Well, something like that.
And so we arrived. 4:00 AMish. Just enough time to check e-mail goings-on, LJ goings-on, fansub goings-on, and crescent goings-on before heading off to bed to wake up an hour later, eat tomato soup (I'd had a craving while I was sick one day last week, and my mom bought me, like, eight cans), and get crackin' on one of those damned summer reading books. I definitely won't finish all five, but I'm hoping to get at least Walden and the rest of How to Read A Book finished.
