Immer positiv.

Do I look bewildered or disappointed in this picture? Lost? Standing in front of the sign I need but still totally unable to see it because my OWN eyes are closed? It does look like I'm forgetting something.

I had some extra time at the end of the day at school today. I recently went on a rather long and adventurous trip into northern Japan over winter break. Naturally, I've got a couple people out there I intend to write about it to. Some read english. Some don't. This time, the 日本語speakers won the coin toss. So with intense focus and a little trepidation at the effort involved, I sat down and started writing. (Actually, I moved over and nabbed the best computer in the school as no one was using it and started typing. It's much easier.) Two hours later, with the school principal looking over my shoulder remarking and beaming and the vice principal suggesting occasional words at me (no, there's no privacy in a Japanese teacher room, but usually it's amusing) much to my own worn out delight they pronounced it a work of literary art, amusing, well done, perfect, fluent, interesting, and …not so many mistakes that it's impossible to understand. :) "It is understandable!" I heard, and frequent, "Look, he's using Kanji!!"

It's a room full of teachers. You kind of have to expect some of this kind of excitement.

Wiped and not wanting to go hunt for my USB memory thingy, I sat. It was late, my brain was fried. I quickly copied the whole thing and pasted it into a webmail message to myself, hit send, logged off, went outside and finished track practice with the track team, and biked home.

The message is entirely unreadable. Thanks to the !@#$! text encoding on windows' machines (I checked my account) though it looked FINE when I hit send, none of the japanese got recorded. You know, I just want a computer to work. When it is having problems, I want it to tell me and allow me to interrupt. Nothing more!!! Goodness.

So, all that work, and I can't post it to mixi like I wanted, I can't reread it or take it down to the yakitori guys for proofreading, I can't just sit and grin and marvel at my first - and amazingly successful seeming - attempt at actually writing something out in 日本語; actually telling a story about something real with no translation... I can't I can't I can't 全然出来ないよ！！！！！

My only option, it seems, is to finish where I left off here, tonight, from memory, post it, and then post the first half tomorrow.

I just... have no other choice. Damn.

And they think I'm confusing on PURPOSE. heh.

Aber wir wißen die Wahrheit, ja? :)

頑張ります。