*blurble*

J159 Friday September 28th

Thursday night, after work, I played Halo 3 until 4AM. It is sweet, like candy. A cup for my game-thirsty soul. It is, in a word, awesome. To further underscore the sheer awesomeness of the day, though, I ran for a solid 15 minutes before playing. It's the beginning of what will be a renewed exercise regime.

Friday itself was uneventful. I ran again, in the evening. I took many a twist and turn through the grid of back streets that Hitachi is shot through with. While I ran I passed a few barkers, advertisers for a snack bar. The man of the couple shouted a heart-felt "Ganbate!" or "Do your best!/Right on!/You go girl!" (take your pick). Another few hours of Halo 3 awaited me when I got back, after a wonderfully cold shower.

J160 Saturday September 29th

Saturdays. Ugh. If there is one thing I will not miss about this job, it is a Saturday schedule. 7 classes awaited me, and 7 classes I taught. One after the other after the other. After work I felt extraordinarily drained of my energies, though I mustered the strength to do some grocery shopping at Ito Yokado. I made dinner at home and pedaled to G-Bros. A few drinks were had, but I was literally nodding off at the table.

I biked home and had a few hours more of Halo 3, though before long I fell asleep.

J161 Sunday September 30th

The telltale patter of rain on my window, and the even more telltale swoosh of tires on rain-glazed roads told me of the day's weather before I had fully awakened. The day was gray and dreary. Perfect gaming weather.

I watched the final episode of Gurren Lagann today. It was very appropriate, somewhat bittersweet. I'll watch it translated, eventually, but for now I'm content with the bits that I could glean. You don't need much translation skill when the show is about beating the crap out of successively bigger (and boy is that ever an understatement for this show) bad guys.

The rest of my day, quite literally, was spent playing Halo 3. I ducked, sniped, and shot my way through almost a dozen levels of alien-filled genius. The environments ranged from the familiar to the fantastic. The ruined splendor of southern Africa, the alien majesty of Forerunner installations, the claustrophobic biology of Flood infestation. The music was a surprisingly pleasant mix of old and new themes. The gameplay was solid, with good A.I. and plenty of challenging, yet ultimately surmountable, odds.

The story I will not expose here, save that it was very satisfying to me. Halo 2 was a great disappointment, story-wise, for me. Halo 3 delivered with a truly epic narrative of hope, valor, and sacrifice. The action was fast-paced and thrilling. It was freaking sweet. The ending I saw was moving.

After beating the game, an act I will surely relish many times, I took a break and hopped on the Internet. I talked with Peter, one of my fraternity brothers, and another big Halo fan. He and I share similar views on the overall story of the Halo universe, though until now have had little interaction with one another on the subject. He had beaten the game, too. I told him my thoughts on the ending, to which he requested I beat it once more. I had missed a cut scene, apparently, one at the very end of the credits. I had quit those, on accident, when I had beaten the game the first time.

Once again I took up my controller, and once again I threw down. I saw the other half of the ending, and was uplifted. I had thought the ending I'd first seen to be good. This was spectacular.

After beating it a second time, I sought to try my hand at multiplayer Halo 3, using XBox Live. I connected my 360 to my DSL modem using the pack-in LAN cable. It's a healthy 6 meters in length, enough to stretch around my room without getting in the way of anything.

I was distressed to find that I could not migrate my offline Xbox profile, brimming with hard-to-earn in-game achievements, to XBL. I had to create a new one, much to my chagrin, but it is not an impossibility to redo what I had already done. Merely a pain.

My Halo skills, honed on the first version of the game, were never spectacular. I was adequately skilled, and didn't seek to sharpen them against my friends. Halo 2's non-ending put me very cross against Bungie in general, so I patently refused to play multiplayer using that game. As a result, what little skill I had had atrophied in the interim. In layman's terms, I sucked. BUT, and this is the cool part, I was relearning them quickly.

At midnight, after a long day of alien killing, world-saving, and multiplayer-sucking, I called it a night. At midnight. Crazy, I know.

J162 Monday October 1st

Oh, I quite forgot. I had to get up at 3 to go Scuba diving. That's right, I'm going to go scuba diving. Wish me luck!

After only 3 hours of sleep I woke up to my DS alarm clock. Forcing myself to have some toast and take a hot shower, I packed a small bag and biked down to Crescent, a scuba diving school owned by one of the students that comes to my school. Both M-sensei and I teach him, but it was M-Sensei who organized this excursion.

In all, the group was myself, M-sensei, Claire, K, Matt, and Dan. We six, along with my student and his three employees, Yumi, Mika, and Yuka. We were headed for Izu, a large peninsula to the south of Hitachi some 4~5 hours by car. It was past Tokyo. My van, one of two making the trip, I shared with Mika and Yuka, the drivers, and K and Dan. I slept on and off through the journey, enjoying the sights of roadside Japan in those few times I was awake.

We took many breaks for food and bathroom time, but by 10 we'd arrived at the lagoon where we would be diving. There was a small cluster of buildings that served as a rest house, a restaurant, a hotel, and a training facility for diving. Next to the parking lot was a modest swimming pool, where we would spend the next 3 hours learning how to dive.

M-sensei and I had worked with our student, T, for about a week to help him prepare for instructing us in English. He's at a high-beginner level of English; he's very good with the basics, but he's got plenty of space to improve. Luckily my Japanese skills, and those of K, allowed us to translate everything he couldn't get across in English.

We donned our wetsuits. This was my first time in the tight, neoprene garment, and it was a fun experience. The pool water was cold, but my wetsuit went to work quickly, trapping a thin layer of water against my skin. The water drew out my body heat, but since the suit prevented the water from floating away, it instead served to heat me with my own body-heat. Rather ingenious.

We learned the basics. How to recover one's mouthpiece, in case of loss or confusion. How to clear the mouthpiece before breathing. How to stick with one's buddy, as well as how to use the emergency mouthpiece that pulled from our tanks to provide air for our buddies, should they run out of air. We had to re-learn how to swim, using big flippers. We had a break for lunch, myself enjoying a nice meat pasta, with a side of thick-sliced toast.

After a quick review, we were ready for the sea. We donned our gear, our tanks topped off. Our diving gear was as follows: a wetsuit, a weight belt, a scuba backpack, containing the tank of compressed oxygen, the pressure gauge, the primary and secondary mouthpieces, and an inflatable air bladder for buoyancy. Flippers completed the ensemble, but we had to wait to put those on.

Weighted down, we waddled to the beach. The lagoon was deceptively large, a broad oval of calm water that looked out into a deep bay. We could barely see the town on the far side of the massive bay, but we would only be going as far as the lagoon's walls. It is honeycombed with passages and tunnels, and many divers come from across Japan to practice their craft here.

The beach was comprised of stones, rather than sand. We picked our way across the smooth rocks until we got to the seaside. We divided into three teams, two students and an instructor. I was with Dan, and our instructor was Yuka. We equipped our flippers, and waded into the water.

Under the surface is very different from dry land. There is a constant noise, a rasp of sand and rock as they rub against one another. The frequent gurgle of bubbles as they escape from one's mouthpiece. Finally, and most importantly, is the hiss of one's breath.

We began our decent quite slowly, everyone spread out but staying in their groups. I almost immediately began to experience discomfort in my ears. One had to equalize pressure in one's air-filled body cavities, lest pain or worse things happen. Try as I might, though, I could not equalize my ears. Yuka noticed my lagging behind, and we communicated with hand signals.

'Pain' I mimed. 'Ear'.

'Equalize' she responded.

'Pain' I mimed, after trying again. 'Ear'.

We ascended a little, the pressure lessening with the centimeter. I tried again, and got a little equalization. I descended a little more with Yuka next to me. We were down maybe 5 or 6 meters. The rest of the group were down a few more, but further ahead. As we floated, she pointed out some of the aquatic life that flitted around us. Tiny blue fish darted left and right, and miniature, gumdrop-shaped jellyfish undulated lazily. All around was a haze of particulate, life tinier than I could easily see, grit and sand.

We tried to catch up, but I was once again struck by severe discomfort in my ears. Again I signaled to Yuka, and again we tried to equalize. We descended a bit more, and that was when the dizziness hit.

I can remember little of the event itself. I felt Yuka's hand grip my arm, and I responded by holding on to her offered limb. I felt the entire world tilt sickeningly 90 degrees, according to my pressure-addled inner-ear.

'Dizzy' I mimed. 'Pain'

'Up' she mimed. I complied. The world turned upside down. Even as I write this, a phantom nausea whispers through my cochlea.

We ascended, myself too incapacitated to be of much help, but the water's buoyancy gave Yuka more than enough strength to lift me. As we surfaced I felt my ears pop, and water gushed from them. The world spun around me and nausea, until now unfelt, roiled within me like a circular wave. I found it difficult to breathe, and released the front clasp of my tank. My shoulders took the weight, and I found I could breathe again.

Yuka was calm the entire time, and for that matter I was too. She waited until I could move again, and slowly pulled me to shore. She bade me relax and breathe. When we got to the shore I shucked my gear and tugged my suit down to my waist. The air was cool, but it felt nice to have nothing tight across my chest or stomach. Yuka was smiling all the way.

I made my way back to the pool to wait for the rest of the group. I found an excellent walking stick stuck in a small fire pit, and used it to help get back to the club house. My nausea had subsided, but my stomach ached in a powerful way from the threat of it. I felt like I'd been folded in half. I got out of my wetsuit and rested in my swim trunks. I heard the group surface, far across the lagoon. After about 20 or 30 minutes they had made their way back.

We broke down at a leisurely pace, the instructors doing all of the work. The rest of us chatted and lounged in the cloud-saturated sun. Before long we were packed, and we began the long drive home. It was about 5PM.

I slept quite a bit on the ride home. The training was quite a workout, and the day's stresses had me quite wiped out. I woke a few times through the trip back home. We stopped at a seafood restaurant of some reputation. I enjoyed a tempura sampler of epic proportions, filled with many delicious, mysterious meats.

We passed through Tokyo on the way back, and were treated to a beautiful night-view of the city's bridges. The glow of the lights reflected off the choppy water, giving the city a wavy, glittering twin.

We dropped one of the instructors off at a train station, which is where I think I lost one of my blue flip-flops. They'd been longtime companions in my life here in Japan, and had once belonged to E.J. When we opened the door to bid Mika farewell, one fell out, unnoticed. My student was kind enough to donate his Crocks to me for the evening, but my napping kept me occupied during our frequent breaks.

During the ride home, when I was awake, Dan, K and I talked about many subjects. I mentioned Halo 3, and expounded upon its virtues. I mentioned, though, that my TV was quite small (an economic 13 incher). K pipped up, saying that he had a large TV that he wasn't using at his place. Dan, the only member of the gang with vehicular transport that wasn't human-powered, offered to haul the TV from K's place to mine when we got back to Hitachi.

We got back to Hitachi at around 10 or 11PM. We paid at Crescent and went our separate ways. My bike had been stored at the shop, in a tiny alley between it and the building next to it. Dan and I drove to K's place while K walked (it wasn't too far away). We manhandled the TV into Dan's van, and a quick moment later we were at my place. I hauled it upstairs after bidding Dan a fond farewell.

I showered, washing the salt and sea-grit from me. I felt like I'd left my apartment years ago. After resting a bit I hooked up my new TV, which wasn't difficult in the slightest. My first levels in Nerd were of the A/V specialty class, so TV hookup I can do in my sleep. Thanks to my extensive napping in the car, my batteries were pretty well-charged. I was up until 4AM again with Halo multiplayer. The biger screen, a 25 inch model, really made the difference; I feel like I'm not squinting at a postage stamp anymore.