So I’ve been on break this entire week, and the result?
I end up with a sore throat (courtesy my friend who was just recovering from an illness), which somehow evolved into a cold.
As much as I’d be tempted to use my friend as a scapegoat for this, it’s more or less a result of my own stupidity and of bad timing (so yeah, I may have caught a cold from her, but me getting this sick has nothing to do with her).

I ran a dance event a week ago which involved a fair amount of work, running around taking care of last-minute errands, frustration (a lot less than what I anticipated though), and stress.
Don’t get me wrong, there wasn’t anything wrong with the event, and it all went alright, but hey, running a relatively large-scale event requires effort, right?

Once the dance was over, then came my grad pic session – yeah, did I mention I’m finally getting the hell outta university?
I know it’s just a few shots here and there, but I dunno, I was feeling rather nervous till I was done, and then once it was done, I think I relaxed a bit too much – or more like, I think I’ve let my guard down.

So here I am, stuck with an uber sore throat and can’t stop sneezing. Yep, it seems I’ve come down with a cold.
Only thing I’m relieved about is that I fortunately don’t have a fever, ain’t feeling *that* tired, I don’t think I have an upset stomach, my head’s OK enough that I can sit in front of my computer and not collapse (ie. I don’t have a headache).
It sucks how my throat’s gone really bad, since I anticipated getting some vocal recordings done over the break, but obviously that didn’t happen, and won’t happen anytime soon either >_<

However, on a brighter note, I got this over the break:

Yes, the Vocaloid nendoroids, which arrived back home months ago, but I didn’t get around to doing anything with it when I was back home. So I figured I’d get them sent over here so that I can show them off to my friends over here.
I’ll eventually share some other pics once I get around to them.

to do:
- go to an Animate at least twice, if not more, during your stay
- watch anime on TV (and perhaps take a video recording of it); it’s as legit as things can get, and need I mention its quality is nothing comparable to online streaming websites? *cough*
- go drink some potion. Yes, I mean the drinkable type. Yes, I mean the ones that taste like grapes and grapefruit.

not to do:
- wake up at 3:30am to get to the comiket venue, and then suffer waiting outside and freezing your @$$ off.
- fail to think ahead and fail to reserve a ticket for the return trip from Tokyo to Osaka – tis a biaaaaaaatch standing in the Shinkansen for 2.5 hours
- spend too much money on merchandise to the extent where you start wondering where the money for your return ticket has gone and/or whether you have enough money for it
- buy too much “books” to the extent where you start freaking out whether your shoulder’s going to last

Erm, yes… this is what I pretty much did over the past 3 days in Tokyo.
I should be glad I made it back alright from Tokyo, considering that:
a) today’s one of the peak days for people from Tokyo to be returning to their hometown, which means that there are thousands of people who will be fighting over spaces (no, not even “seats”) in the non-reserved cars of the Shinkansen – fortunately, I was able to get on the train at a fairly OK time, but ended up standing for a good 2~2.5 hours
b) of all days that this could have happened, there was an accident by one of the stations, which caused a delay in the Shinkansen schedules/timetables – fortunately, my train passed that station *before* the accident happened
c) I was rather exhausted after yesterday (day 2 of comiket), and sure enough, I’ve acquired quite a bit of merchandise that I had to carry back here – fortunately, my body isn’t really suffering from it anymore

More on the whole comiket stuff to come later, but I probably should sleep for the time being…

So that was my act of stupidity from yesterday, as I was scrambling through my paper.
Over the past four days, I’ve written at least 6000 words and I’m damn proud of it.
……now, all I can hope for is for the papers to have actually gotten a more-or-less decent grade that’ll get me past the passing line. Better yet, give me at least a B and I’ll be happy =p

Seems I’ve stopped caring about my academics, ever since I hit the point where I have enough credits to graduate with at least one major. Well, “stopped caring” might not be the best term to use – I just don’t care as much as I did a few years back.

It’s somewhat rare that I end up doing a paper that I can actually have some fun with – by that, I mean… talking about PMK, Gintama, and Shinsengumi! (yup, the live-action drama with awesomeness) as forms of adaptive works of a historiography – it’s not really as dry as it sounds. Heck, how can something sound *that* dry when at least a third of my paper’s based on Gintama? (read: crack)

Now, the more amusing one was probably the one for my Tale of Genji course. Again, with concent from my prof, I did a paper focusing on adaptive works. The previous paper was based on historiography of the Shinsengumi, this one’s based on the Tale of Genji.
The adaptive works I chose were the animated movie (from the 80’s), the live-action film (2001), and…… um, ZKC.
Yes, I ended up spending at least a third, if not more of the paper talking about the correlation between Zettai Karen Children, a seemingly unrelated manga, and the T of G. My discussion, in addition to the more academic stuff how ZKC can be legitimately be classified as an “adaptation” and what not,  included how the concepts of yaoi and lolicons were embedded in the manga. And I even had enough material from academic journals to back up some of the bs I came up with.
Heck, I even went off talking about how the T of G can potentially be considered a form of dojinshi – alright, let me just hope my prof isn’t going to slap me with an F for that remark……

And so the papers are done, I’m freed from school till January, and I’m outta here in less than 48 hours and will be in mangaland (commonly and officially known as Japan)!
You’ll still probably see me posting often enough, but it’s unlikely that I’ll be online as much – I’ll be busy opening boxes of random merchandise I’ve accumulated over the past year =p

I know I have a tendency to overanalyze materials a bit too much, to the extent where I end up freaking myself out, but nonetheless, this whole “overanalyzing” is something that’s somewhat necessary for artsies like myself.
And myself being such a geek, here are things I came up with for my papers (and yes, my profs have approved this):
- For my “adaptations of Japanese classics” course, I’ll be writing on adaptations of Japanese historiography seen in manga/anime/TV shows – specifically, the portrayal of the Ikedaya Incident in works of manga/anime (read: PMK and Gintama, and perhaps the live-action Shinsengumi!)
- For my Tale of Genji course, I’ll be writing on adaptive works of the T of G (read: anime version and film version of T of G)

What’s sad is the fact that I’m now considering emailing my T of G prof, asking whether if it would be possible/acceptable to focus my paper on the animated version of the T of G (which was part of my original plan) and on Zettai Karen Children.
……yes, you read it right, I did say ZKC.
Now, I’m sure some people are staring at the screen blankly going “WTF is this girl talking about? How the hell is the Tale of Genji, an epic Japanese classic from premodern times, have any correlation with ZKC?”
Heck, my friend’s first response when I told her what I’m planning on doing was, “So you’re writing a paper on loli-cons?”
Well yes and no… there’s a bit more correlation between the two, other than both stories portraying guys going nuts over girls younger than them (this comment is in no way to be taken offensively, nor should one simply interpret this as a true description/depiction of the plot, without actually reading the works)

The correlation’s actually rather simple. The main characters’ names are taken from characters in the T of G, and the character relationships in ZKC parallels some of the relationships between characters (whom the names in ZKC have been taken from) in the T of G.
Easy example: Koichi Minamoto mirroring Hikaru Genji, Taizo Kiritsubo (Minamoto’s boss) mirroring Emperor Kiritsubo (Genji’s dad).

I know I’m hitting the point where I’m just overanalyzing, but hey, if I’m supposed to do a 10-page paper, I need to overanalyze to keep myself (and my word count) going =p

So, my original plan for winter vacation:
- sleep, eat stuff that’s not cooked by me
- open up boxes (literally) of anime/manga merchandise and organize them
- hit up on my usual sources of anime/manga merch
- see family/relatives/friends

The modified plan includes the aforementioned things, plus a new addition: Tenimyu!
Yep, that’s right, I’m now able to go to a PoT musical.

The thing is… the ticket acquisition process itself was rather time-consuming.
If you bothered reading the entire entry last time, you’d know that I went through my mom and my friend in attempts to grabbing tix from “ticketmaster.”
The ironic thing is that I ended up getting the tix “on my own” through alternative sources (ie. communities on SNS, postings on “ticket exchange” website, etc), since our attempts actually ended up failing.
I do give my friends credit for directing me to the websites though.

I’m rather amused and impressed by how organized the people who manage the Tenimyu: Shitenhouji perf. community on the SNS I use have been with making sure people aren’t trolling or acting like retards. Basically, there are threads for ticket sales and ticket exchanges, separated by region. And what I really liked was how there’s a rule “not to sell the tix for anything higher than the original price,” which ensures people won’t get ripped off.
Due to the fact that the tickets are now so bloody hard to get (hint: tix presales – sold out in literally 5 minutes, nuff said), I got lucky when the person selling the tix I wanted “chose” me. T’was great how the first message I see on my SNS page after waking up was “hey, I’ve decided I’ll sell you my extra ticket.”

Anywho, I’m rather content that a) ZOMG I actually got my hands on a Tenimyu ticket, b) it seems I’m actually not gonna be alone during the performance, since I’ll be watching it with the person who’s selling me the ticket (yay for new Tenimy friends ^^), and c) I get to see you-know-who!
Alright, I’ll shut up and go back to paper-ing now =p