too much to do?

weill in japan: day 36

I keep staying up really late for no good reason. The college student schedule is burned into my head.

Today marks the third consecutive day that I'll go to bed at around midnight or later. If I lived in the dorm, this wouldn't be a problem, but I have to commute roughly 45 minutes each way. I woke up late this morning at 7:10 AM and rushed through my morning routine. I was able to get to campus on time and fully washed, but this sort of thing can't continue for too much longer.

As the trip enters its final ten days, there are a lot of things that I want to do but simply won't be able to do. Travel to places like Kyoto will take too much time and cost a lot of money. I'm hoping that I can stretch my current cash reserves exactly to the limit to avoid changing money back into dollars. If I can use my credit card to do the remainder of my small-item shopping, I should be able to pull it off.

At the same time, the school year is drawing very close. Freshman orientation begins just as I'm arriving back in New York, so I need to make sure that I roll out the welcome mat for the two organizations whose web sites I manage. Coordinating these tasks is made even more difficult by the fact that I have access to the Internet for free at school only, and the 13-hour time difference means that I have to wait at least a full day for e-mail replies. This week, I've been spending a lot more time in the lab than in the past managing all of these tasks.

I made the mistake of liking games too much today. I visited the local arcade to check out Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution, which debuts today with two new characters and other enhancements to the year-old game. It's pretty good, but I only got to play once in a versus match which I lost, 3-2. After watching the matches continue across the two two-player setups in the arcade, I played a few more games and left.

Milestone: I have beaten an anonymous person in a Japanese arcade fighting game. While playing Soul Calibur II, I was challenged by someone sitting at the opposite machine. I won fairly handily, 3-1, but the opponent's skills were pretty weak. After dismissing him/her, I got all the way up to the last character Inferno before losing.

Between web page tasks for the campus organizations and myself, playing games both in the arcades and at home, and spending time with my host family, there is little to no time for homework and sleep. The homework load has been mercifully light as the class continues to shift gears every day, but I still have things to do. My room has too many distractions in it. This situation is starting to remind me of my dorm room back in Pittsburgh, whose distractions sometimes drive me to study at the library instead. I can use the library at ICU before leaving for home, but I can't stay too late because of dinner at home.

I know that when I get home and back to campus, people will get on my case about all the things I didn't do while in Japan, but I'll try my best not to let that get to me.

One last note: I remarked yesterday that I was unaware of the meaning of the word "kohibito" (lover), and that lack of knowledge worked against me over the weekend. Apparently it is in the dictionary, under its proper pronunciation "koibito." One character makes a world of difference.

Time to pack my stuff up, get some sleep, and hope I can drag my ass out of bed on time in the morning.