Current mood:	happy
Current music:	Rosa Negra - Sueño Eterno

el último pétalo cayó, y la rosa ya murió, pero aún queda su aliento
well the hard drive situation is taken care of i think. my host mom told me about a road where there were lots of computer stores i could go check out. i went by there today and the first store i went into not only had the HD i needed, but had a better price on it than from dell themselves ($118 vs $157 from dell, and then i would have had to pay shipping to japan on top of that). but the HD alone wouldnt help me without at least some way to install win2k on the new drive. but then i saw that they had some external housings that essentially let you use a laptop HD as an external hard drive plugged in via USB 2.0. the cheapest one was about $32, and has a pretty nice brushed aluminum casing, and it came with two power cables, one for plugging into the wall, and one for plugging into a second USB port to get power from there. if the drive doesnt use much power, it can just get its power from the data USB cable without plugging anything into the power jack. mine works like that, so i dont have to worry about finding a plug. cool. it also came with a leather-looking case (probly actually vinyl but it's nice) to carry the aluminum-encased hard drive in and protect it from shocks and scratches. the case has a belt loop, in case i want to be the ultimate nerd. also when i connected the HD to the computer the first time, it installed itself without needing the driver cd or anything. definitely not expected for that price. im happy. so this way i have 40gb that fits in my pocket and i can hook it up to any computer with a USB slot. that also takes care of my problem with my computer, at least temporarily - i can transfer all my important files to the new HD (which i'm doing right now), and then if this HD dies finally, i have them all safe and THEN i can worry about finding an english win2k cd. although i ran CHKDSK one last time before transferring files to be sure they were all ok, and it found no errors. so maybe the HD has decided to stop dying? i dunno. anyway that's another advantage of this system - if the HD ends up not dying, or if dell replaces it under warranty, then my purchase wasn't a waste - i still have double the storage space and it's portable etc. so i'm very happy how it turned out.

i also felt really cool because i communicated with the computer store guy in japanese and was able to clearly ask him the necessary questions to learn the things i wanted to know (what hard drive would my laptop use? do you have a screwdriver? here is my laptop's hard drive, do you have one of these? what are these housings for? can i use this housing and this hard drive together? so if i buy this housing and this hard drive, can i connect it to a desktop too? do you accept credit cards? i'd like this hard drive and this housing please.)

i've been digging the discman with the remote. it means i have easy access to music anywhere i go, and can easily pause it if i need to talk to someone or listen to a message, without having to dig through my bookbag to find the discman. i can finally listen to music almost 24 hours a day again :) i went with jenn to find a discman for her, and was surprised to see that among japanese discmans, the little remote control thing has become so standard that most of them don't even come with a display on the unit itself. they just make the unit as compact as possible (barely bigger than the cd itself) and put the display and buttons on the remote control. they were so cool, i was SO tempted :) but since i had already spent $160 on the HD et al, and mine works so well, i really had no reason to buy one. though jenn paid $98 and got a pretty cheap one - in hindsight, what i probly should have done was sell her mine for $100 (its definitely worth more than that) and then buy one of the ones i wanted for like $200 or so. that way jenn and i would both end up with a discman that served our needs perfectly for like $100. but oh well, i guess it wouldn't have made sense to spend even that $100, so im glad i didn't think of that idea at the time.

they also had some fake cell phones for sale - every cell phone place has a huge rack with display models of all the different phones they offer. the models have all the buttons and the antenna and everything, but have a fake screen showing some sample image. anyway, these seemed to be used versions of those, perhaps phones they no longer offer or whatever. they were 2 for a dollar so i got my two favorites :) one is pink and one is green and black. what will i do with them? i have no idea. maybe souveniers to give to friends or something, i dunno. but at that price i figured why not? :) i also came across an army surplus store and picked up an (empty) grenade for $3. i'm not sure if i will try to get it home through customs and all that though - i may just leave it here, hehe.

boy i sure wish my room had air conditioning.

tomorrow morning We're meeting at kyoto-eki early to go meet an Ajari. in the west they're known as "marathon monks". there are several paths through the mountains near kyoto. when a monk decides he wants to become an Ajari, he begins a 1000-day-long ordeal. he initially sets out running along the first path, which is about 40km long. he needs to run around the path in one day, then he can stop to sleep. he continues this day after day for about a year. after that he moves to a second path that is about 64km long, and has to run that path daily. he runs around that path until the 900th day, and then for the last 100 days he moves to an 88km-long path and runs THAT daily. when running that path, he only gets to sleep about 2-3 hours each night before getting up around 230am and starting to run again. there are also altars all along the path and he stops at each one and does prayers etc. at the end of 1000 days he has run the same distance as if he had gone around the earth once. oh and while he's running, he wears a sword, and if at any point something happens and he is not able to continue running, he commits seppuku (ritual suicide). people who die or commit seppuku are buried right there, so there's a bunch of unmarked graves all along the path from people who have failed. in the entire history of it, there've been about 48 that have made it. but the running isn't all - once they're done with that, they go back to the monastery and fast for 8 days, with no food or water. during the entire 8 days they have to continually do a certain fire ritual, which involves walking to the back of the monastery, drawing some kind of special water from a well, and walking back to the front and sprinkling it on the fire there. apparently at the beginning he does it on his own, but after 3 or 4 days two assistants come to help him along. he still goes under his own power but they help keep him from falling over, etc. also, after the 3rd or 4th day it takes several hours for him to make it to the well and then several more to make it back to the fire, since he is so weak. also, throughout the 8 days he is allowed to rinse out his mouth with water but he can't swallow any of it, he has to spit it all out. at the beginning, he will put X amount in, and spit X amount out, but towards the end he puts X amount in and X amount will come out and then more will come out. i guess its stuff like stomach acid and whatever. they say that this process is the closest anyone ever comes to dying and coming back. at the end of the 8 days he finally becomes an Ajari.

whats it for? im actually not really sure :) sort of like to prove his dedication or something, i guess. i mean the ones that succeed are VERY famous. but anyway, we're going to meet one tomorrow morning. he's the only one in history who has completed the ordeals TWICE. i really wish i spoke better japanese because i'd love to actually sit down and have a conversation with him. instead what we will be doing is each of the group leaders (i.e. the people with the most japanese experience) are each formulating one well-phrased question to ask him. so i guess i'll have to be content with trying to figure out what he responds to those questions. should be interesting either way.