what's going on with my life?

This week has been one long and crazy rollercoaster ride. Last weekend all of the Stanford students in Kyoto for the weekend on a trip that was sponsored by the Bings, we like them. Visiting the peace park and the atomic bomb museum/memorial was pretty tough on me, I am usually pretty emotionally strong and it takes a lot to get me to react, but the museum this time was enough to get me to shed a few tears. When I think about how far removed from the incident that put an end to WWII for Japan and America, I am awed by the power that the memories of past victims have on myself and others living in this relatively peaceful world. I resonate most strongly with the experiences that transcend cultural, ethnic and historical contexts-- stories that can reach me most deeply, whether sad ones or happy ones, are experiences that can happen to just about everyone. When I stepped in front of the large mural on the wall displaying a picture of a pocket watch, with the hands on the exact time when the bomb was dropped; there was a poem written on the mural that described the experience of the devastating blast from the bomb by telling the story of a little girl that had a dragonfly in her hand that became red from the blast and as she was about to touch it... it basically trails off there leaving the reader to picture the rest.

After that we went to Miyajima island, which was a short ferry ride off from the main island of Honshuu, it was a nice touristy island with deer roaming wild and a large shrine that looks like it is floating in the water when the tide is in. The trip was fun, it would have been better if it hadn't rained.

This week went by incredibly fast; I spent most of the week planning and thinking about how I was going to shoot my film. Everyone in my film club had already begun shooting and I had yet to even start.. It continues to amaze me how challenging it is to make a film come together. I used to think that writing the story was the hardest part, but in the end that turned out to be the easiest. Then I thought converting the movie from text to visual storyboards was tough, but it turned out to be easier than I thought. So far the hardest part about making this movie come together has been the logistical planning. I remember my roomate from this year saying something about how hard it is to excute on an idea and that when it comes to start ups execution is almost the entire battle, well when it comes to independent films, at least with my limited experience that seems to be the case. Yesterday was my big 6 hour shoot, from 11am to 5pm, the day was supposed to rain but by God's grace it turned out to be clear skies and quite warm. I was able to shoot most of the film yesterday by shooting scene after scene in rapid succession. I put quite a deal of work into the planning but in the end I relied on the storyboard in my head more than the one I wrote down, I guess the process of storyboarding helped the visuals sink into my head better than if I had not drawn out all the sketches of the scenes I wanted. The actual excecution was incredibly tiring because at about 1pm five people from my film club came to assist me; in the end it ended up being me, my main actor (Danny) and a support guy (Hieu), and six more film club members (Akira, Hem, Funaki, Mana, Imai and Motoki) I was giving directions in English and Japanese and supplementing them with the universally understood high speed hand gestures; I'm sure I must've looked pretty strange in the train station with my camera and tripod yelling out directions in Japanese and English and flailing my hands as if I were performing some martial arts, but in the heat of the moment I could only think about one thing: finishing my movie. The experience was pretty awesome to say the least I will try and put up some pictures that Danny, my main actor, took with his camera. I'm not sure how everything came out, but I'll know when I start editing.

As for other news about me, I recently decided that I will be going to study abroad in Berlin during Winter quarter next year. The choice was between Berlin or Oxford and in the end I decided to go with Berlin because the experience sounded more exciting to me; I really enjoy foreign enviornments and learning foreign languages so it's right up my alley. Though I don't speak a word of German so it'll be challenging for sure. I'll be in Japan until September and then from September to December I will be in Beijing, China through Stanford's program there and from January to about the end of March I will be in Berlin. It sounds pretty crazy when I write it all out.

I find myself constantly trying to find time in my day to do all the things that I want to do. I don't know if that's normal, but it seems that it has been that way every since I started college. Even in Japan I find myself making incoherent priority lists to try to order my often chaotic schedule. I wonder if that will ever go away... or maybe that's just the way I am hmm ;0)