Where did my spring break go? Pretty much the only things I remember doing are my short trip to Vancouver and reading manga for the rest of the time... And I had such a big list of things I wanted to do during the break too. Darn.

Tomorrow begins my last quarter in America. I'm going home as soon as the quarter ends even though I've heard that many of the other exchange students are going to stay in the US for a while longer and travel around. I don't know why that possibility never even crossed my mind when I set the return date for my plane tickets, but after giving it some though, I don't think I regret missing that chance to travel. My recent trip to Vancouver showed me very clearly that I'm just not cut out to be a tourist. I lack the enthusiasm for it, and every big city just looks the same to me. I would have been a lot more interested in touring national parks and stuff. But yeah, I think I'm ready to go home sooner rather than later.

I got back from Vancouver on Friday, but didn't find the energy to talk about it before now. It wasn't a particularly pleasant trip, but worth doing regardless. Crossing the US border was as nerve-wrecking as the first time, but we got through the customs guy's questioning without any big mishaps (I'm damn glad my friend remembered the name of our hotel, because I sure didn't!). Vancouver itself wasn't all that pretty because the whole city was busily preparing for next years Winter Olympics and there was construction work everywhere. We also realized that we didn't have a plan what we wanted to do in Vancouver so we ended up pretty much just wandering around the city's downtown area and stopping by random shops. It was pretty annoying that Vancouver seems to have the exact same kind of souvenir shops on just about every street (with all the same products). My favorite finds were a Japanese grocery store and a Moomins book (didn't buy it, just liked seeing it in the book shop). I also discovered that if you go to an organic food store in Vancouver, the only liquorice you'll find there is made in Finland (they had both Panda and Halva too!). It was kinda weird walking around in Vancouver since it seemed like half the city's population is Asian. There was Chinese, Japanese and Korean writing everywhere and even some of the street signs (mostly in Chinatown though) had the street name both in English and in Chinese. So weird. My Indonesian friend took me to an Indonesian restaurant (which was playing Chinese music for some reason) and I thought the food was pretty good.

Here's one of my favorite moments during our trip:
Passerby: "Do you know where *** is?
My Indonesian friend: "No, we don't, sorry. We're from America."
Me: "..."
Depends on how you look at it, I suppose XD.

My friend didn't buy anything during the trip and it became clear to me very quickly that her main purpose in coming with me was that she was hoping to see Robert Pattison, who was supposed to be in town last week filming New Moon. Predictably, we didn't end up seeing him or anyone else famous for that matter. I was glad that she was with me though, since she didn't have any problems asking people for directions whereas I've always hated doing that. I took some random pictures, but they're honestly nothing special so I think I'll refrain from posting any this time. The weather was so bad during the trip that I didn't even get any good pictures of the surrounding mountains.

I bought my new course books today and it looks like I'm in for a busy two and a half months. I'm taking on a bigger workload than in the previous quarters so I'll probably be extra busy. I'm taking the kanji course again so that means another 450 kanji to learn. Besides that I'm taking another course in Japanese, East Asian history in Early-Modern/Modern era and Japanese literature in translation. I have 9 new books to read just for the last two courses.

Sakuracon is less than two weeks away now and my cosplay costumes are still in the works. Looks like I'll have to do some last-minute sewing again. My wigs arrived in the mail, but I still need to go buy some shoes and a white shirt... Busy, busy.

And that's all for today, folks.

So, it looks like I really will be doing a Hetalia cosplay at Sakuracon (along with my Hakkai cosplay). Up until today I was unsure whether I should do it or not since I wasn't willing to spend a lot of time on making the costume. In other words, it all depended on whether or not I could find a good (and cheap) coat that wouldn't need many alterations. And guess what? I found one! It's a proper army coat that only cost me 10 dollars since I got it second-hand. I honestly wasn't expecting to find anything usable, so imagine my surprise when I really did find something! I was originally looking for a coat for a Finland-san costume, but the coat I found is actually perfect for a Sweden-san costume, so I'm changing my plans and going as Sweden instead. I'm actually happier that I can go as Sweden, since I like his character a lot more than I like Finland. Finland is portrayed as the small and cute type (and I don't like that type!) whereas Sweden is a stoic, cool guy. I think I just felt obliged to go as Finland since I'm Finnish. But screw that, I'm going as Sweden.

Now I just need to order some wigs...

Hello all you people who like very weird pairings. If you thought it was impossible to pair two countries together, you were dead wrong. I just found out that there is a web manga, called Hetalia, that has one character representing each country in the world (well not all of them, at least not yet). The manga is mostly a long series of gags centered around various historical events (mainly in Europe but other places as well). It seems to have both shounen-ai and het with many weird pairings.

The fandom recognizes Sweden-san and Finland-san as a married couple (though Finland-san seems to be both in denial and a bit scared of his husband...). See their profiles This pairing seems to have quite a large fandom too (I think I just joined the fandom...) LOL.

Translated versions of the main Sweden-san/Finland-san strips:
Running away with Su-san
The Violent Su-san of Northern Europe Takes a Swing
Sweden, me and Dambolis
Christmas Rampage '07, Part One
Polish Swedish Wars 1598 (1621)-1629
Battle for America
5 Year Commemoration Comic
Happy 2009

Here's a funny little fanart What else would a Finn give to his loved one on Valentine's day but salmiakki? *can't stop laughing*

And if you happen to be interested in the other countries, see the full Hetalia scanlation list: Hetalia scanlations

I actually found this because the anime version just began airing (5 minute long episodes). We have only had a short glimpse of Sweden-san and Finland-san so far, and I'm really waiting for them to get their own episode (or more).

Don't you just love finding random fun things online?

Edit. Is it totally crazy that I'm already considering making a Finland-san cosplay costume even though I just found this series this morning? It would be great to go to Sakuracon as a Finn cosplaying as Finland ^_^. Of course I'd also bring along my Hakkai costume (which is about halfway done) since I've already put so much work into it. Most hardcore cosplayers come to conventions with more than one costume anyway. Finland's outfit would be easy enough to do if I can just find the right kind of jacket.

What a crazy weekend. I just got back (about 10 PM) and had to quickly finish a crappy paper for tomorrow and now I'm dead tired. I'll write more about Akicon later since right now I'm about to pass out, so for the time being you can have a taste of my weekend by watching this little video that someone has already managed to upload on youtube:



Round robin story telling with voice actor Vic Mignogna (his roles include Edward Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist, Tamaki Suou in Ouran and Kougaiji in Saiyuki, among others). It was pretty insane, but funny. You can get a fleeting glimpse of my pink shirt at 1:27. Most of the pictures I took turned out pretty crappy, but my Spanish buddy Jose took around 700 pictures so once I get a bunch from him I'll make another picture post.

I reeeeeeeally need some sleep now.

You guys must be getting tired of me posting so much recently (flooding everyone's friend pages, sorry), but here I am yet again.

Happy Halloween! I decided not to celebrate my Halloween in any particular way and instead spent the whole day shopping for a cosplay costume since today was my first free day in a while. I did see tons of people wearing cool costumes downtown though. Bellis Fair (the biggest shopping center in Bellingham) was practically filled with small children who were trick or treating with their parents. I just loved the fact that even many of the bus drivers were wearing costumes (and I just have to mention here that Bellingham has probably the friendliest bus drivers in the world, they're so awesome!). My favorite costumes out of the ones I've seen today were a guy dressed up as a banana and this couple who looked like the two dogs they were walking so that it looked like a pack of four dogs (of the same breed) with two of them walking the other two. Hilarious. I was also delighted to share my morning class with someone who was dressed up as an anbu from Naruto (if you don't know what that means, that's perfectly alright).

I faced a great dilemma today, because I only have a week before Akicon and I need to be able to make a cosplay costume in that time even though I also need to read three books and write a short paper (talk about impossible...). That basically meant that I had to immediately rule out all the costumes that require a lot of detail. In the end I had three choices left: Kyoko from Skip Beat, Hakkai from Saiyuki and Yoite from Nabari no ou. My choice depended completely on what materials I'd be able to find. In the end Kyoko won out since I was able to find bright pink clothing. I wasn't able to find overalls (either pink or white) so I had to make do with pants and a shirt. I only discovered after getting home that they are in fact very different shades of pink so I might have to go try and look for another pink shirt (the problem is managing to find a pink shirt exactly the right shade of pink, with a zipper and a certain kind of collar. The one I have now has buttons so if I end up using it I'll replace the buttons with a zipper). I also found a white belt to go with it so now I only have to make two logos to put on the shirt and find a small white pouch to attach to my belt. And maybe dye my hair temporarily orange.

( Just to give you an idea what I'm aiming for )

There's still half a year until Sakuracon (in Seattle, it's going to be a lot bigger than Akicon) so I'm planning on making another, more complicated costume for that. Maybe Hakkai. I'd love to cosplay as Saiyuki's Sanzo, but his outfit is damn complicated. I'm going to wait until I return to Finland and have access to mum's sewing machine before even trying to cosplay as him.

Weeks sure fly by fast in here. During summer I used to really hate Mondays because they marked the beginning of another stressfull week at work, but here Mondays don't feel any different from the other days of the week. I have lots an lots of homework (mainly reading, 12 books in all to read) so school work takes up as much time during the weekend as it does during the week. I managed to get an A for my second paper (more ancient Chinese philosophers) though it beats me how. There are two other short papers and a presentation coming up soon too.

I had my first two tests last Friday. The first one (the religion course that seems more like a philosophy class) I was sure would go badly, but in the end I was pretty happy with my answers and I think my essay was at least okay. The second test, however, was a total disaster. First of all, I hadn't properly prepared for the map question because I thought the teacher would give us a list of places which we would have to place on the map. Instead, she gave us a blank map and told us to name the marked places - not exactly easy when you have to remember names like Huangzhou, Tianjin, Chang'an and so on... Missed some easy points there. Another problem I had was the fact that there tend to be many different ways to romanize Chinese names, and the teacher's handouts used different forms than the textbook, which was my primary resource. So if there's Mencius (Meng Tzu), Mozi (Mo Tzu), Xunzi (Hsün Tzu)and Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu) among others, how on earth do you expect me to remember who is who when Xunzi and Zhuangzi sound the same to my ears? Had to leave a lot of empty places because I just couldn't be sure I knew who the question was about. The test also contained fill-in-the-blanks type of questions which were so vague that half the time I wasn't sure whether they were looking for a person, idea or something else. There were also some true or false sentences which at times used such difficult English terms that I couldn't understand the questions. All in all, it was one of the worst exams of my life. Once again I'm glad it doesn't matter all that much what kind of grade I get, and at least now I know what to expect in the next exam.

I spent the week before my exams sick so I only had two days to cram for them (obviously it wasn't enough). While I was sick I spent my time happily watching through all the seasons of Bones, which is the most brilliant TV series I've seen in years (Jose disagrees and says it's the second worst show he has ever seen... then again we've noticed that we have very different tastes in both movies - not counting our anime obsession - and food). I immediately downloaded a bunch of new Bones icons to show my life for Booth/Brennan *squee*.

Jose and I have made plans to go to an anime convention (aki-con) in a few weeks. I'm trying to get two of my Japanese friends to join us (it's funny that I know a lot more about anime and manga than they do) so that we can split the hotel bill between us (we've reserved a room for four). The convention is actually from Friday to Sunday, but we have the hotel room booked only for one night. The plan is to leave on Friday after classes, to stay awake through the first night (they're showing anime all night long) and to only sleep during the second night. It's going to be pretty crazy since I'm really bad at trying to stay awake for more than 20 hours, but in the worst case I can just take a nap in the anime room. Jose actually plans to stay awake for the whole three days if he has to (he's nuts!). I'm so taking my camera this time. I really want to cosplay, but I don't really have either time or resources for it. Halloween is also coming up and I don't have a costume for that either. If I could just manage to find pink overalls somewhere I could go to both events as Kyoko from Skip Beat (my favorite shoujo manga ever), but where on earth can you buy pink overalls? I'd also like to dress up as Sanzo from Saiyuki, but that will have to wait until I get back to Finland and have access to my mom's sewing machine (plus it would require a lot of planning and work).

What else... Well, aikido is proving to be really intense. The more I learn, the more intense it gets. In the beginning all new moves are taught to me in slow motion, but today I got to the point where I knew some of the simplest moves so well that my more experienced opponents could do them a lot faster with me so that it felt a lot more like a real fight (which it wasn't, but still). The problem with being up against more experienced adult males, however, is that they're freaking strong, and they no longer seem to feel the need to hold back their strength as much when they go against me. I'm surprised I don't have bruises on my wrists after all that squeezing and twisting. My bottom and thighs are really really sore though, from practicing my forward rolls, and I managed to scrape my elbow pretty bad on Tuesday. I also managed to get a cramp in my foot in the middle of practice and had to stop for a moment. The teacher said it usually takes around two months for the body to get used to the training, which means I still have another month of suffering ahead of me before it should get easier. Joy. I'm still determined to continue aikido for the rest of the year, but I'll very likely quit when I get back to Finland. A year (well okay, eight months) should be enough to teach me the basics and that's all I really need.

I hate the fact that my English doesn't seem to have improved at all during my time here. I still stammer and get stuck all the time and just can't find the right words. I was trying to explain lanttulaatikko to someone yesterday, but I ended up being completely lost for words and had to give up (the other Finnish girl pointed out to me today that I should've used the word "casserole" which I had completely managed to forget). It's just really frustrating. It's not really helping that I talk the most with the other exchange students who all have their own weird accents (a Dutch guy commented that I sound like I have a Scottish accent. How totally weird) and most of them speak less English than I do which forces me to use simple words when I talk to them. Luckily, I get to talk a lot with my roommate and there's also a girl in my Japanese class who I talk to a lot (she studies linguistics and is also interested in hearing about cultural differences). My roommate uses the words "totally" and "sweet" a lot, and I'm trying my best not to pick up the habit of using them...

By the way, do you remember me mentioning Mount Baker? The one I had a picture of? I just found out a couple of days ago that it's actually a dormant volcano that belongs to the Cascade Volcanic Arc. I'll quote Wikipedia for a bit:

"Some of the major cities along the length of the arc include Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, and the population in the region exceeds 10,000,000. All could be potentially affected by volcanic activity and great subduction-zone earthquakes along the arc. Because the population of the Pacific Northwest is rapidly increasing, the Cascade volcanoes are some of the most dangerous, due to their past eruptive history, potential eruptions and because they are underlain by weak, hydrothermally altered volcanic rocks that are susceptible to failure. Many large, long-runout landslides originating on Cascade volcanoes have inundated valleys tens of kilometers from their sources, and some of the inundated areas now support large populations." Link to the article

And that's exactly where I currently am, between Seattle and Vancouver. Now it feels really weird that it doesn't really scare me even though I used to be scared to death of volcanoes when I was younger (I had a lot of nightmares...).

And that's all for today. Ja, mata ne.

If you walked around Tampere today, you probably saw a lot of strangely dressed people. Yep, they're all anime/jrock cosplayers dressed for the 2008 animecon. I've always wanted to go to an anime convention, but I don't know anyone who would be interested in going with me, and I always seem to find out that they're being held only after they're already over. But today I finally got to go to my first ever anime convention.

I only went with the intention of checking it out, but I immediately regretted that I wasn't prepared to spend the whole day there. There would have been so much to do there, but I only stuck around for a couple of hours because I had other things to do and all the merchandise looked way too tempting... I settled for buying two volumes of manga and two pins that say "Otaku; stay away" (in Finnish) and "Sex is good but anime lasts longer". There was also one that reminded me of a certain someone (I know you'll recognize yourself ;D) that said in Finnish "Otaku do it with tentacles". I nearly burst out laughing.

The whole place was filled with cosplayers. It was really fun trying to see how many of the characters I could recognize. I probably saw the whole cast of Naruto (times many, there were so many Akatsuki members that I lost count), many characters from Bleach, D.Gray-man, Inuyasha and Rurouni Kenshin, to mention just a few. I also saw characters from many series that I never thought were even popular in Finland (I didn't think anyone knew Meine Liebe!). For some reason I nearly burst out laughing when I walked by three cosplayers who were portraying Echizen, Kaidoh and Tezuka from Prince of Tennis (and they really looked the part too!). I know I've always been priding myself on the fact that I'm familiar with most of the popular animes, but today I saw a lot of costumes that I couldn't recognize. Shock. Well, I've finally seen proof that I'm not the most dedicated animanga fan in Finland. I'm definitely interested in trying cosplay myself, but first I'd have to figure out which of my many favorite characters I'd like to portray and I'd have to find someone to go with me, as I probably wouldn't dare to go alone. I've been talking on Facebook with one of the other future exchange students at WWU and he said he's interested in going if there's an anime convention close enough to Washington. I certainly hope there will be.

I stayed around for the first half of the cosplay competition (why did I have to leave my shiny new camera at home? Grr.) and a panel where Finnish manga translators discussed their work. Imagine my surprise when I recognized one of the translators there as a girl who has been sitting next to me in Japanese class for the past year! I've even talked to her every once in a while but she never mentioned that she actually translates manga! It was mentioned during the panel that she translates Oh! My goddess and NANA, to mention some. And I was even more shocked to learn that she (and one other translator there) has only studied Japanese by herself for around four years and she's never even been to Japan. Is that really how little it takes to get to translate manga? As a translator-in-training I'm a bit disappointed that the Finnish translators of manga don't have better training. They said their work is always proofread by this other translator (he's currently translating One Piece) who has spent most of his childhood in Japan. But still, I wonder about the quality... Well, at least it sounds like I also have a chance to become a manga translator after a few more years of study. I saw some other manga-translator wannabes there too so there is competition...

After leaving the convention, I did some clothes shopping for my uncle's wedding that's taking place next Saturday. I've been on a diet this whole summer and it's finally beginning to show. It felt awesome to go buy clothes when they actually look good on me! Most of my old clothes are getting too big for me and I'd like to buy a whole new wardrobe but alas, I have no money to spare. Then again, I heard that buying clothes should be a lot cheaper in the US... I did get my visa, by the way. Still 53 days to go.

Phew, maybe that's enough for today.