Now I'm up to date and now its 9 July 94 I just did Shogi and go this morning. Shogi seems a little like chess, but is much more actuve, I feel. I much prefer go due to its relative simplicity. In Shogi, one has alot of different pieces which can be played in different ways. There's lots of things to do. But go seems more pure and many times it's hard for me to see if the game is over or not. For the shogi part I was paired up w/ a girl (whose name I forgot) who took at least 5 minutes to decide 1 move - we didn't even finish one game. I was smart and picked someone else for the go part and played several games. I really like playing go. Maybe I can teach Brian how to do it and we can play (on the small, 9x9 board) Tonight I'm going to go out w/ the group, but I have to be back home by 11:30 and people meet at 9, so I won't get much time. But I heard the taxi fare isn't that much (comparitively) & it's good to have =some= social time w/ other people. Ya know what? I love Brian. I miss my goofy guy. I found a goofy, nerdy guy here (Paul Lester) who's a physics major also, but he's a little too nerdy (but definitely =not= as bad as Mike Marcelais.) It's fun discussing physics w/ him (and interesting to remember he's a Christian Scientist) Sigh, all this stuff here is really cool and the program is half over (almost) but I still really do miss home. However, I think if Brian were here with me I wouldn't miss home so much. Since I expect other people to read this I don't think I shall expand on my thoughts about Brian. I can't wait to get back to him. Right now I'm watching sumo wrestling and I think it's really cool - it's so different from boxing and regular wrestling and each match is over quickly. And there's lots of ritual involved. The ref is dressed up in formal dress and has a fan in his hand to signal with. The fighters have to throw rice or chalk or something [to the side: it's salt actually] into the ring before entering then enter the ring and face off at the opponent and do a particular squat (depending on which time it is - for they've got to enter & leave the ring about 7 times before starting). You can see that as they're doing the squatting they're evaluating their opponent and are looking for holds or some such. I've seen a variety of strategies so far. In any case, the purpose is to push your opponent out of the ring or knock them down to the floor. That;s why the larger guys usually win 00 they're harder to move (more mass = more inertia...remember?) There's a line for each person behind which the guys crouch and (after the ritual sizing up) the match begins after both wrestlers have touched their knuckles on the ground. And then they spring (I saw a couple of false starts, just like in many other sports) There's a couple of techniques I picked up -- one I see alot is that of pushing/slapping - trying to push the person out of the ring. Somewhat luckily the border of the ring is heaped up a little so one can try to stop at the edge a little easier. But this is particularly effective if one is heavier & stronger than the opponent - sometimes the guys are pushed out pretty hard and fall into the spectators - luckily the first row around the ring is that of the other wrestlers - so they can take the impact a little better thank the average spectator. Another one that is seen is of trying to make the other person lose his balance or footing, usu. by holding one's leg under the other and trying to sweep it. I saw a comparatively small wrestler do this successively against a larger one. I was so surprised for usually the larger guy wins - esp. when there's that great a disparity of weights. I saw two guys go over the edge of the ring together while one was trying to do this, but that guy was the first to touch the dirt (w/ his arm) and so he lost. One technique I really liked was that one guy just got out of the way when the other one charged him (he must have known this wrestler likes to charge people) and the other slid and lost his balance for he had expected some barrier that he would push against so he wouldn't lose his balance. Another commons sight is of the wrestlers grabbing on each other's belts - sometimes they get locked this way (esp. if they like the same hold) - sometimes trying to throw the other down, sometimes to be able to push more easily. (sometimes in order to pick the other guy off the ground) Also seen on TV tonight - some psychic show or some such. It was funny because the psychics were so dramatic and serious - at one part they were dragging a lake for evidently the psychics expected something ghastly in there (like a body or a hand( and the people only caught fish. Also, they predicted the existence/murder/something of a 48 yr old woman and alot of the people in the are said that such a person didn't exist. At the beginning of what I saw they had some photographs that had bad exposure problems (like the full sun was coming through trees or reflections off something or chemical discolorations) for a while I thought the people were talking about exposure problems w/ picture taking until I figured they thought these defects were due to some spiritual activity. This also reminds me of a practice I really noticed in the news here. If a building sign or license plate is seen, it's covered or distorted and sometimes they do this w/ people's faces too (which is what they do in pictures too.) But I noticed they never show people's building names (for residents) or the license plates and perhaps we do that in the U.S. too but I never noticed that they did it that much anyway. Since I can't understand much of what is said I pay a lot more attention to visual aspects of things. Just as when I watched Beauty & the Beast before - I noticed so much of the pictures that I hadn't seen before. I never knew how much I depended on listening to things. Just as if I couldn't see the action, I would pay a lot more attention to background music and sound effects (something I noticed already when I've listened to soundtracks I hear stuff I didn't notice before and I get confused for I am trying to figure out which part the movie is at...