1998.06.07 SUN

Went to Kyoto today; it took about two hours to get over there by train. It was pretty fun.

The manga circle's getting more interesting - Friday I found out that they actually =are= going to make a new book. I think that whenever they can they put out a 24-page book, where whoever in the club wants to draw up a story can get it published. I wanted to draw my own story for the book; once I remember asking if they were going to publish a book (It's called 'F Magazine', by the way - I guess the F means 'fan' ;b ) and I =thought= they said no. But I guess I'm wrong - they put one out in April, and one out in May just a few days before I arrived.

Any case - I had an idea which I was gonna draw up, but I think I'm gonna ditch it and try another concept, if I can. Got till the first week of next month to draw it, in any case. Another thing that's cool is that they have a book drawn by the artist for Detective Boy Conan that pretty much explains =everything= about drawing a comic - in Japanese of course, but it, too, is in the form of a comic so I can still understand it ;b

Other than that - I got a TON of homework Friday before I went home, too. We're on chapter 26 in class now - I think they want me to finish the homework for chapters 1-24 before I return to America. Considering the work for each chapter takes about two, three hours to do, I've got a bunch of work to do, but at least I got lots of time to do it. At least this way, I'll also know what I missed in class.

Started figure drawing class on Thursday too. Found out, it's a bit different from class in America - a lot less stressful, for one thing. The main thing I'm worried about is the grading criteria; back in America, we were graded on effort and how much you learned. So basically, you could draw however you wanted so long as you did what the assignment asked for. Here, it's pretty much the same except that you're graded on how the picture looks. If it looks like a photo, you get an A+. If it isn't drawn to that precision, you don't. Considering my flawed proportions and the fact that I don't draw volumes very well - two of the three things specified as grading criteria - I'm not sure how well I'm gonna do in the class. x.x But in any case, I'll try my best like I always do and that's as good as I can do, right? ^^;

Oh, right, almost forgot about Thursday night. Nobu, who I met my first year at ECU, came back to Japan and we had a welcome-home party at his house. It's strange; most Japanese homes are small and compact. Nobu's family lives in a house bigger than mine in the States. Not to mention, there's not a time that I didn't have something to eat or drink sitting in front of me. I feel really reeeeally humbled whenever I go over there.

Any case, we had a good time. Today, Nobu, Min, James, Tatsuya (Nobu's friend), and I went to Kyoto. We met up with a friend of Nobu's as a guide - I can't remember her name to save my life right now (Been trying to remember it for the past two hours) - and we walked all over the place. Pretty interesting, there's a lot of stores up there, on the path up to the temple. The name of the temple's another one that's temporarily escaped my memory. I guess the main bad part about it was that I didn't have any money with me and that James paid for just about everything for me - I couldn't get any souvenirs, and my camera was broken, so I'm probably going to forget all about it in a year or two, considering the way my twisted memory works x.x

Anyways, I think I better go - meeting up with Mayumi (the last foreign exchange student from Osaka Kyoiku to go to ECU) - she just returned from the States and we're gonna catch lunch, so I gotta wake up 'early' (Yeah, yeah, 10:00, that's early now. I didn't get any sleep last night ;b ) Later!