Category Archives: Daily Sketch

Sleeping Bag

Instead of a blanket, I sleep with a sleeping bag. I don’t zip myself up in it, though; I unzip it so it’s a big square, and I use it like a blanket. I’ve done this ever since I was little, probably because both of my parents use sleeping bags, too.

In intermediate school, I wanted to be more grown up, so I got a normal comforter, but in college I went back to using a sleeping bag.

Since my family and I had never really experienced winter, we didn’t realize that the dorm rooms would be well heated at night, so we thought that I’d need something to keep me warm, and that a sleeping bag would be perfect.

The sleeping bag I bought for college is supposed to keep me warm down to 20 degrees Farenheit! I brought it home with me after college because it’s so soft and comfortable. I guess it’s a little strange Continue reading →

Rochester’s winter

When I was in college, I didn’t have very good study habits, because I procrastinated a lot.  Since Rochester’s winters were usually very long, and since I didn’t really like walking around in cold weather,

I studied in my room instead of at the library.  That didn’t work too well though, because I almost always fell asleep studying in my room.  The only time that I didn’t fall asleep while studying in my room was when I was writing computer programs.  However, when I wrote programs, I would almost always get an upset stomach.  Despite that, I really enjoyed programming!
 
Sometimes I’d have to work on my programming assignments in the lab in the computer science building.  Once, I stayed in the lab for 23 hours!  After that, I hurried back to my room to take a shower, and then I returned to the computer science building for a class. Continue reading →

 
On one of my trips to Japan, some friends and I wanted to visit Kamakura. We were in Yokosuka which is only a short trip, by train, to Kamamkura.

I had taken the train from Yokosuka on previous trips to Japan, but at that time, I couldn’t remember how to get to the station. I knew very little Japanese – only what  I had learned from books.

I decided to ask for directions, since most people in Yokosuka speak English. I went into the first store, saw people inside, walked up to the counter and asked in English how to get to the train station that goes to Kamakura.

The woman behind the counter shook her head and said, “Eigo ga wakarimasen” (I don’t understand English). So, I thought for a second and tried to ask in Japanese. I thought it best to tell her where my friends and I were trying to go then ask for directions to the station. Continue reading →

At a payphone

In my junior year of high school, before my boyfriend and I started dating, I called him from an outside pay phone near a theater to invite him to a movie. He’d just gotten back from a basketball game, so he couldn’t come. Since he still had to take a shower, the movie would have already started by the time he was ready. However, we continued talking for over three hours! Finally, his mom told him to invite me over. I had been standing at a pay phone only five minutes away from his house!

　１１年生の時、ボーイフレンドと交際を始める前のことです。彼を映画に誘おうと、映画館の近くにある公衆電話から電話をしました。

　彼はバスケットボールの試合から帰ったところだったので来ることができませんでした。彼はシャワーをあびなければなりませんでしたし、準備をしているうちに映画は始まってしまうからでした。 Continue reading →

    When I was eleven years old  I had a job on a ranch during the Summer. I had to shovel horse stalls, fill wheel barrels with rocks, drag dead brush into piles to be burned and mowed pastures all in 105 degree weather.  I only got paid two dollars an hour (unless I was filing up the wheel barrels
then I got paid per wheel barrel) and I couldn’t take breaks longer than the time it took to get a drink from the hose.

    As bad as that job sounds, while in California, I worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken as a cook and  I must say, it was worse.  It always seemed like the orders of chicken would never stop.  My manager would always promise me I would only have to make one more batch, just to come back to the kitchen three minutes later and have me cook one more.  Every night, five minutes before closing and right after I finished cleaning the kitchen, a car load of people would show up at the drive thru wanting four or five buckets of chicken.  All I ever dreamt about was making chicken and no matter how much I bathed, I couldn’t get that fried chicken smell off of me.  I hated chicken.  I couldn’t eat fried chicken until recently.  What’s worse, after a year of that, I still had not Continue reading →

I really don’t like going to the dentist.

I really don’t like going to the dentist, even to get my teeth cleaned. I hate it when the dentist uses metal instruments on my teeth. I don’t even like biting on my fork when I’m eating! Therefore, I wasn’t looking forward to my dentist appointment when I had to get my first cavity filled. My dentist was Dr. Maurer, a very nice man, and he gave me a lot of painkillers. First, he gave me a topical painkiller. Then he gave me a shot. Finally, he gave me nitrous oxide, which is also known as laughing gas. That made me so relaxed! I still felt a little pain when he was drilling, but I just didn’t care. I think I might have been just a little bit high. I felt so good, that while my cavity was getting filled, I remember thinking over and over, "I’m going to be a dentist when I grow up. Then I can have laughing gas whenever I want!" I didn’t want to be a dentist anymore after I left the dentist’s office, but I was looking forward to the next time I would need a cavity filled! Continue reading →

My boyfriend and I went to Dave & Busters recently.  Dave & Busters is a kind of like a Chuck-E-Cheeze’s for adults because it has lots of arcade games and you can buy prizes with the tickets you get from the game.  There was a strength meter there – the kind you hit with a big hammer.  It even had different settings for men, women and children, so that everyone had a relatively even chance of getting a high score.  I was really happy that I was able to get scores of over 100 when I hit the strength meter until I found out later that my boyfriend had accidentally set the strength meter for measuring a child’s hit when I had tried!

　最近、彼とデイブアンドバスターズへ行きました。

　デイブアンドバスターズには、たくさんのアーケードゲームがあり、ゲームで獲得したチケットで賞品を得ることができるので、大人のチャックイーチーズのようなものです。 Continue reading →

Sister’s Lost Underwear
 
In June, my parents and I  went to California to attend my sister’s graduation. 

She had just gotten her Bachelors degree.  A week after her graduation, she was going to start her Masters degree program.After my sister’s graduation, we helped her move from her old dorm to her new, graduate student dorm room.  Her new place is really nice, because it looks like a real apartment. 

Unfortunately, while moving her stuff to her new place, her box full of underwear got lost!  That was really bad luck, because she had over 40 sets of underwear, which meant that she only had to do laundry every month and a half. 

Later on, we had fun spending late nights at Target and Wal-Mart, since we had to buy her new underwear. Continue reading →

 
Once, my boyfriend and I had free tickets to ride the Waikiki Rainbow trolley.  The trolley we boarded was very crowded, so we had to stand on the steps, which was a little unsafe.  The driver scolded us in Japanese for standing there because he mistook us for Japanese tourists!  However, I couldn’t understand what he was saying and I told him that we weren’t Japanese tourists, so he scolded us in English.  This was a little strange, since my boyfriend is half German, so he doesn’t look like a Japanese tourist.  I guess I looked Japanese enough for the both of us.

 
　一度、私は、ボーイフレンドと無料チケットでワイキキのトロリーバスに乗りました。トロリーバスはとても混んでいたので、私達は、少し危険なバスの階段のところに立っていました。するとバスの運転手さんは、私達を日本人観光客と勘違いし、日本語で叱りました。しかし、運転手さんが何を言っているのかわかりません。そこで私は運転手さんに、私達は日本人じゃないと言うと、今度は英語で叱られました。私のボーイフレンドは半分ドイツ人で、彼は少しも日本人観光客には見えないので、これは少しおかしかったです。恐らく私が日本人に見えたので、二人とも日本人だと思ったのでしょう。 Continue reading →