Hey everyone, sorry for the complete lack of blogging lately. I’ve been pretty insanely busy here in Japan, and I also haven’t been able to play much poker, so… yeah, I’ve been lazy 
Briefly, poker is been epicly lame – pretty much nothing has gone right since May 1st, which makes this definitely the longest, most frustrating downswing of my career. My analysis is that I’ve been running horribly (like OMFGWTF-is-happening-shit-fuck bad), and all the incessant losing has fried my poker brain. So the past couple months have been a pretty ugly combination of ridiculous variance and increasingly poor play.
I’m not entirely sure what to do about it. Conditions aren’t ideal here in Japan since I have to play on a tiny laptop screen with an unreliable wireless connection. Given how hair-trigger my tilt response has gotten, that seems like a pretty solid argument for taking a break until I get back to the states in early August (and can play on my super sick new 30″ Apple cinema display!). It’d probably be a better use of my time to just watch a whole bunch of deuces cracked videos and try to get my poker mindset back on track.
Anyways, enough about lame old poker, on to Japan! Just to jog everyone’s memory, I’m taking a couple classes at Waseda University through the Harvard summer school and living with a Japanese host family. I knew going into the program that the courses would be kind of annoying (and they are), but getting the chance to explore Tokyo and work on my Japanese is totally worth the aggravation.
My host family situation is a bit of a mixed bag – one the one hand, my host father and mother are two of the nicest people I’ve ever met; on the other, they live waaaay the hell out in Tama, in the suburbs of Tokyo. There are a few Japanese kids taking our classes, and when I told them where I live they were like, “Tama!? REALLY!?” No joke, it takes me an hour and twenty minutes to get to school in the morning. Given my lazy ways, having to get up at 6:10 am every day has been a trying experience. And ZOMG the commute is a bitch – first, I get on an absolutely packed train at 7:12, struggle to stand amongst the crush of morning commuters (lol at getting a seat), and get off forty minutes later. I then switch to a different train and go one stop to Shinjuku station. Shinjuku is I believe the busiest subway terminal in the entire world, and I get dumped out right at the peak of the morning rush hour. It’s complete insanity. After basically moshing my way through the crowds for a few minutes I take the JR line a couple stops to Takadanobaba, and then switch yet again onto the Tozai line, which drops me off at Waseda.
How all these people can handle such a grueling commute day in and day out, year after year, is completely beyond me. It’s only been a month and I’m already completely sick of it. I’ve started getting up extra early in the morning just so I can sit and unwind at the Waseda student cafe before class – otherwise I feel like I’ll go all Godzilla on people in lecture
Anyways now I’m sleepy and I have a midterm tomorrow, I’ll try to keep the posts coming – maybe I’ll even throw in some pictures…
