2009 in review
December 27, 2009
This year has been a very exciting year for me for many reasons but my kung fu training has certainly been the biggest highlight of the year. This is only the second year of training under Sifu Steve McGowan but I’ve felt like I’ve accomplished a lot. I’ve noticed a lot of improvement in myself and I’ve also discovered new areas now that I need to improve on. I feel like I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in but there’s a long way to go. We’ve seen a lot of students come and go this year but kung fu is still the biggest constant in my life next to my wife.
Through Golden Harvest Wing Chun, I was able to travel to the Philippines this year and have a wonderful time meeting Sifu Bennie Casas’ family and training there. I returned to Vancouver for the first time in years and had a great time with my family. Lastly, I will be going to Hong Kong again tomorrow to visit family there. This makes three trips in 2009 with the HK trip being decided on at the last minute.
I’ve been teaching for two companies this year and both have been a great source of experience. My employment status will be changing in the next couple of months because I will be starting a full time position with one of these companies. This will definitely make 2010 much different than this year. This year I did not have a stable schedule and at times had no free time, or all the free time in the world. This let me do a lot of things at home including training kung fu a lot. I’ll have to be more disciplined with set training schedules next year when I start the job if I want to keep up my training level.
One thing I didn’t do this year was study Japanese very much. I feel bad about this because I had made so much progress last year with my studies. I hope to study more next year with a more set study pattern alongside my training. I’d like to learn a new skill as well but I haven’t given too much thought on what this is yet. I think time will be my greatest limitation next year. Still, it will be nice to have a full two-day weekend when the new job starts. I have been teaching on Sundays this year and even though it’s only one lesson, it really kills plans.
Just as I had expected, this year I did not meet many people outside of the usual circles in my life. I didn’t get to meet and hang out with as many people as I had wanted due to to time and scheduling. This too, I hope will improve next year. We need to have more gaming! I was fortunate to spend time with my family this year and everyone welcomed a new member to my wife’s side of the family. Little Ayane was born in April and has been a glowing jewel. She is adorable and it’s fascinating to see how quickly personality is developed. I can’t say for sure how far this “personality” is right now but I definitely see likes, dislikes, and simple communication.
I’m very thankful for this year and all the marvelous experiences. I think 2010 will be just as interesting and I will (nervously) look forward to starting a new decade as a (gulp) thirty year old. Is it ever too early to have a mid-life crisis? I wonder if a Porsche is completely out of my budgeting right now…
Gwoemul
October 27, 2009
I saw an interesting Korean movie recently and I thought I’d recommend it. The Host, or Gwoemul in Korean, was a very thought-provoking monster film released in 2006. I remember watching the trailers here in Japan and all it showed was the monster running amongst a crowd of people apparently kicking their asses.
Having watched the movie now, I’ve found it’s filled with a lot of insight into the Korean culture and society. It’s interesting to see the American military and probably Americans in general portrayed as uncaring, cold people. It’s obvious the resentment towards the Americans in this movie.
There seems to be a lot of social commentary on people too. The main characters all had some sort of character flaw that held them back. From being a lazy dumbass, to hesitant athlete, to ever-complaining activist, each character had to get over themselves through the film.
The monster was quite interesting. Compared to other monster flicks, such as ones in Japan and America, this monster seemed like it was more acting on instinct than any real intention to hurt people. It was designed well and the scene where we see the monster running up behind the daughter Hyun-seo was quite cool.
There’s a very wild blend of comedy, drama, action, and horror in this movie. At times I thought this movie was going the road of a parody but only to have something serious happen. The ending was quite unexpected – it did not follow the general formula for these kinds of movies. Because of this, I was pleasantly surprised. Different is always good.
More Louvre
September 22, 2009
Taking advantage of Silver Week, a five-day long weekend that hasn’t happened in a long time, we hit yet another art museum today. This is my third artsy place this month. Today we went to the National Museum of Art, Osaka, located next to the science museum in Nakanoshima.
The line was a breezy 20 minutes, compared to the 55 minute wait at the Kyoto exhibit. We did encounter an Osaka baba, an old lady hailing from Osaka known for her impatience and line-budging-in skills. Her skills were impeccable. Unfortunately I have not been blessed with the ability to punch old ladies in the face. Yet.
The theme of this Louvre exhibit was, “Children from the Louvre collections” and there were pieces from Egypt, Rome, Greece, and a few Middle Eastern countries as well. There were paintings as well as statues and other gadgets and gizmos. I think the piece with the most impact was the child mummy in the sarcophagus.
Alongside the Louvre exhibit was a very interesting and strange Po-po Nyang-nyang exhibit by Miwa Yanagi. She took a couple dozen models and took pictures of them “in which female models dress up as the person they would ideally like to become in 50 years”. The pictures were quite surreal but I thought they were an interesting take on modern society and what we think of beauty and tradition.
The strangest of all were these four giant pictures of a women with her breasts baring and legs showing. In each picture, she had different body parts: old woman breasts, fat woman legs, and the combinations you can create with it. I’m not really sure what the message was but it sure was strange to be standing in front of a picture more than two times my height of a women with giantic breasts flopping about. You can see this picture at the Miwa Yanagi Po-po Nyangnyang exhibit website. It’s too creepy to download and paste here.
Louvre, Kyoto, and Dinner on the Porch
September 21, 2009
The Woman and I had a very rare weekday off together last week and we decided to spend the day out. It’s been awhile since our last date.
Louvre Exhibit
I mentioned in a previous entry that there was a Louvre Museum exhibit at the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art. While neither of us are big art buffs, it was something to do.
Although it was a Tuesday afternoon, the place was packed. We had to wait in a huge line outside of the museum for about an hour. To pass the time I decided to just make fun of random people. Seeing people with purple hair in Japan is not the rarest of things but seeing two of them at the same location is! Typically, only old women with no fashion sense dye their hair blue or purple and so it was that one old woman had purple hair and then a tall, older salaryman-type dude had purple hair. He also had a much younger girlfriend. I’m sure she loves him because he’s a family guy or he’s filled with love and passion.
Also, I was a blind old man lining up for the museum. This struck me as weird. I didn’t quite understand how one who is visually impaired might enjoy the museum. As it turns out, they didn’t even spring for the audio guide. I saw a younger women dictate the signs beside each painting to him. Weeyod.
The exhibit was quite interesting. There were a lot of Vermeer paintings. He’s one of the more interesting artists I know (and I know very few).
Around Kyoto
It was still quite early and we spent some time walking around Heian Jingu, Kamogawa around Sanjo and Shijo, and a quick stroll through Gion.
Dinner on the Porch
It was getting late by the time we finished walking and enjoying the sights and the weather. We both had never had dinner on the terraces beside Kamogawa, so, what the hell.
We walked through looking at the different menus at each restaurant and decided on a place that serves traditional Kyoto cuisine. The food was great even though the portions were quite tiny. The view was nice and the weather cooperated.
On the terrace, you have to sit on floor cushions and eat off a low table. My legs fell asleep almost immediately and I had to shift around quite often. The coincidence of the night – I saw my kung fu si hings Patrick, Pascal, and si je Mari walking along Kamogawa from the terrace. Pascal’s shining head gave him away.
In the end we paid about 10,000 yen for dinner – rather pricey. There was a 1,500 yen terrace charge per person. Not cheap!
Real sushi
September 18, 2009
We recently celebrated our nine-year anniversary. It’s hard to believe that I’ve known The Woman for a third of my life! To celebrate, we went to a very nice sushi restaurant in our neighborhood because I have never been to a traditional sushi joint before. I’ve been to plenty of revolving sushi places and a couple of “normal” sushi restaurants but I’ve always wanted to try a really traditional place.
For one thing, prices were not listed in the restaurant. This was a great sign! This meant the prices changed depending on season and fish stocks. I take this as a sign that the chef needs to carefully choose his stock.
Another thing, the restaurant was tiny. It had two small tatami rooms with kotatsu-like tables and a counter that could seat 6. We were the only ones there so we got counter seats, front row and center, right in front of the chef.
We decided to go for “o-makase” style ordering. Basically, you let the chef decide what to serve you. Literally, “o-makase” means “I entrust you”. Of course, there is some conflict of interest – I figured the chef would go for the most expensive items to maximize his income. Surprisingly he did not. He chose a lot of items that were in season, some expensive, some not so much. My favorites of the night included the matsutake mushroom sushi, the super-flaky unagi, the hamo which tasted so fluffly, and of course the tuna.
The maguro, the darker red cut of the blue-eyed tuna, tasted as soft and delicious as the fine cuts of tuna at lesser restaurants. It was fantastic. I was very curious – if the cheaper cut here was better than the expensive cuts at other restaurants, what about the expensive cut here? I had to try it.
We ordered the jou toro, the “top” cut of fatty tuna. It is much lighter in color and kind of resembles the soft fat around a nice steak. I was not disappointed. Placing the piece of toro in my mouth and chewing softly, I felt the oils just spread and the flavors were overwhelmed my tastebuds. It practically melted on my tongue. I immediately thought about wa-gyuu, or Japanese beef (like the famed Kobe beef, the Saga beef, and Matsuzaka beef) – it was a very similar texture; both tuna and Japanese beef melted on my tongue.
In the end we paid about 13,000 yen. It was totally worth it. I loved the experience and can’t wait to go back there, but probably not for a little while. $130 for fish is a luxury I can’t afford too regularly. I highly recommend this for any prospective tourists though!
Hyogo Art Museum
September 11, 2009
I had a rare Friday off so I made my way to see the Visual Deception exhibit. I had never been to the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art before and it turned out to be a bit of a trip from my place. I’m glad I went because the museum is really cool and reminds me of the Dream Stage on Awaji Island.
The Visual Deception exhibit was fairly interesting. Most of the pieces were paintings made to resemble things in real life. I think what impressed me the most were the paintings made to look like something fastened to wood. The wood was painted very realistically. The Arcimboldo painting of the man made from vegetables was the center piece and probably the most deceptive of all. There were several pieces of art that can be viewed from different angles and you see different images at each angle.
There was a new permanent exhibit called Shadows. It was rather strange. First, it was the only exhibit where you can touch the art pieces. Some very friendly staff greeted you at the entrance and explained that you need to take off rings and watches, check your bags, and even wipe your hands clean before entering. Basically the room had several statues painted black with an LED light hanging above. This created some very interesting visual effects. I didn’t really touch anything.
One nice feature at the museum is the E-mail corner. The “E” in E-mail stood for the Japanese kanji for paintings. I’d write the kanji but Wordpress has a tendency to screw it up later anyway. But anyway, you can email someone from some laptops set up with MS Outlook and attach different jpegs of paintings found in the museum. You may have guessed that these pictures I’ve slapped on this entry are the ones I emailed myself.
I spent about two hours in the musem going through each exhibit carefully. The area around the museum was worth walking around too. It’s close to a disaster research center that looked interesting. There are a couple of big giant shopping areas: a Sports Authority, Yamada Denki, a movie theater, and similar fare.
The Visual Deception exhibit runs until November 3rd. To get there, take the Special Rapid express train from Osaka station to Ashiya. Get off and take the local train to Nada (five stops away). Admission to the Visual Deception exhibit was 1300 yen, there’s a discount at the museum right now for the regular collections. I paid 1450 for everything to get in.
Exhibitions
September 09, 2009
Some interesting art exhibitions are in town and I’m looking forward to absorbing some creative goodness. Anyone interested?
The Louvre Museum Exhibition: Master Paintings of 17th Century Europe
“In European painting history, the 17th century was known as the ’Golden Age.’ To introduce the various aspects of the ’Golden Age’, the exhibition is divided into three chapters, 1. ’The Golden Age’ and its Dark Territories, 2. Travel and ’The Scientific Revolution,’ and 3. ’The Century of Saints; the Successors to the Ancients?’ 71 treasures from the Louvre including Vermeer’s ’The Lacemaker,’ Rembrandt’s ’Self-portrait,’ Poussin’s ’The Finding of Moses,’ and La Tour’s ’Joseph the Carpenter’ among others, will be exhibited.”
“Visual Deception” Damashi-E
Not really sure what this exhibit’s about but the painting used in the ad is one of those vegetable arrangements that looks very much like a person. This one seems interesting.
Harvest Hill
August 26, 2009
We had a pleasant day out with good friends last Sunday at a quaint little place called Harvest Hill, located in Sakai City, Osaka. I think it’s what’s called a “farm park”, or a farm-themed theme park. It’s quite a big park with a lot of greenery, a lot more than what I can usually see in the city so it was quite a welcome change.
There are a lot of things to do in the park like experience different farm activities like milking cows, making your own sausages, leatherworking, and even glassblowing. There were many county fair-style booths with games too but unfortunately they were so old and crappy that it really wasn’t any fun. We had a nice little yakiniku bbq and then walked around the park. There were a few farm animals but they were in pretty sad shape.
Compared to any real farm, or to a real theme park, this place would be pretty sad but it was definitely nice to leave the city and walk around trees and grass for a change.
Night at the Museum 2
August 23, 2009
Hank Azaria is a genius. He deserves a Nobel Prize for the work he does. It was because of Hank Azaria that we liked Night at the Museum 2 so much. I thought it was much funnier and well-developed than the first. It’s good to see 90% of the cast of The Office in the movie too!
T4
June 27, 2009
For the first time in my life, I went to see a movie by myself last night. I had always felt that going to see a movie was a social event and I had always had people come with me. Last night I decided to make it quality alone time since the woman was out with her coworkers and I really enjoyed it. I got to pick a movie without having to consider the woman’s preference. I could have my own drink (we usually share and she doesn’t like coke). I even had no neighbors in the theater because a 20:50 show is considered “late”. I think I’ve found a new pastime when I’m alone.
I went to see the new Terminator movie and while it’s called “Terminator Salvation”, it’s really “Terminator 4″. It was excellent. It was all I had hoped for. After the atrocity that was Terminator 3, I had my doubts about this new movie. I didn’t like T3 because they basically destroyed the premise built up from T1 and T2: that the future was now a dark highway and that humanity was free to decide its fate. In T3 they destroyed that idea and went into a deterministic, “It was meant to be so whatever happens will happen”.
In T4, the much anticipated fights in the future were done well although there weren’t many battles with multiple terminators – you mainly saw one terminator on the screen at any given time. I loved how they incorporated things from the past movies into this one without being overtly obvious. Kyle Reese was introduced well and I was hoping for a bit more character development. There was no main enemy found in each other Terminator movie but I guess the Marcus character was the closest thing. I won’t give up too much about the movie but I thought the story worked well and didn’t come as too big a deviation from the other films’ mood and plots. As expected Christian Bale did a fantastic job as John Connor. He excels in angry man roles. Even the Arnie model, as CG as it looked, worked itself into the movie well but I wish they showed Arnie more.
That’s about all I can think of right now. T4 is going to on my must-see-again list.
My new netbook
April 04, 2009
I’m not exactly a gadget freak but I got myself a nice blue Acer Aspire ONE D150 today. I got this more out of necessity than anything. It’s only been a few hours of tinkering but I already love it. Aside from the tiny keyboard and the unfortunate placement of the Japanese/English switch keys, it’s such a well-designed machine. I’m really looking forward to some more blog writing away from home. It will face its first test in the Philippines next week.
Although the specs don’t compare to my desktop and on paper look similar to my 7 year old laptop, the Lappy 2, as it has been newly christened, will serve a severe need for mobile computing. It’s ridiculously light and portable. It’s boasting a battery of 3 hours with this 3-cell battery that came with it but I’m highly skeptical of it and I’ll probably pick up a 6 or 9-cell battery soon enough.
I’m in the process of installing all my standard things: firewall, antivirus, iTunes, etc., and I’m absolutely in love with Windows Live Sync – a great service that lets me keep documents in conformity across three computers now. It used to take a lot of manual copy and pasting but now all of that is automated.
The tiny webcam built into the machine is surprisingly clear. The speakers are kind of pathetic but I don’t expect to blast many tunes while travelling anyway. I’ll bring earphones for that.
This netbook could be bought for a mere 100 yen if you sign up with E-Mobile for a two year mobile internet contract. I didn’t want that since I have a wireless network at home and cafes here often offer free internet. I paid 45,000 yen but got a hundred bucks off with the Yodobashi Camera points I’ve saved over the last year or so!
Technology
March 29, 2009
Just before I left for Japan, I bought this 64 megabyte USB smart drive for about $50. While it didn’t have the biggest storage space (I think 128Mb was the largest at the time), it was the most reasonably priced, had a reasonable amount of storage space, and came with a USB extension wire that i still use today.
That was about 7 years ago.
This week, I bought a 8Gb Sony Pocketbit USM-J series USB drive for about $25. Like before, the new smart drive did not have the largest storage space but was very reasonably priced. It did not come with an extension wire. Plus I like the little LED light on the 64Mb drive instead of the dinky little light on the slider on the 8Gb drive.
From 64 megabytes at $50 to 8 gigabytes at $25 in less than 7 years’ time. Amazing.
Sweet tooth
March 21, 2009
So here we have a bakery around Nakanojima. Not a big deal right? It’s kind of strange to have a guard in front of a bakery and it is rare to see a line that runs outside of the bakery right? Still, it’s not that interesting.
So why did I take the picture?
Because the line runs around the block reaching the bridge. There is a gap in the line in front of the koban (police box) probably because the people anxiously awaiting their baked goods probably bothered the policemen while they slept in the koban.
I’ve got to find out just how good this bakery is. More to come.
Superuseless Superpowers
January 25, 2009
Superuseless Superpowers. What a fantastic website! My favorite is “13th Bullet Bulletproof”, the picture tells it all.
Grandmaster Yip Man
January 08, 2009
What a fantastic movie. Donnie Yen kick ass. For a guy who never studied Wing Chun before, he did a fantastic job emulating it. This is by far the best Wing Chun movie I’ve ever seen. Makes me proud to be a WC student.
Even though the movie does a wild job throwing Yip Man on a great pedestal, much like how Wong Fei Hung’s achievements were hugely exaggerated by the hundreds of movies, I couldn’t help feel a great sense of pride in “Uncle Man” while watching the movie. It makes me feel great to be Yip Man’s student’s student’s student (from my first WC teacher). I’m not exactly sure how the lineage works with Sifu Steve because he’s not too sure who his teacher’s teacher was. Don’t worry, none of it ever matters.
Boy, am I ever energized to do more training! Go watch this movie my fellow WCers!
Movies
July 05, 2008
Summer is the movie season and here are a few of the flicks I’ve seen recently.
- Indiana Jones: not bad! Very entertaining!
- Rambo: The most violent movie I’ve ever seen.
- Ironman: This was awesome!
- Kung Phooey: I just had to buy the DVD and it cost me a total of $1.16. What a great movie.
- Forbidden Kingdom: What a bag of suck.
Hancock looks quite fun as does Batman. Those are on top of my summer list.
Freaky paintings
May 10, 2008
As suggested by Thomas, the Kyosai exhibit at the Kyoto National Museum was fantastic.
The most fantastic mural ever
After having visited so many museums and exhibits in Japan, I am rather tired of your run of the mill nature paintings and bamboo prints. This exhibit was very refreshing. Kyosai spent a big part of his life drawing things like demons, ghosts, tengu, and satirical drawings. Sadly he was punished by the government for this.
Let me be even lazier than Thomas and paraphrase his paraphrasing:
The paintings were in a kind of ukiyo-e style but with lots of little ghosts, demons, blood and other funny stuff including a great painting that went by the name of “Fart Battle”. Let me be lazy and just plagiarise from the museums website… “The Japanese catch phrase for the exhibition might be translated, “His works are so bizarre, they’ll make you want to cry.” Be shocked and surprised to discover both the bizarre and the beautiful in this artist’s stunning repertoire.” – Thomas
A must-see!
Doom 3
April 22, 2008
I finally finished Doom 3 after weeks of 10-15 minute playing sessions.
Wow, Doom 3 has got to be one of the creepiest games I’ve ever played. There were times that the game really felt demonic – it went beyond a video game and sent chills down my spine. There were a few times when I couldn’t bring myself to play at night when the woman went to sleep.
The Cyberdemon was a beautiful creation. It was much more intimidating than the one back in the original Doom. Still, one begs to ask, where was that loveable thumping noise that he makes when he’s walking around?
Anyway, the game reminded me a lot of System Shock 2 with the PDA audio logs. Unfortunately it didn’t have the scope and the story of SS2. Most of the game was very linear and simple – find the exit by killing everything and trying to conserve ammo.
The shotgun was yet again the bread and butter weapon but I was very glad that my personal favorite Doom weapon, the plasma rifle, was just as cool and devasting as before.
I Am Alone
December 27, 2007
We watched I Am Legend last weekend and I really liked it. In fact, I think this was the best Will Smith movie I have seen. He actually made a convincing performance as Robert Neville. I think he pulled off the act well and balanced a character on the brink of insanity, living in Manhattan all alone. The movie was much better than I could have hoped. And yes yes, the movie went a very different road than the book. In this day and age though, a movie about vampires just won’t cut it unless it’s a Whitewolf movie.
It did get me thinking about being alone. If I were completely alone in Osaka I would give myself at most 6 months before I went absolutely bonkers I think. The first few months would probably just be spent securing supplies and ensuring a certain standard of living. I would probably derive some entertainment from breaking into stores and then homes and rummaging through peoples’ lives for survival and to meet that social need. In absence of real social interaction I think holding and looking at things that remind us of interaction is a good substitute. (That’s why we carry photos of loved ones and reminisce of mom’s cooking).
The routine that was portrayed in the movie was probably something that could keep a person alive and going. Without the routine there would be no point in living. In the movie, Neville had his overriding goal of curing the disease. In my isolated life, there would be a need of some hope – perhaps meeting other people given X amount of time. Or perhaps knowing that people were alive at some certain location. Barring this, a bullet through the head would probably look very tempting.
For survival I would probably relocate next to the big department store near my house. There are many stores in the vicinity and it would be a central location for people to cluster around. Hell, I could probably live in the department store – there’s a sporting goods area that already has tents on display. They sell nice beds and lots of video games too.
Food would not be an issue in the first month or two – there’s a big supermarket at the basement. The biggest problem would be to preserve all the food that will spoil. Securing power generators will be important but considering my very limited experience with hardware like that, it would be a challenge to keep even evening lights on.
Entertainment would not be limited to video games and porn videos from Tsutaya. I think I would take up golf, like in the movie, only hitting golf balls off the highway onto houses. Hunting would be interesting but again, the lack of experience with firearms will certainly hinder that. Plus, there would initially be very little to hunt in Osaka, save for some rats and maybe some tiny songbirds.
I think the best part of this would be when I start going bananas due to the lack of social interaction. I think I’ll do what Will Smith did in the movie, start creating voices for inanimate objects. Punchy The Punching Bag would be my arch nemesis, Stickman the Walking Stick would be my sidekick and bail me out in times of great need, Flick the Switchblade would be my go-to-guy. The climax would be when I finally realize that Flick has been backstabbing me the whole time and Stickman jumps in front of the flying knife to save my knife. The end scene will be me fighting Punchy at the top of a buddhist pagoda.
Soothsayer, party of five
December 11, 2007
Recently started playing Titan Quest – a Diablo-like game built to be better than Diablo. The designers have taken the time to implement many nice things that were missing from Diablo. Every character starts in exactly the same way – you begin customizing your character by picking up to two masteries and within each mastery choosing skills. In that way you have a fairly unique character each time you play.
Here’s my Soothsayer (Nature and Spirit masteries). She’s not so strong in combat but with four pets, she just sits back and picks up spoils of war!
Party of five
In this picture you should see my character with the shield, a scantily clad dryad on bow and arrow duty, a lich on crazy lightning shit duty, and two wolves on nasty elemental biting your face off duty.
I serve to the wise and powerful. Are you sure YOU should be shopping here? – Delphi magic seller
Thanks Mr. T for introducing me to this highly addictive game!
How A Wedding Caused Podcasting
May 17, 2007
Last Friday Mike and Akiyo finally ceremoniously tied the knot at the all too wonderful Sumiyoshi-taisha. It was a very beautiful Japanese wedding with a really awesome reception. Later that night the woman and I MC’d the nijikai and had a great time. Congratulations to those two. Pictures pending permission from the bride and groom.
At the nijikai, the lady won an iPod shuffle! I swore I’d never buy an iPod but if it’s given as a gift, well I don’t see the harm in that. The lady “let” me use it and I’ve been playing with podcasts and iTunes ever since. I really like that tiny 1 sq. inch sized, 1GB piece of machinery.
Finally, with an iPod, I subscribed to Streamlink to listen Coast to Coast AM, still going strong after all these years with George Noory and Art Bell. With dozens of shows archived away, I’ve been struggling to find time to listen to everything. I’m managing to eke about 4, 40 minute clips a day, from my waking moments to the last conscious moments (I go to sleep listening to it). It’s great!
Kobe Harbor Dinner Cruise
June 05, 2006
My Japanese teacher, Yamamoto sensei gave the lady and me a pair of tickets for the “Music-Gourmet Ship Concerto“. It came just in the nick of time as I was looking for relaxing things to do with the lady outside of the house, and outside of Osaka. The ship departs from the harbour in Kobe and sails around the harbor. There was live jazz and dinner (your choice of a few meals but you have to pay for them). The sailing itself isn’t the most beautiful as looking out the window you see blemishes such as industrial areas, Kobe’s new airport, and some drydocks. Still being in a boat around dusk is one of the best ways to relax, in any country.
It was a most unexpected gift but thoroughly enjoyed! Thank you sensei!!! It made for a very nice evening in one of my favorite Japanese cities. Kobe has the urban flair of a city but the sanity of being clean, well-spaced, and comfortable. Cruise or not, hanging around the harbor is great.
My Dell
April 17, 2006
Right before I left for Japan I knew I would need a computer or suffer the paralyzing death of boredom. I got the biggest badass of a Dell laptop I could afford at the time. I ended up with a Dell Inspiron 8200 [1.6 Ghz, 256mb RAM, 40Gb HD, CDR/DVD, NVidia GeForce4 440 Go]. It’s a heavy fucker but I wasn’t going to be toting it around. It was to be my main computer and at the time it had amazing specs, laptop or desktop.
This baby has served me well but it’s fast becoming obsolete. I need a desktop soon. This baby will continue to be my webpage/documents machine though but it won’t run games made past 2002. Well it’s been three and a half years now and I’ve had some less than pleasing experiences with this baby:
Fans
The fans are quite loud and don’t seem to do a great job cooling the innards down. I think overheating was responsible for a couple of shutdowns. The power supply also overheated a couple of times leading to immediate battery use.
Batteries
One of my batteries has died. The other took literally 2 weeks to charge up to 100%. I think it’s working alright now. I’m not sure when the first battery died since I never go anywhere without the power supply. And it was supposed to have up to 8 hours of battery life when both were plugged in. Like hell it did.
CD/DVD drive
The stupid drive seems to heat up a lot and when it heats up it stops spinning. Then on certain disks, like C&C Generals: Zero Hour, it often has lots of trouble reading it. When running Elderscrolls 3: Morrowind, the thing sounds like a Cessna. Plus the thing feels very flimsy – be careful about snapping it.
Touchpad
When I’m typing I sometimes touch the touchpad by accident and send the cursor flying. It feels poorly placed for my hands.
Performance
I’ll blame half of this on Windows XP as much as the hardware but after a few months it slows to a crawl. Booting up takes years longer than on a fresh install.
USB1.1
All my gadgets with USB2.0 are wasted.
Wireless-less
I wish I had the foresight to get a wireless card installed. It would’ve been very useful in Japan. So many cafes and restaurants are ‘connected’ around here.
Aichi 2005: Expo
September 25, 2005
The theme of this year’s expo was the environment and was located in Nagoya, Japan’s third largest city. Our trip started with a night in Nagoya as we enjoyed some local Nagoya delights.
The start
Early in the morning, we got there about two hours before the gate opened and there were about two hundred people already lining up at the North Gate. The reason people wanted (and needed) to push every minute was because they used a really stupid system to get into the more popular exhibits. You line up for a ticket that gives you the right to line up for the exhibit at a certain time. Those pre-tickets were given at certain times and always ran out really early. This only encouraged people to run and trample over everyone. There were online bookings but these closed way in advance.
Once the gates opened people slowly filtered through the gates. Each person had their bags searched but I’m pretty sure I could’ve snuck in a barrel of plutonium as the gate attendant didn’t quite seem awake. We were stuck for a few minutes because this 80+ year old man decided it was a good idea to bring a suitcase. From here we had a full day of exploration ahead and here are some of the highlights of our day.
The expo mascots
Zenigata
February 13, 2005
éŠé‡‘ Zenigata Kintarou is probably my all-time favourite show in Japan. It’s the quirkiest and funniest thing I’ve seen plus it demeans its guests.
The premise: three “supporter” guys each go film and interview a poor person. These poor people voluntarily submit their apartment, fridge, and pretty much anything the supporter finds out about them to jokes and prodding. It’s amazing how stupidity and poverty go hand in hand sometimes. Each time I watch this show, I laugh at how some people subject themselves to suffering just because they’re too lazy or too stupid to think otherwise. The supporters generally try to make fun of them as well which adds to the hilarity.
At the end of the show, three judges choose a winner to receive a 200,000 yen “prize”.
There are several kinds of poor people that keep recurring:
- the dumbass who works at a convenience store barely making a living and dreams of becoming a famous actor
- the quirky dumbass who has an idea and has already put it into action but just don’t seem to see the stupidity of their idea and why it’s not working
- the funny foreigner who’s studying in Japan and is living on a tight budget
- the unfortunate person who has fallen under certain circumstances and is really working and trying hard to make ends meet
While the last variant is least funny, they always win the well-deserved cash prize.
8pm Wednesdays, channel 6.
Perry Bible Fellowship
January 23, 2005
It’s not what you think. PBF is a wicked comic site. It’s so simple and so funny. It’s been awhile since an online comic has made me burst out laughing. The short films by the author are quite creative too.
Roald Dahl
January 11, 2005
I was perusing in the book store near work and discovered they had included actual English books in their English section. Previously, they had a bunch of books about learning English so you know none of them had any actual English in them. They did have some shitty manga that had been translated. I digress.
I found a book by my all-time favourite author, Roald Dahl. Not only had I found a book by him but it was a book that I had never read! The Umbrella Man is a compilation of short stories that was priced reasonably at 955 yen. I did not hesitate to pick it up. I don’t need to write how good this book is because every word written by this literary genius is amazingly wonderful. I’m halfway through it and it’s already replaced the book I was currently reading. His books were an essential part of my childhood.
By the age of 12, I was pretty sure I had found every book ever written by him (that was available in the elementary school library and three public libraries that I went to). I was aware of a few titles that I couldn’t find, such as the Revolting Rhymes and a book called something something Vicar. The point is, I thought I had a good idea of what he had written before his death in 1990.
Since one book’s been found, I’m sure there are plenty more stuff by him that I haven’t read. At his official site, there’s a big list of stuff I’ve never even heard of. I knew he had written some adult-oriented material (nothing gross but just not for kids). I think I’m going to have to start a Dahl collection in my bookcase. I’m pretty sure I still have about half a dozen of his books back in Vancouver somewhere.
Piccolo Curry House
December 21, 2004
In Namba Walk, one of the longer underground shopping areas in Osaka, there’s a curry restaurant that’s quite peculiar. For one thing, there are weird stained glass windows. The most striking thing is how narrow the damn place is. Once you squeeze through the two “entrances” and sit on a stool, you’ll be backed up against the wall. The counter is about 40-50 cm in width. Behind the counter is the girl who’ll take your order and serve you. The other side of the restaurant is probably about a meter away. You can literally reach and touch the other side of the restaurant.
This place, Piccolo Curry, offers fairly cheap meals. I had a karaage chicken with curry and rice for 580 yen while a katsu curry will fetch 680. They serve hot food quite quickly at reasonable prices. Don’t expect good curry – they serve Japanese curry which is devoid of anything remotely spicy.
If you’re not too tubby, you’ll have no trouble fitting inside. This is another quirky Japanesey establishment.
Note the shopper behind me, in the shopping area. That windowy looking thing IS the front of the restaurant. Picture taken by Mikey.
Dotombori Bridge
December 19, 2004
The Dotombori bridge in Shinsaibashi has always been a familiar site for locals and travellers in Osaka. It’s a weird place with many restaurants and shopping areas, many shoppers, many beautiful gals, and shady people coveting them. The area has been under renovation for the past few months. Today while crossing the temporary bridge, we noticed a new walkway open up alongside the river. The previous times I’ve walked by, the walkway had been obscured by barricades and blocks. Today, it was quite impressive how some thought and construction could turn the place into a decent looking area. I’m stoped.
This may become a nice place to come to after dinner to just relax. However the river is notorious for being disgusting. I hope they’ll put in as much effort with the river clean up as the construction.
While walking down there, you can’t help but notice just how many restaurants line the sides. Unfortunately these buildings were quite ugly. To match this new area, they’ll definitely need a bit of a facelift too.
MP3 -> Cell Phone
October 23, 2004
I think my first update after the previous will be one of benefit to the entire world. If you, like me, just bought yourself a nice Sony Ericsson SO506ic cell phone (see Docomo, or Sony Ericsson for more information), then congratulations! You’ve just got a neat little phone with a fairly decent camera for stills and videos, nice resolution screen, a nice springy flip, fun spinning dial control, and the best of all – the ability to listen to music on the go.
I had no trouble getting used to the control, layout, and navigation. Typing English can be a bit of a pain since it will display capitals first and you have to press * to change it to a lower case letter each time. Other than that, the controls are fairly intuitive.
I was quite excited about having a device to listen to music ever since my MD has been screwy and good MP3 players are fairly costly. I bought myself a 128 Memory Stick Duo and a memory stick card reader. Going over the manual, you’ll notice that the phone only takes ATRAC3 song formats. My first attempt was to download Sonicstage for Connect – the software that allows you to download songs from Sony’s online music store. That litttle program has an MP3 to ATRAC3 converter. I’ll save you the headache – it doesn’t work (I tried ATRAC3 on all bit rates, then ATRAC3 plus – no avail). To be fair, I only found the “Move” file function – I couldn’t “Check out” to the memory stick.
Looking deeper into the Sony page, I noticed they recommended the Sony brand card reader – at first I thought it was for profit reasons but then I noticed they package SonicStage 1.5 along with the reader. THIS is what you need.
I returned my generic reader and got the Sony one instead. Got home, installed the software, imported my music library – you’ll need to convert your files into ATRAC3 132 bit rate. Once this is done, go to “Record”, plug in your memory stick into the reader, select your songs, and “Check Out”.
Just plug in the memory stick into your phone and go to the music panel (press the camera shutter button as a shortcut) – the phone will read the card and display the first song. Press play!
Might I suggest Love Psychedelico? They’re the best Japanese band I’ve ever heard. Kumi the singer seductively sounds very much like a cool Sheryl Crow and the songs have a fused country, blues, pop influence. Very awesome.
Learning To Shut Up
March 05, 2004
One of the benefits of living in a country that predominantly does not speak your language is that even when you talk aloud in your native tongue, most, if not all people will not understand you.
In the past few months I’ve taken full advantage of this. Alongside my chums and cronies, I will speak whatever I want whenever I want, uncaring about reactions or suitability of language. In short, I talk about the dirtiest, nastiest, most politically incorrect things anytime I want and none are wiser.
Last night after some secret shopping (tee hee) with some friends, we went and had some Mexican food. This restaurant is a little place located in an old building in the middle of Shinsaibashi. It’s on the eight floor. There are two sets of stairs in this building. Someone was thinking when they built this building – you’d think with two sets of stairs, the chances of fire fatalities would be very low. Sadly, being jackasses they are, the tenants in this entire building leave their shit in the stairs. I looked into both stairways and should a fire break out on the lower floors, I’m pretty sure I would be burnt to ashes faster than a cigarette.
I digress as usual.
This restaurant caters to the foreign crowd, specifically, the English-speaking crowd. This is something I had to keep in mind all night because me being me, I started conversations about tits, my lovely ass, embarrassing stories of old, and all sorts of stuff I wouldn’t be caught dead speaking about in an Earl’s or The Keg. Yet talking about inappropriate dinner table topics is so much fun especially when you’re munching on BBQ wings and downing a margarita (don’t ask why they have BBQ wings in a Mex dig). Luckily we were a bit late to start dinner so no one was really in the restaurant.
Towards the end, a couple of the caucasian persuasion came in and sat behind our table. Oblivious to the fact that I could hear them speaking English, we continued our rather interesting but perverted conversation. It was not until one of the girls, who will remain anonymous, asked the boys in a fairly loud voice,
Do you like big hard tits or small soft tits?
At this point common sense snapped back into me and I hushed this friend. We all had a few giggles and continued our conversation in a quieter volume. Neither me nor the other guy answered this question because it was weird… I mean… how “hard” did she mean? Like concrete slab hard or bicycle helmet styrofoam hard? It was too weird even by my fucked up standards.
Purple… Monkey… Dishwasher
December 16, 2003
I’ve been neglecting my little site lately but I will not apologize. It is my site. Let’s just blame it on a lack of news and effort. I’ve been having a pretty relaxing little while. I’m just catching up on Japanese class and laundry piles and bits of correspondence and the such. I’ve been trying to avoid the weather because it is god awful cold now.
Anyway, I put up a picture of the temple that’s near my house. I took a dozen pictures there and I think this came out the best – that is, it was the least blurry and had the neatest lighting. Looking back though, I wish I took it at a faster shutter speed because the leaves on the trees are too blurred… not the effect I was looking for. Also, a new webcam. I couldn’t think of what to ‘cam so I just snapped a pic of good ol’ me. Dennis said it was the first time he had seen me in a year when we webcammed on messenger. So, here I am! It’s been noted that I’m the splitting image of Keanu Reeves a la Matrix. It’s true you know!
Yet another empty update today. I promise that when the first interesting thing happens, I’ll be here to write about it.
EDIT—
Actually I do have some things to say. Firstly, doom3.com, oh man… drooling sexual appetite increasing.
Second, I saw The Last Samurai on Saturday and i absolutely loved it. Tom Cruise was a minor character in the movie, the big star was Ken Watanabe, who played Katsumoto. Mr. Watanabe’s presence on screen was about 50,001 times stronger than that of Tommy boy. He is my new hero. Not only is he the embodiment of COOL, he was bald in the movie and still looked cool. As a man suffering from a receding hairline, I feel a bit better that bald men such as Watanabe can still be sexy and awesome. Oh man I so want to be a samurai now and cut shit with swords. Oh yeah, they had ninjas in the movie too. If only they took out Tom Cruise and made the whole movie about Ken Watanabe and the samurai folk, I would’ve watched it twice in succession.
There
October 28, 2003
I guess the new online thing might happen to be There. I read about it on a few webpages and it sounded kinda interesting. The screen shots look cool – flying around in a hover board looking at the nice scenery has always been a crazy fantasy of mine. Supposedly this metaverse is supposed to do what The Sims tried but failed miserably.
In The Sims Online, you build a house and maybe a store and then you walk around talking to people. That was about it. In There, there are supposed to be more interaction, more personified actions such as winking and crap, and more crap to buy. You have to convert real money to Therebucks which sounds like a shitty idea but for some reason, it may work. Depending on how expensive stuff is in the game, people might spend a few bucks to get cool gear for their avatar. People spend thousands on crap in Everquest and Diablo.
Apparently, they’re also trying to attract girls into the game because where there are girls, guys will soon follow. The reverse ain’t true though.
Anyway, I probably won’t try this game because it lacks bombs and guns and aliens and cool shit but if anyone of you do try, let us know how it is!
Ok, I gotta admit – the video clip looks pretty impressive and I’m tempted to try it out. I lack a lot of interaction while I’m sitting around my apartment at night. I will totally play this game if you guys (my real friends) all play. I’d rather not go online and meet other people. That’s boring.
Feel Like It
July 05, 2003
Since everyone else has done so, I will create a reading masterpiece for your viewing, and sometimes sexual, pleasure.
I haven’t been updating about interesting things because almost nothing interesting happens in my little foreign life now. I’m actually glad for that because I’ve been through interesting times and I always just feel choked and angry and sad when I count all the jellybeans at the end of the night. I live my simple little English teacher life with my one and only and enjoy the simplicities that keep me grounded
I saw my first ever live baseball game in Japan. The Hanshin Tigers were playing the Chunichi Dragons and somehow Eri managed to buy tickets at the game when it was a sold out game. The baseball fields seem a little smaller than the North American counterpart but that’s the only thing that doesn’t measure up. The stadium was sold out as mentioned two sentences ago. That’s 50,000 people. About 5% of the stadium dressed in blue – the Chunichi colours. The rest were ALL Hanshin fans. Now the thing about them is, if you take 50,000 football (soccer) fans right out of the craziest, most rowdy countries (you know, England, Italy, France, etc etc), made them speak Japanese, take out the rioting, you’ll have Hanshin fans. They were making noise throughout the whole game. Every time a Tiger came up to bat, they sang a personalized song with their name in it (it was the same song all over but with different names). Everytime the Dragon’s pitcher was pulled, they sang some sort of “Sayonnara” song. It was one eye opening experience. The Tigers won 14-3 – the Tigers are kicking ass this season and they’re not taking names. One fella, Hiyama Something, hit a “cycle” – that is, 1 single, 1 double, 1 triple, and 1 homerun. I forgot what we North Americans call it – it might be “cycle” too
Tonight while coming home from watching the Matrix Reloaded, we heard a lot of noise and music coming from near my apartment. It turned out to be the local 29th Annual Suminoe festival, hosted right in the shitty soccer field about 1 minute away. It was essentially like those stupid Night Markets found in Chinatown but a lot more people. I swear the whole of Suminoe came out. There were a lot of stands that sold cheap food and drinks. I got a free fan and we bought small refreshments. Very fun – got to see a whole bunch of kids dressed in yukatas and kimonos.
Eri and I are planning a small vacation come September. We’re sort of thinking of going to Korea. It basically boils down to how much time we have and of course, how much moolah. I haven’t been saving money since coming here. Sucks. Come to think of it, I’ve never saved money in my life – I’ll always blow it on something stupid. I need to become less materialistic but it’s so damn hard when I live in the land of gadgets and aesthetics. The sad part is, I’m not even buying any gadgets – it’s just going out that’s draining. Blech
And that’s all I can think of right now.
Non-Work Work
June 16, 2003
Well, work is becoming busy. Actually, I think it’s fair to say that being busy is the norm now. 7 today and they all showed up. Those bastards. The nerve of them, to pay hard-earned money and then show up!?!?!
The interesting part came after work. Me and a couple others went to this place called Shakey’s Pizza. It’s this shitty little pizza parlour smack in the middle of Shinsaibashi (a busy hub of shoppers and all sorts of shit). They had pizza tabehodai for 600 yen. Tabehodai means all-you-can-eat. I mentioned about this yesterday. The pizza is not too bad for the price – it filled me up even though the crust is super thin and the toppings are carefully grafted on. They had interesting flavours to say the least. Still, I enjoyed it because I got to ask a friend some interesting questions that I wouldn’t normally ask other people.
After both of them left, I was stuck in Shinsaibashi alone so I decided to go to this English Cafe place I saw in some ads. The place wasn’t exactly a cafe. It was more like an apartment with chairs, tables, sofas, and a lot of drinks, freezers, ice, and that sort of stuff. Of course, at first the gaijin girl thought I was Japanese and started to tell me about the covers/fees. It wasn’t until I said, in perfect English, “I was under the impression that native English speakers get in for free.” Ahhh, everything clarifies at this point. I take my seat with these two older Japanese people and begin a nice chit chat. It was about 5:30 and there were only the 4 of us. At about 8, when I left, I think there were almost 20 people there. I met one dude also from Vancouver. The people were divided into beginner, intermediate, and advanced tables and just chatted away. I noticed the native speakers speaking a lot which was interesting… I thought they’d want to let them speak more. So when I was at the table alone, I just asked them general get-ta-know-ya questions to get them talking. It was really fun. It was like work but not really – it was meaningful and personable. For the first time ever, I felt like a teacher.
I’m definitely gonna go back to that place – lotsa human interaction there. Also, I haven’t met many people in Osaka so it’s a great opportunity. Yeah.
And Now For A Proper Update
December 12, 2002
It has been a very busy three days. Maki and Yuki came to Osaka, from Vancouver and Shikoku respectively and I hung out with for two days. I also saw two other guys whom I haven’t seen in ages. One guy, Taka, left for Japan around the time I got together with Eri – that’s over 2 years ago. Another guy, Ryota, I can’t remember when but maybe around last summer maybe. The first day we didn’t really do much but eat and go to a karaoke place. That place has these wireless pad dealies where you can search songs very easily, even for a guy who can’t really read japanese that well. It was a great idea. They only gave us two of those things for the 6 of us so we had a few regular books too. Dinner was great but I was falling asleep by the end.
Like I said yesterday, yesterday we went to USJ. It was awesome! It was way more fun than anything I could ever expect. The place is absolutely huge. The rides had all the videos and sounds from the american one except all voices are dubbed into Japanese. All the rides were pretty old though – I remember Back to the Future came out a long time ago. Still, since it has been more than a decade since I’ve been to the American one, all these rides except Jaws are new to me. They weren’t exactly scary. The closest thing to scary was Jurassic Park – there was a big drop at the end. It was pretty good. We got wet in three of the attractions. It was around 6 degrees or so. You do the math. We went to Backdraft to warm up. What surprised me the most were the prices. Although the stuff was much more expensive than the outside, the markup on things weren’t as high as they would be in a North American themepark. I almost felt I was saving money by going there.
I took a slew of pictures but my digital camera is refusing to turn on now. That’s just fucking wonderful. It has finally bit the dust, taking with it pictures of the biggest tourist place I’ve been to since the Eiffel Tower. I think I’ll have to buy one of those compact flash connectors. Probably faster anyway. Bitch camera.
Strange Look?
July 19, 2002
My page has been down all day yesterday and/or Blogger wasn’t blogging. At first I thought it was something wrong with Blogger (it was), then they fixed it. Then it was something wrong with my server’s ftp. Then they fixed it. All the while, I thought something was wrong with my page’s html because that’s pretty much what the error said. So I changed it. I got bored so I just used one of Blogger’s templates for now. Finally it works.
The Eatery
Eri and I went to this Japanese restaurant called The Eatery yesterday. People at work always raved about it so I decided to give it a try. I’m sure glad I did. It’s not what you expect out of a Japanese restaurant. Firstly, it’s quite westernized – decor, atmosphere, location, even the menu (they serve things like nachos, and our chicken karaage came with a caesar salad).We ordered 4 things that cost us $35 but we ended up bringing half of the stuff home because the portions were huge. Not only was quantity good, the taste was even better. The sushi had a “Eat Me, I’m Fresh!” taste to it while the tempura said, “Behold My Golden Fried Beauty!” The chicken karaage wasn’t as good as it should be, it only said, “I May Remind You of Church’s, but hey, I Come With a Caesar Salad!” Finally, the yakisoba said to Eri, “I Am Really Good Yakisoba” but to me it said something different, “I’m a Fairly Good Yakisoba. I’m A Little Too Sweet but Your Girlfriend Likes It So Shutup!”
Their okonomiyaki is supposed to be good too. Try saying okonomiyaki 10 times quickly.
Oh yes, The Eatery is located at 3431 W. Broadway, near Dunbar.
I’m going to say some stuff about Mozilla now
April 04, 2000
Not to be out done by the other webpages (Dennis, Jesse, Justin), here are my words about it. I like Mozilla. It’s my favorite ice cream flavour. I really like mozilla in those gelato stands because usually it’s creamier and has a nicer flavour to it. But storebrand mozilla is good too. It’s usually not as creamy but the flavour is still in there.
People who like mozilla are usually stereotyped as being boring and unwilling to try out new things. They may be partially right but mozilla flavour has something that the other flavours can’t do – expansions. Yup you can upgrade your mozilla desert in so many ways! You can put it on pie (no one ever puts strawberry flavour on pies), put it on fruit, put chocolate syrup on it (mmm), put some whipped cream (double mmm). There’s a desert at Death By Chocolate that is several scoops of ice cream: mozilla, strawberry and chocolate, and sometimes mango ice cream too, and it’s covered by this thin toasted pastry. It’s so good. Mozilla is the king of ice cream flavours.
So on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being bad and 10 being good, I would say mozilla is an 8.
