November 26th 4:45pm

Hey everyone, today is another link dump of stuff i've bee acculmulating over the week.

Chevy Tahoe Ads - So chevy did this neat thing where they let consumers make there

In the new Transformers live action movie, they have a stupid contract with an american car company so Bumblebee who was always a yellow beetle is some stupid sports car now. It's really stupid.

WoW birthcontrol - this is a cute little ad about how MMOs completely destroy relationships...
Lion slayings - And this is just completely horrible, i mean christ, this defeats teh whole purpose of wildlife protection

Recent ridiculous conversation at work

November 24th 6:59am

Well, i waited in line for a wii in front of target this morning. Today is black friday, the day after thanksgiving where all the stores open at ridiculous early times and have ridiculous sales to kick off the the xmas season. Well, my original plan was Best buy at 5am, then target at 6am then ebgames at 7am... Well when i got there at 4am the line for bestbuy was from bestbuy all the way to the target on the other side of the strip mall. If you were to be walking from the end of the line to the best buy it'd have taken you about 5 min. I didn't have my camera, but it was sure a sight to see. Anywho, so i gave up on best buy and decided to just get in line for target. Which was cool, i was the 7th person line, and there was only 2 people ahead of me who had planend ot get a wii. Interestingly enoguh, the guy in front me, from Harvard, got up at the ass crack of dawn to just get a xmas tree... he vehemently claimed it was a really nice tree... (yeah me and everyone else in teh line thought he was nuts) Anywho, i run to the electronics section and bam, i'm running around up and down the isles, i'm not seeing the wii, so i ask, and they are like no we have no wiis... and i'm like... fucking A... so i basically came home disgruntled forging ebgames cause i never foudn out what time they opened...

Luckliy in hindsight, that guy from harvard wasn't going for this mess of a tree, that would only be offered at KMart AND in the U.S... like what kind of crack monkey thought this shit up?

November 19th 7:48am

So i tried to get a Wii this morning... little did i know that it was goign ot be this popular, show up at 6:30am this morning and there is already a huge huge line... The store i went to supposedly only had 69 units, and whatever they had they sold them quick, (they handed out tickets) But like only half the line walked away with tickets. So, i suspect it will be a sell out day for nintendo. Wonder how many units ther are though... Anywho, rumors have it that the next shipment of wiis will be available in stores on black friday. Also, more PS3s will be shipped each week until the end o fthe year supposedly. I was under the conception the next ps3 shipment will be next year. Oh well, no matter.

Check out the console sales in japan for last week. I find it amsuing that a console that has been out for more than ayear has sold 150K units in 1 week alone. Interesting to see that there is over 6 million DS sold (if you combine the too)Poor regular DS though... if the lite had been release 1 week later it probably coulda broken the million mark.

Nov 5-12 console sales injapan

November 17th 12:24am

Hehe with th erelease of the ps3 tomorrow mornign in teh us, a friendly tirade about sony was sent to me by one of my co-workers. It's pretty cool, sums my feelings exactly...

And in other news... apparantly for "some" religion this is their wedding vows

The minister then tells the groom: “Now, (groom's name), girls need clothes. And food and Tender happiness and frills. A pan, a comb, perhaps a cat. All caprice if you will, But still They need them. Do you then provide? Do you?”

“Hear well, sweet <bride's name> for promise binds. Young men are free and may forget. Remind him then that you may have necessities and follies, too.”

The m inister then tells the bride, “Know that life is stark and often somewhat grim, and tiredness and fret and pain and sickness do beget a state of mind where spring romance is far away and dead.”

(friend's commentary So basically, "Dude. Get your wife a cat. And hon, yeah, he might forget he's married...you'll have to live with it." )

Hell all the ps3s are going to sell out tomorrow in like 4 seconds... question is will all the wiis sell out on sunday? I hope so after i get mine :D I geuss tomrrow will find out really how many ps3 shipped ot eh U.S. the sony stated 400k or the analyst's 150k-200k.

November 15th 7:24am

So now that my friends ... bah no time... i'll haev to come back to tis.. anyways enjoy the links...

Random links of the day:
Paper Art - This guys makes amazing art ... out of sheets of paper and here are some pics
Clear your donwload History - this guy was doing an interview and check out what's in his download history!
Remarks on Disruptive Technology - article on disruptive technologies...

November 12th 4:41pm

Hey, everyone check this out it's a voice translator of english to japanese. The concept is pretty simple and not new. I myself of thought about doing it this way, that way being using voice recognition change the what you hear into text on teh little pda device and then use a language translator to change that to japanese and then you text-to-speech engines to say it back. Now it's nice ot see this all in one package, but first havin ga spearte gadget for somethign that could easily be something you downlaod into your pda and second, everyone knows those text translators are horrible. So it'll spew out nonsensical japanese, in some random level of politeness which will be completely awkward. Anywho, still interesting that this is finally showing up in small devices. The big issue with non-trained speech recognition and such is it requires alot of CPU power, which coupled with new algorithms (probably simliar to those used for cell phone calls) should be getting mroe accurate.

Those of you who don't know the reason why cellphones are horrible at sending music or other stuff not voice is that compression techonology is specifically designed to isloate the voice and then just compress that. So when there is noise it soudns liek crap and such. It's basically a backwards karaoke filter in which instead of removing just the voice it keeps only the voice. Anywho, just food for thought.

Oh mognet is a great site for japanese music videos as well as translations for tons of japanese songs.

Updated: CHeck ou tthis skit from SNL, Lazy Sunday

November 12th 3:04am

Well nothing much in the last few days... I geuss yeah for america we are finally seemignly free of our dictator of sorts, bush will have alot more difficuly getting stuff done his way for the next 2 years. Hmm... i was going to say something, but i completely forgot... oh well nothing you can do about that i geuss. I geuss i'll catch you guys all later.

November 10th 8:02am

Blah blah blah - just noticed i forgot oto link one of my avi properly as it was still pointed to a dummy image. Anywho, it's a video of when everyone took me out for a beer on my last day at the nearby lake. Other than that i'm truckign along. I did discover this DivX site last night that has all these videos, just select download and rename teh file with an avi extension and bam opens right up in media player. We ar etalking full resolution videos, not the crap quality on youtube. Downloaded so many videos espicialy from Otsuka Ai who is this chick that apparntly did 5 of my favorite songs and i didn't even know it, thought they were all different chicks.

I'd just like to point out that apparantly EVERYONE who looks at my site from japan is still using IE6.0 to view my website... Get on teh boat peopel and get firefox, or AT LEAST get IE7.0 with teh tabs and so the images on my site don't have the boxes around them...

November 7th 10:52pm

No comment, i'm a goof. I forgot ot upload the actual paintball pictures to my site. Anywho, they shoudl be working now. I just picked up teh american version of Elite Beat Agents (EBA) and it's pretty damn good... Hard kinda, breezed through the first 14 missions and got to 15/20 and have done 6 times and still can't beat it... it's adamn long too... My only issue is that the songs suck hard core. Going to see what i can do to get my hands on the japanese version. Oh i also picked up a webcam today too, so if you want to chat over skype or something drop me a line. Hmm... let's see... Oh yeah, in my photo gallery, if teh image is particular blurrly and dark and generally looking horrible, try clicking on teh big image, it is probably a movie file so you need ot download it. I encoded it in DivX.

Bah another night of not studying japanese, no freaking idea where the hell my time is going, i've only had about 4 hours of game playign time since i got back from japan 10 days ago. So it's not like i'm wasting it on that. Well i'll jsut keep chugging along and hope for the best.

oh link dump... Cute abandoned taiwanese cats - a great japanese song that captures the feeling of old okinawaen stories

November 6th 10:13pm

So i just got some pictures from my paintballing trip this weekend. So i'm going to throw them up here. Here's the ref giving use the rules. I'm the one in the Red mask, my boss is the guy to my right with teh green beenie.

This is my manager and me taking a defense position behind a house while we are pinned down by 3 guys from the opposing team.

This is me standing tall and getting ready to take a shot over the top of the house. Nothing like stickign your head up, having ot find the enemy fast, shoot and then duck as the paint balls come flyign in to where my head just was.

This is my leaning over to peek around the corner to get a better angle at one of the guys on teh other team. You can't really tell from teh picture, but i've got one leg completely extended, kinda lunged out there shoot and then use my power leg to get back to the safety of the house.

Last but not least, everyone's dirty mug...

November 6th 12:44am

Well, life has gotten back to normal, i'm not deahtly ill anymore, just a lagging cough. My fish tank, all teh fish that would have died have already died. i think i'm left with 3-5 fish out of the 40 or so i had starting on last monday. geuss this is a good oppurtunity to get the tank back under control and then to slowly populate it with fish so it isn't as much of a hassle as it was before. Man, 80 fish in a 55 gallon tank is alot of work. so much algae...

Anywho, i was busy this past weekend. Spent the whole week freaking out cause i couldn't think in japanese at all, like zen zen... I thought i had lost all my japanese, but i got a chance to speak with one of my friends on sat. night and BAM no problems. I guess i'm just totally immeresed in english right so there is no oppurtunityfor me to see that i know japanese. It's kinda like a hidden skill, like not something you would think i could if you didn't know me. Anywho, this week (as in monday) is when i officially start sudyign like a madman to learn all the stuff i need to learn for my test in Dec. I'm going ot try to write something in my japanese blog so that people know what's going on and so i can work on using those new grammatical structures.

Oh before i forget, i finished doing week 14 as well and posted it up. Like i said on my Okazaki links page.... Don't film yourself while drunk, singing and dancing... it's just an all around bad combination.

November 2nd 9:57pm

November 1st - 1:21am

Ha, for all of those of you that didn't believe their are white or chinese jamaicans, check out this guy. His accent is genuine as far as i and my family can tell so enjoy white jamaican

In other news i was adding a chemical to my fishtank when the cap fell off the bottle and all the chemical entered teh fishtank. Even after i did 4water changes, most of my fish died...

October 30th - 7:12pm

October 30th - 8:16am - American Time

October 23rd - 1:20am Japan Time

October 20th - 2:51am Japan Time

October 15th - The country side

October 4th - Tokyo second time

what a shitty return trip, i missed the good shinkansen by 5 min. After that the last train to okazaki, i don't know what happened, but the train stopped halfway there and sat in Obu for 20-30 min. I was supposed to get into okazaki at 12:41, but it's already 1am and i don't know how close i am, not very close i think. And to boot, it just started raining too, so now i get to ride home in teh rain

On a good note i met with the Teranishi family and they took me out ot shabu shabu place in tokyo. It was amazing, 5 course shabu shabu and the first time i'd ever eaten shabu shabu in Japan, it was great!

October 2nd 10:16pm - Tokyo first time

Well i went into Tokyo for the evening for dinner with the Sawada family. It was great because they are people who know me best out of everyone in japan because i lived with them for almost 2 months on my frist study abroad trip to Japan. I learned that since they hosted me, they have hosted 3 other foreign exchange students, each having completely different personalities; the last person being in japan specifically as an extended vacation. I did learn something else though, the sawadas' commented that my japanese appeared to be at the same level as one of the other students they housed, but more importantly, to me at least, they said i was the most serious person about learning japanese of all the students they've hosted so far. At that time i lived and breathed japanese, and now i'm a little more lax, but i'm more serious about speaking in japanese than my compatriots around me here. (not that means much, i've spoken more english on this time around then any other time). And that i also was the most serious about learning about Japanese lifestyle and culture. To tell the truth its like reading a fantasy novel and going "ooh!" everytime you read somethign about how the fantasy lifestyle is different than what i'm used to.

Today i found out that the word for "success" is also the word for having "sex". Leave it to a langauge where you talk indirectly to have so many words with double meanings. I find it quite amusing, though the "review/revenge" word is still my favorite.

October 9th 9:48pm

October 1st 12:50am - Hiraizumi

Well today was interestnig, headed off to hiraizumi to check two of its famous temples. Chosouji and Musoji famous for its beutiful buddist garden/lake arrangement in which 2 dragon boats currently reside. Which i mind you took consinderable effort to photograph as one of the caretakers was busy emptying the boats of the water from the rain from the past night.

Well my trip is over, alot of traveling, my legs hurt alot. Wish it was better organized, wish my friend had come along, would have been alot more fun. So i used my hyatt points to stay at the gran hyatt in tokyo for a night, which was really nice. I got cocktails while i was being checked in at the special front desk on the 10th floor. It was really nice, everyone in there was at least doubel my age except for the 1 baby. Check the pic section for pics... However, while taking my camera out of my bag, i dropped it and broke the lens cover that protect the lens as well as controlling when the camera is off or on. I will have to see fi i can get that fixed while i'm here in japan as i'm really hoping to continue using this camera for candid shots after i get a new camera. So some weird, saw alot of people during this trip, that in fact was the best part of my entire trip.

My current thinking is i only have 1 more month left before i return to the U.S. That in itself is wierd, my friends here say I talking about going back to america like I grew up here in Japan, and then moved to america. Maybe my friends are right that i'm really a japanese at heart. You know, i still don't know what it is about japan that i even like, i think it's how everyone respects everyone else, adn probably most iportantly, speaking in japanese. It's fun, very fun, it's weird, if you were brought up with only knowing a single language and then get to the point where you can have a real conversation about serious shit that is important to you, thinking entirely in another langauge; it's wierd, someitmes i say shit and i'm like, what th ehell did just say, and i translate it to english only to discover that's what i wanted to say. It's hard, talking about this experience, i've had it before, when i came ot japan before, but it's at ac different level now. ANywho, my train stop is coming, so i better get ready to get off.

September 29th 8:25pm - Sendai

So in Japan you can use your cell phone as a visa card/id card by swiping your phone over a pad liek the mobile quick pass. You can even use it as an electronic ticket ot board a plain. Also, go nintendo, apparantly their new pokemon for the DS allows you talk over the internet via the DS. Which was totally unexpected and nice feature they added.

October 6th 1:30am Japan Time

September 28th 10:30pm Japan Time - Oirase

Well Oirase was beautiful, I only wish I had scheduled more time so that i could have done the 3 hour hike to see all the waterfalls... In fact i could have now that i think about it, damn. When i moved my schedule around i diddn't reale it gave me more time in Oirase. Well it's ok, I'm really pushing myself getting up at 6-7am every morning to do stuff and cactch trains. But i have to admit if you have the tiem, traveling around by train is great.

Japan is wonderful, and this be the one thing from when i Lived in Jamaica, i would watch the sunrise with my grandmother every morning as the sun came up over the montain. For some reason, i like being able to see mountains for some reasons, i don't know why. Never felt that way about the beach which i've met some people that just have to see the ocean. And Japan is the best place for someone who loves mountains. Tohoku has mountains all over th place, yet the most beautifiul place i've seen thus far was on the shinkansen from Nagoya to Tokyo. I don't konw the area, but it was in a very steep mountain range where the clouds rolled off the mountains like in the all the movies. Anywho, i'm in sendai today and tomorrow and i've already pfilled up my large memory card on my camera and all i have left is my 128mb card to last me 1.5 more days of intense sight-seeing, i wonder if it'll be enough.

One more thing. The Araya family coulnd't stop mentioning how my japanese has improved. The key thing i've learn that most of the common japanese grammar is contained in the beginner courses. Once finishing that you start learning more words, kanji, keigo and some of the subtle japanese forms. Which is probably why i'm doing better. I seem to do fine when i lead a conversaions, and do poorly when asked specific questions, but that is something i can see myself improving in. Man i wish i spent more time with japanese people over the last 3 months, i'd have improved my Japanese alot more. But, oh well, i'm still here for another month, i'm hoping my japanese will improve alot over the next month. And if i'm lucky and my friend from sapporo gets accepted into the language school in ths tataes we'll get a chance to speak on a regular beases, hopefully in japaense!

OK it's late i'm going to go study... OH i'm really fucking tanned from the last 3 month in okazaki, i should take a picture to show you how tanned i am now!

October 4th 7:00pm Japan Time

I jsut got back form my trip throught Japan. I kept a paper and pen journal and will be making posts to here when i get the chance. I've placed my sapporo entries below and have uplaoded my sapporo pics so check out the gallery too!

September 27th 7:20pm Japan Time Sapporo, Hokkaido

Well i spent the evening hanging with my 2nd host family in Sapporo, the Araya family, with Takahide and his wife keiko and their daughter Kana and her husband Seichi. We had a great talk about how wedding customs and how they vary from prefecture to prefecture in japan. Apparently, in japan when a women gets married the man pays a dowry to the woman's parents. However, Hokkaido is special that the guests pay an entry fee of around $130/person to be able to attend the wedding. Whereas in the rest of Japan guests don't pay for anything. In nagoya, the woman's family pays a dowry to the man's family. So the trick is to find a woman to marry in Nagoya and then get married in Sapporo! ;)

Today i head off to Tohoku, I'll be there in another 3 hours or so. Hopefully my schedule isn't too rushed...

September 25th 9:40am Japan Time Sapporo, Hokkaido

So saturday i spent the afternoon with a Saiko's friend talking over a cup of coffee at a coffee shop. After which my friend came and met up with us after she finished work. We went out to dinner and had indian food which was pretty good. We then went out bowling, i'd like to note this is my second time to going bowling in the last weeks and leave it to the japanese to only have big ball bowling. Before now, the last time i can remember bowling is with my auntie yoala on my 13th or so birthday. I think i lost miserably to the two girls... but i can't remember ;)

On Sunday i spent the day with a friend of the first host family i stayed with the kanagawa family. it was great seeing them again. Kaito is 9yo now and otoya is 10yo now. Still the same as i remember from 3 years ago, just bigger. I spoke with their mom alot, which was great for me cause it seemed like she was speaking at her normal speed, which is really really fast. Which is great, cause i think i could understand most of what she, as to 3 years prior when i had much trouble. Once Fumitoshi, the father returned from work we went to Tooyako, which is hokkaido's largest lake. It's actually the top of a an old extinct volcano, but the water was very pretty, a beautiful shade of blue that reminded me of swimming in the beach in Mobay in Jamaica.

So 3 years ago, i gave Kaito a Doraemon backpack, well he STILL uses it today! Isn't that great. i'm really happy to have been able to give someone something their were able to use for 3 years. Conversely, i've been using the the handichief the nakagawa family gave me 3 years ago ;)

Today i go back to go to the Sapporo beer factory with Saiko in chitose with another friend of hers. So because of that saiko lucks out again in not having to practice speaking english, which is fine by mine, the more japanese the merrier.

September 23rd 8:30am Japan Time Nagoya Airport

September 23rd 1:35am Japan Time Okazaki

Well as i cleaned out my room to move into a new dorm, and as i packed to go to Hokkaido i have this overwhelming sense that a chapter of my life has just closed. The feeling can be best described as when you moved out of your dorm room each year during college. Like a sense of accomplishment, loss, friends separating, and a new life beginning, yet some of the old continuing. This is pretty mushy stuff, outside my usual diatribe of useless sputtering's of my mouth. Well i'm sure once & awhile breaks the repetitive feeling.

As i walked back to my room after dropping stuff off at my friends room, instead of my usual riding hard to get to the top of the hill as fast as i could, i decided to stop and walk my bike. it might have been so i didn't break into a sweat, who knows. It might have also have been because i had this feeling, this "ii kanji" as it is said in japanese. This empty road with its single visible streetlight. It was very photographic, but as i say that, i felt it best to leave such as it is and just enjoy the moment. One of those things you can't capture so why spoil the moment by trying? Plus if you spent to much time trying to catch everything on film, you miss the real experience that is there and all you are left with is the image and not the feeling. Well, with that and my flight being in 5 hours i'm going to sleep. 1 week w/o computer access, this should fun. I need this getaway from my getaway. Sounds funny, but its true. It'll be good to see all my old friends.

September 21st 8:15pm Japan time

For such a supposedly sexually repressed society, japan has some interesting outlets for for their frustation. Check out this story on the sport called "Air sex" that was in the newspaper here. But basically like air guitar. Today was my last day of class, and tomorrow is our gradution ceremony and thne i'm off ot hokkaido and tohoku for a week so there won't be any posts. However they'll be tons of pics when i get back i hope.

September 20th 12:22am Japan Time

Ahh so i was bumping around on teh USGS site (basically lists all earthquakes in teh last 7 days) and decided to look up how big the earthquake i was in in Hokkaido was 3 years agos ince the japanese use teh same scale, but leave off the decimal... Which i don't get cause the differnce between a 8.0 and 8.1 is a factor of 10 or something. Anywho... here's the info for the quake i was in AND the after that came 90 min later... Mind you teh time is a littele off cause it's in GMT time i believe... but it happened at around 3ish int he morning if i rememebr correctly. I was about 100 miles northwest of the quakes epicenter... but luckily on teh other side of a huge mountain chain so it was a 6.0ish in my area...

SEP 25  19:50  8.3  HOKKAIDO, JAPAN REGION.
SEP 25  21:08  7.4  HOKKAIDO, JAPAN REGION.

Septemember 16th 1:13am Japan Time

So some converation about week 8 gallery. So me, Kan-san, ho-san, and alex-san wen to the beach that was recommened from teh student services. Well the town was Hazu, and there were 3 stops and there was a map i couldn't read that had a whole bunch of nifty icons on this oe stop and i thoguht this must be where all the shit is. So we get off make it down to the beach and notice it's a fishing port... so we start walking along the road and run into a old man who we ask where the beach is and he says it is basically really far away. He then proceeds to laugh a little and then imforms us that, even though it was 92 that day, all the beaches close on August 31st. Well that is just bullshit... So we headed back to teh shitty beach that most peopel go to Gamagori. Well, gamagori was the same, all the beaches closed on August 31st. So after all our traveling we found no beach and jsut went to a local shrine and looked around. And this was only saturday...

Septemeber 15th 11:57pm Japan Time

So this week was.. yeah... busy. My roommate Kan returned home this morning, kinda sad. My room is big and empty now as i'm not sharing it with anyone. Ho san also left this week. Ho san was only here for a month but we hung out alot with each other so he's someone else that'll be missed. And again i'll re-iterate that this is one thing about this program, since peopel can come in 2 week increments, there is very high turn-over so you can make good friends, but then they leave. It's very hard. Anywho, with that being said, this week was amazing, and though i had to sacrifice my japanese study time so that i could hang out with my friends on the last week they are around, it was well worth it.

This week included a a mad dash to karaoke at 2am in the pouring rain to get int here befor eit closed at 3, and not beign let in. Followed by crashign at Denny's till 4am. (note denny's here serves mostly japanese food so it's really weird). I had a test the following day, so teh 4am thign was rough. Then the following day hanign out with everyone till 2am shooting the shit. Well the following day we actually went and did karaoke for 6 hours and brought our own alcohol, here are the pics from that. Followed up by shooting the shit in the common room again till 2am. Then on thursday, i had another sayonara party with my class where we all wen tout to karaoke for 3 hours. I sung yatta with another guy and did the dance... no alcohol so in teh first 30 min. only 2 songs were song. After that i went back and hung out with judi, ho and kan san till midnight shooting the shit. Man i'm going to really miss those guys.

September 11th 9:32pm Japan Time

So apparantly Japanese people don't like killing moquitos with their bare hands, so here in japan you can buy an aerosol bug spray to kill mosquitos. Personally i think this is over doing and adding unwanted chemicals to the air for no reason. But to each their own.

So on the picture explanation you'll have to wait a little longer, i have a huge test on wednesday that is the same placement test i took when i came into yamasa. So it'll be a good marker to how much my japanese has improved over the last 3 months. So i'm kinda nervous as would anyone else in my situation i gather.

Oh, check out these new t-shirts and fabrics. Finally got LCDs embedded in the fabric now, i just know this is going ot be annoying in the near future with it embedded into couches in public places for advertising. could become kinda annoying.

September 11th 1:31am Japan Time

Just finished uploading my pictures from this weekend into gallery 8. Check em out, i'll be adding some comments later this week. Just a little busy cause my program officially ends next week.

September 5th 8:00pm Japan Time

So a little commentary on where japanese and american tv is different. For some weird reason, i still haven't figured this one out myself, but tv here in japan is really good. However, most of the shows show a few of the same 30 or so famous japanese actors. What i'd liek to include here is that in this pool of actors there are what the japanese called AV actresses. AV stands for Adult Videos. So you can see my confusion. These people would never be in the public poplight, let alone be on tv most of the time in various talk shows. Now another thing ot mention is japanese game shows. They're great, except they also pull from the same pool of actors. So this i don't quite understand, here we have actors and famous... they're rich already. And yet, now we have game shows where they can win money and i'd like to mention here that unlike in america where this money would go to charities, the money here goes straight to the star.

September 4th 10:19pm Japan Time (added to end)

Well, i apologize that i haven't updated this site in awhile. But to tell you the truth, being here for 2 months, alot of the stuff i see and do and now is nothing special, hence why i also don't have pictures. Like this past weekend i went and played pool with some friends of mine and then on sunday i had what is called Okinomiyaki which translates roughly into the food that everyone loves. It's basically cabbage i think with egg plus whatever else you want in there and you cook it yourself on a gridle and bam you're down. I usually get mochi, bacon, and double cheese... That shit is good...

Speaking of plans... i need to get off my ass and start actually figuring out where i'll be and where i'm staying for my big trip in 3 weeks. All my friends want to meet up with me and it's hard coordinating meeting with 4 different people in tokyo on one weekend and 4 different people in sapporo the following weekend.

Hmm.. notes here tell me i haven't mentioned another word that has dual meaning, that word is fukusyuu. This word means "review" as well as "revenge". Now, evertime i think about this relationship i think the japanese are very clever because, well, they're right.

Well hopefully i'll some more pictures for you come next week as the plan is to go to the beach on saturday and to an onsen in the mountains on sunday. Obviously i won't have pictures from inside the onsen, though if i did, it'd be all naked men anyways and most of you wouldn't want to see that.

(added)
So i was going over my homework and a sentence that i wrote directly translates as "this morning, on the train, an unknown person, my ass, touched (and i was happy!). So the sentence i wrote i forgot to use passive form of the verb which its use in japanese denotes somethign that happened that you feel bad about. So my sensei wrote on my homework, "you were happy that someone touched your ass?!" Japanese is such a dangerous language!

August 30th 10:07pm Japan Time

So a little update on the program i'm doing. I'm pretty frustrated by the fact that after studying japanese for somethign like 3 years worth of classes, i was placed at the top of the 3 lowest class of 10 classes. I mean, my vocabulary and particle usage is weak, however at the time i had no recollection of any japanese and i regained much of my japanese in the first few weeks, and have gotten rid of a few of my worst problems in my conversation... Heh, it was fun when i found out that i was basically saying the equivalent of "HEY YOU!" whenever i talked ot other people for the first 2 weeks... not to mention consistently talking in potential form (can eat, can drink) which is japanese also is very formal so that wasn't so bad...

Anywho, i came here with the hope of being able to take the level 2 exam, whihc certifies me in business level japanese, but i'm really far from that goal. Alot farther than i thought. Had i been placed in the class above mine i'd be in a much better place, but we'll never know. It's still kinda rough realizing you've studied this stuff before but you forget out to use it and how much you lost because i didn't study for awhile. And then realizing it'd take about at least a year of studying just japanese at this institute to even be able to start approaching any sort of fluency. Kinda of depressing to say the least. Anywho, off to study...

August 29th 10:10pm Japan Time

Test your japanese table manner fluency with this quick and dirty little test! Luckily i scored perfectly on this quick little test.

Well, the new counter i have on this page keeps track of where people are hititng my website from geographically in the world as well as what link brought them to my site. Anywho, my site has been popping up in some weird searches from google. From "complaints about yamasa" from a guy in canada to "free online japan girls massage parlor" from someone in India. Now, a little comment on that last search. No idea what the hell that guy is looking for, but he obviously doesn't know what the hell to search for cause i looked at these search results and boy there was nothing there even close to relating to this.

August 28th 8:23pm Japan Time

The japanese never cease to amaze me. Look what i found Smap - Super which is ... well i have no idea what this is... but it's funny as hell and definately out there. SMAP is this like band that has been around forever that everyone loves, kinda like aerosmith i think... but sing pop of course.

Here's japanese rap to go along with it... I'd just liek to point out that rap here is just rap, it has nothign about beating women, the ghetto, how they were raised, it's all very surreal, like rap, consored.

And one of the arcade games they have here. It's like DDR minus the dancing and what other neat thing about it, you only hear the melody and when you hit the note you actually make the maing part. So if you suck, it soudns horrible, but if you are good it sounds cool.

I also just uploaded my matrix video up onto youtube here

August 27 11:52pm Japan Time

heh.. one of these i'll have the time to throw this into a proper blog software... i've got the setup just got to do it. Anywho... for those of you who didn't know there is a Japanese language proficiency test called the JLPT that is held once a year on the first sunday in December all over the world. Well there are four levels of this test, and in proper asian fashion lvl 4 is the easiest and lvl 1 is the most difficult. Here is a quick overview of what is required for the tests to pass.

Needless to say the gap between lvl 3 and lvl 2 is.. uh... fucking ridiculous. And that total hours of study is total bullshit. Anywho, i passed the lvl 3 exam 3 years ago, and with that, there is little reason for me to take that test again, even though the class i was placed in here in japan basically goes over material that's in lvl 3. However, i'm going to try to bust my ass for that additional month that i'm here in japan with private tutors and then for the month when i'm back in the states before the exam and hopefully get myself up to the point where i can pass with like a 60%. Cause lvl 2 is really hard i really need to be here in japan for another 6 months and then i'd feel like i could pass lvl 2 no problem. But alas, the test is only offered once a year and you can only take one of the 4 exams offered.

It takes about 1.5 years for a taiwanese/korean/chinese person to become fluent in japanese and takes a westerners about 2-2.5 years to become fluent because the asianaic languages all use kanji so they come in with a huge advantage over the us westerners. Still upsetting to find out that y 4 years of japanese study could be summed in jsut 5 months of study here at this program, and that i'm repeating 2 months of jsut cuase i didn't score high enough to get into the next class.

Anywho, i really need to go find a lvl 3 and lvl 2 practice exam that i can take and see how well i do in level 3 and how close i am to level 2.

August 26th 10:30am Japan Time

So this link was on cnn today, this has to be both the cutest and saddest thing i've seen in a long time. Kitten Video

It's now official, i'm here for another month. I'll be returning at the end of Oct. I'm planning on having a welcome home/house warming party on the falling saturday, the first saturday of November.

August 25th 12:46am Japan Time

Just goes to show you that you can't make all the best moments by just yourself (you know this makes alot more sense in japanese "jibunde" then it does in english :P)

axehead: Crap!!!!!  It wasn't the power supply.  I think maybe the motherboard has bitten the dust.  Ordered a new one today.  /crosses fingers
frogs:I tried to tell ya you need full upgrade a few posts back.
axehead: Yeah I know  But I can't convince the significant other of that right now
ME: do a full upgrade of the significant other while you're computer is down... then you can upgrade your computer
axehead:Trip, you bad:)
pyro:Hosang has ho's in different area codes,  he is a stone pimp who can love and leave the ladies at the drop of the feather in his fedora.  

This problably isn't the least bit entertaining, but it was totally out of the blue in the midst of me studying my vocab for a test coming up on monday and was totally unexpected. Needless to say, it made my night. Man - yeah - people are cool, life is the people you surround yourself with. ^_^

August 22nd 7:18pm Japan Time

So last night i saw a tv show wher ekids send in questions about animals and the show tries to answer them. One of the questions was about sea otters. Now if you know nothing about these cute beasts, they spend alot of time floating on their backs with a rock on their chest that they bash seashells against while floating on their back to break open the shell. Well, some bright kid wanted to know what happens when you take the rock away from them what do they do. So, they went to an aquarium where they could take away the rock and geuss what the otters did. They bashed the seashells against the concrete siding of the tank they were kept in. But these otters are well trained, they actually go back into the pool and pick up all the broken seashells on the pool floor and then dump them into a bucket. Not to mention give the trainer a handshake after they recieved their treat. In other news, piglets will always feed from the same exact nipple from their mother. Mainly becuase they go to the nipple that gives them the most milk to make them stronger so the strongest piglet gets way bigger/strong faster than his brothers...

August 20th 5:43pm Japan Time

Last night was interesting, i headed out to Nagoya which was havin ghtis huge festival, tons of food to be had it was good times. After which we went to this Okinawan bar where i got to meet this musician who plans an Okinawan shamisan which only has 3 strings and the made part (where the bridge is to hold up the strings is) is made from snake skin. Anywho this guy was really good and sounded pretty cool so i bought his CD and he autographed it, which was really cool. He then proceeded to show me a picture of him performing at ground zero at some ceremony ... which was just so cool. Oh before i bought the cd he was playhing his Sanshin i think it's called i think i'm wrong though... he made a song on the fly where he comment on the beauty of my friend's girlfriend and made mention to foreigners, me and my friend, i think. Anywho when i get back i'll let you guys take a peak.. it's really cool.

In other news, yesterday was the last day of a friend of mine. He was only here for 6 weeks, but he had to go back to Kansas for school on monday. He'll be back in December, but i'm hoping that in the future i can run into him again in Japan.

It's kinda sad, turn over here is so fast, with most people staying in 4, 6, or 3 month intervals. It's really hard for everyone to see newly made friends go and thus the arrival of new people. Anywho, i'm meeting TONS of new people, and there is just not enough time to do everything i want to do.

August 17th 8:17am Japan Time

Check out this awesome vid from Laztown - Pirates and then resulting WoW video that ensued

Also i made up a new word... Independenticized.... The act of gaining one's independence. Example sentence "Tennesee wasn't part of the U.S. when we Independenticized against Britain way back when"

August 16th 8:38pm Japan Time

Heh this was amusing Wii vs PS3 apple commercial spoof

August 15th 1:44pm Japan Time

Playing more catch-up, i'm working on uploading the pics and movies from the okazaki hanabi (litereally hana = flower, bi = fire). Which was annoying cause i had to rotate alot of the movies so they were the correct orientation and i did some cropping and audio compression as well... Requires DivX so go download it from DivX.com. Anywho, firework pics are up in week 5 gallery and the fireworks movies are up in week 5 clips gallery. (please note that when you click on image it'll open up the movies)

August 14th 11:30pm Japan Time

Well, i just got back from Korea, got tons of pics, about 130 or so from my 4 day trip. Just wanted to let you knwo last week i had another huge test and getting stuff in order so i coudl go to Korea... so that's why i hadn't updated my blog at all last week - anywho without further ado, here's i gallery from week 4. This week discovered a Secret Japanese Gundam Facility ;)

August 8th 6:12pm Japan Time

Update: i finished rotating all the fireworks movies and when i get some time tomorrow or thursday i'll put them up.

Just for the record it was an addition $48 for the coloring. Anywho, i watched in awe this mornign as my roommate drank his milk and then proceeded to spit out chunks of curd. Go shitty dorm fridge! And now for your personal enjoyment, i present you with some you tube movies i found

Katana vs. Machine Gun - this is a short video where they blasted a katana with a army machine gun a .50 cal... I'd just like to point out that the katana cut most of the bullets in half.

Kendo Robot - ok this just scares the fuck out of me... why would you give a robot a katana and then practice with it...

How much can a cat carry - this is from a japanese tv show where they think up stupid little things to investigate

August 6th 5:26pm Japan Time

Well, i got a haircut yesterday, it cost $40 and i was ripshit to have to spend that much money for a haircut... well... let me tell you when i left it was totally worth every penny. The haircut experience, and i say experience cause i wasn't expecting any of this... Pleasently surprised you coudl say.

Anywho, here's how it began, after being seated, the styliest comes over with this paper chart of a head and starts drawing what you are describing to her to get it exactly like you want it. Then, i'm guided to the shampoo area where i get covered in numerous towels so my clothes don't get wet. The guy washing my hair takes liek 15 min. Ok, i'm clean now, onto the haircutting. Well, the chairs are the same except that they don't go up and down. Rather the hairdresser sits in a rolley chair that can go up and down to adjust to your height. Next i get this fancy towel wrapped around my neck snugedly, but then proceeds to loosen it up a bit to make sure its not uncomfortable. Next comes the paper neck thing we have in the U.S. and finaly the big apron. The hairdresser then proceeds to cut your hair. Well, geuss what, clippers are obnoxious and poor quality of service, so the entire haircut is done by hand. Anywho, after the haircut is done, i get ANOTHER hair washing w00t sauce! don't haveto worry about shedding all over the place until my next shower. Great, after the hair washing we're done... well i geuss not, i get led over this other chair that resembles a dentist chair and after i sit down they hit a button and the chair goes completely flat. Ok, this is weird... I then proceed to get my entire face shaved. I'm talking, my forehead, eyebrows, ears, and my friend even had his nosehairs cut! Man this is awesome... But wait folks, i'm not done yet. We then proceed to get a quick facial during which we get a neck and shoulder massage! Well, now we're done and are ready to go home. That's it folks, what you get in japan for $40 is well worth it in my opinion and i'm going ot keep going back!

Oh did i forget to mention - i colored my hair too while i was there ;)

August 4th 3:02pm Japan Time

So more from my list of things to mention (i have a list you know, of things that that aren't like america that people may find interesting). I learned a japanese proverb today - "give a cat money" in japanese "neko ni koban" which basically means giving/receiving a useless unuseable gift. For example, giving a english dictionary to someone who doesn't speak english for instance. The koban in the saying is atually the name of japanese currency from long long ago when teh coins were eliptical shape (same shape as an egyptian cartouch if you know what that looks like). Also i learned that they also have a saying that is "pig in front of pearl" which is basically the same exact meaning of "pearls before swine"

Anywho this weekend is the okazaki festival so i'll have lots of pictures later...

August 3rd 12:55am Japan Time

Well first of all i have to say the following is one of the cutest things i've ever seen... Cute cat and Rooster

That being said, got some funny japanese culture stuff for you today. So i ran across a few interesting words in the past week that just make me laugh and have been the crux of many a joke this week. First up the verb ukeru, this verb has two meanings... 1. to take an exam, 2. to suffer... I find it amusing how they are somehow related... Ok second up is syujin which mean husband, not to be confused with syuujin (a longer u sound) which means prisoner. I'm sure that many guys how there will attest to these being one and the same. Lastly, and this has caused alot of confusion on my part. In japanese the word for a Pirate is also the same exact word for a Viking. Interestingly enough they make no distinction between the two. But in a correlated story, buffet style eating is calling Viking, in refering to a person who gets up and gets their own food. Yeah i don't really get it either, just one of those things i have to accept and use.

July 31st 11:58pm Japan Time

I've added 2 new entries under my japanese blog.

July 30th 10:22pm Japan Time

Well i have two things to talk about here, but i'm going to split it up into two posts since i need to get back to studying. Anywho, me and John went out to Nagoya to get haircuts yesterday... Upon arrival in nagoya (a 30 min train ride that costs $6 one-way, after be completely squished the entire way) we discovered that the hair parlor was already full for today and couldn't take any more reservations. This was followed up by the 2 other people we were with sayign they only came to Nagoya for haircuts and to buy electronic dictionaries... Right crap thing #1. So we made the executive decision to try to go to 1 famous place at least... the Swan gardens. Upon arrival we discovered that it was 4:30 and that the park closes at 5pm, so we said fuck it and got back on the train.

Luckily, at this point Francois sent me a msg saying he'll be in Nagoya in 15 min and to meet him at this really famous department store. After which we could go do something with him, his gf and her friend. Well, turns out the friend already had plans to watch her nephews for the evening. Well, crap thing #2 cause more japanese people to practice japanese with the better. Well, while we were tlaking to the friend, the gf got suddenly sick, and Francois had to take her to hospital. Ok crap #3, no it's just me and John.

Well, luckily, Francois had alreday made plans to meet up with a japanese friend of his in Nagoya and we were able to hang with her and her friends, which was cool. Got to practice alot of japanese. Well time came soon enough to head off and catch the last train, and we made the poor decision in hindsight to go out to bar and catching the 5:50am train in the morning. Well, at this point we ran into a friend of the group, this guy from Canada who has been living in Japan for 3 months as an English teacher, and yet can't speak japanese at all... Well great now we have to speak english cause we run into one guy who can't speak japanese at all... Well he has another friend coming and they were going to go to a bar close bar. Well great, cause we were going to a bar too right? Well... wrong... because he dind't speak any japanese nor his friend, they took us to what is called a "Gaijin bar", which basically means foreigner bar crap thing #4. These bars are all over the place in the foreigner district of Roppongi in Tokyo, but this is one thing i've specifically avoid goign to. Anywho, Gaijin bars are famous in japan for foreign guys to go and pick up japanese girls, and conversely japanese girls know they can pick up foreigners here as well. So here i'm standing around in a bar with 40 foreign guys who only speak english with 5 japanese people who don't really speak english, and like 5 japanese girls that are throwing themselves at everything that moves and 5 guys hitting on the same girl... It was all pretty slimy...

Anywho, Before we know it crap thing #5 strikes, everyone wants to go home, and not interested in karoake like we had hoped. John's big into karaoke too. Oh the crap thing is that John is completely plastered. Well there are these manga bars. Now manga is japanese comic books, and in these bars or whatever you call them you get a cubbicle with a computer and a tv with a ps2 and some games and MMOs installed on the computer and you sit and play video games or read comic books. Also a great way to pass the night when you have no money and want a place to chill until morning. That is unless crap #6 kicks in. John is so drunk he throws up all over the cubicle and myself. And now the people in the cube next ot us are complaining. So the store people come and start cleanign it up and John keeps trying to roll into it, so i had to keep catching him so he didn't fall in. Now i'd just like to point out that i'm a good friend... Anywho, i got warned that if john threw up again we'd be kicked out onto the street... luckily he didn't. But that didn't stop him from thrashing his legs into the cube walls or bashing them on the gorund. Had to surrond the bastard in pillows to keep him quiet.

Now time comes to catch our train and it was a bitch to wake up john as he kept punchign me while i was tyring to wake him up. Now i'd just like to point out here that i'm a good friend here in that i didn't try to burn him with cigarattes to wake him up! But that is another story that is not mine to tell. Anywho, 2 hours later we finally get home aroudn 8:30am. Yeah for shitty day!!!

July 29th 11:40am Japan Time

Well, this was a very tiresome week. I was grinding away studying and didnt' get much chance for anything else. Well, i ended up doing ok on the test but lost some points here and there... Anywho, me and a friend went out for sushi last night and we saw this sushi that was called "Toro <some chinese characters we couldn't read>" so we were like oh cool good tuna, let's try it out. Well we were intrigued as to why ti cost $5 for this plate of toro so when we got home we looked it up. Yeah, i need to stop buying expensive sushi that i don't know what it is... Turned out to be Horse sashimi... Yeah, it's pretty disturbing... it didn't even taste good! Whale is much better! Sigh.. anywho i'm heading into Nagoya today for some sight-seeing and a hair cut so i'll catch you later...

July 26th 4:17pm Japan Time

Hi everyone, just jumping in to let peopel know i haven't dropped off the face of the earth. I have a really big exam tomorrow and i've been spending the majority of my free time preparing for it... Bu ti leave you with this one quick thing about japan. Here they are very concience about the environment... kinda... but i'll get into that another time. Anywho, for the sake of water conservation all the toilets in japan have 2 different flush option basically a little flush and a big flush. that's what the two characters mean, swivel up for small and swivel down for big. But not to be outdone... the water that flows in to fill the tank comes out of the faucet in teh top so you can wash your hands and that water goes into the toilet. Now... to conclude japanese toilet etiquitte, apparantly soap isn't enough for them anymore, so you wash your hands with soap, dry them off, and now every bathroom has a bottle of rubbing alcohol in it with a squirter to rub your hands in alcohol to disinfect them.

July 24th 5:45pm Japan Time

Well this was an exciting weekend cause i went to Tokyo. Check out the uploaded pics in my week 3 gallery. As always check out the pictures link on teh left to check out my comments on this trip. Well off to study, i have a big test comign up on thursday. I also registered this site under a new domain name markhosang.com so now you can easily remember my URL.

July 19th 3:03pm Japan Time

Wow... today was just horrible. It was raining incredibly hard today. So hard that alot of people chose to walk to school instead of riding thier bikes. Well let's put it this way, i had an umbrella and i live about a mile away from the school. Well, by the time i got ot school i was soaked from the waist down, my arms were drenched, and my shoes were completely soaked through with water. We think it was an aftermath of the hurricaine that hit taiwan a few days ago.

Hmm... i had planned to go to Tokyo this weekend, but looks like the tour group i was going to do is all booked already. I'll have to figure out what i'm going to do. Well back to doing laundrary...

July 18th 10:07pm Japan Time

Haha... the best Engrish EVER. So i'm looking at possible places to visit during the 1 week vacation i have here after my program finishes and this is what i saw...

"The average temperature of Takayama in February is around minus 2 degrees centigrade. Please participate in war clothing."

July 17th 10:46pm Japan Time

Well, great news.... I got a ketai today! w00t sauce! only took 2 weeks but i was finally able to get one. It's a prepaid cell phone but whatever - it's of the same quaulity of my phone back in teh states. Anywho, i have 2 things to share with you folks today. First is this French Cartoons that my french friend showed me... I don't know what to say about this but check it out, you'll be surprised.

Second, i watched the most interseting TV show i have seen in awhile. In Japan it's ok for a 4 year old to go to places by himself safely. I mean i've seen first graders on the busy rush hour train in Tokyo goign to school all by himself. It's wonderful, from a societal point of view that they don't worry about them. Anywho, there is this tv show where they give a 4 year old an errand and see if the small child can do it. Well the most amusign thing is that the children are mic-ed and there are like 6 hidden cameramen all dressed up as construction workers running around video taping them. It's funny when the kids give them strange looks... one kid even yelled at one cameraman - "hey get out of that garden". Anywho it's great, teh kids get on the train and go to to the next town and all sorts of things. It was very intersting

some other quick links i've been sitting on... Yakuza want to ban a film discouraging students from joining teh yakuzu for fear that it will cause teh gang members children hardship in school. And just ot show that in Japan, image is everything check out this article of an actress whose career is basically washed up cause the guy she is dating is a known playboy. And lastly, check out this awesome bike, it has a freaking tank tread! that's awesome! For anyone whose ridden on a snowmobile can tell this thing would have way better handling.

I also updated teh counter on this site to something more powerful information wise. We shall see if it provides any useful information.

July 16th 10:30pm Japan Time

Week 2 pictures are up - please check them out inmy picture archive as i've a description of the whole week listed there. I also got rid of that horribly tacky marble background that i had. This color is temporary until i figure out a new color scheme. Now back to studying...

July 16th 4:30pm Japan Time

Hey everybody - i finally threw up some pictures from week 1. I had to hack some photoshop auto photo gallery code to get it the way i wanted but there it is. I changed teh orginal code to make a 750x750 image instead of a 350x350 image and if you click on teh image it opens up the original full size image on my size. Feel free to leave your comments, i'm sorry i don't have descriptions yet for those pictures. I'll try to figure how to use that feature before i upload the next set of pictures. Ok catch you all later.

July 15th 7:36pm Japan Time

Well friday was an interesting day. Me and 3 of my comrades decided to trek all the way out to Okazaki-jo (okazaki castle), but getting there was the most interesting part. One of the people that came along didn't have a bike so we had to take the bus. Well japanese buses work a little differently here than in the US. First of all its not a 1 fare for all, it depends on how many stops you were on the bus for. So when you enter the bus (you enter from the rear door) you grab a ticket that denotes which stop you got on and at the front of the bus there is billboard of sorts that says how much it will cost if you are getting off where the bus currently is. Well, that was fine and i knew about this aspect so i informed my fellow travelers. Where we had the trouble was where we were getting off. So there is two slots one for change and one for paying... well all 4 of us needed change and none of us went up and got change before we got off. So the 4 of us basically took 5 min to get off the bus. and made the bus driver very very angry. Well after that part of our trip was done we went to the castle where we found out that this castle was the castle that the tokugawa shogunate came from. Now i don't know much about them, but i believe at some point they were the most powerful of all the shogunates in all of japan before the Meiji restoration.

Well after returning from the castle it was a friday night AND someone's birthday - so what did we do? we went and did karaoke for 5.5 hours. We did what was called nomihoudai which means free drinks for the time you are doing karaoke. This particular karaoke place had what japans refer to as Osake (sake is japanese wine and osake is the term for alcoholic beverages). Needless to say everyone got completely shitfaced. Just unfortunately i was with all english speaking people so they spoke english the whole night and choose english songs for the whole night. They even ragged on me for trying to sing some japanese songs... i'm like hello, you are in japan, learn to sing some japanese songs.

Anywho, on the way home at like 2am we went to this 24h beef bowl place. Which is kinda like a diner, where we sat at a bar with a booth across from us. Well 3 japanese guys sat down in the both and we struck up a conversation which was fucking awesome. The cooler part is by this point there was only 8 of us as some of the original group continued to do karaoke and i ended being the most fluent in japanese. Everyone else had just started learning japanese like 2 weeks before and being drunk i'm not sure how much they understood but it was funny.

July 13th 11:23pm Japan Time

July 13th 6:49pm Japan Time

Well, Dennis contacted me and tried to give me some help in setting up some blogger software on my website... but alas, all require a MYSQL database and i only have access to MS Access db cause of the account type i chose. I may change this in the future, i'm not sure. He also mentioned adding an RSS feed, which i actually got aroudn to try doing today, but the "service is down" error i kept receiving. I'd just like to point out to people that if i hosted my own site on my own box through my cable provider this site would be siginificantly different as i'd be running .NET with a sql 2005 backend... But alas i'm not for a myriad of reasons hosting your own site through a cable modem is a bad bad idea.

So i have this very very big problem. The place i'm living in, has just a hotplate and a pot and frying pan no microwave and no toaster oven. Yet we have a micro fridge only which we all know you shouldn't put anything but soda and beer in. Every night i run into the same problem, what to eat cause i have nothing. The other residence is far far superior to here. So i may request to be moved after awhile as this is getting obnoxious. The other residence with the huge common area so people hang out also has a huge kitchen with huge fridges and rice cookers, toasters, microwaves, gas stoves. A whole lot. Compared to that you can make anything.

Well, me and Francois went out to sushi for lunch today and there was this interesting sushi i had never seen before but it looked really good. Like a deep deep red maguro. Well i got it (it was the most expensive sushi at the place at $4, most of the other sushi was $1/plate) ate one piece and let Francois try the other piece. Well it was good, no taste interesteing texture, soft yet slightly tough, i liked it as well as Francois. So we looked it up, it japanese it is call Kujira - kinda sounds like Godzilla doesn't it? Well, we decided after eating it we should look it up to see what we had just eaten... and BAM! it was whale! Both of were shocked and shamed that we had just eaten whale! Yup, i can now say i've eaten whale, how fucked up is that. Anywho, i'm going ot try to relax and do some studying today. Still don't know what i'm eating for dinner, i've already eatn 5 chips ahoy cookies, maybe i'll jsut have some ramen.

July 12th 4:40pm Japan Time

Well, yesterday was surely an interesting day. After class a bunch of us (that'd be 6 people) went to do Karaoke. Well 3.5 hours later we finished, it was so much fun. I forgot how much i loved karaoke. It was cheap too! the whole thing cost only 800yen or about $7.50 per person. It was great.

Well today i went to a meeting of taiwanese college students who came to japan to do a study and help with city planning with why there are no young people in the city i am staying in. This is a guy we randomly met in front of a post office and we went to support him in his presentation. Which was cool cause he dumbed down his japan and any difficult word he said the english AND french for (cause it was me and my french friend) who came to support him. But he has invited me to come visit him in taiwan so i might go do that for a weekend... I've never been to taiwan. After that all the yamasa students went out to a Izikaya (basically a japnese bar but not so grudgey and serves food, more like a micro brewery). So now i'm just getting back to my dorm and kinda need to do my japanes ehomework... But tonight can be considered good japanese listneing practice as i listened to 2 hours of really complicated japanese about changing the city. Again, when i get some free time i'll post some pictures on line...

July 10th 7:55pm Japan Time

Well that was interesting... Our neighbors just knocked on our door and asked if we had water falling from the ceiling in our room too. Except i thought he first said cockaroaches... Anywho, apparantly the girls ont he 2nd floor weren't cleanign their trap in their shower and it caused flooding in the room below them. Turns out that the retard to did the plumbing as the washer, shower and kitchen sink all draining into the same pipe so it's easy to get clogged.

What is even more disparaging is that i jsut foudn out that the people next door have been taking japanese for only 3 months and are in the same level class as me (this isn't the only person, this makes liek the 5th person who i've tlaked to on a similiar level who has only been here for 3 months). That is just... yeah.... That i've wasted 4 years and alot of money on other langue programs where i could've just come here to Yamasa. Kinda makes me want to stay here longer. I don't know, it's yeah i geuss we'll see. Well, off to study... Man... school and studying... again...

July 10th 12:23am Japan Time

Well this weekend was great, and i'll hopefully get aroudn to actually posting the pictures. On friday there was a BBQ at my dorm complex after school. Nothing like 20 people spending 2 hours trying to light a hibachi - but we finally got it going, just as it started to rain. Lots of sake was had by all and by the end everyone was having a great time and lots of pictures were being taken.

On saturday we set out to get to this park, was Patrick's idea so he lead. However everyone didn't know how to get there and we got lost - very very lost. Needless to say we were exhausted by the tiem we got to the park when we relaized it was all UPHILL from teh base of the park to the center. Even more upsetting was in the middle of the park we discovered it was a sports park with tons of arenas and such like baseballs and soccer fields and not much park...

Today we went to the aquarium or "tsuizokukan" (basically water family hall). They had an orca and tons of dolhpins that we checked up, it was pretty fun. The main attraction was the turtles they had. They even made a little beach attached to teh turtle tank so they could lay their eggs... Well it worked and they had a whole heap load of turtles.

After the aquarium everyone went to a Izikaiya, basically a bar but with your own private booth. The 7 of us each had a beer and ordered 5 bottles of sake - needless to say we all ended up being very drunk and speaking very weird (okashi) japanese.

Last but not least i've uploaded a Japanese potty-training video that someone showed me cause it is just all entirely too funny.

P.S. If you've ever seen the japanese video on the internet on how to act in a sushi restaurant it is an over exaggeration of some of the japanese customs and was a long running joke at the bar.

July 6th 11:55pm Japan Time

So i curse the japanese government. Because of huge increases in crime associated with people coming to Japan and getting cell phones it is now required that only registered citizens can get a phone... Ergo, i can't get a cell phone... even a pre-paid one. Now let me put this into perspective for you. Unlike the US where EVERYONE has internet access but not everyone has a cell phone, japan is the complete opposite, they are still growing their internet backbone here in japan, but Everyone here has a cell phone, and i mean everyone. Like i see kindergarten kids on the train (alone mind you) going to school with a cell phone (ketei in japanese). So lack of a cell phone in japan is... crippling to say the least. And bring over a cell phone from the U.S. would just kill me in so many ways because of the lack of japanese text support.

Well in relation to this my dorm is pretty crappy, set up more like apt. with no common area the other dorm is a dorm style rooms with individual bathrooms and a huge huge common area with a shared kitchen. This is my biggest complaint so far about the lack of community... I will need to figure out something to fix this...

July 5th 6:00am Japan Time

Well, i'm finally in Japan now, everything went smoothly except for well maybe the housing thing. I ended up getting my last choice on my housing request form, Residence K, so i'm living in a slightly larger room but i have a roommate for the next 3 months. His name is Ken and he's from Taiwan and is studying some japanese for work i gather. It's kinda a difficult situation though, Ken speaks very little English and has only had 6 weeks of japanese study under his belt so we basically can't communicate with each other. It's actually kinda funny cause we resorted to Engrish to speak to each other. Basically saying something in Japanese then in English and hope there is enough overlap in understanding that we can figure out what the other is trying to say. So it's difficult but hopefully we'll work something out and has the weeks go by his Japanese with get alot better i think and we'll resort to using only japanese.

Now on shitty side... I've been p since 4am just laying in bed... Obviously still working out the Jetlag which i will figure will take another 2 days for me to get fully adjusted. Also, currently the only ethernet port in the room is on the other side - explaining why i'm not online... but more importantly, my room lacks a 3 pronged outlet so i can't plug my laptop in. I didn't remember having this problem the last time i came to japan, or if it is just an issue with the apt. i'm staying (though i guess i had a sony and sony laptops only have a 2 pronged power plug). Let's hope i can get this resolved tomorrow. Not like I want to be on the internet specifically but would still like to be able to use my laptop to pass the time...

Oh side note - yeah for new 777s - every seat had their own tv on the flight over with a remote to watch like 10 different channels. Only crappy thing is that i slept for the first 6 hours and then like 4 hours later something happened and you couldn't watch anything more on the tvs... it was kinda fucked up. I'll be posting pictures on a weekly basis i think for now in my photo section, but i'll let you know when i post up a batch of pictures.

June 29th 11:23pm

Well, instead of packing like i should, since well, i'm leaving for japan in just a few days ... i'm well updating this. Why? for the 6 of you or so that i know are actually reading this? Well hopefully, the idea being, that the more i put into this site, the more people will visit the site, and well, why not. Plus it's easy to just have an online archive of all my stuff. Which i have alot of...

so let's begin.. Apparently Spain is run by the spanish version of the MPAA/RIAA as Spain just made all P2P networks illegal in the country. Now the funny thing is they also added a tax to all blank media to pay to copyright holders... Now some of you may go WTF?! that's crazy and bullshit. Well.. it is... but well it's been in place in the US on all blank media since VHS/Tape when it was thought that technologies would destroy the industry and they'd have to recoup their losses... Well this is why i don't like it... You are basically giving money to RIAA/MPAA whenever you buy a blank cd that ... let's say you put your family photos on. Isn't that great, they are making a killing off of digital cameras (which you could call this tax more of a "royalty on aunt Sue". Man the MPAA and RIAA really have no purpose in this new world and new to scale back, but like all monopolies and free money work (like the mafia) they won't go without a fight.

And for all you verizon customers out there, great news!

"Under the old plan, no matter at what point in their contract, the customer would have to pay a $175 fee. Now, the fee would be prorated proportionally to the time left on the contract."

w00t! and to add to that if you don't want to lock yourself into another contract

"Verizon also announced Wednesday a new plan allowing existing customers to qualify for the same phone discounts offered to new customers."

Now in the world of gamers who read forums we have these little 6yos running around spouting all kinds of crap that makes no sense... Well it's gotten to the point where penny arcade commented on it (shush i know this comic is from 2004) . Lastly on the penny arcade thing - a guy gave his japanese students some old penny arcade comics and let them put in whatever they thought applied.

currently listening to: "for fruit basket <orchestra version>" by Ritsuko okazaki

OH OH OH!!! haah that guys last name who wrot teh song is teh same as teh town i'm going to! DARK PORTAL OPEN NOW!!! i COMETH!

Guestbook: Post : View

June 26th 11:02pm

Well i got this nifty new photogallery option thingie built into my new webspace... don't kwno how i feel about it yet cause it autoresizes the picture to fit your screen and truncates teh captions on teh pictures but try it out and let me know what you think.

Heh... i broke my website somehow and was very angry hence why it was done for a d ay or two... tech guy was like well jsut go here and here and i'm like did all that this and he's liek uh... hold on a sec... so 5 min later - "i escaltted this and someone willhave to go to the actual server to fix this."

June 24th 7:19pm

I just upgraded my webspace from "Free" to actually paid for which ivees me a domain name and max of 5gb of storage where i just maxed out my 500mb limit. But for now some things are going to be down while i migrate to the new site. Oh check out the sushi video in the media section i don't think i ever actually posted it online.

Update: 2:35am - Hehe... fniially done with teh transfer - enjoy

June 23rd 6:56pm

Well i had ALL of my wisdowm teeth out on wednesday, it was quick and painless. Actually getting the shot of valium was the weirdest and most painful part. Doctor was like, "i jus gave you valium, in like 15 secs you are going ot feel goofy, just let me know when it kicks in" and i'm like what the hell is he tlaking about ... then BAM! high as a kite "uh... hehe... i'm goofy". Anywho i took the vicodine they gave me even though i wasn't hurting at all.. and then bam... throwing up all over the place. Didn't help that liz had given me a strawberry coolata... that shit came out of ever orifice.... and lots of it too! So for 2 days i was fucekd up so i stopped tkaign teh pain meds and i got ALOT better... Still eating a diet consiting of pasta though... And where my wisdom teeth used to be... viewports into my JAW! it's so weird, it looks like teeth are still there...

as.. i write this it is trenchial downpouring outsied... good thing i'm not an umbrella... with an aversino to rain... that'd be teh suck... or possibly as my friend now liek to say "FTM (for the meh)"... which is assine... made of version of in between FTW and FTL... he was doing somethign stupid like a month before so let's hope he gets through this fad... Nothign against him - it's his work... it's teh equivalent of monitoring a forum site with 13yo chinese girls txt messaging o_0 and >_<

Well consider yourselves all lucky for not tlaking to me over IM i say all sorts of goofy things... he's an excerpt

Me: but i'm meeting ehr on moody with chris t
Aaron: if i get there before you, DS-ahoy
Aaron: chris T?
Me: t = too
Aaron: lol, sure it does is that like t'' ?
Me: OOOHH!H!!
Me: good ideo
Aaron: oh no it's not
Aaron: you're not dropping letters whereever you want and putting in ' 's
Aaron: yo''r' sen'enc's wo''d lo'k 'ik' th's
Me: it ocudl be like hebrew, no vowels
Aaron: to make it sound hebrew just throw a bunch of ch's in there
Me: l'k'e th's 's r''lly c''l ''m ' j'w
Aaron: i got all that but the c''l
Aaron: cool
Aaron: gotcha
Aaron: it's like wheel of fortune
Aaron: without the wheel
Aaron: or the fortune
Aaron: so it's like Of

June 18th 3:56pm

Added a new media section to have easy links to all content (movies, audio, pics) that i post here so you can access them. Also added pics from my last study abroad in Sapporo, Japan in the pictures section. Also updated the fish section as well...

So last weekend the long delayed company paintball trip that i had organized ... er... happened (don't know what verb woulda been appropriate there). It was a great day for paintballing, had been torrentially downpouring all week and that day was no different. Nothing to say the least about being completely soaked to the bone and masks all fogged up to hell (though not mine, got an uber professional mask that was just freaking awesome), but the game rocked on. teams were pretty evenly matched the final score being 3-3 for the day. Unlike last time where team Yellow Beacon (all the asians) gotta totally schooled by white people (we don't have name for the non-asian-gay-jewish-europeans in our company). I think we won 1 game of speedball when the teams was 12v7, not something to be proud of though. Here's a pic of the end of day - i apologize for the fuzziness... it was set on manual when i gave my camera to the guy to take the pics so they aren't as clear as they could be.

From now on i'll post the pics here and then when i update the post i'll replace with a link to keep this page from taking stupid long to load.

June 15th 11:32pm

Hehe - this pic was circulating around work today, thought i'd toss it up here for people to check out.

One guy i worked with had to ask "why does it have a steering wheel??"

May 27th 7:17pm

Well, this past week i realized, while nostalgically looking at some of my pics from japan, that the japan pics part of my site was broken in firefox with HUGE text for some reason... Apparently when i moved this site from my brandeis space it got slight corrupted and had all these "BIG" and "small" tags which i've never seen before... So that's fixed. Not to mention there was a broken link pointing to and my old brandeis site. Having been fixed that's all looking normal again... Other than that no big news - going through my huge checklist of stuff to get in order before i go off to japan... so daunting so many worries.

Oh - one thing is i have finally decided to pay for my webspace and get it upgraded so i can get more space and a domain name (maybe more people will come look at this site when it has an easy domain name... who knows...

May 20th 10:47pm

So my Japan trip is fast approaching and the list of things i need to do to get done before i leave is dwindling, every so slightly with each passing week. Well, the roommate selection process is set and done and Rachael will be moving in June 1st. She seems pretty cool and will be bringing a cat of her own, hopefully it'll keep Chloe company while i'm gone in Japan. So I've gotten the go ahead from my company to stay in japan for an extra month till November, so when i get to japan if the program is good i think i'll choose to stay another month.

Man... i just realized i never posted the pictures of when i was in Sapporo... and more importantly to me, i never took any pictures of all the interesting people i met and hung out with.

Oh oh oh... so this ramen place me and Chris discovered in Ueno turns out to be very famous ramen chain... Lo and behold someone else who was sightseeing in japan was kinda enough to take pictures! Check out Ichiran Ramen here!

And last but least - here is a cute pic of Chloe sleeping in my lap... yeah i envy cats... they could make jagged rocks with broken glass look comfortable.

(hmm really need a way to handle this front page getting so long... blogging software search must commence!)

May 4th - 12:46am

Well, hello everybody. I finally got some pics together of my house so i can rent out my extra room, but here's the link to my Room for Rent ad so you can see the pics of my house.

Also, some people accosted me for photos of jersey city when i was there so here you go, a nice view from my cube for the past 3 months of downtown manhatten and the other side o the building facing the statue of liberty.

There were further demands for pictures of my cat chloe to be posted... so to appease the masses here is a picture of chloe sitting in my lap while i was using the computer. No idea how she can sleep - it doesn't look comfortable at all. And here is chloe joining me for dinner, she's usually good about just sitting there, unless it's chicken then she'll try to ninja it when i'm not looking.

So i finally bought my plane ticket to Nagoya tonight... 2 more months and bam i'll be in japan... Kinda surreal... the longest i've stayed in japan in one stint was my first study abroad when i did 6 weeks of classes and stayed an extra week.

April 16th - Condo 4:56pm

Well, the last two weeks have been exciting when i was home for the weekend. I finally went out and bought a credenza and a entertainment unit for my living room. I can now proudly say my TV no longer rests on cinder blocks... yeah for un-ghettofication! With this new furniture i was able to finally get rid of the curio i'd grown to despise as well as my old cd/movie rack i had that was all warped. So both those things are gone and everything is looking very swanky now. Also this week i was finally able to get back to home depot and get evenly cut standards (standards is teh fancy way to say the vertical brace that the shelves attach to). The oringial standards i got were cut so badly they wouldn't go flat against the wall. So the reason for all of this new furniture... well, so my condo is pretty small and one thing my place lacks is ample storage space, mainly cause i lose the entirety of my storage room to a litter box and food dish. So now i have loads and loads of space now to free space in my game closest, kitchen and laundary room. The entertainment center jsut organizes alot of stuff i just had laying on the floor next to the tv so things are tidying up quite nicely.

Oh, one finaly note, this coming week will be my final week in NJ and then i'm back in Waltham - YEAH!

April 10th - Jersey City 11:10pm

Well - i hadn't planned on stopping updates to this site - however right after Seattle i got sent to Jersey City. Well, i've been here for little over 9.5 weeks already and i shoudl be returning back home to Waltham sometime soon. Hopefully i can be a little better about updating this site now that i've finally kicked the WoW bucket and gotten dreamweaver installed on my laptop.

Well i'll tell you a little about this project in NJ... I was hried to come in and spend 100 hours designing this data integration from their homegrown app and the app i customize. Well, soon there was another guy from my company, then another and then another... soon there was a total of 4 guys from my company working on this project to make it sucessful. Well because i was so crutial in the design i ended up doing all the design for the project and being in the meetings, kinda project managerish... it was a great experience... well after 4 weeks of being crowded all the people from my company rolled off and it's just me. Well now ther eis but 2 weeks left on the project and then i'll be back home on april 14th to finally get everythign in order before i leave for japan in July :D

arrg... i had pictures for you guys.. but my laptop is being retarded and i can't load pictures on it right now... i'll try to get one of the guys i'm working with to do it for me tomorrow.

Oh one last piece - for those of you who hate that stupid WinXP that keeps popping up to remind you to restart your machine after you downloaded updates here are instructions to shut them off. Down with Updates

January 22nd – Seattle

So, some of you know and some of you don’t know, but I got sent to Seattle for the last week to work for a client, and I’m here for another week.  Now, this is the kinda weird part, even though I have worked at my company for about 1.5 years, I have only worked on a client site once before, and it was a rather relaxed non-profit in san fran.  Basically that was a cakewalk since had a long outstanding relationship already with this client and it was in a very familiar location, San Fran, where my dad lives.  So, Anywho back to this client, turns out they work a very weird time, 6am to 3pm.  Yeah, kinda ridiculous, but I guess it is the cost of doing business with folks on the east coast. 
            So since this is my first time to Seattle I thought I’d get some time to see the city… Fact is, the client is a 30 min drive away from the city, and since the client was willing to cover the cost of me flying back to Boston, I decided to fly to san fran for the weekend instead.  It’s only a 2 hour flight from Seattle to San fran, and well I didn’t want to spend 12 out of a 48 hour weekend flying to and from Boston.
Well, to throw a big cog in my plans, on the return flight the plane’s steering malfunctioned as we were about to take off, so we taxied back into the terminal and waited around for an hour and ominous sounds came from the underbelly of the craft.  While all along I had these 2 obnoxious girls behind we get bitching and complaining when the pilot came on to report the score of the seahawks game, you know… the home team of the destination of this flight… the team that hasn’t been in the superbowl in the last 22 years.

January 10th, 2006
So for all of you that read skymall, check out this nice editorial on their products. I have yet to get the config info to be able to uplaod my webpage, so i guess no one will be reading this... but it will sure look interesting when i finally coupled it and there is all this crap up there. For even more fun, i'll be going back through all my old e-mails of good links i sent myself over the past year to be posted that i never posted... yeah archived content!

That being said, everyone should check out the following FFA+ flash animation if you haven't seen it. It's awesome, give the guy lots of credit.

January 5th, 2006
Well it's the new year and my computer is mostly up and running, missing some configuration info and what not but i got the old hard drive still accessible at the moment. So for this week i've been in company training, how to be an effective consultant. Tonight, we went to s steak house where we had a REAL client sit down with 3 different groups of 2-3 people for each course. Are job was to befriend and look for opportunities for a follow-up project. It was very fun.

On a side note, i'll be in Washington State from january 16th to the 31st working on site at a client. Hope i have the time to go snowboarding one week.

December 31st, 2005
Little back log here folks - i spent the weekend rebuilding my machine as yet another Hard Drive is failing the S.M.A.R.T. HD check on boot up, nothign like having your bios report "yoru HD is about to fail, backup and replace"

December 28th, 2005 1:54pm
So many of you know that i play world of warcraft (wow), well here is a little video that popped up, i thought it was pretty funny so here it is Warcraft Porn

So i got pointed to this website of a rather video game shop owner's experience he's had with customers, Acts of Gord Here is a small excerpt from the book of Annooyance, ch. 23:

Ten year old child brings Grant Theft Auto to the counter and asks to rent it.  Gord speaks to the father.

"Sir, might I suggest a different game?  This title isn't really a title for children due to inappropriate material."

"Why is that?"

"Substantial violence and swearing."

"Holy fuck!  You're shitting me!  I can't expose my son to god damned swear words at his age.  That sort of shit will fuck him up.  That's bullshit they make games with swearing.  What son of a bitch would make a game like that?"

<dramatic pause>

<Gord types into the computer>

Note:  Nathan can rent mature games - so says his father.

"Here's your game.  See you in a couple days."

December27th, 2005 6:20pm
Updated my portfolio section with my own remarks about my msuic videos and uploaded my unfinsihed Kanon music video. Also addded public links to my subtitled versions of 2 ayumi hamasaki videos

December 24th, 2005 4:36am
So... wow... it's been 18 months since i last updated this page... well... i'm updating it now, well at least content wise. I going to make some changes, but i'm going ot stop using my Xanga blog that has been a little more updated than this. But, well, two different websites, relaly if i have Xanga, then there is no point ot this index.html page you are looking at. So, 18 months... what's happened in 18 months. Well, i'm sure that most of you, 'you' being the peopel that even looked at this page at all ever, gave up and thought i'd never update this website. Well, crap tons of new content is here and more will be coming, along with more updates to the japanese version of this site (i'm hoping of keeping them in sync actually with the same content.

Some quick updates for those who haven't been reading my xanga blog. I quit my job at concentra, where i worked with like 4 other peopel from college, and moved to Greenbeacon Solutions (GBS) where i'm a consultant for CRM marketing software performing customizations and what not to the Onyx web application. Shortly after i strated working at GBS, i bought a condo in Waltham, not my town of choice, and more so i wasn't looking for a place to be across the street from Grad either, but it fit all my criteria for a house and quite frankly, it was the nicest condo i had seen from 2 months of searching. Around that same time Aaron got me and chris hooked into World of Warcraft... which well... has sucked up ever waking moment of my life for the last year. (one of the reasons this website and my xanga blog never got updated).

So as for the future... Yeah my future is kinda... *shrug* I do know however that i'm planning on going to go to japan again this summer for at least 3 months to study japanese extensively. We are talking 6 hours of class 5 days a week with homework. I may choose to stay int hat program for an addition 3 months or so, but i may actually get work there and may jsut stay over in Japan doing that. So this is where GBS is a great company, they are allowing me to take 3 months off (no pay of course) and if i'm serious about being over there (i.e. if i really go), they will actively pursue finding clients in Japan that i can work onsite. I.e. allow me to continue to work for GBS, which is a great company, but yet live/work in japan.

May 15th 2004, 5:12pm
I am trying to update this site and change some things around... So check back soon, more content shoudl be coming.

May 24th 2003, 7:40pm
Currently working creating a new website for BiVo, my final project for my Database class. It was such a good project, the entire development team was offered jobs to research the profile engine and the scheduler this summer.