April 2006 Archives

I love the internet and the availability of silly videos. Yes, this is how I spend my free time. I don't watch Japanese TV I just find videos online of Japanese TV shows and commercials. Plus because my life has been a bit dull as of late I figured I'd post a bunch of links to these silly videos.

First off is this weird video of how to turn a regular finger band-aid into a super crazy finger band-aid. I'll give it a try sometime when I gash my fingers. Plus the classic video of how to fold a shirt in 2 seconds. Or the wonderful video of how to refresh old coffee in a few simple steps. Plus these two Fanta commercials are a hoot. One shows the evil of Fanta, while the other shows how most of my school days go. Plus this Japanese guy shows you why you suck at Tetris.

Now that Macs can run windows I keep reading these reports of places actually reloading Windows on Intel Macs and marketing them as direct Windows computers. Seems to be the trend here in Japan. Seems to be a waste of a perfectly good computer if you ask me. Macs really appeal to the Japanese market. Small, stylish, and very very cute. I'd rather see people using OS X around here. It has better Japanese language support anyhow. ばかですね！

Ok, just because I will probably end up buying some of these before I leave, yet more pictures of sushi USB memory sticks. They look so good to eat, and hold so many Word documents!

Weather always gets to me. This explains my rather happy mood as of late brought on by the ever so nice weather. Yet in the back of my mind I know that in a few short weeks it will be ungodly hot and humid.

I ran into some of the Mormons in town today while ridding home. I stopped and said hello, we small talked for a while, until one of them saw an opportunity to throw out his speech. He was all "Have you heard of our chu.." I was all "Yes I have." He replies "What do you know?" So I counter "I read a lot in my free time." He continues "Would you be interes..." So I finish it with "Nah, I'm good where I am. But thanks for asking." He was friendly, made a connection through small talk, good eye contact, but read me all wrong. See, I wasn't interested in his product. Not surprisingly, they suddenly were all out of time and had to go. Oh well. I'm sure they'll be knocking on my door one of these days.

Japanese beauty products are crazy. They make everything we have in the west, even the most tacky and wacky, look like child's play. I ran across these gems online and must say that these are the gifts that keep on giving. The worst thing is though that I have seen very similar things around town, and I'm guessing some of my co-teachers use them. I personally love the 'Toe Stretchers.' Honestly, who needs longer toes?

So movie studios can now sell DVDs for $1.50 in China, but yet still charge those of us in the west $15-20 for the same thing? Whats the big difference? The ones in China lack a spiffy plastic case. Big frickin deal. No wonder no one is buying them in developing countries, or why people in the west download stuff. Sell your product for cheaper (hear that music industry) and more people will buy them.

People I know in Japan say bad things about Miller Beer. Very bad things. Being sort of from Milwaukee I have to stand up for it. No, not really. But they have done something right. A self cooling beer can. Think of it. Beer that never goes cold. Science is fun.

Because videos are more fun then me going on about stuff, here be a few. Here is a fun filled video that will show you why I love Domo-kun, and make you laugh. Plus these if you watch this video, and then watch this video you will probably come to understand Japanese humor just a bit.

If I didn't know better I'd think all these 1st year Japanese students were in some strange comet worshiping cult, judging by their matching blue track suits. Sadly these kids are only Japanese (kind of a cult I guess) so their matching outfits make sense. My 1st years today headed off for some weird 'Middle School Orientation' thing, so all I could do was make faces at them while the other teachers were giving long, and probably dull, talks. Those poor little guys.

Whats more disturbing, the fact that my kids all think I'm 30+ years old or the fact they still don't know what country I'm from? Both get me.

I spent my day out on Utsumi Island having fun with the kids. Well, that and a big 4 hour break between my classes. All would have been fine except my school district has blocked meebo.com so I can't spend my hours AIMing people. Curse them and their urge to make me do real work! Well, seeing as how I had to entertain myself some other way I went around talking to students during lunch. The school implemented a school lunch program at the start of the new year and I found my 1st year students to be way too cute in their little serving outfits. Thats right. Not only do the kids clean the school every day (at which they suck doing) but they are forced to serve each other food. The humanity.

For the other three hours of my free time I randomly surfed the net and then wondered around outside taking pictures of flowers and insects. I was quite impressed by the flower selection at school, and also that the weather wasn't sucking ass as it has been for the past week

I was also a bit surprised by the active insect life around the flower beds, and figured that while I hated blood sucking insects the non-sucking kind were cool enough to have photos taken of them. I named the spider 'Uda Sensei' because they have the same colored hair. Uda Sensei then said that I was the ladybug because we both have red jackets on. Good one Uda. (PS: Love my new camera. Those bug photos are cropped, but not edited in any other way.)

The office party tonight didn't suck as much as I thought it would. The speeches were great (sarcasm), the food was actually nice, and the drinks would have been great if I was drinking. We found out at this party that the big office boss had gotten married last weekend to a lady in the office (no one knew), so the office gave him a three bonsai solute. This party was a 'Going Away/ Welcome' thing for the new school year. The old people who were leaving the office got to do a crazy 'walk of goodbye', where everyone lined up, locked fingers, and the old employees walked under all the arms. Plus a group of male employees felt the urge to pick people up and toss them in the air. Matt and I both wish we had brought our cameras along for this one.

I went out to Tomonora today where I spent a class period outside taking in the scenery. I had a class with the mentally disabled student at the school, so after we did some new vocabulary, the JTE, and I went outside to draw the landscape. My stick figures with hats on were all the rage, but I eventually stopped drawing and took some pictures instead. I do enjoy taking pictures of flowers. That and the occasional pencil case.

I have a work party tomorrow night. Tomorrow night being a Wednesday night. Plus its 8,000¥. Usually we ALTs drink heavily at these parties to make up for the usually high cost and low quality of the meals. Looks like thats not an option tomorrow. Who the heck has a work party in the middle of the darn week? Seriously?

As my first year of JET is quickly coming to an end, one thing plagues my mind. When all the third years go, who will replace them. Where will they come from? Will the eat natto? But just as important, who will replace the most famous JET of them all, and how will we live without his blog? Clearly there will be a battle of the JET blogs, but in the end, there can be only one.

Let it be known that I do have to do real work every now and then. Like tonight when I spent an hour cutting up sentences and stuffing them into little envelopes. Though somehow I ended up with a random "to" sitting on my floor, some one group tomorrow is going to be very confused by a sentence. At least I hope they're confused. I also mulled through a giant chunk of the Fukuyama English support page which has been sitting my on hard drive for 6 months now. The page is a mess and looks like 1998 threw up all over it. So I organized all the files, cleared up a lot of the barf look, and stuck it on my webpage. So if you're in need of Junior High School English activities and worksheets feel free to take what you need. (I'll redesign the Fukuyama page on company time.)

The 100¥ store is a dangerous place. I walked in needing envelopes and walked out having spent 3,100¥ on all sorts of stuff. Curse you 100¥ store and your fabulous stickers and bows.

The cats outside of my apartment have been going at it like drunken sailors in a $2 brothel. The noise is really annoying, and a couple times this past week you would have thought they were reenacting certain scenes from Eyes Wide Shut. Then again, we all can't wait until the neighborhood is filled with litters of kittens getting into trouble.

My old roomies always complained that iChat didn't allow you to have tabs (as if they actually ever going to be talking to more then two people at once...). Well, heres a nice little add-on called Chax for iChat that lets you have tabs as well as some other fun features.

Love my new camera with its big 2.5in screen. But how the heck to I remove those darn finger smudge I put on it?

Bill, Matt, and I went down to Hiroshima to wish Theresa and Jane happy 22nd Birthdays on Saturday. During the hour and a half bus ride across Hiroshimaken I was able to take some beautiful scenery. The landscape was dotted with Japanese Sakura, aka cherry blossoms, which gave the appearance that snow had fallen in random select areas on the mountainsides. Unfortunately the recent rain and bad wind we've been getting in the area have taken a quite the toll on the trees, and a fair number of blossoms have already fallen. After I got back on Sunday I went to the little park behind my apartment and tried out my new cool camera on the cherry trees. Several small children were highly amused by me, and pelted me with broken English. Oh the fun.

Speaking of my camera, two things I love and two things I dislike (after using it for 24 hours). First thing: It takes super amazing inside photos without having to screw around with settings (as seen in the photo from Jane and Theresa's Birthday above, of which I screwed up my settings by trying to do it manually when I could have done it with a preset). Also the 2.5 inch screen is a widescreen, which is nice when taking landscape photos (horizontal) BUT when taking portrait photos (vertical) your image is super small. Except that this is a Canon IXY 800 IS/ Powershot SD700 IS. When you're viewing a portrait photo you can turn the camera 90 degrees and the picture will then change to fill up the entire screen, on its own. Now that is cool. I also dislike the screen being so big (ok, stupid of me). I'm afraid I'm going to scratch it, and I have to be real careful not to smudge it all the time with my big ass greasy fingers. Though I guess my biggest complaint about the camera is that theres a little 'Print' button on the back, which is only useful if you have a Canon photo printer. Otherwise it just sits there and is useless. Its the equivalent of a small stain on a nice white shirt. Anyways, check out these photos above. (I wanted to put the full size and full quality photos up, but realized that next to no one would really care to look at them fill sized and they would take forever to load. So I've just added this one and this one to show how nice of photos this little camera can really take. Even by me.)

A friend of mine has me working on her old G3 Powerbook. Its quite old and has some major issues. She had a new iBook now, so its not a big deal to her. If I can't get it working properly I may see if I can buy it and turn it into a LCD picture frame, which would consist of me gutting it and putting it into a frame so that I can run a photo slideshow off of it, thus becoming a digital picture frame/ painting. I know, very geeky, but I've seen it done before and it's really quite a good use for old laptops.

Matt and I noticed that one of the tenants in our apartment complex was moving out on Saturday. Breakdown of the apartment complex now. Buildings 2. Rooms 8. Tenants 3. Gaijin 2. Japanese 1. One down, one to go.... Heck, it might be cool to fill up the adjacent apartment building with more JETs when the new batch comes in this summer. Oooo I can imagine the super crazy BBQs, parties, and social gathers we might think up. I can also imagine the horror that the neighbors will feel as they see more of us. "Look whose coming to dinner..." (As for the picture.... well... I love Japanese signs)

I've been waiting several months for Canon to come out with an update to its Powershot/ IXY line of cameras so I could go crazy and buy a new one. Well, that update happened on Friday. So Friday after work I went over to my local discount electronics story and bought myself a Canon IXY 800 IS (Canon Powershot SD700 IS in North America) camera and a nice big 1 Gig Memory card. Oddly enough the price of the camera in Japan was only 43,000¥ (with the current shit exchange rate thats only $360), while the price of it in the US is around $500. Go me! This new camera replaces my old Powershot S400 which I've been using for the past 2 years. My first impressions of this new camera are nothing short of pure amazement. The body is metal and sleek, the kind of design that you have come to expect from Canon's Powershot/ IXY line in the past couple of years. The organic curve design they've moved to is both visually and functionally appealing. The screen is a big 2.5 inches and looks really damn nice. The camera has a 4x Optical Zoom which is a small boost from my old camera's 3x Zoom. Function navigation is controlled by wheel halfway embedded in the camera, and is quite easy to operate. Access to the USB and AV Out ports is hidden in a little plastic over on the side, which if you weren't looking for it you'd miss it as the control wheel sits almost on top of it (though not blocking access). The camera still sports a view finder for those of us who don't want to waste power on that beautiful 2.5 inch screen. Next to the viewfinder is the on/off switch, which is an interesting change from it being on the top. Don't know how I'll like that seeing how I have big hands, and my fingers seem a bit big. Battery and SD card access is from the bottom as usual. The internal software on the camera seems to be the same as the last revisions, which I really enjoy (once I switched it to English). I was able to take something like 50 photos continuously on the camera using its Continuous Shot mode, before I became bored. With my 1 Gig SD card I can take 360 shots on the highest quality and highest resolution. Startup time in like half a second, and focusing take half a second. Anyways, the whole reason behind buying the IXY 800 IS was the built in image stabilizer, a first for the IXY/ Powershot line. I'm going to test it out tonight in Hiroshima to see if it lives up to the hype and actually takes super clean and clear night time shots. I really hope so. Maybe I'll go take some Cherry Blossom photos if the weather is nice to test out the cameras 2 cm focal range. Ooooo tech bliss! (Now only if I could get a manual in English.....)

Now that I have my new camera I can send my parents my old one, and hopefully they'll start sending me photos of their new puppy. Who is super cute. I mean, really really cute. I wish I had a puppy. Speaking of animal... I was doing a self introduction to a group of first years on Friday. As usual, I have some giant pictures I printed out, one of which is a cute picture of Wilson and Murphy sitting on a couch together both looking at the camera. One little girl commented something in Japanese, and I only made out part of it. "Looks like... dead." My JTE translated for me, and the little girl had said that her old cat looked just like Wilson, but was now dead. She kept looking at that picture for a long time. I could really use a cat around here. (Or as in the picture above, a cat, a puppy, and a sleeping schnauzer.)

I had some people over last evening for some games, drinks, and snacks. I think everyone is on a wine kick now and the 9 of us went through several bottles. Somehow my team of Graham, Bill, Jeremy, and I managed to beat the other team in an astonishing comeback that will live on in trivial pursuit history. But in all honesty, theres nothing like a good old fashioned round of Uno at the end of the night to

Its not yet rainy season yet I have been soaked twice this week. The first was on Monday during a very 'movie' sort of moment. I was rushing to catch my bus after class in a nice downpour. As I reached the cross walk, only a good 30 seconds away and across the street from my stop, I see my bus rush by. I let out a "Damn it." At that exact moment a car comes by and splashes me with a nice wave of water. Now soaked, I return to school and wait an hour and a half for the next bus. Then Tuesday it seems as if typhoon season had started early. This was bad news as I had a half an hour bike ride through this wind and rain. During the ride I am forced to stop several times as my umbrella gets turned inside-out. As I enter my school, soaked from the waste down, the rain suddenly stops. Let this be a warning to you. Don't mess with Japan.

Things Josh Likes To Do: Wave his hand as he walks up to a sliding door, thus giving him the feeling that he is in fact a Jedi English teacher.

Now that school is back in session I feel a lot more... energetic. Or at least as if I'm accomplishing something for a change. So far I've only had one class of 1st year students, none of which know any English. Kind of hard to do a self intro when they know no English. Its kind of nice through to actually have the students know you when you walk around a school. I can only hope that I stick with certain schools for the next two years so I can continue to see the same students.

Things Josh Likes To Do: Smell new copies of National Geographic. Fresh ink smell.

Matt, Bill, and I are teaming up to do a a video for the first annual Fukuyama ALT Film Fest. Which I think is just an excuse for us all to make silly videos. They can be about anything, as long as they are only 5 minutes long. I think we have a chance at really doing something cool. Or at least something very weird.

Things Josh Likes To Do: Mix all of his curry and rice together before eating it.

I found some silly links that might cause you some random laughter. A guy blowing up his G4 Computer. USB Sushi flash drives, as well as other odd USB things. The most odd music reviews you can find. Plus, did you know that in the 70's Spider-man lived in Japan and had his own giant robot? Yeah. He did.

Things Josh Likes To Do: Sing the song Bicycle while riding my bike in town and ringing the bell obnoxiously.

I've been getting quite a few e-mails from people who just found out that they got into the JET program. Quite an interesting mix of people. A girl I knew from high school, a couple of guys I met while studying in Japan, and some random people who had e-mailed me with questions about JET. Way to go people. Now comes the fun part where you wait to find out where you land. Lets hope you end up somewhere cool. (Like Fukuyama) See you soon Chris, Spencer, Emily, Michael, and everyone else who made it in.

Things Josh Likes To Do: Sleep in really late and let the sun wake him up.

Saturday was a major event here in Japan. Droves of Japanese and their friends were out having traditional hanami parties, aka flower viewing. By traditional I mean loading up on snacks and drinks and sitting on a blue tarp with all your friends drinking heavily. While viewing the wonderful cherry blossoms. I hit up two separate gaijin parties, which seemed to join together like Voltron to make one giant party with around 50 people. At one point several ukuleles were brought out and a strange rendition of Twist and Shout was snag with a group of Japanese musicians who happened to wonder by. You don't believe me? Check out the video below...

Now as to the great details of yesterday, lets just say a lot of wine was drank, there was some gaijin on gaijin wrestling, and we ate some KFC. Enjoy these pictures.

Heres something super weird. This little one person car that looks like it walked out of the movie Brazil. I mean, just look how tall I am next to it. Yeah, only in Japan.

Neko Fever! has taken over Japan. I love Neko Fever! Gotta save all those little Chu Chu guys. Adding another Hiroshima Jet blog to my list, check out what Heather has been doing on her lonely island.

Friday was a day of leaving and a day of welcoming. Heidi left for America in the afternoon at about the same time as Matt moved in next door. I spent most of the afternoon waiting around his apartment while the gas company and phone company did their thing. Bill and I assisted the movers in getting Matts stuff into his apartment. His new place is the exact same as mine, though slightly smaller and a different configuration then his old one. Now it seems as if he has too much stuff to fit it all in. Oh Matt, what ever will you do. Oh, I know, steal my internet. Horrible man.

Saturday Bill, Matt, and I headed to Osaka to see two days of crazy concerts. After a long bus ride, a trip to the Apple Store, and finding our hotel the three of us headed to Osaka Jo Hall to attend Spring Groove. We missed the first half of the concerts (not a big loss) but did manage to see Damian Marley, Erykah Badu, Pharrell, and Snoop Dog. Damian Marley was loud. Plus he had this guy on stage who just waved a Jamaican flag the entire hour. Pharrell was the only one who put on a decent show. Snoop Dog was clearly quite high on stage and spent the vast majority of the time asking "How ya doing Osaka," talking about himself, and saying "Whats my name?" You knew things were bad when he started rambling about love and quoting Barney. On the weird side of things we noticed that a lot of Japanese people brought their small children with them. To a very loud concert. Yeah.

That evening we met up with my old friend Motoshi who showed us around for a while. The four of us, along with Grahame, Natasha, Jess, and Jeremy all got some fun dinner in the heart of the city. Oddly Matt and Bill were super tired and had to go back to the hotel whereas I went out for a few hours. Bizarreo.

The Punk Spring Concert on Sunday was so much better. The place was packed both on the floor and in the seats (as opposed to on Saturday where the floor was only halfway full and no one in the seats) with very crazy Japanese fans. The bands knew how to get the crowd going. We ended up seeing Ellegarden, The Living End, Sugarcult, MxPx, 311, Zebrahead, and Bad Religion. The energy level was a nice change from the previous day, and the Punk bands made the hip Hop bands look lazy. The string bass player from The Living End not only stood on top of his bass while playing but sung it over his head. This while the guitarist played using a Corona beer. MXPX did a fun guitar switch, where the guitarist throw his guitar across stage while a roadie throw one back at him. Zebrahead spoke Japanese and knew how to get the crowd going. Simply awesome. Bill got yelled at, twice, for trying to take a picture. It was funny.

Monday we set out for Universal Studios Japan. After the thrilling hour wait in line to buy tickets into the place, we ended a dream world of movie magic. We eventually found that the Spring Break crowd had caused all the rides to be backed up for at least an hour. Luckily we then figured out where to buy Express tickets, which is probably the biggest money making racket there. See it costs 5,500¥ to get in. This lets you walk around and wait in line all day. But for about 3,000¥ more yen you can buy a book of passes that lets you cut tot he front of the line. Thus making more money for Universal Studios as well as screwing over everyone in line who doesn't have the pass. So long story short we managed to actually get in and out of each ride in about 20 minutes. Boo yeah.

The rides are actually the same rides as Universal Studios in the US, except that all the actors and videos are in Japanese. Who knew Doc Brown, Shrek, and The Terminator all spoke such great Japanese? I didn't. The T2: 3D show was fun to watch, though someone in front of us had brought their four year old son with them who got freaked out and cried. Backdraft was the worst possible event there. Nothing but videos featuring the actors and directors and a one minute pyro show. Back To The Future was by far the most fun filled ride for the three of us, though we all completely enjoyed the Spiderman 3D ride. Jurassic Park was one silly water ride, and the T-Rex made it all worth while. But the one thing that made the day was Jaws. Having a super genki Japanese tour guide girl shoot at a big ass Jaws popping out of the water made my day. That and the massive BBQ dinner we had afterwards. The ribs... so good....

We stopped and played some video games before leaving Osaka, only to have Bill get yelled at once again for taking pictures. When will he learn!