April 2007 Archives

First off, sorry if my spelling is super off. I am weak without auto spell check.

Friday I skipped out on the last bit of work and caught a train into Osaka. I then proceeded to try and return an under water camera case I had bought the month before. Sadly I was already outside the 2 week return limit. At least until I played the "sad and confused foreigner" card. Which works most of the time.

Nate was kind enough to let me stay at his place for the night, though I must say it was a bit scary. Not Nate, just the condition of his apartment. Which I can completely make fun of here because I know for a fact that he will never read this page.

So my trip from Osaka to the Philippines started out at 5:35 am. Where I woke up and took a scary shower in a scary bathroom. I then caught a cab to Osaka Station and caught a bus to Kansai International Airport. I love KIX as an airport. It never seems busy, it never seems crowded, and it looks shiny and high tech. Sure, it may be sinking into the ocean and also losing money to no end, but I like it none the less. Plus you can get curry at 8 am! The wonders! The best part about flying from Japan is that they 1) Let you bring on soap and tooth past in carry on bags 2) They don't make you remove your shoes and scan them. I like keeping my shoes on.

The flight to the Philippines was quite easy. Four hours. Plus they showed uncensored versions of films. And for some reason, me sleeping soundly and drooling all over the pillow was a clear sign to wake me up every 20 minutes and tell me to take some food or drink. I gave the airline ladies some very dirty looks. Grrrr.....

As is my no talent talent, I selected the slowed line for imigration. Which I didn't mind as I had a 5 hour layover in Minila. Bad news for the nice girl from Hiroshima City that lined up behind me. I assume she caught her connecting flight, but we may never know. The Minila airport was nice, new, and with a Mr. Dounut. I killed time by buying some magazines and having a really nice sandwich. I almost missed the gate change for my connecting flight though, as I was intently watching a movie on my iPod.

My one hour plane ride to Cebu was very entertaining, as I used the full extent of my Japanese skills to talk to a young couple from Tokyo. They were also in the Philippines for a few days of diving, and we talked about all the places they had gone, what teaching was like, and how badly people in various countries speak english. Fun time. Though not as much fun as my taxi driver telling me how all the Japanese that come down spend all their money on the ladies. No really. He went on and on and on about it. Its fun the things people chose to talk about to you in English.

So I'm beat, and I think my $2 worth of internet is up. My hotel is super duper nice. Overly so. Like, I think I'm spending more moneyon my hotel here than I ever do in Hiroshima. Well, I guess this is a vacation. Gotta enjoy the fun and the sun. Take it easy out there.

By the time you read this, I will probably be in the Philippines enjoying fun filled fruit drinks. Oh yes. They will be good. I leave on Friday for Osaka and then catch a early flight to the Philippines on Saturday morning. Hopefully I'll see something super fun and post a picture or two. Maybe not. You never know. For a fun filled look at where I'll be for the next week, click this happy link.

I have entered two videos into a contest at Gizmodo.com. The contest is to make a PSA (Public Service Announcement) regarding gadgets. Something akin to the "This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs." ads from the 90s. My friends and I took the whole "parody" thing as far as we could, even doing a shot for shot remake of one. I hope you enjoy them. (Also go to Gizmodo and vote for me!)

Save The Bees

This is Your Brain On Gadgets

(No working, or worth while gadgets, were harmed in the making of that video. Though we did kill a VHS tape of Days of Thunder as well as a Laser Disc of Short Circuit.)

Speaking of badly done videos by me, I've finally put every single old video of mine onto my youtube account. So yeah. I'll update the vidblog as soon as I get back from vacation. But until then, just click the link to my youtube account.

On a sad note, my Macintosh is now old. Three years old. Which means its out of warranty. Which means it'll probably break any day now. I shall cry. I also shall be looking at getting a nice new Macbook Pro.... hmmmm.... Pro....

Also, if you're bored without me around you really just need to watch this video below.

Feeling better?

I'm currently working on a short PSA type film for a online contest. Prize, a nice cool $1,000 camera. My idea? Smashing things. Electronic things. To accomplish this with electronics other than my own I went to the thrilling second hand store Hard Off. While there I bought them out of all their extremely cheap old stuff. Which is how I now own a 1¥ printer, a 200¥ SNES, a 100¥ Gameboy, several LPs and LDs, joysticks, steering wheels, cameras, and a bulky word processor. But while all this is fun, I needed something catchy and beautiful to destroy. Jess was happy to lend me her iBook, killed by a misplaced glass of water, for me to beat the crap out of. But because I'm nice, and I needed some ways to persuade her, I promised I'd take the hard drive out so she might maybe get the data off of it. Easier said than done. So after about half an hour, some cutting, pulling, twisting, breaking, and throwing, I had the hard drive out. And also quite a few random bits of metal and circuits. Which you can see below. If you're wondering how this will all go down you'll have to wait a few days. The contest ends Thursday at noon (Friday for me), so I'll be sure to post it before I leave for the Philippines.

I've been madly posting old videos on youtube the last day or so. I'm maybe 2/3rds of the way through them all. If you care to relive 2005 and 2006 with me, just click here and start watching old videos. I'll update my vidlog to include the youtube movies after I get back from vacation.

Speaking of videos, check out the Lets Film Festival entries that are up on youtube! Grahaem's winning superman film. Natasha's animated high school love story. Matt's funny zombie love fest.

My hope is to get Simon addicted to DEFCON so I have someone to play while at work... I told him today "Its like chess, but with global nuclear war." Anyone with some free time, and a mind for strategy should try it out. (For Mac and PC! No excuses!)

Does this game remind anyone else of a certain 80's Wargames theme movie? "Would you like to play a game?"

So heres the long awaited sequel to Pocky... Pocky II: Electric Boogaloo! Something that Matt, Bill, Simon, and myself made up for this years second annual "Lets Film Festival". While we did not win this years "Best Film" award, we did get quite a few laughs. Oh well. Maybe next year when we do Pocky 3: The Death of Pocky we'll win. The event consisted of about 12 films, each about five minutes in length. They ranged from ravenous zombies to singing ALTs. Fun was had by all. A special Kudos to Graheam (one of the two organizers for the event) who did an animated Superman film that captured the hearts and minds of everyone there.

Oh, and here are some pictures in case you don't wish to relive the event at home.

I'd have posted more stuff... but... DEFCON has taken over my brain. "Shall we play a game?" (If you got that reference, you deserve to be both hugged and slapped.)

The other day I was walking down my street and saw something dart across the train tracks. Usually I am quite accustomed to seeing all various types of cats in my neighborhood, and even the occasional rat. But this was different. Too small and long to be a cat, to big to be a rat (unless Japan has created super mutant rats). I speed up and watched it dart across the road and into someone's flower bed. What I saw surprised me in my urban setting. A wild Japanese ferret. I had seen warning signs about them when I was out in less populated areas, but I never expected to see one in the city. Cute little guy.

Two things bothered me today while reading the news. Both were dealing with cell phones. The first is an article about how the high use of cell phones is destroying the ability of youth in Japan to use computers. But the way I read the article, it seems the problem is that people just don't know how to type because not everyone can afford a computer. I would be more worried about how in the modern computer age the written Japanese language is falling apart. I've had several Japanese teachers of mine complain about how forgetting kanji (The Chinese characters used in the Japanese language. You need to know about 1500 of them to read a newspaper.). Not so much forgetting it, as forgetting how to write it. When you don't have to manually write them out your brain forgets how to do the 20 or so strokes (yes, some are that crazy, many are easy). Than again, I detest the shorthand that has become the online standard for young english speakers on the internet. LOL my white ass. The other weird article was about how cell phone signals are causing bees to freak out and die off. Which would suck, as many crops need bees to survive. I would find it funny if the human race fell apart because of a lack of Bees.

Finally we can put this horrible poster to rest, as someone has finally published an article explaining that kitten are safe. Domokun is probably quite happy to be cleared of any kitten killing.

How is it that road construction is going on in my neighborhood at midnight, on a Thursday night. Yet when you gather a large group of foreigners together to party down at 9:30 on a Friday night the neighbors call the cops. Oh the irony of Japan. Why why why.

I finally am starting to put videos up on youtube again. The ones that were in my Video section of my blog, that at one point all got deleted from my friend's webserver (Not his fault, computer failure. I love you Dale. In a non gay way. Like how I love Zach Braff. Nothing wrong with that.). I stuck up Pocky this morning. If you'll remember it was our submission to last years Fukuyama "Let Film Festival", and will be followed up by Pocky 2. I spent some time last evening redoing the credits, which suffered from the "WHEN WILL THE EDITING NIGHTMARE END" troubles I had last year. Hopefully this is a bit better.

I sometimes still get people asking me why I'm in Japan (for now a total of over two years). I wish I could just show them articles like this one, and reply "Why wouldn't I be here?". Seriously. Its like living on another planet, expect with a KFC in every town.

New "Get a Mac" ads are out. Not as funny as the Japanese versions.

Its Hanami Season in Japan again. The falling cherry blossom peddles line the streets, as well as the passed out people who enjoyed themselves a bit too much. Tis the season to be young and alive in Japan.

I took part in a Pub Quiz last Friday in Hiroshima City, and though my team didn't win, we did decently well. It was for charity anyways. Plus we at least have our pride for not cheating our way to victory. (Oh, you know who you are.....) It was one of those weird occasions where JETs from all over get together, and then you realize that you don't actually know anyone, and the last time you even saw most of these people was at opening orientation 9 months ago. Then again... most of these people will be leaving in 3 months anyways.

On Saturday Natalie and I went to Saijo for some Hanami fun under some trees. The weather was nice, and the company friendly. I watched several young Japanese people hit each other's rear ends with bats and tennis rackets (see photo below). Later on an ambulance came and took away some poor college kid who was near death. I spend a good deal of time enjoying the flowers and the clouds, and taking slightly covert photos of other JETs making out in the park. I really do love digital. That and people not noticing me walking right past them. Or taking several photos of them. Moving on... On Sunday the guys and I started work on Pocky 2. Twice the fun Pocky 1 was (which I will be sticking on Youtube tomorrow), but with better acting. Ok, I lied on the last part.

Speaking of JETs and whatnot, my office will be a tad interesting this summer. As there are 10 people involved in my BOE (11 if you count the one who left half-ways through the year), and only 4 of us are staying on, and we're probably going to get 3 or 4 new positions added on as well... You can probably see where this is going. So if you didn't catch my drift there, I'm saying that this summer my BOE will be getting anywheres between 7-11 new JETs in. All of whom need to be pampered and helped along, just as I did when I first got here. The problem is that there will be so many of them and so few of us. Especially if any of us senior JETs go on vacation, which is almost a given. So much to think about and ignore.

Crystal and I had dinner on Sunday evening, and on the way back to our respective apartment we stopped to pick up some candy. Crystal, with her hawk like eyes, found a large moth wedged between the sliding door. The poor little guy was rather beat up, and didn't fly away. Even as I walked home with him on my thumb. I took him inside and snapped a lot of pictures of him. Some turned out well, others, not so good. I later released him outside.

I would love to learn Japanese this way. Or at least have my kids learn English this way.

Only in Japan.

There really should have been a National Lampoon's Japan Vacation. I mean the movie just writes itself. With this in mind, lets talk about my family's vacation in Japan.First off, there is no possible way I can write about everything that happened. I'd be here all week. Plus I'm lazy.

My parents arrived in Japan and somehow managed to make it down to Osaka before the trains shut down. Lets just say I was slightly worried for a while, but calmed myself with a few drinks and the company of my former college room mate Nate. The family got here, and then proceeded to spend the next two weeks complaining about everything. Just kidding. They did surprisingly well in their new environment. In Osaka we attempted to see some Sumo, but it was super sold out. We hit the aquarium instead. Which was super packed with spring break children. The next day I proceeded to be near death, as I had caught the office illness that had floored three other ALTs in the weeks before (damn you). So I spent two days in bed, in the hotel in Osaka, while my family looked around Kyoto. They appeared to have a rather fun time, even after finding out that everything worth seeing closed at 4:00 pm in the city. I eventually started to feel better and joined them on their sight seeing.

Soon after this I found out my camera was broken, which is my way of saying all of these photos were not taken by me. The magic of the digital age. Another day in Kyoto and then off to Himeji, where my parents had their first ever taste of nan bread at a middle eastern eatery. Afterwards we went to Kobe and took the cable car up a mountain, much to the dismay of my mother, and watched the sun set. At least until we were kicked out because the placed closed at like 5:30. Wendy's soon followed. The following day we went to Fukuyama to see my apartment as well as go to my favorite internet cafe, where my mother fell in love with curry. Seriously, my parents really need to try some new foods. We later headed to Hiroshima City, where my family was slightly perplexed by the street cars.

The Peace Park and Miyajima were seen by all, and my sister was even slightly attacked by deer. I took them out for Indian food and Vietnamese food as well. Fun new foods for all. We later headed back to Fukuyama where I gave them a tour of City Hall, one of my schools, and the old port city. (Name two places where I don't do work, and one that has boats!) We even had a sashimi filled dinner with one of my adult students and her husband. (Yes, my parents actually do like raw fish. Can't say so much for my sister.)

Some fun side notes about this trip. I watched more Japanese TV while on this trip then I have in the past year. My family had some weird urge to eat at Starbucks every morning. My parents never once got lost in the subways of Osaka. We almost adopted an old man in Himeji who was overly helpful. My domokun shirt seemed to be a major hit in Kyoto, especially amongst the cute college girl crowd. My parents smuggled cheese and meat into Japan for me.

They eventually returned home and were smothered in cat love. The things I miss by not being in Wisconsin.

I love taking pictures. Its usually my motivation for going most places. This is why I was quite saddened, and depressed, when I found my Canon IXUS 800 IS having problems in the middle of traveling with my parents (I loved that camera). Seems that somehow, a very noticeable fleck of dirt had found its way INSIDE the camera and onto the CCD. Which caused a big dark spot in 1/4 of the picture. With the help of my Japanese teacher Aki I took it back to the store and its been submitted for warranty approval and possible fix-al.

Ah but thats now the fun of this story. No, that would be my overall dumbness that follows. Because I'm planning on going to the Philippines in about 3 weeks and need a camera I was left with three options: 1) Hope its covered under warranty AND fixed in time. 2) Buy the same version of the camera so that I could use my underwater case with it. 3) Buy the new version of the camera and a new underwater case. Clearly I picked the most difficult and expensive option, being #3. So while in Osaka I went off and bought the new underwater camera case that would work with the new version Canon camera that I bought the next day in Fukuyama. Case closed. Ok, I lied. See it turns out that newer doesn't always mean better. After buying the new Canon IXUS 900 IS I took an immediate dislike to it. On paper the camera seemed like a nice upgrade, but in reality it was a bit of a downgrade. The image quality was lacking, the wider angle lease caused image distortion, and while the entire body is made of metal the battery housing is made from the cheapest of plastics giving the camera a very cheap feel (this review of it at dpreview.com compares the two cameras directly and had the same feelings on the subject as I did). This plus the fact that the new underwater case cost about $200 made me take it back to the store and ask for an exchange to the older version which I had before. Easy? No. It took over and hour and me calling in my Japanese teacher to get things worked out. Seems that the owner also was under the impression that newer = better and couldn't understand why I didn't see things the same way. He thought that if I got a new older model camera I would be unhappy with it and that the new new model camera would clearly take better pictures. I think he was just trying to be too helpful, and eventually he just gave up and gave into me looking very sad and coughing a lot. (Japan apparently doesn't have the philosophy of "The Customer is always right.") Though he had to order the older model in from another store. It may be here by Saturday.

So there we have it. I now have one slightly broken camera in the shop and maybe it'll be fixed. I have one new, slightly older model camera on order. I have a nice $200 underwater case that needs to be returned, if even possible. Plus I still have no camera.

That and Sega finally killed the Dreamcast. If I had a camera I would take a picture of mine crying.

This means you American JET who felt the urge to raise your fist to me and threaten to rough me up three times. Yes, we may have differing views on race and racism in America. Yes, in America you may be a minority and I may be a majority. Yes, I will never know what its like to be you and you'll never know what its like to be me. Yes, having a group of five people at a table will probably give five different views on a complex issue with no easy answer. No, it is never acceptable to threaten another person while having dinner and discussing racism in a movie you've not seen. No, I will not spend hours debating the history of racism in America and how much it sucked for your family and possibly the vast majority of families through the history of America. No, I will give your argument extra credit because someone who looked like me did something to someone who looked like you many many years before you were born, nor should this negate the validity of my arguments or anyone else's argument at the table. No, I will not leave just because you're extremely angry that I don't agree with you. No, resorting to name calling and insults isn't the best way to win an argument. Yes, acting like that did make you look like a jerk. Yes, hitting me probably would have caused the bar owner to call the cops, though to be honest I wouldn't have cared. Yes, you probably have a right to be angry about issues of race in America. But I think I'm missing the point with all this Yes and No stuff.

How about this: Anger and hate solves nothing and only perpetuates the problem.

Maybe the problem we have is that many people like to view everyone in America with a lot of hyphens. You see a Mexican-American, African-American, Asian-American, White-America, French-American, Jewish-American, ect ect ect when the fact is we're all just Americans. Anyone who was born and raised in America is by default an American who has far more in common with any other American than with a person 1,000 miles away in a country they've never been to, nor will probably ever visit. Lets just face that fact that we're all American and stop disliking each other because of a damned hyphen or skin color, and start disliking each other for what really matters in life. (Mostly the fact that a large percentage of Americans are jerks.)

If you actually think that beating me up would fix every wrong that has happened to your family in America over the past 100 years, well, go for it. I'm issuing an open invite for you to beat me up with absolutely no police involvement what so ever. No going to jail, no losing your job, no deportation. But on one condition, that when you're done you call up your entire family and explain to them that you got the person responsible for every wrong that has ever happened to them. I'm sure they'd be proud at the advance you'd made for race relations in America.

Oh, and don't be expecting invites to any of my taco parties after that either.