May 2007 Archives

Rainy season sounds just like it sounds. Its rainy. And hot. Lots of both which somehow comes together to make for a really hot beginning to summer that is either rainy wet or humid wet. Which would be no problem to me if I worked in an air-conditioned building or drove a car. But once again I face the reality of me ridding my bike in the rain and working at schools that won't even let me bring a bottle of water into the classroom. But I guess it could be worse. It could be typhoon season. Which is just like rainy season, except that it also has massive amounts of killer wind.

I love zombies. I love Macintoshes. I love the idea of zombies going to an Apple Store. Which is exactly what happened last weekend when a flash mob of zombies ran amuck in San Francisco. The only downside was that no one broke out any shot guns on the crowd.... oh well. For a rundown of the event, read this fun article. For a gruesome photo gallery, look over here. I'd totally do this kind of thing in my free time...

On Friday I went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I hate to spoil it for you, but it kind of sucked. What you say? How could a movie about pirates suck? Waaaa? Well it did. So much so that my friends and I become bored with the film at several point. Even a cameo by Keith Richards didn't do much for any of us (he seemed just to appear for the hell of it). Blah, this is the second three-qual installment movie I've been disappointed with this summer. Curse you hollywood. Curse you.

As an avid laptop person I often find myself in situation where I'm out and about and in need of an internet connection. While I could just try and connect to the many wireless networks available to me, having a bit of extra info would be nice before clicking on one. Which is why I like WiFind, which adds some extra info to the wireless network area of your Macintosh. So now I can click once and see if a network is password protected or not as well as a much more detailed signal strength. Kind of handy. The downside is that this little app costs $8 and doesn't really seems like its worth a FULL $8. Which is why I also like CoconutWiFi which does much the same thing, has some fun filled colors, sits in your menu bar full time, and is free. If only I wasn't color blind and unable to tell the difference between the yellow and green bubbles. Sigh.....

Sometimes people from home ask me if Japanese students are better than American students. My usual response is "No, they're just as dumb and stupid as American kids."

Its been a rainy day here in Fukuyama. Not much happening, though I did come up with a fun idea or two for some silly videos. Which I may or may not be filming soonish. I am so lazy.

But the good thing about today was that my neighbor Matt made me aware of some interesting Old Spice commercials that just came out. Ones that feature a personal hero of mine, Bruce Campbell. You might remember him from each of his rather funny parts in every single Spiderman film. But hopefully these videos let you enjoy him for his real B level acting abilities. (Watch his hands during the video for an extra laugh.)

I find this one overly funny, if for nothing else but the nice set they have him on.

But I must ask... whats with the weird sounding leather chairs? Almost... too much?

Japan is well known for its liberal use of 'engrish' in every day situations. So much so that I have to wonder why I even bother to teach real English when my students are constantly surrounded by english that makes no sense. Imagine studying English for 6 years in school and then not being able to make sense of any of the English you see on the streets. But I digress. One of the things I find rather funny is how perfectly good movie titles are changed around here in Japan for no real reason. I break down the foreign movie titles in Japan into one of three areas. The first is the unchanged. These are the movies that are kept the same, and even marketed with the original English title. Sure, they may have a katakana translation of the title underneath, but the title is more or less the same. For example the DVD cover for Casino Royal is more or less the same, yet provides the katakana translation of the title below.

Casino Royal and most movies fall into the first category of unmolested movie titles.

The second group is slightly more interesting. These would be movies whose name has been changed to something completely different, yet still is actually relevant to the movie. Such as the change that happened to My Super Ex-girlfriend which was changed to Gガール (G-Girl), which is the super hero name of Luke Wilson's ex-girlfriend in the film. So I guess it is kind of relevant.

You could also say the same for The Incredible which was changed to Mr. インクレダイブル (Mr. Incredible). Not much of an issue there as I guess a family really should get its identity from the male head of the family. Plus he's the biggest one on the box cover.

One of the most funny ones I've seen lately has been for the movie Snakes on a Plane, which has been shortened down even further in Japan to just Snake Flight. I like how they even put that bit in English with a katakana translation below it. Just because.

But still, even these changes are not so bad. I mean, if you actually look at the cover art you'll almost always find the original title put somewhere in small print or off to the side.

But the last category is by far the best, and most difficult to come by. These are the movie titles which have been so changed and perverted that they really don't have anything to do with the movie. They're weird in Japanese let alone when you change them back into English. For example, the movie Napoleon Dynamite, a tough one to really market to the Japanese crowd, was changed to simply "Bus Man." No really. I guess who ever was trying to think up a catchy name in Japanese saw a bus on the cover and figured it was a good way to present the film.

I hoped you enjoyed this thrilling look into my local video store. If anyone else has some bad movie translations they're like to send my way, just e-mail me.

Friday ALT Jess left our city for good, returning back to New Zealand to be surrounded by warm and sandy beaches. Our BOE has had some bad luck this year. Two of our second year JETs have prematurely left us, which means that their schools become our schools. Luckily in both cases I did not any extra schools, and in the first case I did get some sweet stuff that was left behind so I wouldn't call it an complete loss. (A free LCD is a good LCD.)

Saturday was a happy day as a bunch of us took part in a celebration of fellow ALT Rose and her turning 24 years old (ok, her birthday was Friday, but the party was Saturday). A gathering at our local beer garden where we all ate and drank to our hearts content. Happy Birthday Rose. (She's the blond one if you didn't know.)

I was actually quite saddened on Saturday. I took a bike ride out to one of the dive shops in town and realized a major setback in my quest to dive in Japan; I'm too big. I'm too tall, too big footed, and overall just too large for the dive equipment that my local dive shop has. Even their catalogues didn't have much in my size (Not that I feel the urge to spend $500 on equipment right now). So goes my life as a Super Sized guy in Japan. Maybe one of the other shops will have an XXL wet-suit.....

I put up a photo album of my Philippines travels. Around 50 pictures. I'll try and get the SCUBA pictures I took online soonish. As I don't actually have anything to do at work tomorrow I may try and get around to organizing the last 5 months of photos.

The last flight simulator I got into was back in the 4th grade, which is why I'm surprised that I've become star-struck with this one. See this isn't just a generic flight sim, its a Battlestar Galactica sim. One thats being made for free by some very talented users with a lot of free time. Its worth a try, as its FREE, and quite fun, and really nice looking. I really can't wait what the guys at Beyond the Red Line crank out in their final version. (Heck, I went out and bought a 900¥ keyboard just to play this game.)

The main reason I took a week long trip to the Philippines was to do some diving. In fact, I was paying good money to study for most of my week in order to gain my Advanced Open Water certificate. Staying and diving at Alona Beach on Bohol was a blast. As I said in my last post, the area was very laid back and relaxing. Not too many tourists, mostly divers and their families. I booked and dived though SeaQuest Diver Center which I would highly recommend to anyone visiting the area. While I was there the shop seemed to have a swarm of middle aged German couples diving though them. They were nice enough to speak English to me and compliment me on my nice German name. (But did they really need to wear such small bathing suits the entire time? Ewwwww!)

During the time I was there, I did a total of 9 dives. One of these was a night dive, and the max depth I went down was 35 meters. The pictures you see below were all taken by me and my trusty Canon IXUS 800 IS (700 IS in North America) housed inside its official Canon underwater case. Unlike my experiences diving in Thailand the picture taking conditions in the Philippines were quite nice. High visibility and light levels. I took around 400 pictures and some video. I'll post a lot more pictures onto my photoblog within a week or two. I really need to buy a book about fish found in the Pacific Ocean. Forgive me for not knowing what everything is.

I like the two guys in the first picture, and the flashiness of the Lionfish in the second.

The blue spotted ray in the second photo was nice and quick, and tough to snap a picture of 35 feet down in low light.

The garden eels in the first shot were kind of far off, and I had to zoom in. They'll retreat into their hole if you get close to them. The second photo is of a small crab. He was really tough to take a picture of and I'm sad that none of the photos I took turned out in the way I wanted them to.

The school of Jack Fish in the second photo didn't mind me at all, and I kind of got lost in them.

Me and those pesky Jack fish. Plus a nice shot of a sea of coral.

Night photos make me scream. Many fun things come out at night, and its hard enough dealing with being in complete darkness and taking a picture of something. The crab on the left is very funky, and the little shrimpy dude in the second photo has some fun whiskers.

Me all geared up and a nice sea of blue coral.

One of the dive masters has a big thing for sea slugs, which are some of the most strange and interesting looking things you can come across, though tough to snap a picture of. The second picture is just a landscape shot.

So I like clown fish. Sue me. Those little angry bastards are fun to look at and make for some good picture taking. The second photo is one of my favorites. I think I'll call it "Two Schools of Thought."

I like the diver in the background of the first photo, and the coral in for foreground of the second.

So yeah, taking pictures under water is super fun and super difficult. The first 50 pictures I took were mostly worthless due to bad visibility on my first dive, and several other times a good photo was ruined by bad lighting or my camera wanting to use a flash under water. That combined with trying to deal with diving and your camera while trying not to drift off in some other direction while taking a picture has given me massive respect for anyone who does this for a living. That and I really can't wait to do this again.

One nice thing about digital cameras these days is that they take rather nice video, as long as you have a massive memory card to put all that data on. Below is the two minutes of video I took while under water. The only problem I ever ran into with video was with me. I didn't want to switch to shooting video and miss out at shooting some regular pictures. Oh well. Enjoy the sound me breathing.

So thats what diving was like at Alona Beach. It was really nice I really wanted to do stay longer and do some more diving. Maybe this summer I can work some diving into a trip. I hope you enjoyed the photos, I'll put more up later.

So I'm now back from my wonderful trip to the Philippines. What can I say, it was fun. This is mostly an orgy of pictures with a few words stuck in-between. Enjoy.

As I said in my past post, the flight from Osaka to Manila is quite quick. The four hours went by with ease, and I even snapped a few nice cloud pictures along the way. The thing I forgot to write in my last post was that our plane aborted its first landing attempt. We were almost on the ground, only a few meters up and about to touch down, and then the pilot kicked it into high gear and off we went again. Some bad wind conditions I guess. Kind of weird, but I was in no hurry.

The island of Bohol wasn't too busy. Alona Beach was the exact same way and mostly occupied by middle ages European diver couples and a few beach bums. The kind of place where most of the beach side bars are empty after 10. Slow moving and easy going. A very relaxing place to spend my out of water time. Despite the many warnings I had gotten about the overall safety of the Philippines, Bohol felt far safer than anyplace else I've traveled in Asia. Cops patrolled the beach, you could have a candle light dinner on the beach, and everyone seemed to know everyone. One of the randomly nice things about Bohol while I was there was the yearly fiesta that was going on. My dive instructor invited me over to his house where I ate way too much mango and pork. Not just pork, but a big pig on a stick roasted over an open fire. Super good.

I spent most of my time doing diver related things, which I'll post about in my next entry, but that doesn't mean I didn't do some fun touristy things as well. I took the official Bohol tour one day, hitting all the very 'touristy' things in one go. The first leg of my trip was to a Tarsier Reserve where they breed the weird little guys. They're just so weird and cute. I resisted the urge to pick one up and cuddle him.

The next stop was to the Chocolate Hills. Just a warning, they are not really made of chocolate. These very weird and beautiful natural formations are actually a geological mystery. No one really knows how they were made. Either way, they're a one of a kind thing in the world, and worth seeing once.

Another stop at a butterfly sanctuary was a surprise. A new addition to the island, the sanctuary held a collection of all the native butterflies on the island, as well as attracted quite a few wild butterflies with its impressive gardens. And yes, those two are having sex in the second photo. Its butterfly porno.

There was also a quick little boat ride to see some waterfalls. Not all that impressive overall. Though after I slightly freaked out when a little lizard called up my arm while inside the van. After figuring out that it wasn't a big bug, but a nice little green lizard, I let the little dude hitch a ride on my hand and then later let him out at the next stop.

We made a short stop at the oldest church on the island. The place also has the bragging rights of being the largest coral stone church in the region. The inside was impressive in some ways, and disappointing in others. Guess I was expecting it to be a bit more old looking and a bit more fancy.

Our last stop was the Blood Compact site, which holds the honor of being the spot where the first treaty between the Philippinos and the Spanish was made. The whole thing involved drinking each others blood. Fun for all.

So that covers just about everything on Bohol. At least all the touristy stuff you'd end up seeing while there. The day before I left the Philippines I was able to spend half a day running around the city of Cebu seeing some historical and touristy things. The city itself is quite impressive, being the oldest city in the country and one of the most developed islands. A sprawling metropolis with a well sought after night life. It was the first place Magellan stopped at in the Philippines, and also his last place, as he died here in 1521.

Yet I saw nothing but a bunch of old stuff. Like Fort San Pedro, the oldest fort and earliest european structure in the Philippines! Once a symbol of military might, now it houses rusty cannons and seemed to be a place for young couples to gather and hold hands.

Magellan's Cross is a gathering point for the faithful and the touristy. Not actually the real cross, but its said that this one contains fragments of the real one. At least it has some pretty painting.

I asked my driver if he knew of any randomly weird or fun places to go, so he took me to a Korean Taoist temple that also sported a nice view of the city. Afterwards we went to the spot where Magellan died, which was actually located on a separate island. Silly Magellan, made the classic mistake of underestimating the natives.

That evening I took a taxi out to a massive super mall where I watched the new Spider-man movie. All for the low low price of 110 Pesos (around $2), which made me cry as I remembered how much I pay for movies in Japan (about 1,500¥ or $12). I was quite surprised to find a takoyaki stand in the mall as well. That and get a pat down by security guards as I entered the mall. Seems they're concerned about safety in the mall. Who cares! They had a Starbucks!

So the next day, after a nice 16 hours, 2 taxis, 2 trains, and two planes, I finally got back to my home in Japan. Plus I still have 500 Pesos for some reason. Sigh...

So thats the land portion of my trip. I'll post all the fun diving details soon enough. I hope some of the pictures were interesting enough to make you want to travel to the Philippines!