I am posting this here for a few reasons:
Mostly because it's my blog and I can do whatever the hell I want with it and none of you can do anything about it.
Also because I have been a big fan of Kanye West since his first album--I think he is one of very few unique voices in the hip-hop world--and his newest album is set to come out in August. Here's the video that just came out from the first single released off the new album. It's called "Stronger," and it samples, coincidentally, my favorite Daft Punk song "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" (it's not as dirty as it sounds). Not being in the states, this was my first time hearing the song as well, and I am very very pleased.
The last reason is probably most relevant to the content of this blog. You'll notice a lot of Japanese writing throughout the video, and that there are a bunch of weird scenes which seem to make no sense. For some reason (that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the lyrics at all, but I suppose fits with the rhythm and feel of the track), they decided to remake scenes from the Japanese animated film Akira (Certainly the most famous anime movie in the USA, one of the most famous in Japan as well) as live-action sequences. I like the movie Akira for various reasons, but don't absolutely love it. The comic, however, that the movie is based off of, is one of my favorite books in the whole world. It's a tremendous epic, actually, spanned across 6 phone-book sized volumes, and the movie (which was made by the same man who made the comic, Katsuhiro Otomo) only covers about half of what goes on in the comic. Anyways, I could talk forever about Akira and how much I love it, but the real point is to show how far Japan has penetrated into American pop culture. There's no indication in the video that the scenes are taken from Akira at all, you're just supposed to know. And I bet a ton of people will. Awesome. This country is the height of 'cool.'
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Friday, June 29, 2007
Welcome back
I guess it's been a few days, huh. I'll tell you why.
Illness.
Awful, awful illness.
On Wednesday I woke up with a severe headache and stomach pains. Luckily, I had some Tylenol on hand, so that took care of the headache for a while, but the stomach pains didn't go away. I couldn't even eat breakfast, it was so bad. I was alone at work that whole day because Shino-san was still in Osaka. My stomach pains only got worse, and as the day went on, some new symptoms arose: feverishness.
I underwent feelings of extreme heat and uncontrollable sweating, during which I would even take my shirt off (I figured as long as I'm the only one in the office, I may as well), and those periods would then be followed by the opposite. I would feel extremely cold, have to put my shirt back on and my whole body would shiver uncontrollably. This went on all day, and I decided to send an email to Shino-san and leave work early. Wednesday night was one of the worst nights I can remember having. At the beginning of the night I was having an episode of extreme heat and as I lay in bed, practically naked, I felt like I was swimming in a pool of my own sweat. I could barely sleep, and when I could it was only for 20 or 30 minutes at a time, at which point I would wake up either from shivering or from the need to go to the bathroom (diarrhea had reared its ugly head, plus I threw up). It may have just been dreams, but I think I even hallucinated a little... my mind was totally panicked. In the middle of the night I sent another email to Shino-san saying I'm really sorry but I just don't think I can come into work on Thursday. He wrote me back in the morning saying that's totally fine.
Horrible timing, by the way, for this to happen: I missed my own show at the Ruby Room on Wednesday, and then I missed Aya's show on Thursday. I was really looking forward to Aya's show, too, because I haven't seen her in like 2 or 3 weeks.
Anyways, Thursday (yesterday) was not much better. Still with the shivering, the sweating, the diarrhea and throwing up. By the time I went to bed last night, however, things started to feel a bit better. I hadn't had either a hot or cold spell in a few hours and my stomach didn't hurt terribly.
Today is even better. I'm still a little sensitive to temperature, but not nearly to the extreme that it was on Wednesday, and really the only problem I have left to deal with is the diarrhea, which is still just as bad as it was on Wednesday. Then again, I haven't eaten any solid foods whatsoever since Tuesday, so that could be part of it.
the point of the story is that I now know the Japanese word for diarrhea: geri.
I know this wasn't the most pleasant entry, but hey, you ask for my life, you get my life.
Love, Lawrence
Illness.
Awful, awful illness.
On Wednesday I woke up with a severe headache and stomach pains. Luckily, I had some Tylenol on hand, so that took care of the headache for a while, but the stomach pains didn't go away. I couldn't even eat breakfast, it was so bad. I was alone at work that whole day because Shino-san was still in Osaka. My stomach pains only got worse, and as the day went on, some new symptoms arose: feverishness.
I underwent feelings of extreme heat and uncontrollable sweating, during which I would even take my shirt off (I figured as long as I'm the only one in the office, I may as well), and those periods would then be followed by the opposite. I would feel extremely cold, have to put my shirt back on and my whole body would shiver uncontrollably. This went on all day, and I decided to send an email to Shino-san and leave work early. Wednesday night was one of the worst nights I can remember having. At the beginning of the night I was having an episode of extreme heat and as I lay in bed, practically naked, I felt like I was swimming in a pool of my own sweat. I could barely sleep, and when I could it was only for 20 or 30 minutes at a time, at which point I would wake up either from shivering or from the need to go to the bathroom (diarrhea had reared its ugly head, plus I threw up). It may have just been dreams, but I think I even hallucinated a little... my mind was totally panicked. In the middle of the night I sent another email to Shino-san saying I'm really sorry but I just don't think I can come into work on Thursday. He wrote me back in the morning saying that's totally fine.
Horrible timing, by the way, for this to happen: I missed my own show at the Ruby Room on Wednesday, and then I missed Aya's show on Thursday. I was really looking forward to Aya's show, too, because I haven't seen her in like 2 or 3 weeks.
Anyways, Thursday (yesterday) was not much better. Still with the shivering, the sweating, the diarrhea and throwing up. By the time I went to bed last night, however, things started to feel a bit better. I hadn't had either a hot or cold spell in a few hours and my stomach didn't hurt terribly.
Today is even better. I'm still a little sensitive to temperature, but not nearly to the extreme that it was on Wednesday, and really the only problem I have left to deal with is the diarrhea, which is still just as bad as it was on Wednesday. Then again, I haven't eaten any solid foods whatsoever since Tuesday, so that could be part of it.
the point of the story is that I now know the Japanese word for diarrhea: geri.
I know this wasn't the most pleasant entry, but hey, you ask for my life, you get my life.
Love, Lawrence
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
putting the "Wha?!" in Biwa
Something really cool I noticed the other day. Well, I noticed it a long time ago, but never figured out what it was until the other day. On my walk to and from work I walk in front of this store that has clear glass Japanese-style sliding doors at the front past the genkan (the recessed welcome area where you leave your shoes) is simply a wooden floor with a few tools along the wall and some shelves along the other wall, etc., but the floor is mainly empty. In the morning when I walk by, there is always a man (presumably the owner of the shop) wearing a yukata (summer kimono) sitting seza (traditional Japanese style of sitting on the floor: on your knees with your shins/feet tucked underneath) on the wooden floor reading the day's newspaper. When I walk by on my way home from work he seems to be always doing some kind of wood-crafting (still while sitting on the floor). The sign contained some characters I couldn't read, so I never knew what the store was. Until the other day, when I saw one of his nearly-finished products, that is. He is a biwa-maker! A biwa is a traditional Japanese instrument that's basically a lute. Soooo cool! I kinda want to go in and just talk to him, I bet he's a pretty interesting guy. Perhaps I will one of these days after work. You can read more about the biwa HERE.
That's all to report for today, really. I'm alone in the office today and for about half of tomorrow because Shino-san had to go to Osaka to meet a client or something. Lonely me!
Tonight I was going to meet up with Kie and help her practice her presentation that she's giving tomorrow (it's in English, hence the me helping part), but she canceled because she has not yet finished making the powerpoint itself! Cutting it close! She should be fine, though. Her English is better than my Japanese.
It's 4:30 now and I guess I could, theoretically, just head home now since I'm not really doing anything right now anyways. I guess I'll wait another 10 minutes or so and then head out.
I was trying to think of what I give to my friends here as a present before I left, that would be really neat and something they probably couldn't get on their own. I decided on mix CDs! Since they have all expressed interest in American music, I'll give them some of my favorite stuff. Whenever we talk about music, I always ask them if they know some bands that I like and the answer is usually know, so this gives me a chance to show them. I think that's a good, meaningful gift, right? And now I'm really excited about making them, so maybe I'll work on that tonight since I now have no plans.
Alright, Take care everybody! Love, Lawrence
That's all to report for today, really. I'm alone in the office today and for about half of tomorrow because Shino-san had to go to Osaka to meet a client or something. Lonely me!
Tonight I was going to meet up with Kie and help her practice her presentation that she's giving tomorrow (it's in English, hence the me helping part), but she canceled because she has not yet finished making the powerpoint itself! Cutting it close! She should be fine, though. Her English is better than my Japanese.
It's 4:30 now and I guess I could, theoretically, just head home now since I'm not really doing anything right now anyways. I guess I'll wait another 10 minutes or so and then head out.
I was trying to think of what I give to my friends here as a present before I left, that would be really neat and something they probably couldn't get on their own. I decided on mix CDs! Since they have all expressed interest in American music, I'll give them some of my favorite stuff. Whenever we talk about music, I always ask them if they know some bands that I like and the answer is usually know, so this gives me a chance to show them. I think that's a good, meaningful gift, right? And now I'm really excited about making them, so maybe I'll work on that tonight since I now have no plans.
Alright, Take care everybody! Love, Lawrence
Monday, June 25, 2007
Sky is Blue
Howdy.
I am quite impressed with one of my old high school classmates, Dora Magrath, who has made her own music and recorded and album. I've listened to some of it and really really enjoy it. Fun fact: Dora was the first girl I ever asked out on a date! Fun Fact: Dora was the first girl who ever rejected me! haha. Certainly no hard feelings, though. She was quite nice about it and we remained friends. You can check out her CD if you want, and listen to a little bit of it over at:
http://cdbaby.com/cd/doramagrath
Other news of high school classmates: Sam Altman and Rick Pernikoff have left school to start a company (with some other friends) in Silicon Valley. Their company is called Loopt and they have developed a social networking program for mobile phones that has already been picked up by Boost Mobile (a national mobile phone network). Again, really impressed with what my old classmates are doing these days. I can't imagine being able to do something like that.
So, the weekend was grand. On Friday night I went out? What did I do on Friday night? I can't remember. I don't think I had any specific plans, so if I did go out, it was probably just to a local bar or something. Oh, that's right. I did go to a local izakaya because I wanted to get to bed early so I could head out to Chiba in the morning on Saturday. Then I ended up sleeping until around noon on Saturday anyways, haha. I did go to Chiba, though, which was really cool. The convention center (called Makuhari Messe) is in a big commercial area, which is centered around a rather large outlet mall. It is also the location of the Chiba Marines (Chiba's baseball team) stadium. I thought I could go to a game after the convention, but they had an away game that day, unfortunately.
The mobile electronics fair was not what I expected. It was focused entirely on electronics for cars, which for the most part meant audio systems. It was neat, though. There were tons of cars lined up and you could go and sit inside each one and listen to the audio system they had. They also had big machines to pump air inside the cars. Pretty crazy. And, of course, campaign girls in small outfits. I have pictures, but I haven't even loaded them on the computer yet, so they'll have to wait. After the mobile electronics fair, I saw signs all over for the "World Hobby Fair," so I decided to check it out.
It was insane. I've never seen so many children in one place in my life. It was an enormous fair and pretty much jam-packed with families that basically just came to show their kids a good time. Apparently by "World Hobby," what they actually meant was "Children's Games." It was pretty neat, though. I'm glad I took the time to see it. I have a few pictures of that as well, which will go up at the same time as the Mobile Electronics Show pics.
On Saturday night I texted a few friends to see what they were doing because I had no plans. I only heard back from Yuki, who also had nothing to do and happened to be near Shimbashi, so she came over and we ate some yakitori and had some beers and walked around. We went to this little bar under the tracks called the "Budweiser Carnival," which I had seen before but never gone inside. It was pretty hilarious, and clearly geared towards men. The waitresses, called "Bud Girls," wore these cute little dresses that were about one size too small, and there was a random large black guy singing soul music on a karaoke machine. It was really strange. There were two drinks you could buy which the Bud Girls made right at your table (one was a mix of grapefruit juice and something else and they squeezed the grapefruit at your table while singing this ridiculous song; the other was something they did in a shaker which they shake at your table, again while singing a ridiculous song). There was a table full of Japanese businessmen that kept ordering those drinks over and over and eventually sang along with the girls. It was really hilarious. Also, the "large" size beer was enormous.
On Sunday I went and played some street hockey with the Tokyo Street Hockey Association. Ted plays with them every Sunday and invited me. I told him I'd be really bad and he said "so are we," so I figured why not. It was pretty fun. REALLY tiring. But there are some good people there. I may go back next week for round two.
Speaking of things being really tiring, I've noticed that I don't really get tired climbing up the stairs to my room anymore. I live on the 5th floor of my building, so every day, multiple times a day, I go up and down 4 flights of stairs. The first week here it was really brutal (yes, I know I'm massively out of shape), and would really take the wind out of me to go up to my room. Now, though, I can do it no problem. It's a good feeling. Enough to motivate me to exercise a bit more when I get back to Saint Louis? We'll see...
Anyways, after street hockey I went home, cleaned up, did my laundry, and then headed out to Shimokitazawa for my friend's live. This was a band I met a while ago, called 'golf' (I don't know why), and the bassist, Ando, is a really really nice guy. It was a really good show. The live was to celebrate the release of their new album, which I got. It's really good, I listened to it on the walk to work this morning. The two opening bands were also pretty impressive, and it turned out that Yuki actually helped out in the making of one of the bands' albums.
I'm just now noticing that I use the word "really" a lot.
Tonight I am meeting a guy I met last week, Naota, for dinner and maybe grab a drink or two afterwards. He works in Shimbashi, so I'm sure we'll just do something in that area, which will be nice and convenient.
Ted is now officially gone. He went to Missouri for a business trip (meeting some new clients, etc.), and then he's going back to his home in Colorado for a bit, and then he heads out to Hawaii for vacation. He'll be gone a total of 3 weeks, which, incidentally, is the amount of time left for my internship, meaning I won't be working with Ted anymore. Sad, yes, but I told him I'd probably bring my parents into the office one day after he gets back, so I'll get to see him one more time before I head home. So it's just Shino-san and me in the office now for the next 3 weeks. Could be interesting or could be boring, I have no idea. Ted gave me a few things to work on, though, which is nice.
Well, my friends, it's just about time for my lunch break. Sayonara!
I am quite impressed with one of my old high school classmates, Dora Magrath, who has made her own music and recorded and album. I've listened to some of it and really really enjoy it. Fun fact: Dora was the first girl I ever asked out on a date! Fun Fact: Dora was the first girl who ever rejected me! haha. Certainly no hard feelings, though. She was quite nice about it and we remained friends. You can check out her CD if you want, and listen to a little bit of it over at:
http://cdbaby.com/cd/doramagrath
Other news of high school classmates: Sam Altman and Rick Pernikoff have left school to start a company (with some other friends) in Silicon Valley. Their company is called Loopt and they have developed a social networking program for mobile phones that has already been picked up by Boost Mobile (a national mobile phone network). Again, really impressed with what my old classmates are doing these days. I can't imagine being able to do something like that.
So, the weekend was grand. On Friday night I went out? What did I do on Friday night? I can't remember. I don't think I had any specific plans, so if I did go out, it was probably just to a local bar or something. Oh, that's right. I did go to a local izakaya because I wanted to get to bed early so I could head out to Chiba in the morning on Saturday. Then I ended up sleeping until around noon on Saturday anyways, haha. I did go to Chiba, though, which was really cool. The convention center (called Makuhari Messe) is in a big commercial area, which is centered around a rather large outlet mall. It is also the location of the Chiba Marines (Chiba's baseball team) stadium. I thought I could go to a game after the convention, but they had an away game that day, unfortunately.
The mobile electronics fair was not what I expected. It was focused entirely on electronics for cars, which for the most part meant audio systems. It was neat, though. There were tons of cars lined up and you could go and sit inside each one and listen to the audio system they had. They also had big machines to pump air inside the cars. Pretty crazy. And, of course, campaign girls in small outfits. I have pictures, but I haven't even loaded them on the computer yet, so they'll have to wait. After the mobile electronics fair, I saw signs all over for the "World Hobby Fair," so I decided to check it out.
It was insane. I've never seen so many children in one place in my life. It was an enormous fair and pretty much jam-packed with families that basically just came to show their kids a good time. Apparently by "World Hobby," what they actually meant was "Children's Games." It was pretty neat, though. I'm glad I took the time to see it. I have a few pictures of that as well, which will go up at the same time as the Mobile Electronics Show pics.
On Saturday night I texted a few friends to see what they were doing because I had no plans. I only heard back from Yuki, who also had nothing to do and happened to be near Shimbashi, so she came over and we ate some yakitori and had some beers and walked around. We went to this little bar under the tracks called the "Budweiser Carnival," which I had seen before but never gone inside. It was pretty hilarious, and clearly geared towards men. The waitresses, called "Bud Girls," wore these cute little dresses that were about one size too small, and there was a random large black guy singing soul music on a karaoke machine. It was really strange. There were two drinks you could buy which the Bud Girls made right at your table (one was a mix of grapefruit juice and something else and they squeezed the grapefruit at your table while singing this ridiculous song; the other was something they did in a shaker which they shake at your table, again while singing a ridiculous song). There was a table full of Japanese businessmen that kept ordering those drinks over and over and eventually sang along with the girls. It was really hilarious. Also, the "large" size beer was enormous.
On Sunday I went and played some street hockey with the Tokyo Street Hockey Association. Ted plays with them every Sunday and invited me. I told him I'd be really bad and he said "so are we," so I figured why not. It was pretty fun. REALLY tiring. But there are some good people there. I may go back next week for round two.
Speaking of things being really tiring, I've noticed that I don't really get tired climbing up the stairs to my room anymore. I live on the 5th floor of my building, so every day, multiple times a day, I go up and down 4 flights of stairs. The first week here it was really brutal (yes, I know I'm massively out of shape), and would really take the wind out of me to go up to my room. Now, though, I can do it no problem. It's a good feeling. Enough to motivate me to exercise a bit more when I get back to Saint Louis? We'll see...
Anyways, after street hockey I went home, cleaned up, did my laundry, and then headed out to Shimokitazawa for my friend's live. This was a band I met a while ago, called 'golf' (I don't know why), and the bassist, Ando, is a really really nice guy. It was a really good show. The live was to celebrate the release of their new album, which I got. It's really good, I listened to it on the walk to work this morning. The two opening bands were also pretty impressive, and it turned out that Yuki actually helped out in the making of one of the bands' albums.
I'm just now noticing that I use the word "really" a lot.
Tonight I am meeting a guy I met last week, Naota, for dinner and maybe grab a drink or two afterwards. He works in Shimbashi, so I'm sure we'll just do something in that area, which will be nice and convenient.
Ted is now officially gone. He went to Missouri for a business trip (meeting some new clients, etc.), and then he's going back to his home in Colorado for a bit, and then he heads out to Hawaii for vacation. He'll be gone a total of 3 weeks, which, incidentally, is the amount of time left for my internship, meaning I won't be working with Ted anymore. Sad, yes, but I told him I'd probably bring my parents into the office one day after he gets back, so I'll get to see him one more time before I head home. So it's just Shino-san and me in the office now for the next 3 weeks. Could be interesting or could be boring, I have no idea. Ted gave me a few things to work on, though, which is nice.
Well, my friends, it's just about time for my lunch break. Sayonara!
Friday, June 22, 2007
Delayed
Man, I actually had enough work and stuff to keep me busy enough today that I didn't even realize I didn't write in my blog until just now. It's about 6:10 and I'm still at the office (not because I have to be, but because I have no plans and figured I'd stick around and use the internet for a little while longer).
I did indeed cancel going to the open mic last night because I was too tired, and then to make myself even more tired I actually played soccer yesterday after work with some of the guys who live in my building, who I'm just now becoming friends with. There was Mauricio, from Brazil, who actually works in the building (been working there for 3 years). And then Eddie, from Chile, who also works in the building and has been for about 1.5 years. And finally Coby, from Ghana, who seems to be very good friends with Mauricio and Eddie, but I'm not sure if he works in the building or is just staying there, nor do I know how long he's been here. I will work on finding these things out.
Also, I ate dinner at a ramen shop that I walk past pretty much every day and has always seemed to be pretty crowded. When I walked past it last night it seemed to be relatively empty (it was a bit on the early side for dinner), so I figured it would be a good time to go check it out. I got some pork miso ramen dish because the waitress told me it was the most popular, and it was fanTAStic! I'm totally gonna eat there like every other night from now on, haha. Not really, but I will certainly be eating there at least a few more times before I leave.
Tomorrow I decided I will go to a Mobile Electronics Show in Chiba (a 30-40 minute train ride). Mobile electronics is pretty much what this country has proven they do best in recent years, so it should prove to be pretty awesome. Hopefully they'll allow pictures. I think I'll go there early and then afterwards I can explore Chiba a little bit for the rest of the day. I have really no plans this weekend. I wanted to hang out with Kie (hehe), but she's going to her cousin's wedding this weekend. On Sunday there are a couple things, I suppose: A comic convention at Big Sight (I have always wanted to go to a Japanese comic convention, so I'll probably end up going there), there's some street hockey on Sunday afternoon (but it will most likely be unbearably hot, so I'm not too sure if I'll go to that), and a band I met not too long ago is playing a live in Shimokitazawa. I'm not sure what time it's at, but I've been wanting to revisit Shimokitazawa because it was a neat area so if it's in the evening I'll probably go to that.
It's about 6:30 now so I think I'm ready to head home. I'm getting sleepy already...
I did indeed cancel going to the open mic last night because I was too tired, and then to make myself even more tired I actually played soccer yesterday after work with some of the guys who live in my building, who I'm just now becoming friends with. There was Mauricio, from Brazil, who actually works in the building (been working there for 3 years). And then Eddie, from Chile, who also works in the building and has been for about 1.5 years. And finally Coby, from Ghana, who seems to be very good friends with Mauricio and Eddie, but I'm not sure if he works in the building or is just staying there, nor do I know how long he's been here. I will work on finding these things out.
Also, I ate dinner at a ramen shop that I walk past pretty much every day and has always seemed to be pretty crowded. When I walked past it last night it seemed to be relatively empty (it was a bit on the early side for dinner), so I figured it would be a good time to go check it out. I got some pork miso ramen dish because the waitress told me it was the most popular, and it was fanTAStic! I'm totally gonna eat there like every other night from now on, haha. Not really, but I will certainly be eating there at least a few more times before I leave.
Tomorrow I decided I will go to a Mobile Electronics Show in Chiba (a 30-40 minute train ride). Mobile electronics is pretty much what this country has proven they do best in recent years, so it should prove to be pretty awesome. Hopefully they'll allow pictures. I think I'll go there early and then afterwards I can explore Chiba a little bit for the rest of the day. I have really no plans this weekend. I wanted to hang out with Kie (hehe), but she's going to her cousin's wedding this weekend. On Sunday there are a couple things, I suppose: A comic convention at Big Sight (I have always wanted to go to a Japanese comic convention, so I'll probably end up going there), there's some street hockey on Sunday afternoon (but it will most likely be unbearably hot, so I'm not too sure if I'll go to that), and a band I met not too long ago is playing a live in Shimokitazawa. I'm not sure what time it's at, but I've been wanting to revisit Shimokitazawa because it was a neat area so if it's in the evening I'll probably go to that.
It's about 6:30 now so I think I'm ready to head home. I'm getting sleepy already...
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Part XXVII: A Pleasant Surprise
I was a bit disappointed in my show last night. I just felt off the whole show, like something just wasn't working right. But I think it's best not to think about it. Don't let it get me down. Plus, it could just be because I was so happy with my show last week that by comparison this one was worse, but maybe still okay. Who knows...
I met up with Lauren for dinner beforehand and we ate at a Chinese place that ended up being pretty good and we made it in right before it got filled up, so we were lucky. Lauren and I aren't good friends or anything, and we may never be, but it was still good to see her, and I was glad she could come to see me play. That was really nice of her. She had a friend who was going to meet us at the Ruby Room to see my show as well, but she got lost and didn't make it in time. We got to talk, though, afterwards and she was nice. Lauren came here a couple days ago to work at Tokyo University doing some sort of graduate research (shes an engineer). All my friends were very impressed because Todai (shortening of Tokyo Daigaku, or Tokyo University) is basically the number one university in Japan.
I had a pleasant surprise today at work: Kie came to my building and we had lunch together! Okay, so she didn't come here just to see me--she just got a part-time job that's right down the street from where I work and today is her first day there--but it was still a nice gesture that she thought to ask me to lunch. I'm beginning to like Kie, by the way (yes, like like). I need to start talking to her in Japanese, though, so I can actually practice. She is pretty adamant about speaking to me in English because she wants to practice (not that she needs it, her English is far better than my Japanese), so I always end up just speaking back to her in English. She's about to graduate so she's job-hunting right now. She's got an interview next week with an England study abroad office. She's really nervous because the interview's in English, but she'll be fine. I told her she just needs to show them how much she loved her experience studying in England (which she did, a lot) and that she can express that well to other students who could potentially want to go there. If she can do that, she'll be fine. Apparently that's what her job would mostly be, just marketing their programs to students.
I think it will be fairly easy for me to get a job here, even if I don't get the teaching job (with Jet or Nova, etc.), although that would be my first choice. There are SO many opportunities for English-Japanese bilinguals here. It does seem like lately, they've been shifting to give more of those kinds of opportunities to Japanese natives because more and more Japanese are learning English, but even still. I think the biggest hump would be actually moving here, and then things would fall into place pretty easily. If nothing else, I could always get a job at a restaurant (there are TONS of restaurants here that cater to foreigners and have foreign staff) or a hotel as a temporary thing. I think Ted might be able to help me get a job, too, because he used to work as a headhunter and he knows a lot of people/employers who would be interested in someone like me, he said. So that's excellent. I'm in good shape, I think.
Well, mes amis, I am off. Ted gave me a project to work on while he's gone (he's leaving this weekend and will be gone for the whole rest of my internship; sad, I know), so I'll get a head start on it in this last hour of work today.
Sayonara,
Lawrence
I met up with Lauren for dinner beforehand and we ate at a Chinese place that ended up being pretty good and we made it in right before it got filled up, so we were lucky. Lauren and I aren't good friends or anything, and we may never be, but it was still good to see her, and I was glad she could come to see me play. That was really nice of her. She had a friend who was going to meet us at the Ruby Room to see my show as well, but she got lost and didn't make it in time. We got to talk, though, afterwards and she was nice. Lauren came here a couple days ago to work at Tokyo University doing some sort of graduate research (shes an engineer). All my friends were very impressed because Todai (shortening of Tokyo Daigaku, or Tokyo University) is basically the number one university in Japan.
I had a pleasant surprise today at work: Kie came to my building and we had lunch together! Okay, so she didn't come here just to see me--she just got a part-time job that's right down the street from where I work and today is her first day there--but it was still a nice gesture that she thought to ask me to lunch. I'm beginning to like Kie, by the way (yes, like like). I need to start talking to her in Japanese, though, so I can actually practice. She is pretty adamant about speaking to me in English because she wants to practice (not that she needs it, her English is far better than my Japanese), so I always end up just speaking back to her in English. She's about to graduate so she's job-hunting right now. She's got an interview next week with an England study abroad office. She's really nervous because the interview's in English, but she'll be fine. I told her she just needs to show them how much she loved her experience studying in England (which she did, a lot) and that she can express that well to other students who could potentially want to go there. If she can do that, she'll be fine. Apparently that's what her job would mostly be, just marketing their programs to students.
I think it will be fairly easy for me to get a job here, even if I don't get the teaching job (with Jet or Nova, etc.), although that would be my first choice. There are SO many opportunities for English-Japanese bilinguals here. It does seem like lately, they've been shifting to give more of those kinds of opportunities to Japanese natives because more and more Japanese are learning English, but even still. I think the biggest hump would be actually moving here, and then things would fall into place pretty easily. If nothing else, I could always get a job at a restaurant (there are TONS of restaurants here that cater to foreigners and have foreign staff) or a hotel as a temporary thing. I think Ted might be able to help me get a job, too, because he used to work as a headhunter and he knows a lot of people/employers who would be interested in someone like me, he said. So that's excellent. I'm in good shape, I think.
Well, mes amis, I am off. Ted gave me a project to work on while he's gone (he's leaving this weekend and will be gone for the whole rest of my internship; sad, I know), so I'll get a head start on it in this last hour of work today.
Sayonara,
Lawrence
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Now to the real news
So as you can see, I wrote last night (see the post below). That felt damn good. I haven't really written any fiction in like a year. I haven't really had the time to, I guess. I wrote it over dinner at a Thai place that I discovered is right around the corner from a Chinese place that's right down the street from my place.
It's Wednesday! So it's back to the Ruby Room tonight. I love that place. Hanging out there on Saturday with everyone was really fun. I may have to go back there this weekend, if I've got nothing else to do. Lauren Linderman, one of my (now former) classmates from Wash U. is in town and said she'd probably be able to come to the show tonight! Exciting. I'm not real good friends with her or anything, but it's still cool to see somebody you know when you're a bajillion miles from home (I don't know the actual estimated distance, so I rounded up).
Today is the day we go to the bio-tech convention at Big Sight, so we'll be leaving for that in about 40 minutes. It's at least bound to be more interesting than the auto service show, right? Although this time we don't have any clients to meet up with or anything.
I've been drinking these one liter bottles of mandarin orange juice (my god, so good) just about every day, while at work. There's a little store run by this cute old couple that's right on my path to work that sells the bottles of it, and I stop by there almost every morning. 230 yen for a 1-liter bottle. It more or less just ends up becoming my breakfast. They know me now and pull out a bottle for me right away whenever I come in now. They're very sweet.
Completely unrelated to me and Japan and anything: Paul told me about this new HBO show called "Flight of the Conchords." Flight of the Conchords is actually a comedy-folk duo from New Zealand and they've performed all over the world. Their show is about an unpopular folk duo from New Zealand trying to make their way in New York City. The first episode is online at their HBO homepage (click here to go there), and I highly recommend everybody watch it. It is so funny. I watched it last night before I went to bed, and then watched a couple parts of it again because I loved it so much. There are also plenty of videos of them from other performances over on Youtube (click here).
All right. Have a good Tuesday night, everybody!
Love,
Lawrence
update: we're just about to leave, but I wanted to say I've been working on this story some more (again, see below), and I am really enjoying writing again. This will be my new thing to do when I'm bored at work now! I'll be sure to keep you all updated on it, too. Bye!
It's Wednesday! So it's back to the Ruby Room tonight. I love that place. Hanging out there on Saturday with everyone was really fun. I may have to go back there this weekend, if I've got nothing else to do. Lauren Linderman, one of my (now former) classmates from Wash U. is in town and said she'd probably be able to come to the show tonight! Exciting. I'm not real good friends with her or anything, but it's still cool to see somebody you know when you're a bajillion miles from home (I don't know the actual estimated distance, so I rounded up).
Today is the day we go to the bio-tech convention at Big Sight, so we'll be leaving for that in about 40 minutes. It's at least bound to be more interesting than the auto service show, right? Although this time we don't have any clients to meet up with or anything.
I've been drinking these one liter bottles of mandarin orange juice (my god, so good) just about every day, while at work. There's a little store run by this cute old couple that's right on my path to work that sells the bottles of it, and I stop by there almost every morning. 230 yen for a 1-liter bottle. It more or less just ends up becoming my breakfast. They know me now and pull out a bottle for me right away whenever I come in now. They're very sweet.
Completely unrelated to me and Japan and anything: Paul told me about this new HBO show called "Flight of the Conchords." Flight of the Conchords is actually a comedy-folk duo from New Zealand and they've performed all over the world. Their show is about an unpopular folk duo from New Zealand trying to make their way in New York City. The first episode is online at their HBO homepage (click here to go there), and I highly recommend everybody watch it. It is so funny. I watched it last night before I went to bed, and then watched a couple parts of it again because I loved it so much. There are also plenty of videos of them from other performances over on Youtube (click here).
All right. Have a good Tuesday night, everybody!
Love,
Lawrence
update: we're just about to leave, but I wanted to say I've been working on this story some more (again, see below), and I am really enjoying writing again. This will be my new thing to do when I'm bored at work now! I'll be sure to keep you all updated on it, too. Bye!
Work in progress
I don't know if you guys will be interested at all, but I had this idea for the opening of a story last night and so I just started writing. Here's what I came up with so far. I can't indent on this thing, so I just put an extra space in between paragraphs.
"In my dreams I'm less hairy," Peter told his friends Aki and Goldman.
Peter had recently been having dreams in which he was naked or topless for one of several reasons--sex, the beach, tattoo parlor, etc.--and it had been bothering him to notice when he looked down that there was a total lack of chest and stomach hair. He had also noticed that his belly didn't stick out as far, but this didn't annoy him so much as it actually delighted him. The hair, though... there was something disturbing about it not being there. Something unnatural.
Peter had begun to wonder whether this same thing ever happened to Robin Williams or to Indian people--anyone well-known for being hairy. Was the bearded lady beardless when she slumbered?
Peter himself was not particularly endowed with a full chest of hair, nor did he even enjoy the idea of having any hair at all besides the hair on the top of his head, but somehow it had disturbed him very deeply to look down in his dreams and see nothing but bare skin. He had developed a strange sense of pride about his body hair, in the same way that he felt strangely proud when he broke wind when nobody else was around and it smelled particularly bad. It was like a forbidden pride, something he knew he shouldn't be proud of, but there was some ineffable satisfaction in the whole idea of it.
"Less hairy," Aki repeated, half as an is-that-seriously-what-you-just-said question, half as an I’m-repeating-this-so-you-can-hear-how-dumb-you-sound remark. Laughing and trying to drink her beer at the same time, a drop of it fell down onto her chin and she turned her head to wipe it off with her shoulder.
Aki, being both female and half-Japanese, was certainly the least hairy of the three and couldn't remember any sort of dream in which hair was missing where it should have been. Nor could she remember any dream in which she had more hair than she should have, though she silently decided that would be far more disturbing than the former.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
You're so beautiful, you could be a part-time model, but you should probably keep your other job just in case...
Hi y'all. Sorry I couldn't write earlier, before you guys headed to bed (most of you, at least). There was some troubles with the internet in the building this morning. Apparently like half of the servers went down and so the whole building was running on half the amount and it was going rrreeeaaaalllllyyyyy sssslllllooooooooowwwwwwwwwww....
So we all got frustrated and went for an early lunch. But it's back now! And right now I am suddenly getting a stabbing pain in my left heel. weird.
When I got up today, I felt tingly all over. I realized very quickly it was goosebumps
because it was freezing in my room. The temperature regulation (or lack thereof) is probably the biggest complaint I have about my building (yes, bigger than the cockroaches). I don't know if it's because the system sucks or because the tenants keep changing the temperature setting, but every 5 hours or so, the temperature will shift from being about 20 degrees to about 25 degrees and then back again (in Celcius, mind you). When I went to bed last night I was so hot I laid down with no covers and only my boxers on and I was sweating, but when I woke up I grabbed all the covers on top of me and curled into a little ball to stay warm! It's central air and the thermostat is in the hallway right outside my door. I had never touched it until this morning when I went out and changed it from 20 to 22. It's really ridiculous. 22 is perfect. Basically room temperature. And I just wish people could keep it there. Argh. Or, even, just keep it cold or keep it warm. One way or the other, at least I know what to expect. The fluctuation is driving me crazy!
Yesterday, throughout the day, I somehow developed an awful awful headache, and by the time I got home from work it was so bad I didn't want to go out anymore, so I canceled (I can't believe that word only has one 'l' in it) my plans to go to the Rock Factory and stayed home. Well, actually, I ended up going exploring in my area, which I had only done a little bit of up until then. If you keep walking away from the train station from my place, there isn't much there. I walked that way first and got bored quite quickly. The further you get from the station, the less commercial and more residential it becomes. So then I went back towards the station. Passed up my apartment again, and wandered up and down every little alleyway I could find. I discovered 2 things:
a) There is a Mos Burger! (which, by the way, I caved and ate a Mos Burger last week; so good). I figured there had to be one in my area, but I had yet to find it and now I know where it is. I just gotta control myself and not eat it all the time (which really shouldn't be that hard cuz there's so much other good food around, too).
2) There are way more hostess clubs than I thought there were. When you really look, they're like everywhere you turn. And they have all different themes. I'm sure they have them in places other than Japan, but I've never really seen anything quite like what they have, so I'll talk about it a bit. You can probably guess from the term, but hostess clubs are sort of like gentleman's clubs, but usually there's no nudity involved. You pay by the hour to sit at a table and you can choose your hostess who will not only serve you, but sit and talk with you, etc. (There are host bars, as well, which I believe actually are an exclusively Japanese enterprise; they're basically the same thing for the opposite sex, although I didn't see any in my area). They can--and often will--be themed, too. I saw a sign for one that was beach themed, so all the girls wore bikinis. I walked by an entire strip of Maid Clubs, in which the hostesses are dressed in these elaborate and frilly French maid costumes (there are Maid Cafes as well, which is slightly less shady, in which the waitresses are all dressed as maids--but you don't have to pay just to be there and they're not paid to talk to you, so they generally won't unless there's like nobody else there, or something). I saw an ad for a cosplay club, as well. Cosplay is short for "costume play," and it basically means the girls will be dressed to look like characters from Japanese anime or videogames. Some of the clubs are a bit shady, but some of the clubs are actually quite high-class, and those girls make a TON of money. Ted said when he taught English here, one of his students worked at a nice club in Ginza (where all the really high-class clubs are) and she only worked 2 nights a week, but brought in almost 10,000 dollars a month! Plus, their loyal customers will often bring them nice presents, too. It's so wild. Probably slightly dangerous for the girls, too, though. I would really like to go and see what one is like sometime, but they are just ridiculously expensive, so nope. Not gonna happen.
Anyways, all in all I'd say I live in an interesting area. hehe.
Oh, I have some pictures that Aya sent me from way back when we hung out in izakaya in Akabane. I will post those right after this. Well, my friends. This has been educational. Enjoy your Tuesday. Mine's winding down already...
So we all got frustrated and went for an early lunch. But it's back now! And right now I am suddenly getting a stabbing pain in my left heel. weird.
When I got up today, I felt tingly all over. I realized very quickly it was goosebumps
because it was freezing in my room. The temperature regulation (or lack thereof) is probably the biggest complaint I have about my building (yes, bigger than the cockroaches). I don't know if it's because the system sucks or because the tenants keep changing the temperature setting, but every 5 hours or so, the temperature will shift from being about 20 degrees to about 25 degrees and then back again (in Celcius, mind you). When I went to bed last night I was so hot I laid down with no covers and only my boxers on and I was sweating, but when I woke up I grabbed all the covers on top of me and curled into a little ball to stay warm! It's central air and the thermostat is in the hallway right outside my door. I had never touched it until this morning when I went out and changed it from 20 to 22. It's really ridiculous. 22 is perfect. Basically room temperature. And I just wish people could keep it there. Argh. Or, even, just keep it cold or keep it warm. One way or the other, at least I know what to expect. The fluctuation is driving me crazy!
Yesterday, throughout the day, I somehow developed an awful awful headache, and by the time I got home from work it was so bad I didn't want to go out anymore, so I canceled (I can't believe that word only has one 'l' in it) my plans to go to the Rock Factory and stayed home. Well, actually, I ended up going exploring in my area, which I had only done a little bit of up until then. If you keep walking away from the train station from my place, there isn't much there. I walked that way first and got bored quite quickly. The further you get from the station, the less commercial and more residential it becomes. So then I went back towards the station. Passed up my apartment again, and wandered up and down every little alleyway I could find. I discovered 2 things:
a) There is a Mos Burger! (which, by the way, I caved and ate a Mos Burger last week; so good). I figured there had to be one in my area, but I had yet to find it and now I know where it is. I just gotta control myself and not eat it all the time (which really shouldn't be that hard cuz there's so much other good food around, too).
2) There are way more hostess clubs than I thought there were. When you really look, they're like everywhere you turn. And they have all different themes. I'm sure they have them in places other than Japan, but I've never really seen anything quite like what they have, so I'll talk about it a bit. You can probably guess from the term, but hostess clubs are sort of like gentleman's clubs, but usually there's no nudity involved. You pay by the hour to sit at a table and you can choose your hostess who will not only serve you, but sit and talk with you, etc. (There are host bars, as well, which I believe actually are an exclusively Japanese enterprise; they're basically the same thing for the opposite sex, although I didn't see any in my area). They can--and often will--be themed, too. I saw a sign for one that was beach themed, so all the girls wore bikinis. I walked by an entire strip of Maid Clubs, in which the hostesses are dressed in these elaborate and frilly French maid costumes (there are Maid Cafes as well, which is slightly less shady, in which the waitresses are all dressed as maids--but you don't have to pay just to be there and they're not paid to talk to you, so they generally won't unless there's like nobody else there, or something). I saw an ad for a cosplay club, as well. Cosplay is short for "costume play," and it basically means the girls will be dressed to look like characters from Japanese anime or videogames. Some of the clubs are a bit shady, but some of the clubs are actually quite high-class, and those girls make a TON of money. Ted said when he taught English here, one of his students worked at a nice club in Ginza (where all the really high-class clubs are) and she only worked 2 nights a week, but brought in almost 10,000 dollars a month! Plus, their loyal customers will often bring them nice presents, too. It's so wild. Probably slightly dangerous for the girls, too, though. I would really like to go and see what one is like sometime, but they are just ridiculously expensive, so nope. Not gonna happen.
Anyways, all in all I'd say I live in an interesting area. hehe.
Oh, I have some pictures that Aya sent me from way back when we hung out in izakaya in Akabane. I will post those right after this. Well, my friends. This has been educational. Enjoy your Tuesday. Mine's winding down already...
Monday, June 18, 2007
2 bits
I saw a guy actually cutting his own hair, with scissors, while sitting in his parked car while I was walking to lunch today. Apart from the bizarreness of the whole idea, and the fact that it's hard enough to cut your own hair with scissors when you have a proper mirror and enough space, all I could think of was "wouldn't that make a ridiculous mess in the car?!"
Happy Monday!
Sigh, another week of work...
I had a pretty good weekend. I went to a concert in Shimokitazawa by myself on Friday night. I was planning on going to a concert with Chu on Friday, but it turned out the concert he invited me to was actually on Saturday, so I ended up with no plans on Friday and I checked around online and decided I'd just head out and find something on my own. The concert wasn't great, but I met some nice people who may or may not come to my shows this week (of which there will be 3!!).
On Saturday I had no daytime plans so I slept in a little bit and then decided I would go someplace I haven't been to yet and walk around with no map. I picked Omotesando because it's a large street that has all the big designers' stores (Prada, Gucci, Dolce & Gibana, etc.), so I figured I'd see some very fancily-dressed people and some cool stores and that'd be fun. There were not very many people around the Omotesando Station area, so I was disappointed, and the only big designer's store I saw was the Prada store (which was pretty cool, but I was hoping for more). But I walked for a loooong time, and somehow ended up going in a big spiral shape. I went from Omotesando South-west-ish to Gotanda, then North-west-ish into Shibuya (but I stayed on the outside edge of Shibuya, away from the area I am normally in there), and then North to Harajuku, then South-east back towards Omotesando but I found a station before I got there (I dont know what station it was) so I just hopped on the train there. Somewhere in between Gotanda and Shibuya, I ended up in a very large Cemetary. It was four whole blocks and really pretty, so I spent about an hour there, walking up and down the rows
and stopping occasionally to rest. That was the best part of the whole walk. I didn't bring my camera, but I got one picture I took with my camera phone, which you can see on the left. I like it because you can see how nice the place is, and theres also a huge office building in the background.
On Saturday night I decided I would do the whole staying-out-all-night-until-the-morning-train thing, since I slept in in the morning and all. My friends Satoshi and Tatsu were going to both be DJ-ing at the Ruby Room from midnight until 5 AM, so I headed over there at about 10:30. The place was pretty empty when I got there and throughout the whole night there were only like 20 people there, at most. Adam, the bartender (from Australia) said on Saturday's it's usually no less than a hundred people through the whole night and this was really rare. It turned out to be a good thing, though, I thought. I got to have longer conversations with people and it was pretty cool. There aside from Tatsu and Satoshi, the people I really enjoyed talking to were Adam, Peko (another bartender), and Johnny (a New Zealander who also DJed a little bit before Satoshi and Tatsu started their sets). Since there were so few people there, Satoshi was able to bring me into the DJ booth and show me how the equipment worked. That was awesome. It seemed pretty complex to me and I was really impressed, but Satoshi said once you get the hang of it it's really really simple. I'd like to try sometime, but I have no idea how I would do that since I don't have the equipment or anything. I also discovered my new favorite drink. It's called Umeshu and it's a Japanese plum wine made from sake. It is soooo good. Oh, and the other good thing about having so few people there was that every hour or so Adam would make a drink for everybody at the bar, for free. It was a good experience, although I was dead tired on Sunday so I don't know if I'll ever do it again. Hehe. I also fell asleep almost immediately on the morning train (at about 5:30) and missed my stop by a long shot. I woke up like 8 stops past where I was supposed to get off!
Oh yeah, the cops were also out and about at 5/6 AM. As a foreigner, I have to carry my passport or a copy of my passport with me at all times. If the cops were to stop me for any reason at all (and they don't even really need a reason to) and I didn't have it on me, they could arrest me. So I always carry it just in case, although it's generally understood that the police would never actually stop you if you were just walking around like normal. I've never even heard of them ever stopping a foreigner for no reason, nor has Ted (my boss). But on Sunday morning when I got off the train at Shimbashi there were a bunch of cops just walking around, "keeping the peace," and luckily there was another white guy getting off the train, too, who was walking like 20 feet in front of me because the cop at the station entrance stopped him right away, and I just kept on walking. I mean, I had my passport copy with me and all, but I was a bit drunk and a lot tired and just didn't want to deal with that whole situation. So I got pretty lucky. I'm sure I would've been stopped if the guy in front of me hadn't been there.
I got to bed around 6:30 am and slept until about noon. I tried to sleep longer, but my body wouldn't have it, so I got up and did my laundry and cleaned up my room a bit. At 5 I headed out west to Kichijoji, which I had never heard of before--it's like a 40-minute train ride away--where I was meeting Kie for dinner. It was actually a really really cool area. There were just a ton of little streets lined with all kinds of stores and the streets were packed with pedestrians. There was also a pretty nice park with a lake, and row-boats you could rent, that we walked around. At the park there was an art fair going on, so the walkway was lined with people sitting on tarps with little crafts laid out for sale. It was neat. There were a lot of things I wanted to buy, but I was low on cash at the time and so ended up not getting anything at all. Kie wanted to take me to a very old and famous yakitori (grilled chicken-kebobs) place that was right next to the park, but there was a huuuuuuge line just to get in, so we decided to go across the street to a smaller place and we got to eat outdoors there, which was nice. I'm still not great with food names in Japanese, so I just let Kie order whatever she thought would be good and it was quite a spread: fresh prosciutto, octupus fried rice, some mollusks, shrimp (scary shrimp! you eat the head and legs and all), a bit of yakitori, and some pasta. I was proud of myself for trying all of it. The mollusks were pretty good, but the scary shrimp was a bit much. haha. Oh, the octupus rice, though, was fantastic! Afterwards we went to a nearby cafe for dessert: tea/coffee and ice cream. We got 3 flavors of ice cream for 400 yen (good deal!) and so we had green tea flavor, sweet cream, and chocolate hazelnut. It was quite good. We talked in English pretty much the whole time because Kie said she really wanted to practice (she's been studying English forever and spent a year in England, but doesn't get many chances to speak English anymore) because she has a job interview next week that is entirely in English. She's basically fluent in English, so she should be fine, but she does like to swear in English so I told her to be careful of that! haha.
This week we have one trade show we will be going to--I think on Wednesday--for bio-tech stuff, which could be pretty interesting. Oh, the Auto Service show last week turned out to be a bit more interesting than I thought it would be, and I got to meet our client, who is from St. Louis, so that was cool. After we were done at the auto service show we still had some time to kill before the end of the day, so we decided to check out the cable tv show that was going on at Big Sight at the same time, since it was free admission. That was sooo awesome. Half of the show was devoted to equipment/technology (HDTVs, HD cameras, DVRs, etc.) and the other half was devoted to programming. The programming side was amazing. Each channel had these crazy elaborate booths set up, and there were sooo many campaign girls in wild, skimpy outfits. haha. The baseball network had girls dressed in oversize jerseys and short shorts, and they had an interactive baseball videogame, in which there's a pitcher on screen and you swing this miniature bat and it registers on the tv, and if you hit a certain number of home runs they would give you a prize. There were a lot of people in line for it, though, so I didn't do it. Most booths, though, had little games you could play or something like that. The FOX booth was modeled after a prison, to promote their show "prison break," which is just starting here (it started a year or two ago in the US), and they had campaign girls in skin-tight police uniforms. The rest of the campaign girls weren't in such thematic costumes, but they sometimes had even less clothing than the "police-girls." One booth (for an action movie channel) had a cork-gun firing range game, in which you had to get 11 points in 3 shots to get a big prize. The targets were in numbers of 1, 5, and 10. The ten was small and actually behind the 1 targets, except for a very small sliver that you could, in theory, hit without having to knock over the 1-point targets, although it would really be basically impossible. Ted went up and on his first shot hit that very tiny sliver of the 10-point target! haha. All I got was 1 point, but I still got the consolation prize of a post-it note pad. Afterwards I was like "I didn't know you were such a sharpshooter! Should I be worried?" but apparently Ted didn't hit any other targets with his other 2 shots, so he didn't get a big prize either! Anyways, the show was all in good fun, and Ted and I went for a beer afterwards which was also fun. Although Ted and I are both quiet-ish people (I'm much less quiet than I used to be, but still...), so there were some long awkward pauses in our conversations. heh. oh well...
Okay, I think I've been writing in here for about an hour now, so I'm done! Love, Lawrence!
I had a pretty good weekend. I went to a concert in Shimokitazawa by myself on Friday night. I was planning on going to a concert with Chu on Friday, but it turned out the concert he invited me to was actually on Saturday, so I ended up with no plans on Friday and I checked around online and decided I'd just head out and find something on my own. The concert wasn't great, but I met some nice people who may or may not come to my shows this week (of which there will be 3!!).
On Saturday I had no daytime plans so I slept in a little bit and then decided I would go someplace I haven't been to yet and walk around with no map. I picked Omotesando because it's a large street that has all the big designers' stores (Prada, Gucci, Dolce & Gibana, etc.), so I figured I'd see some very fancily-dressed people and some cool stores and that'd be fun. There were not very many people around the Omotesando Station area, so I was disappointed, and the only big designer's store I saw was the Prada store (which was pretty cool, but I was hoping for more). But I walked for a loooong time, and somehow ended up going in a big spiral shape. I went from Omotesando South-west-ish to Gotanda, then North-west-ish into Shibuya (but I stayed on the outside edge of Shibuya, away from the area I am normally in there), and then North to Harajuku, then South-east back towards Omotesando but I found a station before I got there (I dont know what station it was) so I just hopped on the train there. Somewhere in between Gotanda and Shibuya, I ended up in a very large Cemetary. It was four whole blocks and really pretty, so I spent about an hour there, walking up and down the rows
and stopping occasionally to rest. That was the best part of the whole walk. I didn't bring my camera, but I got one picture I took with my camera phone, which you can see on the left. I like it because you can see how nice the place is, and theres also a huge office building in the background.On Saturday night I decided I would do the whole staying-out-all-night-until-the-morning-train thing, since I slept in in the morning and all. My friends Satoshi and Tatsu were going to both be DJ-ing at the Ruby Room from midnight until 5 AM, so I headed over there at about 10:30. The place was pretty empty when I got there and throughout the whole night there were only like 20 people there, at most. Adam, the bartender (from Australia) said on Saturday's it's usually no less than a hundred people through the whole night and this was really rare. It turned out to be a good thing, though, I thought. I got to have longer conversations with people and it was pretty cool. There aside from Tatsu and Satoshi, the people I really enjoyed talking to were Adam, Peko (another bartender), and Johnny (a New Zealander who also DJed a little bit before Satoshi and Tatsu started their sets). Since there were so few people there, Satoshi was able to bring me into the DJ booth and show me how the equipment worked. That was awesome. It seemed pretty complex to me and I was really impressed, but Satoshi said once you get the hang of it it's really really simple. I'd like to try sometime, but I have no idea how I would do that since I don't have the equipment or anything. I also discovered my new favorite drink. It's called Umeshu and it's a Japanese plum wine made from sake. It is soooo good. Oh, and the other good thing about having so few people there was that every hour or so Adam would make a drink for everybody at the bar, for free. It was a good experience, although I was dead tired on Sunday so I don't know if I'll ever do it again. Hehe. I also fell asleep almost immediately on the morning train (at about 5:30) and missed my stop by a long shot. I woke up like 8 stops past where I was supposed to get off!
Oh yeah, the cops were also out and about at 5/6 AM. As a foreigner, I have to carry my passport or a copy of my passport with me at all times. If the cops were to stop me for any reason at all (and they don't even really need a reason to) and I didn't have it on me, they could arrest me. So I always carry it just in case, although it's generally understood that the police would never actually stop you if you were just walking around like normal. I've never even heard of them ever stopping a foreigner for no reason, nor has Ted (my boss). But on Sunday morning when I got off the train at Shimbashi there were a bunch of cops just walking around, "keeping the peace," and luckily there was another white guy getting off the train, too, who was walking like 20 feet in front of me because the cop at the station entrance stopped him right away, and I just kept on walking. I mean, I had my passport copy with me and all, but I was a bit drunk and a lot tired and just didn't want to deal with that whole situation. So I got pretty lucky. I'm sure I would've been stopped if the guy in front of me hadn't been there.
I got to bed around 6:30 am and slept until about noon. I tried to sleep longer, but my body wouldn't have it, so I got up and did my laundry and cleaned up my room a bit. At 5 I headed out west to Kichijoji, which I had never heard of before--it's like a 40-minute train ride away--where I was meeting Kie for dinner. It was actually a really really cool area. There were just a ton of little streets lined with all kinds of stores and the streets were packed with pedestrians. There was also a pretty nice park with a lake, and row-boats you could rent, that we walked around. At the park there was an art fair going on, so the walkway was lined with people sitting on tarps with little crafts laid out for sale. It was neat. There were a lot of things I wanted to buy, but I was low on cash at the time and so ended up not getting anything at all. Kie wanted to take me to a very old and famous yakitori (grilled chicken-kebobs) place that was right next to the park, but there was a huuuuuuge line just to get in, so we decided to go across the street to a smaller place and we got to eat outdoors there, which was nice. I'm still not great with food names in Japanese, so I just let Kie order whatever she thought would be good and it was quite a spread: fresh prosciutto, octupus fried rice, some mollusks, shrimp (scary shrimp! you eat the head and legs and all), a bit of yakitori, and some pasta. I was proud of myself for trying all of it. The mollusks were pretty good, but the scary shrimp was a bit much. haha. Oh, the octupus rice, though, was fantastic! Afterwards we went to a nearby cafe for dessert: tea/coffee and ice cream. We got 3 flavors of ice cream for 400 yen (good deal!) and so we had green tea flavor, sweet cream, and chocolate hazelnut. It was quite good. We talked in English pretty much the whole time because Kie said she really wanted to practice (she's been studying English forever and spent a year in England, but doesn't get many chances to speak English anymore) because she has a job interview next week that is entirely in English. She's basically fluent in English, so she should be fine, but she does like to swear in English so I told her to be careful of that! haha.
This week we have one trade show we will be going to--I think on Wednesday--for bio-tech stuff, which could be pretty interesting. Oh, the Auto Service show last week turned out to be a bit more interesting than I thought it would be, and I got to meet our client, who is from St. Louis, so that was cool. After we were done at the auto service show we still had some time to kill before the end of the day, so we decided to check out the cable tv show that was going on at Big Sight at the same time, since it was free admission. That was sooo awesome. Half of the show was devoted to equipment/technology (HDTVs, HD cameras, DVRs, etc.) and the other half was devoted to programming. The programming side was amazing. Each channel had these crazy elaborate booths set up, and there were sooo many campaign girls in wild, skimpy outfits. haha. The baseball network had girls dressed in oversize jerseys and short shorts, and they had an interactive baseball videogame, in which there's a pitcher on screen and you swing this miniature bat and it registers on the tv, and if you hit a certain number of home runs they would give you a prize. There were a lot of people in line for it, though, so I didn't do it. Most booths, though, had little games you could play or something like that. The FOX booth was modeled after a prison, to promote their show "prison break," which is just starting here (it started a year or two ago in the US), and they had campaign girls in skin-tight police uniforms. The rest of the campaign girls weren't in such thematic costumes, but they sometimes had even less clothing than the "police-girls." One booth (for an action movie channel) had a cork-gun firing range game, in which you had to get 11 points in 3 shots to get a big prize. The targets were in numbers of 1, 5, and 10. The ten was small and actually behind the 1 targets, except for a very small sliver that you could, in theory, hit without having to knock over the 1-point targets, although it would really be basically impossible. Ted went up and on his first shot hit that very tiny sliver of the 10-point target! haha. All I got was 1 point, but I still got the consolation prize of a post-it note pad. Afterwards I was like "I didn't know you were such a sharpshooter! Should I be worried?" but apparently Ted didn't hit any other targets with his other 2 shots, so he didn't get a big prize either! Anyways, the show was all in good fun, and Ted and I went for a beer afterwards which was also fun. Although Ted and I are both quiet-ish people (I'm much less quiet than I used to be, but still...), so there were some long awkward pauses in our conversations. heh. oh well...
Okay, I think I've been writing in here for about an hour now, so I'm done! Love, Lawrence!
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Uniqlock
is a neat little project from Uniqlo, one of the biggest clothing designers/retailers in Japan, that just began earlier this week to display their line of polos. It's a flash-based clock set to Tokyo time and it plays to the music of Fantastic Plastic Machine. I'm not sure if they recorded the dance videos the same way they did in the auditions, but in the audition videos they had the dancers dance just to the ticking beat, with no music overhead, and they all started with the same steps and then made up their own using their own individual styles of dance (jazz, ballet, hip hop, etc). It's pretty neat, and you can watch the videos at the Uniqlock website, or you can just enjoy the widget below!
Friday, June 15, 2007
百年後の自分
I gotta write early today because we're leaving in about an hour to go out to Tokyo Big Sight. This week is an automotive maintenance show (bound to be less interesting than Interior Lifestyles), and one of our clients is actually here for the show, so we must go. Hunter Engineering manufactures auto maintenance equipment (computers for tire alignment, calibration equipment, etc.), so it's basically a perfect opportunity to show their stuff around. I believe they already have a distributor here, but it never hurts to look for more investors, right?
Last night I went to Yuki's show in Shinjuku. It was my first time in Shinjuku since I came here and I got lost a little, but eventually found the place, on the fifth floor of a building with an awesome play on words: the building is called "Just Bill" only written in Japanese so it's more like jasto biru, and the word biru is used as both the name, Bill, but it also is the word for 'building.' I guess it's not that funny, really, but I thought it was great.
Yuki was 3rd out of 5 or 6 bands that were playing. First was this 17-year-old girl, Aori, who played acoustic guitar and had an amazing voice. She was one of my favorites of the night because she basically played exactly the kind of music that I like. Second was a guy who said he hadn't done a live show in a year and a half, and he appeared very nervous and had some troubles, but overall did pretty well. He played a couple songs I enjoyed, but his music was a bit too slow for my tastes. Then was Yuki, who rocked it. Chu played drums for her again. I swear she keeps getting better. I think this is the most she's ever played solo before, so she's getting a lot of practice and thus is getting better. She also gave me two demos that she made a year or so ago with her solo music. I listened to them a bit this morning and they were pretty good. Her singing voice is so different from her speaking voice it's sort of hard to match it to her face when listening to the CD, but anyways, that's getting off-topic. After Yuki was a guy who was so oddly calm and still. He sat while playing acoustic guitar (actually, Yuki was the only one who didn't play acoustic guitar; she went electric) and had a great voice--really high-pitched and soulful. In between each song he warmed up his voice again singing "a i u e o ka ki ku..." which is how the Japanese alphabet (if you can call it that) goes. Finally (so I guess it was just 5 bands), was this guy named Adachi who was soooo bizarre. He seemed like sort of a beatnik dude who went through this very long, sort of zen ritual of getting ready on-stage before he began (he got out lotion and rubbed it on his hands, then his face, then he would tap various parts of his body: top of head, shoulders, ears, waist, knees, etc.; he closed his eyes and breathed very slowly, etc.). His music was equally bizarre, using props such as a metronome (not used to keep time, though, just there for the sound), radio (used for the background noises of both static and of some people talking). He acted out half of a cell-phone conversation, the other half of which was pre-recorded, live on stage. He was meant to be talking to 百年後の自分 (himself from 100 years in the future), and this was all meant as the introduction to one of his songs. It was really strange. Anyways, I met some more good people, including the guy who runs Yucca's record label, and had some good conversations and then went home a bit earlier so that I could actually get a decent night's sleep, unlike last night.
I don't really have any plans for tonight, but Chu said he was going to a live and would send me the details of it if I was interested. I think it's of an American band, but I'm not sure. I haven't heard from him yet.
I am excited that I get to sleep in tomorrow. Last weekend I didn't really sleep in at all, so it'll be the first time in nearly 2 weeks, basically, that I can sleep late.
I thought I had something else I wanted to talk about, but I can't remember at the moment, so for now I'll say goodbye. Love, Lawrence
Last night I went to Yuki's show in Shinjuku. It was my first time in Shinjuku since I came here and I got lost a little, but eventually found the place, on the fifth floor of a building with an awesome play on words: the building is called "Just Bill" only written in Japanese so it's more like jasto biru, and the word biru is used as both the name, Bill, but it also is the word for 'building.' I guess it's not that funny, really, but I thought it was great.
Yuki was 3rd out of 5 or 6 bands that were playing. First was this 17-year-old girl, Aori, who played acoustic guitar and had an amazing voice. She was one of my favorites of the night because she basically played exactly the kind of music that I like. Second was a guy who said he hadn't done a live show in a year and a half, and he appeared very nervous and had some troubles, but overall did pretty well. He played a couple songs I enjoyed, but his music was a bit too slow for my tastes. Then was Yuki, who rocked it. Chu played drums for her again. I swear she keeps getting better. I think this is the most she's ever played solo before, so she's getting a lot of practice and thus is getting better. She also gave me two demos that she made a year or so ago with her solo music. I listened to them a bit this morning and they were pretty good. Her singing voice is so different from her speaking voice it's sort of hard to match it to her face when listening to the CD, but anyways, that's getting off-topic. After Yuki was a guy who was so oddly calm and still. He sat while playing acoustic guitar (actually, Yuki was the only one who didn't play acoustic guitar; she went electric) and had a great voice--really high-pitched and soulful. In between each song he warmed up his voice again singing "a i u e o ka ki ku..." which is how the Japanese alphabet (if you can call it that) goes. Finally (so I guess it was just 5 bands), was this guy named Adachi who was soooo bizarre. He seemed like sort of a beatnik dude who went through this very long, sort of zen ritual of getting ready on-stage before he began (he got out lotion and rubbed it on his hands, then his face, then he would tap various parts of his body: top of head, shoulders, ears, waist, knees, etc.; he closed his eyes and breathed very slowly, etc.). His music was equally bizarre, using props such as a metronome (not used to keep time, though, just there for the sound), radio (used for the background noises of both static and of some people talking). He acted out half of a cell-phone conversation, the other half of which was pre-recorded, live on stage. He was meant to be talking to 百年後の自分 (himself from 100 years in the future), and this was all meant as the introduction to one of his songs. It was really strange. Anyways, I met some more good people, including the guy who runs Yucca's record label, and had some good conversations and then went home a bit earlier so that I could actually get a decent night's sleep, unlike last night.
I don't really have any plans for tonight, but Chu said he was going to a live and would send me the details of it if I was interested. I think it's of an American band, but I'm not sure. I haven't heard from him yet.
I am excited that I get to sleep in tomorrow. Last weekend I didn't really sleep in at all, so it'll be the first time in nearly 2 weeks, basically, that I can sleep late.
I thought I had something else I wanted to talk about, but I can't remember at the moment, so for now I'll say goodbye. Love, Lawrence
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Work!
I was given an actual real good bit of work to do today! It was fun. We're getting a brand new client that makes high-end custom wood furniture for home/office (and for churches, but I doubt they'll sell any of that stuff here!), so Ted gave me the assignment of researching the Wood Furniture/Home and Office Furniture market in Japan and preparing a little market background statement for them. So I researched on some government sites, etc. and finally gathered enough relevant information and Ted showed me a little sample statement that they had from a previous client, so I threw together a little single-paragraph background statement on the furniture market in Japan! I know, I'm dorky, but I'm excited about it.
I suppose while I'm here, I should disclose my plans for the evening (even though I probably already wrote it sometime earlier this week): Tonight Yuki is playing her first real solo show. She's been playing solo at the Ruby Room, but that doesn't really count cuz it's an open mic. This is like, for real, she's opening for some other band or something. Pretty exciting. Anyways, that's taking place in Shinjuku, and I have yet to go to Shinjuku since I got here, despite it being a pretty popular area, so I'll probably head over there a little early and just walk around a bit, see the area. I think there's a lot of department stores there. I'm not sure, though. I'll check my guidebook before I head out tonight.
Note to self: need to remember to check weather reports in the morning before you leave. It is raaainy today and I did not bring my umbrella. Thank god they're cheap and you can get them just about anywhere, but still. I don't want to amass a plethora of umbrellas. That would do me no good.
One last thing, met the people who live next door to me. They're Chinese! Didn't get to talk much because I was on my way out to the Ruby Room, but the older lady may have been hitting on me. I'm not sure. She kept saying how cool and handsome I was and then giggling. It was odd. And slightly uncomfortable. Maybe next time will be better.
I suppose while I'm here, I should disclose my plans for the evening (even though I probably already wrote it sometime earlier this week): Tonight Yuki is playing her first real solo show. She's been playing solo at the Ruby Room, but that doesn't really count cuz it's an open mic. This is like, for real, she's opening for some other band or something. Pretty exciting. Anyways, that's taking place in Shinjuku, and I have yet to go to Shinjuku since I got here, despite it being a pretty popular area, so I'll probably head over there a little early and just walk around a bit, see the area. I think there's a lot of department stores there. I'm not sure, though. I'll check my guidebook before I head out tonight.
Note to self: need to remember to check weather reports in the morning before you leave. It is raaainy today and I did not bring my umbrella. Thank god they're cheap and you can get them just about anywhere, but still. I don't want to amass a plethora of umbrellas. That would do me no good.
One last thing, met the people who live next door to me. They're Chinese! Didn't get to talk much because I was on my way out to the Ruby Room, but the older lady may have been hitting on me. I'm not sure. She kept saying how cool and handsome I was and then giggling. It was odd. And slightly uncomfortable. Maybe next time will be better.
Man it's a hot one, Like 7 inches from the midday sun...
Alright, Alright. It's just past 9 AM and the work day begins... with a blog post!
First, a few pictures that Ted took of me playing for the second time at Ruby (2 weeks ago)!
Sweet! I like the motion shots, and that last one I think is me playing "You mama you" (a song that only requires one hand on the keyboard).
So, how about last night!!! I know, you guys weren't there, and that's why you're reading this, but seriously. My best performance ever. For sure. Yuki even said "it felt like I was at a real concert." I only had time to play 4 songs, but they were all pretty upbeat and I was a bit more talkative than usual, so that was good. There was actually a heckler! I got heckled by some drunk dude! Hah! After the second song, I started to introduce myself a little more and the guy yelled out (sarcastically) "tell us more about yourself!!" haha. I'll just take it to mean that he liked my music so much he wanted me to keep playing. yup.
The way it works at the Ruby open mic is that you gotta get there early and sign up for whatever time slot you want. I usually shoot for around 9:30, and then Yuki follows after me. My music's a bit lighter than the people that usually play, so I like to get it done early. Apparently they really like me there, though, because last night they asked me to close out the evening, which meant I played in front of the most people (the crowd just gradually grows there as the night goes on)! It was awesome.
I didn't have my camera, but both Aya and Sa had their cameras and were taking pictures of me from the front, so I should have some good pictures coming to you as soon as they send them to me.
The good and bad thing about playing a show that people like is that people will want to buy you drinks afterwards. This did happen last night. I drank far more than I should have for a Wednesday night, but when a Japanese person offers you something, you cannot refuse (it's quite rude). So I just kept drinking. It's a miracle I made it home. Not really. I wasn't that far gone, but still. Before going to bed I drank a bottle of that "power of tumeric" drink and it worked once again!! No hangover whatsoever today. Man, I'm getting lucky in Japan.
Friends that came to see me: Aya (who is, unbelievably enough, actually doing quite well despite the breakup), Sa, Kie... haha, I'm getting popular with the ladies here...
Oh, and Satoshi! He DJed only for a very short while after my show and then another guy took over, but I enjoyed it. He did a great mix of the Jackson 5's "ABC." He will be DJing again on Saturday night at the Ruby Room, so I may go to that. That would, like last week, be an all night event if I decide to go, but it could be worth it. We'll see.
I also met a guy named Ichi who is the bouncer at a dance club and he said he loved my music, and anytime I came to his club he could get me in for free. I have yet to go to any actual dance clubs here, so I'm considering going sometime to check out the scene.
Last point: Kie co-organizes a monthly charity concert for Oxfam (last month's concert is actually where I met her), and she invited me to play at this month's event! I believe it's the last Friday of the month, but I'm not totally sure about that. Woohoo!
First, a few pictures that Ted took of me playing for the second time at Ruby (2 weeks ago)!
Sweet! I like the motion shots, and that last one I think is me playing "You mama you" (a song that only requires one hand on the keyboard).
So, how about last night!!! I know, you guys weren't there, and that's why you're reading this, but seriously. My best performance ever. For sure. Yuki even said "it felt like I was at a real concert." I only had time to play 4 songs, but they were all pretty upbeat and I was a bit more talkative than usual, so that was good. There was actually a heckler! I got heckled by some drunk dude! Hah! After the second song, I started to introduce myself a little more and the guy yelled out (sarcastically) "tell us more about yourself!!" haha. I'll just take it to mean that he liked my music so much he wanted me to keep playing. yup.
The way it works at the Ruby open mic is that you gotta get there early and sign up for whatever time slot you want. I usually shoot for around 9:30, and then Yuki follows after me. My music's a bit lighter than the people that usually play, so I like to get it done early. Apparently they really like me there, though, because last night they asked me to close out the evening, which meant I played in front of the most people (the crowd just gradually grows there as the night goes on)! It was awesome.
I didn't have my camera, but both Aya and Sa had their cameras and were taking pictures of me from the front, so I should have some good pictures coming to you as soon as they send them to me.
The good and bad thing about playing a show that people like is that people will want to buy you drinks afterwards. This did happen last night. I drank far more than I should have for a Wednesday night, but when a Japanese person offers you something, you cannot refuse (it's quite rude). So I just kept drinking. It's a miracle I made it home. Not really. I wasn't that far gone, but still. Before going to bed I drank a bottle of that "power of tumeric" drink and it worked once again!! No hangover whatsoever today. Man, I'm getting lucky in Japan.
Friends that came to see me: Aya (who is, unbelievably enough, actually doing quite well despite the breakup), Sa, Kie... haha, I'm getting popular with the ladies here...
Oh, and Satoshi! He DJed only for a very short while after my show and then another guy took over, but I enjoyed it. He did a great mix of the Jackson 5's "ABC." He will be DJing again on Saturday night at the Ruby Room, so I may go to that. That would, like last week, be an all night event if I decide to go, but it could be worth it. We'll see.
I also met a guy named Ichi who is the bouncer at a dance club and he said he loved my music, and anytime I came to his club he could get me in for free. I have yet to go to any actual dance clubs here, so I'm considering going sometime to check out the scene.
Last point: Kie co-organizes a monthly charity concert for Oxfam (last month's concert is actually where I met her), and she invited me to play at this month's event! I believe it's the last Friday of the month, but I'm not totally sure about that. Woohoo!
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Preliminary Shots taken with phone camera
I'm not gonna drink it yet because I need to go meet some people and I want to be able to take my time with this drink, but here's 2 pics from my phone camera!
Also, on the way home I saw TWO Prius taxis. I have never seen any before and suddenly I see two in the span of like 10 minutes. I dunno what the deal is with them, if they're cheaper or anything,
but I do know that you can pay using a credit card, which is pretty neat. Okay, must be off now. Love!
Japan's seasonal food/beverage specials
Japan has this crazy and amazing thing where companies like Nestle, or Pepsi, etc. will come out with seasonal flavors for their candy/beverages/whatever. The thing that makes it really awesome to me is that pretty much every time I go to the convenience store, I can find something new that I have never had before. Often, I can find something new that I would never even fathom. For example, the newest flavor from Pepsi for the summer, which hit stores just yesterday, is "Pepsi Cucumber Ice." I am not kidding. I just read a whole news story about it, and the first thing I'm thinking is "where the heck can I get my hands on one of these?!" As far as I know, there isn't actually any cucumber in it, but it is meant to taste like the "refreshing" vegetable that we all know and love.
Fanta is also a big partaker in the seasonal-flavors-for-their-drinks party. Though I doubt they've ever done cucumber, they do a very wide range of fruit flavors (I wish I could think of some examples off-hand; most recently I had melon cream soda).
Well, the only reason I brought this whole thing up is because I just read the story about Pepsi Cucumber Ice, and I gotta have it. I get off work in 15 minutes and I assure you: as soon as I find it you will have pictures.
update: Found the following on Pepsi's Japanese home page:
Fanta is also a big partaker in the seasonal-flavors-for-their-drinks party. Though I doubt they've ever done cucumber, they do a very wide range of fruit flavors (I wish I could think of some examples off-hand; most recently I had melon cream soda).
Well, the only reason I brought this whole thing up is because I just read the story about Pepsi Cucumber Ice, and I gotta have it. I get off work in 15 minutes and I assure you: as soon as I find it you will have pictures.
update: Found the following on Pepsi's Japanese home page:
A giant among men
Well, jeans shopping was harder than anticipated. I mean, I anticipated it being tough, I just didn't realize how tough. I am a giant. A giant, I tell you! But I did manage to find one pair that fit me. And, luckily, they looked quite good. Usually, with pant sizes here they just use the S, M, L scale (on which I am something like XXL), unless they have jeans imported from the US or Europe or something, in which case they use the scale of the respective country. I was able to find some American jeans at just my size. Yay. Way to make me feel like a fat-ass, Japan.
I also tried on some shirts, and let me tell you: I'm a medium in the US. I'm just about an XL here. craaaazy. These people are far too small. It just occurred to me I may have clothing issues if I do end up living here in the future... hmmm... Well, I'll deal with that when the time comes.
The Ruby Room was fun. I told Yuki I would be going and she decided she wanted to go, too, so we were gonna try to meet up for dinner beforehand, but shopping was more difficult and took longer than anticipated, so she went and ate without me. Then we met up at the Ruby Room. It was crazy there! There were so many people! Yuki said it's always that crowded on Tuesday. I wonder why. On Wednesday there's barely anybody aside from the people that go to play. bizarre, n'est-ce pas?
So yeah, real crowded. Fun, though. Met lots of people. Saw Gilly again, although I didn't get to see him play because he didn't start until about 11:30, and I left before then so I could get a decent nights sleep because I will be playing tonight. This girl sat down next to Yuki and me and she looked like she was by herself so I figured I should talk to her. I asked her "一人で来たの?" (Did you come here by yourself?), to which she responded, "what? I'm not Japanese!" That just made me laugh like mad. She certainly looked Japanese, and was dressed like a Japanese girl. Then I just made it worse by following it up with "すみません!" like 3 or 4 times (I'm Sorry!) before I realized I was still speaking Japanese, and then finally made the switch over to English. She moved away from me soon after that. I think I scared her.
When I first walked in, there was an all-girl 4-piece band playing. They were crazy. They were not well-rehearsed, and soooo bubbly. They all giggled like mad anytime anyone made a mistake or they were amused by anything, which was most of the time. So basically they were giggling like the whole time. I walked in in the middle of their set so I didn't hear their introduction, but at the end they said "Thank you, we're the Angry Chihuahuas," **giggle** "come see our concert next week!" **giggle** Then they realized they forgot to tell people where and when the concert was, which just made them giggle more.... Yeah, crazy, I told you.
I guess that's about it. I met some other friends of Yuki's (Yuki apparently goes almost every Tuesday to watch), and one of the guys who played gave me a CD of his (I listened to it, it's not very good). Well, my friend Aya broke up with her boyfriend of about 1 year on Monday night. She said she's doing okay because she's strong, but I can't imagine she's actually doing okay. A week ago she was telling me she would be okay marrying this guy. I supposed that could just be because she's 30 and is really ready to get married, but seriously. I've been worried about her so I've just been sending a lot of emails/text messages back and forth with her, but she keeps telling me "I'm glad youre worried, but I'm fine." Well, she's coming to the show tonight, so I guess we can actually talk for real tonight.
My friend Satoshi will, I believe, be DJing tonight after the open mic. That should be fun.
Oh, did I not talk about yesterdays luncheon? I didn't, did I. It was neat. There were people from the offices of various states (obviously). Almost all of them, though, were Japanese people, and the meeting was done entirely in Japanese, which I was not prepared for. I'm not gonna lie, it was real tough to follow. They were speaking much faster than I am used to. I think I did alright, though. I was allowed to sit in on the executive meeting beforehand, because Ted is VP, but I basically didn't say a word through the whole meeting, until the end when they finished all the stuff on their agenda and they all turned to me (which was crazy scary) and started asking me questions about myself. That part I handled well, I thought. And it was a nice opportunity to practice my formal/polite Japanese, which I haven't used much here. Also, the food was delicious (4-course meal!).
Okay, it's time for my lunch break. take care, y'all.
I also tried on some shirts, and let me tell you: I'm a medium in the US. I'm just about an XL here. craaaazy. These people are far too small. It just occurred to me I may have clothing issues if I do end up living here in the future... hmmm... Well, I'll deal with that when the time comes.
The Ruby Room was fun. I told Yuki I would be going and she decided she wanted to go, too, so we were gonna try to meet up for dinner beforehand, but shopping was more difficult and took longer than anticipated, so she went and ate without me. Then we met up at the Ruby Room. It was crazy there! There were so many people! Yuki said it's always that crowded on Tuesday. I wonder why. On Wednesday there's barely anybody aside from the people that go to play. bizarre, n'est-ce pas?
So yeah, real crowded. Fun, though. Met lots of people. Saw Gilly again, although I didn't get to see him play because he didn't start until about 11:30, and I left before then so I could get a decent nights sleep because I will be playing tonight. This girl sat down next to Yuki and me and she looked like she was by herself so I figured I should talk to her. I asked her "一人で来たの?" (Did you come here by yourself?), to which she responded, "what? I'm not Japanese!" That just made me laugh like mad. She certainly looked Japanese, and was dressed like a Japanese girl. Then I just made it worse by following it up with "すみません!" like 3 or 4 times (I'm Sorry!) before I realized I was still speaking Japanese, and then finally made the switch over to English. She moved away from me soon after that. I think I scared her.
When I first walked in, there was an all-girl 4-piece band playing. They were crazy. They were not well-rehearsed, and soooo bubbly. They all giggled like mad anytime anyone made a mistake or they were amused by anything, which was most of the time. So basically they were giggling like the whole time. I walked in in the middle of their set so I didn't hear their introduction, but at the end they said "Thank you, we're the Angry Chihuahuas," **giggle** "come see our concert next week!" **giggle** Then they realized they forgot to tell people where and when the concert was, which just made them giggle more.... Yeah, crazy, I told you.
I guess that's about it. I met some other friends of Yuki's (Yuki apparently goes almost every Tuesday to watch), and one of the guys who played gave me a CD of his (I listened to it, it's not very good). Well, my friend Aya broke up with her boyfriend of about 1 year on Monday night. She said she's doing okay because she's strong, but I can't imagine she's actually doing okay. A week ago she was telling me she would be okay marrying this guy. I supposed that could just be because she's 30 and is really ready to get married, but seriously. I've been worried about her so I've just been sending a lot of emails/text messages back and forth with her, but she keeps telling me "I'm glad youre worried, but I'm fine." Well, she's coming to the show tonight, so I guess we can actually talk for real tonight.
My friend Satoshi will, I believe, be DJing tonight after the open mic. That should be fun.
Oh, did I not talk about yesterdays luncheon? I didn't, did I. It was neat. There were people from the offices of various states (obviously). Almost all of them, though, were Japanese people, and the meeting was done entirely in Japanese, which I was not prepared for. I'm not gonna lie, it was real tough to follow. They were speaking much faster than I am used to. I think I did alright, though. I was allowed to sit in on the executive meeting beforehand, because Ted is VP, but I basically didn't say a word through the whole meeting, until the end when they finished all the stuff on their agenda and they all turned to me (which was crazy scary) and started asking me questions about myself. That part I handled well, I thought. And it was a nice opportunity to practice my formal/polite Japanese, which I haven't used much here. Also, the food was delicious (4-course meal!).
Okay, it's time for my lunch break. take care, y'all.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Japanese Movie News
Famed Japanese action/horror director Takashi Miike, of films such as Full Metal Yakuza, Audition, and Ichi the Killer, has finished his latest movie entitled Sukiyaki Western: Django. A western set a few hundred years after the Gempei War (1180-1185), this film seems to explore a skirmish between the still-battling Heike and Genji clans in the backwater town of Yuta. The interesting thing about the movie is that while all (with exception of one or two Americans, including famed American director/actor Quentin Tarantino) the actors in the movie are Japanese, it is done entirely in English. Miike apparently claimed that, among other reasons, he aims to show the world that the Japanese can make their own movie in English that doesn't "lose" to Memoirs of a Geisha (an American-made movie about Japan with hardly any Japanese actors and done entirely in English). It opens world-wide in September and I am excited to see what Miike can do with the western genre! If you're interested, check out the official site, where there is a trailer for the movie.
In other, older, Japan movie news: remember Team America, how it was a cute idea for them to make a movie with all puppets and stuff, (opinion alert!) but it just wasn't funny and generally boring? Well, director Hideaki Anno has decided to take it to the next level and make a REAL movie with stunning visuals and intricate plot, using entirely marionettes. Strings opened here a month or so ago, and the critics have been treating it well, and it's another one I'd like to see but probably won't get the chance to (plus movies here are absurdly expensive). Click here to check out the trailer (you'll need Windows Media Player).
In other, older, Japan movie news: remember Team America, how it was a cute idea for them to make a movie with all puppets and stuff, (opinion alert!) but it just wasn't funny and generally boring? Well, director Hideaki Anno has decided to take it to the next level and make a REAL movie with stunning visuals and intricate plot, using entirely marionettes. Strings opened here a month or so ago, and the critics have been treating it well, and it's another one I'd like to see but probably won't get the chance to (plus movies here are absurdly expensive). Click here to check out the trailer (you'll need Windows Media Player).
Back to the old grind
Happy Tuesday, folks. I'm back at work, once again.
Last night I ended up not going to the Rock Factory and stayed home (I know, 2 nights in a row!). Yuki decided she wasn't going to go so I thought it might be nice to have another night to myself and get another good night's sleep, too. So that I did. I spent the evening watching various videos online, chatting with a few of my neighbors, etc. There are people in my building from all over, by the way. I can't remember whether or not I've talked about this before, so I'm gonna go ahead and briefly list some of the places that people are from that live in my building: Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Ghana, France, Germany, USA, Japan. Pretty cool, huh? My favorite is this guy Mauricio, from Brazil, who doesn't talk much, but is incredibly friendly. He always wants to give me a hand shake whenever I see him, but he won't say a word. Even if I say like "hey, what's up," etc. He'll just nod his head, shake my hand (maybe even more than once) and then walk away. He looks to be about my age, maybe slightly older. He's funny. My Spanish (or Portugese? what do they speak there?) is a bit rusty, and his English is not good, but we both speak Japanese (although him not half as well as I do--not to brag, just saying), so we use that to communicate in what little amounts we do.
Today is a luncheon for the American State Offices Association (ASOA). Missouri is, of course, a part of the group (Ted is actually Vice President of the Association), so we will be attending. There are 30 states that have offices in Japan, and of those 30, 25 are members of the ASOA. Should be cool to meet people from all over the US. It's taking place at the New Ohtani Hotel. I have no idea where that is, but I can't imagine it's very far, seeing as the US Embassy and most of the state offices are right around here.
Tonight I have no concrete plans, but I was thinking about going to the Ruby Room, this time just as a spectator. They have open mics on both Tuesday and Wednesday. Wednesday, the one I've been going to every week, is more for acoustic-style music/bands, whereas Tuesday is for anything else (plugged-in rock-style mainly). I know a couple people who apparently play there every Tuesday, so I thought I might go and check it out. I still need to find a new pair of jeans because I'm still switching between the same 2 pairs every day and, while I have of course been washing them, I just feel like I need to mix it up a bit more. So I might go shopping beforehand and then head over to the Ruby Room. That's a good plan.
Speaking of washing, I'm rather enjoying this routine of doing laundry once per week (because I only brought about 10 days worth of clothes). Usually, when I'm at home, I let it build up and then I do a bunch of loads about once a month--and I always dread doing it. But doing it once a week here has meant that it's only been one load each time, so it's not cumbersome at all and it gives me some good relaxing time. I really should continue this pattern after returning home.
Well, no real exciting stories this time, sorry about that. I suppose that's all I've got for now. Until next time...
Love,
D
Last night I ended up not going to the Rock Factory and stayed home (I know, 2 nights in a row!). Yuki decided she wasn't going to go so I thought it might be nice to have another night to myself and get another good night's sleep, too. So that I did. I spent the evening watching various videos online, chatting with a few of my neighbors, etc. There are people in my building from all over, by the way. I can't remember whether or not I've talked about this before, so I'm gonna go ahead and briefly list some of the places that people are from that live in my building: Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Ghana, France, Germany, USA, Japan. Pretty cool, huh? My favorite is this guy Mauricio, from Brazil, who doesn't talk much, but is incredibly friendly. He always wants to give me a hand shake whenever I see him, but he won't say a word. Even if I say like "hey, what's up," etc. He'll just nod his head, shake my hand (maybe even more than once) and then walk away. He looks to be about my age, maybe slightly older. He's funny. My Spanish (or Portugese? what do they speak there?) is a bit rusty, and his English is not good, but we both speak Japanese (although him not half as well as I do--not to brag, just saying), so we use that to communicate in what little amounts we do.
Today is a luncheon for the American State Offices Association (ASOA). Missouri is, of course, a part of the group (Ted is actually Vice President of the Association), so we will be attending. There are 30 states that have offices in Japan, and of those 30, 25 are members of the ASOA. Should be cool to meet people from all over the US. It's taking place at the New Ohtani Hotel. I have no idea where that is, but I can't imagine it's very far, seeing as the US Embassy and most of the state offices are right around here.
Tonight I have no concrete plans, but I was thinking about going to the Ruby Room, this time just as a spectator. They have open mics on both Tuesday and Wednesday. Wednesday, the one I've been going to every week, is more for acoustic-style music/bands, whereas Tuesday is for anything else (plugged-in rock-style mainly). I know a couple people who apparently play there every Tuesday, so I thought I might go and check it out. I still need to find a new pair of jeans because I'm still switching between the same 2 pairs every day and, while I have of course been washing them, I just feel like I need to mix it up a bit more. So I might go shopping beforehand and then head over to the Ruby Room. That's a good plan.
Speaking of washing, I'm rather enjoying this routine of doing laundry once per week (because I only brought about 10 days worth of clothes). Usually, when I'm at home, I let it build up and then I do a bunch of loads about once a month--and I always dread doing it. But doing it once a week here has meant that it's only been one load each time, so it's not cumbersome at all and it gives me some good relaxing time. I really should continue this pattern after returning home.
Well, no real exciting stories this time, sorry about that. I suppose that's all I've got for now. Until next time...
Love,
D
Monday, June 11, 2007
Pictures from Michael
Michael sent me a link to see pictures he took from when he and Grant were here. Only a few of them have me in them, so I'm pasting those here, but if you want to see the rest, you can find them at: THIS LINK
Grant and I musing in front of Hachiko, the most famous dog (statue) in Japan.
Me looking... sultry? I don't know what I'm doing, but I like it. I think this is from the dinner cruise we went on.
Me in Kagaya on their last night in town. If you look closely, you can see the waiter in one of his wild costumes in the background.
I had the misfortune to choose the seat that the waiter had the easiest access to.
This first one is from their first night in. They were hungry so we went to this little yakitori place near their inn. The chef/owner (back left) was very chatty and funny.
Grant and I musing in front of Hachiko, the most famous dog (statue) in Japan.
Me looking... sultry? I don't know what I'm doing, but I like it. I think this is from the dinner cruise we went on.
Me in Kagaya on their last night in town. If you look closely, you can see the waiter in one of his wild costumes in the background.
I had the misfortune to choose the seat that the waiter had the easiest access to.
Japanese women taking over the world
They could, I tell you. I mean, not only do they have Miss Universe this year, but now I find out they've got the pole dancing world champion (Reiko Suemune, pictured below)! Is there anything more the Japanese women can do to prove their ridiculous awesomeness?!
well, let's see... since Friday night, what have I done?...
On Saturday afternoon I went out to Shimokitazawa, to this used goods fair that Kie (and some other people I don't know) organized for Oxfam Japan, where she volunteers. It was pretty cool, and I got something that was marked for 1500 yen, but somehow managed to get it for 300 yen. It wasn't because of my insane haggling skills, though; it was because the cashier dude was like "yeah, I know it says 1500 yen, but that doesn't really mean anything, it can go cheaper," then he just stared at me waiting for me to say something. I said "Um.... Okay... now what?" *laughing* "allright, how about 300 yen?" "DONE!" haha.
Another pleasant surprise was seeing two of my other friends, Yuta and Yutaka, at the sale as well! What are the odds? They told me they are planning on coming back to the Ruby Room this Wednesday and will play some of their own music this time (they came to see me play last week, but didn't play)! I'm excited. I saw them play like a week and a half ago and they were great.
Kie, unfortunately said she was too busy to hang out (which I had assumed would happen anyways), so that option was crossed off the list for Saturday night. She did say we should go for a meal sometime and that would be wicked. I'm not kidding, that's actually what she said in English. She studied abroad in England for a year, so she speaks basically flawless English, but it's British-style English, which is so amusing to me because I've never heard anyone speak British-style English without having a British accent. She said she was worried about how the sale was going to turn out "because about an hour before it was pissing down outside," which I assumed meant raining hard. So the point is she says things like "wicked" and "loo" and it's basically awesome.
Soon afterwards I received a text message from Satoshi saying that he got a cold and will still be going to the club, but will probably go home very early, so maybe another time would be better, so I crossed that option off the list as well, leaving me with going to another live with Yuki. It turned out to be really fun, and I'm glad I went even though it was the last option on my list. Not that I didn't want to go. The only reason I put it at the bottom was because I've been hanging out with Yuki a lot and figured I should go out with different people. I enjoy hanging out with Yuki, though, because she speaks slowly, so it's really easy for me to understand her. I don't think she's doing it for my sake, either, I think that's just how she normally speaks. Anyways, the live itself was not the greatest. The first two bands I didn't like at all. The second one at least had an interesting sound that set it apart from anything I'd ever heard before, but it just didn't match my tastes. Also, the lead singer of the second band was apparently Yuki's ex-boyfriend. They dated for 3 years and 9 months, but broke up last October. That was a long story that Yuki told me about when we went out to drink afterwards. But back to the live. The third band was the band that we actually went to see, and I really enjoyed them. They were like a modern rock-style 3-piece band. The guitarist was hilarious and kept doing wacky dances and barking into the mic and stuff. Also, Sa--one of the girls I went to karaoke with the night before--was there, so that was cool. She said she definitely wants to come see me on Wednesday. It should be a good show this week! haha. I'm excited.
On Sunday I did something that I don't think I've done at all since I got here: I stayed home almost the whole day. I was originally supposed to go to the Ghibli Museum with Kie, but tickets were sold out. So then we were thinking about going to just do something random, but then it was raining like mad, and I had to do laundry, and she said she had some work stuff to do, so we just canceled altogether. Turned out to be good for me, though. I did my laundry, and then later in the day it cleared up a bit, so I took a little walk and then had dinner and then came home again. I also got to go to bed early (so nice), for once! So yeah, hanging out with Kie was again postponed indefinitely. She said she might come on Wednesday, also.
Well, I don't think there's much of anything going on at work this week, except I think one of our clients is actually coming here on Wednesday-ish. Exciting stuff.
I am off to research some more! Cheers,
Lawrence
edit: I also forgot to mention the olympic women's figure skating gold medalist...
well, let's see... since Friday night, what have I done?...
On Saturday afternoon I went out to Shimokitazawa, to this used goods fair that Kie (and some other people I don't know) organized for Oxfam Japan, where she volunteers. It was pretty cool, and I got something that was marked for 1500 yen, but somehow managed to get it for 300 yen. It wasn't because of my insane haggling skills, though; it was because the cashier dude was like "yeah, I know it says 1500 yen, but that doesn't really mean anything, it can go cheaper," then he just stared at me waiting for me to say something. I said "Um.... Okay... now what?" *laughing* "allright, how about 300 yen?" "DONE!" haha.
Another pleasant surprise was seeing two of my other friends, Yuta and Yutaka, at the sale as well! What are the odds? They told me they are planning on coming back to the Ruby Room this Wednesday and will play some of their own music this time (they came to see me play last week, but didn't play)! I'm excited. I saw them play like a week and a half ago and they were great.
Kie, unfortunately said she was too busy to hang out (which I had assumed would happen anyways), so that option was crossed off the list for Saturday night. She did say we should go for a meal sometime and that would be wicked. I'm not kidding, that's actually what she said in English. She studied abroad in England for a year, so she speaks basically flawless English, but it's British-style English, which is so amusing to me because I've never heard anyone speak British-style English without having a British accent. She said she was worried about how the sale was going to turn out "because about an hour before it was pissing down outside," which I assumed meant raining hard. So the point is she says things like "wicked" and "loo" and it's basically awesome.
Soon afterwards I received a text message from Satoshi saying that he got a cold and will still be going to the club, but will probably go home very early, so maybe another time would be better, so I crossed that option off the list as well, leaving me with going to another live with Yuki. It turned out to be really fun, and I'm glad I went even though it was the last option on my list. Not that I didn't want to go. The only reason I put it at the bottom was because I've been hanging out with Yuki a lot and figured I should go out with different people. I enjoy hanging out with Yuki, though, because she speaks slowly, so it's really easy for me to understand her. I don't think she's doing it for my sake, either, I think that's just how she normally speaks. Anyways, the live itself was not the greatest. The first two bands I didn't like at all. The second one at least had an interesting sound that set it apart from anything I'd ever heard before, but it just didn't match my tastes. Also, the lead singer of the second band was apparently Yuki's ex-boyfriend. They dated for 3 years and 9 months, but broke up last October. That was a long story that Yuki told me about when we went out to drink afterwards. But back to the live. The third band was the band that we actually went to see, and I really enjoyed them. They were like a modern rock-style 3-piece band. The guitarist was hilarious and kept doing wacky dances and barking into the mic and stuff. Also, Sa--one of the girls I went to karaoke with the night before--was there, so that was cool. She said she definitely wants to come see me on Wednesday. It should be a good show this week! haha. I'm excited.
On Sunday I did something that I don't think I've done at all since I got here: I stayed home almost the whole day. I was originally supposed to go to the Ghibli Museum with Kie, but tickets were sold out. So then we were thinking about going to just do something random, but then it was raining like mad, and I had to do laundry, and she said she had some work stuff to do, so we just canceled altogether. Turned out to be good for me, though. I did my laundry, and then later in the day it cleared up a bit, so I took a little walk and then had dinner and then came home again. I also got to go to bed early (so nice), for once! So yeah, hanging out with Kie was again postponed indefinitely. She said she might come on Wednesday, also.
Well, I don't think there's much of anything going on at work this week, except I think one of our clients is actually coming here on Wednesday-ish. Exciting stuff.
I am off to research some more! Cheers,
Lawrence
edit: I also forgot to mention the olympic women's figure skating gold medalist...
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Another video pertaining to Sushi!
This is largely a spoof of sorts, but at the same time, a lot of it is oh so true!
Friday, June 8, 2007
カラオケ！(Karaoke!)
Hey everyone! I'm just getting ready for bed. I had a pretty good Friday. The Interior Lifestyle fair was really awesome. Unfortunately, photography was prohibited at the whole event (unless you were press), but I did managed to sneak in some pictures before someone stopped me, so I do have some pictures. I'll upload those later. I don't really know what to say about the Interior Lifestyles fair. There was SO much there. It was quite large. Two floors worth of convention halls (4 convention halls altogether). It was cool, though.
Tonight I went to do some karaoke with Aya and Yuki, but Yuki couldn't make it, so Aya invited another friend of hers, named Sa. She was very friendly, and loved aiko (one of the few Japanese musicians I know, and probably the only one I can actually sing along to), so we sang a lot of aiko songs together. Really fun. 3 hours of karaoke can really hurt the voice. You gotta keep on drinking to fight back the burning feeling. Aya was getting a cold, so she didn't sing a whole lot, but she did bust out on some English songs, which I was very impressed with, seeing as she really doesn't speak any English at all. She said she was reading the English on the screen (rather than the Japanese they use to spell it out phonetically), but didn't really get the meaning of most of what she was saying. But still, she could pronounce things correctly, so that was cool. They were quite impressed with my ability to sing Japanese songs, as was expected, but in the same way, I don't really understand everything I'm singing, I'm just reading it out phonetically. Haha. Still, not bad. I really want to go again. Sa may be coming to see me play at the Ruby Room next week (Aya will definitely come, she said). I had my camera in my jacket pocket, but I took it off inside because it was hot, and I totally forgot about my camera, so I have no pictures of karaoke. Sorry! I really need to get better about that. I just prefer to focus on enjoying the company rather than taking pictures (not that that can't be enjoyable too, I guess I just never think about it).
Tomorrow I'm going to this used items sale that Kie organized and probably hanging out with Kie afterwards, although she said she wasn't sure how busy she would be afterwards, so who knows. I do have multiple options for tomorrow night, though. Of course, if Kie is free, I'll most likely spend the time hangin with her, cuz I haven't seen her in a week. Yuki also invited me to come with her to see a friend's live. And Satoshi invited me to go to a club with some of his friends. If I do decide to go to the club, that will have to end up being an all-night thing because the club doesn't open until 11 (and the trains stop around midnight; and taxis are insanely expensive here, so a lot of clubs and bars actually stay open until about 6 AM, when the trains start up again), so this will require a bit of planning/preparation. It will be saturday night, so I could do the all-night thing if I wanted. Who knows...
Well, for now I'm off to bed. More stories to come. Love, Lawrence
Tonight I went to do some karaoke with Aya and Yuki, but Yuki couldn't make it, so Aya invited another friend of hers, named Sa. She was very friendly, and loved aiko (one of the few Japanese musicians I know, and probably the only one I can actually sing along to), so we sang a lot of aiko songs together. Really fun. 3 hours of karaoke can really hurt the voice. You gotta keep on drinking to fight back the burning feeling. Aya was getting a cold, so she didn't sing a whole lot, but she did bust out on some English songs, which I was very impressed with, seeing as she really doesn't speak any English at all. She said she was reading the English on the screen (rather than the Japanese they use to spell it out phonetically), but didn't really get the meaning of most of what she was saying. But still, she could pronounce things correctly, so that was cool. They were quite impressed with my ability to sing Japanese songs, as was expected, but in the same way, I don't really understand everything I'm singing, I'm just reading it out phonetically. Haha. Still, not bad. I really want to go again. Sa may be coming to see me play at the Ruby Room next week (Aya will definitely come, she said). I had my camera in my jacket pocket, but I took it off inside because it was hot, and I totally forgot about my camera, so I have no pictures of karaoke. Sorry! I really need to get better about that. I just prefer to focus on enjoying the company rather than taking pictures (not that that can't be enjoyable too, I guess I just never think about it).
Tomorrow I'm going to this used items sale that Kie organized and probably hanging out with Kie afterwards, although she said she wasn't sure how busy she would be afterwards, so who knows. I do have multiple options for tomorrow night, though. Of course, if Kie is free, I'll most likely spend the time hangin with her, cuz I haven't seen her in a week. Yuki also invited me to come with her to see a friend's live. And Satoshi invited me to go to a club with some of his friends. If I do decide to go to the club, that will have to end up being an all-night thing because the club doesn't open until 11 (and the trains stop around midnight; and taxis are insanely expensive here, so a lot of clubs and bars actually stay open until about 6 AM, when the trains start up again), so this will require a bit of planning/preparation. It will be saturday night, so I could do the all-night thing if I wanted. Who knows...
Well, for now I'm off to bed. More stories to come. Love, Lawrence
Who wants to meet Dick?
Good morning! Well, good evening for you all.
Last night was Michael and Grant's final night in Japan. They should be on a plane right now (and for the next 10 hours or so) on their way back to the States. Anyways, they read about a restaurant in their guidebook that they really wanted to go to called Kagaya, so they made a reservation in advance and we went there around 6:20 (we were told to get there early). Turned out it was actually just down the street from where I live. Just about a 5 minute walk. From the description, I expected a large-ish venue--the guidebook said it's dinner and hilarious entertainment that proves to be a better experience than the Imperial Palace--but in fact it was quite small, with seats for only about 20 people total. The waiter, upon entering, acted completely normal. We took off our shoes, sat down (this was a sit-on-the-floor style restaurant), and really couldn't see why this was such a big deal. Things started to get strange pretty quickly, though. The waiter, whose name on his business card is actually Mark (but he is clearly Japanese, I don't know if thats his real name or not) Kagaya, brought out warm hand towels and served them to us on the head of a robotic An-pan-man, a famous cartoon character here (picture below), and then pretended to speak as An-pan-man, welcoming us, etc. (Mark spoke very good English)
He followed up this act by presenting us with the drink menu, which was written in Japanese, so I guess he felt he had to explain it to us in English. He did this by acting out most of the items, one way or another, as a robot. He would draw the outline of a beer-bottle in the air and then air-drink it and feign drunkenness, etc. After we ordered our beer and sake, he presented us with a list of countries (America, Japan, China, France, England, Brazil etc.) and asked us to pick one. We, of course, had no idea what this was for, but Michael went ahead and chose France. After that he just went about his business as normal and we couldn't figure out why the heck we had to choose a country. Until about 5 minutes later, when the French music began to play on a stereo in the corner. Then, from a back room, out comes Mark with an easel and a beret-like hat on, with a look of stereotypical French je-ne-sais-quois on his face, while gazing into the "distance." He then set up the easel and began drawing portraits of various patrons, myself included, with a black crayon. He spent just a couple minutes on each portrait and they were really pretty impressive for being so quick. They were like cartoon versions of whoever he drew.
After the French act, he brought us our drinks and then proceeded to explain the food menu to us. He did this with the use of a monkey hand puppet, who was supposed to represent himself, while Mark was supposed to represent the customer. There were 4 menu options, going from least to most expensive (light food, regular food, fancy food, and lots of food with all-you-can-drink), but you could not actually choose what food you were going to get, it was just a whole lot of smaller dishes. So, to explain the menu, he acted out 4 different scenarios in which you might order each option. I think Mark really likes pretending he's drunk because he acted like it for most of the scenarios. It was all hilarious (I was pretty much laughing hysterically non-stop), but in particular was option 3, in which the customer ordered the fancy food because he had a lady friend joining him for dinner and then Mark went ahead and acted out the lady's reaction to the delicious food... (in a high, soft voice) "Oh, so delicious" *takes another bite* .."oh, Michael, you're so cool" (taking the name from the reservation)... "Oh, I can't go home tonight..." *another bite* .. "oh, Michael, stay with me until morning"
Finally, for option 4, with lots of food, and lots of drink, he of course pretended to be drunk again, and then pretended to "stuff his face" with air food, then to eat the monkey puppet, and then to try to eat me! Since it was their last night in Japan, we wanted to go a little fancier, and ordered the fancy food (option 3). The food was fantastic. Some tofu dishes, eggplant, radishes, asparagus, fish, chicken, and more. It was so delicious.
Oh, I forgot to mention, he served the sake in a pitcher with an electronic fountain-style spout moulded to look like a boy peeing (you pushed a button to make him pee out the sake). And the beer in these mugs that had uneven weights in the base of them that spun when you picked them up, so it shook the mug like crazy. It was quite funny at first, but then it got annoying because you had to press on the bottom of the mug while you were holding it to make it not shake, and I had to do that the rest of the night.
Some other countries he acted out: Brazil, doing some kind of wild dance that I can't even begin to describe. America, as... shoot, I can't remember. England's was insane because it really had no real relation to England--he first did a little puppet show with a frog puppet, and said he was from England (that was the only England-related thing about it) and he said he had a brother named Dick who lives in Tokyo, and would we like to meet Dick? Then he pops out from behind the puppet 'stage' in a full frog costume, and pretends to be Dick. He didn't really do anything, that was basically it for that one (there are a couple pictures of him in the frog suit). He also did Japan, which was fairly impressive, actually, he did a traditional-style Japanese dance with a fan that was pretty elaborate and wasn't really funny at all, just cool. Oh, I remember, for America, he didn't act anything out, but rather brought out this American-made game that was less of a game, actually, and more of a torture device, and he forced us to play it. The game was: 4 people grab these metal handles with buttons where your thumb is, and you watch a light that flashes red. As soon as the light changes to blue, you have to push the button as fast as you can, and the last person to hit the button gets shocked (or if you hit the button before it changes you get shocked). I'm pretty sure they don't make that game anymore, probably because they got sued like crazy, but it was scary. I played twice, though, and didn't lose, so #phew#! Finally, he also acted out China, pretending to be a Bruce Lee-style martial artist.
All in all, it was a great experience, and I have yet to go to the Imperial Palace, but I would believe that Kagaya was a better experience than that (mostly because you can't actually go to the Imperial Palace, just to the gardens around it).
Today I'm going to an interior design fair at Big Sight. I'm really excited about it. There should be some awesome displays. I will be taking my camera and, assuming it's going to be as cool as I think it will be, will take lots of pictures. I'm going to this one on my own, which is kind of nice. It means I can look at the things I want to look at and not have to worry about following Ted around.
After that I will be heading to Karaoke with Aya. We're meeting at 7 at Shibuya. I'm also, as you know, really excited about that too. I love karaoke. And I love being able to sing the one Japanese song I can sing at karaoke, especially if I'm with a Japanese person! haha.
Alright, I gotta get ready to go to Big Sight. Love you all!
Last night was Michael and Grant's final night in Japan. They should be on a plane right now (and for the next 10 hours or so) on their way back to the States. Anyways, they read about a restaurant in their guidebook that they really wanted to go to called Kagaya, so they made a reservation in advance and we went there around 6:20 (we were told to get there early). Turned out it was actually just down the street from where I live. Just about a 5 minute walk. From the description, I expected a large-ish venue--the guidebook said it's dinner and hilarious entertainment that proves to be a better experience than the Imperial Palace--but in fact it was quite small, with seats for only about 20 people total. The waiter, upon entering, acted completely normal. We took off our shoes, sat down (this was a sit-on-the-floor style restaurant), and really couldn't see why this was such a big deal. Things started to get strange pretty quickly, though. The waiter, whose name on his business card is actually Mark (but he is clearly Japanese, I don't know if thats his real name or not) Kagaya, brought out warm hand towels and served them to us on the head of a robotic An-pan-man, a famous cartoon character here (picture below), and then pretended to speak as An-pan-man, welcoming us, etc. (Mark spoke very good English)
He followed up this act by presenting us with the drink menu, which was written in Japanese, so I guess he felt he had to explain it to us in English. He did this by acting out most of the items, one way or another, as a robot. He would draw the outline of a beer-bottle in the air and then air-drink it and feign drunkenness, etc. After we ordered our beer and sake, he presented us with a list of countries (America, Japan, China, France, England, Brazil etc.) and asked us to pick one. We, of course, had no idea what this was for, but Michael went ahead and chose France. After that he just went about his business as normal and we couldn't figure out why the heck we had to choose a country. Until about 5 minutes later, when the French music began to play on a stereo in the corner. Then, from a back room, out comes Mark with an easel and a beret-like hat on, with a look of stereotypical French je-ne-sais-quois on his face, while gazing into the "distance." He then set up the easel and began drawing portraits of various patrons, myself included, with a black crayon. He spent just a couple minutes on each portrait and they were really pretty impressive for being so quick. They were like cartoon versions of whoever he drew.After the French act, he brought us our drinks and then proceeded to explain the food menu to us. He did this with the use of a monkey hand puppet, who was supposed to represent himself, while Mark was supposed to represent the customer. There were 4 menu options, going from least to most expensive (light food, regular food, fancy food, and lots of food with all-you-can-drink), but you could not actually choose what food you were going to get, it was just a whole lot of smaller dishes. So, to explain the menu, he acted out 4 different scenarios in which you might order each option. I think Mark really likes pretending he's drunk because he acted like it for most of the scenarios. It was all hilarious (I was pretty much laughing hysterically non-stop), but in particular was option 3, in which the customer ordered the fancy food because he had a lady friend joining him for dinner and then Mark went ahead and acted out the lady's reaction to the delicious food... (in a high, soft voice) "Oh, so delicious" *takes another bite* .."oh, Michael, you're so cool" (taking the name from the reservation)... "Oh, I can't go home tonight..." *another bite* .. "oh, Michael, stay with me until morning"
Finally, for option 4, with lots of food, and lots of drink, he of course pretended to be drunk again, and then pretended to "stuff his face" with air food, then to eat the monkey puppet, and then to try to eat me! Since it was their last night in Japan, we wanted to go a little fancier, and ordered the fancy food (option 3). The food was fantastic. Some tofu dishes, eggplant, radishes, asparagus, fish, chicken, and more. It was so delicious.
Oh, I forgot to mention, he served the sake in a pitcher with an electronic fountain-style spout moulded to look like a boy peeing (you pushed a button to make him pee out the sake). And the beer in these mugs that had uneven weights in the base of them that spun when you picked them up, so it shook the mug like crazy. It was quite funny at first, but then it got annoying because you had to press on the bottom of the mug while you were holding it to make it not shake, and I had to do that the rest of the night.
Some other countries he acted out: Brazil, doing some kind of wild dance that I can't even begin to describe. America, as... shoot, I can't remember. England's was insane because it really had no real relation to England--he first did a little puppet show with a frog puppet, and said he was from England (that was the only England-related thing about it) and he said he had a brother named Dick who lives in Tokyo, and would we like to meet Dick? Then he pops out from behind the puppet 'stage' in a full frog costume, and pretends to be Dick. He didn't really do anything, that was basically it for that one (there are a couple pictures of him in the frog suit). He also did Japan, which was fairly impressive, actually, he did a traditional-style Japanese dance with a fan that was pretty elaborate and wasn't really funny at all, just cool. Oh, I remember, for America, he didn't act anything out, but rather brought out this American-made game that was less of a game, actually, and more of a torture device, and he forced us to play it. The game was: 4 people grab these metal handles with buttons where your thumb is, and you watch a light that flashes red. As soon as the light changes to blue, you have to push the button as fast as you can, and the last person to hit the button gets shocked (or if you hit the button before it changes you get shocked). I'm pretty sure they don't make that game anymore, probably because they got sued like crazy, but it was scary. I played twice, though, and didn't lose, so #phew#! Finally, he also acted out China, pretending to be a Bruce Lee-style martial artist.
All in all, it was a great experience, and I have yet to go to the Imperial Palace, but I would believe that Kagaya was a better experience than that (mostly because you can't actually go to the Imperial Palace, just to the gardens around it).
Today I'm going to an interior design fair at Big Sight. I'm really excited about it. There should be some awesome displays. I will be taking my camera and, assuming it's going to be as cool as I think it will be, will take lots of pictures. I'm going to this one on my own, which is kind of nice. It means I can look at the things I want to look at and not have to worry about following Ted around.
After that I will be heading to Karaoke with Aya. We're meeting at 7 at Shibuya. I'm also, as you know, really excited about that too. I love karaoke. And I love being able to sing the one Japanese song I can sing at karaoke, especially if I'm with a Japanese person! haha.
Alright, I gotta get ready to go to Big Sight. Love you all!
And aren't you lucky today?... MORE pictures!
Most of the pictures are self-explanatory, but the last bit that is of a restaurant called Kagaya, I will have to explain. It is, however, very late and so I"m going to bed for now and I will write about it at work in the morning. Meanwhile...
New Photo Album
p.s. It is WAY faster to upload with these smaller picture sizes/resolutions. I'm sticking with these from now on.
New Photo Album
p.s. It is WAY faster to upload with these smaller picture sizes/resolutions. I'm sticking with these from now on.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Some more pictures (sort of)
I made a guest appearance on Yucca's blog! (Yucca, once again, is the band of Yuki, Aya, Yusaku, and another guy I have yet to meet).
There are some pictures of me there from my shows on Monday night and last night, as well as one from last Saturday at Akabane. They're pics Yuki took with her phone, so they're not the greatest quality, and you won't be able to read what she wrote, but you should go check it out anyways.
Yucca's Blog
Until next time...
There are some pictures of me there from my shows on Monday night and last night, as well as one from last Saturday at Akabane. They're pics Yuki took with her phone, so they're not the greatest quality, and you won't be able to read what she wrote, but you should go check it out anyways.
Yucca's Blog
Until next time...
Putrid Purple Lollipop
Another successful show at the Ruby Room last night. I'm not sure if it was me, or the sound, but I felt like I kept getting off-key about halfway through each song. And, of course, no one would actually tell me if I was or not, so I'll just never know. But I got good response. Ako asked if I had a CD because she really wants one. So I suppose that's a good sign. I love the Ruby Room crowd because each week there's been at least 2 new people playing, but then there's also some of the same people that keep coming back and are all really friendly and great.
Yuki's set was fantastic last night. I don't know why, but her voice was much cleaner-sounding and her guitar sounded way better, too. She said it was probably because she was a little drunk.
Speaking of drunk, Yuki gave me this drink that is called ウコンの力, or "the power of tumeric," and is in a tiny little bottle that looks like an energy drink, so I was wary of it at first, but she said "No, no. It's good for your liver, and it's what people drink before they go to bed when they drank a lot and have to go to work the next day. It helps prevent hangovers." It didn't taste great, but... well, I didn't drink a whole lot last night, compared to other nights, so I don't know if I even would have had a hangover anyways, but I do feel great this morning. Also, on a related note, I'm glad I now have Japanese friends who can teach me the more useful words that you don't learn in class, such as hangover (二日酔い, futsukayoi) or the verb for getting drunk (酔っ払う, yopparau).
Perhaps the most interesting set from last night, though, was Kyle. Kyle is actually Yuki's English teacher, who came here from Canada last year. It's apparently against, the rules for the teachers in their program to become friends with the students outside of class, so I'm not supposed to tell anyone. So you guys don't tell anyone either, okay? Anyways, Kyle played acoustic guitar and sang with a country-style twang, which I wonder where he picked up because I can't imagine country music is popular in Canada. He opened with a song called "Putrid Purple Lollipop" about a lollipop that he found stuck to his shoe one day and he decided to give it a lick, only afterwards seeing all the nasty crap that was on it. I don't know why you wouldn't assume there was a whole bunch of nasty crap on a lollipop that was stuck to your shoe, but either way the song was hilarious.
I haven't seen Aya since Saturday because she works a lot, but we've been exchanging emails every day. She is having a tough time now because she broke some ribs going skiing in March, but she can't afford to take time off of work because she's supporting herself, so she's been going to work (she's a receptionist/secretary) non-stop despite the injury. Apparently she's still wearing a corsett, too. I mean, I understand you gotta make money, but that's wild. That's gotta be brutal on her body, cuz she works long hours and only gets a vacation day once every week and a half. We are gonna go do some karaoke tomorrow night, though, which should be real fun. I've only gone karaoke-ing with a Japanese person once before and it was a great experience. They get into it. A lot. I'll be sure to take pictures, and I'm sure Aya will take some, too, seeing as I have yet to see her without her camera on hand.
Today Ted is taking me to the Jetro library. Jetro is the Japan External Trade Organization and they publish a lot of market reports, etc. for international importers and exporters. We are going to go and see what we can find out about golf accessories distributors in Japan for one of our clients.
And tonight Michael and Grant are coming back to Tokyo for their final night in Japan. May it be a fun one. They have already made plans for what to do from stuff they found in their guidebook, so I'm just going to be meeting up with them after work and let them guide me around, for a change. It would be nice if they could meet some of my new friends, so Yuki said if we want to meet up for drinks or anything after dinner I should just mail (meaning text message) her.
Love Y'all. Catch you later.
Yuki's set was fantastic last night. I don't know why, but her voice was much cleaner-sounding and her guitar sounded way better, too. She said it was probably because she was a little drunk.
Speaking of drunk, Yuki gave me this drink that is called ウコンの力, or "the power of tumeric," and is in a tiny little bottle that looks like an energy drink, so I was wary of it at first, but she said "No, no. It's good for your liver, and it's what people drink before they go to bed when they drank a lot and have to go to work the next day. It helps prevent hangovers." It didn't taste great, but... well, I didn't drink a whole lot last night, compared to other nights, so I don't know if I even would have had a hangover anyways, but I do feel great this morning. Also, on a related note, I'm glad I now have Japanese friends who can teach me the more useful words that you don't learn in class, such as hangover (二日酔い, futsukayoi) or the verb for getting drunk (酔っ払う, yopparau).
Perhaps the most interesting set from last night, though, was Kyle. Kyle is actually Yuki's English teacher, who came here from Canada last year. It's apparently against, the rules for the teachers in their program to become friends with the students outside of class, so I'm not supposed to tell anyone. So you guys don't tell anyone either, okay? Anyways, Kyle played acoustic guitar and sang with a country-style twang, which I wonder where he picked up because I can't imagine country music is popular in Canada. He opened with a song called "Putrid Purple Lollipop" about a lollipop that he found stuck to his shoe one day and he decided to give it a lick, only afterwards seeing all the nasty crap that was on it. I don't know why you wouldn't assume there was a whole bunch of nasty crap on a lollipop that was stuck to your shoe, but either way the song was hilarious.
I haven't seen Aya since Saturday because she works a lot, but we've been exchanging emails every day. She is having a tough time now because she broke some ribs going skiing in March, but she can't afford to take time off of work because she's supporting herself, so she's been going to work (she's a receptionist/secretary) non-stop despite the injury. Apparently she's still wearing a corsett, too. I mean, I understand you gotta make money, but that's wild. That's gotta be brutal on her body, cuz she works long hours and only gets a vacation day once every week and a half. We are gonna go do some karaoke tomorrow night, though, which should be real fun. I've only gone karaoke-ing with a Japanese person once before and it was a great experience. They get into it. A lot. I'll be sure to take pictures, and I'm sure Aya will take some, too, seeing as I have yet to see her without her camera on hand.
Today Ted is taking me to the Jetro library. Jetro is the Japan External Trade Organization and they publish a lot of market reports, etc. for international importers and exporters. We are going to go and see what we can find out about golf accessories distributors in Japan for one of our clients.
And tonight Michael and Grant are coming back to Tokyo for their final night in Japan. May it be a fun one. They have already made plans for what to do from stuff they found in their guidebook, so I'm just going to be meeting up with them after work and let them guide me around, for a change. It would be nice if they could meet some of my new friends, so Yuki said if we want to meet up for drinks or anything after dinner I should just mail (meaning text message) her.
Love Y'all. Catch you later.