trying stuff

Of late I have been trying to try stuff more. Stupid first sentence, I know, but I thought I`d try it out... yeah. So lets take a look at some of that...




Ah... we all know that nothing goes together better than Blue and Hawaii, except maybe biscuits and gravy! so you would think that this crap would be a hit right? It sucks. Check out Jesse`s blog as he talked about it also. Who bought it first, not sure, but for sure he posted about it first and probably wrote weller than me, sorry, I.








Next I took a ride!So maybe some people out there have heard that a new line has opened up in Tokyo! It`s a subway! It`s called the Fukutoshin Line (副都心線) which means something along the line of "sub-downtown" or "sub-center" line and it runs between Ikebukuro (池袋) and Shibuya (渋谷). The line connects to a few lines already (the Tobu Tojo (東武東上線) Seibu Yurakucho (西武有楽町) and the Seibu Ikebukuro (西部池袋)) and is scheduled to connect to a big new one, the Tokyu Toyoko line (東急東横線) in 2012 so in effect you will be able to go from Saitama (埼玉) to Yokohama (横浜) very easily... not so interesting for me, but OK. Since I work in Ikebukuro I decided to jump on one night after work to test it out even though it is actually less convineint than to take the Yamanote line (山手線) which already goes from Ikebukuro to Shibuya (and beyond to my transfer station of Gotanda (五反田)) but I wanted to give it a whirl. It was ok. I jumped on the express at Ikebukuro and it was only 2 stops to Shibuya, so fairly quick, but it was surprising, only the 3rd day of operation and it was empty! Anyway, lame, probably the last time I`ll be rockin` that line unless the Yamanote breaks down.

what`s cooking good looking?

If you live in Japan and you miss some of the good ol` foods from back home, you should for sure check out theflyingpig you can get all kinds of COSTCO goodies there, here`s what I received in a recent shipment!
Also, I`ve been cooking a lot recently, and some good stuff too! Some of it is good ol` home style cooking from scratch, check it out:
here`s some sweet homemade chili using the black beans i got from the flying pig, so tasty, if you want the recipes, send me a mail!

Here`s a sweet sandwich using a homemade avocado/tofu spread and completely vegetarian for you weirdos!

Awwww yeah boi! Next we have some sweet biscuits and gravy made from scratch!the one downside to the biscuits was that I can`t seem to find buttermilk for the life of me in this country...

Finally, ume-shu! Making some plum wine baby yeah!
here`s the ingredients:the washed plums:add the sugar:add some white liquor and some brandy:

an update on my break...

Well, I was gonna make a big ass post talking about a bunch of shit, but I don`t want to, so I`m not gonna! I am gonna do several posts over the next few days covering a few things that I`ve been up to, like stuff, experiences, and food, so look forward to those! What I will do is update what`s going on here at no airplay.

So, been thinking a lot about what I should do, I`m falling back into the `6 months lost` pattern from last year and I want to avoid doing that so I needed to re-think what I was doing. I had been trying to fight my boredom and come up with some ways to make things still enjoyable and useful for myself. Apoc said it best, `there was no end in sight` (I might be paraphrasing here). The first idea that I was thinking to do was limiting the podcasts to just specials, you know, Thanksgiving, New Year`s and the like. But that seemed boring too... I was thinking of doing a limited run of some kind and then I saw that Apoc D was back and doing a season set-up. 13 episodes in the second season! I`m super thrilled that he`s back, but 13 episodes is a lot. What I really want to do is cover the whole year... but how? Well, I think I`m gonna do 4 seasons per year. Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, along with some special episodes for the afore mentioned holidays. So I think what we will see is 4 seasons per year of between 8-11 episodes each. That will give me around a month or so off between each season to do nothing. Who knows... this is the plan for right now, I`m planning to kick off the the summer season with a July 4th specialstravaganza! and wind it down with a special tribute to dude? on September 11th!

takin' a break...

I'm taking a break. No show last (this) week. I'll be back soon probably.

-butt?

playin' the ponies

Yesterday meltin faces, mornin, and I all headed over to Oi-keibabjyo (大井競馬場) for some rockin horse racing action! We got there at around 3:20 or so with the first race kicking off at 3:55 so we ran around like chickens with our proverbial heads cut off trying to figure out exactly what to do with the betting system we were dealing with. Well, by the end of the night we had figured out most of it, but there are still a few ways to bet that I'm still unsure of... I am somewhat familiar with the system we have back home, but this was my first time to go to the track over here and wasn't sure exactly what my options were. So the first race went off and I bet solely on name value for that one, putting my money on "Green Seattle" and "Go Go Tiger" for obvious reasons! "Green Seattle" was a big ol' pile of glue, but "Go Go Tiger" came in for my only real victory of the day, I won about 1300 on a 200 yen bet. That was the peak of my betting... all day... the first race... We stayed all day and watched the next 9 races with some success, some failure, and a bunch of almost! Over all it was pretty good times though, I'd love to head back out sometime again this summer for sure. The big draw aside from the ponies is the light show that happens between each race (nightime only dude), hence the name "twinkle race". In the infield of the track they have a giant net that lights up and displays a bunch of different patters between the races (my guess is that it would distract the horses if it were on during the races) along with your typical Christmas looking lights on the hedges and bushes and such. It's actually pretty cool, might be a bit more impressive without the big ass flood lights that illuminate the track, but what are you gonna do?