Rants

I thought I'd fire up another post while I was at it. I just had a few things that didn't really go with other posts that I felt like talking about. The first is the Hello Kitty bike. This bike is the bane of my existance. It has some stupid hello kitty stuff on the handlebars, and a hello kitty pad on the rear fender of the bike. It's not like this is a kid's bike, it's a full fledged adult size bike. And this person always ends up blocking me, or getting in the way so I can't park my bike under the covered area. It's ridiculous. It wouldn't be so bad if it was just another bike, but it's a hello kitty bike, and I want to set it on fire! Aside from the hello kitty bike, I must say that most bike riders in this city are terrible. They are dangerous, and they do not pay attention what so ever. Along with the crazy bike riders I must deal with on my way to the station and other places, there is something that is especially troublesome that I must deal with on the way to the station. It's the blind corners. On my way to the station everyday, I come accross roughly 10 blind corners. In some places there are mirrors set up to see around the corners to see the incoming traffic, but that is of course, car traffic. Doesn't usually show the opposite way, where bikes could be coming from. It's dangerous, and it doesn't help that, over the past month or so, they ripped up the street about half way to the station to fix some pipes, so, now it's a pretty rough ride:( Anyway, on to some good things. In 2 days, the first games of the NFL season will begin, and all will be good in this cosmic vastness. This weekend, I'll be doing a special "voice" session trying to explain the rules, history, and current state of the game we, in america, call football. It should be fun, I'm hoping that some people will become interested in it enough to maybe watch a game on cable or something, but I figure that's kinda hoping for alot, so I really just want them to enjoy it, and maybe learn something about my favorite game. Saturday evening, hunbun is going to stay over and I'm real excited. Usually I end up staying at her place, and it's cool, cuz her place is real nice, and mine's a dump. Anyway, on sunday this week, she doesn't have yoga class, so she's gonna stay here, and like I eluded to in the last post, I kinda have a surprise for her. It's gonna be nice, and I'm really looking forward to having her stay with me for the night.

O-hisashiburi!

Well, it's been about a week since I've put up a post, and for all of the people who have been waiting for this, here ya go. (shout out to Jesus, cuz I think he's the only one who ever reads this anyway)
The first thing I wanted to talk about is the TV show Lost. So, I've been watching this over the past 2 days, and let me tell you, I've watched almost the entire 1st season in 2 days. It's pretty cool. I like the set-up, they tell the stories of all of the survirors of a plane crash at different times in a real interesting way. The one thing that I can't get over is (and if you want to see this show, don't read the next line) the polar bears. If you don't know what I'm talking about, watch the show. It's pretty cool, and the best character is Hurley, he's funny, and he adds a needed dimension to the show. I never was interested in the show back home, couldn't care less, but being here, and needing something to watch, I took a gamble on it, and it paid off, it's good stuff.
Aki Aji! means fall flavor, and it's exactly that. Every year here, they put out seasonal beers, fall, winter, spring and summer. Seems that all of the major beer makers do this, and it's cool I guess, it makes it interesting at least. But the one that Kirin has come out with is really good. I like it a bunch. Dude? does too, but Hunbun thinks it's a bit dark. Oh well, I like it and over the past couple weeks I've bought roughly a ton of it. So much, in fact, the Lawson down the street from me is currently sold out of it. oops, my bad people.

Last week, on wednesday, I went to a place called "Ringer Hut." I thought it might be some kind of rip off of Pizza Hut or something, but it was far from it. The board on the outside claims that it is "Nagasaki Chanpon." I was a little skeptical at first because the only pictured food was some fried rice. It looked good, but I just couldn't tell what else they were going to have available, but people kept on rolling in and so I took a shot. It was real good, this is what I got:

It was chanpon, and gyoza, all for less than 700 yen. The chanpon was packed full of goodness; carrots, squid, shrimp, cabbage, soy beans, corn, kim chee, and pork. And best of all it came with 4 gyoza which were really good.

Anyway, that's it, that's all I've got for now, there's a couple things I'll go into this weekend, but I can't just yet as it's a surprise, and there's a possibility that hunbun could actually read this :)

rain, rain, go away!

So, this week, because of a shift swap that I had done, I only had one day off. Today was it. And guess what? It's raining again. I think everyday I have off, it rains. Roughly everyday at least. But anyway, I braved the elements and headed into the downtown area of Oomori to check out a couple of places. The first place, which I checked out on my way home last night(after it was closed), was Oomori Bell Port. It's mostly an office building, but it has a bunch of restaurants inside also. It seems that they might also put on concerts there too, I'm not too sure about that, but there was an area that looked like it could be some kind of performance area. As far as the shops and restaurants went, it was a bit of a letdown, not too much going on really, but the architecture was really cool, see
:

So, I just walked around there for a bit, and then I made my way across the street to the Ito Yokado. (notice the large "7&i" logo on the top of the building. 7-11 and Ito Yokado have merged here) I've heard alot about this place, I've been to a few of them before around other stations, but this was the first time to see the one in my hometown here, I just could never find it before. Well, I was impressed. It's really just you're typical department/grocery store, like Fred Meyer's, or something like that, but what seperated it from other Ito Yokodo's I've been to in Japan is that this place was really spacious. It's set up on 3 floors, but you've got room to walk around, and not run into people. While I was there, I stopped by the food court, and came across something I've never seen before, a "Colonel's." "What is that?" you ask? Well, apparently it's not a KFC. But it sure seems like it. They seemed to have maybe some more wraps and sandwich deallys than maybe you're normal KFC, but not really. The one real difference I noticed was that the fries were different. Instead of the wedge style you find at KFC, they had the criss-cross style at Colonel's. I had a chicken sandwich and it was good, but I really couldn't figure out why it was not a KFC really.... kinda curious....

they say it's your birthday, happy birthday to you!

So, tonight was hunbun's b-day, happy b-day hunbun! I had to work late, so tonight, we just had time to go to dinner. We went to a place in Oomori, and, surprise! it wasn't AnAn! I know, I know, "wow" right? Yeah, we decided to try something new. We went to this place that has a pepper for a logo, and living up to the expectations, it was a cornicopia of spicy food. We went with a course menu, and we had some Kimchee cheese thing, nabe (a kind of pot boiled misc. food thing), tofu salad, and a couple of other things. One of those things was some Habenero fried chicken. My god! The hotestest thing I've eaten in my life! I love spicy food. I eat it all the time, and usually don't bat an eye. I've lived through, what I call, the "Indian Death Curry," and the hotest hot wings most places can throw at me. Tonight was different. My god, it was intense. I took one bite, and waited.... It was all good to begin with, but then... it started to come, and it didn't stop, it was intense, I mean really intense. I warned hunbun not to try it, but she did. Big mistake. When they bring the stuff to the table, they give you plastic gloves because your eyes will begin to water, and after touching the chicken, the last thing you should do is touch anywhere around your eye. Hunbun, made this mistake, and experienced some pain. Anyway, the food at the restaurant was really good. I was very impressed, but I'm not going to mess with that chicken again. So, tomorrow, I'm working, but after work I'm meeting up with hunbun, and we are going to hang out this weekend, and do some shopping for her b-day presents. New glasses and a new cell phone. I gave her a couple of things tonight. I gave her some salt&vinegar chips, and a drink maker thing too. I also gave her some cheese cake. She liked it. Good day, I hope it was a good b-day for her too.
Later y'all!

Tribute!

Happy Birthday Hunbun! So, hunbun was born in the year MCMLXXIV. Things were good that year, not because of what happened outside of a hospital located in Omachi, in Nagano prefecture, but what happened inside that hospital. That was the day that the world was introduced to a beautiful little girl. Anyway, I'll save the mushy parts for our face to face meeting later tonight, but I just wanted to let everyone know what else happend the same year that she was born.


MCMLXXIV, what a big year!

Here's some things that happened in that same year:

Richard Nixon resigns.
The number of copies of Pong (or commercial clones of Pong) exceeds 100,000 units.
The Sears Tower in Chicago (the tallest building in the U.S.) opens.
Top 2 grossing films in North America were "the sting," and "the exorcist".
Hank Aaron hit HR #715.
Oakland A's won the World Series over the L.A. Dodgers.
Boston Celtics win the NBA champrionship over the Milwaukee Bucks.
The "rumble in the jungle" happens in Zaire, Africa where Muhammad Ali regains the World Heavyweight Title from George Froman.
Miami Dolphins win Super Bowl VIII over the Minnesota Vikings.

Things that also happened on August 25th, but in different years:

1609: Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
1718: New Orleans, Louisiana is founded.
1825: Uraguay declares its independence from Brazil.
1830: Belgium revolts from the Netherlands.
1916: the U.S. National Parks service is created.
1944: Paris is liberated by the allies in WWII
2002: ESPN's signature show SportsCenter has their 25,000 episode.

Other famous people with the same B-day:

1919: George Wallace
1931: Regis Philbin
1946: Rollie Fingers
1954: Elvis Costello
1958: Tim Burton
1972: Marvin Harrison

So, yeah, that's some stuff with some similarities. Really I wanna say, Happy B-Day hunbun! I'll see you tonight for dinner, and I'll see you more this weekend, you're the greatest!

The internet rules!

So, I'm thinking that maybe people know this already, but, damn, the internet rules! I have just come to realize this over the past few days. For those who don't know, I am a huge football fan. Over the past few days, I have been able to watch about 6 different preseason football games that without the help of the internet, I would never pbe able to watch any other way beign here. Man it's great! Ive been able to watch both of the seahawks preseason games! The first game, was well, pretty "sloppy" as Holmgren put it. Pretty poor outing. The second game was pretty good, I mean, Indy's first team was fairing pretty well, but we held tough, and then the rest of the game we pretty much dominated. It was good stuff. Another game I watched was the Arizona vs. Pittsburgh game. For some reason I was only able to watch the first half of this one, but what I learned is that Arizona looks pretty scarry. Same division as the Hawks... looked really good. Anyway, along with football I've been watching a couple of my favorite shows, Numb3rs, and Avatar. Other than that, I've been checking out a couple of shows I've never seen before, like Prison Break. And some old favorites like CSI, Without a Trace, Aqua Teen, and Cold Case. Yeah the internet basically rules! The last thing I want to talk about is the VLC media player. First of all, it plays almost anything, but the best feature is that you can play videos as a wallpaper. If you look close at the picture you will see all my desktop icons over the video image. It's great! Also, while I've been watching Prison Break on full screen in the background, I've been writing this blog. Way to go internet!!!!

Bikun and boy

So after work on Saturday,I stopped by this tiny O-bon festival here in Oomori. O-bon is a japanese holiday that goes for 3 days kinda. It's hard to really describe because some places don't really celebrate it, at least here in the big city, but then some places have it in July, and some have it in August, go figure. Anyway, it was really small, but afterwards Bikun and I went for a ride to the Tama River. It's the river that seperates Tokyo-to from Kanagawa-ken. ("to" means municipality, and "ken" means prefecture) From my place it's about a 35-40 min ride, and it's not too bad, it's pretty much all flat ground, and it was a really nice ride. I headed out there because I had reports from my students that there might be fireworks along the river that evening, but either I was too late for them, or they were at a different location, either way, I wasn't too dissapointed, I really just went for the ride. I ended up at this park that is right next to the river and has many baseball fields and stuff, and there were several groups of young kids, lighting fireworks and stuff, around. I couldn't really go right down next to the river because along the banks of ther river is where all the homeless people have their.... well... houses. They build these little huts and stuff, and they can pack em up and move them and stuff, it's really quiet amazing ingenuity. Anyway, since it was really dark, and I couldn't tell if there was an opening for me to actually go down to the river's edge, I just hung out on the path behind the homeless' houses and drank a beer and enjoyed the evening. It was cool, but some freaky huge bugs!

weirdness....

So on saturday I was working in Hiroo for the day. It was ok, i guess. Anyway, for lunch I decided to go and check out "Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs." It was ok, a bit overpriced. But the strangest thing happend, I walked in and a foriegn guy was working the register, he said "irashaimase" (welcome) and before I realized what was going on, I just started speaking to him in Japanese. I asked him if the chili dog had onions on it, and unfortunately it did, so I ordered a cheese dog set. Well, I'm pretty sure that this guy probably spoke English on-par with myself, but I made my order, I paid, and all that good stuff that happens at restaurants all in Japanese, and he responded the same. It was very strange, I think it's the first time that has ever happened here. Usually Japanese employees at highly foriegner visited establisments will naturally assume that I don't speak Japanese and just try and speak English to me. Anyway, it was weird....

Inspiration strikes!

So, inspired in part by my witness to the coolest parking job ever, I bought a bike! WahoooOOoo! It's rad, it's name is "bikun." Which is a combination of a japanese pronunciation for bike (baiku) and the name ending (showing familiarity) for dudes (kun). So Here he is:

It's really nice having a bike now, and it's cut my trip to the station by a third! great stuff.

On wednesday, hunbun and I went to see pirates of the carribean 2, and it was pretty cool, kinda corny, but I enjoyed it enough. The theater was really nice, and we had a good time, we went to a Thai restaurant before hand and it wasn't too bad. It was only the 2nd time I've been to the movies here in Japan (the first was about 6 years ago) because it is pretty expensive, about $13 a pop! But it was cool, first movie I've seen in a theater in probably a year in any country. I'd say the special effects were better than the first, the story was worse, and of course it is deffinetly a set-up for the 3rd installment. I'm now looking forward to that, and I think it comes out in march or something crazy like that. I thought Johnny Depp was really good in it, and everyone else was pretty good, but aside from the ship of crazy cursed people again, the only new characters in the movie (a bad english guy, and a voodoo lady) were both pretty weak I thought, oh well!

While we were waiting for the movie to start, hunbun and I went looking at some glasses, because I hate the ones she has now, and I told her I'd buy her some new ones for her b-day. We found a couple of cool ones, and I really liked this one, I think they are really adorable.

the coolest parking job ever!

So today on my way to work I saw, what I must say is, the coolest job of parking a bike I've seen in my life! It was amazing, I almost wanted to stick around to see who was the baddass who did this. But I didn't.

Very close to where this picture was taken I took another picture! Ignoring the grammer and spelling troubles they seem to have, the dish itself just doesn't sound so good....