I`ve done it!

I just googled myself, well, "No Airplay" at least. When I google myself I don`t come up with anything that I would be proud of... I did it, I hit #1! I don`t know how I did it, I guess it`s probably thanks to me. God knows no one else reads this, so following my own links has brought me fame beyond my wildest dreams! #1 on the google rankings! Don`t know if there is anything else for me to accomplish.. maybe this is where it should all end? I guess, might as well just keep plugging along until I reach the coveted Wikipedia page. That spawns the question of which is actually more a nod to "you`ve made it!"? What do you think? #1 result in Google, or your own Wikipedia page? What an age we live in! What a joke of an age that allows my blog to be the #1 result of any search in a world with a population of nearly 7 billion people. In other news, it`s 9 days until mornin and I head off to the great north for a few days of relaxing, drinking beer, eating good food, sightseeing and a wedding party. Also, it is Melting Faces` birthday! Rock! Happy b-day brotha! Cabana Boi! Anyone feeling the Ricky Ricardo vibe? Is that just me?

an April/May punch to the face of info!

I'm back! i know i haven't been gone, i mean i put up a bunch of pics of sorts and shouted out about America's racism, but it's time to get down to what's gone down for me since the incident last month.
after getting out of the hospital i had some sweet meatloaf for the 1st time in ages!and then a crazy window washer outside my classroom:a picture from that bad ass curry shop in hatanodai (旗の台) i mentioned in 'the happening...' post:stuff is taaaaaste! mornin's insisted on going there like 3 times since we stumbled upon it the 1st time. it's cool, it's scrumpin good(soon)! i mentioned in that same post that I'd be going to my 1st baseball game of the season. i did. and I've been to 3 others since. I've had a rough year. 4 games, 4 L's... the only saving grace was the Frontale game mornin, meltin and i rocked during golden week, 4-1 beat down! back to the 1st game. mornin, melvis, his lady (we'll call her K2) and i headed to Y-town for a baystars x tigers throw down. didn't turn out for the good guys (sorry deuce!) all because of our starting pitcher, Fukuhara (福原), going too long. F'n new manager, Mayumi (真弓), has made a bunch of bad calls so far this season. It was pretty cool because somebody wrote "しね" on the Giant's mascot! Ha!Ha!
Don't forget to get yourself some Tigers P.C.P.2nd game i went to was for round-face's wedding party. it was good times, first time I've sat home side at jingu (神宮) in about 3 years, and 1st time I've ever rocked my Aoki (青木) jersey. another loss at the hands of B-stars... I'm for sure a much bigger B-stars fan, but since it was round-face's day, it was still a let down (again, sorry deuce!). i did hear some great news that day that I'm not sure if it's cool to post here now, but good news! congrats round-face! get your katsup here!
onto golden week... i had 9 days off, and the 1st was spent watching Frontale whoop Kyoto with a massive 2nd half performance! I expected more from a team that's all about the "Hardcore Naked!"my boys! (they had a big 3-2 comeback 2 days ago over 1st place, and hated rivals, the Urawa Reds, in Urawa! their 1st home loss of the year! Forza Kawasaki!)　before the season opener melvis, mornin and i had our pic taken for a game day program but we couldn't go to the game that it was for because it was a Wednesday. luckily, mornin found a back issue at the 2nd game and POW! there we were:Too bad the reporter messed up and said that we were from Kawasaki city, Ota-ward (川崎市大田区)... It's actually Tokyo (東京). Which we told her.
tight! right? for the next couple days mornin and i just hung out, watched some TV and that was about it, it was good times.
next, i found some Jesus Body, just read it, and be amused:melvis and i tried a mini-T.O.C. with dude? and melvis failed! next time bro! mornin and i next headed out for a game up in Saitama (埼玉), her 1st trip to the stadium since it had a dome put on it. i wanted to get one of the new Lions jersey and it is sweet! but we were there to cheer on our Golden Eagles!Stupid lady in the bottom walked to much, otherwise the pan-o-rama woulda been a bit better... another loss... next couple days dude? and i rocked another mini-T.O.C. and mornin and i just chilled some more. to wind up golden week, mornin and i went over to Jingu for a Tigers x Swallows game in a (at times) driving rain. another loss... so to quantify my record on the year is 1-1-4... my next scheduled game isn't until June 3rd up in Sapporo, our fightin Hiroshima Carp taking on the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters. hope i can get another win on the board!
most recent action was Mr. infidel's going away party. he's heading back to the U.S. to hit up law school, go on boy! the party was intense, some dancing, some capoeira, and a ton of drinking! as far as i can remember, my final count was: 3 tall boys of beer, 2 tall boy chu-his, 3 cups of beer, 2 cups of something called 'reggae punch', 3 cups of vodka and some juice and a shot of tequila... it was a wicked night. gonna miss Mr. infidel, but i know in a few years i'll have a lawyer who'll hopefully hook me up pro bono! bu-ya!

let the games begin!

oh baby! it'd been a looooong winter, and with Saturday, that all came to an end, the flowers came out, the birds sang, the bees buzzed and it was good. although fall and winter belong to football, in japan football is unwatchable. all winter i was a caged animal. I'd been yearning to get out to the ballpark to enjoy some cheer, and beer and some sports action. Kawasaki Frontale X Kashiwa Reysol got me out. mornin and i headed out around noon, we stopped off at a grocery store called Otento to get some food and beer. i picked up a sweet chicken cutlet sandwich (チキンかつサンド) and some fried chicken (から揚げ), both of which were very tasty. we got to the stadium at about 12:30 and settled down in a little park across the street at a picnic table to eat and wait for melvis. melting faces came around at about 1:15. 1:50 rolled around and we headed back over to the stadium to get in and get some seats. surprisingly, they had opened the gates before the scheduled 2pm time and so we got a bit hosed with our seats. we ended up sitting on the corner, pretty decent, but far from the supporter's section, and thus, a bit quiet for my taste. oh well. we had 2 hours to kill so there was a lot of drinking done. i made it through a 6-pack before kickoff. also, when we walked in, we received a wine glass featuring the 'comedy' duo ......... and inside the box both mornin and i won a chance at a prize. we headed out of the stadium and around the corner to test our luck with the raffle. nada. we both got a cheap bag. it's a kinda cool design, but i wanted a free jersey...
kickoff! buya! the game was a bit slow, we didn't set ourselves up for as many chances as usual and it was pretty obvious that some opening game jitters and rust was effecting our play. Reysol put a sloppy goal in early in the 2nd half and later, my boy, Chong Tese put in an equalizer and that was it for the scoring. a 1-1 draw to start the season. damn. well, it's a long season, but i hope we can get 3 points out of the next game. there was an adorable little girl sitting in front of us, she provided a lot of entertainment for us when the game got slow.
after the game we all were heading back but i had some trouble with my front tire. no air. i pumped it up once but it went flat again. i tried and tried to get air in, but it just came pouring out again and again. i gave up and just rode home on a flat tire. i was exhausted. there is a pretty decent amount of hillage between my place and the river and on a flat tire, it is not fun.after getting home, it was time to watch the WBC match up of Japan and Korea. it was a slaughter. the game was called in (i think) the 7th inning because Japan was up by more than 10. amazing, considering in the 2006 WBC Japan lost to Korea twice, and more recently, lost to them in the Olympics. mornin and i headed out around the 5th inning to get dinner, some tasty okonomiyaki at 浜しん.
Sunday was a good ol', mostly lazy day. the morning (afternoon) was spent doing a little neighborhood shopping with a lunch at the high noon cafe in 御嶽山 (ontakesan) where we grubbed on some tasty sandwich action. after lunch, it was back home for call of duty, American idol, Korea vs. China (another blowout), tasty ravioli dinner and finally some amazing race! a full, and exciting day!

splat!

my knee still hurts, i got sick again, and i don't know if fable 2 has an ending... on the bright side i've almost recovered from my cold! and next saturday i'll be at the frontale game with mornin and melvis! i'm psyched! this time of year is pretty boring. football ended and soccer and baseball haven't started yet. we've got hockey and basketball, but without the sonics i don't care too much about either of those until the playoffs. college b-ball until march madness. selection sunday is in 2 weeks! and the dawgs clinched at least a share of the pack 10 championship! i have been watching Japan's warm-up games for the WBC, but they are pretty boring. the real thing will be more interesting but nothing compares to actually being out at the stadium, watching a game with a smuggled beer or 7. other than that, life's been pretty average. just lots of working. i need a vacation i think...
Good news! There's gonna be a sequel for Red Dead Revolver coming out this year (Fall) called "Red Dead Redemption." I'm looking forward to that. The first one was pretty good, pretty original idea at the time and pretty decent game play. I hope the sequel ends up being just as good.

superbowl sunday-monday

The super　bowl has come and gone, almost a week ago now, and i thought it was time to getting around to what happened.
my super bowl started around 7:00 Sunday evening, i started drinking. i didn't stop drinking until about 15 hours later. around 10 that evening melvis showed up and we went to an an with mornin. about an hour later, mr. infidel came around, already blitzed, and after finishing dinner we headed back to the pad, played some games (winning 11 demo, bomberman, ncaa, nhl 2K9, let's tap etc.) drank a bunch more and waited for kickoff. although the plan was origionaly to stay up all night, i was the only one who actually did, i knew i wouldn't wake up if i took a "nap." i did get the chance to take a couple candid pics and to see a nice sunrise.











shortly before kickoff, i woke everyone up and the boys all went to McD's for breakfast then we headed back for the game.The game itself was pretty good. 3 quarters of it were somewhat uneventful, save for Harrison's int return at the end of the 1st half, but the 4th quarter was very exciting. i almost nailed the score (1 point away) but i chose the wrong winner (actually i thought pittsburgh would win, just was pulling for the cards). there were some questionable calls in the game, but the most astounding one had to be not reviewing the final cardinals play. even if it remained a fumble, you gotta go under the hood on that one... Probably the worst part of the super bowl was the horrible, horrible color commentary by Sterling Sharpe (I think that's who it was). What a tool. I venture to say, he was on par with John Madden.
>next i took a good, long nap! after getting up, mornin and i went over to akihabara so i could pick up winning 11 09 (pro evolution soccer 2009) and skate 2. both games are awesome! i highly recommend them. mornin and i created a team and have been playing 3-4 league matches a night since we got it. it was a rough start, but our last streach has been good, 4-1-0. currently in 4th place baby! dude? and i have been playing skate 2 quite a bit too, Thursday night i went to bed at 4am. there you go.
Addition:
This year (since I came back from Seattle) mornin and I had been tracking the NFL standings using a kind of board and helmets that I got while I was home.One by one, teams that didn't make the playoffs, or got taken out in the playoffs were doomed to spend the off-season in "the closet!" You don't want to go in the closet, you shan't return... until about August. The only helmet that gets to stay out all year is the Steelers', and it gets to ride on the head of Buddha.

Merry

It's Christmas day here in Japan and it was a good day. I took a looong nap and then mornin and I went over to Kamata for diner. We went to a rad Korean place that I'll review later but here's a pic of the Chijimi (チヂミ) we hadIt was really tasty, and I think it might have been the first time I've ever been to a Korean restaurant. It was really good! But... today also marked the end of the first half of vacation. Crap. 5 days gone. Gotta work the next 2, then I get 7 more days off! But the first 5 days were up and down.
Up, good fun on Monday with mornin, melvis, and mr. infidel.
Down, Tuesday on. The itis had me messed up and sleepy most of the time, but not too bad after Wednesday afternoonish. Up, check out my Christmas present from mornin! Isn't it the greatest!? And of course, she is too! :)
(the movie pictured is Kundun, a really good movie about the Dalai Llama)

Another up moment is that I heard today that my friend Tigger (Tora) is engaged! Congrats Tigger!

Work ashita... crap.

I gots the 'itis'

and by itis, I don't mean the standard definition, I mean I think I have tonsillitis. Crap. Yesterday melvis came over and originally we intended to go to 526 for some ramen but they were closed for some reason so we went over to Marukin soba-ya. I had an awesome sukiyaki-don (すきやき丼) but I didn't take my camera with me so I'll wait until I get it again to do a review on scrumped. After dinner we played a bunch of games of both NCAA 09 and Fight Night Round 3 and I dominated almost every game. We also drank a ton! Melvis and I went through a 6 pack of tall boys, before mr. infidel came over, along with maybe 3-4 redhooks. And then the real drinking began. We were playing with drinking rules for most of the night, but after awhile we changed up the rules and made TDs be punished by a shot of awamori, and when we ran out of that, I went to the store and got a bottle of potato shochu. druuuunnnnk. But I woke up this morning surprising not hung over, well maybe a little, but not bad. But my throat was really swollen and it was hard to swallow. And it's been that way pretty much all day, so i've just been laying on the couch sleeping on and off all day while mornin's been taking care of me, she's so sweet :) I've got a hangnail too.

L.W.O.D. '08 pt. 2: Days 4-6

Day 4 (TUE):
Rain again... luckily today's game was never in doubt because it was in a dome. F'n domes. Oh well. We headed over to Suidobashi station and walked over to Tokyo Dome City and met up with meltin faces again. meltin faces was able to win a big ass stitch doll after he sunk a basketball in some game. Congrats! We got some beers and headed over to the Tokyo Dome to check out the team store and the Hall of Fame. this was my third time to visit the Hall and it's a pretty cool place, lots of interesting historical stuff and modern things as well. The one disappointing thing was that one of the coolest exhibitions, the all-star game exhibition, was swapped with a Japanese national team exhibition. I'd guess because of the Olympics. It was pretty lame. The game was pretty bad too, Baystars suffered a pretty healthy beat-down. The Tokyo Dome is terrible. The seats are tiny, and the aisles are narrow. It just sucks! With the T-dome visit, dude? has passed me for total number of baseball stadiums visited in Japan, but I'll tie him back up in 2 weeks when I visit Sendai! Boooya!


Day 5 (WED):
Day 5 was very leisurely. dude? and I spent the day going around on the Yamanote, but without a challenge. I think both of us were a bit beat down by the weather and days 1-4. We decided to just go over to 恵比寿(Ebisu) and check out good day books, THE place to get used English books here in Tokyo. I picked up 3 books, Hurricane, Under the Banner of Heaven, and Motorcycle Diaries and dude? got one book too. Can't remember the title, but it was all about speeches. Afterwards we headed over to 秋葉原(Akihabara) to see if there were any good games out there for us, but didn't find anything decent. While in the area we thought it would be a good chance to check out a beer bar over in 両国(Ryogoku) called popeye. The place was sweeeeeet! It had real beer! No cans! The beers that we tried, maybe 5 in all, were all excellent, especially the 1st one. dude? was thinking of posting about it over on his site, ninety9bottles, but hasn't yet, so look forward to that. He's got more info about it than I do. I'll probably get around to putting a post on scrumped sometime, but I might need to do some more research. Too bad it's so far away... After popeye we came back home and went out for some italian over at the next station, and that place will be up on scrumped real soon.
Day 6 (THUR):
Final day of the L.W.O.D. and even more relaxed than the previous day. Got up, rocked some NCAA, and rode bikes over to 自由が丘(Jiyugaoka) and had some Wendy's. We headed back to my place in a light rain and dude? packed up and we headed over to 品川(Shinagawa) so he could jump on the Shinkansen and head back to 大阪(Osaka). All the trains were late because of the bad weather, but he got a ticket and was off. Thanks for coming dude?! After our goodbyes I headed back to my place, met mornin and we biked over to the stadium to catch a Frontale game. It was, at times, an intense downpour but the majority of the game was dry. Best part is that we crushed Niigata 4-1! boooya!

L.W.O.D. '08 was definitely not what I had had in mind, but for sure a good time. I think if the weather had been better, and we had been feeling better, things would have turned out a bit different. It was good, very relaxing, very vacation like. Good to see dude? again. Glad that meltin faces and mornin could participate in this year's L.W.O.D.

L.W.O.D. '08 pt. 1: Days 1-3

So here it is, the post.
L.W.O.D. '08 had all the makings of epicness that you've come to expect from me, however it ended up being much more... some word that doesn't mean 'epicness.' It wasn't bad at all, I had a really good time, just much more laid back than I was expecting. I think butt? and dude? were pretty wiped out generally after day 2. Find out more!

Day 1 (Sat):
I got off work and headed over to Gotanda to meet up with dude? who had been working his ways on express trains throughout the day from Osaka. I can't remember how long it took, maybe he'll comment about that later, but it was a looooong ride that's for sure, お疲れ様！ We headed back on the train to my place, met Meltin faces, and mornin and got ready to go over to Ramen 526. You can see the Scrumped review here. This turned out to be a really bad idea. It was really tasty (as always) but it was just so unbelievably filling that for the first half of the Conbini challenge pretty much all we could muster as far as commentary was 'uhhhhhh.' It was pretty bad. But the conbini challenge ended up being a winner. After a break in the middle at a Lawson that didn't sell beer! We all made a bathroom trip and felt back on the right path and we eventually made it back to my place for a bunch more drinks and some rocktacular Karaoke action! mornin played cameraman and got some really good pics from the challenge, the two best were for sure this little series: you had to be there to get the full effect, but me turning my head ruined dude?'s attempt to pull my 'tongue in the ear' photo trick.
There are a ton of good pictures from this night, and I might put another post about it, or put them up on flickr some time, wait for it...
here's an amazing shot from karaoke:
Day 2 (SUN):
Got up at a pretty decent hour and prepared to head out over to Jingu Stadium for the first of a 3-day baseball extravaganza! I woke up feeling a little hung over and with a completely trashed voice, but I downed a bunch of water hoping to feel a bit better before we headed out... it didn't work. I started to feel really sick while we sat around and played some NCAA so I made a trip to call the dinosaurs and suddenly felt a ton better! So we headed out and hoped for the best but got the worst. We got in and got our seats and went around to some of the shops at the stadium waiting for it to start, praying that the rain would subside. It got worse and worse and right about first pitch time, there was an announcement made that the game was being canceled. What a crushing defeat. We had been looking forward to all the games on the schedule, but none more than the first one, at the best stadium on the tour, and the only game featuring the Hanshin Tigers. It was a sad day, and we just headed back, played NCAA and did an auction draft for a fantasy football league... disappointing...

Day 3 (MON):
Got up, played some more NCAA then headed down to Yokohama stadium for game 2. More rain and dude? hadn't been feeling so good but we were just hoping that game would be played as scheduled. Luckily it was! We got in our seats but found that although they we good (1st row) it was a pain in the ass because vendors constantly walked directly in front of us so we headed further up in the stands and were asked to move a bit closer because the seats we were in hadn't actually been sold. The security guy was nice enough about it and just told us to move down a few rows. There were many, many seats to choose from. When the game started there couldn't have been more than 2000 people there and although more people came later in the game, after the rains had calmed down a bit, it couldn't have been the more than 8000 people that the newspaper said it was the next day. I'd guess 4500 or so. Carp came away with a 3-2 victory, and it was a pretty good game to take in.

Bar ba quey! Bar ba quey!

As I mentioned on the show yesterday, I was thinking about rockin` up to the roof to take the BBQ for a test run, and thus I did! I headed up around 2:30 or so, and came back down around midnight. It was fun, It was also a pain in the ass! It took me about 3 hours to eat my first hot dog, and it was still a bit underdone... the biggest problem was the wind! It was terribly windy and continually f`d up my attempts to light the coals. Anywho, I got it going fairly well and cooked up some more dogs and played some guitar and was up there for about 4 hours before meltin faces showed up, followed shortly by mornin and much later another friend came by. The little BBQ faired well in it`s first cruise around the block and should be ready for the real BBQ on Saturday or Sunday