Day 22: D-day...

So, here it is. November 5th, 2007, the day that at the meeting was stated as being D-day. This is the day that we should all find out whether or not my company will be able to continue, or if it will declare bankruptcy. It's still only 2:00 am, so I don't expect any news for awhile yet, and really not at all, but we'll see. I'm a bit nervous.

Day 18: balls full throttle...

Well, the clock had ticked over to November now, and I've decided now is a good time to start studying for the JLPT. For those who don't know, the JLPT is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, and it goes down December 2nd. The test is once a year, so this is the one shot. For the next month I'm dedicating myself to the passing of the test and thusly I've established some rules.

Rule 1:
Japanese only.

There ya go, that's the rule. Means, no English movies, TV shows and the like. There are some exceptions however...

Exception 1:
1 hour a day, and only 1 hour, may be used to speak English.

Exception 2:
One day a week I am allowed to speak my beloved English as much as I want, and to watch it as well.

Exception 3:
If engaged in the act of teaching (ha!) then "Rule 1" does not apply. This should be only 1-2 hours a week if at all anyway.

Exception 4:
Of course, if I'm hanging out with someone who doesn't want to join me in this endeavor, then "Rule 1" again doesn't apply.

Exception 5:
Anything dealing with football, and podcasts such as PTI, and Around The Horn are OK. Also, this blog.

That's pretty much it. We'll see how it goes. Wish me luck.


Here's a look at the books I'm gonna go through this month!

Day 12: the meeting...

Again my fellow instructors and I (along with the staff from our school, and hundreds of other instructors and staff from other schools) met up in Shinjuku at our company's head office, AKA "the womb" (for the Kanto region at least) for an informative meeting about the status of the company. The one thing they forgot was the "informative" part. After a stand-up routine performed by the interim-leader (which pissed off more than a few unpaid teachers), the show began. An hour later we knew 2 things: no money, and no decision for the next 10 days. Great. Oh, I guess we did find out one more thing, no one was going to be working over that time period either (way ahead of the game!). After the "speeches(?)" there was a Q&A session, which brings about a couple questions of my own. Does it count as a Q&A session when there are no As? Is that ironic? I do know one thing, it was BULLSHIT! Anyway, that'll be the last thing about this situation at least until I see some $$$s in my bank. Just don't really like talking about it very much, and if I ever read back through these posts in the future to remember this time of my life, I don't want to read about this.

After the "meeting" we all headed over to BK, yes, that BK: BURGER KING! It's back in Japan now after a 6-7 year absence. I remember 1 or 2 of them here the first time I came to Japan, don't remember if I ever went then, but it's been a solid 2 years or so since I've been and it was a nice stroll down memory lane. Bacon Cheese Whoppers rule!

Day 3: a protest in the park...

So, my vow to put up at least a weekly post has, well, been broken. Sorry. But I'm back! Starting on October 15th 2007, I have not gone to work because I haven't been paid. Anybody who'll read this, will already know that, and that's why I haven't really wanted to write about that, but I should post about something, so, I'll post about what's been going on during my hiatus.


Day 3: a protest in the park...
So on October 17th my fellow teachers and I all met up in Yoyogi Park to protest not being paid. It was nice, drank some beer, some god awful Tequila, played some hacky-sack, and best of all, we played FOOTBALL!! We didn't have an American Football, but one of the Aussies brought and Aussie Rules Football so we ran with it, and it wasn't too bad, a little bigger around than your average football, which made gripping it to throw down field a little more difficult, but not too bad. My team ran away with the game, final score was somewhere around 70-35. Awesome! After the protest in the park, we all headed over to A.O.S.'s house for some poker action and that cost me 1000 yen. Not a great showing, but not terrible either, oh well, it was a good day.

I totally Oeshikied myself

Wow, I know what your thinking, 2 posts in 1 day, yeah, I know. Anyway, what we have here is actual happenings, last night I went down to Ikegami, a station near my house, and the namesake of the train line I ride roughly twice a day for a Oeshiki. Oeshiki is a Buddhist memorial ceremony, and this one was remarkably like a festival, tons of people, fair foods, games, floats and the like. It was wicked times, Deuce, A.O.S. and his girlfriend and I all partook in the festivities that went through the town and into the famous Ikegami Honmonji temple. It was the 2nd time I've been there, but last time was during hanami season and the rain struck, so this was the first time that I've gotten to take much of a look around the temple, and it's cool, like almost all other temples you'll see here, but with more stones than most. Not really much to go on here, but it was fun, drinking, eating, and watching people twirl there stuff in the air, good times.

from the top to the bottom, and back to the rock!

Well, well, well... ellipses... man I bet you all missed that huh? Wait, no one reads this except Deuce, shout out! Anyway after a sweet little 6 month hiatus I'm back, and way wickeder than ever, as shown in these first couple sweet ass lines of prose, frame it! No excuses, but I have a lot of catching up to do, and I think that might have been the main reason I didn't get back on the horse as soon as I probably should have, but I've decided to just go forward from here, and if you're lucky I'll go back in time and post some stuff about the crazy 6 months lost, hey maybe that'll be the title of any future past posts from here on outro. God I missed my wit. Anyway, look forward to, at least, weekly posts from here until the end of the year, I'll start with at least one new one tonight about the most recent rad thing that I was witness to. Cheers all, here's to No Airplay!

6 months lost... post #1: "Play balls!"

Here's a post I wrote way back when (maybe may?) but never put up. I'm putting it up now because if I wait to put pictures with it, it might never show up. So, pictures will come later, enjoy!


Hey hey hey! So it's that time of year again, the smell of the grass, the crack of the bat, and the drinking of the beer. It's a great thing. Over here the baseball season starts slightly before the start of the season back home, and so this year I got out to my first game on April 1st. This season started in Yokohama, at Yokohama stadium with a game between the Yokohama Baystars, and the Yomiuri Giants. The day began with a trip to a penis festival in Kawasaki (that'll be saved for another post) and ended up with a blowout. The Giants put a beating on the Baystars 10-1, with Yokohama's 1 run coming late in the game, while several of our companions were on the way home with someone who had a bit too much to drink in the scorching hot sun. Seems that baseball + beer + heat seems to spell disaster fairly regularly.

Two days later I headed deeper into Tokyo to Jinju Stadium to root on my Hanshin Tigers against the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. It was a real exciting game with spats of rain, a grandslam by Kanemoto (on his B-day), Esteban Yan's Japanese debut, and a free hamburger (given to me by a fellow Tigers supporter) all rolled into a 4-3 Tiger's win. This sweet game was the home opener for the Swallows, however it was far from a sell-out and heavily populated by Tigers fans. Roughly 2/3rds of the crowd was Tigers fans. It was great.

April 7th came around and it was off to Urawa up in Saitama to take in my first J-league game. I must say I'm not the biggest soccer fan, however I have been to a World Cup match, for the experience mostly. I am a fan of the Urawa Red Diamonds (known more commonly as the Urawa Reds), mostly because my favorite Japanese player plays for them. The stadium, Saitama Stadium 2002, which is also the Japanese National Team's stadium of choice, is a bit far from me, but it was worth the trip. Reds fans are super! hunbun and I got there close to 2 hours before kickoff, and all of the seats in the super fans section were already taken, so we ended up sitting just to the left (our left) of them. I'd say that they were just about as exciting as the game itself which ended in a 2-1 comeback victory over Jubilo Iwate. Thrilling victory really.

To wrap up the month of April, Deuce and his lady and I headed back to Yokohama Stadium, this time for a game between the Baystars, and the Chunichi Dragons who were in 1st place at the time. The game was really good, the Baystars were able to come away with a 5-4 victory, the key was that the Dragons' big bopper, Tyrone Woods, struck out 4 times, most of them with men on base. Suck it Woods! The day ended with a trip to good ol' An An, scrumptious!

R.I.P. L.W.O.D. Feb 14th 2007 - Feb 18th 2007

As mentioned in the famed "Well..." post of January 27th 2007, my best bud dude? was coming out to Tokyo to visit me for a long weekend. Here is an account of those events, entitled "the Long Weekend of Debauchery 2007."
(by the way, yes, I looked up the spelling of debauchery)

Wed Feb 14th,
The day started out typical, work. After work I headed to Shinagawa station to meet dude? and begin the L.W.D. After returning home, we started drinking and played a few games on his Xbox 360. Boring I know, but it gets better...

Thur. Feb 15th,
After waking up, not easy, we had a little lunch and prepared for the the big first real day of the L.W.D. We hit the store to get some necessities, beer. At noon we hopped on the Ikegami line headed towards Gotanda station. The plan: 1 beer for every major station on the famed Yamanote line, plus one going in and one coming out.


YukigayaOotsuka -> Gotanda -> Shibuya -> Shinjuku -> Ikebukuro -> Ueno -> Tokyo -> Shinagawa -> Gotanda -> YukigayaOotsuka

(Stations in Italics are not on the Yamanote line, meaning, YukigayaOotsuka)

If you notice the "->" spots, those all represent 1 beer drank. The rules: open a beer when you get on the train, and it must be finished before getting on the next train. We were allowed to get off of the train, but generally couldn't leave the station, except for in Shinjuku where I needed to leave to pay my rent, and in Akihabara, where dude? wanted to look for a game, and I wanted to look for a Wii. But it's ok, because in Akihabara we each drank an extra beer! So the grand total was at least 10. After that, we were pretty spent and spent the rest of the day just playing some Xbox and Xbox 360 in preparation for saturday's big festivities.

Fri. Feb 16th,
Started out the morning scouring for the Wii we didn't find the day before. We looked all over, Ikegami, Kawasaki, Jiyugaoka and Ooimachi all to no avail. So sad :( We went on to finish the day with an all-you-can drink bonanza at a favorite spot in Shibuya called Amataro. dude? and I met up with a bunch of my co-workers until the last wisps of the day. It was a good day.

Sat. Feb 17th,
This is the day everything had been leading up to. The 3rd ever Tournament of Champions. The first ever involving 2 contestants. We went back around to most of the places we hit the day before, but this time looking for a new Xbox controller because one of the ones I had had been acting up. While looking everwhere, we found none, but we did come across the prized Wii we had been looking for. By complete chance I was looking at the box when an employee at a small game/video store walked up and flipped the sign to show that they had some in stock. Immediately I walked to the counter and picked one up, along with Wii sports, a fun title I must say. Although we were thrilled to have the Wii, it was a little late in the game to include it in our T.O.C. but after we got back to my place we ran it through a few rounds before kickoff. It was rad. Because of all the searching around and Wii trying, we pushed back the original start time of 5:00 to 7:00. Here's the results:

Game
Arena Football: 67 - 70
Fight Night Rd 2: 2 - 1
Top Spin: 6 - 0
MLB 2K5: 8 - 7
NFL 2K5: 31 - 3 *
NHL 2K6: 6 - 5
NCAA March Madness: 61 - 48
NCAA 07: 7 - 64
Tiger Woods 06: ?? - ??

My score is listed first, followed by dude?'s
The Tiger Woods score has apparently been lost to history, I need to find that somewhere, and for some reason there was and asterik next to the NFL 2K5 score, I think there was some kind of controller malfunction or something during that game, I'll have to ask dude? about why that's there... So, yeah, that was the end of that, just a freakin' drinkin' good time.

Sun. Feb. 18th,
The end, just hung out, and dude? left in the early evening headed back to Osaka on the shinkansen, it was a stooper of a weekend, good times man, good times.

One good sleep...

Back by popular demand! Well, really one person said "I've checked your blog recently, and no new posts, what's up with that?" And I kinda went over that in my last post, about 2 and a half months ago. Shout out to Deuce, by the way!

So, back to the title of this post, One good sleep...
Have you ever felt like you were one good sleep away from being back on track? Maybe a couple of late nights, or some overtime have derailed your normal cycle for a few days, maybe a week? Well, I've felt that way for... I'd say about 3 and a half months or so. Just one good sleep away from being right. Everyday, all day, it's been tough sleddin' man I'll tell you that. I got it! At least I've convinced myself that I got it. I decided before going to sleep on sunday that that night's sleep would be the one, and when I woke up monday, I rolled with it, I said "that was the one, I'm right as rain now," and ya'know what, it's worked. I've been feeling pretty up this week. And here I am, actually writing a blog post for my millions of fans out there! Rock!

I've also re-realized that I really should do this, not because of any readers that might be out there, and not to hit number 1 on the google rankings or anything like that, but simply to keep a chronicle of what I do. Simple. So, here is the first post of the 2nd season of No Airplay, back with vigor, and spunk, and skeet skeet for your face!

Well...

So how is everyone? I'm good. Haven't written anything in awhile, and I think there's a good reason. Since my days off have changed to Tue. Sat. I just haven't felt much like writing anything. It was a whole lot easier when I had back-to-back days off. If I was busy the first day, I would usually put something up the next day, or I'd put something up on the first day, and know that I'd have the whole next day to do nothing. Now I feel like I almost always have too much to do, or I just don't want to do anything. Anyway, I think I'll probably not put anything much up here until I get back to having consecutive days off again.
But enough of that, I do have some good news for next month. On Feb 10th I'm gonna go to the Tool concert at Tokyo Zepp! I'm freakin' excited! Many years ago I bought tickets on-line for a show in Seattle, and they never came... not the band, the tickets :( So this will be the first time I'll be able to see them, I've always wanted to, and now is my chance baby! I went to the convenience store today and purchased them from a kiosk, and the printed it up and it's now in my possession! Rock! Also next month, around the 14th, dude is gonna come out and rock Tokyo with me for a few days. We are gonna play "tournament of champions" (see previous post) and just hang out for a few days. It's gonna be great. Anyway, that's about it for now, not much I guess, maybe if I get some time I'll talk about what I did for new year's and stuff like that, we'll see...