Back around the end of November I volunteered to take some kids to Tokyo Disneyland on a field trip for a local English school. Normally Disneyland is over crowded during the normal season weekend but this being the beginning of their annual Christmas Theme season and on a national holiday and it was packed to the gills! We still managed to have fun but I learned my lesson; no more Disneyland on a holiday/weekend. I'd still go on a weekday while people are at work but you'd be hard-pressed to get me to fight those crowds again. I'm talking a 30 minute line up for a drink, pop corn or slice of pizza type day.
Then again, the other day my co-worker told me one of her students went to Tokyo Disneyland on the weekend only to be turned away to Disneyland's less popular Tokyo Disney Sea since they were running at full capacity already. Lunacy.
Anyway, if anyone is wondering what it's like at Disneyland in Japan during the holiday's you can check out this link and look through my pictures which ironically don't have more than a few people milling about in the background. It was busy, I swear!
Happy Holiday's!
2004/12/26
2004/12/23
Comics are for kids.
Link to full panel
These comics are funny. Although the 3rd panel of the Bush strip isn't funny, I just like the idea of Bush in an Electric Boogaloo. "Curse you...you limber spawn of a goat." Hahahaha. And, I guess the writing for the third comic isn't that great either, I just really liked this guy's style and characters.
The peanut one just makes me laugh for some reason.
Not much point to this. Just wanted to share.
2004/12/22
It'su armosuto Kulistmas!
Well, I said it would be done and here it is. The Christmas tree of 2004 appointed to stand over this years gifts. Ain't she a beaut? And you can hang a coat on her too. Now how many of you can say that about your trees?
Also this is just too funny not to post here. In the spirit of Christmas, here's pictures of kids scared of Santa Claus.
Merry Christmas kids!
Click me!
Also this is just too funny not to post here. In the spirit of Christmas, here's pictures of kids scared of Santa Claus.
2004/12/19
!!!-Live! Live! Live!
!!! (chk chk chk/ boom boom boom/tock tock tock/ect.) did a show in Tokyo a while back in Ebisu's Liquidroom and turned part of it into a Japan only live release. We'll 3/5 of it is live, the 4th track is made up from a performance at the BBC and the final is a remix of "Me and Giuliani down by the school yard (A True Story)" by label mate LFO. (This song has been on the last three albums of theirs I bought, 2 of them being EP's)
Five tracks doesn't sound like much but when you're !!!, each song is a 5-10 minute dance/stomp boogy so that's like getting 5 separate parties all together.
Like I said the first three tracks are live and this is what I bought the album for. To hear familiar songs with crazy vocals and unpredictable tangents from the band; crowd banter and to hear the band in a natural freak out just like all great live records should strive to be.
The first two tracks easily accomplish this, the third is frankly boring. Sounds like they are trying to gain their strength back from the first two songs, but when you're putting out only three live tracks on a live cd I would hope they would choose the shows three best.
The BBC performance sounds like a studio release which is ok I guess if I didn't already have it on their last LP"Louden up now".
The final track remix of "..down by the school yard..." isn't all that great. It makes their style of dance music (live instruments, freak out vocals) into generic four on the floor (do people still say that?) synthesizer dance music. Maybe not as bad as a 1995 release of Jock Jams but it's still not that appealing either. (After repeated listens it went from who needs it to alright but not as good as it should be.)
Some highlights during the concert are when he addresses the crowd like so:
"What's up Japan!"
"..............................(lone guy in the back) WOOOOO!"
".....Anyway.....We're chk chk chk (and so on)"
Isn't that funny!?!?! They didn't no how to respond! HAHAHAHAH.
And in the track "Hello, is this thing on?" near the end when he goes through the songs "I'm at a club on drugs and I'm freaking out maaaan" section and he's yelling,
"Am I making any sense at all? Does anyone here speak English? Does anyone. here. speak. English! DOES ANYONE HERE SPEAK.... heuh, heua...DOES. ANYONE. HERE....everybody's actin'......everybody's. acting....everybody's actin' like I'm f*cking crazy or something....EVERYBODY'S ACTING LIKE I'M F*CKING CRAZY OR SOMETHING.... hyuh..hyhu...EVERYBODY'S..." ect. ect. ect.
Hahaha, I'm sure he had the whole crowd glancing nervously around in a cold sweat.
"Man, this guy's pissed! Someone speak some English to him." *Everyone glances away* Get it? Because he's in JAPAN! HAHAHAHA!
That would have been great to see everybody stop dancing and grow generally concerned for the guy.
It's a good listen but maybe a better name would have been Live! Live! Live! Studio! Remix!
Five tracks doesn't sound like much but when you're !!!, each song is a 5-10 minute dance/stomp boogy so that's like getting 5 separate parties all together.
Like I said the first three tracks are live and this is what I bought the album for. To hear familiar songs with crazy vocals and unpredictable tangents from the band; crowd banter and to hear the band in a natural freak out just like all great live records should strive to be.
The first two tracks easily accomplish this, the third is frankly boring. Sounds like they are trying to gain their strength back from the first two songs, but when you're putting out only three live tracks on a live cd I would hope they would choose the shows three best.
The BBC performance sounds like a studio release which is ok I guess if I didn't already have it on their last LP"Louden up now".
The final track remix of "..down by the school yard..." isn't all that great. It makes their style of dance music (live instruments, freak out vocals) into generic four on the floor (do people still say that?) synthesizer dance music. Maybe not as bad as a 1995 release of Jock Jams but it's still not that appealing either. (After repeated listens it went from who needs it to alright but not as good as it should be.)
Some highlights during the concert are when he addresses the crowd like so:
"What's up Japan!"
"..............................(lone guy in the back) WOOOOO!"
".....Anyway.....We're chk chk chk (and so on)"
Isn't that funny!?!?! They didn't no how to respond! HAHAHAHAH.
And in the track "Hello, is this thing on?" near the end when he goes through the songs "I'm at a club on drugs and I'm freaking out maaaan" section and he's yelling,
"Am I making any sense at all? Does anyone here speak English? Does anyone. here. speak. English! DOES ANYONE HERE SPEAK.... heuh, heua...DOES. ANYONE. HERE....everybody's actin'......everybody's. acting....everybody's actin' like I'm f*cking crazy or something....EVERYBODY'S ACTING LIKE I'M F*CKING CRAZY OR SOMETHING.... hyuh..hyhu...EVERYBODY'S..." ect. ect. ect.
Hahaha, I'm sure he had the whole crowd glancing nervously around in a cold sweat.
"Man, this guy's pissed! Someone speak some English to him." *Everyone glances away* Get it? Because he's in JAPAN! HAHAHAHA!
That would have been great to see everybody stop dancing and grow generally concerned for the guy.
It's a good listen but maybe a better name would have been Live! Live! Live! Studio! Remix!
2004/12/18
Hobbit-Like Human Ancestor Found in Asia
Link
Scientists have found skeletons of a hobbit-like species of human that grew no larger than a three-year-old modern child (See pictures). The tiny humans, who had skulls about the size of grapefruits, lived with pygmy elephants and Komodo dragons on a remote island in Indonesia 18,000 years ago.
Hmmm...there's a Yumiko joke in here somewhere but I'm going to be mature about this and let it go.
But anyway, this discovery is pretty crazy. Scientests believe that these "hobbits" actually interacted with "modern day humans" (homo-erectus) and were quite intellegent despite only having a brain 1/3 the mass of people today. If human cloning really gets going, we could see these little guys running our gas stations in as little as 50 years!
Scientists have found skeletons of a hobbit-like species of human that grew no larger than a three-year-old modern child (See pictures). The tiny humans, who had skulls about the size of grapefruits, lived with pygmy elephants and Komodo dragons on a remote island in Indonesia 18,000 years ago.
Hmmm...there's a Yumiko joke in here somewhere but I'm going to be mature about this and let it go.
But anyway, this discovery is pretty crazy. Scientests believe that these "hobbits" actually interacted with "modern day humans" (homo-erectus) and were quite intellegent despite only having a brain 1/3 the mass of people today. If human cloning really gets going, we could see these little guys running our gas stations in as little as 50 years!
2004/12/16
Abandon Ship!!!
Hmmm, gamesarefun.com is reporting Sony's newly released handheld is having some major problems with defective units.
Slashdot says:
"Among many to report on this issue, OneHungLo writes "GamesAreFun.com is reporting that several defective PSP units have been shipped, suffering from problems such as dead pixels, broken UMD drives, air bubbles in the screens, dust in the screens, and the analog "nubs" not working, or actually falling off. They also have a video of a UMD popping out of the PSP as it's running, due to the unit being twisted/turned. I wonder how long it will be until Sony issues an official statement about this?"
Link to actual article.
A nice movie of a game literally being lauched out during play.
Sony released a small 200,000 units this Sunday in Japan to which some 90% have already been sold. This is Sony's first attempt in the handheld arena so one might guess releasing a system that breaks before or when you touch it doesn't bode well with the consumer. Also the reported 6-10 hours of battery life seems to be a crock too as people now testing the system in real life conditions are saying about 90 minutes for graphic intensive games. (Early figures) And load times a plenty too.
All this bad news is a real bummer too since the decision to budget price the system to compete with Nintendo's DS really spiked my interest in it. When you actually hold it and feel the design and see the huge 16:9 screen sprawled over the entire face you'll be very tempted to jack the sucker who let you play and run away with it football style. Let's hope Sony fixes these sloppy mistakes and develops a battery that would actually make this handheld useful when it's not plugged into the wall.
And great original IP's would be nice too. Not interested in PS2 ports.
P.S.-How on earth did Sony get away with releasing such a shoddy, defective unit to the public? Usually if there's a mistake it's like one thing on a majority of units but this looks like everything is randomly wrong with it. Bubbles in the screen, dust under the screen, dead pixels, square buttons not lined properly with the circuitry underneath, the analog nub doesn't work or breaks off from use and some units won't boot up when you try turning them on. Oh, and games fly out of the system. Read all of that again. Who in their right mind would let this thing go to market? I wish upon them many sleepless nights of tossing and turning; but no twisting cause they might suddenly fly out of bed!
Think of those poor, poor early adopters.
Slashdot says:
"Among many to report on this issue, OneHungLo writes "GamesAreFun.com is reporting that several defective PSP units have been shipped, suffering from problems such as dead pixels, broken UMD drives, air bubbles in the screens, dust in the screens, and the analog "nubs" not working, or actually falling off. They also have a video of a UMD popping out of the PSP as it's running, due to the unit being twisted/turned. I wonder how long it will be until Sony issues an official statement about this?"
Link to actual article.
A nice movie of a game literally being lauched out during play.
Sony released a small 200,000 units this Sunday in Japan to which some 90% have already been sold. This is Sony's first attempt in the handheld arena so one might guess releasing a system that breaks before or when you touch it doesn't bode well with the consumer. Also the reported 6-10 hours of battery life seems to be a crock too as people now testing the system in real life conditions are saying about 90 minutes for graphic intensive games. (Early figures) And load times a plenty too.
All this bad news is a real bummer too since the decision to budget price the system to compete with Nintendo's DS really spiked my interest in it. When you actually hold it and feel the design and see the huge 16:9 screen sprawled over the entire face you'll be very tempted to jack the sucker who let you play and run away with it football style. Let's hope Sony fixes these sloppy mistakes and develops a battery that would actually make this handheld useful when it's not plugged into the wall.
And great original IP's would be nice too. Not interested in PS2 ports.
P.S.-How on earth did Sony get away with releasing such a shoddy, defective unit to the public? Usually if there's a mistake it's like one thing on a majority of units but this looks like everything is randomly wrong with it. Bubbles in the screen, dust under the screen, dead pixels, square buttons not lined properly with the circuitry underneath, the analog nub doesn't work or breaks off from use and some units won't boot up when you try turning them on. Oh, and games fly out of the system. Read all of that again. Who in their right mind would let this thing go to market? I wish upon them many sleepless nights of tossing and turning; but no twisting cause they might suddenly fly out of bed!
Think of those poor, poor early adopters.
2004/12/14
Strange days: The Magic Minute
Ok, so apparently Friday's have turned into some sort of Twilight Zone day.
Two Fridays ago I was driving home along the same route I've driven for the past two years only a few minutes later than normal. My travels are about 35 minutes one way, with 18 kilometers and about 23 traffic signals along my way and during this trip I did the impossible. I found the magic minute.
Now I don't know if it was a freak accident or if the signals are reset everyday at exactly the same moment only to blink for hours and hours leading up to one perfect synchronized chain of green lights, but that's exactly what happened (well except for the one light). It was like the planets orbited for 10,000 years and came upon the one exact moment where they all lined up in a perfect row and gave birth to this perfect portal shaving an easy 8-9 minutes off my travels.
If the lights are reset at sometime during the day that would leave an extremely tight and convenient passage for me to get through to go home everyday, but all I have to do now is find that perfect moment to leave work which was unfortunately found by my being late. So naturally I don't want to really stay late everyday to try and find that moment cause I'd get home at an earlier time leaving at my normal time. But just the fact that the perfect commute is really out there shatters a lot of daydreams I've had about being able to get home without actually making a full stop the whole way.
I did mention one light that I'm not really counting because it was a pedestrian light triggered by a fool who had no idea what they stopped me from doing. But if I were to continue the planet analogy I would call that light the Planet X of signals because it's there and it orbits the sun like all the other planets but it's just not part of our solar system to include in the greater group so I'm allowed to discount it. Another view could be that the person did actually know what they were doing were assigned to ruin my "portal run". That would be weird.
Two Fridays ago I was driving home along the same route I've driven for the past two years only a few minutes later than normal. My travels are about 35 minutes one way, with 18 kilometers and about 23 traffic signals along my way and during this trip I did the impossible. I found the magic minute.
Now I don't know if it was a freak accident or if the signals are reset everyday at exactly the same moment only to blink for hours and hours leading up to one perfect synchronized chain of green lights, but that's exactly what happened (well except for the one light). It was like the planets orbited for 10,000 years and came upon the one exact moment where they all lined up in a perfect row and gave birth to this perfect portal shaving an easy 8-9 minutes off my travels.
If the lights are reset at sometime during the day that would leave an extremely tight and convenient passage for me to get through to go home everyday, but all I have to do now is find that perfect moment to leave work which was unfortunately found by my being late. So naturally I don't want to really stay late everyday to try and find that moment cause I'd get home at an earlier time leaving at my normal time. But just the fact that the perfect commute is really out there shatters a lot of daydreams I've had about being able to get home without actually making a full stop the whole way.
I did mention one light that I'm not really counting because it was a pedestrian light triggered by a fool who had no idea what they stopped me from doing. But if I were to continue the planet analogy I would call that light the Planet X of signals because it's there and it orbits the sun like all the other planets but it's just not part of our solar system to include in the greater group so I'm allowed to discount it. Another view could be that the person did actually know what they were doing were assigned to ruin my "portal run". That would be weird.
2004/12/12
Yon-sama! ヨン様！愛してるよ！ 体元気ダゼェ！！！
In a brilliant attempt to attract in upwards of 4 million new readers I have decided to post an article about every old Japanese woman's #1 Korean boy-toy, Yon-sama!!!
Mr. Yonju Pe (34, Star of Korean soap opera-"Winter Sonnet"/"冬のソナタ") has been riding his wave of unimaginable fandom here in Japan for a few months now and just coming off his recent visit to Japan has become more popular than ever! As news reports, he came for a 5 day visit for promotion of himself, which is, understandably, what the rich and the sexy spend most of their time doing. (Photo: right)
Millions upon millions of old women with nothing better to do have developed a clinical obsession for this man. Casting aside decades of marriage and demanding divorce （ヨン離婚(Yon-rikon)ーYon Divorce）on account of their husbands not being able to provide the love and understanding that Yon can dish out all too easily through his hit Korean drama "Winter Sonnet" (冬のソナタ）*wink*
Yon, as dreamed a million times over
During his recent visit the crazed women were seen waiting at the airport in upwards of 24 hours just to see him off his plane, crying and shaking madly as he passed. (Some were even shown crushed as they never had the opportunity to deliver an expensive gift they felt they just had to give the star. My condolences.) Even a news helicopter got into the fun as they chased his car down the highway level with his window hoping he would flash his brilliant smile skyward. Pandemonium, no wait...YONdemonium in every sense of the word.
2004 is truly is year of Yon!
Let's see what Ms. Tanaka has to say about Yon-sama.
---YON-SAMA!!!
And there you have it.
Mr. Yonju Pe (34, Star of Korean soap opera-"Winter Sonnet"/"冬のソナタ") has been riding his wave of unimaginable fandom here in Japan for a few months now and just coming off his recent visit to Japan has become more popular than ever! As news reports, he came for a 5 day visit for promotion of himself, which is, understandably, what the rich and the sexy spend most of their time doing. (Photo: right)
Millions upon millions of old women with nothing better to do have developed a clinical obsession for this man. Casting aside decades of marriage and demanding divorce （ヨン離婚(Yon-rikon)ーYon Divorce）on account of their husbands not being able to provide the love and understanding that Yon can dish out all too easily through his hit Korean drama "Winter Sonnet" (冬のソナタ）*wink*
Yon, as dreamed a million times over
During his recent visit the crazed women were seen waiting at the airport in upwards of 24 hours just to see him off his plane, crying and shaking madly as he passed. (Some were even shown crushed as they never had the opportunity to deliver an expensive gift they felt they just had to give the star. My condolences.) Even a news helicopter got into the fun as they chased his car down the highway level with his window hoping he would flash his brilliant smile skyward. Pandemonium, no wait...YONdemonium in every sense of the word.
2004 is truly is year of Yon!
Let's see what Ms. Tanaka has to say about Yon-sama.
---YON-SAMA!!!
And there you have it.
2004/12/07
Tsunami's and auctions and settlements, oh my!
So there was an earthquake in Hokkaido last night, eh? About a 5 (out of 7) and happened right about the time I was ready for bed but as I watched the news with there bantering on and replay after replay of earthquake footage there was a special report! Tsunami!!!
That's right, a monster wave charging the northern island and expected to hit within the hour. How cool is that? So I decide to stay up since the news channel just sat there with the camera pointed at the water waiting for this huge tidal wave most likely carrying night surfers on it's bosom to slap the coast of Japan. And so I waited. And waited. waited...
Oops! Sorry folks, no tidal wave tonight! All is well, go to bed. What the hell, right? But then they said that the wave wasn't that big anyway. Only about 50 centimeters at its tallest point and only three of them at that.
For some reason I had this image of like this sky scraper wall of water building up as it raced toward Japan at unimaginable speeds because "Tsunami" and "tidal wave" are big strong sounding words. But now I figure all they are are waves caused by earthquakes under the ocean floor no matter their size. mmmm...
In other news the base player for Nirvana (the tall guy who calls himself "Krist Novoselic" apparently) auctioned himself off of eBay with the highest bid going for $7300 US. The winner will be picked up from their local airport by the bassest in his little airplane and flown to the city of his choice for a little wine and dine. Proceeds going to charity. Awww... Wait a minute....he's flying???
And woman who the Wachowski Brothers ripped off for the Matrix trilogy gets over 2.5 billion dollars in copyright infringement compensation. It seems she wrote the story back in 1981 and submitted it to the brothers (brother and sister??) which they rejected and later referred to while writing up The Matrix. Oops! Say, if she's getting cash for copyright infringement, how about the people who made "Ghost in the Shell"? Or was that movie used as a source of inspiration only? Shucks.
That's right, a monster wave charging the northern island and expected to hit within the hour. How cool is that? So I decide to stay up since the news channel just sat there with the camera pointed at the water waiting for this huge tidal wave most likely carrying night surfers on it's bosom to slap the coast of Japan. And so I waited. And waited. waited...
Oops! Sorry folks, no tidal wave tonight! All is well, go to bed. What the hell, right? But then they said that the wave wasn't that big anyway. Only about 50 centimeters at its tallest point and only three of them at that.
For some reason I had this image of like this sky scraper wall of water building up as it raced toward Japan at unimaginable speeds because "Tsunami" and "tidal wave" are big strong sounding words. But now I figure all they are are waves caused by earthquakes under the ocean floor no matter their size. mmmm...
In other news the base player for Nirvana (the tall guy who calls himself "Krist Novoselic" apparently) auctioned himself off of eBay with the highest bid going for $7300 US. The winner will be picked up from their local airport by the bassest in his little airplane and flown to the city of his choice for a little wine and dine. Proceeds going to charity. Awww... Wait a minute....he's flying???
And woman who the Wachowski Brothers ripped off for the Matrix trilogy gets over 2.5 billion dollars in copyright infringement compensation. It seems she wrote the story back in 1981 and submitted it to the brothers (brother and sister??) which they rejected and later referred to while writing up The Matrix. Oops! Say, if she's getting cash for copyright infringement, how about the people who made "Ghost in the Shell"? Or was that movie used as a source of inspiration only? Shucks.
2004/12/06
Start the parade...We're finished!
Hey look! It's another example of writing something and not putting it up for 2 weeks!
Finally after months and months of collecting addresses, history checks translations, declarations and obscure information long forgotten I'd like to proudly announce that Yumiko and I are finished with our immigration papers. They are now in the mail (again, after they were sent back because of a mix up with the post office here) and zooming over to eastern Canada to be processes and judged.
And now we wait. And wait and wait to see if we are worthy to join Canadian society as a power team.
Since the forms are constantly reminding you that any false or inaccurate information could cause your file to be unfairly processed, me and Yumiko naturally became very nervous over any question that posed even the slightest ambiguity.
Looking back now I remember some of our lowest moments. Such as the blank that asks to fill in your name in English and your native language, which sparked to, "Fill in you name in your native language??? But Kanji is from China! Should I fill it out in Hiragana? First name first or last!?! My head!" <--Yumiko
Or filling out the "Contents" section of the envelope. "How many pages are we including? There's an envelope in there! Does that count as one or do we guess how many pages are included inside to make it technically correct?!?" <--Me
Those are just off the top of my head but I'm sure given some time I could come up with some doozies. It's funny how much you question the simples things when put under a little pressure.
Well, now that that's done we can finally direct our full attention to Christmas shopping and what else?...... Ah, that's right, wedding next month. Better get those mock invitations out.
Finally after months and months of collecting addresses, history checks translations, declarations and obscure information long forgotten I'd like to proudly announce that Yumiko and I are finished with our immigration papers. They are now in the mail (again, after they were sent back because of a mix up with the post office here) and zooming over to eastern Canada to be processes and judged.
And now we wait. And wait and wait to see if we are worthy to join Canadian society as a power team.
Since the forms are constantly reminding you that any false or inaccurate information could cause your file to be unfairly processed, me and Yumiko naturally became very nervous over any question that posed even the slightest ambiguity.
Looking back now I remember some of our lowest moments. Such as the blank that asks to fill in your name in English and your native language, which sparked to, "Fill in you name in your native language??? But Kanji is from China! Should I fill it out in Hiragana? First name first or last!?! My head!" <--Yumiko
Or filling out the "Contents" section of the envelope. "How many pages are we including? There's an envelope in there! Does that count as one or do we guess how many pages are included inside to make it technically correct?!?" <--Me
Those are just off the top of my head but I'm sure given some time I could come up with some doozies. It's funny how much you question the simples things when put under a little pressure.
Well, now that that's done we can finally direct our full attention to Christmas shopping and what else?...... Ah, that's right, wedding next month. Better get those mock invitations out.
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