Oh dear, it looks like it's been a good 3 months or so since the last post... :(
If anyone is still out there, I will get around to doing a proper post soon, honest...
In the meantime, here are two videos about gyoza (gyoza being very delicious Chinese dumpling-things). I find them both almost as catchy as I find gyoza delicious. Gyo-gyo-gyo-gyoooooza!
I am hungry now :(
Oops, looks like my plan to keep a journal of my golden week activities didn't quite come to fruition. Probably because I ended up not doing anything remotely interesting, and it rained. Oh well!
I have been doing remotely interesting things since golden week though, including going to numerous parties, playing guitar at a session thingy in a town called Tsu (great name, I think) and general hanging out...so I do have a social life! Honest!!
I also went with a couple of friends to a weekend long rawk festival on the beach at Mikawa-Toba, near Toyohashi (which is kind of near Nagoya) which was a lot of fun...but it rained. Oh how it rained. In fact on Saturday it did nothing but rain, hard.
I have some photos on Facebook but I'm not sure how to show them to regular internet folk without e-mailing them individually and I'm too lazy to work it out. Can someone tell me?
I got to hang out with rock stars last Friday when some members of US band The Graves Brothers Deluxe came to Nagoya to play a show with two Japanese guitarists and I somehow ended up drinking with them until early the next morning. Get me and my showbiz connections. On the right we see the impressive coiffure of Kawabata-san from Japanese band Acid Mothers Temple. And someone called Yoko, who fell asleep and who I didn't get much of a chance to speak to. Sorry Yoko.
On sunday I am thinking of going to Tokyo for the day. A friend of mine told me about this rather delightful museum. I'm definitely getting t-shirts!!
I see from their access page that there's a restaurant right across the road...I'll bet they do a brisk trade!
I've been enjoying a belated easter thanks to my lovely sister Nicola, who sent me lots of chocolate. Thanks Nic!
She also graciously enclosed a card, the envelope of which I have scanned for posterity's sake and posted left. It may look like a Beat Happening album cover drawn by a borderline psychotic but it is in fact my sister's hand-rendering of my immediate family. Either way I'm very touched and I'm sure she'll be honored to know that it will now live on in digital form. Thanks again Nic, and I particularly like Dad's Simon Cowell-style trouser action.
Today was the first day of Golden Week, i.e. three public hoildays, i.e. I'm off work until next Thursday. I spent it by sleeping until roughly midday, then going out and about, first to a Golden Week record fair in Kanayama. I went to the same thing last year so if you can be arsed looking up my posts from last May I probably wrote something about it then. If you're interested in record fairs in Kanayama, that is. Which you're not.
After several hours of "digging" I went to a second-hand bicycle shop and after several hours banter/rambling with the lovely proprieter got a new (old) bike. It beats the creaky-momochari-with-flat-tire-that-I'm-too-lazy-to-get-repaired that I've had until now hands down (it has gears! gears!) so tomorrow I think I'd quite like to go a-cycling somewhere. I just don't really know where yet. Or what kind of time I'll be able to drag my sorry carcass out of bed. Still, watch this space.
In fact (and NOT because I have nothing better to do...honest) I'm quite tempted to give you all a day-by-day account of my Golden Week goings-on. So stay tuned and I'll see you again tomorrow!!!!!!
My dad is holding a sponsored "moonlight stroll" through the streets of Oxford in memory of my mum and in order to raise funds for her hospice (which is run as a charity). Should anyone be so lovely as to want to sponsor him (it's a very worthy cause!), go here:
http://www.justgiving.com/rayfarmer
Go on, I'll give a you hug if you do. (geographical location permitting)
Thanks for your comments! (((hugs)))
I went to a spring festival in Kakuozan (a part of Nagoya) on Sunday. Lots of stalls featuring homemade arts and crafts and such, and one featuring the frankly baffling Orepanda (オレパンダー, see left). Those ears are stuck to his head with suction cups, which I found oddly impressive. His website (Japanese) lists such details as his "special moves" ("Panda-blade", "Orepanda-vacuum" etc). Once again I shall leave you, the humble reader, to draw your own conclusions. Thx to Eiko for letting me steal her picture.
A nice man came round from NHK (Japan's main broadcasting company) the other weekend to explain that I have to pay them a small amount each month for the priviledge of having a TV (I finally got round to buying one last December), not unlike the TV Licensing system in the UK (but NHK have commercials! What am I paying for???). So I thought I'd better actually make use of the thing, and subsequently I've been watching more TV. However, for some reason I often wind up watching home shopping (Japan has QVC as it turns out)...there's just something incredibly relaxing about it, and since everyone speaks quite deliberately and there's no background noise the presenters are often easy to understand (and kinda cute as it happens).
Also, I've been watching an inexplicably large amount of UK comedy panel shows (Mock the Week, Would I Lie to You? etc.) and the like on the Interweb. Unfortunately a lot of the news items and such that are discussed are way over my head (Gordon Brown? Who he??) and there still seems to be a distressing amount of national interest in and discussion of Big Brother, which I didn't give a rat's arse about when I lived in the UK and I certainly don't now that I live on the other side of the planet. Many other facets of UK celebrity culture elude me as well...I recall having to ask my family who Kerry Katona was while I was in the UK. But, if I remember correctly, that was part of the reason I wanted to leave the UK in the first place...to get away from the Big Brothers, the Jamie Olivers, the Simon Cowells etc. etc. and to just go somewhere where the mass media can't really effect me because I don't understand it. At least out here I can filter my English-language cultural intake...I'm generally informed about the stuff that's worth watching by my lovely family and UK friends, and it surfaces online or on DVD eventually...and I'm in much less danger of having Jamie Oliver's spittle-flecked mong face rammed down my throat by some Sainsbury's commercial. Win win!
Having said that, as a somewhat inevitable result of my re-kindling of UK TV viewing, I find myself completely, passionately mystified as to why Tara Palmer-bloody-Tompkinson keeps getting TV work. She's appeared in several things I watched recently, and...she's just shit. So, maybe we are all born to be water-cooler TV critics on some fundamental level.
Flight of the Conchords has been a recent favorite as well. I learnt to play "Bret You've Got it Going On" on guitar. Because I'm slightly sad. OK, not slightly, very. Gotta love those jazz chords though.
As some of you may know, I spent February in the UK. I came back to find that my local supermarket had changed name to Piago, and that they have a Piago "theme song" that they play often over the in-store PA, in between bursts of the incredibly heinous muzak Japanese supermarkets seem to favor (and I mean heinous. Surely the point of in-store music is to enhance the shopping experience, not to send the customers fleeing to the doors in terror, as I often feel like doing whenever a shotgun suicide-inducingly bad elevator-music version of, I don't know, "Sweet Child of Mine" or something starts spewing from the speakers??).
Anyway, the Piago song is very jolly and catchy and I find myself smiling everytime it comes on. Possibly because there is something wrong with my head. Anyway, you can hear a snatch of it on this commericial. Everybody! Kokoro-no-pia-pia-pi-a-gohhhh...sing damn you!
April 18th is Record Store day (worldwide? they have it in Japan and the UK, I know that much). So go buy records you swine!!
VW camper vans and Mini Coopers are apparently very popular with the retro hipster crowd here, despite the fact that they're a bit shit and keep breaking down all the time (the cars, not the retro hipster crowd).
By the way, is "Beetle Bus" commonly accepted nomenclature? It is here, anyway. I certainly hadn't heard it until a friend was explaining their popularity. I thought she was talking about Magical Mystery Tour or something until she drew me a picture.
While we're on the theme of Crap ___ 'o' the Day, Crap Album Cover 'o' the Day ("crap" in this case meaning more "lo-fi" than "bad") goes to Jap group Kabemimi for their new CD-R opus Yokujou Shita Inu (Desired Dog), see right, which somehow manages to be simultaneously cute, funny and downright creepy. Like a fair amount of Japanese culture, in fact.
Saturday marked my 3rd anniversary of being here! Banzai!
I have spent most of the last week at work translating a manual about off-road driving techniques. Which is about as exciting as it sounds. I enjoy translation though, and would kind of like to do it professionally even though it makes my head hurt sometimes. So it's all good. What's kind of depressing about translating for a big company though is seeing your handiwork go off to be run through several committees or what have you, who will no doubt have their evil ways with it, stripping the thing of the nuance, prose stylings and distinctive authorial voice I spent so many hours instilling it with. Honestly, these people just have no respect for the struggling artiste. Actually it's probably a good thing in this case since I stuck quite closely to the original Japanese for safety's sake and due to a lack of time, and Japanese manuals never seem to be written with brevity or readability in mind. Strange that.
So if you buy a Land Cruiser Prado next year and it has a manual about off-road driving, that's my handiwork right there! Well, some of it. In there somewhere. Perhaps. I really don't know.
I went a-wondering around Atsuta Jinja (a shrine in Nagoya) on Sunday and saw the statue pictured above. Frankly I'm none the wiser so I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions. The characters below seem to denote it as some kind of "monument to spectacles". Hmm. Nice tits though. And it would look bitchin' in my apartment.
Why not read my brother-in-law Gareth's music blog?
http://howlifeshouldsound.com/
Well, I thought it was time to try and start this thing up again, so here goes. I won't go into the reasons for my absence since most of you know what's been happening and the rest probably don't care. And because the title is "Andy's Jap Blog", not "Andy's Blog 'O' Misery". Anyway whatever, I'm back to spew my creative juices onto the Interweb, so let's see what kind of wonderful mess they make.
While we're on the subject (of the blog name, not my juices) I really think I ought to change the name of this thing. Calling it my "Jap" blog seems somewhat constrictive in that I can only post about my life here in Japan, when, obviously, I have a whole universe of other thoughts and wisdom to share. But the only other name I can come up with is the deeply unimaginative "Andy's Blog", which, frankly, is a bit shit. Or there's "Taking it up the Archipelago", which I like but which might sound more than a little gay. So I'm open to suggestions.
In the meantime this blog is under construction as I fiddle with new templates and generally try to update it.
Sakura season is upon us once again! If only it was like this all year round. Hey ho. I did something slightly trainspotter-esque over the weekend for the sake of exploration...I travelled to the north-east of Nagoya (not a hugely taxing journey, considering that I live in the south-east of Nagoya) solely for the purpose of riding the Linimo train line. Linimo is a mag-lev (i.e. a train that is levitated and propelled by a magnetic rail, instead of using wheels). As I boarded I could tell that I was taking a ride...into the future!! Yes, it was next stop year 3000 as I glided (glid?) along on my cushion of magnets. Everything on board is completely automated and the train itself glides like...a thing...through...an analogy. Either way it was well swish, and hopefully I'll find an excuse to ride it again sometime soon.
Yesterday I went to see a live show by Doravideo, aka Yoshimitsu Ishiraku, a jolly chap who somehow looks like he should be a bouncer. He's also a kind of multimedia drummer who connects his drum kit to to some convoluted piece of technology which then projects video images onto a screen in sync with his drumming, accompanied by music. The use of video allows him to work in numerous political and pop culture references (many of which went way over my head), such as a song centered around an old commercial for a bathroom air freshner and another showing looping images of KISS. He played an enormously effective duet with Katsui Yuuji, a rail-thin electric violinist who somehow looks like he should be a science teacher. Really excellent stuff, none of the videos I found online really do them justice so you'll have to take my word for it I guess. I should point out that the above picture isn't mine.
I took some photos of the Christmas illuminations at Nagoya station, they're very nice, if usually a little crowded...
http://photozou.jp/photo/list/154073/681560
So...what else have I been up to? Hmmm...
Bought a new phone, finally...it's very swish...interested parties can check it out here. No, I didn't get an iPhone, I have my reasons, mostly financial...
Been going to some gigs...fascinated though I'm sure you all are by my gigging activities...most recent was last Friday when I went to the rather tiny KD Japon to see some young fellows with very interesting haircuts named Gegegege Quartet (they're a trio). I felt kinda bad, they were fantastic and energetic but there were about 15 ppl in the audience (due largely to the size of the venue)...one can only applaud so loudly. That's them in the photo...love the Wu Tang shirts! Also on the bill were two performance artists and a group of studenty types who had a naivete vaguely reminiscent of Maher Shalal Hash Baz (at least in my head they did).
Also went to see ex-Boredoms guitarist Seiichi Yamamoto and, in late Sept., a very enjoyable collaboration between Nagoya's own Acid Mothers Temple and Osaka noise legends Hijokaidan...a gig that was flimed and has since been released on DVD...will get my hands on it to check if I am at all visible! (I was down the front, hehe). I actually filmed the entire gig myself from the mosh pit (such as it was) on my little digital camera, only to accidentally delete the main chunk of video in a frantic attempt to make space on the memory card for post-show photos. Curse you cruel fate!
Sorry for the gig reports but I felt compelled to write something, and writing about music is much more enjoyable than laying my daily life bare for the Internet to peruse! So you can just go away.
Back in the UK 19th Dec - 2nd Jan!
Just a quick note to let the world know that I'm not dead! Hooray!
Life over the last few months has been simultaneously completely different yet also completely familiar. New and scary problems that I have no experience of coping with, and the occasional new personal contact, contrasted with the same-old-same-old workaday world (I still live and work in Japan by the way, just in case you've lost the plot by now). Life's rich tapestry, yadayada.
Well, gotta Keep on Truckin' (© 1968). Went to a Halloween party at Yamasa (that's the Japanese school I used to go to) last Friday, had lots of fun, drank too much (the Yamasa bar sells Guinness! And at a fairly reasonable price (for Japan anyway)), saw people I hadn't seen in donkey's years, etc. Many interesting costumes on display, and how many chances do you get to see the lovely Yamaguchi-sensei in a bright red clown wig? (no pictures, sorry, try some other Yamasa student blog). I keep meaning to go there often since I have an almost familial connection with the place. But it's sooo far and I'm sooo lazy :(
It's been work visa renewal time and for the umpteenth time I'm amazed at the efficiency of Japanese administration and public service in general. It came through in a coupla weeks which I'm sure puts most dirty foreigners to shame. Plus Nagoya Immigration has moved to a brand new building (which, sadly, is twice as far away from where I live as the last location) which is all shiny and nice and has a Lawson (convenience store) on the 2nd floor! Yes, inside the building itself! Thrice huzzah for beauraucracy!
Unfortunately the process necessiated a trip to the Tenpaku-ward (the part of Nagoya I live in) town hall thingy one morning before work to get a form stating how much tax I've paid, which was slightly more dingy. And no convenience store. Can't win em all huh.
Anyone still read this? Must be a record for non-posting...
Several major things/problems going on in my life right now...lots of stresses to bear, adjustments to make, changes to undergo...but I know that whatever happens I will come through them, and come through them a stronger and more complete person :)
But right now I've gotta sleeeep...
July is here and the air is full of moisture and horrible biting insects. Other than that, not much of note happening really. Mindbendingly slow week at work, but went to a welcoming party on Friday.
Went walking round Osu Kannon (a lively shopping district-type part of Nagoya) with a friend yesterday. We found a tattoo parlor named, I kid you not, "Boobies". The mind boggles. Despite the name, they showed no evidence of any kind of specialization in mammarian tattooing. Why not visit their website? (beware, crappy flash intro)
The government has evidently started a campaign to promote rice as a breakfast food, as a bowl of rice in the morning is said to improve energy levels and concentration throughout the day. I can't decide if their campaign is cute and funny, or just scary. Either way there's more wackiness to be had on the Ministry of Agriculture's website (and you can view the TV spots here).
How is everyone?
My 3rd summer in Japan is looming ominously on the horizon...we are currently in the rainy season and the heat/humidity/sweatiness levels are well and truly on the rise...I am slowly becoming more and more thankful that I will be spending the majority of the summer in a nice air-conditioned office. My blood's too thick for Nevada, er Nagoya. Always work a Hunter S. Thompson quote in if you can, that's what I say.
Still, the evenings are rather pleasant so I walk home after work most evenings. Which reminds me...I have created a short Google maps tour of my immediate surroundings. Check it yo!
Also, against my better judgement, I have uploaded several photographs taken by myself during work outings.
I seem to be reading random Wikipedia articles in my idle moments (yeah, I know, it's inaccurate, but I never remember the details so who cares, hehe). I happened across the story of abandoned former coal mining facility Hashima Island (aka Battleship Island, pic left) and found it quite interesting. It's probably, like, a metaphor and stuff. Gnarly slideshow and more sober description here.
Evening all!
The weather is slowly but surely increasing in temperature...as is the humidity...luckily I have my new Hello Kitty hand fan to keep me cool (see left...maybe you can't quite tell from the photo but she has a fan in her head...yes I was slightly drunk at the time of purchase, thanks to a friend's leaving party at work...it's amazing what they sell in convenience stores nowadays).
Just got finished watching a very bizarre movie (Japanese movie? Bizarre? Surely not) named Party 7, lent to me by my lovely workmate Ikeda-san. Plenty enjoyable though, especially Captain Banana. Also made me want to watch more Japanese movies, for language acquisition purposes. If anyone has any recommendations, let me know.
Still buying records on occasion. Whereas everyone else is clamoring after the latest iPod Nano or what have you, I seem to have gone in completely the opposite direction. I am consistently amazed at how collectible certain slabs of vinyl can be...rooting around in a used record store earlier today, I saw one record displayed with a 100,000yen price tag (about $1000 USD)...it seemed to be some hideously obscure private pressing put out by an avant-garde theater troupe in the 1970s...scary. I've been playing a slightly less rare 1976 LP by sultry chanteuse Yoshiko Sai (佐井好子) rather a lot recently...very lovely, comes heartily recommended if anyone out there fancies hunting down the CD re-issue...
Been playing lots of Nintendo DS games (I'm quite tempted to buy a Wii but I'd have to get a TV first)...including a rhythm game for children based around the vaguely disturbing anime character oshirikajirimushi (ass-biting insect):
The Japanese word for "solar eclipse" - 日食 （にっしょく） - consists of the characters for "sun" and "eat", thus evoking a sense of the sun being eaten rather than obscured. Well, I thought it was interesting anyway.
If any of my Chinese-speaking friends still read this thing, perhaps you could tell me if the word comes from Chinese? Is it rooted in mythology? Perhaps the ancient Chinese saw an eclipse as the sun being eaten by a huge dragon or something? Hello?
On a completely unrelated note: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/21/lost.parrot.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
You may be aware that I spent a year and half at the Yamasa Institute in Okazaki; and since including my e-mail address in the little box over to the left there I have received literally several messages from prospective Yamasa students asking me questions about the school and the experience in general. So I thought it was time to look back and collect my thoughts on my time there.
I started at Yamasa in April 2006, with the vague intention of studying there for 6 months. It was a big life change for me - I had barely even traveled outside of the UK, let alone lived in a foreign country - so naturally I was a little apprehensive. I had saved my pennies for over a year and had decided to blow them on six months in a foreign country studying funny squiggly characters and talking to people badly in their native language, which seemed very silly. If you ask me why I came here (many people do) it's hard to give a clear-cut answer even 2 years down the line, so I often don't. But in reality it sprang from desires to get out of a rut, gain life experience, overcome shyness, meet new people, and learn a valuable skill to boot.
As a life experience, it strikes me that life in a foreign country is something that is so different, you will never know how you personally will react to it until you actually go ahead and do it. That was certainly the case with me. And that sucks. Some people wind up hating it, some people can't adjust, some people are overcome with homesickness...how do you know if you are one of these people? Well, you're asking the wrong person. However I will venture the opinion that, if you don't have a solely superficial interest* but you are genuinely interested in the culture and the language and in the chance of living abroad and learning a new language and progressing personally, that you are (IMHO) more likely to have a rewarding time here (please note: this statement is in no way legally binding).
*(I was originally tempted to insert a parenthetical rant about anime nerds, geeky white guys who like Asian women a little too much, internet forum-dwelling Hello Kitty masturbators with anime avatars who shop at J-list and whose online posts contain "OMG kawaii desudesu ^_____^ arigato gozaimasu", and other lamentable pieces of fallout of the explosion in popularity of Japanese culture in the west; but I am painfully aware that, as a westerner with an interest in Japanese culture, anything I write will be at least tinged with hypocrisy, and this is neither the time nor place. So I think I've dodged a bullet with that one, eh?)
Anyway, editorializing aside, you've decided to take the plunge and study Japanese at Yamasa. Go you. The school, in general, is fantastic. It's small(ish), the teachers and staff are generally wonderful and cuddly and know what they're doing. I think it's an excellent, enjoyable place to learn beginner- and intermediate-level Japanese (I personally think the advanced levels could use some work, but then I think that advanced level stuff can't really be taught from books but should rather be acquired). There's a real community feel to the place (in fact, once you move outside of the school and into "real" Japanese society you come to realize that Yamasa is almost a kind of porously-sealed gaijin-oriented commune, protecting its charges from the scarier aspects of real life in Japan). Of course, there's the possibility that you'll be incompatible with a certain teacher or staff member, but that's life. Most people, with a lot of personal effort, will be able to attain a good level of Japanese there in a relatively short time (relative to, say, studying by yourself or studying outside of Japan). And Okazaki is a nice place to live, though some may find it slightly dull (in which case go and "study" in Osaka or Tokyo or somewhere, you big party animal you).
Finance is a problem for many and will require lots of careful consideration (unless you're being bank-rolled by your uber-rich parents or something, natch). It is very possible for native English-speakers to land teaching positions (even with no experience), but many people who work enough to be able to subsist without external assistance often seem to do so at the detriment of their study time, free time, and sanity.
And yes, it's not an easy language to learn by any means (espeically for westerners, and the written language in particular)...I've been here for 2 years and I still feel like I know nothing...but if you don't do things because they're hard you'll never get anywhere. Frustration definitely set in for me (feel free to look back over some of my previous posts), and it seems to affect most people, albeit at different times and in different ways. For me it started after about 10-12 months and seemed to manifest itself as a reduced ability to learn new things and think clearly. Personally I wouldn't recommend spending more than a year at Yamasa unless you're the sort of person who can withstand that kind of prolonged intense study. And don't get down because you can't read Japanese fluently even after one or two years. The writing system is completely retarded and (if you are a westerner) your brain is not naturally programmed to accept it. God alone knows how long it would take, 5 years perhaps? Less with solid practice? And the writing...don't expect to be able to write Japanese fluently any time in the next decade unless you're some kind of shodo freak who practices every hour god sends. If you didn't learn to write kanji as a child, you probably ain't gonna, with any degree of comfort (that's OK though, because in this age of the personal computer, you probably won't ever need to able to write spectacularly well, even if you live in Japan...I only ever handwrite my address and occasional memos at work). But of course, everyone learns language at a different rate, so feel free to ignore me.
Also, if you don't have any hard reasons, try to ask yourself...why do you want to learn Japanese? Why do you want to devote precious time and hard-earned money to the study of this language? Are you mad? This language is insane. Sure, Japanese culture is popular now, and everyone wants to watch anime without subtitles or play Final Fantasy before it's released in the west or wants to understand J-Pop lyrics etc (oh god I'm ranting again) but these are superficial reasons that don't (IMHO) warrant you investing the sort of time, money and effort necessary to learning Japanese well. Maybe you'll be jaded and cynical toward Japanese culture by the time you achieve any kind of fluency. And if you're thinking from a business standpoint, surely Chinese is a better option? I don't want to sound negative, or make it sound like I made a mistake in choosing to spend so much time and money learning Japanese, because the personal progression I've made, the life experiences I've gained and the multitudinous people I've met over the last 2 years tell me quite definitely otherwise. I'm just saying it's something that should be carefully thought about.
Anyway, hopefully this long, pointless screed will be of benefit to someone. Feel free to get in touch with comments or questions (as long as they aren't the kind of questions that can be answered by reading the Yamasa website). Thanks!
It is Golden Week here in Japan (a consecutive series of bank holidays kinda thing)...though for me it's more of a Golden two days...back to work on Wednesday...either way I have free time on my hands so I thought I'd try and post something here.
It's strange...not to go off on a tangent or anything, but I was just ruminating on how my lovely but recently removed friend John-san uses his blog as an opportunity to practice his written Japanese...and I do pretty much the exact opposite. By which I mean, living and working in Japan, I relish the chance to write something in English, and this blog (when I can be bothered) serves as an outlet to that end. Well, I say that, but actually I'm just incredibly lazy about learning Japanese. So it goes.
Anyway, Golden Week! Whoop-ola!
Since getting some scratch together (a wonderous thing after a year and a half of studentitude) I've been somewhat indulging my irrational love of peculiar Japanese musics...in other words I am slowly becoming a vinyl otaku...to that end I attended a record fair in Kanayama this weekend and spent far too much money on crusty slabs of wax. Though, even saying this, I must commend myself on my restraint, I could quite easily have spent 5 times the amount I did (there was a copy of a hideously rare Tolerance side! On Vanity Records! In practically mint condition! And Kan Mikami's first LP as well!!! And that JA Seazer LP...and and and good God but I need a girlfriend).
While we're on the subject, some time ago I tried starting a music blog, but then kinda lost interest...maybe I'll do something with it...I've got a ton of stuff that I have an irrational urge to post about...http://musicsfromjapan.blogspot.com/
By the way, some tool keeps posting spam comments on my blog with links to pr0n sites...so, if you see a comment posted by someone you don't know...er, stay in school...etc)
Today was Showa day here in Japan. Showa day is a national holiday originally started to celebrate the birthday of Emperor Hirohito, and therefore is something of a controversial subject. But to me it just means *no work*!
As the weather was somewhat clement I decided to go on a little cycle tour of Nagoya, going west from my home in Hirabari, through Yagoto, Imaike, Sakae, Tsurumai, and back home again (also taking in lots of other places most people reading this will probably never have heard of).
I also thought I'd give the new camera a work-out...you can view the results here. They're not enormously interesting but they might give you some idea of my surroundings. Plus I've been too lazy to work out how to use my camera properly so I just jammed it into "simple mode" and let it do it's own thang.
春だよ！ 晴れだよ！ ビールだよ！ よしっ！ （でも、もうすぐ夏になっちゃう。。。実を言ったら夏、あまり好きではないし。。。頑張ってね、アンディーさん -_-; )
で、僕のアパートがすごいゴチャゴチャになっちゃったら、「大掃除をしよう」っていう気がしてきた。 今やっているところだ。。。（無精）
ちなみに、新しいデジカメをゲットした ^^ もうすぐ、無暗に写真を貼るかも！
リサイクルショップで、ヘンな形のラジオもゲットした(写真は下記）。。。ちょっと怪しいかな。。。
Spring has most definitely sprung here and my apartment is a complete tip, so I have requisitioned an emergency sort-and-file on its ass. Therefore I am too far up to my elbows in suds 'n' grime to post much.
Also, I have (finally) bought a new camera! My previous one steadfastly refused to take non-blurry photographs in anything other than outdoor, daylight conditions...so expect a plethora of photographic wonderments to be posted here!
And finally...not to sound like a bad submission to "That's Life" but I was poking around in my local 2nd-hand store thing this evening and I found an AM/FM radio of a somewhat peculiar design...not to offend readers of a somewhat more delicate sensibility, but upon viewing it I was immediately reminded of a certain personal hygiene implement, the name of which begins with "d"...I present a photograph (together with instruction manual) for your perusal below...
The speaker is on the underside, and the, er, "nozzle" serves as an FM antenna.
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