Saturday, August 09, 2003

a little work, some karaoke, some orginal music, and other insanity

The other day I went to this school almost outside of Tokyo, near the state of Chiba. It was far away, but I had been offered a one time only (and maybe more than that later?) teaching job at this kind of English preschool. The kids would come in and we would play with them and exchange basic phrases with them. Most of the kids were about 3 years old, and I was very impressed that a lot of them had memorized basic english phrases by that age! I could say "hello whats your name?" and often they would say their name, and then nice to meet you or something, and some could even carry on basic conversations about how they were doing and etc. I was impressed.... afterall, I don't think I was even doing much talking in my native language when I was 3, let alone in a second language! One of the little girls (was her name Mana?) was so young, but she had already became a little comedian (in Japanese). She would constantly make remarks (when a face was being drawn to practice naming the face parts in English she yelled in Japanese "ohmygod! stop it, its scary, it looks like my grandma!" and another time we were arranging ropes on the ground to let the kids play hoping games, and she said in japanese, "freaky! it looks like micky mouse, hurry lets make it into a panda!" and when all the kids were making crafts, they were supposed to make a cat and dog from folder paper [origami] and she made the cat and the dog and then drew a tear on the dogs face and said in japanese that the dog was sad because the cat was giving it a hard time, and other stuff like that! she was so silly!! I couldnt help but wonder if she would become a famous comedian or something!) It was all really fun, and later the lady who hired me (her name is kwi heng, she is Japanese-Korean) will send me a little bit of money for my work. which will be really good, since I am still of course really, really, low in the money department.

Taro had his birthday a few days ago... (HAPPYBIRTHDAY TO THE TAROMAN!) and so we met him and went out to eat (at an Italian restaurant now listed on my EAT.TOKYO website under the name "ITARIA ICHIBA" which is currently like the second restaurant listed) and then we went to karaoke. We were walking along in Shinjuku and this guy fished us out of the crowd, which is common in Japan. Its insane how crowded it can get in "downtown" Tokyo, people just flood the area, clogged in constant motion. Words cant explain the massive amounts of people that just exist in a constant flow. Anyway, back to the fisherperson. In Japan, people are hired to stand in the crowd harassing people with posters asking them to go to restaurants, gentleman's clubs, and you guessed it---karaoke! Dear reader, in case you've never had a chance to experience a japanese style karaoke thing (you can experience those in canada) let me explain a little bit. You go to this building that has lots of little rooms, you get assigned to this room with a microphone and a TV with a karaoke machine. Some karaoke places offer free drinks that are delivered (some are drinks like wine coolers and beer, and some places only offer soft drinks) and some karaoke places dont offer any free drinks, and instead they have cheap entrance prices but require you to buy atleast one drink. Anyway, the amount of songs you can sing is insane! This place, just as an example, had thousands and thousands of Japanese songs (both brand new and painfully old) and hundreds and hundreds of english language songs (super new and as old as the mid 1950s-early 1960s) and songs in Korean and Tagalog. What was really amazing about the English song selection was the range of music. This wasn't just brittney spears, it was anything, from greenday (punk) to marylin manson (goth metal) to eminem (hiphop) to anything else you could think. If your wondering, just for fun I tried to sing weird songs by manson, eminem, elvis, and other off the wall artists, it was so fun! the crazyest fun part was trying to sing the Japanese song "LOVE LOVE SHOW" by an artist I like that is named "Yellow Monkey".. (If you've never heard that song I think you can go here and then click the LOVE LOVE SHOW link and it will pop up a sample song window, wait for it to load.) My singing basically was in and out, some parts were maybe quite clear (the parts I had kind of memorized or the parts that were mainly written in Japanese alphabets that didnt use difficult kanji) and other parts were mumbled as I tried to keep up with the song. ^^; ...I don't remember ever trying to sing a Japanese song in Karaoke before though, so it was really fun trying... I'm going to have to practice with my bad voice, and do it again sometime!
i am sure i sound like a dying turkey when I sing! hahaha

dot dot dotNOTICEdot dot dot

I've had time to waste, and I don't like to waste my time just watching the seconds go away... so I made a freaky weird techno song using vintage radio samples and a virtual synthesizer and stuff. Please check it out by clicking here and then clicking the name of the file. (The name of the song "tenaga musuh" is Indonesian and I guess it means something like "energy enemy" or something!) I made this one, unlike the last song I linked to. Let me know what you think, try my weird song!
smilezzz

Right now the wind is really slaming against this appartment. Its late at night, and my mind is a little light headed... but I like the sound of the wind. Although sometimes it slightly shakes the room a little (if its not earthquakes shaking me its wind, when will the shaking stop?? heh heh) ... I really do like nature sounds though, I just hope I don't get blown away to the land of OZ. Apparently its almost a typhoon or something? I'll be ok of course. Let me hear your thoughts, cus I'm a comment hungry bunny. oh yeah.

if I was a bean I would be green JALAN-JALAN SAJA! DA-DA!

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