3am rant

Three in the morning. Is there a better time to splatter a blog with an empty rant? In the buttcrack of morning, I can riploose from the normal constraints and social rules, I can be free, I can express my innerself! Frolic! For example, admit that I'm eating my second dinner for tonight. The first one, when I came home from work ages ago was a yummy pasta dish from the convience store. But midnight (postmidnight if you know what I mean, nudge nudge) munchies hit me harder than a tree living in a freshman dorm at Rastafarian College and Recreation Center. So my second dinner is nacho chips, and a sandwhich. With brown bread. A rarity in this spot of the spiny globe thing. And a second carton of orange juice. I already drank one 1000ml carton of orange juice with my first dinner, and now I'm on my second. If pirates drank orange juice instead of rum I would be well on my way to becoming an honary pirate, my friends. It might take a few more cartons before I would get my first eye-patch. And with that, I leave you with the smile that I have a special day off work tomorrow in which I can take a bath in my shallow self-pity and putrid sense of achievement. Or something silly hip-jokester like that! Me sleepy.

happy new years!

Its offical. Its a brand new world, time to start making things, this is my year of creation. Watch out world, here I come?
Anyway, new years itself was really fun but not that exciting. Sheena's roomates (Matya and Shannon) invited me over to watch movies and drink with them. We saw Sisterhood of the traveling pants (a member of what some people call "chick flicks" although it was entertaining), some mystery movie with the guy Frodo from lord of the rings, and at that point it was about 1 in the morning and offically 2007 so I suggested we go to the local buddhist temple/shrine to enjoy the actions of the community. Matya said it was too cold, so (being drunk) me and Shannon tried to litterally drag her out the door by her feet. Poor Sheena who was trying to sleep, we were not so considerate. Matya didnt go. The temple was fun, even though I've seen those kind of celebrations other times of course, it was still fun to have some sort of send off for New Years. Hearing people ring the temple bell, and eating balls of battered octopus chuncks, and downing free hot temple sweet sake, with that fresh bits of rice still in it flavor. Ahh, the new year. After that I went back to their house and watched a really old godzilla movie. After that I took an early morning train home and crashed.
Well, enough of that. Now for some words about a "new years party" that my friend Yuka invited me to. Her family and reletives always get together on the 2nd of January to have Chinese food in Yokohama. Its like a family tradition. It was fun to meet everyone, and interact a little with her reletives. Before heading off to the dinner appointment their grandma talked some of us into going to the cemetary and visiting Yuka's grandfather's grave. Yuka's grandma is very forgetful, she forgot her grandson (yukas brother) several times on the way there, and forgot who I was a few times also. Shes a cute old lady though, so it didnt seem negetive. They let me put some incense in his reception box too, and clense his headstone with temple water. It was fun to be welcomed like that. And then it was off to dinner with reletives of my friend. A few reletives kind of gasped and kind of freaked out when they saw me. But I'm used to that, no biggie. The food was really good, and the conversations were fun, the beer cold. Good times. Well, I dont usually embed content into my blog (links can be changed, but embeded content can be messed up if the original server moves or whatever) but I really like this spin video I made of hanging out at the restraunt. Enjoy! (Just press play and let it stream to you.)

and here comes another one

These years. I tell ya. Its a blur, one year and then another piled on top of another. I tell ya. The weather has been freaky recently, really rainy and warmer than usual. I'm on new years brake and Evan and his friend Beth are up here visiting. Its fun and a stretch of my small room. We have futons angled around like a puzzle, but I'm happy that we figured it out and got us all settled down in my tiny messy studio appartment. Hint hint. I think I will open a hotel in my room, or atleast a hotel for my friends. Come on over! And oh yeah, I have new pictures up. Woo. 11 shots of random glory.

photo madness

Yeah, thats right, a dip into photo madness! I havent had anything better to do, so I took a billion photos in the last week or so. I went through the endless shots, and uploaded 16 juicy pictures (and a few videos!) and I welcome you to check them out (after you click the link just click next, in the upper right corner, to see them all.) And if you havent noticed, look around, I'm tweaking things on this main diary page and making it more "modern" so Enjoy!
Today it was brisk and cold. When I came home I turned on my heater and left it on. My electric bills going to be expensive this month. Flashback time! since thats what blogs do a lot and I dont do that enough and I need to connect with my audience (of two) ... so yeah, que backflash music... I remember when I was little, we had a wood stove with a pipe that ran up to the chimney. We didnt have centeral heating, and I remember watching my mom put little peices of a log into a little compartment, and watching the flames lick and eat the wood until it became engulfed. She would then poke the little metal door shut with another peice of wood, and I would stand near the stove soaking up the heat. Those were the days. The days of shaggy carpet toilet bowl covers, and candy cane christmases, and snow powdery winter mornings. Ahh, returning from backflash. Reality, or whatever this is, returns.

I'm a big dork

So I feel like the grinch or something. I have been such a grumpy antisocial person these days, I need to work on my attitude. I feel like maybe the city is slowly taking away my Soul. For example, Kayo invited me to a christmas party yesterday but I just said grumpy things to people who talked to me most of the time. Whats wrong with me? These days, I have felt so bad about my bad attitude that I've been doing things like giving my chair in the train to tired people, and letting others go before me in lines in an attempt to regain my karma. I'm wondering if its part of the whole getting used to living in Japan again thing. I was away for awhile, and Japan is a strange place I guess. I wrote a paragraph complaining about different things, and then i realized i am still being mr.grumpy if i think that way. mr.grump needs to go on vacation or something, so I deleted that, yeaaah! I need to look on the positive side of life.

red leaves

Sometimes its hard to express culture things in words, but I want to somehow express a short trip I went on a few days ago. I went to a state near Fuji-san, and checked out the red leaves. Watching the red leaves (momiji) is a Japanese culture event in Fall. In correct manner, its a bit orchestrated and even scheduled on TV and what not, but the beautiful leaves capture something beyond all the setup of this natural event. There is something poetic in the moment of transmission from vibrant life, to a red crimson last-shine before they fall and become part of the soil which encourages more life to grow. I cant really capture it in words beyond these that I tried to share here, so I guess I will let pictures do the talking. Heres the link for the photo set of the best pictures I took. There are about 20 of them, just click the next link (in the upper right) from this picture to see all of them, enjoy vibrant colors of nature. I also took three good videos including the view of Fuji-san in the morning. Moments in time.

nice people & etc

So I was thinking I should act like my blog is a "time capsule" and I should just fill it up with those baasic day to day things that are maybe boring, but they are my life at the moment. So I was coming home today, and I was tired from teaching and so I fell asleep on the train and dropped my ticket (which I had been foolishly holding) so when I got to the ticket counter I thought he'd make me buy a new one (because foreigners have been pretending to loose their tickets so they have gotten more hard on people about lost tickets) so I went up to the train guy and said (in Japanese of course) "oh I want to buy a new ticket." and he asked where I came from, and I told him the truth, even though it was far away, and he asked me how much I had paid, and I was like "uhm... like I think 310YEN." and I apparently got it right, or he felt sorry for me, because he said "well, today you can go through with no ticket, but dont loose it next time." I smiled and rushed off. I am wishing now I had thanked him more, it was cool to have a "nice" moment inside this busy mean big city.
And I thought I would also mention a habbit of mine that I was thinking might be a little odd. Recently I havent had time when I am getting ready in the morning, and if I am eating noodles instead of rice, I boil my water and put in the noodles, start the shower, and then take the bowl of noodles into the shower and eat while starting the first rinse. I saves time, and makes sense to me (I hold the bowl out of the stream of water so it doesnt get mixed with shower water) and I dont think I will stop this habbit soon, but I'm wondering how odd it might be. Before I run away I thought I should share a smile or two, so heres a freaky video from old Japanese TV; rainbow man fights with silver faced freak.

cycles

Seasons turn in cycles, I spin, the days continue. I am alive and enjoying my days, but finding my mind slowly pulled into the "day to day" burn of a regular job. My creativity seems to be disapearing, something that I dont like. I need to work on more projects, do more things, be more creative. 2006 was supposed to be my year of collaboration, but none of my friends had the time or desire to collaborate I guess. So I guess 2007 will be my year of personal creation. Make some cool new ideas and send them fluttering off into the world. Stay tuned.

hand language

I walked home tonight, in the dark cold rain. Thoughts in my head. I'm sitting on my messy floor now, infront of my laptop, the speakers playing Creedence Clearwater Revival, "I set out on the road, seeking my fame and fortune..." The voice grinds on, and I pull up the event of the day that I'm looking for. It was this afternoon, it was still raining then too. I had ducked into a McDonalds near my house for a hamburger. The lunch-rush was in full swing, the staff running up and down yelling (with manners) at their customers. I was standing in line behind these two old women, they were having an animated conversation with their hands. Something about going somewhere (all that I can get, I'm still basic verbs and salutations) but the moment that hit me was what came next. The women got up to the counter and ordered with sign language. And the amazing, and hard to explain thing, was the change that came over the counter staff. She stopped talking, and just swayed her hands to indicate various things they were communicating about in basic sign language. I had a vision of a whole world communicating with their hands, wonderful visual symbols etched in the air, and yeah, noise pollution would be greatly reduced; the thought came to life and I could imagine the whole shop communicating with their hands. And then the whole country. It was a beautifully silly and cool idea. The young staff woman broke the silence with a strong "Thank you for your order please come again" to the two old women (who of course didnt even notice) and this broke me back into the noise of the room. Cash registers, people, a litteral ocean of sound.

day to day

Well, I've been told my blog is getting too philosophical lately and that I should shift it back to a log of what I'm doing... work, life, that sort of thing. The problem is I dont want to have a blog about work. I dont think I'd get fired for that (although my Japanese friend got fired for commenting on her friends blog entry about a bad boss, talk about bad luck, everyone got fired, I guess it was true... he was a bad boss!) I just dont really want to mix work with my blog too much. Kind of like trying to mix salt into my cocoa or something. Salt is important but its a whole different thing than cocoa... or something like that. But other than work, my life is mainly just filled with meeting people or sitting around my room most of the time. Not the most stimulating of topics for blog entries. If I find something, I'll post about it, otherwise for now its going to be mostly philosophical-ish rants. And in other news, I've had videos and tons of photos streamed to my korean site for years, but very few of my unkorean friends visit that so I've decided to try out that Twango service to bring even more media to unkorean viewers. Of course I have my original feed that is sent from my cellphone. And I started a new one of large photos taken with my new digital camera. For an extra bonus, I even have a channel of videos taken with my camera which should help you feel like you are walking around Tokyo with me... or something odd like that. Stalkers Paradise. Enjoy.

circadian rhythms

Last week, I was coming home from a bookstore in the evening. I got out of the station, and I was greeted by a typhoon. Thick rain, blown strongly in heavy waves. People were trying to walk home with their umbrellas, only to have their umbrellas ripped out of their hands or violently turned inside-out. A woman next to me screamed as her purple umbrella twisted and shuddered under the strength of the brutal wind. It then sucked the umbrella back, as if pealing a purple banana. I was so wet when I got back to my house, 10 minutes away, that I looked like I had taken a shower in my clothes.
The next day, it was hot and sunny. It appeared like sunshine and rain had fought for power of the sky, their battle leaving literally hundreds of umbrella carcases on the sidewalk leading to and from the station. Mostly cheap 100yen umbrellas, snapped, twisted and used; flapping in the breeze as the sun shined down ignoring yesterday's weather.
The weather was like many apparent victories of history (or even those of our mind), where the vanquished slowly regains control, so gradually that the approach is hardly noticed. Our sunshine was bright and beautiful, but slowly the heat faded from the days, the violent weather of winter slowly sinking its teeth into the last gasps of summer until with out noticing I needed a small coat today, even though the sun (in its proxy position of apparent power) continues to shine.

happy birthday

My friend (he doesnt use his name on the internet so I guess I wont either) recently posted a feelings about his birthday video post on his blog. After seeing that I thought I would comment on my feelings about... my own birthday! It feels weird to think about time, and its rapid unfolding. I was looking around trying to find old pictures of myself, and I found my oldest website again. I used my geek skills and reconstructed it (many image links were broken since it was so old) but its very geeky and makes me feel old to think this page is still on the net (in a broken form) ...a webpage that is from 10 years ago... a TEN year old webpage. Its fun to read it, like looking at a time capsule or something. Some of the things I was into, like encyclopedia making and film making are still some of my interests, but other things that I was into (some really geeky ones) show typical passing youth-interests. This page shows a mellow me, after any youth anger, a year before I headed off to college, a place where of course my life changed. I think I blogged about it before, so I guess thats about all I have to say about that. But really, life is a strange thing. A few more years, and it will mean that I have been overseas longer than I was in college. I need to take some time to think about what that all means, but I feel a little brain dead at the moment so I'm not sure what to add here. A comedian is streaming off the net, people laughing, while outside this room a driver is going by selling sweet potatoes from his car, his selling song echoing into my ears. Time continues.