Tanya’s Blog

I went to Den Den Town. I thought I’d be bored, waiting for the American students to buy their video games, but I underestimated the place.

First we explored various used games. Not just a sega here, gameboy there - they had every system ever available in Japan for sale, and probably every game too.

Then I found the used manga. Everywhere from 50Y up, average around 200Y ($2 CDN). So I bought 8, totalling a smooth 1750Y.

Next I explored things I wasn’t going to buy. I looked at cameras, MP3 players, laptops, plasma screens… and I found the absolute COOLEST USB storage devices. They’re rather unboring here. There was also a lamp plugin for the USB with some smooth anime character, either a well dressed lady or well dressed man leaning against a lamppost. Yeah yeah, so there’s smooth, iMac-like geek versions back home… but I’d so own the lamppost one instead.

Rather.. interestingly, was the “surprise! boobies” aspect. Looking at manga - surprise! Enter the wrong aisle.. looking at action figures, surprise! this one’s wearing masking tape in appropriate area. looking at videos, surprise! a whole section! … just randomly, you know, places where… oh my god. There were no kids in den den town.

It was all us .. err… basically males 18-50, mostly in the lower end. Foreigners too.

I’ve found that people are REALLY helpful though when I’m hopelessly lost. One person spoke great English and walked me to the station (once we parted I was lost again), the other mainly told me I was on the wrong side of the platform. It’s really, really confusing getting around the subways and crap. London was easier, even.

Today I’m standing on the platform of the train I just got off of, and the line name is the line of the train I want to get onto, but that’s not the line servicing the platform. ??? So I went and found the right line. Gauh.

I’m surprised how little we learned in two years of Japanese class. Some of the most important phrases weren’t presented, or at least drilled in as they should’ve been. This week’s top:
I don’t know.
Naaah, it’s good it’s good.
I don’t understand.
Ah! I know!
Delicious!
I’m okay.
What’s that?
Here?
Now?
With you?

I really wish we’d have had more vocabulary. I suppose it’s up to me now to fill in those gaps.

So far I’ve:
-Stayed at the school dorm
-Attended a local concert (cello, taiko, karaoke, bingo, magic show)
-Gone to dance-aerobics with the host-mom
-Made udon at the same place (is old folks’ day place)
-’played with old peoples’ balls’ according to the American kid… it’s like dodgeball with old people, but the other team is bottles with bells inside.
-Been to the Kyoto Tower also Tawawa-chan
-Been to an orchestral concert
-Gone grocery shopping
-Written my placement test
-Gone shopping with the American kids to the city, and for Yakisoba with them too + Korean girl
-Watched INUYASHA on TV (Ranma 1/2 also)
-Gone out for Indian food with the other exchange students
-Met the school presidents
-wore my PINK DRESS
-Watched the election!
-Bought manga! (Aishiteruze Baby No. 1)
-Saw the COOLEST insect. An old man I asked called it Kyou no Chou I think… Chou was the part he made sure I got. It was green and looked like a green furry lobster. Lobster-moth-butterfly. Chou is Butterfly, no?
-Saw Densha Otoko or Train Man, episode 8. I had wanted to see it when I came here! I love it!! It’s funny and sad and… poor train man. Read about him, he’s a hit. Also, Geeks get a discount to his film!
-Took photos! Week 1

The photos are from this week, there’s more basic photos up a level.

Hi Blog. I’m in Japan.

Egg flavoured tofu, though not quite gaggable, is still mostly inedible. Don’t buy it, don’t try it, just don’t. Eew.

Poor, ignored Blog. Today you got an upgrade, congratulations!

I’m losing my summer. Yes, I’ve painted for the past five weeks. Without that, I don’t know how time would have been marked. I work, I see sweetie, I eat, I sleep. How can people do this? I can’t wait for school.

So if I haven’t talked to you, Blog, forgive me, but you are not alone. I haven’t emailed my childhood best friend in a month. I’ve spent too much money. I can’t remember how I managed to visit two coffee houses on Monday, June 20th, and not remember a thing.

Perhaps I’ll try Moss Graffiti one day. Looks really cool. I wonder how possible it is?

First, MSN 7 NEEDS to be patched. There is a problem with file transfers, it doesn’t not allow you to send .mp3 or .avi among others. Pure, pure evil. So check out Mess.be when you realize what a dirty trick they played.

Second, I feel this blog will not be long lived. I just am not fond of the word press software, because of its spamming capabilities. I like it otherwise, I just hate that I have to turn off my comments. Other blogs I’ve found who don’t monitor comments have 200+ per post of just spam.

Plus, if and when I do go somewhere I want one of those awesome blogs. Yeah, one of those! Not this or my other journal, nothing with a history. It’s habit.

Hey, it hasn’t been THAT long has it? A month plus a day? Here goes.

-Lose a couple hours of your life at Hackwriters, reading short travel/cultural/diary/fiction/social commentary stuff.

-I used this as a source in my International Studies essay. It’s on how Iraq is not a humanitarian intervention. Human Rights Watch: War in Iraq.

-My hero. She bakes, knits, sews…

-Carlos Ghosn is my other new hero.

-I know I posted this somewhere else but I just think the Prokudin-Gorskii photos from pre-revolutionary Russia are totally awesome. Library of Congress put together a great exhibit. Unbelievable. Yeah yeah, digitally remastered and all that.

I just finished the most awesome book, Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. There is also a film version, with some changes to the story (ie. Kitano). Not available in North America, but the book is.

You can find the first 11 chapters online at Bobmink’s Translations.

Do stay away from spoilers. Whereas, I didn’t and the ending still came as a surprise. Of course, I found myself covering the remaining count at the end of the chapter till I had ascertained which student would be subtracted, if any.

Best $25CDN I’ve spent in a long time. Shame it was only 600 pages (6 days).

I notoriously enjoy nachos as a late night snack. Chips lacking salt with cheddar cheese - nothing fancy. So I searched up the idea…

One man uses junk food to induce wild dreams. The first one listed is, naturally, nachos.

I stumbled on my revolutionary secret by accident, after eating a large order
of Gonzales y Gonzales nachos with green chiles late one Tuesday evening. 25
minutes later I found myself running half-naked through a bamboo forest,
pursued by a rattling army of giant crabs, as mortar rounds liquified the
beach nearby. The next pulse-pounding four hours would have cost Jerry
Bruckheimer half a billion dollars to stage. I bolted awake in the middle of
a terrifying cliffside chase sequence with the light bulb of a great idea
glimmering over my head in the darkness.

Next is a page pointing to symbols in dreams. The page on letter N mentions:

Nachos
If you dream of eating nachos, this suggests that you are procrastinating or making excuses about something.The spicier the nachos were, the more trouble you are having.

Nachos are my aid in procrastination on the deep homework nights.

Lastly, some sixteen year old girl’s Advice, including such gems as:

4. Don’t eat spicy food before bed. Unless you find insomnia fun.
…
6. Don’t read LOTR if you’re sleepy. This is not a very easy book to read, and you really need to pay attention to what you’re reading. If you don’t, you’ll miss a lot of important details and you’ll get bored.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, keeping prisoners in tents in the desert, wearing pink underwear, working on a chain gang, and watching the disney channel. Prisoners, paying for their own 40cent meals, no less.

This is the first I’ve heard of this guy, strangely. As they say, he really has the right idea. Very no nonsense.
There’s an old CNN article to see, with a couple of the famous quotes.

“We took away coffee, that saved $150,000 a year. Why do you need coffee in jail?” says Arpaio, patrolling the dusty, barren grounds. “Switched to bologna sandwiches, that saved half a million dollars a year.”

He’s all about saving taxpayers’ money. It is good. But, in the CNN article it mentions some drawbacks to his approach, with some legal costs of unhappy prisoners getting sick/beaten. But when you read the comparisons of prisoners’ living conditions to Iraq soldiers’ conditions, not to mention death tolls… (and why they are where they are, so on)

Anyway, read up a little more on the Re-Elect Joe page.

I thought my mother was believing everything she reads again, when she showed me this, but the story checks out.

Though I was disappointed I couldn’t find any Taylor Savvy on Shareaza, I did find Mocky ft. Taylor Savvy - Catch a Moment in Time.

Meet Mocky. He rides a giant hedgehog. And he has an absolutely AWESOME Video for Catch a Moment in Time. Quicktime video, Enjoy!

yay… it’s my brithday..

and tanya was the 3rd one of my friends to wish me happy b-day.. (*well, if you count emmy and dan together then second*) others *caughsANDREW* went to bed before he could do that… *glares* but yay and it’s set to rain today! I am happy!

I will keep you all updated on the events of the day! And tanya too… and if there was a suprise wedding.. like my “friends” clame there will be…

An Indian based page on Nutrition, this is Bawarchi. Browse a couple articles, it is remotely interesting. Also, Kaela was right about bananas.

I know I’ve been really into the whole Myers Briggs thing the last couple days, but it’s just too interesting! So here’s something to give a shot: Myers Briggs test and which anime characters it relates to. The little pages, (like mine, the INTJ), list a couple anime characters you can probably relate to relative to your results, plus the obligatory description of the type.

There’s also a forum dedicated to figuring out which types Harry Potter characters are. There’s even a Harry Potter test where they’ve already chosen who is what and it’s shorter than the big test, yielded same results for me but may not for you.

I highly recommend taking the test and googling your type, learning more. It’s uncanny how much it can explain about things you’ve done, ways people react to you (and you to them), that sort of stuff.

I love the ninja. Go see the White Ninja Comics. It sure is cute. Thanks Amanda. You rock. You give me all the best links then I put them in my blog.

White Ninja gets a Kiwi
White Ninja Draws Horses Better
White Ninja Walks a Cat

So. Great.

People can’t seriously think like this.

I’ve heard these names before, but didn’t know. Thank you brother Jeff for the link to the video. I’d be offended if it weren’t so ridiculous.

CARLSON: Canada needs the United States. The United States does not need Canada.

[…]

CARLSON: I think if Canada were responsible for its own security — you would be invaded by Norway if it weren’t for the United States.

from the transcript.

Not to say there aren’t any points raised that could truly be argued, but the people saying these things are just so ridiculous that it negates anything they might have a point about. How did they get on TV?

This all starts with Krazy Bob. He recommended 102.7, Co-op radio in the Lower Mainland. So I gave it a shot. I liked the Spanish morning show, followed by reggae, and the general unpredictability and obscureness of it all. Sometimes too obscure.

After school, turn on the radio in the bathroom. Great song! It’s announced as being Taylor Savvy - Jealousy. I think these were the days of Napster, but I searched to no avail. I also googled without luck. All I found out was that Jealousy was only on vinyl.

Fast forward to 2005. I google on a whim. I FIND IT. My life is complete. You can listen to the song by clicking a link on the left side.

Taylor Savvy at Kitty-yo!

An almost Mad magazine-esque comparison of One Nation and Ozzfest. Thank you Nem for the link! So here is “A match made in…”

ONE NATION

The prevailing fashion statement will be comfortable khakis and T-shirts in a rainbow of colors, many with empowering slogans.
OZZFEST

The prevailing fashion statement will be black, black and more black, including many T-shirts with slogans unfit to print in a family newspaper.

Happy February!

From The Globe and Mail.

Charlottetown — Prince Edward Island has begun revoking the driver’s licences of parents who fail to make child-support payments.

The provincial government has had the power to take such action for a decade, but just began to exercise that power a few months ago.

The licences of three men who are refusing to make support payments have been suspended in the past few weeks.

Debbie Conway, provincial director of maintenance enforcement, said Monday she does not know why revoking licences was not done in the past.

That is so incredibly AWESOME

The latest game from Giga-Rensya is Kutar’s Powder. For more games, visit the games page, and click the button. It says “daunroodo” (download). Yes, the installation thing will come up with a bunch of question marks, just click the browse thingy (???) and all that. It’ll work out, really. It’s worth it. So cute. So addictive.