So Xiaofang is up in Tokyo and has been living here for one week exactly.  I started to write a blog entry about that last week, but got distracted half way through, saved it as a draft, and the UI on MSN spaces is so unusable that I can find where my saved drafts are.  I think I will change that in the near future.  Xiaofang wants to start a joint website where we can blog, upload photos, etc.  Though with the net the way it is nowadays, we could probably just go sign up at blogger or something right?  I'll keep ya posted.

Last week was the craziest week thus far.  Xiaofang moved up Sunday, we had two people from the HQ in America come in all week (both of whom I needed to meet with regularly), and I went to my first library fair/conference on Friday.  I ended up working 53 hours not including lunch breaks and still managed to show my coworker around Shibuya and Akihabara on two separate little trips.  It was insanely bad timing though so Xiaofang's first week in Tokyo was kind of lonely I'm afraid.  We made up for it by meeting having lunch with my old Japanese friend Mr. Yoshii (he treated us to traditional Japanese food which was really good and even gave me two tickets to an art show!) and then went in search of large kimonos for me in Shibuya which proved both successful and cheap.  So now it looks like I'll be getting married in Japan wearing a kimono, pretty cool.  Though with my insane schedule (I was getting home at midnight a couple of nights in a row) I wasn't able to study Japanese and my test is next Sunday!  Which reminds me of when I took the Japanese Proficiency Test 2 years ago, it just happened to be the day after Mom returned to the States after a week long visit.  I swear, Autumn is a horrible time to hold these exams.  Anyway, after spending a good 3 weeks studying pretty intensely and trying my best to not break the chain, I was kind of perturbed to have my discipline broken by something out of my control.  I guess I could have studied at lunch though; it just goes to show you, you have all the time you're ever going to have.

But enough old man ramblings; Super Mario Galaxy is awesome.  I was showing my coworker around Akihabara and saw Half Life 2: the Orange Box for 7000 yen.  I really, really wanted that game ( not as much as skate which still eludes me) but honestly I'm kind of sick of FPS games for the time being.  I know I'll get the Orange Box eventually and maybe even spring for Call of Duty 4, but when thinking about money invested versus fun acquired and the length of the games, FPS's don't hold up very well.  For one thing, they are short.  CoD4 single player is like 4-6 hours long or something ridiculous.  And while the single player experience is fun, the co-op experience is a blast, the multiplayer isn't really fun unless you have a few friends to play with because we already know that 90% of the people on XBL are idiots and 99% are better than you.  And losing isn't very fun :P 

But back to Mario.  It's nice to play a game by people that obviously know how to make games.  And what I mean by that is "user experience".  These people either know how to play-test their game to ultimate refinement, or can put themselves in the place of the user such that they feel you on a some primordial level.  The game isn't frustrating, it's challenging.  It isn't violent, it's just got action.  It's creative, playing with your expectations of a platformer while delivering a nostalgic experience that makes you want to go back and play more Mario games.  I guess I've been on a Wii kick lately; after getting, honestly, sick of playing shooting games after Bioshock, Stranglehold, and Halo 3 back to back, I decided to switch it up and play some Wii.  Wii Sports is still fun, Zelda remains one of the most compelling games to date, and Super Paper Mario is a nice, solid little game (which I borrowed for free from my friend, I'd never pay money for it!).  But Mario Galaxy is just plain fun.  Usually after playing a game for about 45 minutes I'm done, but so far I've played about 3 hours and I don't notice time go by. 

But back to work.  So work is keeping me busy, but that's a good thing.  It's nice to have Xiaofang here, coming home to someone makes all the difference in the world.  Life is good.  And very different than the previous two years, and yet somehow I feel more settled down in Tokyo than Shikoku.  I guess that's an obvious statement since I'm working a job in the corporate world, living with my fiance, and not in the country any more.  And yet, it is a big change.  The small difference between my current job and JET has a surprisingly huge impact on me.  I guess knowing that my job has a future, in the since that I can continue this job indefinitely and get a raise, means all the difference in the world.  However, I'm still ridiculously frustrated by my level of Japanese on a near-daily basis.  I'm trying to study to get better,  and I have noticed some progress in only the month that I've been trying, but it's still extremely disconcerting when I think about how far I have to go.  Moreover, I feel that I'm destined to learn Chinese, so it's like if I get really good at Japanese I'm not even done there.  But I guess it's something to look forward to as well!

But back to life.  We spent the weekend leisurely after kimono shopping (renting) by doing an hour of karaoke (I mainly listened to Xiaofang sing :P) and then saw the Bourne Ultimatum which just came out this weekend.  Xiaofang loved it!  Of course I knew she would, it's her type of movie to the T, but I'm glad she enjoyed it.  I've always been a huge fan of the series (in print as well) and was happy to see that the 3rd movie was a good ride despite a different director.  The one large car chase seen was just insane!  She wants to go back and watch the first two movies now, which I conveniently have on DVD, so I suppose we'll get around to that this week.  Sunday was spent (and is being spent this minute) in the laziest of fashions sleeping in until midday, cooking omelettes for lunch, sleeping some more, cooking curry for dinner, and getting in some Mario Galaxy time.  I guess I'll start another movie soon to round off the weekend and then hit the sheets for another day in the rat race.  I'm beginning to sound like my dad! :p

Well, my month or so of hip hop addiction (Kanye - Graduation, Swollen Members - Black Magic mainly) was abruptly ended by the new Jimmy Eat World album, Chase This Light.  I must say, it's great.  Standout tracks are the single and album-opener Big Casino, Electable, and Firefight; but they're all pretty good.

In other news, the Red Sox have won the American League Championship, heading to the World Series with the Rockies.  With a couple of Japanese pitchers on the team, the famous one being Daisuke Matsuzaka, it's all over the news in Japan.  It's funny how popular these guys over here, I think it's the dream of probably 90% of all boys in high school to go play baseball in the MLB.  It's like their version of being a rock star.  It's also funny how if there's not a Japanese player then they really could care less about American baseball.  Though I doubt we could care less about Japanese baseball.

In yet other news, the Chinese communist party had it's big meeting recently and decided the fate of the country for the next 5 years.  Really it means nothing to me (not yet anyway) but I will be in the country (with my parents!) in about 6 months.  Speaking of which,  I should really book those plane tickets...  The thing that really surprised me was the good ol' hammer and sickle on the nametags of the people attending the meeting and on other banners.  I wasn't aware that that symbol was still in use, and it's honestly kind of unsettling!  I guess China still hasn't moved past it's old ways (also, not yet).

Wednesday is my next little business excursion, this time to Nagoya for two days; making it the first time I will have spent the night on a business trip.  I'm looking forward to it and may take the opportunity to meet up with my friend from college and Hokkaido buddy Jennifer, who is currently studying Japanese in the area.  This will be my first time to Nagoya, which also happens to be the birthplace of my good buddy Aaron, so I'm interested to check it out.  From what I hear from Japanese people though, it's not very interesting ^-^  Apparently a lot of people see it as a bland city that's neither the big city like Tokyo (though Nagoya is the 3rd largest) or the crazy homeland of comedians that is western Japan.  It is, however, the hometown of Toyota, but the company is located apparently pretty far outside of the city.  Anyway, I'm excited to go see it and visit some more universities.

I'm still holding off on skate and Half Life 2: the Orange Box ... but barely.  Dave invites me pretty regularly to take a nice, friendly, wallet destroying stroll down to Akihabara and buy both of them.  So far I've resisted, but he's slowly chipping away at me.  However, I'm trying to find an alternative in looking in forums to trade games with people.  So far, no luck.  Halo 3 multiplayer still continues to be quite enjoyable, though I must admit that it dregs up the absolute worst of the internet.  I did write a write up of what happened and even included a clever little punchline, but unfortunately I don't think I can reproduce what was said with my mom (sup mom!) reading this and potentially my boss googling my name.  I swear, the internet is just no fun anymore :P

I will leave you with this: my favorite TV show in Japan, Hey, Hey, Hey just started with Cindy Lauper delivering the opening ... yeah! Also, BoA looks kinda old (how disappointing) and Koreans speak the best Japanese on the planet ... much better than actual Japanese people :P

Update: BoA just put on glasses; I take back every bad thing I ever said about you.  I still love you baby.

Update 2: I just saw a commecial for chocolate that made me loose it, and sure enough, it's on youtube!  Ok, maybe the internet is still kinda fun :P  European pear FTW!

I made it down to Kagawa last week for a 3-day weekend.  The nice thing about working in Japan is that they have more national holidays than pretty much everywhere I believe.  Pretty much every weekend in September is a 3-day weekend, so when October hits you really aren't used to being at work on a Monday :P  The weekend was really refreshing; I didn't quite realize just how much Kagawa has been my home and really a large part of my life until leaving and going back periodically.  Of course, not only did I change locales and move to Tokyo, I started living by myself, away from my friends, and doing a completely different job.  Anyway, Tokyo life is pretty good, however by the time you subtract your unemployment insurance, health insurance, income tax, social security (I'm now on the "salaryman" social security instead of the national security which is great "you get so much money back!" .... but you pay so much more into it!), that in reality I think Xiaofang makes more money than I do.  Nice! How much of that is going out into the "real world" versus living in Tokyo sucks?  I guess I'll never know until I move back to the States, but hopefully I'll be making a larger salary then.  I did look around on some job websites, and there are quite a few jobs I'm qualified for in Tokyo, and it seems like quite a few more I'll be qualified for in a couple of years if I keep working the job I'm at and improving my Japanese.  That's the thing eh?  You gotta get the Japanese better, and I've been feeling really frustrated with my level as of late.  Sure it's great when you first meet someone,
      "Your Japanese is so good!"
      "Thank you, but no I'm still studying..."
      "But you can carry on normal conversation!"
      "Yes, but I'm not here carry on normal conversation, I'm here to do business...."
      "And you use chopsticks so well!"
      "Thanks......"
Honestly though, sometimes I can understand the news and I'm so happy and then the next day (it always happens the next day, hour, minute....) someone will say something that I don't understand that's always insanely simple.  It's so frustrating.  Perhaps I'd feel better if I was studying and trying my best, but I'm not.  That makes it that much worse.  So, I registered for the Japanese Business Test in November.  Stupid, I know.  But I figured it would be good to have a target and, with a hefty price of 7000 yen registration fee, I'll kick myself if I don't study.  Another added benefit is that the JBT, unlike the more widely taken Japanese Language Proficiency Test, is just one test despite having multiple rankings.  Basically you take the same test as everyone else, and how you do determines what level you are.  The Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) however, has a seperate test for each level, so if you fail that test you get nothing.  I know this because I took the 2nd level test (1 is highest, 4th is lowest) when I first arrived in Japan almost 2 years ago.  Apparently 4 years of university Japanese couldn't adequately prepare me because I failed quite horribly (50%).  Honestly though, anything less than 2nd level is pretty much meaningless in terms of finding a job.  While 3rd level is pretty much all you need to know for everyday communication, the gap between 3rd and 2nd is quite large; say the difference been middle school and high school level English with 1st level being roughly equivalent to low-level university.  However, I know plenty of people that have 2nd level that can't speak Japanese all that well!

Not to get off a tangent or anything, but this blog entry is pretty much stream of consciousness. I'm currently waiting on my rice to finish cooking in my rice cooker while my curry simmers on the stove.  Since coming to Tokyo I have actually started cooking more and am finding it surprisingly enjoyable.  I'll admit, it was very, very tiring at first.  I didn't know the recipes, I didn't know where the cheap grocery stores where, etc.  But now I can cook my favorite curry from memory and whip up some pork with cabbage and chicken with turnips pretty quickly as well.  The most surprisng thing though, is that its a serious stress reliever.  For one thing, it forces me to unplug from the computer for a while, and also it requires just enough concentration for me to be able to clear my head, but also provides a little downtime here and there to let me kind of work things out.  The sheer moment of joy however was when I was exiting the station and got a craving for curry, some curry I had eaten somewhere was good, where was it....oh yeah! I cooked it!  It was the first time I actually wanted to eat my own cooking versus just doing it to save money or because I was too lazy to go outside.  I could see, however, becoming less tolerant of low-level restaurants (sup Dad) and thinking to myself," This is horrible, I can cook better than this!".  Regardless, I'm quite fatuated with this curry, as you can see, it's just onions, spinach, grounded beef, curry powder, and garbanzo beans (which are awesome, who knew?) mixed with some water, salt, pepper, curry powder, and ketchup.  It's quick to cook and insanely filling.  As for the rice, the rice-cooker does all the work while the curry simmers and there ya go!  Cheap too!

Enough gushing over my own cooking and on to more manly and geekier things: Halo.  3 to be exact.  It's good, in the sense that Halo games are good.  I mean, it's the same thing, and that's a good thing, right?  Honestly, I don't know why anyone that plays FPS games on a PC would ever play this.  I know that's an elitist thing to say, but it's ok, I'm elite.  Anyway, back in the day people may have heard of this thing called a computer that played games on the internet for free.  It's amazing, and still exists today.  You too can own one, in fact, you probably have one already, just waiting to deilver "HD" graphics that we've had for 10 years (sup 1024x768).   I know PC gamers are snobs, and they have a right to be.  But the thing about Halo 3 is, it's the only console game that makes me relive the glory days on the PC, that brings it back.  Of course, Half Life 2: Orange Box has just been released so as soon as that is procured I'll probably not have a clue as to what Halo is except the girliest name for a man's game ever created.  By the way, did I mention how awesome Team Fortress 2 looks?  I'd go buy a new PC to play the thing if I thought I could get a decent ping over here...

hmm nothing much else going on....except I'm in engaged! whoop!  So it's official now, Xiaofang and I are getting married, and insanely fast too.  But, I wouldn't have it any other way.  Of course in true Dustin fashion, things are complicated.  We aren't content to have one wedding like most chumps, no sir, instead we're having 3.  One for each title in the Halo series....:P  The first one is in Japan, featuring a smaller number of guests, intense single-player action (that came out wrong!) and white kimono (yeah, no analogy there) in November.  The second is the more multiplayer of the deal with a guest list of over 150 strong and all the alcohol and cigarettes you can shake a stick at (take that Halo!), the third is to be released in the US sometime next year, but hasn't gone gold yet.  Hopefully details about the beta will be leaked soon.  People that live in Japan: expect your invitations or just sign up on facebook for the love of God.  If you don't get one, come anyway.  It's the big party with all the foreigners in Kagawa.  People outside of Japan: hold your horses (that came out wrong!) or come on over to Japan or China, now you have an excuse to do some traveling!

Now back to my curry cooking and business news, isn't being an adult grand?

figured out how to blog from my phone. in kagawa now, there should be some photos being uploaded too!

Well I guess there's so much stuff going on I haven't had the will power to do much except play games and cook when I come home, but I have been doing a ton of that; especially of the former :P  Bioshock was great, I really dug it but I did think the ending could have been better.  Stranglehold was a ton of fun and really satisfied my id, but it was of course over pretty quickly.  I've also discovered that my lag on xbox live is just unacceptable.  I don't really want to buy Halo 3 all that badly (surprisingly) but am tempted to just to test my connection playing against locals (that's pretty much the only popular online xbox game in Japan).  However, I've still got my eye on skate and Half Life 2: Orange Box comes out next week.  I think playing Team Fortress 2 with lag would just break my heart though.  So much for fiber :( I was hoping these issues would go away since moving to Tokyo, but I still haven't gotten bit torrent working either.  I want to switch service providers (you can use multiple providers with the fiber service) because I know plenty of people that use different providers and bit torrent like mad.  However the one I found requires a credit card ... a japanese credit card.  I signed up for a Japanese credit card when I got my bank account but for some reason didn't get the card.  I would go talk to the bank but of course they're open 9-3 on weekdays only.  Welcome to Japan, you're always one crucial, asinine step away from what you want to do.  But they'll always screw you in the end, count on it.

Anyway, I'm getting more involved at work more and more, and it's fun.  I still haven't gone out of the office since the last time I posted, but at least I was able to get some training with the Korea boss when he was in town.  Soon I'll go through some online training and get to do even more; I'm looking forward to it.

Still though, it feels like a cycle.  Go to work, wish I was home sitting around.  Go home, wish I was at work and not just sitting around.  I think part of it is that I feel like I'm just waiting until Xiaofang moves to Tokyo.  Like that feeling you have when you have something planned and you have about an hour until it starts; you can't start anything new but it's too long to just sit there and you are kind of at a loss as to what to do.  It's like that, only 2 or 3 months long.

Today I left the office to go to visit some potential clients.  I usually don't start work until 9 (ish) but in order to make the bullet train I left early at 7 to be safe and arrived at 7:50 at Tokyo Station.  My coworker and I caught the bullet train 8:24 heading north towards Niigata Prefecture where our two university visits for the day are located.  The metropolis of Tokyo endured surprisingly long; the 20 story baby skyscrapers of downtown gave way to packed houses and shops of the shita-machi quickly enough near Ueno before succumbing to the park-infused landscape of the suburbs with the occasional rectangular 4 story monstrosity of a shopping mall.  After Omiya we were on our way towards the country-side through a series of tunnels that despite the speed of our transport, refused to give way to sunlight.  I couldn't imagine how many thousands of hours of thousands of hands of both machine and man the tunnels must have taken to build, but it was impressive and made me want to learn more about the CCC-esque structure of Japanese construction. 

We changed to a small bus at 10:00 filled with English-speaking students 5 minutes after our arrival bound for the International University of Japan.  The meeting went quickly and the staff we met were, according to my co-worker, "like familiy".  We demonstrated some of our products and answered questions and were soon back at the station and on the bullet train for another 15 minutes before arriving at Nagaoka.  At Nagaoka station we rented a car; a Honda Fit which is a little four dour sedan much like a Toyota Prius but I'm not sure if it's a hybrid.  We then stopped for lunch at a soba restaurant and ate some noodles and tempura shrimp as quickly as we could before another meeting at 2.  The thing that struck me the most about Nagaoka is that it feels like America.  It's one of the few areas of Japan that isn't heaviliy populated like Tokyo, but still has a lot of land.  So, things are more spread out with large shopping centers and they're accompanying parking lots, a Ford dealership, McDonald's and other big Home Depot-esque "home centers".  On the way back we even saw a gun and ammunition store.  Even though guns are normally illegal in Japan, apparently if you're a hunter you can still get one with a license.  Sorry dad, I don't know what they are hunting!  But in a high snowy mountain range, I can only imagine. 

With another demonstration, this time in a large conference room reminiscent of the UN or something, we got into a discussion with some of the staff of the library for almost an hour; but that at least meant they were interested :)  By now it was almost 5 which meant....German food!  We had only an hour before our train ride home so we returned our car and destroyed some German sausages, salad, and a pizza at the local Baren Baren (I think that's what its called).  After an 8:00 arrival at Tokyo Station I was back at home by 9 after a full 14 hour day.  The great thing about traveling so far is that the company pays for you, but you still get to take all of the memories and pictures you want just the same...in between some business meetings.  It still was a long day.

This weekend turned out to be quite awesome.  Friday night I went and picked up a couple of DVDs after work, The Usual Suspects and The Inside Man, which one might say are very similar movies on some level despite being made some 10 years apart (though of course Hollywood is 90% remakes/rip offs/homages anyway).  I actually didn't get to watching them Friday night, instead opting for some Xbox 360 loving of Blue Dragon and Gears of War.  As of this writing I still haven't watched The Inside Man, but The Usual Suspects was as good as I remember and proved a good end to yesterday.  Speaking of which, I started off the Saturday kind of slow, but by 1:30 or so was on my way to Shibuya after stopping by Musashi-sakai (the station just east of me) and discovering I can send my poor Wii in to Nintendo to be fixed at no charge, including shipping.  In Shibuya I wandered around before reaching my true destination: the Apple Store.  Or as I like to call it (and the way I described it to Xiaofang), the Dustin Store.  I must say that I dig(g) the whole Apple product and marketing scheme despite knowing that it is just that, a scheme, with guiltless abandon.  However, my wallet isn't such as big a fan as I.

I showed up at 3:00 or so and got two appointments on the "concierge" service provided on two iMacs.  My appointment: 6:00 for my iPod (the sound went out in the right ear after 1.25 years of service) and my precious PowerBook G4 (it won't boot and is pretty much dead after 2.5 years of faithful and excellent service).  So with both of my beloved Apple products in need of service, I had no choice but to kill 3 hours in waiting.  Luckily with Xiaofang still living in Kagawa and me knowing exactly 3 people outside of work in Tokyo, I have nothing but free time.  So, I started wandering north, towards some park I had heard of called Yoyogi Park.  The way to the park was filled with pretty much uneventful but interesting things and pictures taken such as searching for good coffee shops, noticing the presence of a Haagen Dazs and a Tower Records, and other miscellaneous stores and restaurants in an easily livable area despite it being one of the most famous areas of downtown Tokyo. 

In about 5 or 10 minutes of walking I happened upon a wide pathway lined with trees with musicians playing guitars, bongos and singing about every 20 feet in a long row trying to get break, including a girl band on the way back.  Much to my surprise, I discovered that not only is Yoyogi Park quite nice, but it was playing host this particular weekend to a celebration of all things Brazilian.  So after indulging on a beer and nice stick of peppered meat, I was quite happy to spend the next two hours watching capoeira and a crowd go absolutely ballistic for a large Brazilian band playing what apparently were crowd favorites.  It was really a great time that I happened upon by complete circumstance.

Upon returning to the Apple Store I was told within about 5 minutes that you can either fix your iPod for 18000 yen (150 bucks, price of an iPod Nano new) or buy a 6000 yen (50 dollar) adaptor that lets you play the music out of the port that is on the bottom of the iPod used to plug it into your computer.  I opted to do nothing out of protest.

Next, I was helped by a surprisingly proficient and cool guy whose name tag read "G-man" and had most of his head buzzed except for a small swirl of hair on the top of his head.  G-man proceeded to tell me that my hard drive is pretty much fried, probably because back during the time when I was interviewing for jobs and spending more time sleeping on the train and bus than in a bed I dropped my laptop :(.  The thing was pretty much un-bootable and try as we could (for about 2 hours) we couldn't get the hard drive to move enough to back up my photos; which had we been sucessful it would have cost ... 18000 yen for a back up fee which G-man was cool enough to inform me that it was basically store/business overhead costs.  The actual service charge for fixing the computer would be 37000 yen (325 bucks) and that wasn't gauranteed to fix the problem.  I told him I would think about it and decided to grab some dinner at Wendy's around 8:00.  After a quick Bacon Burger Classic Combo (.... yeah) I went back fully with the intention to just pay the fee, forget about the photos, and be done with it.  But upon talking to G-man, my man, about the potential of there being additional problems even if I fixed the hard drive he pulled me aside and informed me that there is a place to get these things taken care of for much less in the place all things electronic in Tokyo: Akihabara.   For 5000 yen plus the cost of the hard drive, they'll take care of it and it's completely safe and legit.  I can dig it.  With my hard-won information in hand (and still all of my money) I finally went home, took a shower, and watched The Usual Suspects.

Today proved to be just as fun.  In the morning I had to go to the city office to take care of some paper work but it turned out to only take less than an hour and I was out the door.  At 1:30 I met up with a guy I met at a Starbucks randomly a couple of weeks ago and went to a rock climbing gym a couple of stops from where I work.  Even though I wasn't the best at it (i.e. worst) for my first time I had a blast and I have a nice post-gym workout feeling going on.  Basically like lifting weights only much more fun.  My friend that took me, Kousuke, is a guy that actually lives near me at the same station and is a PhD student in Biochemistry.  I'll always say, if you want to meet cool people go to a coffee shop ... in Japan anyway.

Wow that was long, time to play some Blue Dragon and maybe some of that scrumptious Call of Duty 4 beta!

Well well, what have I done since last we met?  Honestly, not much.  I was however oddly social last weekend.  Friday night was meeting my friend from university, Adam, who's been living north of Tokyo in a prefecture called Saitama.　We caught a screening of Rush Hour 3 at a movie theater located inside of an 8 story building that was quite thin.  Basically one floor, one theater, and I beileve the theater only occupies 4 floors of it; it's like seeing a movie in an office building or something, but I guess they have to put it somewhere.  Coincidentally Burger King as started trying to get back into the Japanese market after they left some years ago during a recession.  Apparently they used to be quite popular but when the Japanese economy burst into a thousand origami cranes thanks to idiotic real estate prices, they packed up shop and ran.  It was actually my first time eating Burger King since the Bangkok airport over a year ago .... and it's actually not bad.  Rush Hour 3 was, well, about the same really.  I got what I ordered at both restaurants and while I wasn't expecting sirloin and Citizen Kane (I'm assuming that's an easily recognizable metaphor for a good movie, even though I've never seen it), I still would have liked if they didn't just spend 30 minutes re-watching previous Rush Hour movies and making a checklist of things to do to take to the bank.  Basically I felt like the entire time I was waiting for the movie to start, and by the time we finally did come to the climax, I was thought," Wait, he's the main bad guy, that's it?  That's the movie?"

Anyway, it was still fun; going to the movies with a friend with popcorn and a ginger ale (... yeah), it doesn't get any better than that.  Saturday I had planned going out and seeing a festival, but I was just too tired and it was too hot, so I spent the day configuring my computer to stream RSS feeds over to my 360.  If you remember previously I set up the ability to stream stuff already downloaded, but I have since thrown those chains free and watch on demand, or as I prefer, on whim!  Of course my current bit torrent-less hell requires me to keep within the lines of the law and watch free stuff, but the number of free broadcasts over the internet is quite staggering.  I was watching Bloomberg TV last night in real time.  Pretty cool.

I just finished watching the Iowa Democratic Debate on google video and had a couple of impressions:

• All of the candidates had some good points and some bad points about them.  Overall, I felt they didnt excude the same levels of politician sliminess that I was expecting, but some of them definitely stayed on message.  I love how when asked about another candidate or really anything, they only talk about themselves, but I guess that's to be expected.
• There was very little actual debating.
• Hillary is probably the strongest candidate in terms of personality and presentation.  You can definitely tell that she's the only woman to have a serious shot at the Presidency for a reason.  But out of all of the candidates, I trust her the least (my own neurosis not withstanding)
• The main criticism of Obama is that he doesn't have much experience, and whether that is a good, refreshing thing versus a weakness.  Even though I generally like Obama, I wasn't impressed with his answers to the questions and unfortunately didn't seem to have any serious statistics, facts, or plans to back up his plans.
• The little guy, Kucinich, was pretty cool and outspoken.  He would be good as a Secretary of some kind, but he unfortunately doesn't have the appearance of a President.  His presentation is good, and he's got some good salesmanship, but unfortunately to be the QB you gotta look and act the part.
• The old guys kind of come under the same heading, they have the experience and knowledge to probably do the part, but I'm not sure they have the charisma.  As much as I hate it, being the President still requires some superficial qualities.  They would probably make good VP's that actually pull the strings a la Dick Cheney *shudder*
• Overall the Presidency requires a lot of different disciplines rolled into one person, and there just didn't seem to be anyone that was firing on all cylinders on that regard.  What do you think?

The most impressive thing was just how much the internet and freedom of information is effecting everything.  Imagine back in the days of FDR when he did the Fireside Chats versus today how different things are.  Imagine 70 years before that during the Civil War and Lincoln giving the Gettysburg Address.  Not only is the internet changing the way things are being delivered in terms of speed and distance, but also content in a big way.  CNN and YouTube paired up to deliver a bunch of user submited questions that turned out to be much more interesting than the debate itself.  I wonder if when the two young guys who thought up YouTube ever dreamed that they would provide a platform for the masses to talk to their future political representatives and I wonder what the Founding Fathers would think about such close contact between the people and their leadership; after all, this is a republic, not a democracy.  Did they dream of a priviledged elite or did they intend for us to be so intimate with our representatives?  Of course in those days there were only 2.5 million people living in the colonies versus the 300 million in the States today.

Anyway, not to get too deep about it, I was taken aback by certain aspects of the debate.  It seems immediately after giving Kucinich a chance to speak they immediately cut to a completely different topic which begs the question, just what political agenda does ABC have?  Hopefully the networks will change with each debate, because ABC seemed to do a very bad job at it.

p.s. I finally got my bank card in the mail today, yay!

I suppose we each have our own little definition of heaven.  And I'm in mine right now, that, or the endorphines are talking from the soapbox loud and proud.  Anyway (<- I hate that word but it seemed best) right now I'm sitting on my new little two seater couch (it's basically a Dustin-seater) and eating a PBJ sandwhich.  I had almost forgotten they existed, and honestly I didn't like them that much.  But now, now they are a gourmet that I treasure.  I found peanut butter, real American Skippy peanut butter, at my local grocery store and have been eating them pretty much non-stop for the past week.  The best part is, not only have I graduated to not sitting on the floor but with the addition of the company laptop running Windows, I'm streaming my favorite podcasts over to my 360 and watching them on my TV!  I literally cackled with glee upon sitting down and realizing what I now have.  If I can just get bit torrent working then I'll be in business.  I worked all day yesterday and still can't get it figured out.  I also got a new double bed delivered along with the couch, so hopefully that will work out.

       "But Dustin!", you say," you live in Japan!  What is all of this PBJ, sofa, couch, bed, and American video game podcast stuff?  Shouldn't you be chasing ninjas and eating sushi while sitting on tatami and writing haikus?  What gives man?"
       "Well, avid reader", I would say," two years of sitting on tatami hurts your back and most Japanese people now have couches and sofas anyway."  If you're looking for Asia in Japan you'll probably be kind of disappointed when they all wear clothes from the Gap and listen to hip hop.  Does that mean I should just pack up and move back to the ol' US of A?  Hmm, maybe but the food over here is still great and I'm having a good time for now.

So I'm moving ever slowly towards my dream apartment, I've got all the pieces in place (well, once bit torrent is working) now I just have to start upgrading them; bigger couch, HD TV, etc.  But it's coming along.  Work is going well so far, still kind of in the training phase.  I finally get to go out of the office on business on Tuesday which I'm looking forward to, it'll be a first for me and very exciting. 

This weekend I haven't really gone anywhere; I decided to take a weekend just to chill in the new place and get used to it, and it's going well so far.  I've played a lot of Blue Dragon and beat the first disk.  It's pretty good, a solid RPG.  I'm not sure if it's a parody of itself at times or just really that campy, but it's still fun.  I watched Heat again which is by one of my favorite if not favorite directors, Michael Mann, and even though it's twelve years old (I feel old...) it still holds up as an amazing film.  I really liked Collateral and Miami Vice as well.  I can say though, that I never want to live in LA; assuming his depiction and what nearly everyone I've ever met from there says is true.  I'm halfway through Michael Palin's Sahara which I bought back when I was in China and just now getting around to.  It's quite amazing and I'm really interested in seeing his other travel movies.  He's been making them for over 10 years, who knew?  His newest one about the Himalayas is coming out this Fall which should be interesting.

Xiaofang came up for the O-Bon holidays last weekend and stayed until Wednesday.  Having her here was certainly a nice change of pace, it's amazing how much she can lighten up the place.  Eating by yourself is just not fun; which is good I guess for saving money because I just don't go out as much.  I did recently discover though that Japan's 'Mega Mac' at McDonalds is what we would consider a Big Mac.  A Big Mac in Japan is like an American Big Mac's little brother; about half the size.  And a Royale with Cheese in France is a....

I'm going to check into streaming non-wma formats to my 360 to watch some more movies, I just can't get over how cool this is!  The digital age is amazing...

So I've been working at Ebsco a week now, it's going well so far. The first couple of days were mostly training on what products Ebsco makes and learning about their business. Luckily the lady who sits next to me's English ability is only exceeded by her kindness and she pretty much shows me what's up. I've coincidentally been learning what my brother has been up to the past two or three years of his life (sup bro!) and it's kind of cool that we both work for the same company. Over all, I'm still very excited to work for them and learn more about what I'll actually be doing. Working in a small office (even though the company as a whole is quite large) means you pretty much do whatever needs to be done; so you learn a lot of different stuff. That's the idea I had going into it and that's proving to be true thus far. So far I've been approached on doing everything from translation to customer service to pretty hardcore IT back office stuff. So in other words it fits me to a T. That's my impression for now at least. Tomorrow I'm slated to finally get some face time with the boss and figure out more about what's going on. On the home front, I quite like my apartment and it's location, but it's kind of empty without Xiaofang. The place just seems to have no soul, like a hotel or something. Only unlike a hotel, I have to pay for all of my appliances and furniture which I'm still working on acquiring. Once I have a refridgerator and a couch I'm hoping the place will feel a little more like a home. Until then, it's kind of like a hotel, only with a wooden floor instead of a place to sit. Not to sound negative, the apartment is actually quite good and a good deal from what I understand. It's certainly not a little hole-in-the-wall place either. Another good thing about the office, by the way, is that it is literally surrounded by a plethora of awesome places to eat that are reasonably, if not cheaply, priced by Tokyo standards. I've been eating large portions of Indian, Italian, yakiniku, and Chinese all for less than 1000 yen (about 8 bucks) which we consider pretty good. Meals (and by that I mean, an entre) generally don't go below 500 yen (4 bucks) even at a fast food restaurant or something (though McDonalds does have some hamburgers on it's 100 yen menu...). However, you can expect to pay 150 yen ($1.20) for a drink out of a vending machine. Isn't that a little expensive? And with the Tokyo heat (35 degrees Celsius = 95 degrees Fahrenheit) you can tear through some drinks pretty quickly if you don't watch it. By the way, the internet connection I have at the apartment is screaming fast, now I just have to figure out how to configure my router to allow bit torrents and I'm good to go. There's somethings that Japan does right, and fiber optic internet connections are one of them :P Just finished watching Batman Begins for the first time since I saw it in the theaters, it's not bad!

Originally I was going to go to Kyoto this weekend for Gion Matsuri, but it just wasn't financially feasible for me so I'm chilling at home and enjoying a 3 day weekend (Monday is Ocean Day) in the rain of the oncoming Typhoon #4. Actually, staying inside while it's raining is somehow quite nice. You're completely justified staying inside so you don't care if you spend the morning watching trailers from E3. Oh, E3? Yes it almost died, but honestly from a consumer perspective I hardly noticed a difference. Sure, people didn't release nearly the amount of new information (Microsoft) but Sony still showed some cool trailers. I'm not sure if they're 600 dollars cool or not, but my Ratchet and Clank fanboy-ness does know no bounds. However, for the moment my resources have been dedicated towards moving apartments. I sent in the last payment of 150,000 yen yesterday (yeah that hurt) bringing the grand total to 254,000 (about $2000). That covers half of the month of July, my deposit, fire insurance, and agency fee. Combine that with the 150,000 I spent going to Tokyo three times to find a job and the apartment, and you can see that I'm not making much of a profit by getting a new job, far from it actually. Let's hope it's worth it.

This weekend should be spent packing up the rest of my apartment, cleaning, and starting to move/ship things. Let's hope that happens :P I did recently buy Blue Dragon in Japanese for only 2000 yen, pretty good deal if you ask me. The reviews of it weren't that spectacular, but it's a solid RPG with good music and an interesting fight system. Maybe hardcore RPGs just don't get reviewed well any more?

Only 4 days left of work, isn't that crazy? 3 weeks from now I'll start my new job and enter the workforce for real. It's an exciting time, not to mention the drastic change of locales. Get this, I actually have a McDonald's at my station now. AT MY STATION! Kagawa prefecture had like 5 of them total. Of course it doesn't really matter, why would you live in Japan just to eat at McDonald's you ask? It's just something that happens. Living in America, of course you wouldn't care two ways about the ol' Micky D's. But once taken out of your element, taken away from pre-packaged food and grease, sometimes you just want to go back to something familiar. Oddly enough, I'm not the only one that feels this way. I've heard a lot of people refer to McDonalds as the American Embassy, it's where you go when you need a pick me up. Anyway, enough with fast food mumbojumbo, that stuff will kill ya, here's the Almost-Final Countdown.

Hiketa Junior High, Aioi Elementary, Hiketa Elementary, Hiketa Kindergarten, Heiwa Preschool, Aiikuen Preschool, Oomi Preschool, Honmachi Elementary, Shirotori Elementary, Fukue Elementary, Honmachi Kindergarten : FINISHED
Days left at Shirotori Kindergarten : 1
Days left at Fukue Kindergarten : 1
Days left at Shirotori Junior High : 1 (2 including closing ceremony)
Days of adult conversation : 0 (1 including going-away party)
Days left of work : 4
Days left until next job : 18 (including weekends)

Who is Criss Angel? I thought it was the name of some sort of TV Show or a deodorant, I wasn't sure which. Of course a quick trip to wikipedia sorted that out ... and I still don't care. I think admitted to you earlier that I'm a diehard consumer of American celebrity news. We all have our guilty pleasures right? However, I'm not sure if being unplugged from the machine means you don't know what is going on or are blissfully ignorant. Of course, in the end pop culture doesn't matter, but at the same time its kind of all we have. (This brings us to today's Dustin Essay (yay!) continue reading below).

I made the down payment on my apartment, only 97350 yen, if I remember correctly, which brings us to about 790 bucks American, that's not including the first month's rent. I can't tell you how amazingly cheap that is in Tokyo ... or maybe I told you last blog post, I can't remember. Anyway, with the exchange rate what it is right now (like 123 yen to the dollar which is so insane) I should probably bring some money back over from the States, go me! Turns out I made the right move in moving my meager assets to the States. Not only do I get interest (Japanese bank accounts have like 0.005 percent interest, go bubble economy burst!) but the dollar is appreciating like mad! I'm looking forward to the move ... this month. Honestly I looked at the calendar yesterday and had an immense sense of anxiety and dread wash over me; this year July is a month to remember.

Another reason to remember this July is, of course, Harry Potter! With the 5th movie coming out here the 13th (check your local listings) and the final book coming out the following weekend, I can't wait to see what happens! I took a trip to Osaka last weekend with my Japanese teacher and some fellow students to Osaka and picked up books 2 through 5 for Xiaofang in Chinese. They were sold out of book one so I got the movie instead and am going to start my multicultural Harry Potter campaign on her senses momentarily.

The trip to Osaka was a good one. I woke up early and met my friend from China, U-san, and his wife, Rie, at the restaurant near my house and then proceeded in their minivan-esque car to pick up our "teacher", Kubo-san. I say "teacher" because its more of a conversation class and he's 27, so we get along more like friends. We then drove a couple of hours across Tokushima and Awaji-shima to the bridge connecting Awaji-shima to the mainland and stopped at a rest stop. Luckily enough they had a donut restaurant with free-refills on coffee that help to bring me into the world of the living at 9:00. We met up with our mutual friend and former class mate, Li-san, and his wife, Jo Ka-san, at the Shanghai building in Osaka; a building full of 5-stories of Chinese shops, restaurants, and karaoke. I got Xiaofang her favorite, pig's feet, as well as the Harry Potter series and some bilingual English/Chinese magazines that are meant to be used as English readers; pretty good study. Kubo-san's friends Honda-san, a graduate student in political science, and Yoshiga-san, an English-major, also joined us at lunch. Afterwards, I conveniently forgot my cell phone (they're mailing it back to me today, isn't Japan nice?) at the lunch table and we left for our main objective, an international festival at Kubo-san's old university, Osaka Gaidai. There we danced around a big drum set up and took part in the festivities through the eating of many scrumptious delectables such as chocolate covered bananas, shaved ice, and french fries. Truly international :P After about 4 hours there we ate dinner at a Japanese sit-down restaurant called Sato. I had the breaded-pork with chawanmushi and a lot of rice. It was slightly expensive at 1300 yen but really, really delicious. From there we started the journey back to Kagawa which took us about 2 hours or so, significantly faster than the bus.

Pop Culture, Society, and History? All with the ramblings of a crazy ex-pat.

What does anything really matter? Pop culture is something that many of us know about, whether intrinsically from being plugged in such as my brother or actively seeking it out a la any loyal MTV watching mall rat. So really, whether you like it or not, it holds a powerful sway over popular opinion, culture, thought, history, and you name it. It's a conspiracy! How many kids born today inside the machine know that there was a time when you couldn't instant message your friend instantaneously? I suppose they know it, but do they know it? Do I know it? Not really. You can't see the changes history is making while you're in it I suppose, but I just one day realized what it must be like to get old; to know how things used to be and to never be able to convey it to the younger generation because they haven't and never can experience it.

Ok so all of this sounds really trippy and rather dripping with Asian ex-pat hippyness. What I mean is, you can see things that are changing but not see beyond the first or second step, you can't see how those things really impact society as a whole because it's just too big. Moreover, the people that are coming behind you and taking these things for granted are shaping the future, so in the end, you're opinion and impressions of the changes in society will become lost and obsolete opinions, even though they were probably the correct impressions. This is what we like to call history; a subject I loathed in high school because it was presented as a completely irrelevant collection of Take for example World War II. My grandparents certainly lived through that, and by that I don't mean they were alive when it happened, I mean they survived. My grandfather was a member of a B-52 Squadron (I think it was B-52) that flew out of Alaska and bombed ... Japan. So while my grandfather's youth was filled with violence and assaulting the "evil" nation of Japan, his later years were filled with much-awaited peaceful farming and carpentry in southern Alabama. During his life time highways were constructed that changed the face of the United States forever creating a habitat called a "suburb" along with all of the accompanying necessities such as a car, air conditioner, microwave, and TV. Though his boyhood was spent fishing and listening to radio adventures at night, his later years he would see technology he never thought possible. In the end though, he is amazing adaptable, still living at age 84, a full 60 years older than his grandson who now communicates from the old "evil" empire of Japan through the Internet to his friends. Of course, the Japan that existed when he fought against it doesn't exist any more. And the number of people still around that remember that Japan are fading by the day. Interestingly enough, that number is decreasing more rapidly than you would think due to Japanese decreasing population; something rare among prosperous, modern countries.

The secret to happiness is not caring what other people think, but does that give you a right to be an ass hat?

Today is my last day at Hiketa Junior High School.  I wore a suit for the occasion and I must say that walking around in 90 degree heat in a suit is unbearable; I had sweat dripping down my face at my going away speech.  How can I survive in Tokyo like this?  I guess I'll figure something out.  You see, Japan, unlike most of the rest of the world, is still very, very formal.  So even in the summer in 95 degree heat with Georgia-like humidity, you're still wearing a suit.  And you're not driving around in a car, you're packed in a train commuting to work in the world's largest city.  I'm looking forward to it.

Hiketa Junior High School has been good to me.  I learned a lot about Japan and a ton about education here.  I met my favorite teacher and good friend, Mrs. Arioka, and from then on really became to love this school despite not having many classes and having to kill countless hours in the teachers' room.  Unfortunately in the Japanese school system, teachers are transfered once about every 3 years in a process in which about a week before the beginning of each school year they announce the transfers and you're suddenly gone.  It's quite insane and no one seems to like it, I have no idea why they do it that way but "that's the way it is".  Although I was unhappy to see her go, I'm also kind of happy that she's not here because it would be that much harder to say goodbye from this place with her here.  With her, and a few other teachers who I've become friends with, transfered, I can walk away knowing that they've moved on and so can I.  I think, however, I'll at least get to see her again at my final farewell party next month.  In July, you see, I'm going back to Shirotori to teach at those schools for one last go around until the final closing ceremony on July 20th before Summer Vacation.  Once that starts, its one more final going away party from the Board of Education on the 23rd, my last Japanese class and going away party on the 24th, and then (hopefully) moving to Tokyo on the 25th. 

I've finally found an apartment in a "little" city called Kogane-i that I think will be a great fit.  The apartment is a 2DK with a larger than usual kitchen/dining room at around 10 "jo", or the size of 10 tatami mats laid out.  Yes, Japan measures the sizes of room using tatami mats, but, oddly enough, it's an easy way to understand how big the room is.  The apartment also has two other rooms that are 6 jo each ( or 98 sq ft).  One room is tatami or "Japanese style" the other one is "Western Style", i.e. wooden flooring.  Oddly enough, the door way above the Western style room is much bigger than the Japanese style room, even though the extra room above the shorter doorway is wasted space; I'll show you a picture later.  Another nice thing about the apartment is that it is only 5 minutes walk from the station, Higashi Koganei.  Which is, needless to say, a dream compared to the 15 minute walk my current apartment is.  That 10 minutes is all the difference in the world when you're carrying groceries in the rain.  Which brings us to another good point of the apartment, it's near a McDonald's!  Finally, I can enjoy egg mcmuffins for breakfast and grab the occasional McFlurry.  It's about time.  Honestly I hated McDonalds in America but now I love it to death.  We also have a MOS Burger next to the station as well, which is quite delicious. 

Well this was supposed to be a blog about leaving Hiketa Junior High School, my main base school and what I think of when I think of JET.  But I guess it just goes to show you that while I loved my experience here, all I can think about is the next step.  Maybe that's due to the face that I just got off the phone with my real estate agent.  Maybe not.  Regardless, I'm heading to the bank today to wire the money for my first month's rent.

I also don't leave for another month, so I guess it hasn't quite sunk in yet that I'll be moving.  I guess we'll see!

Here's the Next, but not yet Final, Countdown

Aioi Elementary School : Finished
Hiketa Elementary School : Finished
Hiketa Kindergarten : Finished
Heiwa Kindergarten/ Preschool : Finished
Oumi Preschool : Finished
Aiikuen Preschool : Finished
Days Left at Hiketa Junior High School : 0
Days left at Shirotori Junior High School : 7 (not including closing ceremony)
Days left of Adult Conversation Class : 2 (not including farewell party)
Days left of Work : 15 (including today and closing ceremony) ( 22 including weekends in total)
Days left until new job : 33 (including weekends)

A little bit of exercise goes a long way.  Having just come off of a little jog up the coast near my house, I can say you get about double the amount of time out of exercise as you put into it.  Or rather, I jogged for about 30 minutes, but for some reason I'll be super productive for about the next hour.  Some might argue that I'm on some sort of endorphin (firefox tells me I'm spelling that wrong, but my superior intellect prevails) rush or perhaps that exercise stimulates the brain and the rest of the body.  This is no doubt true, but I find it's more like I suddenly regain the appreciation of sitting on my ass, and now am quite happy to do anything to continue doing just that, including answering email, writing pointless blog posts, and transferring money across bank accounts to pay my loathsome credit card.  I hope you enjoy it while it lasts.  If you find this blog entry suddenly end and hear the revving of car engines in Forza 2, you'll know the hour is up.

I actually encountered my friend John as I was jogging.  I haven't talked much about him before, but he's an interesting guy.  He was a camera dude in the 80s and 90s and lived in Ireland for about 10 years.  There he met his wife while working as the manager at a Japanese restaurant and then moved to Japan to my little town.  His daughter is perhaps the cutest little girl in creation and that cuteness is magnified when she speaks English.  For some reason watching kids learn a language fascinates me, maybe because I'm trying to pick up language learning tips from them, but his daughter especially.  I wonder if my kids will have to do the same thing; learning two languages at once.  Though if things keep go the way they're going, will my kids be learning 3 languages at once?  Crazy.  Anyway, it's an interesting thought, and it's cool to see them just pick it up two languages at once; and not only that, but distinguish the two.  Some how she knows that this is daddy's language, you use this language to talk to strange white people.  And you use this other group of words to talk to mommy's people that are everywhere.  But what about that big foreigner we just met jogging down the road?  He talked to me in both, what's wrong with him?  Doesn't he know you can't do that?  I guess that's where I have to apologize, I'll never speak both languages as well as she will, and I have to admit, I'm a little jealous.

I've been watching Battlestar Galactica (BSG) Season 1 religiously now (so say we all) and I gotta say that it is expectedly created for me.  Those of you reading this (Aaron) will know why.  Not only that, it's a good story.  At first I was wishing for a little more action, I never expected this show to be one of those, you know, girl drama things.  But I couldn't be happier at the story, it's great so far and they find a way to comment on current events without being heavy-handed or completely leftist whackos.  Good times.  I couldn't be more happier with the plotlines now, and it's got some good action scenes when they are there.  There are also some great, great scenes (no more Mr. Nice Gaius) in general that are borderline geeky fan service, I love it.  I highly recommend you (Zack, Dad) go watch it.

Forza 2 is so gripping, I had no idea I liked racing games this much, and Shadowrun is basically a time vortex into which I sacrifice my time, life, and internet connection in return for teleporting madness.  If only I was better at it, but I dig it a lot.  It is also serving to hype me up for Team Fortress 2, a game that has been in the making since I was in middle school I believe.  I still have fond memories of my brother kicking me off of the net connection over our 28.8 modem to call his girlfriend.  Ah, back in the day when connecting meant you couldn't use the phone line, who can imagine such a thing?  (Sorry Aaron).

I think we finally decided on an apartment.  Now we've just got to get a guarantor and it's ours, now let's just hope that they don't sell the thing before we can get that taken care of.  It's a nice place, only 25 minutes from Shinjuku and roomy.  I"ll keep ya posted.

Curiosity didn't kill the cat, it just took it to a higher plane of existence.

Well, I'm back from Tokyo, again.  I'm sitting on another one of those "I slept on the bus and am not sleepy but not awake" hangovers that are lovingly handed out upon waking up and getting off the bus in the span of 5 minutes.  It's been 2 hours or so now, made the commute to work and am now reading the Internet.  We found some decent places; one of which we like pretty well, but I think it's in the country.  Yes, it's still in Tokyo.  Yes, it's only 25 minutes from Shinjuku.  And yet, it's still in the country.  But I guess for our price range and for how big we want the place to be, sacrifices will be made.  But after spending two years in a town that even the Big Brain doesn't know about, you'd be wary too.  Tokyo is a glorious land, a land of McDonald's and Starbucks on every intersection, and while I know I can get those things every where I go, I still wish I didn't have to get on a train for them.  We're gonna keep looking, but the place is nice and only about 5 minutes away from the station.  We'll hear back from another agency Thursday about another apartment closer into the city, but its such a good deal (close in, cheap, big) that basically I'm trying to conceive of what's wrong with it. 

You see, searching for an apartment in Tokyo is basically trying to balance three things: location, size, and money.  You can't have all three, that's the way it works.  And this place, well on the surface it seems to be breaking that rule by offering all 3, so something must be wrong with it.  We didn't get to see it, but we'll get pictures and see if we want to go back up and look at it.

After much convincing and eating at Chinese restaurants to build up her strength, I managed to coax Xiaofang into going and eating Mexican food with me at the much-lauded El Torito on Saturday night.  We had to go to another location in Ikebukuro since our much loved Shibuya one had closed for some reason.  But the food was still top-notch even though I thought the service was lacking and for some reason Iced Tea isn't all you can drink anymore.  Of course, drinks aren't usually free refills in Japan, they're stingy as hell!  Though oddly enough you can pay $4 for a standard beer but get all you can drink beer for as little as $12 at some places.  But free refills on Coke?  Never!  I told you Japan makes no sense.  We also found a Chinese lunch buffet near the office in Koenji.  It kind of reminded me of a Chinese lunch buffet in the States, but inside of an old wooden building you could easily imagine in Hong Kong along with authentic food.  Ok, perhaps that's nothing like in the States, but the egg drop soup was top notch and they had Xiaofang's favorite, pig's feet.  Yes...she's an interesting girl that one...

Did I mention Forza 2 and Shadowrun are in the mail and should be arriving in day now?  I eagerly await their arrival and the forthcoming customization of my new virtual Nissan 350Z.  I'll take a picture of it for the blog; modern videogames are cool like that and are beginning to feature web integration.  Pretty sweet!  I ordered some parts from Divineo and am proud to say that I replaced the analog controller in my PSP by myself.  An easy fix of undoing a couple of screws and replacing a part, but it was my first time (it was gentle).  So now I'm playing Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops on the way to work.  And, like every other good PSP game, it's a great game, great graphics, and would be amazing...if the damn controls didn't suck.  Sony, two analog sticks, please!  And one's that don't suck or break.   I realized after looking at an array of wires that would make Tetsuo from Akira squirm, that since I started carrying my PSP I have 4 electronic devices on me; PSP, DS, cell phone, and iPod.  I would have 5, but I got a dictionary for my DS so I don't carry that around any more.  So here's what I need.  Sony, go make me a PSP phone that has a 6GB hard drive in it.  Make it easy to carry with a long battery life and release some good PSP games.  I'll gladly pay you 600 bucks or whatever, just do it.

The apartment search continues, but here's the countdown so far:

Aioi Elementary School : Finished
Hiketa Elementary School : Finished
Days left at Hiketa Junior High School : 5
Days left at Shirotori Junior High School : 7 (not including closing ceremony)
Days left of Adult Conversation Class : 4 (not including farewell party)
Days left of work : 24 (including today and closing ceremony)
Days left before next job : 44 (including weekends)

This weekend was set away for saving money, i.e. not going anywhere and just playing games and trying to save my wallet.  Well, the not going anywhere worked out ok; except for going out for band practice on Friday night (I even took the normal train both ways to save cash), I stayed in our little town the entire time.  Unfortunately, Saturday afternoon started with a casual," Hey, let's go get some lunch" and ended with a " we really ate 23 bucks worth of sushi?".  Dinner started with similar innocuous beginnings such as," I'm not really that hungry."  and "We could just go get some ramen?" and ended with "We found a great new restaurant and we really ate 50 bucks worth?".  It was good though.  The new place we found has a little boat shaped area around the bar and serves some killer fried chicken and mabu-dofu.  I'd recommend it if I wasn't 1 of 3 foreigners that live here and can read this blog.

Shadowrun.  SHADOWRUN!!! Who knew I'd become obsessed with this game?  Let me correct that, the beta of the game.  I'm playing a half-mast version that only has half of the races, magic, and tech in it.  I can only imagine the insanity of the full game.  One demo took this game from being what I considered a laughing-stock cash-in on Microsoft's part to a burning obsession that successfully ate up roughly 10 hours of play time this weekend and about 48 hours (assuming I dreamed of it) thinking time.  It's one of those games that you just have to have one more round.  It's like Counterstrike and Halo on crack.  Teleportation, flight, swords, seeing through walls, resurrection, it just doesn't get any better.  And it requires some serious teamwork and strategy.  There's a lot of nay-sayers out there trashing this game, but don't believe it.  It's fun as hell, and this is coming from someone who usually eschews online FPS games.  But this has character building in it.  It's the only FPS that people have actually brought up WoW in the same conversation with, if that tells you something.  Should you go troll/minigun tank?  Ninja elf?  Dwarf shaman?  Human tech specialist?  The combinations are endless, usually resulting in my death.  But its a game that even when I'm dead, I'm watching the best players and trying to see what they're doing.

But Dustin you say, what about the 'no games until Tokyo' policy?  Well friends, fate has happened to put Xiaofang and I's one year anniversary (man that went fast!) on this Tuesday, and she has graciously agreed to buy the game as a present, which is clearly outside of the no buying games policy.  Certainly receiving games is ok!  Coincidentally, Forza Motorsport 2 is also out, which is making me really wonder as to what to ask for.  Shadowrun, or Forza?  I'll admit, I almost bought both this afternoon, I had the credit card info all put in and everything, just waiting to summon the Forces of Good in Hong Kong and have them ship me their merry delivery.  I still might, I mean if I dropped 50 bucks on food can't I buy some video games?  I guess that's the mentality that spent all of my money in the first place...

Ok here's a quick countdown (not quite yet the final one, when that comes, the title of the post will change accordingly, I assure you)

34 School Days left
42 days left until I start my new job (!) in Tokyo
1 day remaining at all of my elementary schools and kindergartens
6 adult conversation classes left
13 days of vacation left (I could almost take off half of my remaining time :P)

So Paris is out of jail after 3 days.
Lindsay is in rehab again.
Britney is out.
I love celebrities.  I love knowing that having money isn't the source of happiness.  Celebrities are horrible role models, luckily they're not supposed to be.  It's hard to see what happens to people when they have a ton of money and little or no responsibility at a young age.  Honestly, I'm glad that I don't have to deal with it.  You can't have happiness with out some pain, can't have success without some failure, and you can't have a goal without something to work at to get there.  If you had limitless money and nothing to do it would be horrible.  Of course, if you had a lot of money you could be like Bill Gates and actually do something good for the world.  I'll tell you something horrible: I love to read celebrity gossip.  When I lived in the States I didn't care, but after being unplugged from the system for a little bit, I discovered I really liked reading about what was going on, but in fast forward.  You see I'd only make it to the book store with English magazines about every 6 months, so I 'd read something like," Brad and Jennifer's relationship is on the rocks."  And the next time it'd read," Brad marries Angelina."  It's a lot more exciting that way.  That stuff is admittedly pointless, but the fact that I learned something valuable from it isn't.

For some reason the other day, I was reading about how Lindsay Lohan was found crouched over a bunch of cocaine, doing lines off of a toilet seat in plain public view while hopelessly addicted to a substance with out even realizing it.  I don't have any personal experience with drugs, but I can understand addiction on some level I guess.  And for some reason after watching someone who has more opportunity, money, and youth than most people squander it as a slave, I felt pretty good.  If someone like that can squander their life and subject themselves to something as dumb as a powder, then I'm doing pretty good.  I'm not anyone or anything's slave. 

What does worry me is the example that these people set for other people.  I recently gave the girls in my English club some issues of Seventeen magazine (I feel so old, I'm describing all of this like I'm 60 or something).  Anyway, I felt obligated to read what was inside (Ok I admit, Scarlett Johansson was on the cover and she's kapow!) because I didn't want to give 14 year old girls what amounts to an American sex manual without knowing what was inside.  Not that I'm a staunch conservative or anything, but I didn't want to get fired :P Luckily enough, and I was actually surprised, that the stuff inside wasn't half bad.   Anyway, it seemed innocent enough, it did have "Secrets to a Guy's Body" on the front, which actually turned out to be pretty tame with just sex ed kind of stuff in it, nothing really dirty.  Anyway, as I was reading it I realized that there's probably thousands of young girls that read this magazine like it's the handbook to sex and relationships and God's Holy Scripture.  Do they think to take this stuff with a grain of salt?  Even if they did, what would they have to compare it to?  What is a good source to learn this stuff from?  I would want to say they should learn it from their parents.  But thinking of the common household situation in America that probably doesn't make any sense.  And you sure as hell wouldn't want to learn it from your common Japanese parent, they'd probably have you liking people dressed as a cartoon character with boobs the size of a Star Destroyer and tell you that if you don't get married by the time you're 25 then you're doomed. 

I digress; what is a good way to teach children the honest truth about the world?  In modern society I think that we have to deal with things that most people never dreamed of.  We have technology, no, we've been blessed with technology to communicate with more people than we ever dreamed of before, travel around the world in a day, keep up to date on the latest news and are generally brought together more as a people than ever before.  But that comes at a cost of potentially being further apart individually.  I hope that there's some way to convey these things to young people (including myself) and people that are little older as well.

In the end I just hope that when some girl that's 14 looks at Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton, or whoever else it is that they get their fashion advice from, they realize that these people are good for fashion (if you like sunglasses that make you look like The Fly) but you shouldn't learn everything from them, and, in some ways, you should pity them.

Well, I'm back from Tokyo Insanity 2007 Super Expensive Wallet Raping Edition.  After having spent the majority of the pass two weeks actually in or in transit to Tokyo, I can say that I like the city pretty well.  I'm not sure about living there; it's busy, it's crazy, it's more expensive than should be possible.  And there's the cost of moving in.  So imagine this scenario, if you will.  You're paying 100,000 yen a month for a 2 bedroom apartment that's perhaps 50 square meters.  That's about 800 bucks a month because right now the yen is insanely weak (I should just move all of my money back into Japan right now....).  Then they ask you to pay 2 months rent deposit, 1 month rent key money, and another month's rent for the agency fees and 5,000 yen a month in maintenance.  So you're talking 3,300 bucks American JUST TO MOVE IN.  Plus another 50 bucks a month on top of your rent.  It's enough to make me want to puke.  No wonder their economy burst back in the 80s due to real estate inflation.  A 100 years ago one months rent would be enough to buy a house 10 times over.  But I guess that's economics for you, especially for a country that's occupied by a foreign power.  So far I've found some places to move in to that are not quite as expensive, but the lowest I've found is around 200,000 yen, so about 1600 bucks, which I think I can swing.  Still, I probably should go outside too much for the next two months :P

It seems like there's always more video games, but I'm slowing down and trying to beat the ones I have.  I've completed Crackdown pretty much as humanly possible, at least for me anyway.  And yet I still only have half of the achievement points, they pretty much expect you to go crazy.  I still haven't beaten Oblivion or Viva Pinata or the Godfather, which should provide hours of entertainment for the next couple of months.  I'm trying to not buy another game until I get to Tokyo.  I'll let ya know how it goes.  Forza 2, cheap versions of Burnout 3 and Dead Rising, Command and Conquer 3.  There's some good stuff out there, but I think I can resist.

Tokyo was good though.  Had a couple of job interviews that I think went well and things are shaping up.  I'm excited to start something new at this point.  JETs been a good program though, I just hope I can make the transition well.  The funny thing about Tokyo is that it feels a lot more like Japan than the rest of Japan for me.  Maybe because it's got the whole crazy techno thing going on that everyone probably thinks when they think of Japan.  But it's also got old school Japanese temples, sumo, ladies in kimono, and everything else all mixed with the skyscrapers, neon lights, and commercial insanity that Tokyo brings.  And no one stares at you because you're a foreigner.  In fact, they probably do the opposite and don't pay any attention to you, I love it.  For now anyway.  It's nice to get some relief from living in a town where if I go out and buy a Coke it might make the newspaper "NEWSFLASH!  Foreigner actually lives here and buys a drink.  Turn to page F1." 

The real world sucks, shouldn't I just go back to the JET dream?