TheLeong.com Blog

Bull (as in 'Year of,' not the Night Court guy)

2008-12-31T07:27:00.002-05:00

Well, here we are at the final day of 2008. It's 7:30AM and I've been awake for the past 3 hours because of jet lag, which is terrible because in about 27 hours I leave on a plane back to Japan where I'm sure reverse jet lag is going to really screw me up.

It's been a good trip home. Got back into St. Louis on Christmas Day, and had the big family dinner. After that I spent the week mostly relaxing around my parents house, going shopping here and there, visiting some friends, etc. It seems like the older I get the more satisfied I am with just staying in the house when I come back to visit. I don't feel the need to go out and "see the town" every night. It's not that it's not great to see people, but especially when I'm jet lagged, I see nothing wrong with staying at home and falling asleep before 10. I hate to think that part of that has to do with becoming old. After all, I have passed the quarter of a century mark, meaning that I only have a few more hundreds of years to live. Oops, I mean less than that.

So how was everyone's 08? For me...I guess it was normal? It wasn't an especially bad year, but I can't say that it was an amazingly great year either. Just a normal year. It's not like I'm depressed or anything, but I'm not the kind of guy to say "wow that was such a great year! omglololowtf". 2008 was just a normal year, which in my book is a good thing. I went to China, finally started working full-time again, soon thereafter decided that working as a Japanese salaryman wasn't exactly for me, and thus even figured out the next step in life. I'm looking forward to 2009 as a year I finally start working a job where I can both dedicate myself to work and actually get paid for it at the same time. It may very well be a first for me.

So that was just a short post to close out the year. Thanks everyone for all your help, etc over the past 12 months. I'm looking forward to a great 2009 and hope everyone has the same. I'll also hopefully be traveling a lot more in the coming year, so if you're living in the US and have been crying your eyes out every night for the past year or two hoping that you'd see me again, we might be able to arrange that. Happy New Year everyone!

.003 years left til senility

2008-12-24T17:49:00.000-05:00

Time for some random "statistics" that no one will really find interesting, I'm just writing this to kill time on the monorail.

Approximate time I'll get home tonight��9:45PM
Hours until flight to US: about 19.5
Current packing completion rate: 0.0%
Estimated sleep time tonight: 0 hours
Current age: 24.997
Favorite food: St. Louis style pizza

The end.

America here I come. Hells yes.

Winding down December

2008-12-19T01:16:00.001-05:00

As strange as it seems, December and 2008 are just about over. I'll be heading back to the US on Christmas for a week, staying in St. Louis to see the fam and plan new job* related stuff. Hard to believe the year's this far along. Thank god I've only got 3 more days of work this month.

Last weekend we had a bonenkai (˺ǯ��), the year-end party that Japanese people like to do. It literally means "party to forget the year," probably because most Japanese people hate their lives so much they have to drink copious amounts of alcohol to forget how painful the past 12 months have been, only to get drunk in January at their new years parties to begin the cycle anew**. Our was a lot of fun though, with 25 people racking up a 100,000 yen bill (about a grand in USD) at the first party, followed by all-night karaoke. Here's a pic I stole from Andy's Facebook of the survivors who made it for McDonald's breakfast at 5AM on Sunday morning:

Since I decided to write a blog at about 1:30AM again when I should have been asleep at 11, here's just a quick rundown of what I need to do/will do before leaving for the US on Christmas Day.

Fri 12/19 - work, then department's bonenkai
Sat 12/20 - sleep, x-mas shopping, Goi school bonenkai, maybe karaoke with Chiba school
Sun 12/21 - x-mas shopping for real
Mon 12/22 - work, get home late, then sleeeeep because Tuesday's...
Tue 12/23 - another BS holiday, "The Emperors Birthday!" shopping and packing.
Wed 12/24 - work, stay up all night packing
Thu 12/25 - try and scam the airline counter girl into giving me a free upgrade since it's my birthday (25 on 25!), fly, get home and eat way good food, sleep for 2 days

*It's pretty fishy, haHA!
**Just kidding; the Japanese don't really drink to forget the year. They do it because they're a nation of alcoholics.

Levar Burton

2008-12-15T01:46:00.002-05:00

I don't read books. OK that's not totally true, but I was thinking just now about how I very rarely read books these days. I used to read a lot of books, but now I can't remember the last time I actually read a full one from start to finish, excluding textbooks or other study materials like the ones I used for JLPT a few weeks ago. It might have been as long ago as the spring, maaaaybe the early summer, when I went to the Chiba library last. I'm not including comic books or magazines in this either, although I read a lot of those, in both English and Japanese.

So I don't read books, but I still read a lot. About 90% of what I read now is on a computer screen, either being news, personal and professional blogs, or other stuff you read online that is of another genre altogether. I live by Google Reader, and on average probably read at least 50 articles or entries a day. Sure a lot of them are short, but it adds up! I skim the headlines of around 4 or 500 entries a day, judging by the "unread item count" that Reader shows me whenever I log on. I go through everything fairly quickly, read or star the entries that most interest me, then mark everything else as read, allowing me to keep track of what's new the next time I get on. (Am I using Reader wrong? Is there a way to mark stuff as not new, but not read?)

Anyway where I've been trying to get to after the previous 2 paragraphs of mental diarrhea is this: is not reading books bad? Sure I'm reading stuff, but what benefits do bound stacks of paper have versus images on a computer screen? I suppose I don't read novels so much, either on paper or digitally. I don't read things that are that long. Wait - maybe that's what the difference is. Has my attention span shrunk so much by technology that I'd rather stare at stuff on my screen* than flip through pieces of paper? Digital stuff is so much more convenient and portable. And I know there are a lot of pretentious uppities out there who will say I'm less intelligent for not reading books, but these are the same people who read goth novels with no real value other than to look emo and boring at Starbucks. No thanks.

Just some random thoughts. I think I'm going to try and read more in '09. Maybe that will be my resolution of sorts. But right now I need to get some sleeeeep. Get to da choppa!

*like you are doing at this very moment

JLPT 2008 Carnivale Extravaganza

2008-12-11T23:08:00.000-05:00

On Sunday I went totally unprepared head-first into Level 1 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Exam (��ܸ�ǽ�ϻ��), the same exam I took Level 2 0f a year ago and somehow miraculously passed. OK, that was a lie - I actually did study, but only for a week and a half so I might as well have not even tried. From the beginning I wasn't planning to pass Level 1 this year, so it's all good. It was at least a good thing to try it to see how much I can improve between now and next time. Starting in 2009 they're offering the test in both summer and winter here in Japan, as opposed to only in the winter like they've done up to now. So now I have two chances to take it next year, and I think I can do it in '09. But we'll see. Just like last year, it was kind of fun getting back into studying. I've been living here so long but almost never actually study. Sure, you learn stuff by exposure, but sitting down with a textbook is definitely a better way to learn.

And now that I've (re)learned that lesson, I will forget about it until next test time.

Just like last year, being in a flood of other foreigners is always a painful experience. I'm pretty much always complaining about the other foreigners around here, but when you bring a whole bunch of them together in one place you really see the cream of the crop. I suppose I should instead say the cream of the crap, because wow. Since I don't want this entry to be longer than necessary, let's just do a quick summary of some of the many things that irked me between sessions of getting pounded by a ridiculously difficult Japanese exam:

On the train (yes, that early into the game) there was a group of about 6 foreigners on one side of the car. Just by a quick guess, I'd say there were a few Chinese, a South American, an Italian, and some other generic sleazy looking guy. They were calling their Japanese teacher on the phone attempting jokes and just being obnoxious. I'm sure their Japanese teacher is annoyed enough by having to teach these scabes in class (at some kind of language school?), let alone getting a phone call at 8AM on a Sunday.
The mass flood of foreigners (90% Asian) from the train station to the test site, which was about 15 minutes on foot this time. Also slow-walking women are always a pain when they block the entire sidewalk.
Several groups of foreigners "practicing" by "speaking" Japanese to each other during the breaks. I put "speaking" in quotes because they must have been Level 4 or so and thus can barely make sentences. Foreigners unnecessarily speaking Japanese to each other bothers me enough already.
In the test room: the chick next to me looked like a young, Korean version of Mimi from The Drew Carey Show. Gross.
In the test room: the middle-aged Chinese guy sitting directly in front of me smelled like an antique store. I don't know how else to describe it. I think it was his puffy coat, which must have been stored in an ooooooold dresser for about 5000 years. And his back was less than a foot away from my nose.
Korean guy outside who started speaking to me in Korean. I replied in Japanese saying I wasn't Korean, and that I was American. He kept going in Korean. I got my phone out to ignore him, and he reverted to staring at me as if waiting for me to finish so I could resume "conversation."
On the way out, the Korean guy from before saw me and made eye contact, waiting for me to say something to him. I did not.

OK so the bullet points didn't help shorten the length of this entry. But yeah just wanted to share those tidbits of complaint with you. This year saw a sharp decrease in the appearance of Asian chicks with emo glasses, but there was unfortunately a large influx of Asian chicks wearing Ugg Boots, which is by far worse.

+100 HP? BS!

2008-12-10T23:53:00.000-05:00

This morning when I got to my office building I headed into the convenience store in the lobby to pick up a snack (breakfast) and a drink, as I do pretty much every day. Today I saw that they were selling the Final Fantasy Potion drink, this time promoting the Dissidia game that I'll probably never get to play.

They'd sold that drink a few times in the past, for various FF promotions, but I never got around to trying it. Well this morning I did, and it is awful. Haha, seriously. They could have just put Sprite or Coke in a Final Fantasy-branded can and it would sell just as well over here I'm sure. Instead they tried to make some kind of funky energy drink that just tasted like watered down Red Bull or something. Every time I took a sip I made some goofy, twisted face. Is that how you replenish HP?

I just read all the info on that Wikipedia site (the one I linked to above), and I guess the black can of Potion I had today was "bittersweet muscat" flavored, while the also available white cans are grapefruit. I don't think I'm going to bother spending 200 yen on a can of grapefruit potion, since there's no way it's going to be good.

Post-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving victory dinner

2008-11-30T12:26:00.002-05:00

I had all but given up on a Thanksgiving-ish meal here in Japan, since pretty much the only place you can normally eat turkey around these parts is Subway, which is pretty expensive and also annoying because if you order a footlong sub they assume you're splitting it with a family of 10. They also don't sell chips.

On Thursday after work I grabbed some Burger King in Funabashi after my lesson, figuring that since I can't eat turkey I might as well eat something American. KFC is all over the place here, but as we discovered in 2006 it's also not nearly as good as fried chicken back in the States. At some point during that day I wrote a 1-line message on mixi, the Japanese equivalent of Facebook, saying "I want to eat turkey." My friend Yoko replied on there saying that her restaurant had turkey that day, and I should have come.

W H A A A A A A A T ! ? ! ? !

Several e-mails later on Friday, I found out that Outback Steakhouse in Makuhari, where she works, still had some turkey left and she could save an order for me if I could make it. Damn right I could make it. I headed there straight after teaching in Soga, and enjoyed a Thanksgiving dinner with Bryan and Brian. The meal was roast turkey, a sliver of cranberry sauce, masked potatoes, broccoli, unlimited bread, and 7,000 "G'Day mates!" Overall it was really good and probably the closest to a real American Thanksgiving dinner I could expect around here. Also I think Bryan made the waiter pee his pants in fear. Thanks Yoko for saving the day.

I think my phone makes the food look bad; it looked way good in real life.

day

2008-11-27T23:54:00.000-05:00

What's Turkey Day without turkey? Well, just a regular old day here in Japan. I worked late, grabbed some Burger King in Funabashi after my lesson, and pretty much had the most un-festive Thanksgiving ever. Oh well.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, especially those who are able to eat turkey and pig out on this day like you should. I'll be sure to eat twice as much turkey come Christmas in St. Louis.

Oh, and on a 500% completely different subject, have you ever seen a deaf person talk on a cell phone? I think I saw it for the first time today. No, I'm not talking about someone partially deaf screaming into a handset. Since a lot of Japanese cell phones have video conference-ish cameras, you can do video calls. The guy I saw outside the station was signing at his phone. At first I thought it was some crazy guy trying to hex his phone, but I'm pretty sure he was using sign language (with 1 hand?).

Land of the Rising Bear

2008-11-15T20:07:00.000-05:00

I'm on my last night in Kumamoto (��), where I've been on a business trip for the past 5 days. I left Tokyo on Monday evening after working as usual in Shinjuku. It was my first time to use Haneda Airport, so I guess that was kind of cool. I was a bit surprised at how smooth the whole process was. Since it was a domestic flight, I didn't have to worry about showing ID ever, was only going for a short time so didn't have much luggage, and slept the entire 2 hour flight. It felt more like riding on a local train than getting on an airplane. I guess since nowadays pretty much the only time I fly is to go between Japan and the US, I was mentally preparing for a huge ordeal of ridiculous security checks and other stupid warnings against the terrible threat of bottles of water.

Arrived in Kumamoto and hopped on the last bus from the out-in-the-middle of nowhere airport to my hotel at the Kumamoto Kotsu Center (��ܸ��̥��󥿡�). The hotel was actually pretty nice, despite being so cheap. A big part of this was due to the fact that they didn't have any single rooms available when I checked in, so I got a triple instead. Since it was 3 twin beds instead of 1 bigger one I guess that wasn't so great, but my room was massive, so I think it was worth it. Got up bright and early Tuesday to start teaching. This week was a similar intensive seminar to a few I've done in the past, but my class this time was really young compared to the ones I did before for the same organization. That was pretty sweet.

Let's see... what else did I do of note while here? I tried Kumamoto ramen, which is supposed to be famous. It was really good, but to be honest, ramen is ramen and I think local specialties are just another one of those things Japanese people like to harp on about. I did try basashi (�ϻɤ�), which I understand being more special because it's harder to find in other places. Basashi is raw horse meat, which sounds gross for two reasons (raw meat and horse), but it was actually pretty good. I tried 3 different kinds: straight up raw horse meat, raw fat from some part of the horse (near the mane, maybe?), and the liver. (see pic below) All of it was a lot better than expected, but also mega expensive. Tried some different Kumamoto shochus, fried horse cutlet skewers (��), and another local dish called karashi renkon (�ɻҥ�󥳥�), which is lotus root stuffed with mustard. It was an expensive meal, but I talked to the mother and daughter working for like 2 hours while I ate, and then with some old alcoholic dude who showed up a little bit before I left.

On Thursday night I went out with my students to a nabe restaurant then karaoke, which was a lot of fun. With my students all being around my age, I think it was easier for me to hang out with them and not feel like I was just entertaining a bunch of old people. One student drank so much that the next morning during class he had to leave to go puke. I don't think I've ever had a student do that, haha. I'm coming back here in January to teach the second half of this seminar, and I think I'll have the same class. Either way they all want to go out again, so that'll be cool.

I'm staying at the Kumamoto Royal Hotel now, which is nice and cheap but not as good as the Kotsu Center Hotel. The bathroom feels like an airplane lavatory and the location is a little further away from the main drag. It's OK though, since it's only for 2 nights. Today I went around to do a little sightseeing after sleeping a ridiculously long time. Waking up for 4 days straight at 6AM does that to you. I got to see the Kumamoto Castle (��ܾ�), which is "one of the great castles of Japan." It was pretty sweet, but it started raining in the afternoon so I had to cut my sightseeing short at that. I did some shopping in the afternoon and have been spacing out for the past few hours in a Popeye net cafe. I'll probably crash early tonight before waking up and flying back to Tokyo in the morning. Having a party with Matt and other old co-workers at night, then back to work as usual on Monday.

This was a good trip overall but I was pretty tired almost the entire time. I didn't get any JLPT studying done, although I naively thought I would. Oh well. I'll upload better/more pictures when I get home - these are just from my cell phone.

Suuuuuuuushay

2008-11-10T01:32:00.001-05:00

If memory serves me right, on Saturday I went with Brian and his replacement at Chiba school, Andy, to the Kappa Sushi close to my apartment. It's a kaiten-sushi, where the sushi plates go around on a conveyor belt and you grab what you want. It's awesome because everything is only 100 yen. We decided to have a contest to see who could eat the most, and the results were horrilble for all. I think Andy ended up with about 14 plates, Brian with 21, and me with 22. Even though we each had 2 or 3 plates worth of juiceboxes, it was a painful bout.

I may have won the contest, but we were all losers that day. Haha.

Quick mindbarf

2008-11-04T00:38:00.000-05:00

I've been neglecting my blog for the past few weeks primarily because of the rhythm of work and the everyday cycle of work-sleep-wake up-repeat. I've said that before, I know, but it's pretty true. As easy as things are, it's tough when you have such a long commute in the morning and evening. Today (Monday the 3rd) was another BS Japanese national holiday, Culture Day (ʸ��), so I had the day to relax. More importantly, my work week is now shortened to 4 days.

Next week, I'm heading down to Kumamoto for the first time on a business trip. I'm teaching from Tuesday to Friday, then have the weekend to goof off and be a tourist to the max. I don't really know much about the area, except that there's a big castle, a monument for Miyamoto Musashi, and a mountain that I realistically won't get around to. Also people keep telling me that Kumamoto ramen and raw horse meat (basashi, �ϻɤ�) are the local delicacies, so I'll definitely be eating those. I'm looking forward to that week. I'll be staying at a hotel close to the seminar site, meaning the commute will be nothing, plus I finish at 5:10 everyday meaning I'll have a lot more "free time" than I do with my regular schedule. I've never been to Kyushu, so this will be a cool trip. Plus work is paying for everything except my last 2 nights in a hotel (when I'm on my own), so you can't beat that.

I'm coming back from Kumamoto on the 16th in the afternoon, giving me just barely enough time to head back to Chiba from Haneda, after which I'm meeting up with the old Goi crew to have a party with Matt, who's coming back for a visit. It's going to be a busy Sunday, followed by a rough Monday at work. But it's just 5 regular days of work before a sweet 4-day weekend! (another BS holiday and a vacation day to use it up).

I think that's about it for now. Next time I post we'll probably know who the next President of the US will be. And yes that was just an obligatory reference to the election. Don't worry, I'm not going to get political.

�򹯿��

2008-11-03T23:25:00.001-05:00

On Thursday I went in before work to a clinic near my office for a routine physical (kenkou shindan, �򹯿�� in Japanese). My company arranged for everyone to get free checkups, so I figured I might as well. I had never gotten a physical here in Japan, so for some reason I was expecting a series of futuristic exams and machines similar to what you'd see on a TV show. Unfortunately, the exam ended up seeming more like something out of Welcome Back Kotter than Star Trek.

When I came in, first I told them my name, and they gave me my file. Since my company already had everyone's reservations made, I assume they also handled any other paperwork. I had a 2-page short questionnaire with the basic medical history stuff like "have you been stomped by Godzilla in the past year," but other than that and my name, they asked nothing. Not my birth date, not if I was feeling sick or not, nothing else. I take my little file to another counter, where they explain to me the... how do I say this medically? Oh yeah, the piss test. So instead of a plastic medical-looking cup with a locking lid like I'm used to in the States, they hand me a paper Dixie cup with my name written on it in Sharpie. I was instructed to go into the bathroom, do my biznass, and put the sample in the small closet in the toilet stall. Yeah. Instead of putting a lid on the cup and handing it to a nurse, I was instructed to put my cup into a little cabinet. Along with like 7 other peoples pee! W. T. F. So things were already getting weird.

Next I go sit in the waiting lobby and talk to one of my co-workers who was there at the same time. After a few minutes I get called into the next station of fun: the x-ray room. This room looked more like a boiler room with a giant 1930's printing press. There was a very industrial feel to this room, complimented by the enormous, multi-section beige-colored x-ray equipment. The crazy looking old Japanese dude started speaking in horribly broken English, telling me to take off my jacket and step up to the chest x-ray machine, which looked like an old-school refrigerator. That was pretty weird. I don't even know if that was an x-ray machine, he might have just wanted me to hug his fridge. The technician never even left the room during the x-ray. He actually was standing right behind me. I'm sure this contributed to his craziness, being blasted multiple times an hour with radiation.

After that there was some more waiting before the next round of stuff. They did my weight, height, blood pressure, hearing, and eyes, which were all pretty much routine and nothing special. After that, there was more waiting followed by "the doctor." From my past experience with doctors offices, all the little tests and stuff were first, followed by the actual examination with a doctor, who does all the real stuff. This would also be the time they actually give you any advice, etc., and make you feel like you were really being checked up.

Here, however, the "doctor" (I don't know if he was a doctor, I'm just assuming so) checked me with a stethoscope then... told me I was done. That was it. I literally spent 5 minutes or less with the doctor then I was sent home. I did feel kind of ripped off. They're supposedly going to send me my results later at work. Maybe it will have a sweet picture of me hugging a fridge with a creepy glowing man behind me.

I also want to mention that this clinic had a "members club" area behind a curtained hallway. What does that mean? I have no idea. Maybe you get a real x-ray and a real doctor's advice. And maybe even a lid for your pee cup.

Not-so-genius

2008-10-19T21:54:00.000-04:00

I've been using iTunes for a long time now, especially after getting an iPod a few years back. I'm overall happy with it. It's getting pretty annoying though, since recently it seems every week there's a new software update. This is even weirder for me considering the program has been more or less the same for the past 4 years, save for minor improvements and "features" like the Genius playlists - a sweet gimmick but something I suspect I will never use in my entire life.

And NO I don't want to download Safari! Lay off it, Apple.

T-Bone

2008-10-14T01:54:00.003-04:00

Do you remember that episode of Seinfeld where George kept trying to get everyone at his office to call him T-Bone, but he instead got stuck with Koko? Like many episode of 90's television, "The Maid" taught us a very important lesson, one that is all too often forgotten or overlooked by adults today. This lesson is that you can't choose your own nickname.

This is one of the many thousands of small things that slightly irritate me in my daily life. It doesn't really come up too much in work situations, but in social circles it's much more prominent (and annoying). It's even worse when you start meeting friends of friends of friends*, etc. It's a simple rule - you can't choose your own nickname. We all know that I love nicknames, but there's just something wrong with choosing your own. I think this is due in part to it being a scientific fact that over 60% of nicknames are derogatory and something don't really want to be called, and if someone's going to make their own nickname, it's going to be a lot closer to Iron Man Johnson than Mac 'n' Cheese. If you try to give yourself a nickname that makes you sound better, everyone will automatically assume you're some kind of arrogant retard. It just doesn't work. I don't care if you yourself think the nickname is cute/funny/ironic/a social commentary. You want a nickname that bad? Just give me a minute.

Of course some exceptions may exist, but it's overall that's a very rare occurrence. It's indeed amazing if someone creates or suggests a nickname for themselves that is then accepted by the general population. Further study is needed.

Where was I going with this? Nowhere.

*Yes, there is a single person who triggered this post. I won't divulge names though.

Who loves cookies!?

2008-10-10T22:22:00.002-04:00

I may have written about this in the past, because I know I've thought about it several times. If so, too bad.

In Japan, they love giving gifts. Not necessarily big gifts, but small little presents, usually some kind of food. And they love giving these presents all the time. Seriously, the reasons to give gifts to your co-workers, friends, and estranged family members who live deep in the sewers are far too many to count. These include (but are not at all limited to) birthdays, someone getting married, quitting your job, going on a trip, going on a day trip, getting sick, someone else being sick, recovering from being sick, making someone sick, and being happy that you didn't get sick when everyone around you is dying of the plague. And as if that wasn't ridiculous enough, they also give gifts in return for GETTING A GIFT. Just as you imagine, this is a horrible, endless cycle of getting rice crackers, small individually wrapped cookies, and other random little things filled with sweet red beans.

Before I go any further, I will say that I enjoy receiving these little gifts, as any selfish human does. But is it worth it? OK, back to the complaining about the parts of this gift-giving system that I don't like. As much as I'd like to say "it's the thought that counts," in Japan most of these gifts, especially in the workplace, have no thought or feeling at all attached, save for maybe the all-important-in-Japan feeling of obligation. People go through the motions of giving gifts because, like a lot of Japanese traditions, everyone else does it, and if you don't do it, everyone notices and thinks there's something socially wrong with you. People don't care about giving boxes of cookies - they just do it because they have to. They don't select individual gifts for their co-workers, but rather they stop by the many souvenir stands at train stations and airports to buy a standardized box of cookies, which are the same throughout the country with a different box listing it as a specialty of that area.

Sure, people do give gifts to people and mean it, but the gifts that are exchanged just as a formality become tiresome, especially when you have to consciously leave room in your suitcase anytime you go somewhere because you know you are expected to buy some kind of snack for all of your co-workers. I don't know how much money is wasted on this industry in Japan, but it has to be pretty high.

Note: I originally got the idea for this post on Thursday morning. Between then and now I received yet another gift (a rice cracker) at work, for someone having a baby. Yes, the new mother sent the office a huge box of snacks. I am unaware of any gift sent to the mother.

Mooned

2008-10-01T00:28:00.000-04:00

Joey over at Moon County had a Cartoosday contest a few weeks ago to write the words to go with a blank cartoon he drew. I won, so I got the glorious prize of the people's ovation and fame forever. Also another picture of my choosing. I was originally allowed to name anything I wanted Joey to draw, but since he didn't want to get arrested or sued or be made to draw anything super twisted, I agreed on a somewhat tame picture.

And by somewhat tame and not super twisted, I mean I asked for a picture of Chuck Norris eating a bunch of Pokemon.

And Joey did it!

Click here for the wallpaper version.

Thanks Joey! Also check out LOLJK. Talk about plugging your friend's sites!

au one Mail - awesome idea

2008-09-29T11:43:00.001-04:00

I ended up going to bed a lot later than planned last night, even after spending the entire evening in my apartment taking care of random tasks that I'd been putting off for too long. I burned some TV series off my external HD to clear space, filled out a Yodobashi credit card app, organized some bills I need to pay, did some laundry, and downloaded Megaman 9. I even cleaned up my apartment a bit and hauled a whole bag of trash downstairs. It felt like I had accomplished a lot.

Anyway, I've been thinking for a little bit* that I need to get a new phone, since my old faithful Sony Ericsson W43S is getting a little worn out and can't even do the simplest things like watch TV, view MS Word documents, or give me a root canal - which are all standards for the current generation of Japanese ultra-phones. Yes, after only using my phone for 2 years it has already been outdated more times than I would like to mention, with new features popping up on the market every day. A few months ago the iPhone came out here in Japan, and despite its awesomeness +5 appeal in the US, in Japan it sucks and I don't even know anyone that has one. No, wait, there was one guy at my office who has one but he seemed to only be interested in listening to the radio. This entry isn't about the iPhone, but yeah, compared to any typical Japanese handset the only thing Apple's magic device has going for it is the touch-screen. There are so many features missing (even compared to my old-ass phone) that most people aren't interested.

Oh yeah, so speaking of phones. When browsing the au (my carrier) catalog for information about current phone models and pricing plans, I leaned about this recent service called au one Mail. After following the easy instructions on my phone, I was all set up and simply amazed at what it does. It seems that au has partnered with Google to give au users a special Gmail account. The interface is just a rebranded Gmail, giving you an @auone.jp e-mail address that you can access from your PC or phone. But the best thing is that this new account can automatically keep a copy of every sent and received mail from your keitai. And since it's Gmail, you have several gigs of space forever, and the ridiculously sweet search capabilities. This was exactly what I always wanted.
Click the pic for a bigger screenshot.

If anyone else here on au wants help on how to set this up, let me know. It's definitely nice to know that you can have an automatic backup of all the e-mails you send on your phone.

*about a year and a half

To infinity and beyond

2008-09-26T13:27:00.002-04:00

I set my work computer's Firefox start page as Wikipedia, so I usually read a few random articles on the main page to start my day off (as opposed to actual work). The first one I read today was about China's space flight this week. On the page they had an image of the China National Space Administration's logo:

Is it just me, or is this pretty much exactly the same as this one? See:

Yes, while I realize that in both cases it's supposed to look like a plane/spacecraft, you still have to wonder if the CNSA, established in 1993, didn't have some huge Star Trek nerd designing their logo.

I guess we'd just have to ask Captain Jon Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise.

Oops!

2008-09-25T11:19:00.000-04:00

Haha there's a chance some of you tried to access this site (I don't know why you would) over the past few hours and found that there was nothing here. Just like last year, I forgot to renew my web host, which expired today. Since my host is in the US, midnight there was about the same time I sat down at work this morning. I opened Gmail and got a message saying my theleong.com e-mail accounts were expiring. I quickly renewed the host though, and everything's fine now. Not nearly as much of a panic as last year, hahaha.

I'll try and remember to renew ahead of time next fall.

�ż��

2008-09-13T12:40:00.003-04:00

I wish there was a way I could silently take pictures with my phone, but there's not because too many Japanese guys take upskirt shots of middle school girls. Thus, it's mandatory for Japanese phones to make a shutter noise. There's no option to shut it off.

Anyways I'm writing this on my phone as I ride the Sobu line train towards Funabashi. The dude standing across from me looks like a young Japanese Rob Schneider if you can picture it. He has a really short buzz cut, a purse, tight holy jeans, huge buckled boots, a diagonal referee t-shirt, and is carrying a grandma shirt over his arm (probably for if it gets "a lil' chilly willy"). But worse of all he is listening to his headphones and making this creepy child molester face. Not just smiling, but constantly making slight movements with his eyebrows and mouth as if he were Roseanne listening to the waitress at Golden Corral describe the specials. He is also doing the Night at the Roxbury dance. That's Japan for you.

Aaaand he just got off at Tsudanuma.

Frankie Valli

2008-09-12T22:27:00.001-04:00

I'm so grateful this country I'm living in has the natural wonder that is the Japanese Four Seasons*. Only Japan has a full spectrum of 4 distinct seasons. This may be hard for you to comprehend but let's take a look at them:

His Holy Majesty the Emperor's Winter
Graceful Dance of the Falling Cherry Blossoms Spring
Who Needs Central AC When You Have Paper Fans Summer
OMFG Nippon is the Greatest Country in the Galaxy Our Leaves Change Color Fall**

No other country in the world has the vast diversity in climates that Japan has, since every other country is blanketed in a single season year-round. For example: frigid cold (Canada), blazing sunshine (Australia), pollution and poisonous food (China), or gunfire (America).

The sad thing is there are some Japanese people who think something close to this. OK, maybe with less Pokemon and yeti, but the four seasons myth is something you hear far too often. Japanese people think their country is so special, a magical land that surely no other place on this planet could come close to. Yeeeeah. I've been asked multiple times if there is winter in St. Louis, as if the US is some alien planet devoid of temperature fluctuations. Old people, as usual, are even worse.

And before anyone starts thinking to themselves "they were probably just asking if the winter is cold, or how cold, or about the specific climate." They weren't. There's no excuse.

*The terms "Japanese," "Four," and " Seasons" are copyright 711 BC Emperor Jimmu, founder of Japan and direct descendant of the Sun God Amaterasu

**Alternatively referred to as OMFG Nippon is the Greatest Country in the Galaxy Our Leaves Change Color Autumn

9,9 busta a rhyme

2008-09-09T14:39:00.001-04:00

Well hey what do you know? I think fall is finally here! The weather this morning was a brisk 75-ish degrees Fahrenheit, with relatively low humidity and a nice breeze. Compare that to the usual summer weather conditions of over 9000* degrees with 1000% humidity and constant sandstorms. OK I guess that's a slight exaggeration - the sandstorms subside every afternoon for a 4 hour acid rain shower. But at least this morning I got to come to work without smelling salaryman BO all the way into Tokyo. Ding dong, the summer is dead! (I hope.)

More on Japanese seasons in my next post.

* IT'S OVER 9000!!

Phantom with ghost sandwiches

2008-09-01T23:57:00.003-04:00

It's already September (say do you remember)!? Time seems like it's been going by pretty fast recently, almost entirely due to working every day then having a pretty full schedule every weekend. A week goes by like nothing, but I haven't decided if that's good or bad.

I'm enjoying work a lot more than I guess I originally thought I would, with the worst part still being the long hours. I technically work a normal 8 hour day (or less), but with the hour+ long commute it feels like I'm working 12 hour shifts. I usually get home after work, relax just a little, then have to go to bed soon after so as to not sacrifice precious hours of sleep. Then I wake up and head back to the trains to go to work. But enough about that.

I saw a movie over the weekend, 20th Century Boys (��ǯ). It's based on this super popular mystery/sci-fi comic book which I had never read. I'm not going to go into any of the plot details, but it was a pretty sweet movie spanning several decades focusing on a creepy cult leader intertwined with a group of people who went to elementary school together. Yet somehow the movie makes sense. This is the first of a trilogy, and even still it was 2.5 hours long. It was entertaining, but still, this is getting ridiculous. Why are movies these days so long?? Even Dark Knight, which I loved, was way too long. I'd rather directors cut out some of the unnecessary action scenes or some of the retarded CG sequences and leave the movie at an hour and a half. 2 hours is acceptable, but anything longer than that is painful. Come on!

I'm still waiting for fall to fully kick in and cool this country off.

Could it be...

2008-08-26T15:26:00.000-04:00

We've had a few days recently of not-totally-balls-hot weather, and I'm getting hopeful. Is summer just about over? Seriously that would make things absolutely amazing. If I had to choose between sweltering heat and cool rain/overcast, I'd have to go with the latter. Mainly that's because I'm tired of riding on hot, gross trains to and from work. Right now in Tokyo it's 73 degrees F, slightly windy, and feels great outside. I know that this is mainly just because of all the rain we've been having, but if summer is wearing down I'm all for it.

Since I'm blogging already I might as well diverge into other random babbling. Nothing super interesting during the weeks following Obon Vacation, just working and not getting enough sleep at night due to watching TV and playing on the internet. On Saturday there was a Farewell Party for John who's leaving Chiba after about a year. It was pretty good; a huge party of mostly people I didn't know, but at least I commandeered a table for the few that I did. It doesn't feel like it's been a year since John got here. I think time is passing pretty quickly, which in a way is bad because I need to figure out exactly what I'm going to do with my life (been thinking about this a lot recently).

I know I don't want to live in Japan forever, but the question of the moment is how long will I actually be here? And while I realize that a job isn't the most important thing in life, in reality that's going to be the deciding factor of where end up living. I guess if I could find a good job in the US I could move back, but I don't know where in the US I would want to live. St. Louis would be good because my family and a lot of friends are there, but overall I feel like there's not much else there for me. Japan/Tokyo is very comfortable right now, but I think it's still different enough for me to have a slight sense of adventure living here. Maybe I've been living in too much of a dream world and need to get back to reality. Whether or not reality lies in the US I don't know, but I need to kind of think what my next job will be. I suppose it's time to start thinking of a career and some long-term goals, neither of which I have at the moment.

Mindfart.

2008 JLPT App

2008-08-17T22:18:00.001-04:00

I haven't really decided (or thought too much about) whether or not I'm going to take the JLPT (��ܸ�ǽ�ϻ) this year, but I bought the application packet anyway. Instead of having a modern application system, like say, on the internet, you have to actually get this 500-yen packet at a bookstore, fill it out, and send in your complted documents via snail-mail.

Anyway, for anyone else taking it (I know a few of you are), here are some of the specifics for this year's exam:

Test date: Sunday December 7, 2008
Application Period: Aug 1 (Fri) ~ Sep 12 (Fri) (SOON)
Cost: 5500 yen + 500 yen application packet = 6000 yen
Test results announced: Mid-Feb 2009

That only applies for people IN JAPAN. I don't know about if you're doing this in a different country. Here's the official site.

If I end up taking it, I'm highly doubtful I would pass unless I seriously started studying ASAP. I passed Level 2 last year, but Level 1 (top level) is quite a jump up. Here's the official description: The examinee has mastered grammar to a high level, knows around 2,000 Kanji and 10,000 words, and has an integrated command of the language sufficient for life in Japanese society. This level is normally reached after studying Japanese for around 900 hours.

Yeowch. 2000 kanji!? 2-kyu only required 1000! That in itself will probably bone me. I'll try and look at the sample exams from previous years sometime soon and see if it's even worth applying. If it's a total loss I'll just sell my application packet to someone else. If it seems like it might be possible I'll give it a shot, since they only offer the test once a year (for now).

Blogs I wrote about 2007's JLPT: Part 1 and Part 2