05.27.04
Today is going to be sparse, gomen. Made a new desktop for you nice people featuring a pic of Shibuya, Tokyo. Lots of pretty colors in this one, dudes! Since it's no longer a 'pure' photo (i.e. it's been Photoshopped), I put it in the desktops section of my .mac homepage rather than here on Flap. It's available in both 1028 and 1440-widescreen flavors. Drop a mail if you'd like them in any other sizes. I'm always happy to oblige.
In other news, it's been a pretty crap week, classes have sucked, I'm behind on sleep and I just got bad news from some close friends who were expecting their first child, so I think I'm just gonna go to bed. Oyasumi.
05.22.04
One of the funniest parts of running this site is checking the search logs. For those who weren't aware, whenever someone does a web search and follows those results to a site, those keywords are logged in that site's... uh, logs.
Of course there's plenty of expected searches, like 'living in japan,' 'japanese high schools,' 'engrish' and the like, but some of this stuff is just so out of left field that it's entertainment in itself. Check out some of the searches this month that have brought people to the Flap.
- chillin
- hernia
- help a shark
- kids who know there mommy's are going to spank them (wtf!?!? -ed)
- annoying sounds monica seles
- clutch cargo pictures (threw that one in for you, Fletcher! -ed)
- flap dancing (I did NOT make that up. -ed)
- i spank my kids with their pants down (WHY does spanking keep bringing people here??? -ed)
- kitten and a puppy together picture
- leprosy in japan
- or i'll spank you (Sigh. -ed)
- sad coffee
- saisho wa gu (Bwahahahaha!! -ed)
- sensei fletcher (Look, Fletch! Someone is seeking you out! -ed)
- why do dogs act wild around the kitten (This one is too easy. -ed)
- why i want to live in japan (Aha, looks like someone is researching their JET application. -ed)
- workplace apathy (Aha, looks like someone is researching their JET application. -ed)
And last but not least, someone please go through the archives and tell me why my site came up when someone searched for:
- show me a picture of a dog humping it's owner
You can't see me, but I'm weeping right now. -_-
05.20.04
Doh! I had two more pics that I inteneded to post yesterday that got lost in the shuffle. The first one is just a little shop on the side of one of the many hills in the city I hiked up. Just thought it looked cool with the stairs and stuff, nothin' too special.
This other one was the residential area that I had a few pics of yesterday. I took seven shots in a 180 degree panorama and stitched them together in Photoshop. Almost a megabyte in size, so be ready for a long load time if you're on dial-up.
05.18.04
So I spent four days in Korea in the nice port town of Pusan. I wanted to go somewhere outside Japan for Golden Week and was keen to keep it cheap so I hopped on the Beetle (a passenger HYDROFOIL!! Cool, eh?) and hopped across the Sea of Japan, which I guess is called the East Sea by Korea since they say they claimed it long before Japan ever did. Sounds like a Civil War/War of Northern War of Aggression kind of issue to me, so I'm staying out of it.
Anyway, in retrospect I think 4 days by myself might have been a bit much. It wasn't that it was a boring place but I think my lack of Korean language skills (which consisted of 'thank you') really hindered the experience. This is no one's fat, stupid fault but my own. What IS everyone else's fault is the degree to which I was led to believe that languages I can speak are spoken in Korea, which is what I based my decision to stay 4 whole days on. I can't count the number of people who told me, "Oh yeah, don't worry, everyone speaks English and if they don't they'll speak Japanese."
Bull Shit.
In four days of gallavanting around, going to restaurants, stores, riding in taxis, going to tourist-y spots, I ran into a total of three people that spoke English and one person who spoke Japanese. Again, I'm not trying to attack Korea because most people don't speak English, why should they? I'm blaming myself for being duped into having an expectation there was no reason to believe. So the lack of communication coupled with the fact that I couldn't read menus or even tell what kind of food a particular restaurant had, I didn't have quite as much fun as I was anticipating. Ah, well.
I still enjoyed walking around the city and seeing a place that wasn't Japan, it's been too long since I've done that. It's always fun to see all the little cultural quirks that make up a place, almost more-so than the the big quirks.
For example, I noticed that Koreans really seem to like physical contact. Like any time I saw a couple girls who were friends walking somewhere they were invariably holding hands or walking arm in arm, and I don't think I was seeing only the lesbians for four straight days. It wasn't just the girls either. On many occasions I'd see guys walking, one with an arm around the others shoulder hanging off him while they were walking down the street. I'm not homophobic at all, but if one of my friends put his arm around my shoulder while walking or otherwise, I'd rip it off and beat him to death with it. It's just a personal bubble type of thing. Chalk it up to a cultural difference I guess. :P
I'll also say this, the Koreans appear to be sitting enthusiasts! There were places to sit everywhere! No matter where I went there were chairs, and usually people sitting in them, on the sides of roads, in back alleys, couches on the sidewalk, you name it! I was navigating through a dense residential area on the side of a hill (pics on the pic pages I'll mention in a sec) and was walking through a random back-alley, and there was this old lady just chilling on a home-made stool with her cordless phone from inside the house just sitting there. She wasn't reading a paper or talking on the phone or enjoying a Gin and Tonic, she was just sitting. It's like if there were so much as two square feet of space in front of a little shop on a narrow street somewhere I'd expect to hear a conversation like this:
Guy: Dude... there's like a couple square feet of space here.
Dude: Hey, you know what? This would be an awesome place to set up a chair and, like, sit in it!!
Guy: Oh dude, I know!!
<They hi-five.>
So yeah, they like to sit.
So all in all, even despite my communication problems, I did quite like the town. Pusan is also one of the most photogenic cities I've been to, sooooo I guess we'll be doing the photo-sharing thing again as per usual (Tokyo, Kyoto, et al). Got two whole pages worth of photos starting here on the Flap, and in addition to the slew I got here, there's also a few more over on this page in my .mac galleries. Take a gander if you so desire.
05.13.04
So I'm back from my trip to Korea. I'm STILL sorting through all the pics actually. Between this site and my .mac photo galleries, there's going to be roughly a metric shitton of photos. ^_^ It's taking me a while to resize and color correct these babies though, so while I'm prepping those, I have to tell you about the discovery I made during the last ten minutes of work today.
This week is boredom overload since there are no classes and everyone is practicing for all the silly presentations they're going to perform during my old nemesis, Taikusai (Sports Day). Today was particularly brutal since it was raining outside so the students couldn't practice their marching routines in the field, so they were all in the gym where they practiced their group songs. So imagine an echo-y gym, with five groups of about 60 kids each, each singing a different song, at the top of their lungs, AT THE SAME BLOODY TIME!! It felt like someone ripped my ears off, put them in a blender and jammed the blender into my ear canals. :(
So later on, I'm sitting in the teacher's room, just waiting to get the hell out of this torture-fest for the day and I notice a sports equipment catalog on the couch. Having a few idle minutes, I picked it up and started to thumb through it. Nothing could prepare me for seeing... the Sportime Chicken™.
Yes, I have photos (cel phone photos, sorry for the graniness), because I knew you would never believe me if I simply told you that a rubber fucking chicken was in a wholesale sporting goods catalog. After my laughter died down and I picked myself up off the floor, I did what I knew I shouldn't as far as my sanity is concerned and read the description. I offer now, my translation of the description for the Sportime Chicken™:
Launch it high into the sky with the Flingnet(p.57) or Parachute(p.10). You can even use it as a relay baton. Or instead of a game of catchball you can play a game of "Catchchicken". It's unique design will leave people laughing with a strong impression. To combine this curious chicken with curious activities is the aim of the Sportime Chicken™.
Relay baton!?!? Are you fucking serious? There was another two minutes spent on the floor in hysterical laughter. Catchchicken?? Another five, down the tubes.
I have to admit, as absurd as the Sportime Chicken™ is, hysterical fits of laughter are a nice way to end the day.
One quick aside, later in the book there was a ball-type product called the "Ballzac." Now maybe I'm just from a weird side of town, but, uhhh..... doesn't that mean something else?
And one more touchy-feely aside, I want to take the opportunity to send a hearty shout out and congratulations to Josh and Katie who have just recently had their first poop-machine (also referred to as "child" by some). Josh was one of my roomies in university and I was there when he started dating Katie, who is now his wife. Sadly though, I was not there when their first child, William, was born, but I'd like to recreate now, in my awesome kung-fu comic style, how I like to think it all went down.
Oh man, Katie's gonna kill me but it was worth it. I REGRET NOTHING!!! ^_^v
Anyway, back in the day, we all warned Josh that if things continued to go as well with Katie as they seemed to be, he was gonna end up changing diapers some day. We told you, dude! Bwahahahahah, now get in there and get that kid some clean drawers, Daddy-O! ^_-
Seriously, Congratulations Josh and Katie!! Hope the little guy lets ya get some sleep every now and then. Can't wait to see you guys again and meet your son!
Review Fukuma Hair Flap at Japanreference.com
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