Maximum the Hormone

This music video is complete in all the ways that I wish it to be. Don't watch this unless you want to see people vomiting up their own intestines. Bikini Sports Ponchin by Maximum the Hormone.

Pirate

Sad in Shibuya.



Arrr! Thar be no toys left after all this packing.

Horse Arse

There is no explanation for this. "Come to our bar if you like the rear ends of horses."

送別会

We went out to dinner with Toshikatsu, Kiriko and her husband for a bit of a Japanese farewell. The restaurant was an Australian themed one. We ate kangaroo, crocodile and steak.



Bye, bye.

Packing

Alice's box cubby house.



It's actually quite easy to pack because all our stuff is only in two rooms. We still have about 13 boxes though. A lot of it is heavy coats, books and toys. I've been laying away the Japanese learning materials for my bookshelves at home; books, dvds and nintendo games. Stuff is so cheap at the second hand book stores that I feel obliged to acquire some.

Bek's Birthday

We went to the Hard Rock Cafe in Roppongi to have Bek's birthday. Here she is opening some lovely presents. As you can see, Alice is missing everything by being asleep.



The candles were really hard to light. They were shaped into the letters in 'Happy Birthday'.



Alice and Ema are trying to escape the adults. Okay, so it's just Alice.



Here's everyone at the table except me, and Alice is sleeping next to Bek.



The cake. It was a chocolate mousse cake.

Alice Looks Like This Now

Snobbery

I just thought this an appropriate name for a clothes 'boutique'.



This bugs me.

The Mountain Song

Please don't watch this unless you want to hear it another ten thousand times in the back of your brain for about a month or two. It's not Jane's Addiction obviously. It's from a movie directed by Katsuhito Ishii, 茶の味　(The Taste of Tea). The colour brown in Japanese is literally 'tea colour', 茶色, （ちゃいろ）.

Audio Crack

Konnichipa is, apparently, this lass' cute way to say konnichiwa, which means 'good day'. It's really instructive in either how annoying or how mesmerising you find it. I take no responsibility for any ear worms you acquire (from the German 'ohrwurm'). The tune sounds a bit German actually, like crazed polka music.

I have so many of these weird videos saved. I promised Bek it wouldn't only be her who suffered them.

Galaxy - Rip Slyme

Mad finger play.

Winding Down

Well, unless you haven't noticed I haven't really written anything here in a long time. Japan is kind of normal now, for me. In fact I've lived longer in this apartment than in my house in Botany. I've kind of forgotten anything but my daily Japanese routine. All my neighbour hood knowledge is about where to get cheap apples, which are the closest supermarkets, and the things I need to buy from the three of them because I can't find everything in one store. Indeed they are not very super.

We're heading back on December the 13th. The tickets are booked but it's getting iffy with the company, pay-wise and expense-wise, lately. They haven't managed to pay for our apartment for this month, for example. Luckily we won't be kicked out on the street because we have a cute, helpless daughter.

This blog was for any interested parties to peruse, but mainly so I can remember my trip in the future. I'll probably only post Japanese videos from now on, or a few pics here and there.

Face Guy

This man has attached electrodes to his face which make his muscles twitch in time to the music.

Stupid Tug of War

Diverse Divers

It's hypnotic.

Owl Transformer

Best name ever for an owl: Lalachusa.

Ninja Cat

Just posting a bunch of videos that I didn't make or even upload is still blogging, I swear.

Nunchaku Baseball

Some guy from Sapporo using the batting cages. I'm actually getting quite decent myself with my foam 'chucks.

Drawing

This is the first thing that Alice has ever drawn that we can recognise as something. It's me apparently.

Clinic

If your muse isn't inspiring you like it should, send it away to a day spa, and get it back as good as new.

Japanese Pools

The promise:



The reality:



On the bright side, they make everyone get out of the water for ten minutes every hour, ostensibly to fish out the drowned corpses of crushed children.

Enjoy

I thought they were alright, really.

Misleading Advertising

Policeman don't have a sense of humour, either.

Nice Bek Pictures

This one looks like I own an expensive camera and have some photographic knowledge.



Alice took this one.

Just some pictures

A fish I made in boredom.



Alice tried to feed Elmo some biscuit.


We've taken the dummy away now, and she's been fine.



A huge stone in Tokyo Midtown.



She likes to be 'safe' with her toys and a blanket.

I keep putting off posting because I had some big ones to deal with, like Mt. Fuji, but it made me post nothing at all, so I'm trying to ease myself back in with some light posts.

Draw a Line

Alice is becoming a bit more ordered, at least with pencils and toys. Her game is to make a line.

Memento

Who is the fine actor on this Japanese DVD cover?

This is a great movie by the way.

Darth Vader vs Japanese Police

Japanese TV is a whole lot of rubbish with a few excellent things thrown in. Just like TV everywhere else.

Japanese Wrestling Demolition Crew

Full

From 1991, before businesses allowed flexible start and finish times for employees.

Source : Kirai-net

Alice, Duplo, Speaking, etc.

Harajuku Signs

The irony was that it wasn't on a corner at all.



Such noble sentiments.

Mogul Skiing

Lang-8

You may know that I've been studying Japanese as a way to prevent insanity, however Japanese is not really a good language to do this. I'm now more insane than ever, less social, yet more tech savvy and so I've attached a widget to the sidebar which links to my Lang-8 journal.

What is Lang-8? Well it's a really simple yet amazingly useful idea. When I taught English, one of the truly terrible jobs was correcting student diaries. There seemed an endless stream of them, and most were filled with incredibly mundane entries like "today I didn't do anything, I slept and watched TV, and had something to eat". I mean, sometimes they would write these sorts of things every single day. Do any thoughts at all go on in English student's heads apart from the basic necessities of life? Were they unable to at least tell me how they felt, and I don't mean physically, I was hungry, thirsty, sleepy, I mean their true secret deep thoughts, the ones which they dare not speak of, only hurriedly scribble down in a flurry of passion and guilty emotion? Why couldn't they let me in on their loves, their dreams, even their dirty, dirty secrets? I thought diaries were kept locked up, saturated in juicy details, leaking information to the minds of ingenious siblings bent on exposing who Katie 'really likes'.

Anyway, I digress. Lang-8 is an online diary writing website aimed at language learners. You write a diary in the language that you are learning, and native speakers from that language correct it for you. In return, you correct journals in English. It's basically an honour system, you aren't forced to correct diaries, but as you gain friends and notoriety you kind of feel obliged. So yes, I'm now correcting diaries again, and I'm not getting paid.

It's a great idea, it's free, correction is much faster than writing a post yourself so it's not a big deal to edit a few, and best of all, people write interesting stuff about their lives, their thoughts and cultural differences which they find puzzling. It's addictive to read these short, pithy opinions about this and that. You can leave comments on each journal entry, so often you get correction and discussion, which is marvellous. Also, it allows you to still interact with natives no matter where you live. I know it's not as good as speaking to a language exchange partner, but it's good to have the discipline to keep coming back, writing something and then checking where you went wrong.

So if you're a language learner, try it out. Especially if you speak Japanese, kick my grammatical butt if you feel the need to.

You could also search for my nickname on the site (phauna) and add me as a friend, please. Unless you are my enemy. Don't do that if you are, soon I'll find you, when you least expect it. Expect me. Although you won't know when I find you, just expect that I *will* find you, sometime, when you least suspect it.

Some Gifts

Thanks everyone for the presents.

A Woman's Mind

Oh those fickle women.



This coffee is innocently brewed and really blended.

Ball-Shaped Onions

Here's an ad which caught my eye. It says "with the power of onions, a healthful life." I've never thought of onions as a wonder food, and have thought even less of them as a delicious drink. I suppose the ad execs were thinking onions are cheap, they aren't bad for you, and voila, new health food.

They have a lot of faux health products in Japan, as do Western countries, however a lot of them centre around the amazing properties of regular food. For example, pills which contain the equivalent of 25 sweet potatoes. Just try and eat 25 sweet potatoes a day. You can't, can you? Well just throw back one of these pills. And then there are the testimonials, some old man saying he tried to eat 25 sweet potatoes a day but couldn't carry them all home from the store on his bike. So he takes these pills, and he's not dead yet. Proof of their efficacy.

Oh and they still have those vibrating belt machines which supposedly wobble off fat. They had those machines in gyms in Korea, and people used them.

Kamakura

Kamakura lies about an hour out of Tokyo, and is a hotspot of temples and shrines.



Many armed Buddha.



Temples, like churches, often have cemeteries attached.



I don't know what this is but it's cool. You can see a fox spirit at the bottom.



This seems to be a Jizo, a god dedicated to children.



These guys seem bored by hanging around all day in a temple.

Origami Cup

I'm sure you may have some idea how to make an origami cup from a square of paper. If not, try it out, it's quite handy and easy to learn.



Bek got this particular origami paper with her health check papers. If you want health insurance in Japan you need to undergo a yearly physical. Of course a physical requires some analysis of your body. At least some parts of your body. And if you note the colour of this paper and it's prescribed use you may guess that there is also some analysis of your bodily fluids.

The instructions ask you to use this cup to hold your early morning urine. Bek at first thought they meant to carry it from home to the doctor's office in this cup. A mighty feat on the Tokyo subway, to be sure. Of course that seems unlikely. However I think it's amusing that your origami skill somewhat dictates your ability to collect your sample. And the square seems quite small, resulting in an even smaller cup.

Luckily I'm allowed to be unhealthy as I like without having to pee into a tiny, leaky square of folded paper.