And my trip (did I mention I was taking a little trip?) was a bust this past weekend, but I'm actually in a pretty good mood.

To recap:
Friday - classes were better than expected. (The text was an especially boring unit imo, but the kids had a lot of fun with it, go figure.) After work, I went with a colleague for a quick round of drinks and a bite to eat at an izakaya. Then I went downtown and picked up a new blazer and pair or pants. Finally went to the foreigner bar for a couple more drinks, chatted up the waitresses for a bit and then went home.

Saturday - I was supposed to go to Osaka/Kyoto to meet a Japanese friend who has just returned to Japan after living in the USA for a while. However, she e-mailed to say that she felt sick, possibly the flu, and couldn't make it. It was raining all day here as well so I just stayed in and watched some videos. Among them, I watched The Godfather again. Pretty good flick, but I don't know if it is the #2 movie of all time (according to the IMDB).

Sunday - Did some laundry, oh and Tootsie was on one of the HD movie channels so I watched it. Great performances from Hoffman and Murray. That movie is A LOT better than I remembered. Then again, the last time I saw it, I was in junior high school and it was the edited-for-TV version. Still didn't quite dig the ending though. Anyway, then CV came over and we hung out for a bit. We had dinner at an izakaya downtown and then went to a party. It was pretty cool but with work the next day, didn't really want to get too crazy.

So now I'm in the office about to go look over my stuff for today. But first...

Riding the bus in the rain today, I thought about the car once again. Today the commute wasn't too bad. However, doing that during the rainy season was not my idea of fun. I'm planning on being at this university for another 2 years. After that, I dunno. If I can find some sort of tenured instructor position somewhere, I might consider staying in Japan. Otherwise I'm probably going to head home and try to find work at a community college/Intensive English Program, that is, if the economy isn't still in the gutter. Anyway, back to the car. If I'm here for 2 more years, I would get enough use out of a car to make it a worthwhile purchase. Nothing fancy, just a cheap used car that's easy on the gas. Then my other friend was like "You should get a wagon or even a mini-van. That way, if you stay in Japan but move somewhere else, you can use it to haul some of your junk over there." Interesting idea, I think I'll check into it.

Alright, enough procrastinating time to do a little work.

(Yes, it's been a while since I've had to do one of these.)

You may be thinking, "What the hell would he have to rant about in Shangri-la?"

The English department is wanting to to an overhaul of the curriculum. They say it's broken and needs to be fixed. In my opinion, while there are things that could be improved, some of the changes they're suggesting are not going to improve things. In fact they may make things worse. As the junior instructor (in both time served and age, the second factor carrying a lot of weight in Japan) however, basically what I say don't mean sh*t. Admittedly, I've only been here for 4 months. I still don't know all of the ins and outs of this system. So yeah, they can come up with a plan and I can follow it. Maybe that's just what I need to do. After all, the last time I voiced my opinion at my job about English education wasn't exactly a success. *sigh*

In other news, I saw G.I. Joe last night. That was a fun movie! It went a little heavy on the flashbacks and explosions, but was generally quite entertaining. Oh and The Baroness and Scarlett - wow. (^_^) I'm glad at least someone was able to make a good movie based on toys from my childhood. (the Transformers movies are a mess, sadly. ;_;)

Oh and I've been watching the Women's World Vollyball Grand Prix. Japan did surprisingly well in the previous round. I was really surprised to see that they had beaten Germany and Russia, as those teams are significantly taller. They were able to win with their technique and teamwork. This round however, they lost to both teams. It seems like the previous round was just a warm-up and now they brought their "A" games. I was happy to see that Japan beat Holland decisively last night. That means that even though they have the same record as Germany in this round (1-2), they're ahead due to the points ratio. Tonight's match is against China and tomorrow night's is against Brazil. China is winless, but not a team to be taken lightly. Brazil, well... they're like the Juggernaut of women's volleyball this year. "Don't you know who I AM? I'm the Juggernaut bitch!"

Dinner tonight with CC (the Cute Counselor). I'm pretty excited, nervous even. I haven't felt like this about meeting someone for dinner for a long time. Oh, and I found out why she never speaks Japanese to me. Yesterday at the university thing, I paid her department a visit. In her department are some nurses, older ladies, who I've met before for basic things like having my blood pressure checked. They don't speak any English so we always have our chats in Japanese. So when I saw them, they started up with one of our chats, and CC was like "What? You speak Japanese? All this time, I've never heard you speak Japanese!" It's true, whenever she sees me I'm usually talking with other English teachers or my students, always in English. Back to the nervousness, I find that I'm worried about what I should wear and where we should go, what should we do after dinner, etc.... I'll just play it by ear like I usually do, but I surprised myself that I was thinking so much about it.

Well, due to the excessive rain we've been having, the fireworks festival has been postponed. It's not because they're afraid it would be rained out. It's because the venue is underwater. The venue is the Abekawa riverbed, which normally is a dry flat empty plain. Because of all the rain it's actually underwater now, therefore nowhere for firework viewers to hang out. That's ok with me though, as of this evening I still wasn't all that excited about it.

In other news, ( I saw The Half-Blood Prince )

So tomorrow, instead of the fireworks festival there's going to be another house party. It'll be later in the evening, so during the day I'm going to try and get some stuff done around the apartment.

Ah man, I'm sleepy. More tomorrow.

I still wanted to get the air con, so I called up a Japanese friend of mine to see if he could help me out. He was a little busy but could help me in the early evening. So I watched a video and then took a nap. After the nap, I headed downtown to do a little window shopping. I was wandering around downtown when he called and said he could meet. We went to the electronics store closest to downtown, which was good because my experience at the other one was tainted. Once there we both looked at the various models and in a relatively short time someone came to help us out. The sales dude needed to know detailed info about my apt. I answered what I could, and asked my friend for assistance on the ones I didn't get. We finished the questionnaire and set an appointment for installation. The air con I selected wasn't in stock, so I have to wait until the 18th for the install. No prob, I just don't want to have to come back here to take care of this anymore.

So not that the store did anything spectacular for this to be an unfu*k japan moment, but my friend really did me a favor. (oh and my gf was busy today, so that's why she couldn't help out with this one. Besides, I don't want to have to depend on her for everything. I was hoping to do this one solo. Oh well.)

After that, I treated him to dinner where we talked about how crappy Transformers 2 was. Then we also got into a discussion about other things we'd like to see in live-action form. I mentioned that I'd like to see a live-action Macross, Yamato, Record of Lodoss War, and Area 88. He mentioned some obscure 70s/early 80s stuff which I didn't really know by name. From his descriptions I could picture the shows, but I didn't get the names. He told me how crappy the Dragonball live-action movie was and I told him that the Speed Racer live-action was actually pretty good.

It started out as a rather slow day, I did laundry and went to my friend's house to hook up her fiber optic internet connection.

Then I got an e-mail from another friend asking if I wanted to see Transformers 2 and go to the Tanabata Festival in Shimizu. The festival was nice. I had me a Budweiser to commemorate the 4th, lol. I also met someone from Indonesia that lives in my neighborhood! She's actually lived there for a few years.

( Then we went to see Transformers 2 )
ETA: The movie does get 1 bonus point for having the aircraft carrier where I finished up my Navy career: the USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74). I was like "Hey... That's my ship!"

After the movie, we stopped by a foreigner bar which was surprisingly empty for the 4th of July. For one thing there were only a couple other Americans there. Still, it was fun and I met some cool folks. I'll have to come back sometime and hang out with them again.

When I got home from work, dark heavy clouds had formed and, indeed, off in the hills in the distance it was already raining. I didn't want to go out and then get caught in that so I stayed home.

It never did rain. Oh well. The only thing I really need is a couple of surge protectors. I have power strips but I'd like to have a little something to protect against voltage spikes. I also want to get a mouse pad for my computer stand at the apt. Oh yeah and maybe a DVD/divx player, lol

I watched Star Trek: The Motion Picture again today. It was never one of my favorite Star Trek films, but I do remember liking it a lot more than most of my friends did. I still like it. However it's major flaw, especially in light of the other films, is that it just takes itself too seriously. The other films tend to have a lot more fun with it and are generally more enjoyable, that is IF they are well written. I still like Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan the best. After that is a tie between First Contact and Star Trek (2009). My least favorites are Generations (ugh, one of the worst movies I've ever seen btw), Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Nemesis. This is an odd confession to make but I actually always wanted to be a trekkie. At the age that I started to get into it (elementary/junior high), I just didn't have access to any of that stuff and I ended up getting into other things - mainly video games, D&D, and comics.

So anyway, I downloaded a couple of, ummm, files and seeded them to well over 100% while watching Star Trek: TMP today. I'm not a big fan of hit-and-run torrenting. I feel one should at least give back as much as they've received. That was very difficult on eMobile. That upload was a fraction of the download (seriously it was about 10% as fast). Actually, with fiber optic fully maxed my new upload is a little slower than my download to tell the truth. I don't know what's up with that. However, since I took my download speed on torrents down a few notches and set my upload speed to match, I can do both simultaneously. By the way, I checked out my fiber optic modem. I have no idea how the digital cable tuner is going to jack into it. I wonder....

ok ok, I don't need to let everyone know what my internet at the apartment is like. I'm sure you all have figured out by now that it's pretty fast and I like it. Sorry about that.

My first class today wasn't as fantastic as what I had last week. For one thing it was really sunny and warm out today. Two, I suspect they pretty much had a "Case of the Mondays". So a little while later, I asked some of my upperclassmen students in a different class about what their classes outside of English are like and they said that generally their other classes have about 100 students each. The teacher gives a lecture for 90 minutes straight. The students take notes, maybe are assigned some homework, and every now and then have a quiz or test. Except for laboratory classes, the teachers never call on the students to answer questions about the lecture, much less ask them to do anything in pairs or groups in the class.

The point is I might want to ease up on the classroom participation expectations. Nothing irks me more than the students just sitting there in silence, like bumps on a log. However, this is what they do in ALL of their other classes, so basically they're just being good students, that is, according to what their other classes expect. Fortunately I've been rolling with it, but today perhaps I let it show a little more than usual. I had last week's set of classes on the brain and the bar was set pretty high today.

FINALLY came to Japan.... And it was worth the wait! I enjoyed it a great deal. Really neat were the nods to earlier iterations of Star Trek, especially the original series. I think I'll see it again soon.

Then I went shopping. I picked up a couple of work shirts at Uniqlo and a pair of hiking boots (for the Mt. Fuji climb!) at ABC Mart.

Then I went to a party. I met some students and a couple of instructors from a neighboring university. We started off at an bar downtown and then went to a reggae bar which was near the apartment I lived in when I did JET back in the day. It was a good time, but in some of the pictures people took of me, I look like I've gained some weight. My face looks all fat and stuff. That's it, I'm going on a bike ride today. I know of a couple gyms in the area. I think I'll check them out. I'll also try to stop by the university and see what our gym is like as well.

One more thing, Game 6 Orlando vs Cleveland, in Orlando. Orlando is up 3-2 in the series with the chance to close it out at home.

GO MAGIC! p(^o^)q

It wasn't quite what I was expecting. The style reminded me of those "serial" comic strips in the paper. For example, Prince Valiant, The Phantom, Terry and the Pirates, etc... It was an interesting read. I have no idea what the movie is going to be like.

Oh and speaking of having no idea what the movie is like. This is pretty much how I approach watching movies these days. For example, The Matrix. I had heard about the hype, but made a conscious effort to avoid it. Then I saw the movie and was completely blown away. Anyway, I was watching the news this morning and they were talking about how the new Star Trek was coming to Japan. They had some interesting sound bites from the cast, but they would show scenes from the movie over the sound bite. They were showing so many scenes from the movie that I had to change channels. Japan doesn't quite get it when it comes to spoilers. When Episode II came out here in Japan, all the tv programs talking about the movie ALL showed clips of the fight scene between Count Dooku and Yoda. (Fortunately I had already seen the movie by then, but still.) So yeah, I may have been unknowingly spoilered on something in the new Star Trek. I'm just going to forget that I even watched tv this morning.

In other news, I continue to be pleasantly surprised by how motivated and active the students are in my classes. Prior to, people who I know that have taught at Japanese universities warned me about how unenthusiastic, lazy, quiet, etc... these students can be. Even the literature on the matter has said the same. To a lesser extent, it seemed like my co-workers also had the same sentiment. Somehow I don't think I lucked out with this many classes. Indeed, today I was doing a lesson more straight out of the textbook than usual (I did fewer super happy fun exciting speaking activities) and yet they were engaged throughout.

My first thought was that this is all perhaps due to the fact that I'm new here and they're excited to have a new teacher. However, almost all of my classes are 1st-year students. So then I thought that this is all because they're new here and excited to be at university. However, those negative reports included those instructors teaching 1st-year students. So yeah, I dunno. I'm going to try to not read too much into it and just go with the flow. So far, so good! (^_^)

Dang, is that the time? No wonder I'm so sleepy!

I was watching Jurassic Park in the dark here in my apartment when all of a sudden....

EARTHQUAKE!

It was just a little tremor, but talk about an immersive viewing experience! lol.

I have one class to teach today, and I have to be here for 8 hours. I brought my kanji dictionary to work and will do some studying by deciphering some of the reams of paperwork that fly across my desk everyday. We get so many memos and bulletins here, it would behoove me to learn the language of these things as I expect to see more of these kinds of things at my next job.

Yeah, I really should have started this sooner. Like from day 1. My thing was that hardly any of these things were ever relevant to me anyway that I'd be better off ignoring them than expend the time/effort trying to figure out what they meant.

Still, I have always had free time so I should have just gotten in there and actually done some work vs. just playing around on the internet.

It's a bit late, but I really should make that a New Year's Resolution. Did I even make any resolutions this year? If not, I guess I'll have two.
1.) Study Japanese
2.) Exercise
I've been doing pretty good with the exercise. The studying Japanese, not so much. This latest paperwork challenge is a prime example of why I need to get back into that.

Speaking of exercise, I went to the gym last night and the floor was practically deserted. There were no classes and hardly anyone on the weights/machines. Then I got into the bath/sauna and the place was PACKED. WTF?!? Where the hell did all these idiots come from? ugh. Still, I didn't want to go home all sweaty, so I toughed it out. I hit up the sauna, had a shower and soaked in the bath. The place cleared out eventually so I was able to relax after all.

When I got home, I started watching 21. I got about halfway through then I had to turn it off. For being such a "genius" the main character is quite an idiot. I was like "gimmeafrickinbreak". It started off pretty cool, then it just got dumb. Oh well.

Alright, I'm gonna crack open my dictionary and try to unravel some of the mystery of the moonspeak.

Good lord. I can't believe how BAD ASS this movie is. Holy shit. Liam Neeson, god damn. Fu*k. I'm going to watch it again. Right now.
*presses play*

One of the previews at the movie theater on Sunday was for...








...wait for it...










Dragonball Evolution.




ugh. This looks like the worst movie ever. I was embarrassed just watching the preview and I don't even like Dragonball.

(aka 修羅雪姫, Shurayuki-hime)
Interesting film, its influence on Kill Bill is profound. I had actually heard of this film before Kill Bill, but only yesterday got around to watching it. I should track down the sequel. Oh yeah, and the manga too.

Today is a light day at work, thank goodness. I rolled over wide awake at 3 am last night. I couldn't get back to sleep so I stayed up and played Sid Meier's Pirates until it was time for me to wake up and get ready for work. Not only did I have a light workload today, but the few classes I had were excellent. I haven't even had any run-ins with you-know-who. Days like today make the prospect of working here next year seem not too bad actually.

iTunes is being a fu*ker though. I reorganized a lot of music so I decided to just re-do my iTunes library. Suddenly, the artwork for about 50 CDs "could not be found". WTF man, it was all there when I first added these CDs! So in my downtime today I've been manually adding all of the missing artwork. Pain in the ass. Not only that, but some of these new scans are not as good as the ones that iTunes initially found. Grrrr....

I'm feeling pretty groggy, but I do want to hit up the gym after work today. I figure I don't even have to change out of my work clothes, just pack my gym bag and go straight there. Come home, make dinner and go to bed. Sounds like a plan.

I think I'm coming down with it. This morning I woke up with a sore throat. Then I noticed that my body was all achy. At first I thought my body was sore from the gym. However, it was a different kind of pain, kind of a dull lethargic soreness, and that's when it hit me... I'm coming down with the flu. Fortunately I have a lot of TheraFlu (daytime, sore throat and nighttime) that I brought with me from home. I think I'll serve up some nighttime before I hit the hay.

Other than that it was a pretty boring day today. Did laundry, made lunch, watched that shi-ty movie "Wanted", played around on facebook, had dinner at the mall, started watching "The Chronicles of Riddick", got bored with it, and here I am.

Oh crap, I still need to do up a lesson thingy for tomorrow. Lemme go do that now.

No, bad as in blech.

I just saw "Wanted". Wow, that movie was terrible. What a waste of time. Man, I'd really like that hour and a half back. Good thing I didn't see it in the theater. Then I'd really be ticked off.

Went for a few drinks with a couple co-workers last night. Started off in the park, ended up at a yakitori joint. It was pretty good. I really liked the atsukan. Then again, I always like the atsukan - lol.

I started watching Tropic Thunder. It was pretty dang funny, but I got sleepy and fell asleep right in the middle of it. I gotta finish it tonight.

Is anyone in the Tokyo area doing anything interesting for the day off this Monday? (e.g. partying Sunday night) My GF is busy this weekend and I'd like to get out of the house.

Just as I was bitching about weighing 76 kilos, for the past 3 days I've weighed 74. I figure a lot of that is just water weight. Maybe the colder weather has something to do with it as well, perhaps I'm burning more calories doing regular stuff just trying to keep warm.

I watched Hellboy II: The Golden Army today. That was a neat little flick. I totally forgot it came out actually, then I saw an ad for the DVD on facebook - lol. This doesn't even come out in Japan until January 2009 - double lol.

Parents' Day is Thursday. I had a dry run of my 3rd grade class today (with a different homeroom). It wasn't that great. They did really well with the warm-up; I'll keep that the same. The textbook stuff was normal. Then the main activity.... The set-up turned out to be a huge drain on time and we didn't get much time for the meat of it. I'll have to tweak that, maybe set a time limit for the set-up, make it a race - give points to the first team that completes the set-up. I want to keep this activity in the lesson plan as the little bit we got to spend on it did look impressive (there just wasn't enough of it). Oh and I have my dry run of my 1st grade class tomorrow. That one I'm pretty sure will be ok as it's basically the same lesson from a few weeks ago just with a different grammar point.

I'm heading down to Shizuoka Thursday night after work to spend time with the missus. Friday is a day off. Hooray for "Saitama Day"! Then I'll take the Shinkansen back up to Tokyo on Sunday night. That reminds me, I usually plan my next week's lessons on Fridays. Since I'll be out of town I'll have to prep that tomorrow as I'll be busy with Parents' Day on Thursday. *notes to self*

Speaking of Shizuoka, I'm gonna need to have a talk with Miyuki. We want to live together. The question, can she move up here or do I have to move down there? Actually, I would prefer to move down there. Thing is, finding a decent job. At the same time, I do want to put in more time where I'm at now for the experience and continuity. So yeah, decisions decisions....

I'm sitting here in my warm PJs thinking about how nice it would be to have gotten the kotatsu from that one dude. I guess I'll have to pick up one at the store one of these days. But the cold, yeah it's finally arrived. It's not freezing, but I definitely won't be wearing shorts/t-shirts for a while now. I do like it about this cold though; jeans & jackets weather. Last night, I went drinking with Kenji in the park. It was a pretty brisk evening. We started out with beer and ended up drinking shochu & hot oolong tea (pretty good drink, btw). After that, we had ramen, went to a game center (Street Fighter 4) and called it a night.

I've been working out pretty regularly since July. I started out at 76 kilos (167.2 lbs) and got down to 73 kilos (160.6 lbs). I stayed down there for a while. However, the last few times I weighed myself, I had crept back up to 76 kilos. I daresay that I've added that much muscle. While I'm not that much stronger now, I can see a slight difference in my arms, legs & chest (my gut hasn't changed much though ;_;). At any rate, I would like to maintain this level of strength and get back down to 73. My routine is pretty basic: 15 minutes of cardio and then 3 sets of 12 reps on various exercises targeting either chest/back or arms/legs. I'm thinking more cardio and more reps with a lower weight. I think I'll try 20 minutes of cardio and 4 sets of 10 reps.

In other news, I watched a couple Coen Brothers films, Burn After Reading on Friday and No Country For Old Men today. They were both excellent. These guys really know how to make a movie. Oh and I finally finished watching Macross Frontier. Great show, best Macross since the original.

Not much else is going on. I've got Parents' Day on Thursday. yay. Then Thursday night or Friday morning, I'll head back out to Shizuoka to hang out with Miyuki. Yay! Oh and FSU foosball beat Clemson yesterday, double yay!

I've been on a bit of a superhero kick here. I just finished watching Hancock. I thought it was pretty cool. I don't know what's up with some of the hate out there. :( Definitely not your ordinary superhero flick, and I thought it was all the better because of it.

Oh but before I watched that, I went to the gym. I got home from work and was feeling pretty beat. I was thinking about just having dinner, watching the video and going to bed. However, I decided to be good. I did cardio/chest/back. I'm glad I went because the sauna/bath afterward felt awesome.

Pic Spam
( warning: these are kinda big )

Oh yeah, and I did three things yesterday:
1.) I went to Immigration to get a re-entry permit. That wasn't too bad, considering that this is my least favorite place in Japan. It took about 30 minutes.
2.) I went to Tokyo and bought a laptop backpack. The Targus Dash. I used it to come to work today, so far, so good. It was definitely way more comfortable than my shoulder bag.
3.) I saw Iron Man, The Dark Knight, AND The Incredible Hulk. I actually liked Iron Man the best. Heath Ledger was awesome as The Joker, but there were just some plot holes in TDK that kinda bugged me. The Incredible Hulk was pretty good too, better than the Ang Lee one (which I also liked btw).

ETA: Oh wait, I saw Iron Man the evening after the Sports Day. The other 2 I saw yesterday.