Unplanned wonders of the world

Thought I'd direct you to a few sights. First is the shoe tree. It's quite beautiful. Next is the gum tree (not quite as beautiful, but its worth a look). Follow that up with the valley of the tires. And finally, the little known fact that the video game E.T. for the Atari was so overproduced and rejected by the public at large, that millions of cartriges were buried in a landfill in Arizona. The debacle also crippled the American video game industry for a long time, giving Japan the edge. Thank goodness; otherwise we might not have all your base. Anyways, it's the subject of a music video you should see.

Wall flowers gone wild

I made a panorama of my town in Japan. Click to zoom.
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Was there ever a girl in your life, maybe in high school, and you held the opinion that they were kind of plain but you alone were able to see what cuteness they had and appreciate it and maybe you could even see yourself dating that girl if she wasn't so shy. You envisioned breaking that girl out of her shell and helping her to see just how sexy she was. You fantasized about how chaste and pure she was. You thought she was very sweet and cute when she mustered the courage to talk. Ever know her?

Did you ever meet that same girl years later and discover that she was actually a party animal and borderline nymphomaniac? I met that girl again and again and again. And now I'm meeting other people's wild wall flowers it seems.
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Today, as I walked into the school, I got, "Craeyton... you are... cool!" from a Japanese school girl. Just last Friday another one claimed I looked like Tom Cruise. Both of these comments seemed to come out of nowhere to me. Maybe its the hair wax and leather jacket. Conquering the world, one school girl's opinion at a time.
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More with the pictures already
Kim Jong's got game.
You have to be up on net culture to realize why this worksheet I made is funny.
I was a little shocked to see this nazi flag at a store in a mall. The swastika is not nearly as touchy a subject over here. Actually I wish it could be redeemed. It was a symbol for luck and such stuff for thousands of years before the nazis got a hold of it.
Also, one of my boys has a pencil box with a skull, swastika, and @$*! LIFE printed on it. There are things one just has to ignore...
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Guess that song for old times sake:

You're not right in the head and nor am I
And this is why
You're not right in the head and nor am I
And this is why
This is why I like you, I like you, I like you
This is why I like you, I like you, I like you

Jack Sauce? What's Jack sauce?

My predecessor left a few things food-wise that well... I'm not sure what they are. So I have a refrigerator of six-month old, scary things. And despite this flash (same guys that did that badger thing), I still don't quite know what Mango Chutney is. Is this just a bachelor thing, to have strange ancient foods in your fridge, or do the ladies have stuff sitting in their fridge too?
No matter how much food I buy, it's all gone within a couple days, and I'm left with the chutney in my fridge.

I'm big in Japan, or at least Tara

So I thought they would have gotten bored of me by now, but I'm still appearing on TV. Recently, I've been playing multiple roles in the English lessons. I appear and do a semi-comical yet formal introduction. It looks a lot like this guy (thanks to Mari for that link). Then I appear in the group that is replying to the exhortations to say English together. Today, I wore a plasic geisha wig* in my secondary role.
So I can't go anywhere without people shouting at me that they've seen me on TV. It's hard to respond. "Oh, really? Um, thanks for seeming so excited to have seen me?"

*: And to think, just a few months ago I saw an older comedian (Beat Takeshi maybe) wearing a dog-dish mask(?!) and thought to myself, I would never stoop so low for fame on Japanese TV. Well... in my defence, I did refuse to wear the silly thing in my primary role. I'm enough of a class clown to the kids as it is.

Oh and she fixed my special zombie-killing leather jacket too

T and I exchanged gifts tonight; kind of a belated Christmas. I gave her The Little Prince (translated into Japanese), and she gave me a Papaya Suzuki CD (the guy with the fro from the mayonaise post), which has the song with the lyrics, "I can read kanji, but I can't write them!" I love the song, because I identify. She also gave me something I unwrapped later. It seems like a mask, but it has no eye-holes, nor any other features, and a woman is painted, Ukyo-e style, on the inside. The guys at the yakitori shop didn't know what it was.
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I did really good at speaking Japanese tonight. This ronin is learning. Speaking of which, the other night I fell asleep while watching MPD Psycho (a Takashi Miike miniseries), and woke up the next morning with Japanese stuck in my head. Unfortunately, I didn't quite know what I was saying to myself; random everyday colloquialisms and such just floated in. Well, it's progress of a sort.
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Turns out the orphanage I volunteered at has a web page. Visit, and find a way to donate if you feel so inclined.

Religion and other taboo jokes

I've noticed that whenever I am in a situation where a group of people get to know me for the first time, and an extended time at that, they realize I'm really funny. Usually, it takes months for someone to notice this, because I am so quiet. One day they go, "Oh, I get it now! All those things you say... You're funny!" To which I reply, "Well that's obvious. But have you noticed how incredibly humble I am?"

But even I tell a joke that's not funny every once in a while (analogous to a blog entry without a comment is the joke without a laugh). Among topics that I've discovered aren't funny: orphans dying. Okay, that should be obvious, especially when you are with an volunteer group helping orphans*, but I contend it was funny because it was so unfunny and downright blasphemous.
But ironically, I rarely find religion jokes very funny because I'm too incensed by them. It doesn't even have to be my faith. I cringe at every pedophilic priest joke. I even cringe for the Scientologists. And Tom Cruise.
My goal now is to have a sense of humor about religion, while realizing what is tactful and what is not. So no more holocaust jokes either†.
On a side note, it is very difficult to explain to a Japanese person why the chicken crossing the road joke is funny.
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Now for a random semi-spiritual thought to counter the balance, from some some TV producer,

I believe that the very act of believing in something causes us to distance ourselves from that thing, thus a duality is created: oneself and the thing in which one believes. Now since we all know that in order to fully understand a thing one must be that thing -- walk a mile in its shoes so to speak -- it seems obvious that the state of believing in something inevitably causes us to not truly understand that thing in which we believe. This noncomprehension leads to all sorts of difficulties. "I believe in love" has a better than even chance of leading to divorce, while "I believe in God" seems to end in variations on the Spanish Inquisition. But -- and it's a big but -- if one were love, one couldn't help but be affectionate and caring towards oneself and others. If one were God, one would act toward all beings and all things as if they were one's own creations.

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*:as were attempts to lighten the mood afterwards by alluding to how horrible a joke I had made. These are the times when I really wish I had amnesia dust, or roofies a la Arrested Development.Do me a favor, reach into my pocket and let me have one of those pills please!
†:Holy crap, I'm just kidding! I don't know any jokes about the holocaust.

Get married, get thrown, get down at the reception afterwards

What's the craziest wedding tradition you know of?
From the mainichi daily news (with minor corrections by me):

Recently married men hurled down snowy Niigata slope in time-honored tradition

Local people in Tokamachi, Niigata Prefecture, throw a recently married man down a snowy slope in a time-honored ceremony.

TOKAMACHI, Niigata -- Local residents threw two recently married men down a snowy slope during a time-honored, New Year tradition [did we mention it's time-honored yet?].

A local apprentice cook in Tokamachi, Niigata Prefecture, and a company employee from Tokyo's Shinagawa-ku were hurled down a five-meter-long, snow-covered slope in the Matsunoyama hot spa area in Tokamachi on Jan. 15.

The two men rolled down the slope to the bottom, where their wives were waiting. "I feel fantastic," one of the men said [The other simply screamed, no doubt in joy, or maybe it was the broken leg].

Later, participants in the event coated each others' faces with snow mixed with ash in hopes of health and prosperity ["The burning in your eyes let's you know it's full of prosperity," said one participant].

Local tradition states that a young man started the practice to vent his anger after a man from another area married a girl he was in love with ["No really, I'm over her now!" is also traditionally shouted].

I now have a goal: get married in Japan, and get hurled. Then go to my recently purchased island for a warm honeymoon. I wonder how many people it would take to hurl my giant self?

Stan Lee to blame for the Power Rangers?

This thing is so outrageous that you would have to assume, upon hearing it, that it cannot be anything but a joke. The fact is, somehow Japan got a hold of the Spiderman franchise and added that special, Japanesie-touch via bird-henchmen that go "Whoosh!" and a giant robot named, naturally, the Marveller. It brings to mind a common phrase that was said whenever Kit was around: Because their is nothing that can't be made better with giant robots. We all stand corrected. View the film here, and enjoy the subtitles, which are slightly embellished. Note for fellow firefoxers: I couldn't view it until I switched to Internet Explorer ;_;

Related: SMAP power rangers parody

Because this blog doesn't have enough pictures of me by far

Yoinked from Maurice's blog. That's the Takeo gang. click to zoom, obvs

Express yourself

I know there is an artist in everyone waiting for an outlet. Check out these links for your inner child's sake.

First up: Pixel Tees. Make t-shirts a pixel at a time. Then buy them, sell them, or check out other people's shirts. As long as I'm mentioning unique clothes, I feel I should tell you about Low Tee, where every swim suit is guaranteed to be one of a kind.



What about the body as art? I recommend checking out The Hand Collector. Now I know it sounds like an 80's B-flick, but it's actually a cool project that collects pictures of palms with drawings on them. This seems like a Brit kind of thing to do. Do you ever read my blog anymore Brit? The blogosphere wishes you would visit more often.
Anyways, it reminded me of shakeskin, which is sadly not for those of us that have a fetish for 300 hundred pound women on trampolines. What? Don't judge me. I've linked to shakeskin before and I still need to get around to contributing my photo.

Finally, you should visit flipbook and do some doodling. The site is in serious need of some talented contributions, which is a shame, because it is such a cool idea. And you're safe from the nun when you doodle online, as opposed to the margins your text book from your private Catholic school days.

Learning Japanese through videogames

Must be a slow day at BBC. In this article, they show the faces behind game avatars. Because we were all dying to know. Well, it's a slow day here too cause I looked at them all. The one I linked to is trying to learn, via Final Fantasy how to speak Japanese. If you wanna take the game road, I suggest slime forest for starters. It's free too. Right now, I'm working on translating Silent Hill Novel for the gba.
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In relation to this entry, mom sent me a card saying "This too, shall pass (pun intended)." There was also a Hitchhiker's Guide DVD in the card. Good on ya, mom.

more pics

The rest of the Thailand group is slowly starting to put pictures into an online album. So you can see them here. Btw, I think the shutterbook system may kick flickr's butt.
Group shot.

Here I play the bard. I'm bigger than I ever realized. No wonder Badsha calls me the gentle giant.

On that page you can see the candle-lit Christmas, and the darling orphans, and the yoga cuisine, so take a look.