Lost...in Kawasaki

Friday, 30th November
Went to the monthly teacher's meeting. Had some beer afterward
Had my Elementary School welcome party. Had quite a bit of fun at an Izakaya in Shin-Yokohama with all of my teachers. Drank a fair bit, ate a lot.
Getting more experience in speaking Japanese whilst drunk! LOL
Visited Moco for a bit afterward, talked with Kim　and Kame.

Saturday, 1st December
Hiromi and I caught up with Adrian, Tracey, Craig and Harumi. Ate curry in Zama.
Adrian and I watched The Librarians.

During the week
Cleaned up the apartment more. Became more acquainted with my downloading nerdiness.
In order to allow myself to rest and catch up on over a year's worth of missed sleep, I've become quite the indoors man as of late!
Catching up on TV shows, podcasts and the like...
Notable　TV shows: Scrubs, The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, Heroes, Pizza, The Librarians.
I've also found myself seeding quite a bit on private trackers as well as delving back into the world of eMule. Finding Japanese stuff that is available in an English version is extremely difficult to find!

On Wednesday, I found myself wandering around Machida looking for an Up-Scan Converter (to convert a standard composite RCA signal (DVD, TV, VCR, Video Games Console) into RGB (not Composite/Digital TV, but a 15-pin Analogue monitor connection) signal.
I was rather pleased that I was able to communicate my specific product specification needs in minute detail to the staff in various stores. Alas, the quest was more-or-less fruitless; because (as I predicted), I need to go to Akihabara.

On Thursday, Craig came round and we caught up on times gone past and watched a few episodes of Lost.

The Following Weekend (7th-9th)
I basically spent most of the time playing my PS2. I really only played Burnout Revenge the majority of the time.
Although, I did play the special hacked version of Final Fantasy X International that has the Japanese speech re-instated. This is a kind of new genre of hacks that have arisen with PS1 and PS2 games called "undub"s. I'm hoping someone will hack the International copies of Final Fantasy VII and X-2, as other SquareEnix games such as Star Ocean 2 + 3 have also been "undubbed".

Andrew also came round for a short visit on the 9th. We chatted and reminisced about Australian TV (particularly soaps) and bitched about the state of the Internet back in Oz.

Monday, 10th December
Last night was our last night to Adrian. So, Hiromi, Adrian, Tracey and I had Thai Curry at T & A's (couldn't resist that acronyminal (it's a word damnit!) pun) place. Spent the night talking about various topics on Japan and Australia. Said our final goodbyes, but not forever thanks to the magic of Skype, Facebook and the like.

I know I say this a lot, but I'm continually amazed by Facebook and it's ability to hook you up with people from your long, distant past.
Something that MySpace will never achieve due to it's non-disclosure of people's names to the public unless permitted - which almost never happens because people want their net-names. But aside from that, MySpace blows...who's going to actually be "friends" with their favourite bands because of the Internet?! Unless their someone like TISM, but that's a completely different story from my life.... (Rant rant rant...I know! :-P) I don't care if "Tom" (this is just a facade people, he sits around doing nothing now) has changed to a new default profile, most people's MySpace pages look like angry fruit salad!

I've just finished reading Inconceivable by Ben Elton. I must say that I started off a little bored with the book since there were very little topics being discussed apart from the attempted conception in the first hundred pages or so. However, I now realise that is because the entire book was written from the viewpoint of the two main character's diary entries which were started due to their pent-up stress from trying for so long. So, of course it was a natural progression for them to open themselves up much more to their "books" which are never reffered to as journals in any sense really.
Elton seemed to have gone down a never previously visited path with this book as it seems to shine through in his explanation of one of the two main character's film writing attempts somehow reflecting his frustrations to make a believable female protagonist and also perhaps to decide whether to embrace or reject people's advice. The other factor visited/reflected was the balancing of elements in a tragic comedy. This all seems to ring quite true for Elton in my opinion since any of his material on TV (such side-splitting masterpieces as Black Adder and The Young Ones, of which I am extremely thankful for!) has always been comedically based and possibly never necessarily required any strong gender elements. (I hope this makes sense!)
Lastly, I thought the ending was genius in that it was neither tragic, triumphant or even fully resolved. Somewhere that (and I think this was the point Elton had been trying to make) any Hollywood-targeted films rarely (or even ever - I think I'm saving face by saying this rarely! LOL) seem to tread.
I think this is the first time that I've had so much to say about a book, at least in quite a while. Does that mean it affected me in a dramatic way?

Having said that, I thought I'd write a short commentary about Fat by Rob Grant. I thought it was a rather enlightening experience into the varying worlds of eating disorders. Having experienced both ends of the scale at different times (one more than the other - I won't dwell on this), I could empathise with the characters a lot.
The factors that I enjoyed the most was the fact that Grant disguised many aspects of the character's lives until much later on in the book and also the way the three character's tales intertwined in a non-typical way in that they never actually interacted.

I was quite pleased at the advent of a book sale near Hiromi's work on Friday. Searching for new books has always been a joyful hobby of mine as a companion to the subsequent choice of which book to read first!
I purchased the following books:-
- 2001: A Space Oddyssey by Isaac Asimov (recommended to me by my first guitar teacher like 13 years ago!)
- A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (something I've been meaning to read for quite some time now, but have been afraid to do so after hearing the very common commentary "I read it...Didn't understand a word of it, but I read it!" My recently regained fascination with astronomy I feel has pushed me to take on the challenge)
- The Bible Code by Michael Crosnin (this one screamed out at me, as I'm quite the confused atheist!)
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Philosopher's Stone - I obviously bought the US edition) by J.K. Rowling (having enjoyed the movies, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about with the books. Also, this might pair nicely with my Elementary School career since I already seem to be revisiting my childhood.)
- The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein (I was assured by the kind gentlemen purchasing books beside me that "If you're Science Fiction, that one's a classic. A time-travel novel." How could I turn down such a reccomendation?!)

Saturday was nothing special. It's purpose being rather synonymous with most week-nights recently in that I've been either playing Final Fantasy X and Burnout Revenge (Although last night, I did pull out the GameCube to play some Zelda; but I admit that it's not a far departure from the norm!) or watching TV - which, since it's the end-of-year 'non-ratings' season in the US and Australia, has only consisted of Naruto and Chaser's War On Everything (I only just discovered the hilarity of this show).

Sunday was quite the adventure. It began with Hiromi and I visiting the local hairdresser. Hiromi got a trim and her colouring redone. I don't want to give away anything about my slightly drastic haircut here, as I want to keep it a surprise for those in Japan that are reading....
Afterwards, we traveled to Akihabara, which has to be my most enjoyable trip there yet. Our primary purpose was to buy a couple of DS flash carts for friends.
I also wished to get my hands on an Upscan Converter that supported both PAL and NTSC or failing that; a PAL to NTSC converter or an extremely unlikely TV capture card that supported PAL and NTSC. Perhaps because of the advent of TVs that support both formats, such items are difficult to come by outside of the realm of the Internet. The only things I managed to find were a PAL to NTSC converter that was worth $400 and a TV capture card that was only available in PCI Express form (I really won't need a 64-bit generation computer for a long time!)
For a long time, I've been a collector of special-chip games for the Super Nintendo (Super Famicom). So, we were searching for games for a little while. I bought Starfox (Super FX), Street Fighter Zero 2 (SDD-1) and a Super Game Boy 2 (features the GameBoy Link port). I was tempted to buy RPG Maker 2 (features a TurboFile cart slot for saving games) and F1-ROC II (SETA). I kind of regret not buying these, but wasn't really interested at the time. I might go back and get them if they're still there... It seems my seemingly impossible quest to find a copy of Hebereke on the Famicom (I own the English version, Ufouria for the NES) might still be in vain.
That night we hung out with the gang from DAN at an Izakaya for what I think was a Bounenkai...

There's only 3 days to go of work before the winter holiday, so I'm getting a little excited. Hopefully, everything will go to plan and Hiromi and I will visit Akita over the New Year.

I've been meaning to write this part for quite some time, as some people (although this is a very small percentage) seem to miss the point of my blog. Part of the reason I've chosen to write this now is because I know that these people have left the country and there isn't any chance of them reading this; so therefore this thought really does act at it is intended, a recording of my thoughts and not an invitation for discussion.
The primary reasons for this blog is for me to keep a journal of my experience in Japan and to have something to look back on in the future. However, if others get something out of it, that's great. If it ever appears as though I'm somehow boasting, it's because I'd rather not dwell on bad memories. Why dig up old wounds? I'd prefer to bury them and move on.

Ahem.... Tokyo DisneyLand, that is....
I'm quite excited! Hiromi bought us day passes to Tokyo DisneyLand for Christmas Eve! The closest thing I've been to a theme park was Warner Bros. Movie World and that was ten years ago....

I forgot to mention the sixth book that I bought last Friday:-
- Eragon by Christopher Paolini (I thought I'd give it a shot. I didn't much like the movie (in fact, I fell asleep), but Adrian assures me that the book is better than the movie (as is usually the case), but I still have my doubts....

I read a certain short-story entitled "Deconstructing Dinner" by a one Joy Waller. I'll refrain from commentary until I receive answers to my inquiries to the critically-acclaimed author.