Running

(This post is a week old)

I woke up today to find it snowing in Tokyo. It probably would have been enough to stick in Sendai, but around here things are so dense and the city generates so much heat, it was gone by night. Shinji took me out to eat tonight and we caught up on the eventful last couple months of our lives and talked about the ridiculous situation in South East Asia over dinner at TGIFridays. It was nice to go to TGIFridays because it's pretty much the only American establishment in Japan that is exactly the same as it is in the states, right down to the portion sizes. So I had the best hamburger I've had in months there with some beers, potato skins, and quesadillas (which weren't that good). I might as well had been in Yorba Linda.

I'm waiting right now to leave for Kyoto with the Shimuzas. This is probably going to be a very very long drive, what with the end of the year traffic, snow, and Yukari's little infant Rio crying and crapping the whole way. Woohoo. I'll just be sleeping and moping in the backseat. Oh well, tomorrow I get to see some Fulbrighters.

Todays Top 5:

Top Moments in Television According to Me:

I watch a lot a lot a lot of TV, but this year was kind of weird since I spent almost half the year watching Japanese TV. That kind of disrupts my TV memory somewhat. So this is going to be a very random list of things:

(5) Jay Leno announces his retirement - I wasn't even in the U.S. to hear about this and it was a moment of great joy. If Jay hadn't decided to wait another five years to retire, this probably would have been number one. We don't need him stinking up the airwaves anymore.
(4) Last Christmas Finale - I needed to put a Japanese TV reference in here, which was hard since there aren't a lot of significant moments on Japanese TV. But the Last Christmas Finale was a nice way to wrap up a shamelessly drama-like drama, by which I mean it was completely devoid of social commentary (which many Japanese dramas seem to have as an at least light-hearted and sometimes heavy foundation), and it had so many classic Asian drama features, it was almost reached the level of Korean drama, the Defcon 1 of the genre. They tricked you into thinking Yuki died until the last 10 minutes, everyone fell in love with each other, there were 3 weddings and a child born in the span of the last two hours of the show, and to top it all off, the main character's name was Kenji. Brilliant.
(3) Jon Stewart on Crossfire - I saw this clip on the internet (again, I was in Japan) and it was a little bit uncomfortable and sad to see. In other words, hilarious. In a year that saw his fake news show voted best news program and his fake American history book voted book of the year, Jon Stewart demonstrated why the Daily Show has become so important - because a lot of the time, it's fake news stories deliver more of the truth than the "real" news. Like Crossfire.
(2) Stephen Colbert's Interviews I Could Get - Also from the Daily Show, which I was obsessed with for several months, the two best "Interviews I Could Get" were with Don King and the Rev. Al Sharpton. Both slightly crazy, frizzy-haired, middle-aged black men who unintentionally say hilarious things consistently. And Stephen Colbert is clearly the most talented of the Daily Show cast. You can see these clips on comedycentral.com's daily show site.
(1) Chappelle's Show's Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories - Is it me, or are there too many possessives in that clause? Anyway, everyone knows these clips - the Prince and Rick James skits - and they pretty much carried the Chappelle's Show from really good to amazing. I watched these clips end on end for a long period of time. I hope they have more of this coming.