Ghost Ship

I have arrived safely in Hokkaido. I'm currently sitting at Fulbrighter and Princeton-grad John Kim's desk in a forest research station in the town of Tomakomai (John's topic is an ecological study of the forest ecosystem; something about how typhoon damage changes the spread of nutrients from stream to forest? Or something? Let me ask him when he comes back into the room). I got to Hokkaido around 10:30 AM today, and it is pretty icy and freezing here, but a nice change of scenery. John has this little Suzuki Alto that he's renting and the front fender is dented and the right rear passenger door is destroyed because yesterday he got into not one, but two accidents. Luckily, he sprung for the insurance. At his apartment, you have to shut off the water at night because otherwise the pipes freeze and explode (my building's auto-shutoff system would probably be too annoying here since the water would shut itself off constantly); unfortunately, one of the tenants forgot last night and the pipes exploded, spilling water all over the garage underneath the building and freezing John's parking space solid. Parking the car is amusing.

The boat ride up to Hokkaido was surprisingly really nice. The boat was kind of like a really cheezy hotel. You know what I mean - the kind with teal and purple carpeting, wall tapestries of palm tree-lined beaches, flashing strings of lights, and a clear piano (yes, that's right a CLEAR piano). But it was the closest thing to a cruise I've ever been on (which, in retrospect, is actually quite sad). It was equipped with: an arcade, a mini theater (free!), a buffet restaurant, a gift shop, a snack counter, a bar, a karaoke room, a bunch of pianos all over the place for no particular reason (including that clear piano), a really nice ballroom/showroom that wasn't used for anything, tons of lounges with TVs (and I got to watch The Pianist and Battle Royale, two movies I love), vending machines everywhere, and even a public bath/sauna. And from 9-10 PM there was a simply lovely piano/violin duet performance. So while I only got the lowest level ticket, where you sleep on the floor in a room with a ton of other people, it was actually pretty nice and entertaining. But it's amazing to me that the boat makes any money at all because sometimes it seemed like their was one staff person on the ship for about every two passengers. The fact that the ship was simultaneously so empty and so much like a hotel from the 1970s or 80s made it feel like a horror movie - like The Shining mixed with the Titanic. Despite half-expecting to be murdered by a Japanese version of Jack Nicholson, I still slept decently.

Tomorrow: heading to Niseko to start the Fulbright ski trip madness.

Notes

No time for a full entry, so a few notes:

(1) I'm leaving for Hokkaido right now - I'm going on a fifteen hour ferry ride. I don't know how I'm going to handle that. After skiing and yuki matsuri in Hokkaido, I'm going to Fukuoka. Won't be back for 16 days.

(2) I was wrong about half of the new Bright Eyes material - I've been listening to "I'm Wide Awake It's Morning" from beginning to end for days now. It is the first album I've bought in awhile that made me do that (the last one being Smile).

(3) I went to a kyabakura for the first time last night. It was weird and sort of fun. But mainly just weird.

(4) Someone get Miss Jones fired from Hot 97 New York please. Really - please.

More on all of this later.

my-finger-desu

my-finger-desu
Originally uploaded by kenji618.

Just for kicks, here is a picture of what my homemade bandaid looked like.

new-hair-desu

new-hair-desu
Originally uploaded by kenji618.

After class tonight, I went back to the hair salon I got my first Sendai haircut at back in early November (Ungu Labo) and had a heartfelt reunion with Yoshiko, the girl who cuts my hair. Okay, it wasn't really heartfelt, but it was pretty impressive that though it's almost been three months, she and the guy who washes her clients' hair remembered me, how I cut my hair last time, when I came in last time, what I'm doing in Japan, and where I'm from. Maybe she takes notes on everyone. In any case, Japanese service never ceases to amaze me. I told her I wanted to clean it up a bit, but still keep the length so I can grow it more. It looks pretty Japanese, and I like it a lot. Here it is.

Zannen!

I finally finished this week of last-minute presentation preparation and riding around on my bike running errands. Today, I had a group presentation to give, and somehow my group pulled it off in decent fashion. It was for my advanced listening class, and we had to give a presentation on a TV show, and my group gave it on the variety show "Minna no Mondai", which is a show with quiz questions having to do with daily life. My group was the largest - seven people - and consisted of me, a guy from malaysia, a guy from taiwan, and four girls from korea. The four girls from Korea drove the guys crazy - they were always too busy to meet, were incredibly bossy, and they didn't really listen to anything we said. Well, really just one control freak in particular. The other three just didn't seem to give a shit. So today we finally met up as a group and rushed to throw the things we'd all done separately together into a presentation. I had the idea of taking up the show's basic set-up - with a host and a team of guys and a team of girls - for our presentation, making us a tv show talking about a tv show. Oh, how very clever I am. Unfortunately, since we never rehearsed even one time, that didn't actually go too smoothly. We all had geinoujin (celebrity) characters to play, including Yon-sama, Kimura Takuya, BoA, Yada Akiko, Yuuka, and Hata Youku, a recent comedy celebrity who is famous for his act "guitar samurai" where he rails on all sorts of people while singing this one song. Since I know how to play his song on guitar, it was only natural that I would be him. While working on the presentation, I was frustrated with my group and had written all sorts of lyrics about them that were unpresentable in a classroom setting. But after we limped through our presentation (actually, my group really surprised me and came through pretty well considering we had no practice), the inevitable request to perform a song came. I kind of anticipated it, so I made up a bit during the presentation about how crappy our campus is and sang it. It was pretty weird and embarrassing doing a Japanese musical comedy bit during lecture, but everyone seemed to like it, and it happily did not insult the people on my team to their face in front of my entire class.

Tuesday Freakout

Yesterday after sessions with Takako and Taiga, I was suddenly invited for a shinnenkai (New Year's Party; celebrating it this late in the month seems suspiciously like just another excuse for Japanese people to get drunk on a week day) for my advisor's zemi (thesis seminar). It was really great - just the guys showed up (the class is primarily male) and there was much drinking and back-slapping. We did some good ol' hashigozake (bar-hopping) and the group slowly dwindled as the night went on. They once again impressed me with their ability to nimbly bounce between debating about economics and politics and talking about s-e-x. At the end, the zemi's resident loud mouth Tanabe (it seems like every Japanese class has one loud mouth kid that is the leader) crashed at my place since he couldn't get home that late. He's the type of guy who still yells everything he says to you even when it's 4 AM, silent, and you're sitting like six feet apart.

So following that little adventure, today, I freaked out. I have so much work to get done this week and in the next month and so many little annoying errands to run and places to go and people to see, etc. and YET I still went out last night and I'm still leaving for an extended vacation of domestic travel in four days. So I freaked for awhile, made some phone calls to gather my nerves into neat little bundles again, then stayed in my room all day working, forgot my wallet when I went to go buy dinner, and ate snack foods while crunching Japanese divorce statistics.

I am now going to bed. Good night.

Index Finger: Suck it.

I think this is going to have to be a short entry. You see, i'm typing with only 7 of the 8 fingers I usually type with (I'm not counting the thumbs here, people) because I have a piece of tissue paper taped to my left index finger. Let me explain. Last night, after deciding to put some of the aging vegetables in my crisper to work and make dinner, I made the fateful decision to use "the big and sharp knife" instead of the "smaller, safer, dull knife I always use". I almost immediately sliced into my left finger, bleeding everywhere. The knife sliced in under the skin deep enough that there isn't really any skin I can tear off; it's just kind of a gill on my finger. It just is a flap. And it bleeds easily when exposed, and as luck would have it, I have no bandaids. So I made a bandaid out of tissue and tape (don't ask why I didn't go buy bandaids; I'm cheap about weird things), which is good to stop the bleeding but bad for everything else. Like typing.

On Friday night, I went to Teruko's bar and got really drunk off of sake for free. Everyone kept refilling my glass and I kept emptying it. Really, for the amount I drank I wasn't that drunk. And on the way home, I kept falling. No, silly, not because I was drunk, but because the ground was a sheet of ice again and I had to walk up hill. Why didn't I take a cab? Because I had my bike and drunk me didn't want to leave it in the city and have to go back for it, so I walked it home. Bad idea. At one point, I couldn't make it up this little hill near my apartment because it was just frozen solid. My bike was sliding everywhere, my feet were sliding everywhere. I was literally lying on my side trying to keep my bike from sliding down into the street. It was a pathetic sight. But I did eventually make it home. And today, I went shopping downtown and got some stuff that I was very pleased I found.

A few of the things I bought this weekend were knew albums by Bright Eyes (his two new albums dropped simultaneously this week) and ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead. Both albums are part of a disturbing trend that has hit my music catalogue in the last year - the below-expectations follow up album. These albums are actually really good - they just can't hold a candle to the last album that was put out. In the last year, so many follow-up to amazing albums were released: Iron and Wine (Our Endless Numbered Days), Wilco (A Ghost Is Born), Interpol (Antics), Ted Leo + RX (Shake the Sheets), and now Bright Eyes (I'm Wide Awake It's Morning / Digital Ash in a Digital Urn) and Trail of Dead (Worlds Apart). And not one of them managed to best the album they followed, at least in my eyes. Okay, so granted, most of those previous albums were literally the best albums released in 2002 and 2003 (most unanimously of course being Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot", Trail of Dead's "Source Tags & Codes", Interpol's "Turn on the Bright Lights", and Ted Leo's "Hearts of Oak", while Bright Eyes's "Lifted, Or The Story in in the Soil Keep Your Ear to The Ground" and Iron and Wine's "The Creek Drank the Cradle" are a couple of my personal favorites), but you'd think one of these new records would have been better. Again, they are all good albums - they have stand-out amazing songs, and some were even my favorite albums from last year. But I find myself increasingly going back to those older albums.

Take the new Bright Eyes albums - if he had written one album instead of two, it almost definitely would have been a much, much stronger effort, and as it is, the "country" and "digital" separation he decided to use is pretty tiresome. It undercuts and handicaps the strongest aspect of his last album - the variety of styles that popped up. This album does have one thing in common with his previous discs - he starts it with an annoyingly long and unnecessary intro of people talking. Oh, and Conor's whiny-but-sarcastic emoting is starting to be annoying to even me (whiny-but-sarcastic emoting is one of my many talents) and a lot of the times you get the impression he's saying things just because they sound like they would be excellent things to feel pitiful about. Like, there is one song where he sings about staying up all night at the typewriter staring at a white sheet - should someone who just released around 25 songs simultaneously be singing about writer's block? He also manages to use that most-commonly-used-worst-sample-in-music-history, the dreaded "baby-crying" sample, ruining an otherwise decent song. Seriously, why do people think a baby crying is a good sample to drop into a song? Maybe they believe one of the most obnoxious sounds in life is going to sound intellectual or cool just because it is in their song. You know what? They are wrong.

The Trail of Dead record is their first major label release and you can tell. Sure, the album cover and notes have the same souvenir-shop-of-The-Crusades kind of cornball mysticism to it, but the album inside feels different. There is more money in this sound - the production is much cleaner and deeper - which isn't always a good thing. Trail of Dead's strong point has always been their acid-spitting vocals, slightly fuzzy and dark production values, and the fact that they break all their shit everytime they perform live. Come to the think of it, the consistent breaking of shit is pretty much the best part. Aside from cleaner production, the entire thing just feels brighter and lighter than "Madonna" and "Source Tags", and I'm not sure how I feel about that, particularly coming from a band called "..And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead". Shouldn't they be making me beg for my life rather than making me feel sunshiny?

So I guess the question becomes - is music recently in a slump of crappiness (there weren't as many good albums released last year as in previous years in my opinion) or did my taste in music frighteningly stagnify in 2002-2003 mode? God, I can see myself at 45, calling out for "Lover I Don't Have to Love" at a Conor Oberst show at The House of Blues. Terrifying. I better finally go buy Blueberry Boat by the Fiery Furnaces and that new LCD Soundsystem record and fast ...

Done typing. Damn this finger.

New Workout Plan

I think the last four months might have been the most physically inactive period of my life other than my pre-walking phase, and I have been feeling the effects. I have to sleep much more than I usually have to, have trouble concentrating, and eat tiny amounts for every meal. I'm talking less than my Japanese friends. My Japanese GIRL friends. Yeah, the little tiny ones with the squeaky voices. Something needed to change. So I decided I would check out my workout options here on campus.

Behind the club houses, there is a large Physical Education building that is free of charge to everyone and anyone. After figuring out that I had to bring two pairs of shoes with me (one to wear walking there and one to wear when working out there), I was ready. Let me begin by saying that, as might be expected it was freezing in the building. It was my first experience being able to see my breath while working out indoors. After a long hallway with metal cabinets holding soccer and volleyballs so old their outer shells were rotting, I came to the main attraction of the first floor: a gymnasium with two basketball courts. The basketball club was working out, and inbetween the courts so was the gymnastics club, using equipment apparently inherited from an inner-city Boys and Girls club. To give you an idea, they practice the rings by hanging rings from the backboard of a hoop. It was kind of cute to watch them try so hard with such old, dangerous equipment; kind of like Cool Runnings or something. As for the basketball court itself, it's been awhile since I've played on wood so old (the last time was, surprise surprise, two years and a half years ago in Japan). Otherwise, the courts were almost perfect; all they were missing were the peach baskets. But did I mention it was free? Upstairs the weightroom is housed. It was the kind of weight-room with all iron-equipment, all of which is rusted. One of the benches had been used for so long that the padding was worn all the way through to the wood where you rest your head. Some of the bench-press bars were bent. They even had those dumbbells with the spherical weights at the end - the ones you only see in cartoons and posters from Prohibition Era circus side shows. Really, I thought all equipment like this had been melted down to make bullets during World War II. I was wrong. All in all, the experience was kind of like a cross between a YMCA, a Siberian Prison, and an episode of Popeye. But did I mention it was free?

Anyway, today I saw this story on cnn.com talking about how Fox blurred a butt on a RERUN of the CARTOON The Family Guy to avoid FCC backlash. You have to be kidding me. FOX, the sleaziest major network, has problems showing a cartoon butt? Something is wrong here. I mean really - a cartoon butt??? Wait, wait - which would be worse in the FCC's eyes: a cartoon butt or a baby butt? Really - so it's an adult cartoon, but clearly not realistically drawn (just sort of a curve), and a young child's butt, but it's real skin. This could be a difficult debate. And so recently we've had knee-jerk backlashes over T.O. and desperate housewives, Randy Moss pretending to moon people, Mickey Rooney's naked butt, and now a CARTOON butt. I know this is a post-"janet/jt halftime" show world, but does anyone else feel like this is incredibly stupid? There is a ridiculous amount of sex and violence on TV in the U.S. constantly and these little bits and pieces are picked out to be scrutinized and hanged in the court of public opinion? I've seen all of these clips courtesy of the great website www.ifilm.com and maybe this is just because i'm a crass individual, but none of them seem all that offensive to me. I sort of get the feeling that these reactions are the "moral" people in the U.S. trying to over-compensate for the fact that the U.S. is doing pretty immoral things at the moment (look out! Politics entering blog! Politics entering blog!). The president is spending $40 million on his inaugural "celebration of democracy", and offered only $15 million initially for tsunami aid. Okay yeah, he's bumped it up a lot, but come on, initially setting aside more money for a party celebrating yourself than for a natural disaster that killed 160,000 people is pretty questionable. Especially when we're spending billions on a war in Iraq and our soldiers are under-equipped AND the government finally quietly admitted the WMDs we went in for in the first place never existed. Oh, and they won't apologize for it even though it's costing us, the world, and thousands of young Americans and Iraqis of all ages much more than dollars and cents. I don't want to sound trite (though I already do! yay!), but come on - making huge fusses over Mickey Rooney's butt because it may or may not expose millions of young, impressionable, NFL watching children to the wrong message is pretty ridiculous when we're also sending them the message that the right way to do things is to go into a country and start killing people to make things the way we want it, and also to not spend much money helping other people in need because - why should we help them? We're too busy fucking other people up with our big guns! Good luck not getting shot while casting your vote in your first-ever democratic elections, (what's left of) the Iraqi people!

That's all I wanted to say.

That sure was some tasty chicken stirfry!

It snowed more today and I did pretty much nothing. Except ..

Tonight I made dinner for myself. And it was delicious. I continue to amaze myself.

So yesterday, my mom topped somehow managed to top herself in the amazing care package department. The box contained: The Anchorman DVD (as selected by my little sister), an incredibly nice scarf (as selected by my older sister), Jon Stewart and the Daily Show's book America (as selected by my mom), as well as cheezits, cheetos, thin triscuits, snickers, and pringles. If you know anything about my taste in humor or snackfoods, you know this package hit the nail on the head. It was perfect. Arigato ne, Okaasan!

Two interesting news stories: Matt Leinart decided to give up millions of dollars and risk injuring himself to take a shot at a third national title shot at SC. I'm not sure if this story makes me want to say "you idiot!" or "why aren't more athletes like this?"

The other story was on cnn.com and was talking about the best-mannered cities in the U.S. according to some ettiquette teacher who says she based her ranking off of "letters and faxes ... from the public and those who have taken her etiquette courses", so you know it's pretty scientific. I wasn't so appalled at the top ranked city since I know nothing about it and have no interest in ever going there (Charleston), but I was pretty appalled by the eighth ranked city: Philadelphia. Now, Philadelphia is definitely much more polite than say, New York (which isn't saying a lot since a room of people booing you and throwing things at you might be more polite than New York City, too). But I lived in Philadelphia for four years, and it was definitely chock-full of tired and angry assholes who I wouldn't exactly consider to be polite. Believe me, I wasn't exactly ready to write letters about the all-stars they have working the register at Wawa - or the other people shopping at Wawa for that matter. Maybe they didn't count West Philly and 90% of Center City as part of the city, because then it might be considered not impolite. I have a funny feeling Mayor Street and his staff's hands are all cramped from writing tons of letters addressed to this ettiquette school ..

I had two conversations today that set me off angrily, something that doesn't happen tooo often. One was about how Asian or un-Asian I am - something that has been offensive to me since I was a kid when "friends" called me a disgrace for not being "Asian" enough and other Asian kids would like shun me for not doing "Asian" things - like listening to bad hip-hop, growing my bangs out long, wearing a Nautica jacket, or wanting to drive a lowered Integra (all things I feel like I'm a better person for not doing). I wish Asian-Americans would realize two things - their idea of what being "Asian" is is just an empty, fleeting identity they've built up in AMERICA. It is not Asian - it is a skewed definition of Asian-American. If they came to Asia at this point, they'd probably be viewed as less Asian than me now. This silly defining of what "Asian" is should stop. And secondly, they should know that their kids or grandkids are not going to be nearly as Asian as they think they will be. Why? Because they will grow up in America to American-born parents (or parents largely-raised in America) and that makes it pretty difficult to make them anything other than really, really American. Trust me - it happened to my family (has anyone seen my sisters recently?).

The other conversation was about people not wanting to ever get married and not wanting families - which I definitely hear as an option and I know it's a personal decision. But I feel like people are being too selfish nowadays and forget two things: (1) that the only way we exist is because of procreation and I don't think that sucks so much and (2) as you get older you will get lonelier. "But I'll have my friends and family!" Yeah, and they'll either die before you or have their families to keep them occupied. And if they don't, well good - you have two or three people to hang out with. I for one want something to leave behind after I die - something to carry on the torch of my family. And yeah, marriage can suck, but so can a lot of things; yeah, having kids can be a pain in the ass, but they can also be the greatest thing that ever happened to you; I don't think those are really convincing reasons to run away. And I can tell that within my own circle of relatives, the people who are unmarried are either much less happy with things than the people with families or are trying to get married now. Probably the thing that pisses me off the most is that the people who say these things are the smart, ambitious people - ie, the people with the good genes that should be procreating! Right now all the idiots are procreating! That's doom for our society! Okay, I will stop talking about this because I probably pissed people off just writing all that. And I don't want to go there with this blog.

Wow I have to pee now. Bye.

New Slang

I finally saw Garden State tonight, which was released in the States the weekend I left for Japan. Zach Braff made a movie that was convenient, a little contrived, a little cheesy, and poorly acted at times. He also seems to be a graduate of the P.T. / Wes Anderson Night School of Hip Direction because the whole film is awkward pauses, stiffly-framed shots, and dramatic push-ins. Except he's not nearly as gifted as the two Anderson boys. That being said, I of course loved the movie. I mean, maybe it's just because i'm the target audience for the movie, but the entire movie stank of Chang. Right down to the story that was slightly too simple and small an episode to actually be called a story (which seems to be what half of my stories turn into) and of course the hipster indie soundtrack choices. If someone asked me to make a movie, this is pretty much the exact movie I would have made in reverse - instead of leaving California to loiter around Jersey, I would take the opposite flight to loiter around Orange Country - which is a pretty embarrassing statement to make. Let's just move on.

Does anyone out there read cnn.com? Has anyone else noticed that recently they have switched to this bizarre past tense in their articles that makes every article sound like it is talking about some dramatic historical event attached to a history channel timeline? Here's an example: "Officials also were beginning to think about whether the town -- also hit by a mudslide in 1995 -- would ever be safe enough for people to live." It's that "were beginning" that annoys me - shouldn't it just be "are beginning" or "have begun"? Shouldn't news be written in present tense when it's still going on? I don't know what's going on with the editors over there. Or am I way off because I never studied grammar? Am I a dork for even caring about this? Yes? Okay. Sorry.

The sun came out today and melted the entire city meaning people weren't injuring themselves crossing the street for the first time this week. I had dinner with Taiga and then went downtown to have some drinks with Takako. Despite the fact it seems that today was warm enough for my water to not shut itself off all day, it was still freezing judging by my standards.

Running water, sort of

My plumbing has shut itself off five times today, and it probably would have shut itself off more if I had been quicker to turn it back on. You might remember it shut itself off a few weeks back for the first time, causing quite a panic in my apartment about whether or not I had been paying my bills. Well, today I finally took the time to read the disclaimer on the water control panel, and apparently the system is used to prevent the pipes from freezing, which is what I figured. It's basically a fuse for my plumbing. This might be because I grew up in Sunny Southern California (which is of course having its own weather problems), but I've never seen this system before. And it's a great idea - the last thing I need is for the plumbing system to freeze over and be incapable of flushing the toilet. But the only problem is when you turn the water back on and try to use it, air shoots out of the faucets like a bullet from a gun - with no exaggeration at all. I did an experiment and held a bowl tightly in my hands and turned the water on and it shot the thing right out of my grip. And the water that comes with the air splashes all over the room. Plus, I have to go through this process every time I need to use the water - to brush my teeth, take a shower, wash my hands, flush the toilet, wash the dishes. What a pain.

Other things that happened today:
-this ridiculous news from my alma mater

-the entire country is on sale because of New Years, meaning I bought a new jacket and a new CD for rock bottom prices. I looked through HMVs bargain bin of no name's figuring there would be one CD in there worth buying and there was. Which CD? A two pack of Phantom Planet's second and third albums. Price? $8. You never see that kind of price here. And to my pleasant surprise, they are both solid pop albums. Yatta. I'm going back out there tomorrow.

-On the way back from shopping, I was getting a little too confident about my ability to ride my bike in the winter here and got careless for one moment. While trying to pedal around a girl walking on the sidewalk, I hit a patch of ice and my bike slipped out from under me and I went skidding across the ground. I'm bruised up my right side and my shoulder is strained, but it was more embarrassing than anything else. Now I can fully appreciate those salt rocks they sprinkle all over Penn (the ones that stain the cuffs of your pants streaky white and get stuck in the tread of your shoes). Sendai hasn't discovered that yet. It would help, since half of the sidewalks here require track cleats to keep from eating it.

Overall, today was a pretty great day despite the little crappy things here and there. It's good to be back, in more ways than one.

House-Warming Party

I am now back in Sendai. During the last week, I went out pretty much everyday with a different set of friends in Tokyo, hitting all the hot spots of the city and packing in lots of beers along the way. The craziest night was when I went out with Reid (one of my sempai from my internship in Tokyo) and a couple of his friends and stayed out all night partying with a bunch of half-Japanese/half-European types and models (apparently they were models - could have fooled me though). These guys seem like they know everyone in Tokyo - celebrities, club-owners, hipster doofuses - and they had some truly nutso stories about what goes on behind the scenes of Tokyo club life. In general, my life is Tokyo is enjoyably unbalanced - I hang out with my typically Japanese relatives on the one hand, my poor college friends on the second hand, and high-rolling banker-types on the ever-elusive third hand. It's a little jerky in the transitions, but it keeps things interesting.

I woke up early today (early for my recent life being 10 AM) because it was my cousin Kaori's seijinshiki, or the ceremony that celebrates becoming a full adult (in Japan, age 20). Think barmitzvah without the party, gifts, and Judaism. So she got dressed up all pretty in a kimono and we went to take pictures (she skipped the actual ceremony, making it really just a day to wear a kimono and take pictures). I was oddly placed in the family picture we took at the portrait studio - odd mainly because (1) I'm not part of the immediate family and (2) I was the only person not dressed formally, since I was only visiting and didn't expect to need a suit. So there I was, in jeans and a gray sweater trying to look as un-stupid as possible. Should be an interesting memory for the whole family (which, in my defense, they said they wanted - that way when they look back at the pictures, they can say "oh yeah David was here!" - at least that's what they told me. Maybe they were just being nice).

My train ride to Sendai took almost an hour longer than I expected and it was unbearably hot in the Shinkansen. It was pretty confusing - I was sitting there, stripped down to my t-shirt above my waist and contemplating taking off my shoes and socks to give my body maximum efficiency in heat dissipation, while the people around me were like still wearing their coats and hats, like the air conditioner was on or something. And then there were a couple of loud middle-aged businessmen behind me who must have crushed like two 6-packs of beer between them during the ride and were pretty drunk by the time we got out of the train and into Sendai.

And oh what a Sendai it is! The city was getting pounded with snow when I got here, and it snowed through the night. I took a taxi home, and I pretty much had to ice skate up my driveway to get to my apartment. My bike is covered in snow and is likely rusted up in all the important areas from under-use the last month. My apartment, which is an absolute war zone, is freezing cold. How cold you ask? I just went to the bathroom, which is in the unheated front half of my apartment, and I could see my breath while sitting on the can. It's basically a meat locker in here.

Taiga, one of my conversation partners, called me up for dinner tonight, so we went to eat sashimi at a joint downtown and then had some nice conversation over beer at an Irish pub that is cleverly named "Irish Pub" (I met a guy there who works at yet another Sendai Irish Pub called "Green Shamrock", which somehow seems even less clever a name than "Irish Pub"). Taiga's a great guy and we have all sorts of plans and schemes for hanging out for the coming months.

Tomorrow is my first time going to class in almost 3 weeks. Hooray.

The Most Epic Football Game EVER (Special Orange Bowl Edition)

Today was the Orange Bowl, pitting USC against Oklahoma for the BCS National Title game. This is the kind of game the Chang family halts completely for. With nine SC alumni and one current student in the family, everything stops. It's the kind of game where every possibly recording device - VCRs, DVD recorders, tape recorders, dictaphones, a stenographer, an etch-a-sketch - is employed simultaneously in my house. My Dad ditched work to go to the game, which wouldn't be a bad case of playing hookie if the game wasn't being played 3,000 miles away from his office. My older sister was at a bar watching the game with SC legend Anthony Davis. My mom was likely at home making small screaming noises everytime something exciting happened and closing her eyes with her head tilted to the side. My little sister, who actually goes to SC, was probably listening to musicals. Go figure. As for me, I have been following college football the best I can this year, watching what clips I can on the internet and reading articles, but I hadn't seen a single down live. So you can imagine my chagrin when I overslept this morning and missed the first two quarters, only to discover the game was being broadcast live on Satellite TV here. It probably wouldn't have been bad had it been a close game where something that mattered actually occurred in the second half, but it wasn't one of those games. By the time I turned the game on, Oklahoma was stumbling around drunk with their pants at their ankles with USC about to finish them off. After watching the replays, it's a wonder that this was supposed to be the game of the century (which, by the way, is a pretty hefty claim to make in the fifth year of a century). Oklahoma played so stupidly, they looked like a high school team. Or maybe they were just manhandled by a better team, who was basically scoring at will. Even when USC wasn't trying to score late in the game, they still scored. USC even scored more than 10% of Oklahoma's 19 points FOR them when Leinart accidentally fumbled and had to a take a safety.

As ESPN.com' Gene Wojciechowski said, "USC did everything but give the Sooners a wedgie." I think they might have done that too. Football pants seem pretty wedgie-prone.

The sweetest part of the whole deal for me isn't that USC shared part of the title last year and got the whole thing this year, or that they won big, but it's that idiot Oklahoma defensive end (or back, not sure) Larry Birdine, who may or may not actually be good at football, had to eat the words from his own big mouth. Athletes say retarded things all the time because they are primarily protein shake-fueled blockheads (not all of them. Don't get all excited), but I don't know why anyone ever thinks it's a good idea to talk shit about the other team before a game. It's no good for anyone: not you, not your team, not the game. And while it makes it worse when you lose, it launches the effect into the stratosphere when you get humiliated. Let's go over some of his choice words:

“I feel like they’re, I’d say, a one-and-a-half-man team. I want to respect them just because I have to play them, but then I watch them on tape and everything, and I realize that they’re an average team.”
-Wow, he can't even respect USC as an opponent - he only WANTS to. If what he says is true about SC being an average team, then Oklahoma must REALLY suck. Or maybe the coaches were showing the team the wrong tapes all week.

"From a defensive perspective, I haven't seen anything that just stood out besides Reggie Bush."
-Really? Anything stand out now?

"I don't know if that's the mood in the locker room. I ask some guys and they say, 'they're good.' I haven't seen them on defense, but if our offense don't turn the ball over and their offense can't score, then I believe we're going to win the game."
-First off, really? You mean if your team doesn't hand the other team the ball, and the other team scores 0 points, you guys might win the game? You bring incredible insights to the game my friend. Second, if you don't know if that's the mood in the locker room after the rest of your teammates keep saying "they're good", then shut the fuck up. You just made it harder for them. By the way, in the final box score, OU had five turnovers and USC had 55 points. But if you could take back those five turnovers and 55 points, OU would have won by, like, 19 points.

"Besides (Reggie Bush), the only guy they throw the ball to is (Dwayne) Jarrett. If you take you take him out of the game, their options are obsolete."
-Uh oh! Deep-South-football-player-using-a-big-word alert! Someone get a dictionary, help this guy with the complexities of alphabetical order, and sit with him while he sounds out the definition to the word "obsolete". USC had five receivers with catches, three with touchdowns, and two for over 100 yards. Not to mention that the only rusher on the field with over 100 yards was SC's Lendale White, NOT the baby-genius Adrian Peterson.

"He's definitely overrated. Like I said, he's a good quarterback, but he's not a Heisman-winning quarterback."
-Let's take a quick look at the box score for the two Heisman quarterbacks: Matt Leinart: 16/35, 335 yards, 5 TDs, 0 Ints. Jason White: 24/36, 244 yards, 2 TDs, 3 Ints. Looks like Jason "I Pee My Pants Under Pressure" White is even less of a Heisman-deserving quarterback than we thought before. The guy's like wet tissue paper in tough situations. 5 TDs, 9 Ints in his last 3 playoff games. Good luck in the NFL!

Best of all, the box score for Larry Birdine: 1 tackle. Scary.

Sorry, that was unnecessary. But I hate when people run their mouths off when they have no reason to do so.

Alas, the only accurate pre-game prediction came from Tommy Tuberville, Auburn's head coach: "It'll be over before the half."

Akemashite Omedetou

New Years came and went and I'm back in Tokyo after a 10 hour drive home across Japan. I spent the last 5 days running around Kyoto, Osaka, and Wakayama with Fulbrighters and family. Kyoto and Osaka were typical Fulbrighter outings - heavy on the karaoke and yakiniku with in a bit of temple visiting. I got to spend quality time with Jen and Dave, and got to hang out with John, the Fulbrighter from Hokkaido who hasn't been around much so far this year and just got back from Thailand where he fortunately didn't die. It was pretty cold in Kansai and it snowed a lot, with it snowing the hardest the night Dave and I decided to walk home from the train station at 5 AM. On New Years Eve, as expected when midnight struck we hadn't picked a place to go yet, so we ended up standing in the snow singing Aud Lang Syne in the snow (or humming it, since people really only know the first line to that song). All in all, quality time spent.

I caught the last train down to Gobo (the part of Wakayama my relatives live in) from Osaka on the night of the first. I was in a huge rush to make the last trains from stations I'd never even seen before, and I was pretty scared I was going to hop on the wrong train and end up having to spend the night sitting in some station in the middle of nowhere. And even when I was positive I got on the wrong train, the station I was going to was so far out in the middle of nowhere, it didn't show up on the map. And the train kept scrolling this warning that the first 4 cars would go all the way to one station, and the last 4 cars would go all the way to another station. And you couldn't transfer between the cars without getting off the train first. I was so confused. How could one train have one half only go part way? But in the end, part of the train just went dead half way.

Wakayama was typical inaka (country-side) action with the relatives - boring and filled with old people. I was also sick the whole time with a head cold, which made matters worse. And I couldn't sleep at night because my uncle on one side of me was snoring and my cousin's baby on the otherside of me was crying it's head off. In a tangential conversation, I've decided that I do not want children. Unless my kids promise to not cry.

Here is most of my 2004 music wrap-up:

Favorite Albums of 2004 that I also own:

I bought a ridiculous number of CDs in 2004. Here are my favorites (some of these were actually released in 2003)
(5) Interpol - Antics - A little disappointing because it didn't have a killer song like Obstacle 2 from 'Turn On The Bright Lights', but it is even more stabbingly confident than their first album.
(4) Blonde Redhead - Misery is a Butterfly - this was a 2003 album I'm pretty sure, but I know I bought it in May of this year at a record shop on State Street in Santa Barbara. It is sexy, melancholy, and reminds me of 1970s spy movies. Incidentally, I haven't seen any 1970s spy movies.
(3) A.C. Newman - The Slow Wonder - I held off buying this album because I was afraid it would give me cavities like A.C. Newman's fulltime band, The New Porngraphers. But somehow, he managed to dial down the sugar in the instruments and still make a better powerpop album.
(2) The Unicorns - Who Will Cut Our Hair When We've Gone - Okay this was definitely a big find of 2003, but I didn't get the album til 2004 (when you still had to order it from Alien 9 to find it) and I saw the band twice live in Philly, which were pretty much the most hipster experiences of my life. Particularly the Easter Show with Sean when BOTH of the opening acts physically attacked hecklers in the crowd, and then 1/3 of the audience (including myself) joined the band on stage for an Easter Egg hunt during the last 2 songs of the show. It was so hipster I walked in with short hair, a windbreaker and khakis and walked out with long greasy hair, a blazer with pins in it, and ripped jeans. Okay, that's a lie. But still.
(1) Brian Wilson - Smile - Just a ridiculous achievement. Proves Brian Wilson has a few marbles left in his head and that it was worth the hype and (40-year) wait.

My Favorite Songs of 2004:

Wilco – Theologians: vintage Wilco on a new Wilco album.
Spitz – 正夢 (Masayume): one of the two best singles released in Japan since I got here.
Orange Range - 花 (Hana): The other best Japanese single released since I got here.
Ted Leo + RX – Counting Down the Hours: Pitchfork called this song, like, music from standing in line for Splash Mountain or something, but I call it the best song on Shake the Sheets.
Klass Brothers – Air in C Minor: First heard in the movie Collateral, this is now THE version of Air for me. Thanks emi.
Brian Wilson – Wonderful: A beautiful little gem on Smile, this rivals "I Will" and "Little Wing" for world's prettiest little tiny song by a guy that was a genius in the 60s.
Polyphonic Spree – Section 12 (Hold Me Now): While moving closer to becoming the world's largest Flaming Lips tribute band, the Spree got 3 things right on their new album: the 70s Broadway-Musical logo, better control of their orchestra, and this song.
Eminem – Like Toy Soldiers: If Em would make more songs like this and less like that crappy first single off of Encore (you know, the really annoying one), maybe I'd pay attention to him more than half the time. Though his plodding, minor-key piano tinkling production could use some variety, this song gets the best of it.
Sufjan Stevens – All The Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands - The most moving and delicate song on the year's most moving and delicate album.
Interpol – Next Exit / Slow Hands (Brit Daniel Remix) - They should bring back the bass and drum to the forefront of the production of this band, which Brit clearly knew and is why his remix kicks so much ass. Next Exit is what would happen if Interpol was playing instead of Marty when George McFly kisses Lorraine at the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance.
Franz Ferdinand – Take Me Out / Come On Home - Songs that seem to bookend a night out, Take Me Out stomps around ridiculously under a disco ball and Come On Home marches pompously around disco lasers.
Blonde Redhead – Elephant Woman - This song makes you feel like you're on your knees begging for one more chance even when you're alone in your room at 5 AM.
Iron & Wine – Each Coming Night / On Your Wings: The two best songs on Sam's new album. On Your Wings sounds like snakes in the grass on a steamy morning (yeah I don't know what that means either, but you have to hear the song), and Each Coming Night will help you go to sleep on nights when its hard to say goodbye. Again, you have to hear the song.
Asobi Seksu – I’m Happy But You Don’t Like Me - adorable jPop by a New York band. Don't worry if you don't understand the lyrics, because the title tells the whole story.
Air – Venus - This song has taken on a whole new meaning and now eats me up inside. It's great.
Jay-Z – Dirt of Your Shoulder/99 Problems - Okay, the album came out in 2003, but these songs didn't reach prominence til this year, right? I don't know which is better - Timbaland's laser blast beat or Rick's cowbell stompfest. But they both make me want to dance. Which makes listening to these songs on the subway embarrassing.
Usher ft. Lil Jon - Yeah - What!
Kanye West – Jesus Walks - The rapping is a little cringe-inducing here and there on this song ("the way Kathie Lee needed Regis is the way I need Jesus"), but the beat is hot and the message is nice.
A.C. Newman – Miracle Drug - The best powerpop rock song of the year, hands down.
The Walkmen – The Rat - The Walkmen are better when they play blue collar rock songs as opposed to drunken, reeling moaners. And this song happens to be everyone's favorite song by them
河口恭吾 (Kawaguchi Kyougo) - 桜 (Sakura) - This song is one of my favorite Japanese songs of all time. I'm not sure if it's still as moving if you don't understand the words, but try it out. When I sing it at karaoke, I get all caught up in the moment. Also embarrassing.
Top 5:
Modest Mouse – Float On - One of the songs that saved my summer and Modest Mouse either brilliantly or accidentally toeing the line between their usual weird self and pop.
The Shins - Gone for Good: From 2003 and I don't care. I listened to this song enough when putting on my defiant and strong face to make it a 2004 song to me.
The Unicorns - Tuff Ghost: Like Gone for Good, I don't care that this came out in 2003. It changed the first half of 2004 and is one of those songs you feel cool listening to.
Let’s Go Sailing – All I Want from You Is Love: A song which helped define the last half of 2004. I discovered this band "surfing the net" one night. This is the only song by them I have heard, and I believe they are unsigned. If they make songs like this, one of the most heartbreaking songs I've ever heard, please someone sign them.
Say Hi To Your Mom – Let’s Talk About Spaceships: This song is actually from 2003 also. I discovered it the same night as Let's Go Sailing and promptly bought the album since the band is actually signed. Despite the band's terrible name, their album of nervous pop rock a la Weezer was amazing, and this song was one of the songs that saved my sanity during the second half of 2004.