"You Just Steer, Ok!"

Summertime is gone, I miss it so much
My board lives in my garage
Waiting for that snowy season
And again I will slide!

They finally drained the waterways in my area of the city to prepare for winter. It now looks eerily like Route Kanal... In fact, my neighbourhood could easily pass for City 17, decrepit buildings, rust, power lines. All I need is a crowbar.

On Sunday I completed the self-hazing ritual required to become a snowboarder. Which means as I write this, most of my body, especially my arse and knees, are in pain. Note to self: Don't learn to snowboard on a Sunday, for Monday mornings equal painful meetings. Also don't learn to snowboard the day before going to a rock concert.

Tons of fun though, I went solo to a hill about 2 hours away (2 trains, a bus, and a gondola). I was a little worried at the bottom of the gondola, as there was 0 snow at this point, but halfway up, everything turns instantly to white, it was kinda cool. As for the hill itself... tiny. I imagine about the size of COP if I had ever actually been there. Pricy too, 4000en (40 bucks) for afternoon pass (I slept in, had breakfast, long travel time), but 4500 for a board rental. Plus transportation, which luckily wasn't too bad thanks to seishun 18.

Snowboarding itself, fun and painful, as everyone knows. It was my first time on a board, and did better than I thought, but I had low expectations. But very fun! My knees hurt. Maybe I'll go next Saturday too, to use up my last Seishun 18 ticket.

I've Got Soul, But I'm Not a Soldier!

Can we climb this mountain, I don't know
Higher now than ever before
I know we can make it if we take it slow
Let's take it easy, easy now, watch it go!

We're burning down the highway skyline
On the back of a hurricane that started turning
When you were young

Aww man, Killer's concert last night! It was at Namba Hatch, surprisingly easy to find. The concert hall is excellent, quite small, so everyone has a good view of the stage... kinda like the Mac Hall Ballroom where I saw The Music, only the hall is way newer and modern and cool. I can't wait to see Bloc Party there, but I gotta get to the very front middle somehow :). Unfortunately, while waiting for the band to come out and play, they had a Johnny Cash cd playing... add the fact that the band came out 20 minutes late, and I got a full hour dose of Cash... that's waaay too much cash for one little man to handle!

But the Killers themselves were really good, they played all the best songs and none of the bad ones, with plenty from both their albums. They seemed slightly uncoordinated between songs, no smooth transition and fancy lightshows like Coldplay, but that's ok. And they saved the best song for last... All These Things That I've Done, woohoo! Of course he tried to get the crowd to sing along at the Soul part, but of course, that was largely unsuccessful with a mostly Japanese crowd ><.

Well... back to a lovely Tuesday morning of teeth measuring.