Here Be Dragons!

I appear to be blogging today... With 2 months left my motivation for things seems to be slowly diminishing. Well, for certain things, like work, and learning Japanese, and I suppose blogging a bit too, since the small adventures aren't as interesting as many of my previous ones. But alas (a sad lad) I push on! Mostly because my motivation to blog is slightly higher than my motivation to work.

Last last weekend I went snowboarding with some others in my company, Byron, Ono, Yoko (Ono's GF (And bring the joke on, it's been said already)), and another guy who's name I forgot. It was quite fun, we went to Fukui to board, and the mountain was much better than the last one. And I'm getting better too. Though the 4h drive each way was a little long.

Sunday the CJP gang went out for all you can eat dimsum, then the guys went to JJ while the girls went shopping. Afterwards we went to Tin's Hall, a foreigner bar at Tennoji. It was open mic night and Byron was performing...

Notable performances include... the French magician performing to Marvin Gaye, the short Chinese woman belly dancing to Pretty Fly (For a White Guy), and the 250 pound white guy dressed up as Elvis, belly dancing to Burning Love.

There was one guy, Steve, from Chicago, who was really really good, the whole bar went quiet while he was performing. If he ever becomes famous, I can say I saw him live... in a small bar... in Japan!

Oh, and a random old guy started yelling at Byron on the train, completely unprovoked. We only caught a few words, something to do with gaijin, so it was most likely a racist rant. Weird, usually OMLGP brings friendly old guys. The two ladies across from us seemed to be embarassed on his behalf, smiling at us and bowing apologetically.

Last week was a little interesting. On Monday I had a 3.5 hour meeting that consumed half my lunch hour, which irritated me. But during the meeting I received an email from IBM, to schedule a preliminary interview for their internship program out east!

I had the interview on Wednesday night, I think it went ok, except I was nervous, and that they were looking for someone with more software experience, and my background is mostly hardware unfortunately. They said they'd email back if I get a second interview, but nothing yet... Too bad, it would be a great job!

Then this weekend, Keith and I went to JJs... got our groove on with some DDR, played some pool, and most importantly, beat Donkey Kong Country! Got about 2 hours of sleep... next day we went to Yodobashi Camera, Keith needed a hard drive, and then we went to Spa World!

Europe theme this time, which is functionally exactly the same, but still interesting/cool. We also went to the gym area to work out for an hour.

At the baths we see this old guy, rubbing his head against the rocks and kinda sputtering water. We were laughing a bit at first, considering it to be Japanese weirdness, but then he started drifting into the middle of the bath, struggling to stay afloat (<2 feet deep water), someone had to go over and pull him out of the bath, they even got a stretcher for him.

Nothing else too special at Spa World really. We went to Namba to find Keith some snowboarding gloves, and to meet up with Jen and Victor for dinner. We went to an isakaya, which was quite good except Victor forgot to order my second plate of fried cheese, the bumcloud! And the 3 girls right beside me, while nice looking, went into "High Pitch Squeal Mode" whenever they got excited, which was waay too often.

Sunday involved going to Jen's house for Pizza Hut pizza, Poker, and watching Little Miss Sunshine! It was a very good party, but I forgot my hard drive at Jen's and have to go get it tonight.

Also, Bloc Party's new CD, A Weekend in the City, comes out today in Japan... 3 hours till I get to listen to it! I can't wait! And I'm almost done reading I, Robot, amazing book!

And finally... a 4 day work week this week, and a 3 day work week next week, since it's a vacation to Hokkaido this week! Full of ice sculptures, snowboarding, onsen, chocolate factories, and beer factories! Long blog when I get back.

Until my blog next Wednesday-ish!