Szkandelous.archive.october27_november6

I am just going to frank; KFC Japan sucks. I really, really wanted chicken. Since chicken is next to impossible to find in Japan, I found myself pandering back to the dirty colonel. I spent $5 on a small coke, small fries, and 2 (two) small chicken strips! And they didn’t even have barbecue sauce. What is this, communist Russia?

Anyway, I’m back at the lovely Java Trading Company working on another update to the site. I didn’t really want to update, but it’s been a while and although nothing remarkably interesting has happened, I find myself in the rare situation of being both awake at an early hour and free. I’m working on a “big” update, so you might see that by the end of the week.

In other news, my former place of employment, the Blue Rock Shoot has mysteriously gone out of business. "Memories keep on changing, situation doesn't change". And now a line of silence for the Blue Rock Shoot:

Today has been pretty average, though I did luck out in that there was supposed to be “Ooame” (the characters are “big” and “rain”) today, but it’s hardly rained. I finally defeated Lu Bu (or however it’s spelled).

I now have guitar. An acoustic guitar with janky strings, but a guitar nonetheless. I woke up with an intense sensation of cold. Getting into the shower, it was cold, the water, cold, underneath a shirt, thermal, and thick jacket it was still cold. Even on the usually too-hot-to-where-your-jacket-even-though-it’s-freezing-outside-and-raining Hanzomon train it was comfortable enough to keep the jacket on.

Today was a monumental day for research. Ever the proper college student, I devoted today to the pursuit of research data for a paper I am developing for my Japanese class. I must have spent all day researching in some form or another.

I also had to write the paper today (two pages, Japanese). The topic is “Why do Japanese people like video games”. In order to answer this question, I went to “game centers” and interviewed customers. Then, to test the validity of these results I compared them with my personal experiences (drawn from a rigid period of testing these video). It’s hard work playing video games and talking to girls in arcades.

Brian beat a sniper game that’s been mocking him for the past few months. The game is rather unfortunate in its subject matter in that it focuses on eliminating terrorists. Obviously it was made before the September 11 attacks. At the end of the first level, if you mess up, a building collapses; at the end of the second an airplane explodes.

Halloween. What did I do? Absolutely nothing.

Today the house threw a party to celebrate Halloween and drunken foreigners. It was for residents and guests, so the crowd wasn’t too small, but it wasn’t huge either. However, I did not go to the party, at least not until after the party had been going on for some time. What I did do was play a fantastic amount of video games with Brian. There’s this game called Dynasty Warriors where you just beat down thousands upon thousands of people. It’s amazing how much beating you do in the game. After a while of that, I dragged Brian to Heaven’s Door.

I asked the people outside the club what sort of music they were playing that night, and they (who happened to be one of the bands) said “ambient”. I asked, “like rock or like techno” and they said “more like techno”.

Ladies and gentlemen, Japanese people may make cool music, but they don’t have a clue what ambient is. I am baffled, the two times that people have said the style of music was ambient, it’s been either trip hop or rock. Do not be fooled, ambient in English does not equal ambient in Japanese. That being said, it was a good night for Heaven’s Door.

The first band was ok, the second band had the distinctive look of a band that practiced in front of a mirror. The music was heavy rock; like a mix between Helmet and Guns N Roses, except that it was boring. They sounded like they wrote music to show off, and that is boring.

After them came a few more ok bands, followed by the last band which was the one I had talked to outside. They were guitar, vocal, and electronics, and were excellent, though not ambient. The electronics guy used an ibook, so props to them.

Afterwards, Brian and I sat around in Mr. Donut drinking coffee and eating donuts. There was a really silly looking white guy sitting next to us (there was no place else for us to sit). He had on a beret and his hair was cut in a Prince Valliant style (very “I have had my life sucked dry from the Ren-fair”). With him sat this mid-30’s Japanese lady tp remind Brian and I just how unlucky both of us were in meeting Japanese people.

Anyway, for some reason, the dumb looking white guy got up to go to the bathroom or buy food or something, at which point the lady started staring at me. I mean she was really staring at me. I glanced over at her because I got a weird feeling, and there she was, watching. And it wasn’t an angry stare either; she was just looking at me. So when I looked back to see if she was still staring, she was still staring, and when I decided to actually look at her for a second, she just kept staring. I think I actually acknowledged her with a nod and smile, she was staring that intensely.

Finally, after a while of her staring she got up and left, only to be replaced with possibly the most unattractive Japanese people I have ever seen. I mean, they seemed nice and they were cute in their own ways, but really, they were truly ugly. And I mean, you-only-see-true-ugly-as-much-as-you-see-true-beauty ugly, I wasn’t repulsed so much as I was amazed. And although I feel bad writing that, it was too novel not to write about; and it’s not like I have anything against them. Like I said, they seemed cool, they were just really ugly

Afterwards, Brian went home and I went back to the dorm to join the party. I met this guy who worked for Japan’s largest economics newspaper and a girl who like Latin music and Chara. I stayed up until four in the morning showing people my room and such. It was a good time.

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