Szkandelous.archive.july13_december20

Man, I think we’ve all been busy lately so how ‘bout an ice-cold beer? Or maybe some ice-cold sushi? Or maybe you’d like to kick back to an ice-cold bowl of ramen?

I am not even going to hyperbolize: it is blizzarding here. No not what-you-would-expect-a-Californian-to say-at-the-slightest-sign-of-snow blizzarding: there is an inch of snow on the top step to my house…which is covered by a roof and three walls and is inset a good 10 meters into the side of the house. It doesn’t even face the direction of the wind; snow hits the walls leading to my front step at such a velocity that it rebounds off the wall, shoots 10 meters to the side and accumulates on the step.

And there’s maybe three feet of snow on the ground.

A lot has happened since I last updated, so I’m not going to go into too much detail.

A couple of weeks ago I threw my first major event in town, a Thanksgiving Dinner. The turkeys and cranberry sauce we had catered but everything else I made from scratch. There must be some sort of helper elves living in Matsunoyama because I had pretty much abandoned the hope that my gnocchi would turn out ok when we pulled it out of the oven and it was perfect. A bunch of other JETs came out for the dinner so I’d like to thank all you guys for coming out if you’re reading this.

Other than that, there’s been numerous trips to Tokyo to hang out with my friends, a conference, a relay race, Kill Bill, an end of year party, me dressing up like a reindeer and a lot of me running around. Which is why I haven’t updated just in case you were wondering.

Oh, and Yuriko and I broke up, but that was like two months ago now. We’re still on decent terms so I don’t plan on taking down her link or removing her from the site. That being said, I can think of no justification for maintaing a link, which is over half a year old, to our ten-month anniversary gallery on my front page. If you want to see the pictures just go through the photo archive like everything else!

“I feel fine and I feel good, I’m feeling like I never should. Whenever I get this way, I just don’t know what to say, why can’t we be ourselves like we were yesterday? I’m not sure what this could mean. I don’t think you’re what you seem. I do admit to myself that if I hurst someone else then I’ll never see just what we’re meant to be.” – New Order

Please somebody shoot me; I’ve had the Mr. Donuts theme song stuck in my head all day long. When I returned to America I pretty much forgot the song entirely but, this weekend I had the luxury of eating breakfast at Shinjuku’s Mr. Donuts’ (an “old fashioned breakfast“ if you will) and it all came rushing back. “OooOOooo , something something something donuts“.

Having said that, you can probably infer that I have returned to Japan. I know I haven’t updated since the Paleolithic era so there’s probably a few readers out there that might not have know but, yes, I am in Japan right now.

However, I am not in Tokyo but in the middle of nowhere nature, Matsunoyama. People tend not to believe me but it actually is a pretty nice place. The arts here are strangely developed, nature is everywhere and there are hot springs galore. In fact, I happen to have gone to the hot springs today.

I really want to show you guys pictures right now but unfortunately I don’t have the time to process all the pictures right now. Next time I’ll give you a tour of my new house and a virtual sightseeing adventure into Matsunoyama.

Anyway, though I think I’ve been speaking about the donuts song, right now I am listening to UA.

“Nokosareta, jikan de kagirareta jidai ni wa, kimi mitai na mayou wa nai. Wakamono da. Yoku niau. Kowarekaketa pyramid ni utsumukiau. Chiribameta sekai no puzzle mada owaranai. Yukiba no nai oosama wa takaramono sagashiteru. Uchi ni kaeru, sono basu wa mou ashita kara konai ka mo shirenai. Itsu datte oyogenakutemo tobikomeruyouni. Ne, dareka kono sekai o zenbu aratte“ - UA

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s already been a month since my last update. Really, sorry about that. Though I knew that I should be updating, somewhere in the back of my head I was thinking, “I’m not doing anything so it’s ok to not update, right?” The funny thing is that I have been doing things, just things that are probably pretty boring to read.

June 15 was my 23 birthday. Since it also happens to be Father’s Day my family decided to celebrate both holidays by going to see a movie. A family movie if you will.

You’re probably wondering “which family movie?” right now.

We saw the new Pixar 3D animation movie “Finding Nemo”. Yeah, yeah, the fish one. It’s really cute so please see it.

From my family I received an iPod for my birthday. I was quite happy about this because the last time I moved across the Pacific Ocean Yuriko and I had to lug my CD’s on foot across all of Tokyo (of course, riding trains and such too but, still very heavy. Sorry Yuriko). This time around I think I’m going to copy all of my CD’s to the iPod and then ship the CD’s by post to Japan (with the peace of mind of knowing that I have backups) Needless to say I was very appreciative of the gift since if I really were to drag my CD’s across Japan again I’d probably completely break my back.

From Yuriko I received this suteki na Mark Jacobs neck-tie. I posted pictures below for everyone’s enjoyment. It was a really cool birthday.

Sometime afterwards Hans, Betina, and Betina’s friends all went to San Francisco’s Japantown for karaoke and yakiniku.

But, other than that there hasn’t been much going on. Or, to put it another way, work has been going on. Or, to put it yet another, in the beginning work was going on but now the café is doing so bad that they’ve lessoned the work hours and so now, not even work is going on.

And yet, I’m at work long enough to know that something funny is going on. This middle-aged, half-Japanese woman who works at our coffee shop has become the object of the one-sided love of another middle-aged male regular customer of the café. He always comes in to ask if she’s working and, when finally seeing her his face lights up in a huge smile. On one hand, it’s sort of cute but on the other hand it’s kinda strange. Sometimes he’ll come look all around the café for her, including slightly stepping behind the counter, and when he doesn’t find her he gets a bit gloomy like some sort of stocker.

And yet, I’m not even sure if it’s a one sided relationship…ah, I don’t even want to think about it. For the time being, it’s kinda creepy.

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