Aino Minako-chan

Things I Discovered On My Summer Vacation

1. One can indeed get sick of ham, cheese, and bread.
After three days in Paris and one too many delicious delicious sandwich, I suddenly discovered that I was utterly sick of the combination. Honestly, if I had one more slice of ham, I thought I was going to scream. For dinner that last night, my mom and I went out of our way to order a plain omlette and spaghetti respectively.

2. I missed Scottish food.
This was surprising to me, since I dislike many "traditional" Scottish foods, like blood pudding or haggis or fry-ups, but I love meat pies and pasties and beans and empire biscuits and leek soups, so I was in heaven. Plus, my uncle (a former butcher) makes a to-die-for lamb stew. Seriously, it was a good few days in Glasgow.

3. My cousin got divorced.
I totally didn't know until my aunt started talking about his new girlfriend, which made me think that she was talking about someone else with the same name for three-fourths of the conversation. It was seriously confusing. No one tells me anything! (Note to kinomakoto : Not R, the one you know; I mean R's oldest brother. R has two little girls btw who are ADORABLE. The older one, age 2, is a doll who speaks with R's strong Glaswegian accent; it's hysterical.)

4. My grandpa has some great war stories.
Like, he told us this one about his earliest memory, which involved him in hospital when he was 3 with scarlet fever, during WWI, watching from the balcony of the hospital as lights lit up the sky to search for bomb-carrying airships (zeppelins, because they didn't use bomber planes in WWI). Or how he mainly worked on convoy rescue ships, which, despite the tendancy to run into German submarines, was the best job (he said) because the ships had lots of extra room and extra supplies since they needed to be ready to take aboard survivors. Or his story about manning a ship to carry a bunch of Americans and their sekrit sekrit package to Italy while being hunted down by more German subs.

That was a really interesting story: He said that he never did find out what they were carrying, but that the Americans they were with weren't military, as the only real military aboard were he and his fellow British gunners; he assumed that the Americans were CIA or something. (I would think that the captain and main crew would have been British military as well, but they apparently weren't; Grandpa was the highest-ranking military member when they arrived in Italy for the debriefing. Maybe they loaned gunners to the merchant marines?) Grandpa said that they were followed by an American naval ship, and he was always amused because he said that the American sailors never seemed to go below deck; there were always people lounging around or even sleeping above deck. But whatever they were carrying, the Germans apparently got wind of it and started submarine attacks. Grandpa said that one night, there was a gigantic explosion, but he didn't know what had happened until the next morning when he realized that the American ship was simply gone.

When they arrived in Italy and unloaded the sekrit sekrit cargo, he said that he and his fellow gunners went to a debriefing with the American military in which he was the highest-ranking military officer and therefore had to deal with them the most. One American military guy got on their cases for looking so untidy and unprofessional, saying that they all looked like they hadn't slept for days, to which my Grandpa replied, "Well, that's because we haven't. Because of the submarines." At which point an apparently higher-ranking American military officer chewed out the first guy for giving my Grandpa and his men crap, and he ordered them to have a shower and some sleep before they came back. Grandpa said that the first American military guy never apologized, but later on, the guy did take a car and drive Grandpa and his fellow gunners to visit Pompei for a few hours, so he supposed that was the guy's way of saying "Sorry I was an ass."

5. You can remove the seatbelts from airplane seats.
Okay, so I had an adventure getting back to Japan... First, my luggage was temporarily misplaced. I had two connections on the way back to Tokyo. My first flight was running late, but I managed to make the connection. Unfortunately, my bag did not. Luckily, I had a long layover, it was a short flight, and there was one more flight that night, so my bags made it in time for the last leg. Then, on the plane to Tokyo, I went to buckle up... only both sides of the buckle were firmly attached on one side. The other side, normally the side with the adjustable strap, was reduced to just a strap. I blinked at it for a while, tried to figure out if I could thread the buckle back onto the strap, and just called a flight attendant. She and another flight attendant discussed it for a bit, and since I really didn't want to move from my nice aisle seat into the only other available seat (a middle seat), the flight attendants simply decided to replace the seat belt by removing the entire thing. It involved shoving one part back a bit and a lot of yanking, but it turns out that the seat belts are basically just hooked onto a bar with a spring-loaded latch. It doesn't come off EASILY (seriously, they were yanking the hell out of the seat in confusion, and I ended up with a twisted strap because they were having trouble installing the new belt right-side-up before the plane took off), but it can be done. You learn something new every day!

Movies Seen On My Summer Vacation
1. Star Trek
Yes, there is nothing better than Star Trek in its full glory on a 7-inch in-flight screen. (lol) But it was fun and I enjoyed it. Also, my mother apparently thought that the Sulu fencing joke (you know, when Kirk goes "What kind of fighting do you do" and Sulu goes "Fencing") was HILAROUS, and it always cracks me up to discover what parts of movies my mommy likes the best. No really, she couldn't stop laughing. It was cute. ^_^

2. The Time-Traveler's Wife
The logic doesn't make a huge amount of sense, and it's slightly creepy when you really think about how he visited his wife as a child, but overall I quite enjoyed the movie. It was just a tear-jerking, sweet romance with a sci-fi twist. Now, to read the book!

A quick question for the more computer inclined (or at least a question for people who are not at work and have time for Google Fu):

Apparently my parents' computer crashed while Dad was at home, so he went ahead and immediately reinstalled Windows. (I tried to not start shrieking "data recovery" at the top of my lungs when I read this email.) Anyway, I've got a couple questions, just curious if any computer gurus on my FL have the info on hand:

1. What's the simplest way to copy music from an iPod back onto the PC? I'd prefer a free method, but I had to write a mini-manual to explain to my mother how to rip a CD, so probably the simplest method is the best.

2. Does anyone know of data recovery methods that my parents could try? All I know about the situation is that my Dad went outside to do some work, came back in, and the screen said he had to re-install Windows, so that's exactly what he did. (I'm baffled both by the fact that Daddy knew where the original Windows install disks were and that he managed to install it correctly by himself.) Mommy said that there's nothing on the computer anymore, but there's a good chance that there's still something somewhere, right? I'm sure that they'd be happy if there was an easy method they could use to at least recover some of the information; Dad said he had backed up a lot of files, but they're both missing (and I mean missing in every sense of the word) their address books.

Big hugs to anyone who can help!

So over the four day Golden Week holidays, Mommy and I went to Osaka. We walked an insane amount, saw takoyaki stands every few feet, and spent an entire day at Univeral Studios Japan. That was actually lots of fun (except for the "Back to the Future" ride; both Mommy and I got very very motion-sick, so we really should have skipped it). But the best part by far was the "Jurassic Park" ride.

See, my mother actually hates "scary" rides. And by "scary", she meets anything that bumps, has sudden movements, or drops. She's ridden "Splash Mountain" exactly once, and she was terrified. "Pirates of the Caribbean"? She considers that to be plenty scary as far as sudden drops go. (No seriously, it has teeny mini-bumps at the very beginning. I swear. I know this because my mother brings them up every single time.) But I wanted to ride "Jurassic Park", so my mom bravely agreed to ride it once with me (I figured I could always ride it once by myself later). So we rode, we got "spat" on by random dinosaurs, we got suckered in by the first fake drop, and we screamed our heads off as we dropped away from under the T-Rex's snapping jaws.

My mother's reaction?

"Oh, that was fun! I liked that."

We ended up riding it again later that night, and according to Mommy, it was just as fun the second time around. It was seriously kinda weird. "Who are you and what have you done with my mother?"

Okay, so Mommy arrived in Tokyo yesterday. It was also, coincidentally enough, her birthday, so I brought out presents and some little cakes for dessert. We got to talk a lot over dinner, and it was good to have her around. Anyway, she told me the most hysterical story that I simply had to share.

Mom was apparently at the grocery store and scanning her items at the self-checkout lane. After she finished, she checked to make sure that she wasn't missing anything, and that's when she noticed some money dropped on the edge of the scanner. However, it wasn't just a normal dropped bill; it was folded tightly into a little square shape. It was odd, but my mom picked it up anyway and brought it home. (The motto of our household in regards to dropped money is "Yeay! Free money!" We're the type of people who stop to pick up pennies and nickels on the sidewalk. If you find a dime... whooo! Party time!)

Anyway, Mommy brought the groceries home, and finally got around to the dropped bill. She unfolded it... and she said she was shocked when she found white powder inside. She didn't know what to do, so she flushed it. (She was mostly concerned that she was traveling in a few days, and the bill had been in her purse.) She contemplated tasting a bit, just to check, but she realized that she wouldn't know what illegal drugs tasted like, anyway, so decided it was better she leave things alone.

I couldn't stop laughing when she told me this story. I have no idea if it was real or just a prank, but I keep imaging a guy standing behind my mom in the checkout line, cursing to himself and trying to figure out if there's a way he can claim a previous dropped dollar bill.

Vacation is almost here, and I'm so excited!

( Flying Excitement! )

( Family Excitement! )

( Work Excitement! (Part I) )

( Work Excitement! (Part II) )

( Variety Show Excitement! )

( Net Excitement! )

As most of you probably already know, I'm going home in a week, and I am soooo excited. I realize that I'm probably talking about it too much, but not only is my first Xmas at home in 4 years, but it's also the first reunion of our immediate family in, like, ever, so I think I get some slack. ^_^ In celebration(?), here's some news from the past week.

Hard Core Christmas Spirit
On my morning news program, they did a little segment about Christmas decorations in Japan, and how people save on electricity bills and all. One of the methods was using non-light-related decorations, like little balloon-type lawn figures and that sort of stuff. But one of the sample houses they showed? One wall of the house featured a giant picture of Mary holding baby Jesus. I thought it was hysterical. That is seriously hard core Christmas spirit for Japan.

My Niece Rocks (Part 1)
I mentioned previously that Detroit Niece started wearing glasses, and she looks too cute for words. She's an active three-year-old, so I was hoping that she wouldn't be bothered by things on her face. But word is that she LOVES her glasses. See, she doesn't know anyone else with glasses at her preschool. And the only other people she knows are adults. Therefore, she has come to the conclusion that glasses are big girl accessories, and that she is obviously far superior to her peers if she gets to wear glasses and they don't. It's rather hysterical toddler logic, and I absolutely adore her super-positive spin on the situation.

My Niece Rocks (Part 2)
Yet another story about why this niece of mine rocks. They've apparently got a fake Christmas tree at their house, so my niece has never been to a tree farm to get their Xmas tree. Therefore, when she first saw a car with a Christmas tree strapped to the roof, she apparently started shrieking, and told her parents very excitedly, "Look! They have salad on their car!!!" Everyone in the family thinks it's a hoot, and no one can figured out why she called it salad. My own attempt at decoding toddler logic says that A) Trees and plants stand upright and B) The thing on the car was not upright, therefore C) The thing on the car cannot be a tree or plant. But D) It was still green and leafy, ergo E) It must be salad.

My Boss is Cooler Than Your Boss (Part 64)
I've mentioned the awesomeness of my boss and his many hobbies before, but after learning Arabic last year and starting to make his very own Middle Age-esque sheepskin book, he decided that it would be fun to learn Arabic calligraphy. And since he's my boss, he doesn't just go at it half-assed. He's apparently in some sort of correspondance course with a calligraphy master living in Israel. It sounds like this calligraphy master is a good teacher, and my boss doesn't want to let the guy down, so he's started practicing during lunch. I have no idea what anything means, but everything that I've seen is pretty impressive. Seriously, I want to be my boss when I grow up.

Danger: Avoid Death
Some of you might have heard of this, but I read an article about some organization chose the best idiotic warning labels of the year. As someone who ends up translating warning labels many times a year, I can honestly say that some of it is pretty detailed. You can see the winners on the web page here, including the best warning label of the year: Danger: Avoid Death. Now, that's a pretty wacky warning label, but seriously? Visit the web site and check out the picture that goes along with it. That's the actual highlight of the warning. I nearly choked on my lunch when I saw it. Ohhh, you gotta love the American legal system that necessitates this sort of stuff....

I'm sooooo excited about going home for Christmas; I'm already getting impatient, which is bad. So here are some random thoughts for the week:

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( An Open Letter to the Girl Walking to the Train Station Tuesday Night )

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I got a letter from one of my sisters last night, and she included pictures of the kids. How come no one ever told me that Niece got glasses? She's soooo cute. Also, Nephew looks like a mini-version of my brother-in-law; it's pretty scary. But I'll be seeing them in 2 weeks! Hurray!

I must admit, though, that there will definitely be things that I'll be missing about Japan during the holiday season. End-of-the-year parties. [sigh] Luna Sea concert. [whimper] And, of course, New Year's Day sales. [sob sob!!] Seriously, basically every store worth its beans sells awesome grab bags, filled with random crap that you never knew that you wanted, for super-de-duper low prices. Stores that normally sell a single shirt for 10,000 yen will offer a grab bag with 6-7 items, dresses and coats even, for the same price. Pay 1000 to get a bag filled with random socks or jewelry, and get your money's worth if you even if you just like one or two of the dozen items included. And I've had awesome luck the past two years with a slightly more upscale jewelry store in Shibuya; I've gotten etched silver rings and 18k gold jewelry for super cheap. Ohhh, grab bags! You'll all be gone by the time I get back to Tokyo, and I will miss you. [sob sob sob!!]

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I would like to quickly note that I have no desire to see the new Beowulf animated movie thingie. Partially because I'm always wary of people trying to "modernize" classics or make them "hip" for modern audiences, partially because I haven't been entirely impressed with what I've seen of the animation (big monsters = look cool. anything supposed to be human = dead and soul-less eyes.). But I think it's also possibly because I was so traumatized by learning Beowulf in high school English. See, I liked our teacher fine, but she was... flighty. She didn't always realize that we weren't psychic. And the highlight of our learning experience came with the Beowulf test, which included the following question:

Beowulf is a ____ and a ____ of a ____ .

( Seriously, WTF? )

I'm currently starting to buckle down for the Christmas season. Long story short, as far as we can tell, all of my sisters and their families have decided to meet at my parents' house for Christmas. Including me and my parents, that means 9 adults and 5 kids (ages 1-4 and 7) under one roof. Which means I need to buy 13 Christmas presents, and that's not counting my dad and one of my brother-in-laws, who both have birthdays. And since everyone is going to actually be there, I can't even duplicate presents this year! ("Look, I got a pair of socks and a tie, too! Now we match!") It's going to be insane, but I'm really really looking forward to it. The entire family hasn't gotten together in, well, ever. It should be awesome. Assuming, of course, that I can figure out what to get everyone. >_< But I've spent the last two weekends wandering around Tokyo, and Sunday afternoon I buckled down and searched every website I could think of, so I'm actually down to another present for my dad, something for my Grandpa, and determinining exactly what I want to get each of the kids.

Dad is tough, as always, and the kids should be pretty easy. The toughest part is that I suddenly thought to myself, "Oh dear god, what if the kids get jealous over each others' presents?" They're just so close in age, and I'm particularly concerned about quiet 4-year-old Calgary neice and forceful 3-year-old Detroit neice. I can totally see Detroit neice liking Calgary neice's toy better, and then stealing it and refusing to let go. Honestly, especially considering their personalities, this is a real concern. (lol) I'm considering getting them the same type of toy. (Like, getting them different types of dolls or something. Disney Princesses are cool, right?) Detroit neice will likely steal Detroit nephew's toy, too, but they live in the same house, so I don't really care about that. ^_^

Grandpa is unfortunately getting tougher and tougher to buy for. His sight is getting pretty bad, so it's harder for him to enjoy TV/movies and nearly impossible for him to enjoy books. Unfortunately, he's a huge techno-phobe, as well, so he refuses to even listen to books on tape. (No, none of us can figure out why.) We keep trying to convince him that he'd love it, and then we could even get him an iPod and load it up with hours of books or interesting podcasts, but he just doesn't want to. Anyway, it's quite unfortunate, because I think he'd actually really enjoy "Letters from Iwojima". See, for decades, the entire family assumed that my Gran and Grandpa wouldn't enjoy modern movies, with their sex and violence and blood and realistic action. And especially, they wouldn't like bloody movies about WWII (which they both served in; Gran apparently hid her pregnancy and served up until the day that her superiors figured her out). Then, for some strange reason, Dad decided to get them "Saving Private Ryan". Everyone thought it was a horrible idea, but as it turns out, both Gran and Grandpa only commented that it was a fun wee movie, and they watched it several times. The family was shocked. Since then, Dad has kept Grandpa's movie collection stocked with any sort of intense drama or heart-pounding action he can find. (Moral of the story is: your grandparents may be harder core than you think.) So I think he'd love Iwojima, if it weren't for the whole, y'know, Japanese with subtitles thing. I assume that there's an English dub, though... Has anyone seen it? Is it any good? Could you actually recommend it for someone who would probably only see a big beige blur on the screen?

Oh, and speaking of shopping fun, everyone needs to see this wonderful blog entry about a JC Penney's catalog from the 1970's. Funniest thing, ever.

This is the actual opening from an email from one of my sisters:

Subject: Happy BIrthday [sic]
It is not that I forgot your birthday, it is more that I have been at the bar the last few nights and was too drunk to write you. Not much of a consolation is it?

I.... honestly can't tell if she's serious or not. Her email did have an awful lot of exclamation points.

Well, I had a good summer break. My mommy came down to Tokyo, and we went to the Tokyo Bay Fireworks, took a side trip to Karuizawa (where we shopped and Minako-chan burned the crap out of her shoulders), then Matsumoto (home of the truly lovely Matsumoto Castle), and finally returned to Tokyo in time for two more days of work (we just moved our offices, so our theme for the two days was "Hope you don't have to work, because there's no power", followed by "Hope you don't have to work, because there's no network"). We even saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which my mom understood surprisingly well (except for the part where she didn't know what a Padfoot was, or the part where she kept calling Alan Rickman "Professor Snapes", or the mind-boggling part where she confused Remus Lupin with Mad-Eye Moody). (Also, I should mention that the scene where Umbridge sacked Trelawney was made much more dramatic by the minor earthquake that caused the theater to rumble in displeasure. ^_^) Anyway, Mommy's back home now, so the apartment is big and lonely. (T_T)

While I was gone, some of my friends were doing a meme, so I thought I'd very belatedly run after the bandwagon.

1. List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
2. Tag seven people to do the same.
3. Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag whoever wants to do it.

1. For the life of me, I cannot correctly pronounce the following words: walrus, armageddon, mutant, or New Orleans. With "walrus", I drawl horribly, run the L and R together, and basically cut out the last syllable, so it ends up like "WAAW-r's". For "armegeddon", I'm just plain wrong. I pronounced it "ar-MED-ig-on" for the first 16 years of my life before kinomakoto told me that I was completely off. (I still get confused about which is the right way.) "Mutant" I pronounce without any Ts, so it comes out like "MU-n". And "New Orleans"... I used to live there, and after only about 4 years, I was drawling "N'awlins" like a 6th generation native. But when I moved away, I discovered that no one could understand what the hell I was saying. So I would have to force myself to say "New-Or-lins". But I was very conscious about it the entire time, and it was rather awkward, so it never came out smoothly. To this day, I am stuck in limbo where neither "New-Or-lins" nor "N'awlins" rolls off the tongue easily, so I always feel self-conscious whenever I talk about the city. (FYI, don't pronounce it "New-Or-leeens". It tends to annoy me.)
2. I can crack multiple joints on command (and do so often!). My wrist and finger joints I can crack fairly consistantly, but my shoulders and most any joint from my ankle down I can crack, loudly, whenever I want.
3. I've had white hairs since high school. Quite a few white hairs, actually, which makes my hair streaked in places. It doesn't bother me, though; I think it looks quite nice and I'm alway hesitant to dye it. And I could just be imagining it, but the white hairs seem to be more prominent around the area where I cut my head during my car accident a few years ago, which suggests that trauma really DOES create white hairs!
4. My favorite sandwich is pepperoni and potato chips. Nuke some pepperoni slices, put it on bread, and then add a layer of potato chips. I personally recommend plain Lays or Ruffles. Mmm, pepperoni sandwich!
5. I'm insanely picky about my toothbrush. It has to be a Colgate Wave toothbrush, compact head, soft bristles. Literally nothing else will do. They're somewhat difficult to find, so I end up buying them in bulk whenever I spot them. Also, for no apparent reason, I wear my toothbrushes out at twice the normal rate, so I tend to go through a lot of toothbrushes. Logically, it can't be good for my teeth, but I've only had one real cavity, so I must be doing something right.
6. One of my best comfort foods is kinako mochi (kinako being a soybean flour and mochi being a sticky ball of rice paste). My mom never really cooked Japanese food at home (although we almost always had white rice with dinner), but she would buy Japanese snacks fairly often, so I grew up on Pocky and arare and dried persimmons. But the thing that I really loved was kinako mochi, which she would often make for lunch. I have a distinct memory from childhood of watching a Rainbow Brite video and waiting for my mom to make kinako mochi. It's a good (and easy to find) comfort food.
7. I never wore pants as a girl. I never owned jeans until I was 11 (and that was for a theater costume), and I never started wearing pants and jeans regularly until I was 13 or so. I still wear flowing skirts and dresses a lot, which tends to make people think that I'm very dressy. (People will constantly ask me if I've got a date, when really I'm just going to the grocery store.) But I'll tell you a secret: the reason I like flowy skirts and dresses is simply that they're easier to wear. For me, pants and jeans are harder to move in; I can hardly kick my leg past my waist in most pants! IMHO, if I can't run or beat someone up in my clothing, there's a problem.

Daddy wrote me the cutest thing in an email, and I just had to share. [FYI, for context, about a month ago my mommy fell down some concrete stairs and landed on her face. ;-_- Mommy kinda laughed about it and said she was fine; Daddy freaked out. She damaged one of her front teeth in the incident, but just recently she gave in and went to see the dentist about it.]

Your Mum is still going to the dentist almost everyday to get the treatment for her front tooth. Seems to be working and I hope they can get it back to the original whiteness. I'm sure you'll agree that her smile has always been a thing of great beauty ....I remember a school poem you wrote when you were just 6 years old when you described her smile as "...shining,shining,shining". I thought that was a lovely thought for a wee girl and I wish we'd kept the poem.

ISN'T MY DADDY ADORABLE!? I got all choked up... [sniff sniff]

So my mommy and daddy are in Canada to visit Canadian Sister and family. Apparently, Canadian Niece #2 is a freak. (lol) She's 7-1/2 months old, and has apparently decided "Screw this crawling shit; I'm learning to walk." She doesn't crawl so much as push herself onto her hands and balls of her feet and walk herself forward, and she already knows how to pull herself up into a standing position. She likes the standing position so much that she gets upset if you stick her in her playpen, which has soft walls that can't support her body weight. Also, and this is even weirder, she apparently cries like a banshee when you try to give her food. I have no idea why. Mom says that it's tricky trying to give her a bottle, because she sobs like someone's pulling her toes off when you stick it in her mouth. Canadian Sister and Brother-in-law said that you just have to keep the bottle in her mouth, and eventually she'll stop crying long enough to drink an inch or two of formula. She's apparently always been like that and won't eat much at one sitting, so they just have to feed her more times in a day. I can't wait to meet her. I've only seen her in pictures, so all I know is that she has absolutely massive blue eyes; she is SO CUTE. I love my weird neices and nephew. ^_^

Also, I found this on a blog somewhere:

1. Go to Google.com
2. Click on "Maps".
3. Click on "Get Directions".
-- From: New York, New York
-- To: Paris, France
4. Read direction number 23. (Note: For me, it was step 21...)
If you laugh, repost this.

I did indeed laugh. Oh, the wonderment of the internets...

I had a great little trip back to the States. I spent most of the time watching movies and participating in shopping marathons. What fun! I could write an entire, sprawling entry about how my niece and nephew are the cutest things, ever, but I'll restrain myself. (Although they are hysterical.) Little Niece was really awesome; for some reason, I get along oddly well with kids in their terrible twos. Unfortunately, she was still asleep when I left in the morning, so I didn't get to say goodbye. My sister told me that Niece got all sad and refused to let her little brother play with the stuffed Totoro doll or the Anpanman toy phone that I brought them from Japan. I find it painfully cute in a little-brother-torturing kind of way.

(Okay, one funny story about my niece and nephew. Apparently, Nephew likes sucking on Niece's toes. Niece didn't used to mind, because Nephew had no teeth and she thought it felt funny. But now, you've guessed it, teething. So instead of sucking, he tries to eat her toes. Needless to say, Niece isn't quite so amused now. She shouts "No" at him and runs away and sometimes starts sobbing because Nephew is a stubborn little dude who will crawl after you with relentless determination, even if you try fooling him by suddenly hiding or changing directions. On a slightly related note, Nephew doesn't crawl like a baby; he crawls like an army guy on his belly. His nickname at day care is "Commando". ^_^)

Anyway, as usual, I watched many movies with my mom. (My dad's not a big movie fan, so Mommy gets her movie bug out of her system with me.) We rented Wordplay and March of the Penguins. "Wordplay" was interesting and funny, although I will fully admit that I thought the participants in the crossword competition who they profiled were kind of weird. I don't really have a strong competitive spirit, never have, so I think it's weird when people actually open their mouths to say things like how little it took them to complete a puzzle, and how they can't understand why it took other people twice as long; is there something wrong with those people!? To me, that's a bit creepy. On the other hand, the segments about puzzle creation and things like that were very interesting. In the end, though, I still preferred the other word-related academic competition movie, Spellbound. The other documentary I saw, "March of the Penguins", was simply incredible. Once you see that film, you're filled with an overwhelming sense of "How the fuck are penguins still alive as a species!?!?" I mean, oh my god! All that work just for one chick!? It's just phenominal. And it's possible that I got teary-eyed once or twice. Because I'm a softy like that.

My mom and I also saw both period pieces revolving around battling magicians (which I will write about later) and Stranger than Fiction. I'm a bit sad to say that "Stranger than Fiction" disappointed me. I was sure that I would love it, and it was funny in a dry sort of way, but it was almost... too normal. When Harold goes to a shrink and keeps insisting that he's not crazy (merely hearing a voice in his head), the shrink eventually caves and refers him to a literature professor. (...why?) The literature professor, for some particular reason, doesn't think too much of Harold until he admitted that the narrator said the phrase "Little did he know...", to which the literature professor apparently concluded that it WAS someone else, seeing as the phrase was contingent on Harold not knowing something, and so how could he make up something that he didn't know? (Which is just plain stupid, because they're just WORDS and not actually contingent on the actual thought processes of a third person, but I digress.) Long story short, the movie was too normal to be a quirky Kaufman-esque comedy, and too strange to be a normal romantic comedy. It just straddled an awkward middle. Having said that, the performances were wonderful and really managed to carry the movie to a pleasent ending. An amusing movie, sure, but not the great one that I had hoped for.

So next week, I'm heading for a wee visit to see one of my sisters and then to see my parents. In preparation for said trip, I literally spent an hour in Toys R Us this weekend, desperately trying to remember how old my neice and nephew are. "Two-ish and less-than-one-ish" was the best I was able to come up with, but I later confirmed this information with my mother, and it turns out I was right. Phew! I wanted to get something that would at least somewhat Japanese-y, so I forced myself not to look at all of the cute foreign-made toys. Then I tried to weed out all the generic things, and I ended up with a stuffed Totoro for the older girl and an Anpanman cell phone thingie for the baby boy. In retrospect, the girl might not enjoy Totoro without knowing the character, and possibly would even prefer something like the Anpanman phone simply because it at least has buttons, but I was totally swindled by the parents and little child shopping in front of me.

Mom: [stopping stroller in front of stuffed animals] Hey, let's buy her a Totoro.
Dad: Cool, here you go, sweetie. [holds Totoro out to little girl]
Little girl: [big eyes] [giant smile] DAAAAAAAAA! [envelope Totoro in massive stuffing-popping hug]

I'm half convinced that they were paid actors, and just circled around the display every 20 minutes to convince unsuspecting shoppers to purchase Totoro goods. It was sooooo cute. The Anpanman cell phone should be fine. It's a "camera" phone (which means that it has a little plastic Anpanman waving on the top screen), and all little kids like bright chewable buttons, right?

FYI, Anpanman is an anime superhero who, as you may have guessed, has a giant anpan for a head. He has all sorts of bread related friends, too (Shokupanman, Currypanman, etc) but I never really knew anything else about the series. As it turns out, Anpanman fights the evil Germ people, and whenever he finds someone in trouble, he re-energizes them... by letting them eat a little bite of his head. People are actually expected to eat Anpanman. I honestly had no idea. I couldn't stop laughing when I first found out.

Well, it's Friday, and assuming no one blows up Syria within the next 48 hours, my boss is coming back on Monday. HURRAY! HOW I HAVE MISSED YOU! So I've been working 11 hour work days this week to pick up the slack, have spent my time being shocked by how little distractions can really add up into destroying your working groove, and have otherwise wanted my nice fluffy cushion of non-responsibility back. On the plus side, the week FLEW by, and today is moving faster than a missile from North Korea. No interruptions, got all of the little jobs out of the way in the morning, turned in three different translations ahead of schedule, looking good. I should mention that everything's kinda muted and fuzzy and shiny around the edges, and part of me feels that I should be more concerned about this considering that I am at work and therefore neither drunk nor high, but I'll go ahead and file this one in the "Win" column, too. (For those who are curious, it's probably exhaustion combined with TGIF and TGMBICBFS* happiness, with a dash of "Lingering cold" for flavor.)

Speaking of warm fuzzies, my sister in Canada gave birth to another little girl (awwww!) last week. Mommy and Daddy are up helping her out, but apparently, everyone's been sick as a dog. Mommy baby-sat the older daughter for a bit, but the poor thing caught a stomach flu and was throwing up all day. As a result, Mommy, my sister, AND my brother-in-law all caught the stomach flu. The situation was so bad that they apparently called Daddy to watch the newborn overnight. (And dude, if you're actually enlisting my dad to watch a week-old baby overnight, you're bloody sick.) They had to call in a baby-sitter for the next day while Daddy slept it off, at which point (you guessed it), my dad got sick, so Mommy was back pulling newborn-sitting duty the next night. The day after that, my brother-in-law was well enough to take his turn, but as you can imagine, everyone is currently still tired and sore. My sister had already been recovering from her C-section, which was preceded by 9 months of morning sickness (seriously, she was sick the entire time; her pregnancy experiences make me never want to procreate, ever), so she's still feeling pretty crappy. On the plus side, the actual newborn has somehow managed to remain healthy this entire time so, you know, go go teeny immune systems!

In other random news, I'm getting sick of my LJ layout and have been desperately trying to find something that doesn't frustrate me. See, thanks to work, I've gotten into a habit of working on computers with multiple windows open at once, all tiled in varying sizes across the screen. (I currently have 5 working windows, only two of which are overlapping even slightly.) So whenever I actually use LJ, my window can be anywhere from "nearly maximized" to "teeny rectangle tucked in the corner". Both columns and fixed widths frustrate me, but all of the standard single column layouts are A) boring and B) contain just the most basic links. I suppose I could bite the bullet and just create my own theme but, dude, I don't like my LJ that much.




* TGMBICBFS = Thank God My Boss Is Coming Back From Syria

I do love my Daddy, and so I'll be extremely sad when Mommy kills him. (lol) My parents went on a little summer trip to visit one of my sisters and family, and I just got an email from my mom. They got back home safe and sound, only to discover that someone (in other words, Dad) left the fridge door open when they left.

"The eggs were BLUE," my mom wrote.

They had to toss everything out, and I'm sure the smell... Anyway, I get my neat-freak genes from my mom, so I can't even imagine how she reacted to this. She sounded surprisingly calm in the email she sent to me, but I'm slightly concerned that it's because she's already added chlorine to Dad's coffee or something. ;^_^

I'm the worst daughter, ever. I totally forgot my mommy's birthday. And if I forgot my mom's birthday, then I totally forgot my brother-in-laws' birthdays last month. What the hell is wrong with me? (T_T) Anyway, in honor of a long Golden Week vacation for me, I've got another long post today filled with things that make my fangirl heart happy.

Freedom Project
Do you like Cup Noodle? Do you like the anime Akira? Do you like Utada Hikaru? Have you ever wished that Kaneda would sell you Cup Noodle while Utada Hikaru sang to you? Then I've got the ultimate advertising campaign for you: freedom-project.jp!!! Okay, so it's not technically Kaneda, but it is Otomo Katsuhiro, so it ends up being the story of Not-Kaneda as he races his Not-motorcycle to freedom and eats Cup Noodle. I am not ashamed to admit that I'm totally in love with this advertising campaign. It has not convinced me to eat more Cup Noodle (yet), but it did nearly make me walk into a pole in the middle of Shinjuku station when the posters first went up. "Kaneda-kun!" I shrieked. "Cup Noodle!" Seriously, there's a lot of fun stuff at the web site, so check it out.

Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 2nd Kiss
I realize this is important information to exactly one person out there (Minako-chan waves to kinomakoto), but there's a sequal to Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side coming out in August. HURRAY!!!! You have no idea how ecstatically happy this makes me. Check out the web site here. Who should I woo first? Oh, the excitement!!

And finally, for V6 fans, "Hold Up Down"!
( Because every V6 movie needs a frozen Jesus. )

Oh, and since I mentioned it yesterday, has anyone out there played (or started playing) Final Fantasy XII? I'm slowly but surely gaining levels and merrily slashing my way through the game, but I've got a question: Has anyone found any use for Levitega? It's a type of magic that just makes you float a couple inches off the ground. But.... WHY? It was easier with "Float" magic in FFVIII; people literally ran around screaming, "FLOAT!!! USE FLOAT!!!!" So what does Levitega do? No idea.

Believe it or not, but this year will be my second Christmas in a row spent in Japan. How does this year compare to last? Well, admittedly slightly worse. I've got a cold and no real plans. When I say "real" plans, I actually mean "plans that involve other people", seeing as Kingdom Hearts II comes out tomorrow. With no work on Friday, that gives me a solid three days to start playing, and I have absolutely no problems with acting like a slug and doing nothing else all weekend long. Hell, I'm planning my grocery shopping today so that I won't have to leave the apartment. It'll just be me, sweatpants, pizza, my warm kotatsu, and my PS2. [thinking] Actually, that sounds like a really good Christmas, doesn't it?

There was a little segment on the morning news that made me think about Japanese Christmas "traditional" foods. The question of the week for the viewers was, "Do you put candles on your Christmas cake or not?" See, when I think of traditional Christmas foods, I think of turkey, eggnog, cookies, gingerbread, fruitcake, stuff like that. In Japan, Christmas food means fried chicken and strawberry cake. As kinomakoto once put it, "Birthday cake for Jesus, I've gotten used to, but fried chicken still makes me giggle." Anyway, the arguments for and against putting candles on your Christmas cake this morning were pretty funny. ("But it creates such a nice mood!" "It's a CHRISTMAS cake, not a BIRTHDAY cake!" "But the candles drip wax all over the place!" "...Wait, that's a good thing?") They showed traditional Christmas cakes from a few countries around Europe, and all of the news announcers seemed surprised that A) many European Christmas cakes tend to be more fruit-bread-y than cake-y, and B) nobody put candles on those suckers. I suppose you could make an argument that you're putting the birthday candles on the cake for Jesus, but then as one of the male new announcers asked, "Who's supposed to blow them out?"

In reality, most people I know don't have cake for Christmas. You'd maybe have it, just in the sense that you want a dessert, but unlike birthdays, it really doesn't have to be cake, does it. Cookies or pies or flambes or whatever work just as well on Christmas. Then again, I'm not really sure how this works for normal, Western, Christian families, since A) my family never celebrated Christmas as a religious holiday since not all of us are Christian, and B) my dad's birthday is December 25th, so we DID always have birthday cake on Christmas. Well, technically, Mom would always get cake for the rest of us and serve my dad fruitcake or Christmas pudding. He's Scottish. He actually LIKES those British Christmas-y cakes. The blacker and tougher and fruitier the better.

But since I actually have lived many years celebrating with both British Christmas cake and birthday cake, I can answer one question for these Japanese news announcers: Never ever try putting candles in British Christmas cake. Only use them for birthday cake. Seriously, my sister and I tried one year, and have you ever tried drilling candles through marzipan? About three birthday candles unraveled as we tried to force them through the top. Then later, we had to bring out carving knifes to slice the damned thing...

Long ramble short, if you need me on Christmas, I'll be the one killing Heartless for munnie, while eating fried chicken in front of her TV. Now that's the life!

Minako-chan is a hyperactive but sleepy bunny, but that's what she gets for drinking a maple latte at work first thing in the morning. I'm really not used to caffeine, and never have it in the morning.
(_ _)zzzZZ

Lately, I've been busy getting ready for my week-long trip home on Saturday. Luggage to pack, luggage to send to the airport, refrigerator to clean out... I'm unexpectedly very busy. Today I woke up a little early and went to the wonderful world of Shinagawa to get a re-entry permit. I ended up getting to the immigration office about half an hour early (whoops) and I didn't really have anything to do, so I picked up forms for extending my work visa (will have to do that in a few months, so this saves me the trip) and browsed the web on my new cell phone. I really hate to see my first cell phone bill; I feel like I'm looking at the web a whole lot, but I figure that if I use my cell phone a ton the first month, I can set that as my extreme maximum and rework my payment plan based around that. There really isn't that much to do on a cell phone web browser; now that it's out of my system, I'll probably only end up using it occasionally for weather, train schedules, and the daily Inocchi blog at V6's cell phone webpage. (Yesterday's blog: "We had a hand-shaking meet-and-greet with the fans today... I can't move my arms!!!!") Anyway, I downloaded a really really pretty Reno screenshot from FFVII:AC to use as the screen for my phone. Ooooo, Reno-ness! Thank you, Square-Enix web!

I've also been busy buying Christmas presents for everyone; my parents are visiting my Canadian sister and family over Christmas, so they can bring up the presents, and shipping for my Hawaii sister (and family) and my Detroit sister (and family) will be a lot cheaper from the States. I really shouldn't complain since I'm in Japan, but really, why does all of my family live so danged far away? (lol) I get vacation, sure, but only one week a year is really useful for traveling abroad... That's more than enough for most people, but most people aren't the ones LIVING abroad. I'd tell my family to start visiting me, but considering that my sisters each have a small daughter born in the new millenium? That ain't happening. Mako-chan, I will likely never ever see your cute new My Sweet Home. Sorry. (^_^)

Anyway, since it'll be easier for me to ship presents, I decided to make this a Very Merry Lacquerware Christmas. Mommy and Daddy get a pretty lacquerware plate for display (which my mom has been dying for). My Hawaii sister gets a cute boat-shaped bowl thingie (found it at a baseball victory sale at Keio; thank you, Hanshin Tigers!). My Detroit sister gets a set of very simple black and silver plates (that couple is oddly picky when it comes to household decorating, but I'm proud to say that they should like this).

But that left my Canada sister. As I pondered what type of lacquerware good to buy them, I suddenly realized something. Their house contains one large dog, one hyperactive one, two fat cats, one hamster (who at last count is still alive after the cats ate the mouse), and a two-year-old little girl who apparently runs circles around the entire family. And there's possibly fish or birds or who knows what by now. What the hell are they going to do with lacquer? I tried desperately to think of something "Japanesey" to get them that wasn't delicate, but this is JAPAN. EVERYTHING traditional is delicate. (Or food which, frankly, would probably not taste too good if bought now for Christmas.) I finally decided on something "chirimen", which in a nutshell tends to be "cute, decorative crap made from silk crepe". You know when you see stuffed bunnies or something that look like they're made from kimonos? That's probably chirimen. As it just so happens, 2006 is apparently the year of the dog, which means that the stores are filled with are absolutely adorable dog statues, paper-mache-ish dog sculptures, and (of course) chirimen dogs. Bringing this all together, I decided to get my Canada sister a chirimen doggie to compliment her animal-filled house. It's basically a high-quality stuffed animal, so it won't break and likely won't be (too) harmed if occasionally chewed on by any member of the household. Plus, since it's a decoration specifically for the year of the dog, I can tell her not to worry if it busts at its seams in a few months. "It's only good for 2006 anyway; no problems!"

Ironically, however, if I end up buying the chirimen doggie that I like, it'll end up being the most expensive gift of the Christmas season, which is why I haven't bought it yet. On one hand, I'm doing pretty well budget-wise, and the expensive doggie looks a whole lot better than the little, relatively inexpensive ones (which all tend to look like cats, for reasons that I don't quite understand). On the other hand, that's a lot to pay for a stuffed doggie, no matter how cute. Hmmm....

But first, a quick snippet from an email from my Dad:

I've been dealing on the phone for the last week with Bob Bobson [real name changed to protect the innocent], a young civil servant who is processing my pension application. [...] Anyway, I'll have to walk him through this slowly just like I did about 15 years ago with a young IRS officer who audited me. In that case, she finally asked me if I would mind writing her report. Will be a learning experience for both of us.

Only my dad would write his own audit. ^_^

In other news, I'm getting all rared up for movie fun this summer, so here's some quick rants:

( And now for Movie News! )