Aino Minako-chan

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.

I'm so exhausted, and I wasn't even the one on vacation.

Okay, so for two weeks, my little one-bedroom apartment was home to two girls (kinomakoto and applcheeks), five suitcases, and eventually an overflowing closet-full of treats to bring home. In quick bulletpoint form, here is how we spent the past two weeks:

• My First Comiket, which was almost shockingly uncrowded. Seriously. I should go more often.
• johnabe came over to watch the annual Kouhaku music battle on NHK. The big feature was a hysterically inappropriate performance by DJ Ozma who has, among other things, been banned from even the NHK building.
• Shopping, shopping, shopping! There were some extremely scary crowds, but also awesome deals. I spent surprisingly little money, considering that I ended up with: three small jewelry grab bags, one expensive jewelry grab bag, a sock grab bag, two clothing grab bags (each literally filled with 8-9 pieces of clothing, including jackets, dresses, and one blingy belt), one dress, and one pair of boots. Shopping!
• Eating, eating, eating! Seriously, if I never eat a parfait until Spring, it may be too soon.

But the highlight had to be a trip to Hakone and an amazing overnight stay in a ryokan with onsen. Oh, it was amazing. The room had a view of the gardens and was kept toasty warm; the onsens were just this side of scalding and felt gloriously refreshing, especially when a cool breeze kicked up outside; and then there was Maiko-san. Maiko-san was our own personal maid servant woman, and I wanted to take her home with me. Her entire job appeared to be acting cute and polite and serving food until we thought we were going to burst. Our onsen trip came with dinner and breakfast, each of which was a long, drawn out, multi-multi-MULTI course affair served to us in our rooms so that we barely had to move. At one point in time at dinner, Ringo-chan counted 20 dishes PER PERSON. The breaking point came after Maiko-san delivered the final dish, crammed carefully onto the table between us.

"Call the front desk when you're done," she informed us as we stuffed our faces with yet another piece of fish-product that was carefully formed and then carved into the shape of a flower. "I'll come back up to take away your dishes, and I'll bring up dessert."

....Dessert!?

I managed to hold my laughter until after she left the room. Breakfast was another 8 dishes or so, although I was starved like a starving woman for no reason, so I ended up stealing food from everyone else. Needless to say, I was fast asleep in a diabetic coma for most of the train ride back home.

Now I'm just sad and alone in Japan by myself. I say that, but I'm just too exhausted to go out anywhere. Holy crap, I need a day off. ^_^

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.

[on Saturday, at karaoke, with johnabe]

Minako: ...so my latest translation is kinda kicking my ass.
John: How bad could it be? What is it about, allergies!? Ha-ha!
Minako: [stare]
John: Oh, wow, really?

Worst part is, it's narration work. Which means that I also have to learn how to pronounce things like "immunoassay" or "eosinophilic leukocytes". Dude, is that even a real word? And I'm oddly worried about the strange acronyms, like IgE or IL-4. Are they pronounced letter by letter ("I-G-E"), or is there some sort of weird medical club shorthand that all the cool people use (like "Iggie" or something)? And I'm pretty sure that I pronounce "eczema" wrong, too, so I should probably look that up, as well. Ironically enough, I simultanously developed a cold that has me sneezing every 30 seconds. [shake fist] Curse you, histamines!!!

So, I had a 3-day weekend, which I spent singing karaoke with John (oh WHY did the Utada Hikaru mix use only the highest parts of every single song!?), playing Civilizations II (my Spanish empire has about 60 billion cities, and growing, so it takes a ridiculous amount of time just to play through one year; I'll never finish the game at this rate), and traveling to Minami-Funabashi to go shopping for the first time in about 5 years (Dude, I forgot that the Lalaport mall rocks... and the new Ikea covers about 60 billion square feet). Oh, and I got my hair cut at a new salon, and while the atmosphere and service and technique weregreat, they really won me over the second that Shampoo Assistant Lad sat me down and said "And now I'm going to start on your massage!" which left me in a puddle of goo.

And on a completely unrelated note that will leave you all in awe of my mastery of the English language, I was trying to think of the word "masochistic" over the weekend, and couldn't come up with it. (Nothing kinky, I swear; I was trying to form a sentence like, "Man, I'd never tell myself something so depressing; I'm just not that masochistic!") Anyway, I at least remembered that it started with an "M", but unfortunately, the only word that I could think of was "Mesopotamic". (This was, interestingly enough, why I was in the mood to play Civilizations.) Yeah, my confidence is soaring for the allergy translation. Koff koff.

Help meeee! (lol) I need to be saved from myself. I am completely obsessed with this new pattern for Le Sportsac:
http://www.lesportsac.com/external/tokidoki/tokidoki_fall.html.
Isn't it too cute!? And the bags come with these little mini doll-thingies and it's bright and cheerful and I really don't need to be spending my money on that sort of stuff.

On a side note, my boss is apparently not going to Jordan for his vacation next month like previously planned. He and his wife are going to SYRIA. ......... SYRIA.

So Saturday was my birthday. Happy one year older to me! johnabe came over in the morning before work so that he could give me my present: two bottles of uber-special edition Final Fantasy XII potions. Do you feel energized!? 50 or 100 hit points worth of energized!? (could happen) I was very impressed with the present, although I had unfortunately just brushed my teeth at the time, so the potions had an extra infusion of mint that made it taste even weirder than normal. I went out shopping in the afternoon, bought myself two shirts and a cardigan-type wrap, and played some Tokimeki Memorial.

On Sunday, after getting my nails done (I believe the shade is known as "Streetwalker Red"), my friend Meg invited me out shopping with her in Roppongi. We hit the new Cold Stone Creamery, which debuted in Japan fairly recently and is ridiculously popular. We felt like we had taken a trip to Disneyland: We stood in a winding line for 45 minutes, only to be greeted by cheery workers who all sang ice cream-related songs to the tune of "Hi-Ho". But Cold Stone Creamery! Yum!! We left to do some shopping, only to discover that it was the last day of the Pixar art exhibition, so we raced to the museum to see that. The highlight was a massive, modern, Toy Story-themed zoetrope. Unlike traditional zoetropes, this was made with huge 3D sculptures attached to a fast-spinning platform. They'd start the thing up, rotating it faster and faster until it was just all a blur... and THEN they added strobe lights, and suddenly, the entire thing was animated. It was wicked cool, and apparently based off of a similar invention for the Ghibli museum. And it all comes full circle. [draws circle with hands] Afterwards, we rested in front of a live musical performance by a newbie, unknown band called "Soma" (they were surprisingly good; band to watch for?), and then headed off to a really yummy Iranian restaurant for dinner.

Finally, I bought myself a new birthday present: Final Fantasty III for the Nintendo DS. Hurray!!! Prepare to level slut!! I haven't actually played yet; I've been busy going online and reading through the manual and trying to figure out which jobs for everyone to learn. As I've mentioned several times in regards to RPGs, Minako-chan and magic don't really get along. I always give people magic and summons and stuff... but then I never actually use them. And don't even get me started on status magic... In fact, me being, well, me, I'd rather have a team filled with nothing but Ninjas and Karate experts. We'll see what happens. And I'll keep you updated on my process!

I had quite a lovely weekend. I ended up spoiling myself rotten, having a wonderful and relaxing time, and then ruining it all by drinking too much Sunday night and getting rather hung over. lol (In my own defense, it was only two drinks. Two fairly poor drinks. I blame it on heat and dehydration.) But I digress...

Friday night and Saturday morning
A translation at work got me in the mood to experiment with HTML and CSS coding. I'm not good enough with either to create new code by myself, but I'm good enough that I can read previously created code and correctly modify it for my own needs. Long story short, I did some fun work with pull-down menus that I may integrate into a new version of my livejournal. Or maybe not. In any case, it was fun.

Saturday afternoon/night
I went out with my friend Megumi to see "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest". I quite liked it, although I think there should have been more swordfighting. Me likes the sword fighting. (johnabe, I'm more than willing to go again if you wanted.)

( As far as spoilers go... )

Meg and I lunch at a really yummy Spanish restaurant beforehand, and went to get our nails done afterwards. I know; it was really girly. But I now have perfectly square nails that are colored bright pink, and they make me happy while I work. It's funny how the little things can make you feel like a pretty pretty princess.

Sunday morning/afternoon
Running high on the pretty pretty princess feeling from the night before, I decided to spoil myself. I cut my hair (which admittedly wasn't "spoiling" as much as "my head is hot and I could really use less hair"). For those who know what I'm talking about, I went to a hair salon in the Shinjuku My Lord building, which is basically filled with good shopping for women (if there are any stores with male-centric goods, I've never noticed them). Oddly enough, I was the only female in the salon. I was me and four older salarymen, who were all getting their hair cut and faces shaved and (not even kidding you) nose hairs clipped. It really wasn't a masculine place, either; there were stacks of fashion magazines for me to read just like any normal salon. It was just, well, kinda freaky. I then went out and bought lots of appropriately girly items: a ring, a pair of earrings, a hair accessory, a white leather wallet, and makeup. Girly-ness!

Sunday night
I met up with Megumi and our mutual friend Occhi (real name Haruka; I don't know why every calls her Occhi). We met up with some of Occhi's friends and ate at an outdoor, all-you-can-eat yakiniku/beer garden. It was quite good, even if I had to stop myself from pouting every time the rest of the table stole my orders of kimchi to do silly things like "cook it with the meat" or "throw it in the yakisoba". I had to keep ordering extra plates for myself. It was good kimchi! And, as mentioned before, I ended up with a hang-over from my two watered-down drinks. Ridiculous.

In all, it was a surprisingly fun and relaxing weekend. Next weekend: V6. Woo-hoo!

I spent New Year's Eve with johnabe, eating dinner and watching music programs on TV. We started with the annual Kouhaku music battle, and went into the Johnny's countdown special.

Since kinomakoto asked, the white team (men's team) won the Kouhaku. It was the usual mix of pop songs, enka, and random tributes that made no sense whatsoever. (For example, they did a series of famous 80's idol tunes, then ended the montage with SMAP coming on stage while O-Zone's "Dragostea Din Tei" played in the background. I've never seen KimuTaku so confused. SMAP obviously had no idea what the hell was going on, either. The Gorie performance was simple amazing; the entire stage was covered in about 100 cheerleaders in glittery, colorful uniforms, dancing in perfect unison. (Gorie competed for the red (women's) team, btw.) The vocal performances of the night were, as could probably be expected, from Dreams Come True and Porno Graffitti. I got a little bit choked up listened to Miwa-san and Akihito-san. But my personal favorite performance had to go to T.M.Revolution, who showed up in a white furry outfit on top of a crane, belting "White Breath" with Darth Vader and a bunch of Stormtroopers wandering in the background. He sounded great, he looked great, and Darth Vader just made me laugh. "What's with the Star Wars theme!?" I thought to myself. And then I remembered that TMR has multiple Stormtrooper-esque outfits and also has an entire album entitled "The Force". "Oh, right, he's a big fan."

And although John was slightly less than amused, I liked the Johnny's countdown special. 101 Johnny's all on one stage! They just kept on coming out of the woodwork.

John: [watching V6 perform] Wow, I actually know all of these songs. This is all your fault.

Can't get enough Johnny's.

But the true highlight of my New Year's was this morning. Four words for you: New Year's Day Sales. I admittedly went a little nuts buying all sorts of stuff, but the sales were amazing! Plus, basically every store had a grab bag deal going on. You had no idea what you were going to get, but you were guaranteed a huge deal. Probably the smartest move I made was limiting the amount of money that I was carrying with me. I gave myself a set limit and went off for the day at 10:00, with the goal of buying a long skirt, some socks, and maybe some boots or a hat. I came back three hours later with the following:

- A long brown velvet and lace skirt.
- A long tan faux suede-y skirt.
- A black top.
- Two pairs of tights and a pair of socks.
- A white hat.
- White boots.
- Pretty pink bra.
- Rose shaped earrings.
- Jewelry grab bag (filled with a ring, a necklace, a charm bracelet, an extra charm, and a pair of earrings).
- A clothing grab bag (filled with short purple pants [too small, but I figured they would be], a fluffy blue top [too not my style], a jean jacket [tad snug, but works well open], a dark gray tube top [perfect!], and a black shirt [also great!].
- 547 yen.

(lol) Seriously, I had to bring out the calculator to work out if I could afford the underwear AND the boots. Luckily, I didn't have to choose. ^_^

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....

I'm going home to the States in two weeks! I have, like, NO time to finish all this work in time!! [looking seriously worried] Since we have a holiday on Thursday, a half-day of work on Friday (due to an all-company meeting), and I'll need to take a half-day off of work some time next week to visit immigration, it means I have only 8 (minus today, 7) days to complete 17 pages of technical documents and 2 chapters of a user's manual. [whimper] Thinking about it makes my head hurt; maybe I'll just leave now and come back raring to go tomorrow.

In other big news, hurray, new cell phone! It's pretty bitchin' and includes a very very pretty camera, so I fully intend to actually start, you know, taking pictures from now on. Too bad the only thing I can't take a picture of is the pretty new phone itself.

Also, I drank my very first coffee, ever. [CHEER] No, you don't understand what a huge step this is. I've hated coffee all of my life. I didn't like the smell, I didn't like mocha flavoring in desserts, I couldn't even stand a sip of caramel frappuchino. But last week at work, I suddenly realized that the smell of coffee no longer made me want to hurl. It almost smelled... pleasant. So I went to Starbucks (I trusted them to be the most sugar filled) and ordered the least coffee-sounding coffee I could find: Caramel Macchiato. And I drank it. And it was good. Minako-chan cheers because she suddenly feels like she's growing up, and no longer has to resort to hot chocolate (which she's also not entirely fond of; tends to be too chocolate-y or too whip cream-y) when she visits cafes with friends. I, too, can order sugar-filled steamed milk drinks that have coffee added for flavor!! Next up: conquering the dislike of cheesecake.

Fight, Minako-chan!!