November 16, 2008
One of the houses in our neighborhood has already decorated for Christmas. I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s funny that every year another store in the US decides that they’re not going to use the word “Christmas” in their advertising or allow their employees to say “Merry Christmas” for fear of offending someone. Yet here in Japan, a country that is predominantly Buddhist/agnostic, no one thinks twice about it. All the stores play traditional Christmas hymns and have the word “Christmas” up everywhere. People who aren’t Christians tell each other “Merry Christmas,” and they’ve even got their own original Japanese tradition of having a Christmas cake, which looks a whole lot like a birthday cake (why don’t we do that?).
I’m not a very good photographer, so the pictures that show the brightness of the lights are out of focus. However, using the flash just doesn’t do the scene justice.
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September 21, 2008
Today I registered in at 16.7% body fat. Yea!
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September 15, 2008
My New Year’s resolution in 2008 was to get in shape. Against all odds, I have stuck to the resolution, and I have exercised at least 3 times a week for the past 9 months. For the first 5 months I only exercised, but since the end of May, I’ve been watching my calorie intake, too. The result? I lost 22 pounds in 3 months! I wasn’t really paying attention to the weight loss, because I was more concerned about the body fat percentage (noticing that I dropped 10 kilograms didn’t really impress me until I converted it to the more familiar unit of pounds). Our scale has a function to show your body fat percentage, and when I started I was at about 28 percent, sometimes even registering at 30 or so. Now I’m down to 17 or 18 percent, with my goal being 15 (which I will change to 10 once I get there).
Anyway, a lot of people say that everything is downhill once you reach 30: You lose your energy and start gaining unwanted fat. It’s funny, though, because up until this year I have been fairly sedentary. I’m now jogging 3 times a week and alternating between weight training and Billy’s Bootcamp. Thanks to the weight loss I’m faster with my kicks at taekwondo than I’ve ever been before. I have never felt more energetic and have never been stronger. That’s opposite what I should be experiencing. Perhaps it was a good thing I have led a fairly inactive lifestyle up until now… 
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September 11, 2008
We went out to dinner with Yoshi and his fiance, Yukie, tonight. It was her first time to meet Kaori’s (and Yoshi’s) dad. Now that the whole family has met her, it’s officially serious. I’m not sure exactly when they’re going to get married…Probably some time soon, though. They say they’re not going to have a wedding.
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August 4, 2008
Yukie Nakama is a Japanese actress. I have liked her ever since I saw her in the horror film called “Ring,” in which she plays a bullied teen who is killed and becomes a ghost. This picture is from her role as a teacher in the television series Gokusen. As you can see, I got tired of doing all the black at the end and couldn’t even find the energy to finish her hand. I couldn’t quite get her mouth and chin right, either. Oh well. On to the next drawing.
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July 29, 2008
The pencil’s still not moving how I want it to, but I’m hoping it will come back to me after a few drawings. Anyway, here’s one of the posters from the Superman Returns movie.
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July 22, 2008
Me (age 8) and Cha-Pa
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May 31, 2008
There aren’t that many restaurants around where we live, so we go to one that I like pretty often. It’s an okonomiyaki restaurant. We went last night, and I ordered my usual menu item. Without asking, the waitress brought ketchup. Most Japanese people eat their okonomiyaki with a special sauce, but I prefer ketchup. I used to have to ask for it, but apparently they know me now, so I don’t even have to ask.
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May 22, 2008
When we lived in Nagano, we had different tires for the summer and winter. Our winter tires are still sitting outside our apartment under the balcony. I’ve been meaning to get rid of them, but I just never got around to it. How fortunate that turned out to be…
Today Kaori had a headache, so I offered to drive her to the station so that she could go to work. I went out and got the car started and she followed, locking the door for me. So I drove her to the station, but when I got back I took out my keys and realized I didn’t have the key to the apartment. I had figured I’d just run her to the station real quick, so I didn’t have my cell phone, and I was wearing a white undershirt and pajama shorts. Needless to say, I wasn’t going anywhwere.
I stuck the car key in the door just to check, but it didn’t work, of course. So then I went around to all the windows, but none of them were open. I remembered, however, that the sliding door on the balcony was open. So I leaned against the fence and just stared up for a while thinking about what a predicament I had gotten myself in.
I stacked the tires up next to the gutter and attempted to climb up…I couldn’t reach. So I went back to the front of the apartment and got one of the crates that our grocery delivery service left. With that I was able to grab onto the balcony railing, but not being a rock climber, I could not pull my feet up. It was at this point that I began to panic, because Kaori wasn’t going to be home for another 7 hours, and I had a translation that was due in 4. So I went back to the car and just looked in the trunk for ideas.
And there it was…a rope! So I went back to the balcony and tied the rope (you might even call it a string) to the railing and then made two loops at the bottom for a place to step. I prayed that the rope and the railing would hold (I could just see in my mind the rope breaking and my foot getting stuck in one of the loops while I fell to the ground hanging upside down), and up I went. It was a success, and I delivered my translation on time…Just call me Spider-Man.
I don’t guess any of the neighbors saw me, because no cops came to check on the caucasian burglar.
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May 12, 2008
This weekend Kaori and I went to see a Noh play with Assis and Makie. It was a sort of recital by people studying the art, but afterwards there were performances by the teachers who are professional actors. Normally, tickets to these plays are extremely expensive and probably out of our reach, but Kaori has some connections thanks to her kimono work, so we were able to go to this recital for free.
Assis was mesmerized, but I was put to sleep. Not only can I not understand what’s being said because of the way they talk, but their movements are extremely slow and few. Basically they just sit there having some kind of conversation. Some of it is more fast-paced, but the one we saw shot sleep signals to my brain (Assis caught me with his camera).
The highlight of the day was Assis being told by one of the ushers that if he wanted to take pictures he could get a cameraman badge to wear on his sleeve. (Normally photographs are not allowed, either.) So anyway, we have pictures to remind me of the…ahem…excitement. Click here.
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