Archived entries for
Western Slug (and, for the record, Nara actually *is* that full of deer)
This morning I was surfing, and discovered a post at gaijinguide about TokyoPunch, which looks like it will be an animation about this slug, a brit, in Japan. The trailer clearly takes place in Nara, which is in the Kansai region of Japan, so I’m not sure why it’s called TokyoPunch, but perhaps more will be revealed shortly.
Here’s the trailer I was talking about:
What was amazing was that… while I usually didn’t feel quite so out of place in Japan as this slug does (I wasn’t so put off by the lack of english, for example), this trailer pretty much captures exactly how I felt in Nara. (I, however, didn’t get stuck in the hole in that pillar — safely made it through.)
P.S. if you want to see that youtube video at a more reasonable quality, you should definitely go download Joey’s youtube in mp4 plugin and then watch the trailer again — it will be crispy and wonderful.
Ben[Lee,Folds] + The[Headlights,Islands]
Went to a couple of good concerts this week… first up, Monday night it became apparent that my friend was looking to sell his Ben Folds ticket due to unreasonable amounts of homework. After a slightly stressful attempt to meet up and complete the ticket transaction, by noon on Tuesday I had my ticket in hand. Noam came back to town, picked me up after my meeting, and we continued onto a stop at Zorbas and then onto Ben Folds. Ben Lee opened, and he was also excellent. Then Ben #2 came onstage:
There was a particularly ridiculous tambourine player who elicited more applause than Ben Folds, completely mysterious.
As usual, Ben Folds was not what I imagined. His recorded music sounds so sarcastic (I have a hard time imagining that he’s not making fun of Zak and Sara), but not true live. The end of the concert involved the audience singing a three part harmony, conducted by Ben Folds. Probably one of the only times I have successfully harmonized.
Friday night was the Islands @ the IMC. The Headlights, who opened, are apparently local — which I didn’t know, though I knew a few of their songs. More than anything else, they seemed to just be really happy while performing:
Then the Islands showed up, after a long sound check and and even longer period of time after their soundcheck where they just weren’t there… finally they began playing though:
Half the band:
Blurry other half of the band (the violins/ violas(?) were rocking)
Most hardore picture, imo — gotta love the IMC lego guy.
Really good sound — even better than their recorded stuff, I thought. Though until two weeks ago I was unaware that they had other music besides “Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby”… now their song, “Swans” has become my official walking-to-math-class song. Don’t know how I ever got to math in the mornings without it.
よんロクロクロクCAPTCHA
So this morning I got into an AIM conversation with one of my friends from Japan, Ayaka, who I hadn’t talked to in ages (like, last July?) She directed me to her new blog, and I was reading and about to make a comment, when I noticed I had to fill in this text field:
It’s a Japanese version of one of those CAPTCHA images that computers aren’t supposed to be able to solve very well and thus ensure that users are human… anyway I liked this one, because it just has the pronunciation of the numbers written out in hiragana and katakana. So it would be a major hurdle to fill this out if I didn’t actually know how to read Japanese (or didn’t know how to count). Of course, I probably wouldn’t have a lot to say about Ayaka’s exclusively Japanese blog if I couldn’t even read the numbers.
The Saltine Challenge
I was unaware of the fact that such a thing existed, but apparently it’s considered impressive if one can eat 6 Saltine crackers in one minute without drinking any fluids. Teddy and Matt told me about this today at lunch, and I’m always up for a challenge…
The challenge is discussed various places on the web, like here, but in summary, I think the conclusion we can draw is that Saltines are really dry.
Teddy claims that the correct strategy is to eat one at a time, and that sort of makes sense if you want to maximize surface area contact between Saltine and salivation. Perhaps next time I try the challenge I will try it that way.
Alas, by the end of 60 seconds, I was chewing my 5th saltine, so I did indeed fail the challenge. I feel like I lost a few seconds here and there by sitting there and laughing at Matt and Teddy who were laughing at me trying to eat Saltines. Thanks to Matt, for filming it with his cell phone, which you can see here.
Next time I think someone should participate in the challenge with me, though. Contest, anyone?
