vietnamese food

Had some great food last night in Nishi-Azabu at a tiny little place called Kitchen. 2 cuties making and serving Vietnamese food. Much less spicy than I thought, which is good because me no handle spice good.
Was with Hiroko and Terrie's Angels*, always good for a laugh. Finished the evening with some Hobson's icecream and Hiroko and I walked home through Azabu.
* Terrie's Angels: Hiroko, Rei, and Haruka all work at Linc Media, run by the Charlie-like Terrie Lloyd. The three go to a karate place twice a week to kick and punch away their stress.

ouch

Cut my left ring finger when cleaning my sword. Yup, the sucker's sharp.

spoonerism from jeremy

Smart feller!

spoonerism

Reds will hole!

amy

Todd's 2 week old gremlin Amy is lookin' more human by the minute.

azabu juban summer festival

It was a fun-filled, action-packed weekend. Got a mail from Ann and Jacob (friends of Steve and Cheech) saying they'd be in Tokyo and could we meet up? Perfect timing with the summer festival, so after some phone tag at the hotel because Ann gave me her name but the hotel room was in her boyfriend's name, we finally met up. Took the unsuspecting tourists back to our place, dressed them up in yukata and jimbei and off we went to Lucky for some eatin'. We sat next to a table of HUGE sumo wrestlers, and A&J took some photos with them. Then we went down to the festival, which is basically a billion people packed into several city blocks with vendors of all kinds. Ann tried her hand at the traditional goldfish scooping and managed to grab one, but I think the guy took pity on her and gave her an extra fish. Then we plowed our way through the people, grabbing some cotton candy, trying other games (nice keychain Jacob!) and hitting the International Bazaar, which was more of the same with a higher concentration of foreigners and weird food. Someone Ollie managed to find us, and we coordinated with Kevin and Z. to meet up later. Ollie went off to find his other friends, so we went back home to change as by now Ann's feet were killing her and she couldn't breathe with the yukata obi tied up so tight. We rested for a minute and headed back out to Lucky to hook up with Kev and Z and Ollie and some of his friends, got a room upstairs and put and put away some beverage and more snacks. A good time was had by all -- A&J hook us up with some photos!
Next day I got up early for iaido and Gosoke schooled us for 3 hours. Came home and Hiroko needed some shaved ice, so we went back up to the festival (last day) waited in line for a bit at THE shavaed ice place, pigged out, then on the way home bought up all kinds of bits and bobs for dinner. That evening we dined on a feast of Jamaican jerk chicken, samosa, pad-thai, chijimi, iwashi, and cotton candy!
P.S. Anne's goldfish died.

scary dream

I was curled up on the bed fetal, wrapped in a comforter, watching the tv at the foot of the bed. Kaoru (IT admin/ops) was sitting in the comfy chair to the right of the bed watching tv, too. Then this REALLY scary dude's face came on the tv. Next thing ya know we're standing there talking to the landlady (Kaoru was renting the house I guess) who's in the doorway to the room, and them from above her left shoulder the scary dude's face just appears. Kaoru and I look at each other and just BOLT. How we got out of the room I dunno, because the landlady/scary dude was in the doorway, but next thing ya know we're jamming out of the house across the front lawn, and the scary dude is like floating through the front door, across the porch, and through the porch screen door.
Scary dude: tall, shortish blonde hair, smooth white skin, large eyes, body in shadows, face lit from below.
Woke up seriously freaked. It was about 4am and my throat was really dry so I got some water and then went back to sleep.

spoonerisms

I like spoonerisms, ever since I heard one when I was a wee child: peas and carrots, keys and parrots.
We had printer problems yesterday and so they replaced it with a fake bricks printer...uh I mean break fix.

humidity

Niina-gosoke ran practice again last night, because Ando-sensei had to back to his home town; seems his father is sick with cancer.
Past couple of days since the typhoon cleared out have been wonderful weather; warm and sunny and windy and really low humidity. Such a difference to not be drenched in sweat.
Niina-gosoke has me going full-bore translating the various iai pages as well as the Hoshoryu Saijutsu page because sai will start next month. He asked if I will start sai, and I think I managed to politely decline by saying I still have a long way to go mastering the sword, let alone starting up a different weapon.

payday!

Gotta love the day after a typhoon. Clear blue sky, low humidity, strong breeze, and Tokyo air that's actually breathable for once. Staring out the window at work to see majestic Mount Fuji rising into the cloudless sky, and realize it's payday! Ah the small joys of life.

paranormal

James Randi is the ultimate skeptic. I remember him debunking psychis on That's Incredible! when I was in elementary school. He still offers the Million Dollar Challenge: "we offer a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event." He should come to Thanksgiving at my parent's house...

typhoons suck

#13 is crawling its way over Tokyo, dumping rain in an attempt to look like recently flooded Europe or something. Umbrellas are great for keep the upper body dry, but from the knees down I got soaked. Kinda unpleasant, but at least my ass-kickin' cowboy boots have proven their worth once again. I love Wyoming.
Keiran made me a cool card for my birthday:RenBday.jpg
And Ericka put up some photos from Jeff & Kevin's Big Beefy Birthday back all those weeks ago.

tools that think

Jeff and Ericka hosted another meatfest BBQ at their place, starring a couple of giant slabs of pork. This time was special, though, because I handed over the tools. They are now the Keepers of the BBQ Tools. May the lord be merciful.
And here comes typhoon number 13...

mugai-ryu english homepage

Talked to Niina-gosoke last night and he gave me the go-ahead to spread the word about the English translations of the Mugai-ryu Iai-hyodo pages I made. Check them out at: http://renfield.net/iai

clouds

At what age do most people stop seeing patterns in the clouds? I was watching a couple of circus elephants juggle bicycles in a particularly impressive cumulous formation the other day, and was so lost in the display of dexterixy I almost got run over by one of those really big Mercedes Benz yakuza-mobiles. You know, the ones where they take your standard yacht-sized Benz EL-900000 and Brabas or AMG lowers it, puts incredibly wide tires on tiny little rims with the purple disc brakes showing through, tints all the windows, makes every body panel bubble and flare somewhere, and puts like 11 giant exhaust pipes on it to handle the even-more over-sized engine. Very convenient to drive in downtown Tokyo.

the photo my mom wanted

Small version of the photo my mom wanted. This is done mostly to check out Blogger Pro's file upload/imaging functionality.

PRO

GIVEYOURMEAT has gone Blogger Pro. There's no stopping us now.

Japan plods into the 21st century. I picked up my new Alien Registration Card today at the ward office (aka "gaijin card") and was pleasantly surprised to see registered foreign aliens in Japan are no longer fingerprinted! Of course the card still has my photo, signature, name, address, work address, and passport information, and I'm required to carry it at all times and show it to any law enforcement or government official whenever requested for any (or no) reason. Failure to do so is grounds for arrest and possible deportation. Ah, progress!

Seriously considering upgrading to Blogger Pro.
I also looked around at all the various cool blogs out there and decided...I don't want to expend any effort whatsoever in an attempt to get linked to any of them.

Hot and sweaty practice last night, and thanks to the shizankai on Sunday, my forms were all messed up -- everything too high and too much follow through. SIGH.