conan

Conan brought his dad Ivan and mom Mutsumi over for a BBQ. Went to UC Berkeley with Ivan, and he was in Kyushu with Stevie back in the day. So Amy brought Narumi and I and Don met Todd in Akihabara, checked out some toys, and then cruised home.
The men attempted and failed to light the BBQ. We went out for bbq fire starter and came back with Zippo lighter fuild and a case of beer. By then of course Hiroko already had a bunch of coals on the kitchen stove ready to go, so we threw them into the grill and that was that.
Ribs went first, then chicken, pork, steaks, salmon, shrimp...not to mention salad and potatoes and a huge apple pie with icecream for dessert.
Stevie and Eriko showed up just in time to eat, and we sat around bloated and in pain as Amy and Conan bounced around the floor.

stop the cycle of madness

So now Daboo is blogging and my blogging about his blogging of flickring about my blogging about flickring about blogging flickring blogging flickring blogging flickring when flickring blogging does flickring blogging it flickring blogging end flickring blogging flickring.

pimp watch

Got my black-and-blue Pimp watch. SO cool!

skin care from london

Seems I am a popular brand of skincare on the island.

use debate to go fishin'

The upcoming presidential debates are anything but.
I remember debating in school. It was a structured exchange of ideas between participants in an attempt to woo one's opponent and the audience to accept your point of view. It was give-and-take, pointed, at times heated, and fun.
These presidential debates will be totally pointless for two reasons:
1) Absolutely nothing new will be spoken.
2) The candidates will not actually debate each other. They'll just respond in series to some softball questions.
Ah, American politics gets worse by the minute. SO glad I live in Japan, where politics is also lame but, thankfully, largely impotent and therefore irrelevant (in that it is rarely responsible for the deaths of thousands, for example.)

post-typhoon sky

tessen & jutte

Some of the new guys have been coming to late Wednesday practice for a couple weeks, so I've been running them through the basics of tessen (metal fan) and jutte (sword catcher). Fun stuff, but really hard to get out of the way when someone's trying to kill you with a sword and all you have is a short piece of steel or two.

daboo flickr

Daboo reads my blog. He gets flickr. I read his blog about reading my blog. I blog his reading about my blog on his blog, on my blog...?

freaky mobile sculptures

They're alive! Do NOT miss the videos. These are some wild, wind-powered art.

george soros

Is pissed at Bush.

flickr? i don't even know her!

Been playing with flickr for a couple of days. Very neat, only because I can now effortlessly take photos with my camera and have them show up on GYM. Enjoy.

japanese scooter cop

NEC_0083.jpg

suzuki dental

Headed over to Hanzomon so that Dr. Suzuki could do some quickie tooth repair. Seems the receding gumline of a couple of my upper left teeth were leaving some sensitive toothness exposed. A quick coating of some magical protective goo and all is right with the world. The real test: I'll try drinking an icy-cool beverage and see if those teeth still give me The Twinge.

furniture!

Custom furniture, how do I love thee? Suruga-isho delivered and install The Unit.
It is stunning.

taikai photos

Put up the photos from the taikai last weekend.

machida

Went down to Machida to drop off Tony's swords and they told me that Hataya-sensei and everyone was down at Tenmangu Shrine demoing. So I walked down to the shrine and got some festival munchies and waited for the afternoon session to start. Saw sensei and several other folks from Toyama-ryu, and then watched the cutting demos before heading back home.
Here are some videos.

health check

Yearly health check first thing in the morning. So I cruise over to the Ark Hills Clinic at 9:30am. Nice place. Chest X-Ray, pee in a cup, height/weight/eyesight...everything's going fine. And then it's time to take blood. Usually, they make me lie down when they take my blood. But this year would be different. New clinic, new nurses. No problem. So I sit down, put out my right arm, blood pressure check, close my eyes, and in goes the needle. Barely even felt it. No problem, I thought. The I open my eyes, and the nurse says "Hold here." And I sit there. "Hold here." she says again. And I sit there. And I think "I will not pass out. I will not pass out. I will not pass out." And then I start sliding to my left, and the ninja-nurse behind me catches my head just before I slam into the wall, and the other one grabs my shoulders and they straighten me out. "You ok?" They ask. I sort of sit there, and my hands and feet are numb and my head is feeling really, really, really light, and everything looks very, very, very far away. And I'm cold. Nurse grabs my wrist and goes "Woah, low blood pressure!" And they ask me again "You ok?" and I just say "Uh...no." and put my head down and wait for the spinning to stop.
After a couple of minutes, I try to stand up. Bad idea. I sit back down and give it a few more minutes until the blood starts flowing into all my limbs and my head doesn't feel so loopy.

jenn in akihabara

Jenn's in town doing hotel things, and she needed electronics, so we met in Akihabara. First stop: Sofmap. Had to sell my ancient Zip drive and CDRW. Cost I paid for hardware originally: $1000. Amount I got in points for used hardware: $20.
We checked out the cool MP3 players in Yamagiwa, saw the big Sony Vaio display with the new portable media players; cool but impractical like most of Sony' recent stuff. Ended up getting Jenn a bargain on a new Canon Wordtank before heading off to Roppongi Hills to bask in the glory of Mori's architecture. Then we headed to Lucky and met Hiroko for some much needed dinner before coming back home and checking out cool onsen magazines and giving Jenn a bunch of good travel tour ideas.

kevin & z' house

America is a great country when even Kevin and Zareen can buy a 4100 square foot house with jacuzzi and pool, his/her toilets in the master bedroom, and a rec room soon to home theater.