• Biking in Tokyo

    Biking in Tokyo

    We finally bit the bullet and bought bikes. Not just any bikes, though, hilarious foldable ones. They fold up pretty small and are light enough to carry around. There’s a term here, “gaijin smash”, which is when a foreigner does something uncustomary or illegal but no one stops them because they’re all too polite here.…

  • Dvorak Day Four

    I’m on day four of this magical adventure and I’m slowly becoming more capable. I’m averaging around thirty words per minute now in the little typing program, but probably a bit less in real life. At least I don’t want to kill myself when I type anymore. It’s the little things in life, you know?…

  • I Feel Impotent

    I’m a fast typist. Ninety words per minute. Take it. That last line, however, took three minutes to type. It’s excruciating. Why? I’m switching to the Dvorak keyboard layout. For those who don’t know, typewriters started out with their keys arranged in an “ABCD” configuration this caused the hammers to bind, so the standard “QWERTY”…

  • The New Zealand Embassy

    We were only able to book our last house for three weeks, figuring that we’d find something else once we got here. As our week at the first place ended we scrambled to find somewhere new. It was going to have to be a compromise. In fact, with only a few days left in the…

  • Hanami

    Hanami means “flower viewing” in Japanese. It gets its own special word because the blooming of the cherry blossoms here is a huge deal. Meteorologists visit the trees every day trying to predict when they’ll bloom, signs go up around the city that say Sakura (cherry blossom in japanese) on them, and restaurants even have…

  • Six Awesome Things

    I woke up this morning at 4:46am. I went to sleep at 11:30pm, so that’s approaching reasonable. As soon as I woke up I began thinking of how great some things are, so I got my laptop and now I’m in the dark writing about them. That’s inspirado. 1. Blankets. How cool is it that…

  • Full Responsibility

    One of the more helpful habits I’ve developed is taking responsibility for everything in my life. This is a strong contrast to the average victim / “things happen to me” mentality that a lot of people have. Basically I assume that anything “bad” that happens in my life is a direct result of actions I…

  • Pictures of Project Hollywood

    Pictures of Project Hollywood

    I was going through some old files the other day and I came across a bunch from Project Hollywood. Ahh, the nostalgia. Here they are: Me and some girl at the Standard. We switched jackets. Mystery’s winnings in a game of quarters. We put a glass ice bucket on one side of the room and…

  • Gaijin House

    I didn’t have much faith that we were going to have a good place here. We found it very difficult to find a place to stay that was central, had two beds, and wasn’t $4000 per month. At the last minute Todd booked us a room in a great area that was relatively inexpensive. I…

  • Dolfin 88% Cacao Chocolate

    I’m not really a chocolate snob. Or at least I wasn’t. I used to love white chocolate and milk chocolate, but now that I eat a very clean diet I can’t even imagine eating that amount of sugar. So I eat a chunk or two of very dark chocolate every day. Cacao is actually very…