Why is it that everyone thinks I should do something with sharp knives? You lot worry me…or maybe I worry you.
Thank you for your hobby suggestions anyway.
The most promising of those suggested so far (while I’m still in Japan, at least) is http://www.geocaching.com , which is a bit like a cross between Fundamental Benchmarks and http://www.confluence.org but with less geekiness. I hope. Now all I need is a GPS unit.
Todays surreal imperitive is ‘Book Off’.
Wandering through Shibuya on my way home this evening I overheard someone accosting an American to sign a petition against the use of wooden chopsticks. Now, maybe I’m not the best person to comment on these things given the sheer decadance of my lifestyle, but surely there are bigger wins in the saving the planet game than stopping using wooden chopsticks?
There was another Christmas party at work today – this time the project party. It was held at a Japanese restaurant in Ohsaki Gate City – one of those places I’ve been meaning to go but never quite made it to. Its another shopping/restaurant/office combo with high rise walkways from the station, you descend into an almost cathedral like space with painted mediterrainian scenes outside the fake windows.
I don’t think the place were ate was particularly happy about all these gaijins who didn’t understand the local food (how /are/ you supposed to eat tough beef with chopsticks?). Most of the food was fish based, which wasn’t exactly to my taste, but my boss did a bit of menu interpretation and ordered me some beef on a stick. The vegetarians in our party were less fortunate, with a choice of only ‘baked potato with cheese’. Which wasn’t exactly what I had envisaged when it turned up, and seemed to contain cheese with a little too much character for some of those concerned.
The meal was rounded off with blueberry ice cream crepes, which, while they were all wrong, were actually alright too.
On the way back to the station I had to stop the guys while I took a picture of the Hello Kitty prison – looked like a bunch of Sanrio cuties had gotten themselves solitary confinement.
I also picked up a copy of “Vamp – violence, ecstacy and occult magazine”, which seems to have a similar premise to Bizarre back in the UK, but with more flesh. Oh well.
Arriving home to an Antifolk CD was nice, thank you venta! I’ve not listen to much of it yet but what I have heard I rather like, in a kind of ‘I knew there must be a genre into which the Violent Femmes fitted’ way.
Ah, thats better, I found a new sense of humour for the mp3 player, this one played me “I have come to kill you” as I was walking through the office door…I wonder whether I was singing out loud? Everyone did seem a bit wary of me today, but that might just have been the rage about discovering six subtley different copies of the same file distributed across my filesystem and having no idea which one was being used by what. “Why can’t I just type ‘make’?”
Walking home last night I was accosted by a mixed hord of orange santas, passed a Chinese restaurant with some traditional illuminated reindeer in the garden, stopped to look at eight larger-than-life inflatable dwarves, and spotted some handy nooses in the window of my local McDonalds.
I’ll go to sleep soon, but before I do…
My entries for Elizabeths Photo Competition
I’m most pleased with Corner, Water and Road, least pleased with Motion, and Friend is intetionally left blank.