Author: david

My Day …

Well, it was actually yesterday, but I had a pretty crazy day. Not only was there a killer typhoon, but a number of other … stuff … happened. Here is a quick summary.

 The Good emoticon

Look at my new printer? It is an Epson PM-A870. It is a copier/scanner/printer all in one. It specializes in photos and also has a negative scanner as well as memory card inputs to print your photos directly. The thing is a beast!!

    in more ways than one. It’s friggin huge. Here, take a look:

 newprinter.jpg

It prints fantastic pictures by the way!! Super friggin excited. 

 The Bad emoticon

MY COMPUTER BROKE!!! Not only did it break a little… it broke a lot. 🙁 I am very sad. It wasn’t my main computer, it was the Linux machine that runs my MythTV server, my phone server, parts of davidandkiko.com (the parts you guys don’t visit!) and held davidandkiko.com 4.0. (We are skipping 3.0 in case you didn’t notice…) 

  What the fuck? emoticon 

So there was a typhoon yesterday, right? Anyways, I wish I had taken a picture, but there is this dog that is always locked up outside of his house. (like every other dog in Japan.) He always barks but is super lazy so just kind of wanders around his little house barking at people half-assedly if hes not too tired to get up. Because my computer broke I was depressed and decided to head out in to the typhoon for some lemon coke. A little part of me expected to not see the dog there, the day of one of the biggest typhoons to hit Japan in a long time.

… he was there alright, but don’t think his owners didn’t care. In front of his little house they had nailed up a peace of light wood. So this poor dog was locked in his house and nailed shut by a flimsy peace of wood that didn’t cover the entire door.

Nice…

Anyways… on a brighter note here are some more exciting pictures. (Yes, I am trying to draw my readers back with bribes of pictures.. bastards.) 😉

kaito.jpg

A big congratulations to our good friends Mike and Tomoko who recently added "Kaito" in to the mix. Look at how cute he is? When my baby is older he is going to wrestle Kaito… or something.

How about a picture of Kiko’s little garden pre-typhoon? She loves it.. most of the plants blew away though. emoticon

 

augustgarden.jpg 

And finally… since I’m all about giving the people what they want, here is what everyone needs. A giant kiko. (photo by Greg!) Thanks!

giantkiko.jpg 

That is all.Love David & Kiko

A Big Typhoon

Since it seems pretty quiet around here, I thought I would try and conjure up some sympathy.

There is a big typhoon heading right over us today. For some reason I am not too worried. Probably has to do with the fact that we are surrounded by a wall of mountains. It seems pretty serious though. It has just spent the evening pouring down on Kiko’s island of Tanegashima. (Which is super by the way…) … we are going to Tanegashima later this month! I’ll be sure to post pictures.

Anyways, take a look. You can see the live updates here.

typhoon.gif 

We hope everyone is doing good. 

Love, David & Kiko. emoticon 

Monster Bash 2005 & More Tokyo

Monster Bash 2005 – Yes… it was pretty exciting. I got to see exciting bands such as Orange Range, Dragon Ash, rize, and Yaida Hitomi with my good friend Greg emoticon. It was a lot of fun! (I have pictures to prove it!) (and movies to! – try them!) (How was it Greg?)

For those that don’t know, I live on Shikoku. Now nothing really exciting happens on Shikoku. However, once a year, a really big musical festival comes to Mannou Park, which happens to be about 5 mins from my house. (Incidentally, mannou is the name of the town I will be living in after Chunan merges with the surrounding villages.) The venue is super beautiful and the weather was co-operative.

… too co-operative. You will be excited to learn that I had an allergic reaction to my sunblock. Stoopid ass Japanese sunblock. I didn’t realize until after I let it soak in the sun for an entire day. I now look like the Phantom of the Opera. I don’t think it will be going away anytime soon (and I have a big C on my chest for some unknown reason.) Stop the excitement.

See how beautiful the concert was…

 

Monster Bash   Monster Bash   Monster Bash

Here are some movies I took at the conert. Keep in mind that these were taken under duress as I had an angry man trying to prevent me from filming.

Orange Range 1    Orange Range 2    Dragon Ash 1    Dragon Ash 2 

This last picture is Kiko, myself and my very good friends Nakanishi-san (whom some of you have met!) He is a super nice guy and took us to Jojoen, one of the best yakiniku (Korean BBQ, read: super good) places in Tokyo. It has a fabulous location overlooking Shinjuku and is fantastic… and expensive. THANK YOU!!!

Nakanishi-san

Flying Noodles

Not so much to everyone in Canada, but to our friends and neighbours in Japan, I often get asked to explain why we choose to live in Chunan, Kagawa Prefecture. (and don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a choice to come here, rather, it was a choice to remain here.) For those of you back in Canada, it would be like a Japanese family coming from Tokyo, Japanemoticon to up and move to the-middle-of-nowhere, PEI. emoticon(think Milton, but smaller and in PEI.)

 Why!?

Well, for one, my farming. Couldn’t exactly be doing that in Tokyo… and it’s cool. Secondly, flying noodles. nagashi somen is a dish where noodles are placed in a water pipe and fly down the ramp. You have to grab them from this water slide and eat them. Chris Houston and Trevor had the experience when they visited me in Japan in 2002, but I have never been lucky enough to do so… until now.

 here, take a look.

 

Flying Somen   Flying Somen   Flying Somen   Flying Somen   Flying Somen   Flying Somen

What made this experience absolutely fantastic was the hardcorednessemoticon of it all. One of the teachers at one of the elementary schools I go to (who’s house this was held at) went to the forest, cut his own bamboo ramp, smoothed it out, set it up, and then proceeded to make enough glasses and sauce containers for all of us. He apologized for not having enough bamboo left over to make the chopsticks, but suffice it to say it was pretty cool. Everything was homemade, and it was a lot of fun. (That and I was amazing at catching the flying noodles…)

Kiko is a knitting machine

Before we left for Tokyo, Kiko has been knitting like crazy for Baby Awesome. She asked me to put them up so everyone can see what she has been up to, but I am an idiot (emphasis added by Kiko) and forgot. So here it is… crazy good eh? emoticon (don’t mention to her that Baby Awesome now has more knitted clothes than any baby will ever need though…) emoticon

Kikos knitting   Kikos knitting   Kikos knitting   Kikos knitting   Kikos knitting

Jasper Fforde

The Big Over Easy : A Nursery Crime

Jasper FForde – he is super. I have recommended the Thursday Next series (absolutely fantastic. click and buy it [amazon.ca], you won’t regret it!) to a number of my friends, and I have just finished reading the above: The Big Over Easy. A lot of fun…

that is all. 

 Note: This has been edited to make note of the fact that it was FRANZ that introduced me to Jasper Fforde. Sort of.

Earthquakes & The Embassy

emoticonEarthquakes

 

That was a crazy earthquake today. It wasn’t particularly strong where we were, but it was long. About 2 minutes exactly. I was actually sitting in a McDonalds reading my book when it started. Nice and gentle, and then slowly getting stronger. Everything was ok at first, no one seemed to notice or care, but after a minute of it not stopping people started to freak out a little. Man, Tokyo is going to sink one of these days. 

Here is a picture of me at the embassy. Yes. Yes, I am aware that I look like an old man. Many people have pointed it out. I like to think it’s just the business clothes… sigh. I don’t suppose anyone has any advice on how to look cool and still buisnessy at the same time? 

daveembassy.JPG 

Life in the Canadian Embassy

I know how much you guys like the pretty pictures, so I was hoping to wait until I had some photos to upload before I posted this… but my fans have spoken and I shalt deliver.

Two entries without pictures… in a row! Can you handle it? emoticon

I have also been doing a lot of thinking about what kind of posts I should be making here. Not only is this website a place to see pictures of us, but I have decided to expand a little bit on what goes on in my everyday life (rather than the really terribly spelling ungrammatical inane non-sequitor posts that I usually put up…) .. not a good a start, I know.

At any rate, the embassy is pretty fantastic. (I will post a picture soon!) I am working in the public affairs section of the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo. The building is fantastic (now that I am inside!… see below) and I find myself actually doing something of consequence. I am compiling a report on the Educational Promotion efforts of the 5 other English speaking countries with embassies in Japan. (UK, US, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand.) Basically I get to visit each embassy, learn about what they are doing to promote Japanese students to study in their country, and write a report making suggestions on what Canada can do to improve our own efforts. Cool eh? I thought so.

Other than that, Kiko is sitting at home… (nothing new)… in Tokyo. We are staying at a friends house. It is actually one of our very few couple friends (Japanese guy and a French woman) with a 1 year old son. So I am getting a taste of what my life will be like in 3 months. emoticon Excitement… let me tell you.

On another cool note, my very good friend the one and only Brian Chapman recently had a review published in the Daily Yomiuri, one of Japan’s leading English newspapers. It was none other than the review for the new Harry Potter book. Take a look… it’s super.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) [Adult Edition]

Read the review here.

The Canadian Embassy

I don’t think I have had a chance to tell everyone, but for the month of August I will be working at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo as an intern. emoticonTake a look at it, the building is super fantastic.

… or it would have been if I wasn’t the biggest dumbass in the world.

So, after securing a place to stay with our good friends Dave & Eri (who read this everyday… right?), I was supposed to begin work this morning. So I get to the embassy at 9am in my suit. I call my supervisor down. She gives me a little lecture about what I should expect during my stay at the embassy and then we start to go upstairs… until I get stopped at the door and asked for my picture id.

 … oh yeah. I guess at a government building ID would be required. I left mine back in Kagawa with Kiko. "What about your foreigner ID card that you have to carry with you at all times??"

".. umm… yeah, well you see, i don’t really have that either."

"so let get this straight. You came to your first day of an embassy job without any form of ID??"

emoticonThat’s pretty much how that conversation went.

So anyways, apparently I have a really nice office in a really competitive job that I should be greatful for getting. I somehow managed to swing the time off work for free, and was gratiously put up by my friends in Tokyo with the super pregnant Kiko.

 I guess I will let you know about the embassy when they let me in.

that is all. 

 

I, Mac?

I am so clever. emoticon

Now, let’s get something straight. I am the last person in the world that would have ever considered buying an I-Book. I hate MAC’s. There silly little buttons confuse me, and I remember getting my disks stuck in the drive. Don’t let me get started on the 1-button mouse. Here’s the story though… My Sharp Mebius (a fantastic slim labtop) broke. It was hurtin’. Now, since I have a desktop (and 2 if you count my Linux/MythTV server!! It’s cool!) I only used my labtop for school work. All I needed was simple:

  1. Internet
  2. Word
  3. Portability

 I was faced with two choices. Pay 150,000 yen for a new Sharp, or pay 100,000 yen for a new I-book. After looking at the costs, and a good talking too from Greg, I decided to go ahead with the Mac. I figure I needed something portable, something that can do simple things, and I had never before used a MAC and wanted to learn. To be honest it is a little heavy (I figured a little weight was worth the $600 in savings) but other than that…

Best Purchase Ever 

Seriously… no joke. The things is amazing. It looks good, is fast, is intuitive and does everything I want it to. The presentation is amazing, sounds is fantastic, even the packaging was cool. Crap… I used to hate listening to MAC people whine… fact is it was (for the most part) deserved.

It’s not going to replace my desktop anytime soon, but considering that it met my criteria for a substantial amount less than other computers would, it was well worth it.

Here is a picture of my new baby, and the cool Japanese Apple Hanko (<- read what a Hanko is about there.)

 

 imac.jpg

 

 

Also, look at this swell picture that my good friend Toru drew up. Anyone remember Popeye? Thanks Tommy!!! emoticon

 

popeye-toru.jpg