Girl's Nite!

Girls nite at S's with the other yoko. 3 girls + 5 bottles of wine + heaps of yummy food = 1 horrifying hangover. of course i didn't know this at the time:




i love wino friends! Daichan came home to find us plastered. god bless him, he just didn't care.


Btw, congrats!

and so it begins . . .

man, 2010 was aggressively bad.

ok, probably not the whole thing but when the last few months are asstastic, the rest of the year kinda blurs. in short, heartache, heartbreak, heartburn, and a heart stopping experience with the near loss of mom. suffice to say, i'm glad it's over.

and all of this culminates to 2011, the year of demotivation. i spent new years wrapped up like a burrito in front of the tv and have tried to spend as much time since in my pjs. i have been absolute crap about all the stuff i took pride in last year: writing to family and friends, reading the news, cooking meals, even staying hydrated. needless to say, no resolutions.

But this is not a paxil-laced depressed ranting. this is perhaps, just a rut, something that i can get myself out of. i imagine a porchetta sammich in new york with my sister in a couple weeks will do wonders for my crepuscular outlook.

to prove that it hasn't gone 100% into the shitter, i recount the few salubrious things i've been doing since the start of the year:

1. i've been walking like a mofo. grandpa has been moved to a hospital a brisk 25 min walk away. so i've been on the move, nearly everyday, racking up a few extra miles on the shoes.

2. his hospital is near a very vivacious shotengai (that's a japanese shopping street -- lots of markets and shops, a couple pachinko parlours, some restaurants, etc.) where i've been buying lots of veggies and fruits and eating one of these every day:


fresh blueberries! very yum. and yes, i eat the entire thing in one go. (SIDEBAR: i don't have a lot of things that i'm particularly skilled at but i do like to consider myself a semi-intelligent person who is fairly literate and has a relatively strong command of vocabulary. and yet i call this a "thing" or "thingy" of blueberries. apparently the word is "punnet," something i had to learn from my australian friend. my initial reaction, "what the hell is a punnet?!" soon gave way to the shame that i SHOULD know this damn word. it doesn't change the taste of the blueberries but my daily consumption is also my daily reminder of my failure in vocabulary.)

3. my nightly stretching sessions. ive restored quite a bit of my flexibility recently which tends to confuse most japanese people. apparently in tokyo, fatties can't be stretchy.

so it is with restrained hope that i end my first entry of the new year. given that it is already february, my demotivation is very obvious. but i'm working on it -- it's just going to take a little more time.

Archery at Yasukuni Shrine

It was health-sports day in Japan so what better way to celebrate my heath and sports than to go to Yasukuni Shine to take in a bit of archery. Kyudo, as its called in Japan, is a super old sport. it's not robin-hood-exciting in any way; it's slow, methodical, and done with quite a bit of ceremony.

first the priests and the judges file in:


next the archers:


there were two teams, four to a team, plus the leader. The teams lined up and took a shot one by one from the same vantage. if the judge wanted an explanation of the shot (which he almost always did), there would be a lot of posturing and yelling of the clarification. the question mainly was, where on the deer did you mean to hit? if he hit where he was aiming, he got the point. if he answered wrong, he didn't get the point. kinda funny.



The bow holding arm was always out of the sleeve during the competition.


the single hot dude there:


she was pretty amazing. great form. the draw:


and release:


then they each had to put a stake in the mound of dirt to signify how many hits they got. there was also some rule about the placement on the mound and such but i didn't catch all that:


the 2 team leaders went at the end. their shots were 2 points a piece:


waiting for the results:


it was a beautiful day. the light was very bright so my shots are a bit over exposed but after a string of rainy days, i was happy for the good weather:




as it was health day, i decided to improve mine a bit by taking a lengthy walk through the imperial grounds:





it was a gorgeous day to be outside:

A Thai Hurricane

my dear friend duang finally made it to japan after years of threatening a visit. she brought her hubby pete and her 2 kids, Mew and Ton. They are a high energy bunch!


mew shows off her new child bride dress:


the girls conspire on the train:




super cute but hyper active! definitely a lot of fun:


the old crew together again!


nice to see you dude! next time, maybe we leave the rodeo at home and try to catch up!

K.O.O.K. Productions

went to a comic book store with a friend just to have a look around and i found myself thinking that a lot of the pictures would make for cool pieces of art. hence was born Komix Out Of Kontext or KOOK productions. Here are some of my prototypes. i think they look cool.



the blood splatter took some work. i got paint all over my floor. still ironing out the kinks in the splatter system:




the most interesting part for me was the comic book culture. perhaps i didn't fully appreciate otaku culture, but there is a smell to used comic book shops (maybe not just used ones): a mixture of sweat and body odor from people who clearly don't bathe as often as they should followed by papery undertones and a permeating dankness or dampness. it's really quite unpleasant but no one seems to notice. don't know if i will be frequenting used comic book stores; i suppose it will depend on how KOOK takes off. drop me your addy if you want me to send you one!