oh yeah, that’s right — it helps if you publish your entries, as opposed to just saving them as drafts… [slaps forehead]

recent happenings — no news is, uh, no news on the employment front… i had a brief surge of paranoia on thursday last week & was convinced that my email account had stopped working, but i think the more realistic option is that none of my applications have generated any responses… (after all, my email account is still happily accepting spam…)

a visit to ebisu — i was introduced to Sumie’s parents on saturday, & you have no idea how relieved i was that the meeting & subsequent meal went well… Sumie’s parents were very nice & very encouraging, & after my initial nerves subsided i had a great time talking with them…

related note — please add horse sashimi to the list of things that six months ago i was pretty sure i would never eat… very interesting texture, although i don’t know if that’s a property of horse per se or just a general feature of sashimi… my palate really isn’t very experienced &/or sophisticated…

for instance — i suspect it’s gonna be some time before i start stealing any of the dried fish (that is, complete, whole, dried fish with tiny little dried up eyes & fins & things) that Sumie was delighted to discover in a market near ueno yesterday, & on which she spent part of yesterday afternoon happily snacking… i mean, sure, in an abstract way i can see that they’re probably good for you…

other examples of food-related head noise — i should declare at this point that i’ve always had a reasonably strong (&, as far as i can tell, completely irrational) aversion to seafood… (one that predates the however many years i spent as a vegetarian — or, as i like to think of them, the years in which i was lost to chicken…) i’ve convinced myself that i don’t particularly like the smell &/or taste of fish/seafood, & in some instances a strong seafood smell has made me feel physically sick…

on the other hand — i eat prawns & calamari & some shellfish & tuna & salmon & various other common or garden variety fish… &, you know, i know i’ve eaten, survived & in most cases enjoyed eating that stuff… it’s not like i have a physical allegy or something… but for some reason, every time i’m faced with something from the sea (&, like, hello, i’m in tokyo) i have this running argument with myself about whether or not i can eat it…

me: ew! fish/seaweed/seafood! i don’t like it.
me: just try it…
me: no! i’ll be sick!
me: try a little piece…
me: oh man, i’m gonna be sick, i know it…
[pulls face, sniffs suspiciously, picks up tiniest possible piece]
me: would you just eat it?
me: … i don’t wanna…
me: eat it. people are starting to stare.
[puts it into mouth, chews distrustingly]
me: well?
me: … it’s okay… actually, i like it…
me: so have some more.
me: ew! fish/seaweed/seafood! i don’t like it.

i wouldn’t mind so much if i didn’t have the exact same conversation between every single bite…

heatwave — you would not believe how hot it’s been the last couple of days… sit still & break out sweating kinda hot… it’s a side of tokyo i’ve not previously experienced…

what else? well, after a brief attack of the pathetics, i bought some stamps the other day… (i’m still not sure which was more pathetic — the initial anxiety attack or the subsequent feeling of achievement…) & i’ve started doing some exercises… & i’ve been doing a bit of writing, which has been a nice change… & various bits of research, & some miscellaneous software installs, & preparation for some wholesale site renovations… & my japanese study…

this is a test — to see if the upgrade from 1.02 to 1.2 worked. looking good so far…

still no job — nor any apparent employer interest, but the search continues & for some reason i still feel confident i’ll find something shortly…

the library is closed today — in which a boy & his monkey (wallet) decide to visit the metropolitan central library in hiro-o, only to find a sign that said… (of course, if i’d thought to look up the library page before deciding to visit, i would’ve known the library will actually be closed until june 4, but those are the breaks…)

well, it was a good plan — not disheartened in the slightest by the minor inconvenience of an unexpected library closure, & buoyed by the glorious weather, i decided to walk from hiro-o back to kamimeguro via ebisu, armed only with my increasingly dog-eared tourist map & nigh-infallible sense of direction… no one was more surprised than i was to find myself outside ebisu station at my first attempt… &, having found my way to ebisu, getting back to kamimeguro was a cinch…

troy hard — went & saw troy on sunday afternoon… it’s, uh, long &, well, that’s about it… not really that much to recommend it… i think it took me about an hour to finally stop hoping that it was gonna take off & become interesting or engaging or entertaining or something… & once i reached that point, it turned into something of an endurance test… brad pitt & eric bana are way buff, if that’s your thing, & sean bean is okay as odysseus, but yeah, it was pretty underwhelming…

a visit to the cheapest izakaya in shinjuku — naoko & kenzo & sumie & i kicked on for dinner at a kinda cool & very cheap izakaya… i’m feeling slightly off colour today, but i’m not sure if that’s because of the (very small) piece of snail that i tasted, or the dish made from a root vegetable (the name of which i can’t remember) that was enthusiastically recommended on account of its bowel-cleansing properties, or all the drinking that accompanied the meal… although if i had to make an educated guess…

picnic, with rain — went to tamagawa on saturday for a picnic lunch & an afternoon by the river… found a good spot & had some lunch & then it started raining, which was not really part of the original plan…

still playing — a new version of wordpress (1.2) was released on 22 may… i’m still playing at the moment, & will probably continue doing so for another couple of weeks, but i’m pretty sure i’m gonna switch over & use it…

sun, sun, sun, sun — so the typhoon apparently weakened overnight, or something… in any case, we’ve had a gorgeous sunny day… made a brief shopping trip to shibuya this morning, checked my email obsessively for a couple of hours in the middle of the day, surfed for a while & read some more wordpress documentation, wrote for a while, did an hour & a bit of study, went for a ride around kamimeguro in the afternoon… not too shabby… now there’s sumo wrestling on tv…

weekend — meeting up with rob & allan on sunday afternoon to see troy… of course, we could save ourselves some time & just read troy in 15 minutes…

hey, cool — the japan bloggers webring links (currently up near the top right of the page… see where it says japan blogs?) should all be working now…

instant ramen’s gonna getcha — gonna hit you right in the face / better get yourself together darling / join the human race / but we all shine on / like the moon, & the stars, & the sun / yeah we all shine on / on & on & on, on & on & on…

goota instant ramen — oishii desu!!!

well, today felt productive — spent the morning job searching & sent a couple more applications into the void… maybe i’ll actually get some responses next week? spent a couple of hours this afternoon reading documentation for wordpress, which is a PHP/mySQL-based tool for publishing weblogs… i’m thinking seriously of migrating to it… i got a test installation up & running in about 45 seconds, thereby making something of a mockery of the wordpress team’s claims to have a 5 minute install…

why migrate? well, i’ve been thinking about overhauling the entire site for some time, & wordpress has some neat stuff that blogger doesn’t support… & i wanna play some more with PHP/mySQL… still thinking through the process, but i think i’ve just about worked out how i can use wordpress to maintain the whole site, not just my blog… it’d allow me to update some of the other sections more frequently, which would be nice… & it’s set up to publish valid XHTML/CSS, which is cool… & it has an import script so i could suck all of my existing blogger posts into the database… a bit more digging & experimenting to be done, but yeah, it looks good… (& you know, it’s a bit geekier than blogger, which is always good…)

still raining — constant rain all day today… there’s definitely a typhoon expected to go past, possibly sometime tomorrow… what does that mean for residents of tokyo? i dunno… might be able to tell you more tomorrow… or a little sooner, if i can find an english-language site that provides weather reports for tokyo… okay, no apparent drama… the typhoon’s 600NM out to sea & heading past… so we get another day or so of rain, & mebbe a little wind…

 
lunch on the day we went to kanda

still no phone — my camera-equipped mobile phone (& the associated photoblog) is one of the many things currently on the pending (until employed) list… i did, however, find myself a neat new pair of puma sneakers last sunday to replace my rapidly disintegrating cons…

as for the rest of the day — studied some verbs, studied some kanji, tried to memorise some vocabulary… listened to the rain… did some web-surfing/research, did a bit of writing… it’s all happening…

so, my current favourite author is — naoko chino, who you might remember from such books as Japanese Verbs at a Glance or A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Sentence Patterns…

kyou wa ame desu — possibly an effect of the typhoon that the television weather was talking about yesterday… but yeah, today has been the rainiest day since i’ve been here… also the sleepiest… crashed out from about 11.00 to 4.00, which kinda put a dent in today’s plans, but also means i feel vaguely human… guess i needed the sleep… & it’s not like i don’t currently have the luxury of being able to defer today’s plans to tomorrow…

kanji — started learning kanji yesterday… wax on, wax off…

the simonster will be visiting soon — if anyone knows where i can hire/buy a pikachu costume, let me know…

oops, is that the time? gotta go… more scintillating blither tomorrow, or possibly the day after that, or…

later that same evening…

yo, which mother f##ka done stole my flow? so, here i am in the pink cow in shibuya for the japan bloggers get together that was apparently cancelled at the last-ish minute (although, not having signed up for the associated mailing list, the first i know about the cancellation is when the manager asks me if i’m here to see the band… to which, as of about ten minutes ago, the answer is, yep…)

so that’s a bit disappointing, although the pink cow seems a nice place, & the band (3 arrows) are gonna be playing electric jazz, & the p.a. is playing busta rhymes, & i’m out & about in a part of shibuya i haven’t explored before, so it’s still all good… one thing i’ve found recently is that being unemployed for the first time in a long while gives you a lot more time for introspection, which has been simultaneously nice & a little, not exactly disconcerting, but definitely head-noisy…

quitting my job & moving to tokyo has sometimes left me feeling a little weird, which i guess goes without saying, but still manages to surprise me in some vague way… i think the hardest thing for me is my life’s sudden lack of structure — i’ve been trying to build in a little more each day, & i think i’m starting to feel less, well, aimless as a result… i mean, that’s weird in itself, because i have some very clear aims, but i guess the continued complete lack of response to any of the applications i’ve been submitting isn’t helping… especially given that the majority of my aims are predicated on finding work & getting a visa sorted out as soon as possible… so it’s to be expected that i’ve had various periods of feeling like i’m in limbo, right?

the other piece of contributing weirdness is the fact that i’m so insanely happy to be in japan that you wouldn’t believe it… so i’ve got this baseline of incredible happiness modulated by periodic flares of worry over finding a job & the (admittedly unreasonable) frustration caused by my inability to miraculously start speaking, reading & comprehending perfect japanese overnight… deep breaths… i know there aren’t any magic bullets, & i knew the hard work would start again once i was on the ground & had time to draw breathe…

& i’m thankful for every day i spend in tokyo, & for every day i spend with Sumie… i don’t wanna embarrass her with anything i write here, but i have to say she has been (& continues to be) very supportive, & she fills my life with joy.

status report: preliminary data — the band turned out to be okay, albeit not really to my taste, but the food at the pink cow (i had the, uh, pink cow — a rare sirloin in mushroom sauce) was good… it’s still raining in tokyo… i’m very happy, if looking to create a little more structure… even more determined to learn japanese… have some projects to work on… living a fortunate life…

oh yeah, the japan bloggers web ring — i’ve not had my membership of the web ring confirmed as yet, so the only one of the web ring links (up the top of the page below the other links, directly above the flowers) that will be working as yet is the one that goes to the japan bloggers homepage…

konnichi wa — tokyo continues to treat me well, although some days are a little more scarlett johansson than others… it’s an amazing city, & i love being here, but i’ve had the occasional flash of homesickness, & it will probably take a little time (& some serious language study) before i can shake off the feeling of not really belonging… (assuming, of course, that it can be shaken off…) but yeah, not a day has passed without finding myself wishing that i’d started studying japanese several years ago… only one cure for that…

kamimeguro ni sunde imasu — my new neighbourhood is fantastic, utterly urban & very beautiful… we’re about 10 minutes walk from the nearest station, & yeah, lots of nice little local shops scattered about & the whole area just has a really nice feel…

spin cycle — i was very happy to unpack & reassemble my bike & find that it had travelled without any problems… haven’t been for any overly ambitious rides as yet, just gone cruising around the neighbourhood a couple of times, but wow, tokyo is so relaxing to ride around in comparison to sydney… so many more bikes here (almost everyone seems to have a bike of some sort) & the drivers don’t seem to view you as some kind of personal affront, & are much less inclined to try to run you off the road…

joblessness — still no news on the employment front, but you know, life could be worse… have been sending out applications & resumes to a few different places, & am trying to remain positive… it’s still early days…

blogger changes — blogger has upgraded & made a heap of changes to the way the application looks & feels… plus added some new functionality… i’m still thinking about what to do with this blog… magicdog vs tokyo is a working title at the moment… also a minor quandary… what to do with the 750+ entries from sydney… because if i change the main template & republish the site, all the sydney stuff will get a free trip to tokyo… what would be great would be a system that allowed you to set individual archive templates for specific date ranges…

message follows — arrived safely [stop] life fantastic [stop] Sumie great [stop] naka-meguro beautiful [stop] have eaten unagi (eel) [stop] survived unagi [stop] unagi actually not that bad [stop] have also tried natto (fermented soy beans) [stop] natto tastes like parmesan cheese [stop] meeting employment agent today [stop] fingers crossed [stop] having the best time [stop] very happy [stop] regular updates to resume shortly [stop]