Today was a fine day

Everything went right today except for the weather. That is to be expected since I am ame otoko (AH-MAY OH-TOE-KO-rain boy). It is natural for the weather to be cloudy on my day off, especially when the day before (my Friday) is absolutely glorious. That's just the way things are-I don't question it anymore. Besides, I don't feel guilty when I stay at home for most of the day.

My main goal for today was to go to the immigration office and pick up my new visa. I had applied for it a couple weeks before and now was the time to go get it. Things started off on the wrong foot when my internet train finder lied to me and told me that the train heading towards Ikebukuro was leaving at 8:14am when it was actually leaving at 8:12am. That meant of course that I had to wait for the 8:17, which meant I missed my connection for the rapid train at Ikebukuro which meant that I arrived at the immigration office almost 30 minutes after it opened. This may not seem like a big deal but anybody who's visited a place like this knows that at 9:04am the office will still be relatively calm and sparsely populated while at 9:28 it will be bureaucratic hell.

So I wasn't in a great mood until I got my passport back and the office worker pointed out that it was san nen-3 years. You can either get a one year visa or a three year visa and everybody knows that a three year visa is basically like hitting the jackpot-they don't hand those out very often. I was pondering coming home after this next contract and I'm probably still leaning that way but still, it's like a weight lifted that I don't need to depend on NOVA resigning me in order to stay in Japan longer.

Then coming home on the train, I almost lost my cell phone. I'm not sure if it fell out of my pocket or what happened but I was transferring to a more rapid train when this gorgeous Japanese girl came chasing after me and tapped me on the back and handed me my phone-I was touched by the gesture. Many people might not have risked missing their own train in order to give some dolt a cell phone he can't keep track of.

Then I stopped back at Ikebukuro and went into the local Matsuya (sort of a fast food restaurant for Japanese food) and found out that not only is their chicken curry meal 50 yen cheaper than it used to be, it also has actual stuff in it now. You know like potatoes, and onions and even some meat.

Finally, since I was having such a good day, I decided that I deserved a little present. I stopped into Tokyu Hands to browse. First I looked at some really cool alarm clocks that tell you the temperature and the humidity level and even had barometers but in the end I settled on picking up a small schedule book-small enough to put in my pocket.

Don't worry...

...I'm still alive! I was not the one person killed in the big earthquake on the weekend. It was actually on the opposite side of Japan and I didn't even feel it. In fact, I can't really remember the last time I felt a relatively big one.

I'm working on this little Powerpoint presentation and darn these things take a lot of time! Now I know why I never did one in university. Anyways I'm working on the fashion section right now. I've already found a picture of young Japanese men's fashion and put a big slash through it:

But now I need to find some pictures of what normal high school kids wear for casual clothes in Canada. The only problem is that I can't find anything! So if you know where I can find some pictures of whatever is trendy in Canada right now please email me some or put some links in the comment section.

The things I get myself into...

I'm making a Powerpoint presentation for one of my students who is going to Canada for three years for highschool. This has created somewhat of a conundrum for me for two reasons; A) I have no idea how to make a Powerpoint presentation, and B) I usually don't do stuff.

I really like the kid and I'm sure it would help him out a lot to have a bit of background on the place he's going to (Vancouver.) So I'll do my best to come with something professional. I've spent the night downloading pictures I can use and researching stuff and darn I've forgotten how much work doing research is!

A suggestion

As some of you know, I'm not exactly the most reliable poster. It comes and goes. I've been scratching my head for a while trying to come up with a way for you lovely people to check for new posts without actually having to come to my page to check for new posts. I think I have finally found a solution-sort of.

This will only work if you use Google as your homepage. If you don't already use Google as your homepage then what the heck is wrong with you? Google could come out with a pet rock and I would fully expect it to be able to do great things. Anyways, if you have regular Google as a homepage then what you have to do is change it from Classic Home to Personalized Home. If you click on the picture that I've added, you can see that I've added lots of websites that I regularly peruse, such as the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, CBC, my email account, and some other games related pages. So basically I can look at all my favourite pages without ever having to leave my homepage-isn't that great? Bring on that pet rock Google! If only I had enough money to purchase a piece of your stock! If you look at the bottom right-hand side, you can see my blog! With all my latest posts. Right on the homepage! And if you see that I've updated my blog, you can just click on that link or click on my blog name and it should take you directly to my blog.



Convinced? If so, read on and I'll provide some more details. If not, go back to what you were doing and wait in anticipation of my next update!

Ok, it's too late to turn back now! Here we go...


First, go to regular Google and click on Personalized Home in the top right hand side of the page.

Then, click on the button that says Show my Page on the right hand side. Before you do this, you can check or uncheck some options if you want to personalize your page.
Then, once you have your personalized page, click Add More on the right hand side of the page.

You should see lots of things that you can add. To add my blog, you need to go up to the text entry box and click on Add by URL beside it.

You should see this pop up underneath it:

In that text box, enter this address: http://brendansboringblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

That should be all it takes! Let me know if you have any problems.

The problem...

...with a hobby like botany/horticulture is that it is just so darned slow. I believe I first started this hobby on Monday morning and I've yet to receive a single return on my investment in the form of a new shoot coming through the ground. Maybe in the next couple of days something will show up. In the meantime, Jared has been psycho-analyzing me (he's got a bachelors in psychology which he is constantly using in the name of evil) and he says it's obvious that I want to have children. I'm not really sure that is correct although I have to admit I never really thought about it before-I just thought it would be fun to grow some plants. If I were to psycho-analyze myself I would say that I secretly want to have a garden.

Books and White Day

First of all, I managed to survive White Day perfectly well-whew! I dodged a bullet this year!! I was sick on Valentines Day and Fumiko had bad hay fever on White Day-so in other words it was a perfect year! I picked out some Godiva chocolates for Fumiko, along with some strawberry smelling stuff from The Body Shop and and Nintendo DS game-Sudoku.

I'm loving Amazon. For ￥２６００ (about $25) I picked up a good one foot worth of books. If you pay more than 1500 yen then shipping is free. They delivered in two days! Unbelievable. I'm still reading and although February was a slow month, I think I've read more books this year than I have in the past two years. Anyways, I picked up War and Peace (ouch), The Count of Monte Cristo (ouch ouch) and the first couple books of a new series by Jonathan Stroung (or something like that-check Books Read 2007 on the right-hand side for details and links). So far I'm only 90 pages in but I'm loving it. If you're a big fan of the Harry Potter series and you've read all the books so far then I would definitely recommend giving this trilogy a go. It's a bit more advanced than Harry Potter but younger fans (high school age) should have no problem with it. The author's "thing" is that his books have lots of footnotes. Unlike most footnotes, these are actually funny and interesting to read. I think I picked up the first two books for only about 600 yen each and so far it gets a big two thumbs up from me.

My Green Thumb

In an effort to become even more well-rounded than I already am (cough), I've decided that I'm going to take up horticulture-or botany or whatever you call that thing where you put seeds in dirt. We live in a ridiculously cold house but one nice thing about it is that on the second floor it has a ridiculously huge window that gets sun for most of the day (and makes a wonderful viewing area for the neigbours to observe foreigners in their natural habitat, lounging around in nothing but their underwear during the hot summer months). I've decided to take advantage of that fact this spring and actually give this house a little domesticalization.

I've spent the past week looking at different planting pots in different stores which are quite cheap but I decided to start simple and just put the seeds in plastic cups first and then transmit them to bigger planters once they've grown a little. I have no idea if this is the right way to go about doing it or not. So far I've planted four different kinds of plants: cosmos, morning glory (they're actually soaking in water right now), zinnias and dwarf (I hope!) sunflowers. As you can see in the pictures I've got a whole little greenhouse going! I wasn't too impressed with the soil I bought so I'm probably going to by a different bag tonight and mix up another batch. I'll let you know how the progress grows.

White Day again

Otherwise known as "Empty your wallet" Day. Hopefully things go well!

I've updated my Books Read 2007 page. I just went on a spending spree on Amazon.jp!

Random Saipan musings

One thing I discovered while in Saipan is that the Japanese obviously have not yet invented the pedestrian crossing button. You know that button you push if you want to cross the road at the traffic lights. There was one such crossing next to the duty free shopping mall in the main shopping area of Saipan. The Japanese would just stand there, not noticing the button on the pole, and the light would absolutely not change for them. Out of mercy, I would push the button for them as I walked by and instantaneously the light changed to a 'walk' signal!

I'm back!! (again)

Another 20 day absence. I got sick again-or rather my second sickness took a turn for the worse. Anyways I'm better now but I think I missed most of the month of February and the beginning of March. Most of my New Year's resolutions have gone down the drain. I haven't studied Japanese in a month, I haven't been to the gym in a month, I've only just started reading again.
Anyways hopefully tomorrow will be the first day in the beginning of a new era. If things go well I'll have done some studying, gone to the gym and gotten my moptop cut-it's been over a good two months since I went to the barbershop and it's starting to get out of control. You know it's time for a cut when your co-workers start making fun of your hair.

Might be a busy weekend for me this weekend-I've just signed a new contract (most likely my last one) and I need to go and get a new visa from the immigration office. Wednesday is White Day, ie. Valentines Day for women so I've got that horror show to go through-I only hope I survive in one piece.