this weekend 2

friday night the people at work held a welcoming party for the two of us 新人(shin jin - new guy) at this japanese-italian izakaya.

it was not so bad.

when all the 年配の方 (nenpai no kata - old people) left, we held a second party (二次会 - nijikai) just for people in their twenties.

with the big senpais gone, the second party was more relaxed, and i got to talk and had simple games with my new colleagues; which is a great opportunity for bonding.

after the second party, they wanted to go karaoke until morning, but i just had enough for the night.

the other shinjin got so drunk that i think i should take the responsibility to take him home.

well, i always take the drunkards home. always.

the next morning i woke up very late.

then out of the blue, i decided to buy a new car.

so i went to Toyokawa, and then i bought a second-hand Honda Fit.

although the it is not brand new, the condition was very good, and the price was not so bad.

around 470000 yen for everything plus road tax until October of 2010.

it was really a pretty good deal.

i went home and decided to organize my photos using picasa.

the free image software from google is amazing! especially the face recognition tech!

i'm very impressed!

i woke up on the sunday morning with a headache.

and hungry as fuck.

so i went to family mart next door to buy a simple bento.

while i eat my bento, i connected my 47 inch sharp aquos to my nvidia gtx 285 via hdmi so that i could watch おくりびと (Okuribito - Departed) on the big screen.

that movie was simply the best Japanese movie i've watched this year. highly recommended!

then i turned to my ps3 to continue the single player missions in uncharted 2.

i got to this puzzle involving big ass golden 'dagger' thingy and it was freaking cool and all; but i got stuck so i decided to watch cat videos on youtube when i realized that Adilla was online playing mp.

fast forward some messages...

well, she kindly invites me to her party and for the first time i'm playing co-op.

it was super fun.

i mean AARRRR FUNNN!!!

pretty hard though, but i'm glad i played that game.

thanks Adilla.

kalau ada masa, kita main lagi okeh?

damn, tomorrow's work; gotta go to bed early.

良い夢を！

p/s: i noticed that i have totally forgotten my responsibility to the society to post pictures of hot Japanese girls. i would like to apologize by presenting to you some fines from Anri Sugihara:

REVEAL SPOILER

early month of ramadhan

it is the muslim month of ramadhan.

so...

i went to yokohama to see some people dance!

it's the yokohama city's hamakoi dance festival.

the number of groups performing was pretty impressive; and they bring their own originality to their routine. ranging from groups of office ladies.

to high school girls.

obasan with cool okinawan dance gear.

to freaking loli-bear favorites: elementary kids.

and this guy. he wears green scarf on his belly.

or this ojisan trying to take a peek behind the jazzy themed high school girls dance troupe.

here's some video:

..

then during the night, my co-workers brought me to yataizushi.

to eat sushi.

good old sushi.

maguro maki, avocado gundan, aji, saba, anago, ama ebi, ika, aburi salmon, tuna sarada... and kari.

and oh, their uni was fantastic!

then we did some random stuff until morning.

where i decided to have ice café au lait coupled with butter toast, and boiled eggs.

that might not be enough to some people, but i can't really eat much on mornings.

then later on, i found myself an american football helmet.

so i tried it on, and try to look the look.

where am i going with this?

Summer Holiday '09 Day 2

The second day of my summer holiday is all about testing the new D90.

I’ve never been so giddy since I last bought my PS3.

The inner otaku/nerd/gadget-mania in me was unleashed!

To test my D90 for the first time, I decided to go to Harajyuku because that place is packed with the most interesting young people (fashion wise) in Tokyo.

> Taking pictures of random people without their permission: Newbie in photography.

It is just a 50 minutes train ride from Hashimoto (city where I live) to Harajyuku, and I arrived at the station in awe; I have forgotten how crazy Harajyuku is.

The place was packed with people, and tourists with their big cameras.

Quickly I realized how hard it is to take photos at such crowded places.

Everything was moving so fast, I can’t really concentrate of using different configuration to check out and compare the different results… I was really overwhelmed by the many functions and manual settings that the D90 offers.

Aperture, ISO, Shutter Speed, White Balance, Composition, Bracketing… I’m lost! It felt too much, and I guess I’m doing this all too fast. I should learn to learn slowly.

I quickly crossed the road from the station to get to Takeshita Road (竹下通り), snapped some photos of the road entrance, and then a heavy pour of rain came, forcing me to get back to the station to find shelter.

And everybody else did the same thing.

The train station is packed full of gothic lolitas, gyarus, hime-keis, homies and huge fat American tourists; all wet and hot.

I can’t stand it any longer, so I decided to go home, after just arrived 15 minutes there LOL.

The train back home felt longer as the bad weather seems to slows down time and I’m a bit blue… but that’s ok because a girl passenger sitting right in front of me on the train wore a shirt so short, I’ve gained little happiness.

You perverts, I can’t take photos! Might get charged with chikan/perversion in public places!

I arrived in Hashimoto, and the Hanabata Matsuri is still going on.

The last time I went, it was during the night, and this time it is during the day, so I take out my D90 and shoot away.

One last thing, did you know that the D90 was the first dSLR that could shoot HD videos?

Although it is a bummer that the D90 will not Auto-Focus when taking videos, the video quality produced was not bad at all.

Here’s a video of a dance performance that I took during the Hashimoto’s Tanabata Matsuri:

Lastly, here's some of the pictures that I took during my first day with my new girlfriend…ok the D90 does not have a vagina but it’s cute anyways.

Festival Ornaments at the Hashimoto Tanabata Festival

The entrace to the famous Takeshite Road in Harajyuku

A broken entrance-ticket machine in Shinjuku Station

Trains coming to Hashimoto Station's Keio Line

Rabbit guy performing in front of Hashimoto Station

Crazy but cool 3rd year high school kid doing street performance

Kakikoori with various flavors

Chicken steaks sold at the Hashimoto Shrine

Cute windmill thingy

REVEAL SPOILER

And of course, hot gyaru chicks with short-hot-pants

Summer Holiday '09 Day 1

Today is the first day of my Summer Holiday, so what better way to start it by going to the beach!

I've been in Japan for almost 6 years and a half now, but weirdly enough, I’ve never been to a Japanese beach, so this might be fun!

The Enoshima Beach was just a 45minutes densha ride from my place, and I met with Bentong and Yu at Fujisawa so that we could go together.

Reached the beach at about 10:30 a.m. and there was already a crowd at the beach.

After successfully influencing Yu to buy a new pair of swimming pants, we head on to the beach with our sunscreen lotions on.

So I got to be honest here, one of the major attractions of going to a Japanese beach during summer is none other than: Japanese girls in bikinis HAH!

But I’m blind as a duck so I have to wear my glasses in order to see the beauties, so I went into the water with my glasses, and only a few minutes later that I realized that this is an extremely stupid thing to do.

Getting deeper into the water to hide my boner, I mean, to experience the wave, I didn’t know that Japanese beaches has such strong waves!

Before I knew it, a strong wave knocks me off balance; I got sea water in my nose and ears.

Then I realized that it was too late: I’ve lost my glasses during the tumble.

It was impossible to recover it.

So I got off the water and went to the spot where we put our stuff, to relax and slap myself on the head for being such a stupid pervert.

As I squished my eyes to make sense of my surrounding, I could slightly see that there were like hundreds of sexy Japanese girls in their cute bikinis running around playing frisbees and beach balls, laying down and doing some other stuff that they usually do when on the beach, and I can only project this image clearly with my imagination, because I can’t see shit without my glasses!

:(

Next time I’m going to the beach, I’m wearing contact lenses!

LOLs, am I a scary person?

After that extremely unproductive and failed attempt at ogling sexy Japanese girls in skimpy clothings for FREE, we went our separate ways, with me returning to Hashimoto.

In the afternoon, I placed an order for a Nikon D90 with the 18-200mm kit lens, after a thorough research and opinion-asking activities.

I really can’t wait for my first Digital SLR camera!

Then somehow, I went to sleep.

I was probably quite tired, and I woke up at about 8:15 p.m. to the sound of my door being knocked.

My Korean co-worker told me that there was a matsuri (festival) being held just 5 minutes from our apartment.

I quickly washed my face and get ready to go out with him.

Does that sound gay?

Damn homophobes hahaha.

It’s Hashimoto City’s 58th Tanabata Matsuri (七夕祭)!


The festival was great with a lot of people showing up, including loud kogyarus (子ギャル) eating chocolate bananas in their skimpy short-shorties.

After a decent amount of watching cute girls in their summer yukatas and ganguro gyarus being drunk while pushing their baby-cars, I decided to buy a pack of tako-yaki, and went home to eat it.


It costs me 500 yen, and this is probably the worst-tasting tako-yaki that I have ever tasted, and I’m really disappointed because I love tako-yakis to death!

I guess that is pretty much what I did today.

Not bad for a first day of holiday.

I cannot wait for my shiny new D90 to arrive at my doorstep tomorrow!

Doki doki doki!

Edogawa Firework Festival

If last week I joined my co-workers and went to the Sumidagawa Firework Festival, this weekend I joined a shady group of 300 people and went to the Edogawa Firework Festival, where the scale was just different from the Sumidagawa Firework Festival.

There were just so many people!

It really looks like a huge summer rock concert as people camped about the Edo-River.

Here's a video of the opening act, and sorry for my 'over-excited' voice on the background:

People crowded the train station after the show, and it was several times worse than the usual train morning rush that I had to endure to get to work; but it's OK because I'm wearing my fav 3/4 pants!