It’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m sitting at home. That’s right, no work! I’m not on Christmas Break yet, since X-Mas is more of a date holiday here than anything else, but I only have to work next Tuesday and Wednesday before I’m off for a solid week. A SOLID FREAKIN’ WEEK! Today would normally be a working day, but thanks to the great emperor of this fine country, it is a holiday. Thank you for being born, Emperor Akihito. Sure, the emperor of Japan doesn’t really do a whole lot, being a figurehead and all, but at least he provides me a with a day off. Also, as Blanchard mentioned in a comment on my last blog post, when the current emperor dies, December 23rd will in all likelihood become a new holiday, like Snow Day or Ice Cream Day (it’s winter). How about Ramen Day? If memory serves me right, this is the first proper 3-day weekend I’ve had in months. I always say that I appreciate my weekends more than ever, after having to work all week, but having a 3 day weekend is pretty much the equivalent of winning the lottery. Last night at work, by 7PM when I only had two classes left, I was so psyched about having a 3 day weekend that I didn’t think about the pain of teaching 4 classes back-to-back. I finished, took out the trash, got a b-day card from my staff, then headed home to being the relaxation process. I am not embarrassed to say that I spend the Friday night of my 3-day weekend sitting at home watching the Music Station Super Live 2006 concert on TV, then playing Twilight Princess for almost 3 and a half hours.
Speaking of the Super Live, let me elaborate a bit. It’s a 4-hour TV special of the normal weekly Music Station show, with more than 40 bands/artists performing live on TV. It’s a pretty fun thing to watch, since almost any popular Japanese pop song is played constantly in this country, so you’re almost always likely to at least recognize most of the songs, as crappy as they may be. There are a good number of Japanese bands I like , but I do have to admit that even more are pure trash. Now for some random hilights from the show, with some image links for those who don’t know Japanese musicians:
I have almost gotten used to SMAP, a popular boy band that has been around since approximately 1840, although I don’t especially like their music or their members. There are 5 of them, and they all do other acting and TV shows and stuff ALL THE TIME, so the probability of turning on the TV and seeing any 1 member of SMAP at any given time is approximately 40%. Anyway, I watched them on the concert and I laugh every time I see their band leader, who apparently is named Nakai Masahiro, because he is absolutely tone deaf and his singing voice is nonexistent. I have no idea how he became part of any band, because he can’t sing at all. Next, I don’t hate Dreams Come True‘s music, but the chick/vocalist looks so strange it’s distracting. Not strange in that she dresses up strange, but her face is just…butt. Sorry. (Unfortunately I couldn’t find a picture where she looked super butt). Next, The Tarako song was cute when I first saw it as a Flash game years ago, but the fact that is has been released as a very successful CD single is just disturbing. Even more disturbing was that it did well enough to be invited onto the Music Station Super Live, with the 2 little girls in tarako hats AND a giant monster-like tarako dancing behind them. There are a bunch of videos on this site. Oh, and the final thing I will mention is that Daniel Powter appeared on this show, and he is a complete d-bag. I remember hearing his song over the summer, and almost thought it was decent enough to download. I will not be doing that now.
I am still so happy at the fact that normally I would just now be finishing my lunch break at work. Thank you Emperor!
After Akihabara we headed to Shinjuku to check out some stores, mainly Takashimaya and Tokyu Hands. Not much to report, although it might be a good time to mention just how many foreigners there are in Tokyo. I think I’ve gotten used to Chiba, and definitely Goi, where you’re more likely to spot a man dressed as a giant stuffed animal than see another foreigner. So speaking of foreigners, we saw the worst group of foreigners ever while waiting in line to get into Tabasa in Harajuku for dinner, the “all-you-can eat pizza, pasta, hip-hop, goodtime, pancakes, and jelly” restaurant that is cheap and delicious. The quickest way to explain them is to use a certain American slang term for white Eminem-type clones. I don’t think I want to offend anyone, so I’m going to call them “wee gars” in this blog post. However that isn’t exactly correct since only 4 of them were white and the other was some kind of Latino. I think you get the picture though. So yeah, like 5 of them, all dressed in the same way – sweat pants, t-shirt or jersey, stupid hat cocked to the side or something angled. They didn’t speak normal English let alone Japanese, spoke really loud, and acted like they were the baddest mofos in Tokyo. We tried to figure out what their deal was and why they are in Japan, but I think the conclusion was that they’re probably military brats, since they didn’t seem to be of working/teacher let alone university student classification. They had cell phones, so they must live here, so I’m going to assume military kids who have nothing better to do but pretend they’re from “da meen streetz.” The worst was this little blond kid who needed a good throttling, but the funniest was this dopey looking kid who was wearing the surefire sign that you are a social outcast and don’t belong in Japan – the shirt that says, in Japanese “I’m looking for a Japanese girlfriend.” Come on. If you wear this 
Finished up the night in Shibuya, where we didn’t really do anything but walk around and look at the fancy lights and jumbotron video screens. It was getting pretty boring just walking around the streets, until there was a bit of an incident outside of Seibu. A Lincoln Navigator was parked outside of the store illegally, and was about a foot and a half into the street. A bus driver decided that he didn’t want to risk scraping this HUGE AWESOME AMERICAN SUV MACHINE so traffic on this road was pretty much at a standstill except for the occasional motorcycle. Lots of car horns were being honked, and finally the police were called. Tonight was a great lesson, or shall I say, reconfirmation, that Japanese police are absolutely useless. At first, after we started watching, two cops on foot showed up after, assumingly, someone in Seibu called them. They called fo
(Yes, I love that pun.) This past week was pretty much the same as most weeks, with the major exception being the huge purchase I made last Saturday during my lunch break. The 
And I leave you tonight with a nice bit of Engrish, found at a store in the Soga Ario mall. And no, it’s not really some dirty book, just whatever in the world the “Sendenkaigi Award Text” is. Still, it’s funny.
This game lets you sit in a little pod and actually pretend you’re steering a giant combat robot. Sure there are a lot of games like this, right? Well, this pod brings on a whole new experience. First off, the place looks awesome. One of the arcades near Chiba station had the Gundam pods set up, and it was the most impressive set up I’ve seen in an arcade in a very long while. See the picture on the right? I nabbed it from the 
The game is about the same price as other high-end arcade games here, which is expensive by American standards, but the game is so fun it’s worth it. You also buy a Pilot Card which keeps track of your name, score, past battles, records, and points, so that you can keep playing to earn enough points to access more weapons, stages, and Gundam robots to play with. The card has some kind of re-printable surface on it, so everytime you update your card, the printed data on it changes. Really cool. Up to 8 people can play at once, in 4-vs-4 matches. Of course, if you just want to play with a few friends, then the computer players will fill in the rest. 
