w00kie’s ramblings

This saturday I went to Naeba in Niigata-ken for my second snowboarding trip of the season and I had a horrible day.

Through a combination of sleep deprivation, bad physical condition and poor equipment, I could barely make a turn 3 hours in the session. That and I went there with two of my friends who dragged me offtrail in a really nice slope of deep deep powder. That was great but it literraly finished me...

Net result of the day:

• I could barely move out of my futon to my sofa the next day...
• ... and when I got to my sofa, I could barely sit on it. I fell on a little mound of ice in the middle of the powder run, right in my tailbone. I have a huge bruise the shape of New Zealand right in the crack of my ass.
• My sunglasses somehow fell out of my jacket's inside pocket, probably in that same powder run. I had just bought them 2 weeks before, they were prescription lenses and cost me a fortune, I'm really pissed about it.

I think I'm going to pass on the weekly ski trips for a while...

Tonight, most of my favorite shows come out of christmas recess:

• 24 (after the first 4 episodes were shown 2 weeks ago 2 days in a row)
• Prison Break
• Heroes

And this makes me happy. Why? Because last week I bought a new TV, being fed up of playing the Wii's Zelda on the old piece of shit I bought from a fake sayonara sale. It always took 3 tries to turn on and the colors were totally washed out.

I got myself a SHARP LC-32BD2 for the ridiculous price of ￥109,000, that's 630€ with the current exchange rate. It's a 32" that does 720p (I don't think full 1080p HD warrants the 100% price increase), with all the HDMI, DVI, Component and D-端子 plugging goodness.

Next in line for the home theater buying frenzy is a Mac mini to stow under the TV and play all the HD content that I couldn't not appreciate until now. However, I'm low on cash so it'll have to wait until the new versions come out and I'm finished paying back my student loan. In the meanwhile, I'll get a DVI cable and plugin my Powerbook to the TV...

Last week, since my girlfriend was moving, we had no place to stay in Tokyo for her last night (after the movers took everything and we gave back the keys). So since she didn't exactly looked forward to the idea of staying at my place, Saitama being far from romantic, we looked for a hotel.

Her ex-company had a special Christmas hotel package going on and since she was still technically an employee, we got to book a night in a City-view room of the Cerulean Tower Hotel in Shibuya for a very decent ¥20.000

We ended up getting probably one of the nicest room of the hotel: 34th floor (top non-private-suite floor) with view of Fuji-san. I had to whip out my camera.

Funny thing: the guy with the room next to ours had ordered a call-girl, she rode the elevator with us going up, stopped in front of the door, checked the email order on her keitai and her skirt and fuck-me boots before knocking and entering...

Sorry for the lack of updates. I was at my girlfriend's in Tokyo for over 2 weeks (without internet) to help her move out. She quit her job that was going nowhere and went back to her parent's in Hiroshima. It's going to be hard, changing from a mid-distance relationship (we saw each other only on the weekends) to a long-distance one.

Anyways, here are the notable events of my new year vacations:

• I wanted to go to a temple at midnight, but it felt so cold outside and nice and warm inside that we ended up just drinking champagne at a friend's recently-moved-in apartment. Fun was had, that's what's important.
• I went to Meiji-jingu on January 4, there were still thousands of people there. Also, half a dozen weird people (including a 12-year-old gaijin girl) were standing around the entrance of the shrine with big signs reading:

JESUS LIVES, HE IS OUR SAVIOR
or
PRAISE THE LORD
or
JESUS CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS

• I finally got a Wii, a colleague found it while shopping for PS3s with his son and bought it for me. Thanks again Morikawa-san!
• I went to Takashimaya in Shinjuku and bought some cornichons, then ate them with baguette and rillettes for new year. It sure beats the hell out of KFC xmas chicken and Toshikoshi Soba, even though I paid ¥1400 for the smallest bottle.

All in all I had a pretty nice time for my second New Year in Japan. Let's hope for many more to come!