w00kie’s ramblings

Found this video on Digg, looks like Yoyogi Park. This guy is a million times more impressive than all those stupid jugglers and beanbag fanatics you find in such parks.

Yes, there's only one crowd I despise more than beanbaggers, it's the drum players. That's probably the main reason why I never hang out at Yoyogi Park...

Taken from the Korean Air lounge at Narita Airport on my way to Thailand earlier this month.

More cool Dental Health info from my Japanese health insurance society. Coming back from Golden Week vacation, I find the following letter on my desk at work:

Information for Dental Checkup and Treatment:

Announcing the "Let's leave 20 teeth at age 80" campaign

Aren't your decayed teeth or pyorrhea getting worse while you are unaware ofr them? Health Insurance society has been sending application forms of dental checkup to the insured persons in numeric order of Insurance Card.

This time your insurance card number is in range of an applicable object: you are entitled to a complete dental checkup including teeth, gum and supporting bone X-rays at 10% of the medical care cost.

This is actually a pretty good deal, apart from the goofy tag-name for the campaign, and I've signed up for a long overdue checkup on the cheap.

I'm not sure if they have Cribs on MTV Japan, but this guy would have a spot on the show for sure.

From left to right: a Maserati Quattroporte, a Lamborghini Gallardo and an unknown Ferrari... More pics here and here.

3rd year in Japan and each year I was on a busines trip somewhere for early April: the time of the 花見 parties. This time I was home and got to drink myself silly on a tarp under the cherry blossoms.

On the border of the 目黒川, I got to take some nice photos with the president of the 写真倶楽部.

2 weeks ago I went to Hiroshima for the weekend with my girlfriend. We had dinner (and innumerable drinks) with a friend of hers on Saturday night in the 本通 area at what must be the restaurant with the most perfect レバー焼き鳥 I've ever tasted.

Anyways, I received as omiyage the following which made me laugh a lot:

It's a set of senbei rice-crackers inscribed with examples of 広島弁, the local Hiroshima dialect. Whenever we're in Hiroshima, my girlfriend reverts to her roots and drops the Tokyo accent she acquired, especially when she's with her high-school friends. I'm usually totally lost...

Shamelessly stolen from Japan Probe, but it's too mind-blowing not to spread the word about it.

Last Saturday in the early afternoon, we had a huge dust storm all over the 関東 area. It started out as a very nice day, sunny 15°C, I went for grocery shopping in just a light sweater. Then around 2PM, the sky suddenly became dark, great gusts of wind started whistling around the corners of our building, we could see the road signs and city lights shaking in the street and parked bicycles being blown away. The sky became dark yellowish / light brown as the huge dust cloud passed over us. Then it was over in 15 minutes.

I couldn't take a good photo as my girlfriend wouldn't let me open the windows or open the door to go outside (we just cleaned up the apartment, so letting all this dust come in was definitely not a good idea), so I got this photo of the event from surround's photostream on Flickr.

Apparently, these dust storms happen often in the Kanto plain at the turn of spring. This huge plain all around Tokyo is heavily farmed and parched fields, from the very dry winters we have here, go up in dust with the strong winds marking the coming of spring.

Walked around 表参道 yesterday visiting interior design shops, looking for cool lamps.

Nice shops to check out:

• The brand new MoMA store in the Gyre building (from which I took the photo) with lots of funny gadgets.
• hhstyle just down the road from there with very very nice and very very expensive furniture.

The results for the 日本語能力試験, more commonly known as JLPT 2008, should be getting in everyone's mailbox in the imminently and it shows:

Visits to my blog post of receiving the results last year have been spiking in the past week.

Good news: a colleague of mine got it in the mail this morning before coming to work, so most people in Japan should have it tonight or tomorrow.

Bad news: the people at the JLPT organization are mail nazis (not delivering the papers if your name is not on your mailbox, imposing crazy processes to let them know you changed address) and since I moved just before taking the test there is a pretty good chance that I will never receive the damn results.