Comedy on Nanikore

Pokemon and One Piece

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 14:08:52 +0000

Just a bit of a random post here, based on a couple of snaps for Pokemon and One Piece. I wouldn’t even go so far as to say photos.

We ordered some pizza the other day from Dominos.jp and it arrived not only in a One Piece box, but also with a free mug! It doesn’t get much better than that for the average One Piece fan.

As I get older and I have kids, I decided to pick up a cheap English language copy of Pokemon Soulsilver for my DS and within the first thirty minutes, what seemed to be an exercise in game grind took and unexpected upswing:

“There’s a large, formidable tree that looks like it can be headbutted!”

You know, you’re right; I should approach more immovable objects with that kind of attitude.

8cm CD Stupidity

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 01:22:01 +0000

Maybe it was because I took a day off; maybe it’s because I’m just too curious, but for whatever reason, I decided to try and take a look at the contents of the 8cm CD which came with my new Sandisk 2GB SD card, and within a couple of nano-seconds the combination of it not being sucked into the machine, and it being out of my reach hit me. Oops. I didn’t even need to go to a search engine to know that this drive did not support 8cm discs.

At that moment, my only option looked like prizing the whole thing open and trying to get it out. Not nice. However, the benefits of having a female around the place mean that I have access to a cornucopia of odd shaped beautification tools which include tiny tweezers, which not only can extract nanobots from tiny hair follicles (or whatever), they can also pry 8cm CDs from Mac Minis, put there by complete idiots. So armed with this and a thin flat blade screwdriver for some leverage, I managed to get the offending disc out.

Moral: don’t put silly small freebie CDs into your more expensive computer.

Errant Posts

Mon, 03 Jan 2005 23:26:41 +0000

Actually, just as I was reading this blog, I realised all the things I don’t put on it. Of course, that’s mainly because they’re mundane and dull morsels of info that no-one is interested in.

For example, just before Xmas, we got our new dining table from Harumi Design in ‘Toriton Square’, and it’s great. It feels great to have a dining table back after 5 years of food off a low table in front of the TV. I think in part this is because when I was growing up, our kitchen dinner table was a community focus point for long conversations before, during and after the meal, so it feels good to have that back, and I’m very happy with the solid oak one we chose. It easily makes my ‘Best of 2004’ purchase list, which will be another post, maybe later this week.

Example 2; I went back to work today to have an Amazon package waiting for me! This is great, I now have the last series of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, but more importantly, Series 1 and 3 of ‘Black Books’ a hilarious comedy from the UK’s Channel 4. (If you’re wondering, I got series 2 as a gift, which is what got us into it).

Oh yes, and it snowed very heavily in Tokyo on New Year’s Eve, and I got caught out on my scooter going through 4 inches of snow - not fun on a 50cc! Still, the Zoomer’s chunky tyres were great - I definitely had sympathy for the Udon delivery chap on his old scooter with bald tyres.

OK, pointless post has finished. Please move along. Nothing to read here … for a while.

Darth Vader works for NTT

Sat, 27 Nov 2004 02:07:23 +0000

As I’m in my new apartment, a few days ago I got my phone line cut over from my old place.

Now, whenever you do this (or pretty much anything else with NTT), they tell you that you should be in the building in case they need to do wiring work. Of course this is a safety net for them, and I’ve never had anyone turn up, but this time an NTT engineer did turn up. He was a nice guy too, chatty but polite (usually they’re a bit miserable), had a photo on his business card for security and generally seemed keen on the job.

He also had a tool belt with a hammer, screwdriver and a few other bits and pieces and generally looked the part. However, he then asked me for my phone unit, which I’d cleverly left in a packing box, but which I then managed to fish out. Of course I’d packed the handset in a different box as you do because they’re so bulky, so it took me another five minutes to find that too.

I asked if he could test it with his test rig (the phone/line tester/handset most telecoms people I know usually have with them) and he breathed in through his teeth and hit the familiar ’ chotto’, which is usually followed by a ’ muzukashii’ for ‘it’s a difficult [situation]’, but this was left in a hanging ‘chotto’ which I took to mean ‘I forgot it’, but rather than leave it at that, whilst I was checking the corners of the few remaining unpacked boxes for my errant handset, he continued to breathe through his teeth and breathe out heavily, so there I am looking at him doing a Darth Vader impression, and I can’t help thinking that hammer on his tool belt looks a bit like a light saber … or maybe I need some sleep.

Before anyone questions that hammer by the way, I see no problem with *any* technician carrying a hammer. If you can’t fix a problem, hit it with a hammer, if that doesn’t fix it, get a *bigger* hammer. Or a light saber maybe in this case.

So there it is, NTT employ the Sith because they’re good with telecommunications which is probably a good sideline to have in these uncertain times. If they employed Jedi they’d have to send two people to each job, because we all know how the Jedi only attack in pairs, (like women going to the ‘rest room’ at a nightclub) with the honourable exception of Yoda-chan. I’m thinking of changing my line to ADSL again (not needed here as the building has Hikari Fiber) to see if a guy turns up with suspicious horns claiming ‘soon we will have more bandwidth than cable TV, soon we will have our revenge’.

Move over!

Wed, 24 Nov 2004 02:21:47 +0000

Well, we’ve now completely moved in our new place.

We spent yesterday cleaning the old place a bit and handing the keys back. I have a lot of fond memories of my 2 years in Komazawa, but as a couple now we needed a bit more space, so here we are.

Komazawa is a great place - the park is fabulous and the local eateries are great. Unfortunately, we couldn’t really find anything we liked in the area which was bigger than our old place, but which was in our budget range, or maybe it had the kitchen in the main room or something else we didn’t like. However, as soon as we saw our now ’new’ place we knew that if we stretched the budget a little it would be worth it (if only because there’s a gomi room on every floor with no ‘different days for different rubbish’ limitations).

Back to the move. After finishing the packing on Monday afternoon, our movers - Mammy Removals - came in and did their thing. This is the second time I’ve used them, and I can’t believe the value you get with them. We got quotes from four companies - 3 of which were between 80-110,000yen and Mammy came in at 30,000, and they aren’t at all sloppy - they were fast and polite both packing the stuff up, and getting it in the new place. Hell, I was so impressed I gave them some beer money…and it takes a lot for me to part with beer money.

We’d already got all the utilities working in the new place from Saturday, so all we had to do on Monday night was dig out the lights, plug them in and start to unpack - next was a look for the kettle/pot for some hot water, and the building’s own hikari-fiber internet access mean’t that tea and broadband were mine! You mean there was something else to do? OK, maybe we are still proud owners of a few cardboard boxes, but it should all be finished by tonight.

Another nice thing for me about the new building is that the cycle and motorbike areas are both inside, in monitored areas, so they’re clean and dry. My little Zoomer is loving it’s own parking space in the basement, and I must admit that it’s an underrated feature IMHO. Interestingly, when we were in the basement car park on Saturday some residents were racing RC cars around (it’s a large carpark), which I’m hoping is a fixture because it’s something that interests me.

The last time I moved apartment (from Kameari to Komazawa) I used my old laptop (an Apple G3 Powerbook) to listen to some internet radio, and this time was now different; as I unpacked books, computers and CDs last night, I hunted down the archives of an old favourite - " Does Humour Belong in Technology" - it’s not great radio, but it sounds better than most pro shows and is kind of fun to listen to in the background.

Now that my computer equipment, and all the books, CDs and DVDs are in one room, along with my partner’s yoga mat and some other bits and pieces, and we have a real living room again I feel like I’m back in a real apartment. (I missed that!) Who knows…maybe even a dining table.

Sorry - must go and finish the unpacking and take all the boxes o the basement recycle area.

Cutie Honey

Sat, 05 Jun 2004 04:46:01 +0000

Yesterday night I finally got to see the Cutie Honey film at the Virgin Cinema in Roppongi. It’s a live action version of the ‘70’s animated cartoon. Let’s get it straight, this is a low budget ‘cute’ film action with virtually no plot, and some very low-budget special effects.

However, unlike recent ‘comedies’ like “The Haunted Mansion”, this one is actually *fun*. It’s the story of a cyborg girl who can change costumes to help her fight the evil “Panther Claw” gang as long as she eats enough food, which in the film is 90% onigiri from Family Mart. The hook is that she has to be naked to do her ‘Honey Flash!" identity change. Also, when she runs out of energy, she loses her clothes. Fear not, in the film, she never gets out of her underwear - much to the annoyance of a lot of the other male movie-goers I suspect.

Eriko Sato as Cutie Honey does a fairly comedic performance, though there is the otaku pleasing ‘yoga in underwear’ scene, the rest of the film is more cheeky than some fans may have liked. Her ‘flashes’ are mostly an anime style CG, and many other action sequences are very manga in their design, which makes for a very fantasy style to the film.

Why was I watching it? Well, I’m just trying to take in more smaller Japanese films, which is getting easier to do as the general quality is getting better, and most of the recent big Hollywood films have been pathetic (Matrix: Revolutions, Haunted Mansion and Day after Tomorrow for example), and also because more and more Japanese films in Japan have showings of English subtitled versions, which helps me with some of the plot points.

The Japanese film industry goes beyond Akira and Takeshi films, so try some of these smaller films and see what you think!

Spoon fed

Tue, 01 Jun 2004 13:34:43 +0000

My long suffering partner and I decided to go out for a meal to the ‘Hiro’ restaurant on the 35th floor of Maru Building in front of Tokyo station. It’s a beautiful looking place, with an amazing view over Tokyo, which looked fabulous as the sun set. The food, as you would expect, comes in many small courses, each well made and presented, but the course that really impressed us was the caviar and rice entree, which, as it was only really a mouthful’s worth, came all ready on a spoon.

When the waiter presented it, he exclaimed “You may be surprised…it looks like sushi but it’s not!”. We were thinking it looked like a few bits of rice and caviar on a spoon. I’ve had small courses before, but not one where it came pre-attached to the cutlery.

We kind of looked at each other for a second, and at some of the other diners…was this a sample? Like a waiter presenting a taster glass of wine before pouring for all? Nope, that was it, though I should say that it was absolutely delicious.

All said, ‘Hiro’ is a great place for a date or a special occassion. Prices for dinner start at 9,000yen for a set meal, so I’ll be living off pot noodles and Yoshinoya for a while.

Gososamadeshita!

Beer = Ogg

Sat, 22 Feb 2003 13:17:25 +0000

The weekend … you have to love it. Well, after a night on the beers last night in Nihonbashi" first as it’s a classic. I’m using Audacity as the recording software. Whilst all this is going on, I think I’d better clean my balcony. The fun never ends.