Once Upon a Time...

a rather hapless teacher of English conversation wanted to have a class for the other teachers so everyone could enjoy the magic that is English. So he thought, "What can I do that's a little different AND fun?" Then he remembered seeing a storytelling card game in a quite brilliant but little know short film.

"That should be a little different AND fun" he thought as he thunk further.

But never having played the game before he thought he'd better test it out. So he took the game along to the eating of most delicious gourmet burgers (and a damn fine slice of cheese cake) that occurred on Sunday afternoon. This was a rather brave thing to do, because there was sure to be much tomato sauce and grease in attendance with the burgers.

But all went well as no cards went soggy and all had fun (but I'm unsure of what happened to the well). So much so that on returning home he and Mari played the game for another hour.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Until the event horizon, that is.

This Post, No Subject

Gack! One month and so far two postings.

Uhmm, let’s see.

Watched or Watching
The Constant Gardener (Rachel Weisz is simply magical), Million Dollar Baby (Clint and Morgan have great rapport), and one more DVD to go for 1st season Stargate SG-1 (it is fun).

Read or Reading
The Winter Queen – I’d read the Erast Fandorin mysteries numbered 2 to 5 over the last year, but had never been able to find the 1st one, The Winter Queen. The stories are not connected, but The Winter Queen begins with a young 20-something Fandorin whom ages over the 5 books. And after reading it I want to go back and reread the others because so much his character and the style of the stories (mystery + action + humor) are introduced in this first outing. Recommended.

The Horse and his Boy – Before I saw the film of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe I decided to reread the book. At the book store there was the complete set of Narnia books in a very nice illustrated edition. I remember not really enjoying them the last time I read them (a little over 10 years ago), and so didn’t want to spring for them all. I thought I’d test the water with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and come back later if I liked it. I did like it and so thought I’d pick up the rest. On returning I found that someone had bought the 1st volume (The Magician’s Nephew), and as I’d got #2, that left the other 5 still there. As I couldn’t get them all at once I decided to pickup just The Horse and his Boy (#3), and keep reading from there. Then on the weekend when I went back to see if the others had returned I found them all gone!
Who bought the 5 remaining books?

Two solutions present themselves:
It was the buyer of #1, who despite being unable to purchase #2 decided to get what he or she could.
Or it was a mysterious “3rd man”, who has swerved in from an outside lane to cut off the book buyers of #1 and #2.

Away Team Report
Catching up with friends on Saturday night was great. Many drinks were drunk and much tasty Mexican food was eaten. There was even a Lost in Translation moment when the wedding party that was in progress across the courtyard had entertainment provided by a singer/impersonator/comedian who was wearing a Star Trek: The Next Generation uniform.

Pipe of Peace
The other day I was sitting in a café when I saw a man smoking a pipe. As I hadn’t seen a pipe-smoker in a long time (actually my first in Japan, I think) I watched with scientific interest. Actually I’m quite interested in the motivations of smokers. Is it really relaxing to smoke?

Using a stopwatch I timed his total pipe-smoking interval, plus the uninterrupted intervals of smoking within that. There was a total of 6mins 50 secs of smoking, broken into 2 parts, with the second interval providing over 4 and a half minutes of uninterrupted puffing. But how does that stack up against a cigarette?

There were ample cigarette smokers in the café, and so over the next half hour I was able to find that cigarettes last about 2min to 4min. But unlike the pipe, where the puffing was constant, much of that time was not spent smoking. Mostly the cigarette seemed to be fingered or left in the ash tray. Interspersed with this was the occasional inhale.

This initial and admittedly very slight study suggests to me that the pipe (where the puffing is almost constant and maintenance of the fire during smoking requires the added ritualistic skill of puffing and relighting) is of much better value to the smoker who wishes to enjoy the pleasure of smoking, whereas the cigarette seemed much more like a deliver device for nicotine into the body.

Some stuff I done since last time

As usual work busy. ‘Nuff said.

Finished a few things off. On the high brow side was Guns, Germs and Steel. Like most popular science books it has a handful of ideas that are proved through copious examples. Thus to get the point across it probably need be only 100 pages long – probably for scientific illiterate me a Dummies Guide… would suffice to understand it. But it is highly recommended. There’ll be a break before attempting his book Collapse as I’ve got some light reading to get out of the way.

Reading also saw Blood Fever, the 2nd book in the Young Bond series, finished off. While enjoyable, I liked SilverFin more as boy’s-own entertainment. Blood Fever alludes to Bond’s future years in WWII. It has more depth to it, building the character of the young boy who’ll eventually go to fight in that war. But this bigger canvas provides less action that Bond can take part in directly. Bond learns that in war survival is more a matter of chance than skill, and so much of the time he is avoiding or running from the epic battles. I’m not complaining – Higson’s intention is to explore the character of the boy behind Fleming’s Bond – but am pointing out that it is a slightly different animal to the first book. And really that’s got to be good.

In gaming finished From Russia with Love for the 2nd time. This time it was on “Agent” level (medium difficulty). Next comes “Double O” level. Sorry Kong, your rescue will have to wait.

And the TV series Friends was finally finished. I guess it’s taken me close to five years to watch the whole series in my on-again-off-again fashion. I’ve enjoyed the ride, but am glad there’s no more forthcoming. While mostly it has been fun the last season did have a marked drop in laughs. The characters were so well understood by long time viewers that jokes could be predicted. Still, belated congrats to them for 10 seasons of fun.

Golden Week was 5 super days in Shuzenji. I did so much – bicycled into the mountains, went to a batting center, went tenpin bowling, did a walking tour of Mishima City, went to Banana Wani Koen (a banana and crocodile park), read books, played games, ate sushi, ate tempura, ate… - you get the idea. Roll on summer holidays.

Ruminations & Observations

Ok, this new month is off to a flying start for blogging.
One day and one post.
I wonder how many months of my blogging career I've thought that?

This week is Golden Week in Japan. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are public hoilidays, but many people take off the Monday and Tuesday as well and so have 9 days straight. Not me though. The education of young minds can't rest for those 2 days, so I've got to be at work. However nothing can dim the joy of the 5-day holiday that's just around the corner. And there aren't even classes tomorrow, so I can hardly complain.

In preparation for the 5 days I went to Akihabara on Friday to purchase the game From Russia with Love for the PSP. I'd intended to play for 5 straight days at 10+ hours per day, but apparently I'm being restricted to 1 hour a day by a person (or persons) who shall remain nameless. Still, should be fun being Bond even for only 1 hour.

Speaking of Bond, I've done a short FF on You Only Live Twice. Like the previous one on GoldenEye, it's pretty much for the fans of the series, but neh, FF needs all the promotion it can get.

Saturday was spent Konging. And yes, that is a word. It's a verb that means to act like King Kong. I'd finished the game a while back, but am now replying it to get a sufficiently high score to open up the secret level where (I've heard) you can save Kong from his demise atop the Empire State Building. Hold on little buddy, I'm about 4/5ths of the way there.

But now it's getting tough to scratch up the remaining points. You get the most points as Jack by defeating the monsters with primitave weapons rather than firearms. Unfortunately some dinos laugh at how the foolish human has brought a spear to what is obviously a shotgun fight. And you get the most points as Kong by finishing the fight with the fewest moves in the fastest time. Again unfortuately I can win the fights now, but find it difficult to do so expediently.

Sunday I went to a really tasty gourmet burger joint. Recently I removed an article from a gaijin magazine about the best burger eateries in Tokyo. I've resolved to try them all over the next few months. I hope they maintain the standard of yesterday's fare.

And I found a hardcover version of V for Vendetta, so I can reread that over GW. I've now got 3 books backed up for the 5 days, which at my slow reading pace I know will actually last me for 5 weeks.

And on Sunday in Shibuya I confirmed an observation of mine. I am in fact, at 74kg and 180cm, the undisputed smallest male gaijin in Tokyo (and not in name only). Of course there's the Canadians Allan and Pixie, but Allan has Japanese parents, and Pixie's parentage harkens from the Court of Fairie. It's quite weird to walk around and notice that every other male gaijin stands taller and obviously lifts far too many weights for his own good. Why does Japan attract so many big guys? Or is that I am just small? Maybe I'm shrinking? Certainly when I went back to Australia last year I was surprised at how much bigger the male population seemed. More analysis is required, although without a grant probably not forthcoming.