February 7th, 2002. These pretzels are making me thirsty.

Fran's birthday is coming up, so I have been spending the past few weeks in search of the perfect gift. It's hard enough doing this back home, where I can speak the language and know where to look, but here, it's like going through a flashback from 'Nam.

My dad and sister have their birthdays in March, and what kind of a son would I be if I sent presents for everyone except my mom? So I figured that I would just shop for everyone and settle everything with one fell swoop. Out of the four people I had to shop for, my sister was the easiest. Being young and interested in pretty much anything that's odd, I picked up her presents within the first three days of my search.

I knew exactly what I wanted to get for Fran, but finding it was a different matter. I searched near and far, high and low, even sent out scouts to help me look. In fact, I had the better part of my Nova students, along with M and Hinnie scoping out Tokyo. Finally, M hit upon a place and we went there that night. It was perfect. This girl is amazing. She always finds these tiny little restaurants or shops in the midst of all the madness that is the ciy, and they are always incredible. It's like she's part blood hound or something.

Mom and dad are always the hardest people to shop for. Both are front-end boomers (can you tell I've been reading a book about demographics?) and pretty much have most of what they want, materially. I'm sure there are a few things here and there that I could pick up for them, but really, anything I could afford is crap to them and the things they could really use are so far out of my budget that I'd need a telescope to see them.

But Fate was smiling on me, as I stumbled onto a pretty good gift for my mom. My dad, as usual, got the short end of the stick. But here's the thing with gift-shopping. Obligation really kills it. It's not so much up to you to find the perfect gift, as it is up to the perfect gift to appear to you. I'm just saying that because I didn't find anything for him really, but still. It's true. Really, dad.

So, I packed all these wonderful gifts into a cardboard box I took from Nova, taped it up thoroughly and marched happily to the post office. I learned from the last time I had to go there, how to ask to have a package delievered. It went really smoothly this time, took only 5 minutes and most of that was me filling out the receipt. I could get used to this.


I was supposed to go out with M for dinner tonight, but I woke up feeling a little crappy. It might have something to do with the weather, but it probably has more to do with the fact that I watched an episode of Seinfeld last night and it's sparked a bit of homesickness again. It was the one where Jerry gets his car stolen and Kramer gets a part in a Woody Allen movie.

Valentine's day is coming up and it's a little different here than it is back home. In Japan, women give things to men they fancy on the 14th, not the other day around. In North America, we call days like this Hallmark Holidays in reference to the card manufacturer and the fact that they push it like mad to sell their wares.

Here, they don't have a term for these commercialized holidays, rather they have a name for the gifts we have to buy. They call them Obligation Chocolates. If you are an office lady, you'd best have a box for your boss. If you've got a boyfriend, you had better be in line at Godiva behind the office lady.

The first time I saw this, I thought of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. Second star on the right, and straight on til morning. I brought it up at dinner the other night, but NJ Tammy pointed out my mistake. That's Never Never Land, not Tomorrow Land. Got it confused with Disney.

This is another reminant from last night. This is what M was taking a photo of with her telephone. Didn't we learn anything from Mao's reign of terror? Geez.

I found a place that develops film for a decent price here. Sure I have my digicam, but I don't like to carry it with me all the time, since I have to worry about having a place to keep it and not losing it, etc. I have a disposable camera as well, and though the quality of the pics are pretty crappy in comparison, it's nice to have something you can just throw into your bag and not care about if it gets lost or sat on.

Here are some photos that I got developed. They will look a little strange because I took photos of these photos with my digicam and my hands aren't steady.

Eddie and Wes. I met Eddie when he did an overtime shift at my school a few months back. He's the one making the obscene gesture. He trained for a while at the Shaolin temple in China. Nut.

Wes is a recruiter for some English school here. Both guys are from Oz.

Same night as the photo above. It was at James' house. He was having a get together and here he is playing a game that Andy (the guy on the side) showed him. Here's how you play: You place a cup on the floor and stand about 6 paces back. You shove 5 coins in the crack of your butt and pinch your cheeks together. Next, waddle forward and position yourself over top of the cup. Release.

The number of coins you drop outside of the cup, are the number of shots you have to drink. Nobody else tried after James.

James and Michelle walking outside. Obviously, James was losing at a lot of the drinking games they were playing that night.

I got this at lunch one day and want to share it with you. Have you ever wondered about the story behind KFC? Here it is:

"When I added that eleventh ingredient and tasted my chicken, I found that it was the greatest chicken I had ever had," the Colonel often said. His special way of cooking chicken under pressure seals in the natural juices and flavours. Prepared with the Colonel's still-secret blend of 11 herbs and spices, Original Recipe chicken is like no other fried chicken in the world."

Eating KFC every day for lunch takes its toll on you. I think that I've had just about as many Twisters as a human being can handle. I bought a pan today from Don Q's. It was on sale for 434JPY, so I thought I'd grab it while it was cheap. Hopefully, it will inspire me to cook more, so I can brown bag it at work.