recentnews Category Archives
There are 125 entries in the recentnews category. Won't you have a look?

The following entries in the recentnews category are show in reverse chronological order. You can click on additional categories or tags within each entry to see their archives.
If you prefer to see all entries (not just those in a specific category), use the navigation options to the right.

Ocean Style I

This past monday was Ocean Day and so to celebrate, I thought it only fitting to make a trek over to the beach to take in some sun, sand and of course, beautiful blue summer skies. A lot of my photography to date has centered around pictures of the sky and buildings, but recently I've been trying to expand my repertoire by taking more photos of people. So with that in...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, photoshoot, recentnews, sky worship, street style
Tagged as: beach, bethann, blue skies, clouds, friends, maya, ocean, photography, photoshoot, portraits, posing, sand, skies, summer, sunshine
07.22.10

Street Style I

A few shots of the lovely Maya taken last week in Tokyo... I really want this lens, but for the time being I'm shooting with this and this. Oh, and this for the catchlights....
Category Info: featured entry, general, photography, photoshoot, recentnews, street style
Tagged as: friends, girls, maya, photography, portraits, posing, street style, tokyo, urban, women
07.15.10

Kawaguchiko

It's been a while since I've been in a car with the lovely Risapie (in fact, I believe the last time was some 7 years ago!!) but last weekend we found ourselves in a car headed to a very rainy Kawaguchiko (Lake Kawaguchi) for a lovely overnight trip to the beautiful Fujigoko area out west of Tokyo. It's the middle of the rainy season here and as luck would have it, it ra...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, photography, ramblings, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: cloudy, flowers, friends, herb festival, kawaguchiko, mountains, mt. fuji, rainy, risa, roadtrip, travel
07.05.10

Kichijoji

I debated for a while whether to title this a Sky Worship post or not, but in the end decided that it wasn't focused enough to merit the title. Actually, there's not much to this post in general. I stopped by Kichijoji the other day, one of my favourite neighborhoods in Tokyo to take a few photos with a friend. This random smattering of pictures is the result. ...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the general, main, photography, ramblings, recentnews, sky worship
Tagged as: blue skies, buildings, friends, kichijoji, maya, photography, skies, tokyo, upshots, urban
06.12.10

Tokyo B&W

I woke up at 5:20 AM this morning and decided to take the day off to attend to the huge pile of things I had to do that have built up over the past month. I started out making some pretty decent progress but then when lunch rolled around I took a break to surf the net whilst stuffing my face and sort of lost my momentum. One of the things I've been meaning to do is up...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the general, photography, ramblings, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: black and white, cityscapes, ebisu, ikebukuro, kichijoji, photography, shibuya, street scenes, tokyo, urban
06.02.10

Takao-san

I did however, decided to take a quick little trip over to Takao-san, a beautiful mountain in western Tokyo. It's a popular destination amongst Tokyo-ites due to its proximity and also relative accessiblity - unlike Fuji-san, you can easily tackle it in a day without even having to get up early and you don't need any extra gear. Its popularity is a double-edged sword...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: crowded, friends, golden week, kaka, mountains, nature, sunshine, takao san, tokyo, travel
05.11.10

Kawagoe

Kawagoe is actually not such a famous place, and even if you find yourself hankering for a brief escape from the urban jungle that is Tokyo (but really, why would you ever want that? I love it...), there are probably better choices out there: Hakone, Yokohama, Nikko and Kamakura, just to name a few. So why did we end up going to Kawagoe? Well, for one, I've already been pret...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, japan - the good, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: candy, cloudy, friends, kanto, kashiyayokocho, kawagoe, saitama, starbucks girl, travel
03.27.10

How to pass the JLPT 1 - Part I

The results for the Japanese Proficiency Exam (JLPT) Level 1 (the highest level) for last December were announced earlier this month, and I was delighted to see that I passed. I passed both the JLPT 1 and the JLPT 2 (which I sat back in 2008) each on my first try. I'm not particularly great at Japanese (I famously confused the words for "poop" and "bean jam" on...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the general, musings, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: capybara, how-to, japanese, japanese proficiency exam, jlpt, nihongo, studying, tips
03.03.10

Tamachi Skate Park

It was beautiful weather last weekend (rare, given how freezing it's been this winter) and to take advantage of the opportunity mother nature had seen fit to bless us with, a friend and I grabbed our cameras and headed over to the Tamachi neighborhood of Tokyo to snap a few shops of some skater boys doing their thing at the local skateboard park. ...
Category Info: featured entry, general, main, miscellaneous, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: action, photography, skateboarders, skaters, sports, tamachi, tokyo, urban
02.23.10

2009 Year in Pictures

2009 was a pretty great year (well for me personally. For the world and the economy, err, not so much) and it was hard to choose just a few pictures as my "favourites" from the thousands that I snapped over the past 12 months. On top of that, there's the question of how to sort them? While all the pictures could be classified dozens of different wa...
Category Info: featured entry, general, memories, miscellaneous, musings, photography, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: black and white, blue skies, friends, photography, pictures, sky worship, sunrise, sunset, sunshine, urban
01.06.10

2008 Autumn Roadtrip - Part X

As the saying goes, "all good things must come to an end." This is true in many things in life, including road trips. And in this case, and in this road trip, "the end" meant a small sleepy backwater town in Fukui prefecture on the backside of Japan that up until a couple years was famous (and I use the term lightly) for little more than fishing and making cho...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, ramblings, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, friends, fukui, japan, obama, roadtrip, starbucks girl, yes we can
12.31.09

Helvetica + Moleskine

I first heard about the Helvetica Moleskines when they were offered at an exhibit on Helvetica at the La Foret museum in Harajuku a year or two ago. I really, really wanted to attend, but alas, this stupid thing they call work that lets me pay the bills prevented me from making it in time, and the exhibit closed, and with it my chance to lay hands on one of these precio...
Category Info: featured entry, general, main, miscellaneous, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: design, exhibits, moleskine, notebooks, stationary, typography
12.26.09

Nikko

I did manage to work in a quick trip to Nikko as a sort of consolation prize, which was nice. By the time we made it to Nikko (in the first week of December), most of the Autumn leaves had already fallen, which was kind of sad. Nikko is really beautiful in the Autumn, if you can survive the jaw dropping crowds, so I kind of regret that we didn't make it there during the prime...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: autumn, autumn leaves, friends, japan, lanterns, nikko, shrines, starbucks girl, temples, tochigi
12.14.09

2008 Autumn Roadtrip - Part VIII

So when I last left off (last month...), our fearless duo had just finished stuffing themselves full of momiji manju and grilled eel bentos and decided to head into Hiroshima city proper to do a little bit of sightseeing. Now, besides Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, the other two cities in Japan that probably most people in America have heard of are Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for obv...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, japan - the good, photography, ramblings, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, atomic dome, buildings, genbaku dome, hiroshima, peace memorial, peace park, roadtrip, ruins
10.17.09

2009 World Bicycle Messenger Championships

I'll be back with the next set of pictures from the Yokohama Birthday Bash and of course the next installment of the Great 2008 Cross Japan Autumn Roadtrip soon, but first I just wanted to post a few pictures from the 2009 World Bicycle Messenger Championships held in Odaiba, Tokyo last week. I had wanted to catch the track stand and skid competition...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the general, japan - the good, miscellaneous, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: 2009 bicycle messenger championship, bicycles, black and white, messengers, odaiba, photography, racing, tokyo
09.27.09

Yokohama Birthday Bash - Part I

It was my birthday the other day, and slightly depressed over slowly inching towards "old old panda" status (not yet, but it's coming...), I decided to go to Yokohama with some friends to celebrate and take my mind off the ever-present press of time. As frequent readers of the pandablog may know, I love roller coasters with a passion. I've been to most of the...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, miscellaneous, photography, recentnews, sky worship, travel
Tagged as: amusement, bethann, blue skies, buildings, friends, kasie, minatomirai, roller coasters, sarah, summer, sunshine, terrapin, urban, yin, yokohama, zach
09.23.09

2008 Autumn Roadtrip - Part VII

Okay, I have been putting this off long enough, but seeing as how it's already the beginning of Autumn, 2009, I probably ought finish the Autumn 2008 road trip series ASAP. Part of the reason that I've been delaying this post for so long is that in this particular installment, nothing particularly shocking, funny or crazy happened. Oh well. I guess I can't end up floating...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, animals, autumn, bento, capybara, deer, eel, hiroshima, itsukushima, japan, miyajima, roadtrip, starbucks girl
09.02.09

Tanabata Matsuri

As somewhat of a consolation prize, I decided to pop over to a neighboring prefecture to catch a Tanabata festival in a smaller town. Continuing the streak of amazing summer weather we've been having recently, the skies were just a stellar mix of rich blue hues, interspersed with fantastic white clouds and the whole affair dramatically lit from up above by a sum...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, miscellaneous, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: colorful, countryside, festivals, lanterns, summer, sunshine, tanabata, tanabata matsuri
08.09.09

570 Days of Summer - Sky Worship VII

The reason I even decided to calculate how many days of summer I've spent in these fair isles is that recently we've been having some absolutely kick ass summer weather in Tokyo (seriously, the skies have been ridiculously beautiful) and as I headed out the door to snap some pictures from the top of the Mori Tower in Roppongi Hills (one of my favourite photograph...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, photography, ramblings, recentnews, sky worship
Tagged as: cityscapes, japan, mori tower, photography, roppongi hills, skies, sky worship, summer, tokyo, urban
07.29.09

Summer Sunshine Redux

>Being half-panda, I'm not normally a huge fan of the sweltering summer heat (we have a tendency to melt into little quivering heaps on the floor). However, every once in a while I find myself venturing out despite the heat and usually when I do I'm rewarded with some great scenery, generally of Tokyo's gorgeous blue skies and concrete. This past week however, I thoug...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, miscellaneous, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: bethann, countryside, friends, japan, ricefields, summer, sunshine, tambo
07.19.09

2008 Autumn Roadtrip - Part VI

My exertion - which flung my donut-lion modesty towel from my body and set it floating about in the current towards an old man near me who instinctively recoiled in shock (whether due to its ratty cuteness or the obvious result its loss had on my modesty at the moment of maximum floating panda-outstretchedness) - proved to be successful (thank god) and I managed to secure a b...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, autum, bathing, dogo onsen, funny, japan, matsuyama, mountains, nature, onsen, pon de lion, shikoku, starbucks girl, uchiko
07.01.09

Sunday Skies - Sky Worship VI

Speaking of taking more pictures, I happened to be out in Shinjuku last Sunday doing that whole "make the most out of my time in Japan" thing when I lucked into some of the most beautiful blue skies I have seen to date. I say "lucked into" because the weather forecast from the previous day said it was supposed to be gloomy and rainy all day - and it was anything bu...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, pandas, photography, recentnews, sky worship
Tagged as: blue skies, buildings, lifestyle, photography, shinjuku, skies, sky worship, takadanobaba, tokyo
06.11.09

2008 Autumn Roadtrip - Part V

Japanese occasionally describe clean, fresh air by saying "空気が美味しい" (kuuki ga oishii) which literally means "the air is delicious." I never understood that, because you know, you want to eat delicious things, and who wants to eat air? Well. After driving up into the mountains for about an hour, it suddenly began to make sense. Because my friends, the air up there...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, autumn, iya valley, japan, mountains, nature, shikoku, starbucks girl, vine bridges
05.12.09

2008 Autumn Roadtrip - Part IV

After was seemed an eternity of sitting in the unforgiving darkness, a disembodied voice floated out over the intercom, announcing the end of business hours and instructing anybody stupid enough to pay 500 yen to see these imaginary non-whirlpools to come to the front of the gate, or else face being locked in for the night and forced to ponder over their gullibili...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, autumn, awajishima, castles, himeji, japan, naruto uzushio, roadtrip, starbucks girl, whirlpools
04.25.09

Quick Update

Howdy. Just in case you're wondering what's with the drop off in posting frequency over the past month, let me assure you it's not because I'm abandoning the blog, but rather because I'm working hard to improve it. I know I've been talking about a site update for months now, but this time I really mean it. A 95% complete and functional version is running on my development ...
Category Info: featured entry, general, miscellaneous, photography, recentnews, webcoding
Tagged as: geekery, redesign, webdesign, website
04.05.09

Tiny Planets

Spring is slowly making its way to Japan (even though today was a freezing cold day), and I decided to take advantage of the nice weather last week to make some so-called "tiny planets" pictures. Most of these pictures were taken in the vast Showa Memorial Park in Tachikawa, out West of Tokyo. You might remember this...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, technology
Tagged as: blue skies, photography, showa no mori, tachikawa, technology, tiny planets, tokyo, tricks
03.25.09

Ameyoko

I'll post the next installment of the Great Western Japan Autumn Roadtrip soon, but for now, a quick interlude of some rainy pictures from Ameyoko in the Ueno neighborhood of Tokyo....
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: ameyoko, dark, gray, rainy, shitamachi, tokyo, ueno
03.01.09

2008 Autumn Roadtrip - Part III

...aaaand we're back. So when we last left our intrepid heros, exhausted from their desperate attempts to deflect police (well, postal) attention to our secret money transfers to support the North Korean nuclear program, they had fallen asleep early in their ryokan, dreaming the fitful dreams of the falsely accused....
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, blue skies, fushimi inaritaishi, japan, kyoto, roadtrip, starbucks girl, tofukuji
02.15.09

Cold Tokyo Days

It's been cold and sort of gloomy off and on recently in Tokyo. There have been some intermittent days of sunshine as well, but for the most part it's just been that long, dull, slow drag through the middle of January. I know I haven't updated in forever, but that's because I've been working on the grand site redesign I've been talking about since last year. ...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the general, photography, recentnews, webcoding
Tagged as: cold, friends, selenium, starbucks girl, tokyo
02.02.09

2008 Autumn Road Trip - Part II

When I last left off, I had just covered the first day of our trip, spent merrily walking along the quiet streets of Kyoto at night. That night we retired to our ryokan and slept well, as we had a plan to wake up early the next morning and make it over to the Arashiyama area of Kyoto....
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, arashiyama, autumn, blue skies, kyoto, roadtrip, ryokan, starbucks girl
01.18.09

2008 Autumn Road Trip - Part I

Okay, so I know it's been forever and a year since I updated but I have a reason - I've been hard at work on the site redesign I keep talking about - it's about 70% of the way done and I hope to have it live in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned. But you're not here to hear about that - you're here to read about the great 2008 Autumn Road Trip, right? So...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, autumn, kyoto, nightshots, roadtrip, starbucks girl
12.28.08

2008 Autumn Roadtrip - Introduction

So I'm back from my road trip. It was an amazing and fun time. Seeing Japan in all its Autumnal splendor is really something. I have tons of pictures (like, thousands) to go through, so I'll be posting them little by little over the course of the next few weeks. But for now, alas, I have to go deal with my strangely musty-sm...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, autumn
12.01.08

Showa Memorial Park

It's Autumn! And on top of that, only 4 more days until I set off on the great Western-Japan Autumn Road Trip 2008! I guess I should probably start thinking about packing and stuff, huh? Until then, to tide you over, here are some pictures from a recent trip out to Showa Memorial Park just west of Tokyo. I love this park - it's so huge and you would...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: autumn, photography, showa memorial park, tachikawa, tokyo
11.16.08

Halloween Panda 2008

Sorry about the insipid Myspace-bathroom-mirror-shot quality of the affair above. Sigh. What can I say? I miss Halloween back in the states. The smell of pumpkin pie, apple cider and autumn leaves... carving jack-o-lanterns and dressing up in crazy costumes and parading through State Street (whilst trying to avoid the ...
Category Info: general, miscellaneous, musings, pandas, photography, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: halloween, lightroom, michaelpanda, myspace, narcissism, photography, self-portrait
11.01.08

Tokyo Throwaway Pics

Originally I had a moment of photographic inspiration this evening whilst taking a break from fighting my computer (Adobe InDesign to be specific) in an attempt to make a few hundred name tags for a seminar I have to organize for work. Normally this is a straightforward data merge operation, but due to a comedic series of mishaps, this task has ended up taking me the be...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the general, miscellaneous, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: blue skies, buildings, photography, R. Kelly, tokyo, upshots
10.22.08

The Hard Light Blowout and Nuno Napkin Extravaganza

You're probably wondering about the title of today's post. Well, I've been playing around with "hard lighting" in some of my photos to give them a darker, more atmospheric feeling. I've accumulated a few over the past couple of months, and decided to post them all in one big entry so I can clear the deck for new photos in future posts. Hence the "hard light blowout".</p...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the funny, japan - the good, main, photography, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: hard light, nuno napkin, photography, sanitary pad, tokyo, video blog
10.14.08

Shinjuku Birthday Panda ver. Blue Skies

Yeah, so I haven't updated in forever...! What else is new? So what has happened recently, you ask? Well, for one thing, I became another year older. Sadly, I am starting to run out of birthdays in which I can still refer to myself as a "20-something" year old. That's not so good. Adding to the glumness of it all, if my plans for next year still hold, it means ...
Category Info: current events, featured entry, general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: birthday, blue skies, buildings, shinjuku, tokyo, upshots
09.21.08

Monorail Blue Skies (Sky Worship V)

Another summer day, another beautiful round of blue skies in Japan. There's a few pictures and a quick blurb about photography tricks in this post, but if you want some other content, I just posted another article talking about an upcoming road trip this autumn. Go check it out by click here, or else checki...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, sky worship, technology
Tagged as: blue skies, camera tricks, circular polariser, geekery, monorail, photography
09.02.08

The Great Western Japan Road Trip 2008 - Planning

Another year, another road trip. As I start winding down what my be my last year in Japan, I decided I very much wished to have one trip through the country in all its stunning, beautiful Autumnal glory (the only season to travel in Japan, my friends)....
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, technology, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, camera equipment, geekery, japan, photography, roadtrip
09.01.08

August Break

What has panda been up to the past couple of weeks since his last update? Well, it involves delicious chocolate cake, dodging baseballs to the face and power flexing in Starbucks. Interested? (umm, I hope so, or else this will be a boring entry! *laughs*) Let's get into it! ...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, miscellaneous, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: aoyama, architect cafe, baseball, friends, risa, starbucks, stephanie, tokyo, tokyo dome
08.22.08

Of cicadas and summer

Yes, I suppose it is time once again for more pictures of more blue, blue skies. What can I say? Summer turns out to be a good season for shooting pretty blue skies. It also turns out to be a pretty horrible season if, like me, you are the kind of person who hates cicadas. But I'm getting ahead of myself......
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the funny, photography, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: air conditioning, cicadas, hot, man versus insect, michaelpanda, summer, video blog
08.07.08

Of Pandas, Pears and Home-made Butter...

Okay, it's hot outside and I'm lazy, so let's try something new here and go with the first ever panda videoblog - a rambling, laconic dissertation about pears, supermarkets and making your own butter at home (in case you ever wanted to)....
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the funny, japan - the general, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: butter, cooking, food, fruit, how-to, japan, michaelpanda, milk, pears, summer, video blog
07.20.08

Another Week...

So, once again, another hot, humid summer week with nothing special to blog about except the rather exceptional fact that I am still alive. Exceptional, that is, because I am half panda and there are few things pandas dislike more than hot, humid, soul crushing Japanese summers. Ugh. You'd think that after 5+ years I'd be used to it. You'd be wrong. Jesus god, what...
Category Info: featured entry, general, miscellaneous, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: camera tricks, cooking, food, geekery, kitchen, pasta, photography, summer
07.13.08

Nighttime in the Hood

It's been a while since I've posted some nighttime shots, so here are a few I took whilst walking around The Hood over the weekend....
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: nightshots, photography, the hood
06.30.08

Wednesday Night...

Just another Wednesday night in The Hood. Nothing particularly special to write about in this post, so for now, enjoy these random photographs. (and yes, I know I need to wash my windows in my kitchen!! haha...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the general, miscellaneous, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: kitchen, photography, sunset, the hood
06.26.08

Painting with Light

Thank you all for your kind wishes in the last post. I really appreciate it! ...So I took the LSAT on Sunday. In short, I don't think I did as well as I did on the practice exams, but all......
Category Info: featured entry, general, miscellaneous, photography, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
06.18.08

Sick Panda

So after making it through almost an entire year without getting sick, of course now - NOW - one week before the LSAT...! - I have to get struck down by a terrible cold and fever the likes of which......
Category Info: featured entry, general, miscellaneous, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
06.08.08

Tokyo Blue Skies II (Sky Worship IV)

Damn, that title could have used some work, huh? *laughs* At first I was going to call it something like "tokyo upshots" but decided against it because that might bring in exactly the wrong kind of intarnets traffic... (see, 'upshots'......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, sky worship
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
06.01.08

Akihabara Wideangle

First shots from the wide angle Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM. Sorry for the lack of interesting subject matter, this was kind of an off-the-cuff series of snaps as I walked around Akihabara. Pedestrians headed home after a long days......
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the general, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
05.25.08

More Zoo Pictures

I should probably start a category just for closeup pictures of animals making funny faces, because there are few things as amusing to me as animals staring into cameras. I don't know why. Is that weird? There is not much......
Category Info: featured entry, general, photography, recentnews, webcoding
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
05.17.08

Mistar Parrot

I spent all weekend studying for the LSAT, translating documents for work, mirroring my blog and production server onto my local machine (with varying degrees of success) and taking pictures of animals. Since only the last one is of any......
Category Info: featured entry, general, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
05.07.08

My life at present

This is my life everyday. Sigh. I work 8 to 10 hours, then I come home, try to cook some dinner, and then sit down to face this: Trying to study for two major standardised tests while working full time......
Category Info: featured entry, general, musings, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
04.28.08

Vietnamese Chicken Panda

So I wasn't going to post any more food pictures, but this was just too delicious to pass up. Last Sunday I woke up with the strange urge to buy the (Product)RED version of the iPod shuffle for some reason.......
Category Info: featured entry, general, pandas, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
04.20.08

What a panda eats

Did you ever wonder what pandas eat in a day? Okay, probably not. But I haven't updated in about 10 days, and the only pictures I've taken recently are of food, so I guess that's today's post topic. Breakfast Kiwi......
Category Info: featured entry, general, miscellaneous, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
04.12.08

Nighttime Sakura

Nighttime sakura on a rainy, drenched sunday evening in Tokyo. Can you believe this is the only shot of the cherry blossoms I got all weekend? The irony of it is, last weekend was the last opportunity to see the......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
04.01.08

Top of the Morning

It seems like such a shame to spend 30 minutes dressing up nice and getting ready for work in the morning just to head out the door and have it all ruined by the combination of wind, rain and heat......
Category Info: featured entry, miscellaneous, musings, pandas, photography, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
03.24.08

Mashiko

A bit out of chronological order, but a few weeks ago a friend and I went up to Mashiko in Tochigi prefecture on a day trip package offered through JR. Tochigi itself is famous for several things, not least of......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, japan - the good, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
03.13.08

Snow Panda

Haha, in all the years I've kept this blog, I don't think I've posted as many photos of myself as I have in this entry (and the previous one). Is the panda blog turning into a venue for indulging my......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, japan - the good, pandas, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
03.09.08

Vainpanda

So the lovely Miss YJ sent me this equally lovely cashmere scarf out of the blue last month and I promised I would send her a picture of myself vamping deliciously for the camera with it. And now, since I......
Category Info: featured entry, general, miscellaneous, pandas, photography, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
02.26.08

Castles and Sunsets

I happened to have my camera with me as I was walking home yesterday, so I decided to snap a few pictures of that perfect time in day when the sky rapidly changes from the brightness of afternoon to the......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
02.11.08

Panda Strap

Alas, it's been a busy week so I've not had a chance to write a post yet. Maybe this weekend? That is, after I decide whether or not to apply to law school next year. A deadline that is literally......
Category Info: general, miscellaneous, pandas, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
01.25.08

Blue Skies over Tokyo (Sky Worship III)

Blue skies over Tokyo Yesterday was a brilliant blue day in Tokyo so I went for a walk with a friend to Harajuku to attend to some Hatsumode-ing, about 2 weeks too late. After we were done praying for happiness,......
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, sky worship
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
01.15.08

Happy New Year 2008

Happy New Year 2008 everyone! It's the year of the Mouse, for whatever that's worth, so umm, I hope you all have a great mouse-themed year and don't get too sloshed with the bubbly tonight ;) I'm in a good......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, main, miscellaneous, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
01.01.08

Farmlife

I actually have been slacking a little bit when it comes to posting, not because I have a dearth of things to write about (quite the opposite, actually) but because a) I had a big test to study for earlier......
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
12.26.07

Fingerprinting

Note: I'm sorry, but there are no pictures in this post. It is also very very long, though broken down into sections for easier reading. Unlike most of the fare on the pandablog, this deals with a subject that......
Category Info: current events, featured entry, japan - the bad, japan - the ugly, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
12.07.07

Post coming soon...

There is in fact a post coming - I'm sorry for the delay and for not having commented on people's blogs recently. Unlike my usual inane panda-related banter, this post deals with something serious and important to me and I......
Category Info: general, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
11.13.07

Nekobukuro Kitty Kats

There have actually been some very disturbing things happening here in Japan land (not to me personally, but at the political/civil liberties level) that have put me in a severely depressed mood recently and are making me seriously - like,......
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the general, japan - the good, miscellaneous, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
11.04.07

Tatami Nap Panda

Mmmmm.... I could nap in this spot of sun forever. I'm going to Nekobukuro later on today for the hell of it, so I figured I might as well get my practice in cat-napping before I depart. What a beautiful......
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, miscellaneous, pandas, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
10.21.07

To all the Rooms Ive loved before

So the other day I was flipping through one of my old boxes of letters and and pictures from years past (which reminds me that there are still some of you who owe me letters from the Great Michaelpanda Spring......
Category Info: featured entry, general, memories, miscellaneous, musings, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
10.13.07

The Time Travelers Panda

Thank you all for the supar kind birthday wishes! :) An update is coming soon, just as soon as I finish up this busy week. And by "busy week" I mean watching nonstop zombie and/or vampire movies (seriously, I've watched......
Category Info: general, miscellaneous, photography, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
09.26.07

Birthday Scarf Panda

There's still a part three to the Great Tohoku Road Trip 2007 (parts I and II can be found here and here, respectively). But it's taking me a while to get to it since I've been kinda down recently, and......
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the general, miscellaneous, musings, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
09.16.07

The Great Tohoku Road Trip - Part II

After our unsettling experience putzing around the smelly Gates of Hell, we cracked open the guide book and tried to figure out where to go next. "Hey panda, I've got an idea." piped up KC as we headed away from......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the funny, japan - the general, japan - the good, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
09.02.07

The Great Tohoku Road Trip - Interlude

Yes, yes I know, you all want to know (omg hi2u mistar presumptious panda!) what happened next after we left the stinky sulfurous gates of hell. I'm working on part II but at the moment have writers block and a......
Category Info: featured entry, general, miscellaneous, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
08.29.07

That's why I jump...

We'll get back to the Great Tohoku Road Trip 2007 in just a second, but first a brief interlude of some jumping pictures from Bart-in-Japan's final hurrah in, errr, Japan. Click to embiggen. Hey, what about trying it front-lit? Click......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
08.20.07

The Great Tohoku Road Trip - Part I

If there is one thing that KC and I have learned from our past adventures, it's that neither of us are much of "planners" when it comes to travel. Our general philosophy is to tack down the intended time of......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
08.15.07

The Great 2007 Tohoku Road Trip

As mentioned in my last entry, after expedia "you haven't got prayer of making your flight" dot com decided to (yoghurt) poop all over our carefully planned Mongolia expedition, my friend and I decided to make the best of a......
Category Info: photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
08.06.07

How Expedia.com made me hate Yoghurt

So as I had posted about a month and a half ago, I was supposed - supposed being the operative phrase here - to be leaving for Mongolia with my erstwhile travel companion this Friday. In a clear example of......
Category Info: featured entry, general, ramblings, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
07.25.07

Are you getting fatter...?

So last Friday I found myself stuck in a meeting all day from 8 to 5. Now this would be bad enough, but combine it with the fact that it is the rainy season - and hence hot, sticky and......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the bad, musings, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
07.15.07

Public Drunkenness at 50mm f1.8

Whatever I thought it would be like, I'm pretty sure I didn't think it would turn out like it did - my mind going over the laundry list of things I had to do to get ready for work tomorrow, my heart heavy with the thought of having to walk to work in a wool suit in the hot sweaty mugginess of the Japanese rainy season, my eyes just moments prior flicking over train schedules to find the fastest route home after getting off at Tokyo so as to avoid time consuming transfers and giving myself a c...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, memories, musings, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
07.02.07

Mos Burger Update

So I promised an update this week and here, so as technically not to break my promise, is a poast that I guess qualifies as an update. I'm currently sitting in my friend's apartment up in Ishikawa prefecture, a little......
Category Info: featured entry, miscellaneous, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
06.30.07

Still alive... and at the beach

Yeah, I know it's been 15 days without an update. I am still alive. I just had an intensely fun but seriously sleep deprived weekend (3 hours in 3 days or so). I need to sleep now. More pictures and......
Category Info: featured entry, miscellaneous, photography, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
06.24.07

Morning Tea

A bit too busy to write a full length post today, but one will be forthcoming soon. In the interim, a picture of some creepy half-naked Kewpie Mayo Babies that suddenly appeared on my breakfast table the other day. And......
Category Info: featured entry, general, miscellaneous, pandas, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
06.09.07

Mongolia Panda

So one of my lovely Kiwi readers (have I told yow how sexy I think the New Zealand accent is?) from the Land of the Long White Cloud left the following comment on my previous blog poast: this isn't really......
Category Info: featured entry, general, miscellaneous, pandas, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
06.01.07

Lindsay, the Telemarket-stalker

What is this book, you might be asking yourself? Well, let's look at the cover: The Complete Fake History of a Bunch of People Who Don't Actually Exist I'd like to think of it as the first entry in a......
Category Info: featured entry, general, memories, miscellaneous, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
05.24.07

More Monorail Love

New post coming soon, as in tomorrow, hopefully. But for now, here's another picture of a monorail to tide you over. I really should make a category called "monorail worship" over on the side ;)...
Category Info: featured entry, photography, recentnews, sky worship
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
05.22.07

Picture Poast

Thus dear readers, I am afraid I shall have to tempt you with the tease shot of the mystery book above: The Complete Fake History of a Bunch of People Who Don't Actually Exist, and then segue into the rest of this post, which I am afraid will consist solely of pictures that have nothing to do with the one directly above or below. But as soon as I get back from this meeting - provided I survive - I promise I wi...
Category Info: featured entry, miscellaneous, photography, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
05.16.07

Crayon Post, the Time Lapse Video

Somebody asked me how long it took to make the Crayon Post I put up the other day - well as it happens, I was wondering the same thing at the outset, so I had set up my camera to......
Category Info: general, japan - the general, photography, recentnews, technology
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
05.04.07

Panda and the Eau de Gooch

...this person - and I've had a lot of time to think about this and what metaphors to use here - is surrounded by an odoriferous vapour cloud of doom so horrible, so vomit gag inducing, it's like the stank of a sweaty salt ham stuck inside a pile of old wet moldy hard cover books....! I mean... it gets you.... gets you right in the back of the throat - it's like... as if... I dunno - like.... a thousand stanky <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?t...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the funny, miscellaneous, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
04.30.07

Dining Table, what what!

Table cloths, placemats and varnish - these things are artificial filters that barricade the connection between us and the immediacy of the moment. Naught but the trappings of pretension, they defy the purpose of buying furniture in the first place - to use it and to let it serve its purpose. I don't want to stop to think to put down a coaster, or spend hours trying to lay down the perfect streak-free coat of varnish and stain - I just want to kick off my shoes, set down a plain wh...
Category Info: featured entry, general, miscellaneous, musings, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
04.24.07

Night Photos and Naughty E-mails

Which brings us back to the present, and this gigantic very explicit pornographic image plastered on my screen, right smack dab in the middle of a crowded Japanese office...! "EERGLPPPFFFHHH!!!!!" I squeak out an incomprehensible sound as my mind begins to register what the frick is happening. "OH MY CHRIST!!!" "OMIGODOMIGODOMIGOD!!!" I stammer-yell to myself as I realise I'm on a Mac and that shortcut doesn't work. Instinctively I move to hit "window" plus "l" whic...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the funny, photography, recentnews, technology
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
04.17.07

Applepanda - The Switch

Okay lots to talk about so let's get right into it. Last Wednesday I was at work tip-typing away hard core trying to plow through all the stuff I had to finish before the end of the day when my......
Category Info: featured entry, ramblings, recentnews, technology
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
04.10.07

Boots and Letter Campaign

Hey happy April Fools day! Actually I completely forgot it was April fools day until my Japanese friend reminded me the other day. Being in Japan for an extended period of time makes everything seem like a dream - you......
Category Info: featured entry, general, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
04.01.07

Hakone

So the weather here in Kanto has been slowly sputtering and lurching towards balmier conditions week by week. The fact that it has been an unusually warm winter - it didn't snow even once! - means that we can enjoy......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
03.24.07

Panda vs. The Bathtub

Okay so here's the deal. I am not a very smart person. This is a humbling admission to make, but my track record: driving on the wrong side of the road, going into creepy buildings with strangers, blindly wandering into......
Category Info: featured entry, general, miscellaneous, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
03.12.07

Inappropriate...!

I wince at the t-word. People, I am not a "manly man". I have a hard time talking about things like this with other men. If you've ever watched the TV show Scrubs, then you'll know what I mean when I say I'm like Elliot Reed when it comes to sex: shirt on, lights off and my idea of talking dirty is substituting "bajingo" for what would normally be an awkward throat clearing and a vague gesturing of eyes towards the ground (w...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the funny, ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
03.08.07

Post coming soon...

Hello all. I know it's been a long time since my last update. A new post is coming soon. Basically, I've got some pictures I'd like to put up for one post, but the only post I can think to......
Category Info: ramblings, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
03.01.07

Setsubun - the face smashing festival

Are you imagining that phrase? Now while keeping that image in your head, slowly replace those words until it becomes "like hurling heavy beanbags at immobile foreigners trapped in a crowd about 25 feet away from you from an elevated wooden platform." And then add "oh and you're a gigantic muscular sumo wrestler." It was, as they say, all fun and games until someone got hurt, and that someone would have been the random old lady who took one to the dome with a rather sharp and alarming plas...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the funny, japan - the good, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
02.11.07

A Panda in London (France Pt. II)

As you may recall from my last entry, the French have somewhat of a laissez-faire attitude towards things like immigration or knowing who's in their country at any given time. In their opinion, procedures such as "passport control" or "customs" are really nothing more than minor irritants impinging upon their cigar-smoking, cheese-consuming time, not to be taken seriously, or perhaps even done away with all together...
Category Info: featured entry, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
02.04.07

France Adventure Pt. I

Okay. So I should probably just change the name of this blog to "Watch Panda take pictures of shit at night", because once again this poast is sporting a bunch of night pictures - and it won't be the last......
Category Info: featured entry, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
01.24.07

Narita-san Temple

Wow, so the first post of 2007, huh? I suppose it's a bit cheap that it's gonna be primarily a photo entry, but as previously mentioned I'm heading off to Paris this Thursday - Thursday people - and I've not......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
01.02.07

Emperors Birthday

I look at her. Panda: "Umm, do you need to check my camera or the camera case?" Officer: (looking back at me) "Oh, your camera? No, it’s okay, you can take photos inside!" Panda: "...." Officer: "Just walk that way for the body check and then you can get in." Shrugging, I take my messenger bag and sling it around my shoulder, safe (and entirely perturbed) at the though that had I wanted to sneak a cou...
Category Info: current events, featured entry, japan - the general, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
12.29.06

Christmas Eve, 2006

Ahhh, is it really Christmas Eve? I'll tell you what, Christmas in Tokyo just isn't the quite same as I remember it back in Wisconsin... the glass skyscrapers, endless stretches of twinkling concrete draped urban jungle... the amazing lack of......
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
12.25.06

No Chicken, No Life

Sign spotted outside a downtown Izakaya (Japanese-style bar). Hard to argue with this sentiment I suppose! Speaking of chickens everlasting - (actually, this has nothing to do with eterna chickans, that was a horrible transition) - I am planning on......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the funny, miscellaneous, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
12.21.06

The Roundup

So as promised, here I am with a Roundup post to try and collect all the little tidbits of randomness that happened over the last three weeks I wasn't posting. Thus, without further ado... Banana Republic Whore There's like $50......
Category Info: featured entry, miscellaneous, ramblings, recentnews, webcoding
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
12.17.06

Early Morning Photography

Off to Tokyo for some random adventures today. But first, some equally random early morning photos. Cufflinks and collar stays... God damn I love tiny furniture... This picture looked better uncropped. (Click here for uncropped version at different angle) Sigh.........
Category Info: featured entry, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
12.16.06

I'm not dead...

I am not dead. Now that that's out of the way, let me apologize for having not updated for nearly a month. I have just been super busy and super sick for the past three weeks, which, when coupled......
Category Info: current events, featured entry, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
12.10.06

Thundar Dolphan!

The first thing it did out of the gate was skyrocket right into the eye of the furious storm far up above us at a sharp degree angle towards what we later learned was a height of 262 feet, the 5th tallest in the world. It was a dark and stormy night, much like Snoopy used to write, but unlike a Peanuts cartoon, the sky took on increasingly darker and more menacing shades as we were ratcheted into the heavens. The flimsy orange low sidewalls of the car suddenly felt incredibly inadequate and...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the funny, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
11.14.06

The Great Bike Theft of 2006

[In My Head]:: "Somehow, Scotland Yard, I'm not holding out much hope you're gonna find my bike next week, let alone in 4 or 5 years given that your investigative technique to date seems to consist of drawing a map in crayon on a crumpled piece of paper and measuring the distance to random buildings. Not exactly C.S.I. up in this motherfucker, is it?" [Out Loud]::"...ummm, if you find my bike in 6 years, you can just keep it as I'll probably have bought a new one by th...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the bad, japan - the funny, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
10.28.06

Kamakura

We finally stopped to ask a kindly mechanic who looked quite busy doing some sort of power drilling/water cooled saw-milling thing which in retrospect we probably shouldn't have interrupted. He looked at our map for a second, then put to light all our confusion with one simple phrase: mechanic: "You're on the completely opposite side of this map" me: "Now by 'completely opposite side' you mean…?" mechanic: (pointing the way we just...
Category Info: japan - the good, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
10.17.06

Sky Worship

People sometimes ask why I like tall buildings. This picture from the Mori Tower pretty much sums it all up. More sky worship after the jump......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, sky worship
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
10.01.06

Nice n Easy Sign Language

Part of the ease, I suppose, is that sign language isn't like "regular" language - you don't make sentences proper, you just sign the most "important" parts: subject, objects, main verb, etc. You don't need to worry about all those other bothersome parts of language that make you sound like a retarded 3 year old monkey when you speak (what natives refer to as "particles", "adverbs", "tenses", etc.), and given that my spoken Japanese basically goes something along the lines of "Me. Hungry...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the funny, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
09.22.06

I walk away...

Moving to Tokyo(ish) was the right decision, I know. But it's hard to think of closing the door on a 3 year chapter of your life. I don't mind moving - I've done it regularly ever since I can first......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the sad, memories, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
08.19.06

Bicycle Misadventures

So I'm back in Japan. Whoo-hoo. Actually a lot of things have been going on here recently which have contributed to me not posting much of anything. Let's start with my bike. The piece of crap I have to ride......
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the funny, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
08.16.06

Leaving on a jet plane...

Hard to imagine, but in about 24 hours I'm going to be smelling the fertile farm fields of Wisconsin for the first time in three years. It's just for a short time, then back to Japan before it even has......
Category Info: featured entry, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
07.26.06

Rocking out...

If you watch the video carefully, you'll notice that several times I accidentally cross into the oncoming lane of traffic. Fortunately there weren't many cars on the road, or else I'm sure we would have died. You may also notice that we very clearly don't know the words to the song. But that doesn't stop us, since if there's one thing living in a country where karaoke is the national past time has taught us, it's that even if you don't know the lyrics to a song, as long as you sing...
Category Info: miscellaneous, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
04.20.06

Great Takayama Road Trip Part I

It's spring break! With no big plans in the works, my ever faithful travel companion and I decided that a quickie road trip up to Takayama in nearby Gifu Prefecture would be the perfect way to spend a Saturday. What's......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
04.03.06

Sun and Rain...

It was simultaneously beautifully sunny and gloomily rainy one day earlier in the week. How crazy! Since I'm suffering from massive writers block lately, I'm afraid you're just going to have to settle for a picture post! The day started......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
03.26.06

Asbestos breathing Panda

His level of alarm seems a bit low considering I've just raised the specter of a potent airborne carcinogen floating about our immediate environment. Since the man clearly has paperwork to do and no time to devote to worrying about asbestos, I bring up the point with several other people, only to be similarly rebuffed. The over-arching theme seemed to be a conclusion that "if there was truly something dangerous in the air, we wouldn't be exposed to it." Who or what</em...
Category Info: japan - the general, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
03.18.06

Kyoto Road Trip

This picture was taken atop the mountain at Iwatayama Monkey Park (see below) by a man carrying a broom and a slingshot. We were actually just looking at the monkeys when he snatched the camera from our hands and shoved us over towards the couple of fanged screaming simians you see on the branch behind us. "You stand there. I take picture." "...b...but, those monkeys have fangs...!" we pro...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
02.28.06

Don't Speak

But what about the next one? And the one after that? And after that? I can't catch them all, and the knowledge weighs heavily on my mind. When we're young we can afford the luxury of constant self analysis and the comforting confines of reality, but the older we get, the more we have to accept the fact that an increasing amount of our world paradigm will be predicated not on fact, but on fictions we have unwittingly invented throughout our lives. I feel that disconnect from reality is en...
Category Info: featured entry, musings, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
01.31.06

Bumper Cars

So it's been continuing to snow on and on for the past two weeks and things are starting to get dramatic. And by "dramatic" I mean "I keep crashing into shit left and right". It's always been a point of......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the bad, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
12.24.05

Snow Tires

"AAAARRRGHHH!!!" I curse, frustrated by both my failure to stop my car's backward careening slide and inability to figure out what the hell "a vague deception of a dying day" means. I'm getting desperate - any second another car is going to come around the bend below me and I'm going to crash straight backwards into them. Or worse yet, I'm going to slide right into the living room of the house at the bottom of the hill. I struggle to remember the chapter in my driver's ed book en...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the funny, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
12.20.05

The Cliffs of Death

WHAT IN THE NAME OF THE MOTHERF-ING BLACK JESUS WAS THAT!?" I bellow as my car starts to spin out of control, mud splashing up on my windshield, shocks creaking to absorb foot deep slime-filled potholes, the sound of ten thousand tiny gravel meteors flung up by spinning wheels at 70kph streaking through the air and denting the hell out of the car body. Tennis jolts straight upright in her seat desperately grasping for poor monkah (sent flying through the air from his vantage point on ...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the funny, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
11.20.05

Autumn Thursday

It was a beautiful autumn Thursday yesterday and due to a fortuitous coincidence in my schedule, I happened to be free for most of it. Somewhat on the road to recovering from the horrible cold that laid me out......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
11.11.05

The great orange hair disaster

Looking in the mirror the other day, I noticed my hair was getting pretty shaggy. Apparently I wasn't the only one who thought so, though, as I had heard (in the typical Japanese fashion) from a co-worker of a......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the funny, recentnews
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
11.06.05

[Back to top]

.