Mast in Japan

Going all Euro

2008-02-19T16:39:00.010+09:00

So, after leaving Japan I flew to Munich to meet up with Paul and then catch a train to Austria. Paul had a conference in St. Christoph Arlberg in Austria so we decided to meet up a week earlier to go snowboarding as the conference was right at the bottom of the mountain. After that week, Paul went to the conference and I was an "accompanying person" and basically just did more snowboarding!

This was my carry on luggage from Osaka to Munich, Europe has real strict rules about taking liquids on and I had a bottle of Shochu in my backpack and this had to check in my carry on backpack, so they gave me a rubbish sack to put my stuff in, wicked.

This place is MASSIVE

The powder is awesome

This is an 8 seater covered lifts with HEATED seats!!!

Jumping into snow is neato super rad fun times

Bye bye snow

Olympic ski jump in Innesbruck, shit!
Interesting tree art, Sardagna Italy

Cheese/salami/bread all bought from the market, mmmmmm

Venice

We spent Christmas with Laura's friends, both of whose boyfriends were chefs, thus we had a crazy massive feast.

After Venice we rented a car named Skyrat, Skyrat by day but Discorat by night!!

Verona
This hot chocolate was so thick the spoon stayed upright.

New Years, Genova (we actually did leave the hotel, honest!)

In Milan they do this thing where you go into a bar and buy a drink and then they have all this real nice "snacky" type food like cheese and meats and stuff, its awesome!

Milan

Hokkaido fun snowboarding times

2008-02-13T08:18:00.012+09:00

After, leaving my home of Kurume to go back to NZ I embarked on a big adventure on the way home which consisted of seeing many people and going to many places, the first being meeting Dom, and also Trinh and my old student Emiko, in Tokyo then going to Niseko Hokkaido to go snowboarding and then head down to Osaka to meet up with Tomomi and finally fly out to Europe to meet up with Paul.....

I was only in Tokyo for 2 days and most of that time was spent in these places:

Then it was off to Hokkaido!

Me and Dom with Yotei san in the background, Hirafu as!

Lets Go!

Ichiban codomo crew ONLY rides though the trees in untracked powder, ONLY!!

Mountain services in Japan are much nicer than in NZ, imagine chilling here with your boots OFF and eating a delicious bowl of Miso ramen and then possibly having a lie down on the tatami before heading outside for some more knee deep powder tree runs....oh, its terrible......

After lunch funtimes, yup thats my track, the ONLY track

Every night we went to the Onsen (Japanese thermal hot pool) which was REQUIRED after a hard days boarding, I took no photos there (cos its a whole bunch of naked men!) but the Onsen was awesome, outside with snow covered rocks around it, some nights it was snowing when we were in the Onsen, super awesome. This photo is taken walking down the mysterious road going towards the Onsen.

This is the main street of Hirafu village where we stayed, just past those traffic lights is where the lowest lift was and our lodge was just behind me and down the road, only a 5 minute walk! Snowing looks good at night.

It often snowed REALLY hard at night.

Inside our lodge, fire going strong thanks to Aussie Koppa! We stayed with these dudes called Niseko Powder Holidays, it wasnt very expensive and was SUPER good, real nice lodge, real onto it lodge managers who helped you out with anything AND cooked you eggs in the morning!

Bye bye Hirafu Niseko Hokkaido, see you again real soon k?

Then after a MAMMOTH travelling expedition of buses/planes/train/shinkansen/subways we made it to Osaka and magically met up with Tomomi somehow even though I had disconnected my phone at that point. Apparently this place where this photo is taken is a famous place in Osaka....

Rollin' rollin' rollin'

After going to the 280yen Izakaya we of course went to Karaoke! This was/is very important especially since it was my very last night in Japan.

So yeah, that was Hokkaido etc, next up, Austria!

Mast Dance Practice (another mix)

2007-10-27T02:01:00.000+09:00

hi there again, so heres another mix I did at about the same time way back in 2005, its dancehall mostly but also some reggae. you can practice dancing to it like these bad ass Chinese kids! Have a neato time listening of downloading.

Tracklisting:
1. Dean Fraser Dean in Chinatown
2. Home T Don’t throw it all away
3. Yammie Bowlo Isn’t she lovely
4. Don Carlos Laser beam
5. T.O.K. Shining star
6. T.O.K. She makes me weak
7. Sizzla Smokin’ herb
8. Elephant man Mad instruments new dance
9. Elephant man kopa dance
10. Elephant man Father elephant
11. Sean Paul Straight up!!
12. Tami Chin Hot!!
13. Destiny’s Child Lose my breath (Kopa mix)
14. Sizzla Pure love
15. King Tubby I trim the barber
16. Sizzla Jah never fail I
17. Admiral Bailey Think me did done
18. Damien ‘Jr. Gong’ Marley Welcome to jamrock
19. Barrington Levy & Beenie Man Murderation
20. Beenie Man Row like a boat
21. Beenie Man Nuh promise
22. Zahair Nuh theif
23. Skitta Pop up
24. Sizzla Rich and beautiful
25. Elephant Man Get mean
26. T.O.K. Unknown language
27. Cobra Wuk date
28. Mr. Vegas Pull up
29. General B/Lexxus??? Taxi cab
30. Beenie Man Good ohh
31. Kelis Milkshake
32. Sean Paul Feel alright
33. Elephant Man Hate mi
34. Jagwa feat Angel Doolas Worldwide
35. Taz feat Voice Mail Gangstas
36. Vybz kartel Buddy nuh done
37. Bounty Killer Man a killa
38. Capleton & Sizzla Never scared blend
39. Bounty Killer Sleng Teng?
40. Bounty Killer Blast Uny?
41. Mad Lion Shoot to kill

This is my 100th post!!!!

yes I know its mostly Elephant Man, Bounty Killer and Beenie Man but dont hate i didnt know much else back then!!!!!

The Niceness (again)

2007-10-26T02:00:00.000+09:00

Hi I know Ive posted this before, but this new player thingy that I got figured out has got me all excited and shit, so expect more posts with music.

This is a mix I did the summer before I left to go to Japan, I havent made any since cos Ive been in Japan with a little portable turntable to listen to records, thus no mixtapes. I think when I return to NZ the inevitable unemployment/boredom/me not having played around on turntables for 1.5 years will mean I will prob make a whole bunch of mixes then I think, yay!

tracklist and shit here

2nd best scene ever

2007-10-26T01:51:00.000+09:00

CAAAAAN YOOOOOOUUUUU DIG IIIIIIIIIIT!!!!!!

7" of the moment #2!!!!

2007-10-26T01:13:00.001+09:00

aw c'mooooooonnnnnnn!!!

first off, this is an amazing song, the original by Stevie makes me almost cry when I listen to it (seriously), but this cover is just awesome, somehow it adds even more soul and feeling to it and makes it bump with the classic Taxi rythm, Bitty Mcleans vocals are sooo nice. If that doesnt sell it enough, it has lasers!!!!!

When Geo at the store put it on the system and that first vocal intro starts and then the wowowowowowow! lasers and effects kick in and then "lately I have had the strangest feeling...." Niceness!!!! I was sold!

So, I found this choice file sharing site where i can embed the player in my blog like you can see above and also you just click on the player and it takes you to a site to download the file too! Or you can click on this to download. Sweet!

bonus!heres 7" of the moment #1! (Read here)

Best scene EVER

2007-10-23T22:53:00.001+09:00

really.

Summer is officially over

2007-10-18T23:26:00.000+09:00

you know summer is officially over when the iced coffee in the vending machines all change to hot coffee :( anyways, heres some neato rad summer funtime memories (click on the links for more neato super awesome pictures and words) sound track here......

Beach BBQs........................

Haircuts.....................
SPF 30 sun tan lotion......................
Helmets.............................
Bike rides..........................
and chilling by the river in Shikoku......................

drinking beer whilst driving some kinda of lion(?) at Spaceworld......

Soumen nagashi.........................

making dodgy shelters.......................

for practising Taiko under...............

and of course the festival (Saturday, Sunday)...............................

weird fashion shows...........

Fireworks viewing parties on the roof..............

party times.................

Strat's and Anna times................................

lone day trips to strange statues.................

camping times...........................

almost as good as an eskimo pie times................

bye bye summer, see you in NZ this January!!!!!

BONUS, for extra strength, click on this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this and this

on a side note I just found this site that has all the Flight of the Conchords episodes online, yay!

Reason why Japan is rad #37281

2007-10-17T00:37:00.000+09:00

I just booked my flight to Tokyo online and I dont even have to use my credit card, I just print this voucher out and take it to the convenience store and pay for it there by cash! How cool is that? If I wanted to I could buy my flight at 3am in the morning with a carton of milk and a fresh towel whilst I sent a fax to someone and ate a nikuman! Japanese convenience stores truly are convenient.

Visitors is fun

2007-09-17T22:34:00.000+09:00

Strats and Anna came and visited for a week, I didnt have any time off so while I was at work they did stuff like going to Nagasaki on the 5 1/2 hour local train by mistake and hanging out in Nagasaki for about an hour beofre coming back, haha awesome. Anyways...

first night i took them to an Izakaya and fed them

i had fun with towels
Anna liked Magic World

then we went bowling, everyone had great form

except old man McAlpine......

this one time I bowled and then turned my back to the pins and I got a strike, then Strats did the same thing and so did Anna, it was amazing!!! 3 back turn strikes in a row, is that a world record or something!!!!

the next day i took them to Taiko practice......

but before hand we went pedal boating!!!!!

hey look at the tall maori man play the short drum!

afterwards we took a mean groups photo, note my badass helmet with a daffodil in it

then we went out of course, i like this group of photos all taken at the same(ish) time

I also like this sexy photo of me

the next day we went to Nokono, island which was rad

we hired bikes and Straton and Anna posed like honeymooners

we went to a beach with a mean as pontoon and did bombs and shit but i didnt take any photos......I did take a photo of the nice view though

at the end of the day we ended up at this really cute cafe which served toasated sandwishs and vitamines juices (see picture for correct spelling) and stuff, it was really awesome, such a relaxing place considering how close it is to the city

also they had this mean as old school shave ice maker, we thought it was just for show until the friendly owner fired it up and made us a free shave ice!

then this saturday we went out in Kokura (see post below) which was cool as drunken fun

thanks for comings dicks

The large motherly statue

2007-09-17T20:08:00.000+09:00

So, this weekend (actually just Saturday) was pretty crazy, it was Straton and Annas last night here so we went out and stuff and I even got to DJ at Grassroots which was super fun and then we went to karaoke until 7:30am (!!!!) which was pretty neat and I got back to Kurume at about 10am and have been pretty much sleeping/watching stuff on youtube in my bed all weekend. so i thought today i better get out and do something, so I decided to go venture out to visit "Narita-san" and "Jibo Kannonzou".

Its big. "Jibo Kannonzou (the large motherly statue) was built in 1983. It is 62 metres high, the largest Kannonzou in Kyushu". Shit that means there is a bigger one somewhere else in Japan!!

This is a crap picture cos it cuts off the head but I really wanted to show the people so you could get some perspective of how big it is (you can click on the photo to see it bigger dick)

going in........

I was literally the only person in the statue the whole time, which was kinda fun and also kinda weird and creepy at the same time.....

At the top the view was pretty good although you could only look out of these little tiny 20x20cm windows.

Birds flew past.

At the bottom under the statue you could go here (again I was the only person there).

There was a life size diorama of people worshipping Buddha...

....and of animals worshipping Buddha.

and cool tunnels...

and a scary skull lined entrance to some room that I didnt go into cos I am a scardey cat...

outside I did some god poses by myself (yeah, I'm awesome!)

oh and this Dinosaur made of tyres....

.....and Godzilla made of tyres is fucking awesome!

Butter Sucks

2007-09-17T19:57:00.000+09:00

I am never buying butter again, just look at my toast!

From now on I'm only buying spreadable spreads, like margarine and marmalade.

Butter sucks.

Also i just noticed theres a "upload video" function on this now, lets try:

NO!

2007-08-21T01:18:00.000+09:00

OK I've held off for a while now, but I cant handle it anymore.

FUCK THESE SANDLE/SHOE PIECES OF SHIT!!!!!!!!

They are infesting everywhere!! why do people not realise that they look totally retarded? ive heard over and over about how light and comfortable they are, well ok, purple velour tracksuits are comfortable, but u dont see me walking around town in them do you???

Dude got flows

2007-08-11T02:35:00.000+09:00

I wanna rap about kebabs like this dude, he rules

Parties on roofs are cool

2007-08-06T00:43:00.000+09:00

So, I just had a little bit of a party on the roof of my apartment, it was SUPER RAD fun times!!!

basically the reason was cos there was a MASSIVE (like HUUUUGE) fireworks show by the river, and my apartement just happens to be in close proximity to the river, SO, i figured, lets cook yakiniku and drink beer and watch fireworks (on a roof!!!)!!! if thats not a recipe for funtimes then i dont know what is....

i cooked rice NZ style (NO rice cooker (OMG!!!) just in a pot) and it was awesome!!!! and we had mad heaps of meat and mystery meat (i forget the japanese word....) and watched AMAZING fireworks. we had a badass viewing spot

after all my friendos had left some other peeps invited me to join them so of course i did, i got to witness some cool japanese acoustic singing and this cool version of eric claptons tears in heavem, i thought he sung it quite well dont you (note the dude singing didnt speak english AT ALL)?? reminds me of nick or sean playing guitar when they are almost too drunk to play.... good times....

also for some reason my camera didnt want to focus tonight, so you get some chotto blurry photos. FOCK!!! also the photos do not show how awesome the fireworks are, think, the best fireworks you have seen in NZ and multiply that by at least 25!!!

ps. I feel like an eggs benedict.........from the packing shed.......

Awesome

2007-08-03T23:58:00.000+09:00

just fricking awesome....

"there are 40 million sheep in NZ and they're pissed...."

can someone send me the DVD?

Soumen Nagashi

2007-08-03T00:14:00.000+09:00

Soumen Nagashi = Noodle Waterslide

so this happened actually one week before the taiko festival and i forget to post up my videos. so basically to make your own soumen nagashi, get a piece of bamboo, cut it in half, hit out the divider bits inside so its nice and smooth, then get some noodles and let a hose run water down and viola! you have the funnest way to eat EVER.

weeeeee!!!

So attacks the flowing soumen

Trinh and Saeko attack!

Taiko - Sunday

2007-08-02T22:29:00.000+09:00

So, anyways, as you know, I was involved in the Kokura Taiko Gion festival which was rad as. here is some photos/videos from the last day. whereas saturday was the serious, go drum infront of the temple kind of day, sunday I was informed was the "freestyle/crazy/fight" day where u could do whatever u wanted and get nice and toasted drinking beer and sake on the streets of Kokura, it was the funnest thing EVER!!! some of our team had masks and stuff and even a Dragon Ball scouter! other dudes in other teams were dressed as power rangers, spiderman, drag queens, amongst others.

1. 2.

(1. ready to go, in my Hapi oustide So's families house. 2. drumming in masks is gangsta!)

3. 4.

(3. I am Vegeta. 4. Fun times.)

Me drumming......looks kinda weird....maybe cos I'm drumming fast...I prob look better drumming slower......(embarassed)

5. 6.

(5. Its a family affair... 6. I caught the Shinkansen still in all my Taiko gear, I rule.)

After the main part of the day, again we went back to the clubhouse and had some food and then a bunch of us took a drum in the beer cart and went back into town, this was where the real madness was, just heaps of peeps drumming hardout EVERYWHERE!!! we set up on the same corner and then another group came and set up with us and we ended up having a massive 3 drum thingy going on. I cant even begin to describe how much fun this was, even not drumming is awesome fun, everyone kinda dances by the dudes drumming encouraging them and chanting "ayasayasayasayasa!!!!" and stuff, i soon learnt how to do the chants and i was jumping around chanting and dancing and drumming with everyone else. The way in which everyone gets a turn at drumming is quite cool, basically if I wanted to drum I justgo up to the dude drumming and motion to him that im gonna take over and then he moves out of the way, OR the fun way is to just push the dude outta the way and start drumming! There is no set time u can drum for, sometimes i would be drumming for about 2-3 mins and then other times i would only be on for 20 seconds before being bumped. No one gets annoyed for being bumped or anything, its all part of the fun. Hopefully you can get some idea from this shorrt video.

I have to say it is definitly in the top 5 things ive done in my life (probably #1 actually) and I'm already thinking about a trip to Japan next year so i could do it again....but prob not.... but hey I hear there is a Taiko group in NZ! yey!

I remember the 90's.....

2007-08-02T00:20:00.000+09:00

just thought Id share....

I grew up in the nineties, it feels kinda weird being nostalgic about it, i cant believe it was over ten years ago (1992-I was 12)that i was going to the Bruce McLaren Intermediate school ball and dancing to stuff like this.....

Ive toured around the world, from London to the Bay

Something, grabs a hold of me tightly, flows like a heart beat daily and nightly

fresh prince was the shit

the cops cruised by lookin for the booze, but what we had was plain and simply apple juice

we be to rap like key be to lock

come on, like u didnt dance to this at your high school social!

haha 5ive, one of their dudes was called "Abs", Nick, Paul, Dom etc, do you remember being taught by some girls at tawaharanui how to do the dance to If you got the feelin? the big guys raps are tight!!

how could i forget peter andre!

and ace of base!

man i could go on and on, theres so much i missed.....
i think i may have to do another post soon....

I miss you Auckland (and the people there).......

2007-07-31T01:31:00.000+09:00

Hi, so I just was coming home on the train, a little drunk cos of the fashion show after party (yes THATS right, more later...) and I ended up maing a playlist on my beloved whizzbang/ipod of mostly NZ music and it made me quite homesick.....like almost crying in the train homesick....but dont worry!!!! im ok!!!! hehehehehe. it just made me remember rad times at parties in NZ and all the mean as gigs in Auckland. you know, NZ/Auckland has a pretty awesome music scene....i miss it quite a bit.....I miss going to 420 and acting like a spaz and mocking all the remuera gangstas, i miss going to Galatos to see rad bands, and the basement of galatos and also rakinos for some dancehall madness (remember that one time Dom/Sean???), and going to see some rad fun whipping cats shows at little tiny bars (see you soon strats!!!), seeing some punk bands at the powerstation (is that still around???), going to the (rasta)Safari lounge and getting WASTED (long islands!!!) etc etc but most especially all the awesome outdoor summer concerts and parties at peoples houses and stuff

just to let you know, I have been starved of turntables for TOO long, thus when i get back and DJ Nicks wedding it will be the KILLER wedding songs mix!!!! i have been compiling a list of appropriate 80's/early 90's songs and 60's/70's songs that is KILLER!!!!! you will die from its awesomeness!!!!! hahahahahahahahahaha!

ps. if you dont like Harry Potter, I HATE you foreverr!!!!!!!!!! (unless i actually like you.....hhehehehehe)

pps Nick, i like Elliot Smith, does that make me cool like you??

ppps remember faith no more?? fuck they rule/d!!!!!

pppps ps's are laaaaaammmmmmme

ppppps but im the lord of darknessssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

pppppps drunk blogging rules! keep it real my dawgs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ppppppps blogging is the REALNESS!!!!!

Taiko - Saturday

2007-07-24T22:53:00.000+09:00

So, this weekend was pretty much the coolest weekend ever. I was involved in the Kokura Taiko Gion festival, which is this festival in Kokura which involves HEAPS of people playing the traditionl japanese drum (Taiko). I cant even begin to descibe how much fun it was or how cool it felt to actually be a part of such a big community thing (my groups basically comprised of families from the neighbourhood around our clubhouse), i really felt like part of japan, not just a foreigner living in japan. hopefully you can get an idea about it from the photos and videos.....
(hey if you clcik on the photos u can see a bigger version)

First was Saturday, I took a day off work, Saturday was the official traditional day, we pulled the dashi (cart that holds the drums) into Kokura, about 30mins, and started drummng as we pulled it thru the arcade

(1. The Dashi ready to go. 2. And we're off!!!! [note the drinks cart pulling up the back])

(3. And the drinks that went into the drinks cart [Sake and Shochu not pictured]!!! 4. Kids first up in the arcade)

After that we headed out on the road and joined a huge line up of dashi wating to go into the castle, we pulled the cart infront of the station and our best drummers drummed and the kids sung their chant thingy and we ended up coming 6th!!!

(5. Pulling the dashi, the little kid at the front has the cutest expression on her face. 6. Another teams Dashi, its a "Tengu" on top)

after a much needed beer [or 3] and some onegiri and karage and stuff, we headed off down the road and into the arcade again and then to the station where a whole lotta groups were drumming, check this group out, they were badass

After that we headed back to the clubhouse for some more food and beer and then we grabbed one drum, chucked it in the drinks cart, and all the older (or drunker!) members headed off into kokura again to drum some more! we even took the drum into a VERY small bar and got some free beers! then we set up on a corner and guess what we did? drummed!!!! ayasayasayasayasa!!!!!

(6. The Samurai Rapper Kengo! 7. Chillin in the clubhouse.)

(8. nankai desuka? 9. we drum in your bar, you give us free beer, yey!)

(10. otsukaresamadesu! happy people at the end of the day/night)

....................

2007-07-20T02:35:00.000+09:00

this shit is straight up AMAZING. this guy is a genius. just watch the video. remember, the things he makes are powered by the wind, nothing else. Basically, Engineering, Maths and Physics RULES EVERYTHING.

glumbert.com - Kinetic Sculpture

Flight of the Conchords, Coffee Beans and Sticks

2007-07-12T23:49:00.000+09:00

So, I was looking at a website i look at a bunch of types most weeks, and I noticed an ad for The Flight of the Conchords, instantly I was like "whaaaa???!!????" cos I know them from NZ, but im thinking "why are they advertisng on an American website??". Well, it turns out that the dudes have a show on HBO in the States, awesome! I guess most of you dudes in NZ prob already know about this (or not??). For you non NZers, Flight of the Conchords started off as a musical comedy act with these two dudes (ones from a great NZ band The Black Seeds), playing "folk" music, but it was funny as hell, anyways, i dunno how it happenned but now they have a sorta "reality" type TV series about them trying to "make it" in New York. Its fricking hillarious man, just check the videos I posted below. You can see some of the full episodes online here even. Its so cool to see a NZ tv show that isnt totally lame, NZ comedies especially are always lame AS. Also its cool to hear some NZ accents again. Their band manager works at the NZ embassy! haha. Yay for NZ!
Also, if you are near a 7eleven in Japan, go there now and look for these chocolate coated coffee beans, they are fricking delicious!!!!! If ur looking for some sweet chocolaty style ones then dont bother, these are the straight chocolate coated coffee bean crack!!!!

Also I finally got some Taiko sticks! My man So gave me his brothers old sticks, so much thanks to him. yey! and this week my Yukata came so I will be trying that on in the weekend, photos next week! weeeee weeeee! The Taiko festival is gonna be so much fun! heres some photos that my friend Sam took from the festival last year if u wanna look.

Man, Ive gone all teched out with the links on this post, meanest geekest.

well yeah obviously

2 kinds of dances

yes NZ only has 4 TV stations

Im the muthaflippin'

how bout him in the nude, is that what you wanna view?

Thanks Paul

2007-07-12T23:28:00.000+09:00

yup

if you know, you know, hehehehe

Jack Bauer + CalorieMate

2007-07-12T00:49:00.000+09:00

haha, anyone who lives in Japan prob knows CalorieMate, this ad with Jack Bauer in a train full of schoolgirls cracked me up.

fixed! I found a youtube version, yay!

and more! yey yey!

I can't eat that right now!!!

He calls the Japanese guy "Ma chan"! Kawaii!!!!!

Jack! Can I eat this one??

Some photos of drunk people

2007-07-09T22:51:00.000+09:00

So, last night was Davids leaving party and I took a whole bunch of photos and promised to put them on the net so that they can see them, so here you all go!

(1. who'se that crazy guy with the towel? 2. A Tomomi, a Mizuki and a Sam)

(3. Me: attacking cake with Saeko. 4. One New Zealander + two Vietnamese = good times)

(5. weeeee! 6. A Trinh, a Aiko, a Gary and a Hiromi)

(7. me and So, my taiko master sensei. 8. So can lift a cactus!!)

(9. weeeeeeeeeeeeee! 10. Trinh don't know)

(11. "Do the table. Do the table!" 12. The poor table after the Vietnamese sandwich)

(13. "Dont worry David I'm sjure it wont hurt". 14. "Oh, oops, maybe it does")

You like Whipping Cats yes!

2007-07-02T20:27:00.000+09:00

my friend Straton has a rad as band called Whipping Cats, you should listen to their music on their myspace page, and/or buy their t-shirts and their album when it comes out in August, or the wrath of Zororg will behest you (or something)

(Whipping Cats at the Kings Arms, Auckland, NZ)

(Fighting Cats Can't Be Bargained With)

Japanese TV is rad

2007-06-27T02:52:00.000+09:00

glumbert.com - Japanese Tetris

Courtesy of my brother, heres one example of how awesome (and weird) Japanese TV is, choooice

I also just found this pretty awesome video explaining the "correct" way to eat sushi, its all true, NO ONE really knows what gari is, its a mystery

and this one on apologising

how to make Onegiri (rice ball)

"can you use chopsticks?", one of the top three most asked questions for foreigners, the others are "how old are you?", "are you married?"

I'm all about centre alignment formatting today

peace out thugs

This guy.....

2007-06-26T00:13:00.000+09:00

Great proof as to why home-schooling is not a good idea.....

Today, went to Tenjin for "walking lessons" and then went shopping, i wanted a new t shirt, but as often happens i ended up buying a bunch of records. Got a few choice old 7"s ("Hungry like the wolf" yeh!, "livin on a prayer/shot to the heart" on the same 7"!!!, "cold blooded") and a few good hip hop 12"s ("top billin", "Passin me by/drop (extended Jay Dee remix!)" among others), but the highlight was finding this "box set" of 50s and 60s music, it was only 2900yen (about $(NZ)35) and it has 13 records in it!!! THIRTEEN!!! Nick, I have your wedding songs on LOCK!! It has pretty much every classic oldies song, choooiiiice!

Oh yeah, I took this picture (below) at a bar in Kurume a while back but its been hiding on my phone for a while, hehe. Currently drinking a 125ml Grape Fanta.

Small cans are awesome

2007-06-25T02:03:00.000+09:00

So, in Japan you can get beer in ANY sized can, its pretty cool, same with Coke and stuff. I was in the supermarket today and i couldnt resist getting these little cans. I always go for the 250ml cans from the vending machines, I dont think I'm going to be able to handle the 355ml cans when I get back to NZ

Asahi Beer cans: 500, 350 & 125ml (2L, 1.5L, 1L, 250ml cans not pictured)

Can't wait for this

2007-06-18T23:58:00.000+09:00

Transformers! More than meets the eye!!!

Anyone (like me) who grew up in the 80's knows that Transformers was the shit, the cartoon was rad, and the toys were probably the most sought after toys of any kid back then, EVRYONE wanted a Trasformer for Xmas, I remember being friends with this dude on my street just because he was rich and he had all the cool transformers like the set that was 5 construction vehicles that fit togethr to make one big robot, so cool.

Anyways, the new Transformers movie is gonna be FRICKING RAD, check the trailer, if you go to the Transformers website you can see it in better quality. I thought I put the Japanese trailer up cos Stephen Speilberg and Micheal Bay look real funny speaking Japanese "Micheal Bay desu" .

Oh, it sounds like they got possibly Linkin Park or some other weak ass band to re-do the Transformers theme song, what the fuck???? that is soooooo weak, heres the original, yey!

killer

p.s. yeah I use the word "rad" alot, what?!!!?! I'm bring "rad" back yo!

Iwaya Beach - But with a clown!!!

2007-06-18T19:50:00.000+09:00

(1: Balloon Anpanman, 2: Gary monster attacking the TrinhSaeko monster)

So, this weekend it was decided to go to Iwaya beach again, the forecast was for bad weather, but whatever, we still went. So I caught the JR up to Tobata where I met up with the lovely Saeko, Tomomi and my Taiko MASTER So, and we drove to Iwaya beach to meet up with David Trinh and a bunch of her students and this dude that owns a cool bar in Kokura and some of his buddees.

(3: Piero - Clown, 4: Baseball team and "nicebody" David)

A regular day of awesomeness at the beach and BBQ ensued, the weather cleared and it ended up being pretty sunny. I went for 2 or 3 swims and stuff which was rad. There was a baseball team there for some oreason and David ended up trying on one of their Shirts which was slighty too small, and one of the guys said to David that he had a "nice body" hahahahaha awesome.

(5: I have a David-lymph-node attached to me, 6: "Look Saeko, its a big yellow ball!")

Prob the highlight though was that one of the people in our group was a clown!! She had brought her balloons along and so she ended up making ballon animals and stuff for everyone which was pretty cool. I dont think ive ever seen a clown making balloon animals at the beach before!! Me and David both concurred that a girl being a clown/making balloon animals is one of the hottest things ever (girls take note!! haha). I got a balloon Anpanman! Also after she gave everyone one of the long balloons to try blow up themselves, that shit's impossible man!!!! Almost no-one managed to even get their balloons slightly blown up, i think everyone ended up getting pretty light headed from all the blowing, haha. So yeah, another good beach excursion, Summer yey yey!!!!

Pepsi - Ice Cucumber flavour???!!??

2007-06-18T19:35:00.000+09:00

Yes, you read correct, there is a new flavour of Pepsi called "ice cucumber", weeeirrrd huh? So I was so intrigued I decided to do a little "review" of it and stuff.

First impressions.......

Well, the colour LOOKS like it should be cucumber flavoured, but what? will it taste anything like Pepsi or will it be a completly new flavour?? hmmmmm

The test.....

Well, its "so-so", it vaguely tastes like cucumber and has this weird "minty" flavour as well, its not too sweet and is pretty refreshing, but like alot of these new flavours it kind of has an aftertaste of soap......., it might go well with some flavoured Vodka like 42Below Kiwifruit or something like that. I reccomend it, just to try, its not disgusting, but its "interesting", I prob wont buy it again......

Haha so anyways, can you tell Im bored???? this was fun, maybe I will do another "review" in the future, maybe not. Also please notice the CORRECT spelling of "flavour" and "colour", NOT "flavor" and color" hehehehe anyways..... Also is "aftertaste" one word?? Or should it be "after-taste" or "after taste"????? lemme biatches

Koga Skatepark and stuff

2007-06-16T01:14:00.000+09:00

So, a couple of weeks ago i decided to get my ass together and finally go to Koga skatepark, a place ive known about for a while but cos its kinda far away i havent gone to, untill now, so i got myself out of bed at the super early time of 8:30am (well, early for a GEOS teacher) basically from kurume its like a 1hr train ride to Koga station and then the actual park is not close to the station at all, there is actually a bus u can take, but i thought i would just walk/skate there.....a good 45mins walking/skating in the hot-ass sun (and it was only 10:30am!!!) and my sweaty ass finally found the skatepark, haha, next time i will take the bus, anyways, Koga skatepark is basically like one big massive bowl, not really any street skating parts except the rails on one end. so the main section of the bowl was just this crazy ass Te-Kuiti-esque bowl thingy that i managed to find a few good lines in (i bet theres heaps though, esp if ur actually good and can go over the spine parts) that is about 5-6ft high all round, and then there is the MONSTER big bowl over in one corner, which is maybe somewhere between 8-10ft (it was pretty deep) and it has a decent amount of vert, actually the first time i rolled down and up the wall i kinda misjudged the highness and ended up totally kooking it and falling from the transition straight down to the flat, getting a few nice grazes, i gotta say, getting injured is a good feeling (after the initial pain), i cant explain why, but yeah, kinda just keeps u in check i guess. anyways, so I forgot to mention, when i got there i noticed everyone was wearing helmets, so i asked one of the dudes (in Japanese, yey!) if i needed a helmeted and said yeah, i obvioulsy looked gutted, so he gestured to two "helmets" sitting on the bench, they were not skate helmets but the kind of hard hat things the road worker dudes in japan wear, so i thought fuckit, and strapped in (check the pic!! haha), also, these two dudes turned up and after a little bit they pulled two decent sized PA speakers and a cd player from their car and chucked them on top of the bowl, there was a power plug at the bowl!!!! so they proceeded to play a cd of dancehall and reggae, which was great, there was only about 5 people there the whole time (it was monday) and i ended up befriending one of the dudes and he gave me a ride back to hakata station in his car and told me about some more skateparks near Kurume, they are pretty average, but hey better than nothing, the dude has a website, its in japanese but if you click on "spots" u can see some of the "spots" near fukuoka

also i had taiko practice last week, its starting to get more serious as the festival is in july, im so excited its gonna be sooo fun!! also after Taiko we went out to the countryside to look at Hotaru (fireflys!) which was super cool, like glow worms but flying

p.s. if this sounds like its an email that I sent someone thats cos it is, i copied it stright from an email i sent my brother, haha, what!!??

7" of the moment #1

2007-06-03T17:13:00.000+09:00

OK, so I've been meaning to do this for a while now, since I've been in Japan I've accumulated a good bunch of 7" records, mostly reggae/dancehall from my man Geo-X at Brooklyn Records Kokura, but also some other styles like punk and jazz and stuff. So, as I have been recording most to mp3's so I can listen to them on my ipod, I thought I would share some of my most favourite ones with the 2 or 3 people that actually read this. So anyways, here the first one, lemme know what you think.

Screw Driver - Ganja Killer

This is maybe one of the first 7"s I bought in Japan, as soon as geo put it on the sound system and that "di-di-di-dii-di" keyboard melody came in I was sold, and then theres the bad-ass vocals, I tried to write a bit about it but I cant really interpret the lyrics so well...., but whatever, when I first got this I would listen to it at least once everyday when I got back from work, I dont even smoke or anything, its just a bad ass song, if you disagree you suck. Enjoy.

Don Quixote is are rules

2007-06-03T16:25:00.000+09:00

So, most people who live (or have lived) in Japan prob know about this place, Don Quixote (Don-ki-ho-te in Katakana Japanese) is probably one of the only stores I know where you can buy anything you want, and i mean ANYTHING, bikes, computers, clothes, jewelery, groceries, even Technics 1200s!!!! For any NZers reading, its like the warehouse, but with actual quality (although some things are dubious) goods.

I mean what other place could I go and buy: a orange T-shirt, a carton of milk, a 10m LAN cable, a packet of biscuits and two cans of Sapporo beer (my purchases last night)???

So yeah, my new crispy orange t-shirt has motivated me to post some more stuff on this blog (and change my colour scheme), so stand by for posts and stuff (maybe, heh).

Its another nice sunny day here in Kurume, kinda wish I went to the beach again (hmm maybe tomorow). Also, a bit of an update from the day at the beach last week, my back is currently peeling like a biatch, I have dry skin all over my apartment, haha, sexy.

The new Dizzee Rascal album is gonna fucking rule

2007-06-02T01:41:00.000+09:00

couldnt find a mp3 of "Pussy-ole" but if you have you will know its just like "woah!"

Can't wait for the album!

Stupid British man of the day......

2007-06-01T22:55:00.000+09:00

Man eats dog as protest in Britain

Ok, so I have nothing against British people, I know heaps of completly rad-as ones and stuff and things. But this guy is a dork man

I mean seriously, If you are protesting mistreatment of animals how is freaking eating one helping anything??? I fail to see any irony if thats what he is trying to do. Its like if I was protesting about global warming by spraying CFC based fly spray and running my Hummer all day on high octane petrol while eating Big Macs from styrofoam containers.

Anyways, I think this qualifies as my first "blog rant". Noooooo!!!!

On a positive note, my friend Dom and his bro have a radio show on "Go" fm in Wesssst Auckland, they just started recording the shows and putting them on the net. Download their latest show here, and/or eat their myspace here

Best day ever (in Japan)

2007-05-30T01:39:00.000+09:00

so yeah, this sunday was def one of the best days ever (in Japan)

on saturday nite i went up to Kurosaki and met up with David and the new teacher there, went out for dinner and stuff then stayed thurrr to wake up early (7:30am! super early!!!) to head to kokura to go to this high school festival of one of davids students, that was pretty interestingish, but yeah then went back to Kurosaki to meet up with a couple other teachers and a bunch of Davids students (two families and some others), jumped in some cars and drove out to Iwaya beach, its sogood doing things like this with familys (with cars) as everything is super good organised, as u can see in the photo we had a sweet set up and SO FREAKING MUCH FOOD!!! the photo u can see was the second lot of stuff on the bbq, after that was a whole bunch of pork and more meat and then little bits of chicken, potato,, prawns, then a whole squid (like, an actual whole squid), a bunch of shellfish, Champagne (!!!) and then yakisoba (fried noodles and stuff)

the dude in the first photo with the hat is Seiji, he has a solar powered fan-hat, he is SUCH a dad, he is like the funniest dude ever, and his little baby is like the cutest most well behaved baby ever also

so the eating was basically spread out over the whole afternoon, i think i had about 4 or 5 swims, played alot of frisbee, even (trieded) slide down some sanddunes, then a little later we ended up befriending these uni students who had bongo drums and a volleyball (in photo) and ended up played bongos and volleyball (funnily enough)

so we basically stayed all day untill about 7pm (when the sun went down) and then headed back and then went to Karaoke (yee!)

i put sun lotion on in the car on the way there but obviously just my face, so when i went for a swim and then played some frisbee with no shirt on i didnt realise but i got super burnt (put sunscreen on the back about and hour too late), anyways, the swimming was real good, water was nice, a little bit of waves, there were quite a few surfers out

ummm yeah, so, good times

met up with my fashion designer on monday (ask me about it yo), have to meet her to get all fitted and stuff then again for rehersal and then the actual day is 30th July, the uni is paying for my transport costs which is nice, im excited!

haha also, i kinda been a slack arse about paying bills lately (not cos i dont have money, cos ive actually saved a bit, im just a slackarse, hehe), but i was totally gonna pay my bills in the weekend but didnt end up doing that cos of aforementioned slackness, so, got home on monday, flick the lightswtitch, no lights! what? check others, check the fuse, damn!!! my powers been cut off!!!! haha, anyways, went and paid the bill, then went to my Japanese class and got Naoko (my teacher) to call the electric company and they sent a dude out to recconnect it straight away, sweet!

PE-NUS power

2007-04-24T23:52:00.000+09:00

ok, now this is even weirder than cryingwhileeating, but.......its funny as shiiiiiiiieeeeet, just watch

watch out for pe-nus power

if ur wondering where i get all this retarded shit from, its mostly the turntablelab blog, its greeeat

The Niceness

2007-04-12T00:39:00.000+09:00

so around the end of 2005 (thats Summer in NZ for you crazy foreigners and Japanese people) I made a "summer" themed mixtape with the idea to maybe sell it to some peoples and give to my friends for Christmas, so most of my friends in NZ will prob have this, but anyways, i just figured out how to upload audio and stuff, which is neato, so i decided to upload this for all you choice dooodes to listen to/download. I think I made about $40 (NZ) off of this (haha, high roller!!) Havent made a mix since as Ive been in Japan with no mixer and turntables.......

I hope you like it

(if you're retarded and didn't try already, click on the picture, or here for the link)

oh, and tracklist is:

1. Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass – More and more amor
2. Madlib – Please set me at ease (feat. M.E.D.)
3. Sa-Ra – Glorius
4. DJ Jazzy Jeff – How I do (feat. Shawn Stockman)
5. Metal Fingers – High John
6. Eighth From the Egg – Black milk
7. A Tribe Called Quest – Same ol’ thing
8. Little Brother – On and on
9. Lootpack – Break dat party (feat. Declaime)
10. Mos Def – Body rock (feat. Q-Tip & Tash)
11. Madvillain – Curls
12. Roots Manuva – Revolution 5 (feat. Chali 2na)
13. Horace Andy – Skylarking
14. R.A. the Rugged Man – Chains (feat. Masta Killa & Killah Priest)
15. The Nextmen – Blood fire (feat. Dynamite MC)
16. DJ Vadim – It’s on (feat. Demolition Man)
17. Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley – Khaki Suit (feat. Bounty Killer & Eek-a-Mouse)
18. Destiny’s Child – Lose my breath (reggae remix)
19. Lucious Jackson – Naked eye (Muscle shock remix)
20. Beck – Girl
21. Opensouls – Turn it up!
22. Breakestra – You don’t need a dance
23. The Mohawks – The Champ
24. Recloose – Dust (feat. Joe Dukie)

cryingwhileeating.com

2007-04-07T01:26:00.000+09:00

I mean seriously

WHAT

THE

FUCK????????

i was seaching for a decent pic of Hokey Pokey ice cream to show my student and somehow stumbled across this site. it is exactly what the name says, People eating while crying, can someone say "aaaayyyyyyyyyyy????!!!!??????"

I cant post a video diretcly here but heres an example of one of the labels of one of the videos

DanielL
What he's eating: Bagel with hummus
What he's crying about: Inconsistent weather

Inconsistent weather???????

man you cant make this shit up

on further inspection, this site is actually pretty funny, although some of the people are actually seriously crying i think........maybe......i guess......

Min & Che' Pls

2007-04-07T01:10:00.000+09:00

havent done a post in a minute which is weird, i gotta start doing more, ive done a bunch of stuff lately, like going to Kyoto/Osaka and going to the baseball and Beppu and stuffffff

anyways, do you know the number one food I miss BY FAR since being away from NZ for a year (my 1 year anniversary was 2 weeks ago!) is the good ol' Mince and Cheese pie!! oh how I yearn for you sooooo, I talk to people about it but they just dont understand, not even British people understand, only NZers or Aussies know the joy and instant satisfaction of a good min and che' pie. ohhhhh mannnn......... if someone wants to fork out and send me a frozen pie somehow i would be your friend FOR LIFE (shit even a crappy $1 big ben pie would do)

anyways, promise i will do more posts laaateeerr

oh yeah, check the wikipedia page on "NZ cuisine", how funny is our "cuisine", boil up, and scroggin, hehe, nice, made me miss home a bit though......

oh and K Bars!!!!!!

Angry/INSANE optician

2007-02-25T17:11:00.000+09:00

and he's Canadian!! hehehe

thanks nick

Board (not bored) in Hiroshima

2007-02-15T02:45:00.000+09:00

so snowboarding in Hiroshima was neato, although it has been a kinda bad season and also kind of warm so there wasnt much snow, so the mountains i went to had like half of the mountain closed due to lack of snow which was a bit of a bummer, but it was still fun none the less

so, itinery was: Saturday night after work went back home got my board etc together, caught a taxi to the JR station (aint no way Im riding my bike with my snowboard!!!), caught the train to Hakata station to catch the OVERNIGHT BUS (of the dead!!!!) at 10:35pm. now get this; normally the bus ride is 4 hours to Hiroshima from Hakata, but for some reason when you take the overnight bus this magically transforms into SEVEN HOURS!!!!!!! why? you might ask, well, cos at about 1am the bus pulls over into a carpark and stops for THREE HOURS, thats right, a 3 hour stop for no apparent reason, so you are meant to sleep (I later found out that this is so the driver can have a sleep too, whats the matter? cant handle a 4 hour drive in the middle of the night?? ever heard of coffee?? pussy.). but combined with me being relatively tall and the bus seats being mad uncomfortable and then me get progressively annoyed at the bus not moving and not knowing when we would be moving again and then me getting hungry and not having or being able to get any food resulted in me getting NO SLEEP for the whole entire journey of the bus ride of the undead, thus arriving at the lovely hour of 6am totally wacked. anyways, so me and my fellow bus ride of the undead traveller Nicole got off the bus and proceeded to find the haven of early morning breakfasts, the evil McDonaldsness monster. got some breakfast, hung out for a bit, at this point at about 7ish nicole decided to head off too Aussie Johns house in search of sleep, while I hung out in Mcds a little longer as I had to wait till 835am for my bus up the mountain (I was "hittori" or "by myself" for the sunday as the others preferred to budget for only one day up the mountain in favour of alcohol instead)

so now i am by myself and went to figure out exactly where the busstop was, i knew it was close to where i was (somewhee by the art museum), so here i am walking around hiroshima at 730am with my snowboard, it couldnt have a more bizzarre sight to see i think, i got to the art museam and circumnavigated the whole thing to find nothing which resembled a bus stop, so i asked in a hotel and the nice man showed me exactly where it was, lucky i asked, as it was just an area on the side of the road. this is about 8am now, still 35mins till my bus, so i leave my stop in search of a toilet to get changed into my snow gear and stuff. get some food and stuff and a genki drink for later, go bakc to the bustop, im the only person there, slightly worried. but now worries, about 5 mins later two dudes with snowboards turn up, safe, then some more, and some more, sweet, this is the right spot. still no sleep. get on the bus at 835 am, get a window seat (i cant sleep without leaning on something, hence also why i had such a prob sleeping on the night bus as i had an aisle seat) and thus have a most glorius and well needed kip on the 2hr ride on the bus-of-the-scary-japanese-lady-tour-guide

finally arrive at the mountain "Utopia Saito" which was all open except for the 5th lift. so it was pretty sweet. all the photos i took are of this place, as the place we went to on monday "Osa" wasnt really as fun (but still fun of course!!!! snowboarding is always fun!!!) cos only the very bottom lifts were open due to lack of snow, it seemed like it would be real fun if the whole mountain were open, but oh well, i just messed around doing butters all day

back to sunday, so after spending the day by myslef at utopia (and meeting a japanese dude that spent a year in NZ and worked at coronet peak, random!!!) i got the bus back, obviously being totally tired i went straight to sleep and sleept the whole way back to hiroshima, i was in such a deep sleep that the tour lady had to wake me up when we got to my stop, haha that was funny, i had stripped down to my t shirt as the bus was really hot and so quickly grabbed my shit and ran off the bus as i had no idea how long people had been waiting for me (the baka foreigner) to wake up, so got off the bus and the bus drove off and then it hit me, im only wearing a t shirt and ITS FRICKING COLD!!!!!!!! haha that was funny, and i was still half asleep, so rung up John and they were at a bowling alley nearby, so got my shit together and rocked on up to this bowling alley half asleep with my snowboard in tow, then ended up going to an izakaya and also a bar WITH my snowboard, haha was soooo weird and funny walking around town with my snowboard, anyways finally went back to Johns and i got some well deserved sleep horizontally as opposed to in a shitty chair. then the next day we went to Osa as aforementioned above with John, Nicole and 2 other peeps from Hiroshima, twas neato

both days the weather was totally sweet, like spring styles, had just a t shirt on under my jacket

so caught the 7pm bus back to hiroshima which must have some magic time machine or something cos it only took 4hrs as opposed to the overnight 7hrs, hehe. finally got back to my apartment at about 1230am on monday night. tired, but happy

wow, i just wrote a bit of a story right there. nice

Mt. Fuji

2007-02-05T21:47:00.000+09:00

Last year in August I climbed Mt. Fuji, some of you may have seen some photos and stuff, but now I decided to put ALL the photos up on the net, yey! click on the photo dummy

Korea photos (also fo' yo' assss!!!)

2007-02-05T20:49:00.000+09:00

so, writing up a post and only putting a few "good" pictures is too much of a mission, so click on the picture below and you will be magically transported to ALL of my Korea photos (yay!), isnt that nice?!

so from now on I will chuck lotsa photos on this. But I will still update this blog "often" cos its sooo awesome and you love it (haha)

THIS is how cool NZ is...........

2007-02-05T19:58:00.000+09:00

so, it seems Palmerston North set the record for, wait for it......... the most Monopoly games played in one place at once, annnnnd.........the world record for playing Monopoly on......unicycles. wow. thats great. good for you Palmerston North.

"No one has ever attempted to set a world record for the number of games of Monopoly played at the same time until yesterday, when 190 people played 48 games. There was the New Zealand version, the original, a German game and a South African monopoly board was also on hand in case it was needed."

Thats just great.

Read the whole story here

Samoa won the sevens!!!!!!

2007-02-04T22:42:00.000+09:00

woah! I bet no one expected that happening, beating the all-mighty Fijians, nice one!

Samoa faatatau!!

I'm Ready....

2007-02-03T01:48:00.000+09:00

so after hauling my board etc over to Japan in April more than 10 months ago and waiting thru summer etc I'm FINALLY getting to go boarding!!!!! the seasons been going for a bit but ive been super busy but at last I am going. So I unpacked the ol board from the cardboard and newspaper protection I packed it in 10 months ago (see left of pic) which brought a strange nostalgia to me of packing my bags before i left for Japan (miss you NZ), chucked a spanking new yellow Alta sticker on it courtesy of the man Rory and santa, set up the bindings and now I'm all set and ready to go!!! yussss!!!! so while you guys in NZ are surfing and have Glennis Challenges I'll be up the mountain!! how weird is that?? today it snowed in Kurume, not enough to settle on the ground, but it was cool nonetheless, its fricking cold here!!!! So this weekend Im going to a little mountain called Tenzan which is nearby, from the sounds of it its kinda small and maybe icy but oh well. But next week im going to Hiroshima where there are real mountains with hoooopefully POWDER!!!!! and then the week after that and the week after that and theeeen HOKKAIDO!!!!!!!!!

ps, send me bbq/beach/summer pics!! I need to be reminded that it is supposed to be summer in February. this whole winter at the beginning of the year thing is too weird for me

Tonight........you!!!!!!

2007-01-31T02:25:00.000+09:00

OK, so, I cant believe they are actually gonna make a whole movie of it, but its gonna be fricking awesome!!!!!! Just thought Id let anyone that didnt know, know. Uh, yeah.

ps, if you take yourself too seriously you probably wont enjoy this, but then again if you are reading this then you probably realise that most things I post up on this blog are of that nature. teehee

So for anyone that doesnt know the awesomeness of Aqua Teen Hunger Force (it pretty much encompasses my sense of humor perfectly), here is an episode for you and your mum (called Handbannana). If youre not into it, sucks for you

Welcome to Kurume

2007-01-30T00:27:00.000+09:00

so, I had my welcome party cos Im neeew at Kurume last Sunday, I think I may have scared some of the students with my as per usual over-exuberance at karaoke, anyways, good times, heres some photos of some people from my new school

ps, still listening to Youth and Young Manhood, "Trani" is one of the most awesomest songs EVER.

Korea videos for your ass!!!!!

2007-01-30T00:02:00.000+09:00

so, its been a month since I went to Korea, and ive been being a slack arse and not posting up any pics or anything, so herre are some videos I took

first up is some cool-ass energetic old people in Seoul, this was taken on New Years eve in this park we stumbled across, first thing we noticed was it was about 97% OLD MEN, which was kind of weird (actually really weird). but then we found this stage where what seemed to be some sort of karaoke contest for people over 90. out front were some peeps dancing, ahhh i dunno what else to say, check the dude in the white hat, hes my homie

next up is this video taken sometime just before new years in Yongsan Seoul, the video captures kinda how crazy it was, notice that when I do a 360 degrees pan (is that called panning?? Isnt panning just going side to side??) that all directions are TOTALLY NUTS, basically, everyone has big ass roman candles in their hands shooting them into the sky, this was going on from like 10:30pm to 1am, just like this whole street completly packed with people and lots of groups of drummers and everyone joining in dancing, holding hands and running/jumping around and shit, it was such a rad feeling of unity, at one point i was holding hands with an indian dude on my right and a korean dude on my left, me a white dude in the middle, and everyone was smiling and dancing and having a choice as time, its at times like this i wonder WHY the hell things like wars happen. i know im totally sounding like a hippy right now, but it really was that awesome. Korea, awesome

next up is just me being stupid doing a heel click in Seoul on New Years sometime after midnight, anyone who is feeling down I prescribe a hug and then a vigourous running heel click, after that you will feel awesome, my man Stu knows how awesome heel clicks are

currently listening to "Youth and Young Manhood" by The Kings of Leon (on vinyl!!!!!!!!!!)

Japan + Records = Good

2007-01-29T23:54:00.000+09:00

so, now where I live I ride my bike past a record store everyday on the way to work, its torture, torture I tell you! trying not to go in! but anyways check out these gems I bought today, yes thats right Presidents on vinyl! you know im playing some shit off that at your wedding Nick!!!!! for only 940 yen I just HAD to! cant believe Ive gone this long without buying Cuban Linx...

also, today I finally started doing Japanese lessons. Nihongo o benkyo shimasu!!!!!! so hopefully soon i might actually be able to have a proper discussion (or not)

Taiko is awesome

2007-01-21T16:11:00.000+09:00

So I dunno how many of yoose doodes know what Taiko drumming is (see videos and pics). But its totally rad. Anyways, last year when mum and dad were over we went to the Kokura Taiko Gion festival which is basically this massive festival with about A KABILLION of these groups of people with drums on wheels going around the streets and eventually culminating in the park, its super loud and chaotic and happy, thus I was loving it! So I thought "I wanna do this!!!" So found out that the Florence and the Sam were in a group with the So. Sooo I and some others are now going to this groups practice once a month in Kokura to practice the art of Taiko drumming, its a lot harder than it looks, there is a definitive technique to it, but hopefully under the guidance of Taiko-master So I will be aiiight. I just cant wait for the festival in summer!!!

I know, I know its an average video.......

When informercials were awesome

2007-01-17T22:25:00.000+09:00

so anyways, I totally stole this off Stratons myspace page but whatever, its so awesome

so this is off the legendary blu-blockers infomercial, waaaay back in the "golden era" of informercials, when Tony Robbins was just getting started there were these awesome glasses, Im sure just about everyones dad or uncle or something has a pair

"It's so not bright, but bright!!!!!!"

and who remembers this guy =====>

"ITS TECHNIIIIIIIIQUE!!!!!!!!!!"

unfortunatley i couldnt find a video of Tonys famous catch phrase, but check this out, its pretty fricking funny (well I think it is)

My apartment = boxes and bags

2007-01-07T01:06:00.000+09:00

so I'm in my new apartment and stuff in Kurume, was a bit of a stupid crazy mission moving apartments and stuff and then when i finally got into the aprtment the gas was turned off thus no hot water!!! i had to teach the next day so i went to school without having had a shower, sexy. anyways its all good the gas is on now so hot showers are a go, although im missing my nice big shower in Akama, i feel a little clautrophobic in this one. anyways, new aprtment is aiight, much smaller than my old one, but kinda cute (and i got internet access, holllllaaaaa at me on msn!!), haha i just said holla at me, weak, lame. new school is nice, very new, lots more students, also had another cock-up and i dont have any of my lesson plans so i have had to re-plan lessons so i been mad busy, rrrrrr, but oh well whatever, im just glad i can sleep in tomorow finally, havent had a decent sleep since i got back from korea

oh yeah,

Korea was awesome!!!! Korea number 1, NZ number 2, Japan ...........(if you were there you know the joke..... so thats like only 3 people, haha) oh and USA number ran raaaow

as soon as i get my aprtment in order and have a decent sleep I shall post up MANY pictures and VIDEOS, New Years at Seoul was INSANE, seriously, definitly the best, most craziest new years ever!!!!

anyways, in the meantime, check this really good song by Pharoah Monch

Best use of bus powered USB. EVER.

2007-01-05T23:22:00.000+09:00

Check how the USB is blurred out. Laughter laughter, oh how I am laughtering.

James Brown - Soul Brother #1 Forever

2006-12-26T21:30:00.000+09:00

just found out James Brown died, damn........

dude was the man, I mean try imagine hip hop today if james brown hadnt existed

Rest In Peace

I'm in Korea!!!!!

2006-12-24T20:14:00.000+09:00

just been in a nice hot spa thingy, nakedness, interesting, but well realaxed

just about to go hang with my friend Kim Jong Ill cos hes trill

Merry Christmas

2006-12-21T21:59:00.000+09:00

Doom says

http://www.youtube.com/STONESTHROW

"ho-ho-ho-ing and things of this nature", nice, hehehe. If you dont know who the supervillain MF DOOM is you should aks somebody

Anyways seriously though......

Merry Christmas to everyone everywhere!!!! and have a choice as New Years too, Ill be think of everyone hanging out on the beach in NZ while I freeze my ass off in Seoul

Haha whatever Im going to Korea to hang out with Kim Jong Ill and his homies, yeeehaaa!!!

This shit is BAD (meaning good)

2006-12-13T21:56:00.000+09:00

OK so Im not sure how to link audio, so just click on this link to the Round Trip Mars Myspace and listen to the top song by JeffersonBelttheGreat. If you dont like it I hate you and everything you stand for and I will track you down and extract your ears cos you dont deserve them.

Seriously though, this shit is totally sweet, Im just listening to it for the 3rd time IN A ROW and will most likely listen to it a few more times. I REALLY REALLY want to hear this on a big system.

Anyways, my NZ friends, can you let know some more info on this dude? Is he a NZer or is it just being released on roundtripmars or what?? It says that the album is just about to be released, someone send me a copy!"!!!!

ps. Table tennis rules, wanna mess?

J Dilla

2006-12-09T11:58:00.000+09:00

This is a beautiful video. Its part of the Stones Throw/Adult Swim collaboration "Chrome Children". The music is by J Dilla (RIP).

chur

Skate Vid Blog!!!!!

2006-12-09T11:27:00.000+09:00

OK, so I got a bit of downtime cos I only have one class today (hahah yeaaaah!!!) thus the youtube watching etc has increased......

but you know I only post quality awesome shit (haha)

anyways, check this kid out, he's totally rad! looks like a choice dude too. I mean, check the shit with a skipping rope at the beginning, ayyyy???!!!!!

haha just watched another video, dude's a funny man

I wanna be this guys friend

Look at my striped shirt!!!

2006-12-09T11:16:00.000+09:00

well I'm not totally against stripy shirts as I own a fair few myself, but you know the ones/guys I'm talking about (see photo). read this link, its freaking funny, well I think it is, and I know my opinion counts (thats what my Mum told me)

"Look at my button down striped shirt! Fucking look at it! This shirt means one thing! I’m coming home with some pussy tonight! That’s right! It’s been a long week at the office and it’s time to blow off a little steam! I am a Junior Vice President! I have business cards that say “Junior Vice President” on them! They’re glossy and magnificent! Here! Have one! Take it!"

P.S. I swear I'll put something proper like some photos up soon......honest........

Pharrell can't skate

2006-12-05T13:33:00.000+09:00

So, after my request for videos of Pharrell skating (or not) my bro Paul came through. haha, lame, weak, lame, weak

anyways, fun weekend, went to a choice reggae party and the GEOS xmas party which was also pretty fun, will post some pics up when i get around to it. you seen a green jacket anywhere?

I want some of these

2006-12-02T11:49:00.000+09:00

Christmas present? <==== Click the link spaz

Got my Vans on but they look like sneakers

2006-12-02T11:30:00.000+09:00

Seriously what the hell does that ^^^^^ mean?? Vans ARE sneakers! Is there something I dont know about?

Anyways, when I first heard this song I instantly hated on it but now I cant stop walking around my apartment/GEOS singing it. I have thus come to the conclusion that this song is choice so ya'll should listen to it cos I said. Seriously, what the hell are they talking about? Its totally retarded but I love it, the beautiful paradox that is hip hop today. But how about that bass line?? rauw rauw!!

Also it seems skateboarding and hip hop have aligned themselves once again as being "cool" (what happened to the tight jeans punk rock phase?). haha speaking of skateboarding and hip hop whats up with that dude Lupe Fiasco? Does he actually skate or does he skate like Pharrell says he does (i.e. prob as much as me, which isnt much). Someone tell me, if you have video proof that either Pharrell or Lupe can skate please email me and let me know. Me, Im gonna get my cargo pants and flannel shirt out and start a 90s fashion revival, thats where its at.

Hello

2006-12-02T11:19:00.000+09:00

so, this is pretty funny for various reasons

Holy Aquatic Action Batman!!!

2006-11-18T14:00:00.000+09:00

So, after seeing this, I have come to the conclusion that NZers are pretty much totally awesome, I will fight anyone who dare disagree with my Shaolin Sword style.

Anyways, seriously, you gotta check this out

This dude whose a NZer (but now lives in America) designed this boat thingy that looks and swims (kinda) like a dolphin, it jumps outta the water, does barrel rolls and everything!!! First the jet-boat, now this!!! Also, it was named in Time magazine as one of the best inventions of 2006. Nice!! Check out their website and this video I found on youtube

ps. the people that host the Today Show are retards. That is all.

Balloons!!

2006-11-07T21:20:00.000+09:00

In SAGAAAAAAA!!!!!! (Note, SAGA must always be written in all caps, I decided that on Sunday, it is now by law, SAGAAAAAAA!)

Annyways, on Sundey, me, David and the 3-piece rhyme gang Floe, So & Saeko (see all their names rhyme!!) All jumped in Saekos redlight running car and headed down (kinda) to SAGA to meet the Canadian Sam for some balloon action at the annual Balloon festival.

train-times are fun-times

After parking in SAGA and getting on a train we eventually got off at the special temporary station at the ballon festival. There is a station on the train line that they only open for one week year when the festival is on, cool huh? First impressions were, lotsa people, lotsa yakitori/yakiniku/beer/okinomiyaki/omiyage, but hey, wheres the balloons???? After an initiall walk around there still seemed to be no ballons insight but there was meant to be some sort of "key race" happening later so we figured we might see some balloons

come get yer souvenirs!!!

what the hell??!!!!

3:30 rolls round and the uber-hyper Japanese annoucer dudes on the megaphone announces that the key race will be starting "hurrah!". So basically it went like this: theres this big long field with about 6-8 big ass cardboard keys hung up on 20 foot high poles along it, and the dudes in balloons take off prob a couple of km away and try to take the right wind and whatnot and come down at the right time so that they can pass by one of the poles and grab one of the keys. Sounds super hard and it was, with the first 5 or so attempts failing by a few miles or so it seemed like the balloonists quests for the magical keys were fruitless. But they obviously had judged the wind wrong cos the next dudes came way more closererer and finally some dudes got one!!! Wow!! he must have won a million dollars or something!!!! No. The genki annoucer announced that they had just won themselves a nice windbreaker jacket. Wow. Thanks grandma. Anyways, thereb were better prizes, like the $(US)7000 car, wicked, what kinda car is worth $7000???? A 1993 Honda Civic?? Anyways apart from the decidely lame prizes the poor balloonist dudes got, once things got going it was kinda exciting and there were about a million balloons flying around everywhere close as to the ground/crowd/each other which was kinda cool.

Almost got the key!

Balloooooons!!!!!!!!!

lots of balloons!!

close balloons!!!

daijobu desu ka???

After that we were all kinda buggered after having stood up all afternoon so food was on the agenda. I got myslef one of the ever-famed "Sasebo Burger"s which was pretty good, but I think "Karatsu Burger" was better, man do I missed Burger Fuel..... After that we kinda missed the night time balloon thingy so we headed off home and dadadada dunno how to finish so Im just gonna say dadadadada ballooners are cool, even cooler than ravers........

ps, oh my god, my mouth is literally watering after looking at the Burger Fuel website....

I see ya'll!!

2006-10-31T23:19:00.000+09:00

Strats, Dom, Carl, I see ya'll!!!

Looks like good times, I miss the Auckland music scene and stuff....
and shimmying to the Whipping Cats (to all you peeps in Japan listen here cos theyre choice)

Halloween Madness woooooo!!!!

2006-10-31T21:34:00.000+09:00

So, on Sunday was the kinda-Kitakyushu area Halloween Party/Pub Quiz at Xelha in Kokura. I think all up there were about 60 people, 6 representing Akama. Some of the costumes were pretty funny, highlights were James' giraffe thing, David dressed as Claire, the dude dressed in the white super hero costume. Notable mentions; Claire trying to look like David (you really needed a plastic hair wig), Jenns big bad (or was it good?) witch, Yuichi's cardboard-robot-snake-thingamy, and most of the Orio students had pretty funny costumes. I was dressed as a Pac-man ghost (cant you tell!!!)

The pub quiz was a crack up, you should have heard the uproar (and rush towards me) when the question "Who is the Prime Minister of NZ" was called out. I was impressed with how well my students did in the themes songs section (as I helped out with this part, thinking "nah theyll never know this one!!") getting all but one (the A Team theme). Unfprtunatly it was not to be Akamas day to shine, I cant remember who won but Im pretty sure it was cos of the evil biased cross-dressing quizmaster, eeeeevvvvvillllll!!! Also the dual quizmaster-age of Claire and Jenn (or British-American English translation!) was pretty funny/effective

So of course after we went to Grassroots which just happened to be pretty full that night and with all the students etc it was probably the most packed bar in Kokura that night!! Thus goodtimes ensued and many dancing was had and whatnot and eventually at closing time it was whittled down to just James and I, we still had 2 hours to kill before first train so we followed these crazy rock and rollers to this bar which was called "Crazy Bar!" which ended up being not that crazy but pretty cool anyhoo. Sidenote, Japan has an endless supply of little teenyweeny bars that you can go into and pretty much claim as your own (cos normally no one else is there!) I dunno how they survive but its pretty cool, down with big bars, up with little small bars!!!

Anyways, a big cheers has to go out to Claire Kurosaki for pretty much organising the thing herself, Im pretty sure everyone involved had a super awesome time and all the students will be hunting out pubs with pub quizzes next time they go to England. chur chur (thats NZese for thanks bro!), much appreciated.

some Akama and Orio and Kurosaki crew

Akama number one!

Yuichi, Miho-rastafari, dunno who that drunk guy to the right is

Claire I can see your nipple!!!

Pass.......
the..........
sunglasses!!!

Some random lock N lollers representing Grassroots

Happy Birthday Paul!

2006-10-26T22:54:00.000+09:00

Its my little bro Pauls 25th birthday today so everyone reading this say "Happy Birthday Paul!" OK?

cool

Happy Birthday bro, miss you heaps

My blogs pretty informative huh?

2006-10-26T22:42:00.000+09:00

best trilogy. ever

lets see if this thing can do 80

great scot!

indians!!!

and a special bonus

dont take no credit card to ride this train

Mt. Sarakura

2006-10-26T22:27:00.000+09:00

so, like, totally, yknow, oh my god, ages ago, me David and Claire climbed up Mt. Sarakura, it was totally gnarly, heres some pictures

The Aliens have landed, man they look stupid...

Seen-ery

Ambassador Gary

Automatic Sports

2006-10-26T22:20:00.000+09:00

look! a driving range where the tee automatically reloads!!!!

Claire at Edamistu driving range

auto baseball pitching at 100 km/hr!!!!

David at Round 1

SUGOI!!!!

Sporty weekend spice

2006-10-25T22:31:00.000+09:00

So last weekend I had a decidely sporty weekend, but fortunatly I wasnt a spice girl (buh).

Saturday straight after work went to the driving range at Edamitsu where my driving game was absolutly on form thanks to coach Sam, hitting to 200-250 yards heaps alot! I made the mistake of not stretching and now my back still hurts 4 days later :(

Sunday night went to the Orio hood to Jenns house for some impromptue 'Texas Hold em' (thats poker for youse that dunno), after a few beers and a bit of tuition it was ready to pull out the big money. 5 yen bets were the norm with a maximum raise of 10 yen (oh shit damn we high rollers!!) and in no time I was rinsing Jenn and David of their 100yen, but alas it was not to be and eventually Jenn cleaned us out....... after that we went to the Orio Billiard hall, yes! I hadnt played pool since leaving NZ so I was well excited, twas great fun

Next day myself and Aqua-asian the motorbike riding extraordinaire went to this big ass multi sports plavce called Round 1, basically you go pay 1300 yen for 3 hours and they have two floors (the top one is outdoors) of sports and what not that you can do as much as you want! like pretty much EVERYTHING!!!! basketball, volleyball, badminton, table tennis, tennis, soccer, frisbee, archery, shooting, FISHING (with real fish), rollerblading/skating, video games (infinite credits!!!!), billiards, baseball etc etc so it was pretty fun, probably my highlight was the baseball batting nets where the balls were pitched to you at 100 km/hr (or was it miles??) like woooooosh

from here..

to here...

the fishing hole was quite out of it, they had real fish in there, im not sure what they were but they looked like trout, you just went and baited up and sat and fished, anyone in NZ knows i hate fishing so i was outta there and went to the auotmated table tennis table and left David to it, he said he caught a fish but I reckon he's lyng, you know you cant trust Americans

prob the next weirdest thing was going on these little miniature motorbikes, so after a big rigmarole trying to get a go on them including signing a disclaimer/injury form written in Japanese (haha) and then getting suited up in enough safety gear to attack a gorilla safely with on we got on our bikes for a cruise which was especially amusing cos david had never ridden a motorbike before and started driving straight towards the wall.....

whats up ladies....

holy shit I'm hungry I gotta go get some food, laaaaaateeeeeeerrrrrrrr

Attention English Teachers

2006-10-25T22:21:00.000+09:00

Check THIS link out, its pretty funny, also the rest of the site is pretty damn funny too (that is, if you have a sense of humor similar to mine)

One good example....

That ad

2006-10-19T23:08:00.000+09:00

Also just cos I'm nice, heres that choice sony ad (some peeps havent seen it), pretty awesome huh?

Also heres an even better thing with a whole lotta balls off Letterman

Happy Birthday Jack Bauer!!!!!!!

2006-10-19T22:48:00.000+09:00

So, out in Kurosaki somehow we managed to get everyone to think David was called Jack Bauer and it was his birthday, so of course we tried to get everyone in the bar to sing Happy Birthday to him. This is the first attempt, note the false starts where everyone breaks into the Indiana Jones Theme song (long story). This was done at least half a dozen more times that night at various other bars. Comedy gold.

Out in Kurosaki

2006-10-19T22:31:00.000+09:00

also a few weeks ago, went out with the Claire Kurosaki, Jack Bauer and other peeps from the general Kurosaki area, was a most enjoyable time, I think the bars there are possibly more fun than the ones in Kokura, or maybe it was the exquisite company (nah couldnt be!)

"Jack Bauer" looking badass with his newly acquired womens bracelet

cheesu!

yeeeaaaah!!!!

I was well impressed with this girls singing.......

and this girls piano playing

all in all a great night was had by all, of course capped of by karaoke and me spilling my drink and smashing a glass, classy!

Ashiya

2006-10-19T22:18:00.000+09:00

a few weeks ago myself, Floe and Aqua-asian decided to go on a little trip to somewhere/anywhere, after a super fun time trying to look for a bus from Orio we ended up going to this beach Ashiya, which is OK but pretty dirty and stuff, but check out this big arse Jellyfish we found!!!!!!!

anyways a lovely day was had by all, watch out for Aqua-asian and his side kick "oar-man" with the power to row (he just needs to borrow your boat) and "Anchor-man" with the power of Anchor!!

also the day before that i went on a brisk bike ride, check the choice beach/coast about 1 hour bike ride from my apartment

Yes Now I have put some photos up!!!!

2006-10-19T22:14:00.000+09:00

yo, so after much a hiatus and too many stupid youtube videos (someone, anyone try tell me they werent quality!) I have finally got my arse together to post some pictures and stuff of actuall worth (well thats debatable too)

so here we go....

Learn how to grill

2006-10-12T12:33:00.000+09:00

Get this video and more at MySpace.com

OK I promise I'll put up some photos and stuff soon......

This!!!!!!!!

2006-10-07T13:36:00.000+09:00

No explanation just click on the link, awesome

dont worry its noth anything scary or anything lame like that

Jack Bauer is my homeboy

2006-10-03T18:57:00.000+09:00

I am addicted to 24.......

WHO DO YOU WORK FOR!!!!!!!

The Optical Inch

2006-09-30T16:19:00.000+09:00

I'm pretty sure I was telling some of you Kokura ninjas about this website last week. Just thought I'd post it up.

http://shaveeverywhere.com/

Enjoy

PS

2006-09-27T21:59:00.000+09:00

The real PNC; this is a good song and the video is funny as shit too

I promise this is my last post today

More youtube funnyness

2006-09-27T21:58:00.000+09:00

check the PNC Raptor scratchin up a storm

My brother's smarter than yours

2006-09-27T21:43:00.000+09:00

check this out, my little bro was on the news! They called him a "pioneer" even (haha), I taught him everything he knows I tells ya

proud big bro

More ghost riding goodness

2006-09-27T21:36:00.000+09:00

this guy rules. watch how he runs around the car. awesome

GHOST RIDE THE WHIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2006-09-27T21:27:00.000+09:00

yo, this is what its all about, ghost riding and getting hyphy, posted just for David, a great explanation about how to ghost ride the whip and what hyphy is and stuff (haha)

but anyways you all know that in Akama its all about ghost riding the train, heres a sneak peak of the new hit song by MC G-ary (straight outta Akama thug-life)

"Ghost ride the train"

(sung on a karaoke mic)
yo, yo, yo, yooooo

i ghost ride the train
im kinda insane
i do it in sun,snow or the rain
u may think im crazy but thats not true
i get out at the platform and drink a cool brew
then i eat a rice ball
dance with everyone and all,
cos im the tall shawl in the big ramen stall
cos im a ghost rider u know what i mean?
im a ghost rider,my homies are keen
got my man in JR hooking me up with that straight gangsta cream
ghost ride the train!
ghost ride the train!
u know u saw me and u know i came
chill on the platform then back on the train
cos i b doin it again and again

Ghost ride the train bitches!!!!!!

keep it real yo, keep it hyphy

Stones Throw tour pt 2

2006-09-21T22:04:00.000+09:00

read part one first!!!!!!

OK so it would seem that I couldnt put any more pictures in the last post so heres the rest

so, Madlib was cool, would have been nice if he played for a bit longer but its all good, it was just nice to see my favouritist producer and prob just one of my fave hip hop artists in the flesh live and direct

"do you know what live and direct means?"

"live and direct"

OK so heres a picture with the flash on, doesnt look as cool and arty but ill just chuck it in for variety. next on was Egon, he was possibly the unexpected highlight. He basically played a whole lotta shit that probably hardly anybody woulda heard before. He started off by playing all this music that I thought was bhangra later to find out that it was Turkish music (I think Egon is Turkish) and it was totally badass, that shit has the baddest basslines and drums and just the tempo and beat you cant help but wiggle you hips like youre in a bollywood movie (even though it was Turkish), pretty much as soon as Madlib finished a shitload of people left so there was heaps more room too which ws nice, although i dont think the Japanese people really got the whole world music styles and not many people were dancing. Next up he went to Italy and played this Funk track from 1974(?) which is sampled on a DJ Shadow track, which was very cool and he played a few more Italian funk songs. I never knew that Italy had funk bands! Then he played this old funk track by this Jpanese band which had THE BADDEST MOST RAWEST BREAK EVER!!! Seriously the drums were so hard and ruff and just totally mad everyone go ohhhhhh!!!!! I have to find out who it was by. Then he went back to Turkey and played some Turkish funk songs which were pretty mean also.

Then that was the end of stones throw so i just hung out and waited till it was time for the first train, started walking from Tenjin to hakata station at about 3*30am at a leisuely pace, got to the station at about 4*15am with just enough time to get a cup noodle and hang out with the homeless people before catching the 4*53 train back to Akama.

I gotta say, theres something quite nice and peaceful about walking around a city at 4 in the morning completly sober by yourself, i think ill do it more often, who says going out by yourself is boring!!! (maybe a little lame but oh well thats me).

Stones Throw Tour, Japan

2006-09-19T21:41:00.000+09:00

so at long last I finally got to see Madlib do a DJ set live, the Stones Throw Japan tour came thru town, it was, Peanut Butter Wolf, MED, Madlib and Egon, whatta mean lineup!!!!

So anyways, was a pretty cool night, just went lone warrior cos no one else was really that keen. Turned up to the club (Decadent Deluxe) at about 10:30pm which was relatively empty at that time (just like back home!), but that was cool i had a good look around the place, 3 floors, was very cool, kinda like an abandoned apartment turned into a club, had a look at the merchandise and got me a limited edition J Dilla 'Donuts EP' and a also limited edition J Dilla picture disc 7" with 2 tracks not on the album, sweet!

there were some Japanese DJs starting off the night playing some really cool jazzy hip hop instrumental styles which was cool, then this funny hardcore rap group came on, there were like 5 dudes all yelling and shouting over a wu tang beat and trying to act tough, i could what they were trying to do but it just came off a bit too shouty and stuff, was kinda funny

so after a little bit of that i decided to venture down to the main room and noticed PB Wolf was setting up so i thought id get a beer and find a good vantage point, done. PB Wolf was using Serato which was surprising cos he's such a vinyl fiend (actually no one used vinyl, both Madlib and Egon used CDs), but his set was pretty cool, at least half of it was a J Dilla tribute where he played alot of songs that he had produced and stuff like that, the dude was a legend man, actually throughout the night there was lots of Dilla related stuff played, was very cool

so after that PB Wolf stayed on and MED came out and did a set which was cool as, he even did the song that he featured on on Madlvillain (Raid), it was awesome hearing those songs (and lotsa madlib intsrumentals) on a big ass system instead of just my ipod headphones

after that Madlib came on, he started off just playing instrumentals, heaps of ones id never heard before, it was cool. haha everything was cool. anyways, the order of the night seemed to be funk and he played a boatload of really cool funk and stuff, would have been cool if he was MCing as well as DJing but maybe next time

Crazy freaking CATS

2006-09-19T21:15:00.000+09:00

OK,

so I had the weirdest night last night. After getting home on the last train from Kokura, then listening to my new records (Max Roach, totally drums!!) and kinda having a boogie by myself (sad I know), I had me some water and went to bed. Thats when i Start hearing this crazy rrrrrreeeeeeoooowwaaaaarrrrrrrrriiiiiiieeeeewwwwwwweeeeeerriiiiiiiiieeeeoeowwwww!!!!!!!!!!! Kinda noise out on the street (Im on the 2nd floor), at first i thought it was a baby crying but i quickly figured out it wasnt human and it was a couple of cats trying to freak each other (and me) out. I though, OK ill ignore it and theyll stop soon enough, WRONG!!! 20 minutes later they were still at it and then they actually started fighting.

I have to say, cats fighting at 3am has to be one of the weirdest scariest things i have ever heard, and it kept going and it sounded like it was right outside my apartment so i thought stuff this im gonna have a looksee, went out on my balcony and on closer investigation i see this regular size cat and think "hmph"

and then.....

the mother load crazy ass godzilla cat comes into view, seriously this cat must have been the size of a doberman (no joke) it was without a doubt the biggest cat i have ever seen, a rottweiler would have freaked out. unforrtunatly by that stage they had finished their fighting and all they were doing was posturing and making crazy meowing noises, i tryed to get a photo but it was too dark and they were a little too far away for the flash, and to be honest i was a little freaked out to try go out onto the road and get a closeup of this cat, um and so yeah thats it, was quite surreal, maybe i dreamt it

so, conclusion is: Cats are totally bad ass and you should not mess with cats cos they will F$%& you up, they are way more badass than dogs. Therefore, cats rule.

Night night

Gary (dawg hater)

2006-09-16T21:59:00.000+09:00

Look, its some drunk people!!

Everyone say Mi-hoooooo!!!!

David read manga porn

David dream manga porn

Sam says "suGOI!!!", Miho says "zzzzzzzzz"

No apologies for my shitty formatting, computers can eat a poo

Would post more but Im gonna go see Madlib, Peanut Butter Wolf, Egon and MED now, yeah!!!!

Mt. Adachi makes you sweaty

2006-09-16T21:50:00.000+09:00

Climbed up Mt. Adachi with some American and some British person, we saw a monkey and we were all scared and thought it was going to attack us but it didnt do nada. Haha, I basically just put the other photo up to show how sweaty we were, was disgusting.

Also on the way down it started raining and we got completly soaked, was hillarious walking thru Kokura completly drenched, all these Japanese people just going heeeeeeehhh??! Had to buy a hyaku en t shirt, left the t shirt i was wearing at Starbucks, stink!!!! Someone send me a new Traffick t shirt.

Gary chan interior decorator at your service

2006-09-16T21:43:00.000+09:00

So, I am basically a genius. There was a door that I didnt need in my apartment and some empty cardboard boxes, so I put two and two together, took the door off its hinges strengthened the boxes with some masking tape and wahey, its a table!!! (note the previously made table from a fedex box to the left). Check the door handle, classy.

So like, if you want any furniture made or some advice on gift giving, you know who to call.

RIP Steve Irwin

2006-09-09T16:34:00.000+09:00

I know this is a little belated, but I just wanted to say that its kinda sad that the crocodile hunter died, however much people took the piss out of him he just kept doing what he did and he was the man, did alot of shit to help charities for animals and the environment that not many people really knew about cos he wasnt the type of dude to make a big deal about it, which in my opinion is super awesome in this day and age where you have dryballs' like Bono trying to "rid the world of poverty" by thrusting his $400 sunglasses around on some huge stage (anyway thats for another post)

crocodile hunter/Steve Irwin: respect bro

crikey!!