-Jess came by last weekend to go see Coraline with us. The party consisted of the standard rpg number of 4. Jess, Jason, Miki, and myself. Coraline is the second movie I have seen in 3D, and so far 3D does not feel gimiky to me. It helps to suck me into the movie even farther than before. At least in a movie theater. I am not sure if it would have the same effect at home. As for the movie itself. Everyone of us has read the book, so well all knew what was going on and had our own expectations. My only qualm was the ending. As Jess pointed out when we were talking the whole movie seemed to have lost it’s “face your fears” theme that we all liked. The ending especially so lost this feeling. The books ending was “oh man, A bit of this problem followed me home. I need to do something about this and finish what I started.” Followed up by an awesome plan. Whereas the movies was “oh no! I need to ditch this key.” Besides that it was still a good movie.

-When Jess came over we switched games. My Assassin’s Creed for her Dragon Age. After FF I quickly got into and beat Assassin’s Creed. After that I started up Bayoneta. I was close to the end of Bayoneta and I had every intention of beating it before I started up Dragon Age but… well…Jess said she wanted to see me make my character. Well naturally that meant that I was going to have to play a bit of the game of course. I have not stopped playing it since… I hear tale that the next one comes out this month as well…Basically I am not going to have a shortage of games anytime soon.

-We found on of my shrimp two meters away from my tank, dead near the balcony doors. I have seen the zip around the tank. I, while cleaning the tank, or a fish, while looking for a snack, must have scared it a bit too much and sent him flying out of the tank and then flopped his way over by the doors.

In other tank news, ever since I put in this awesome piece of driftwood in my tank I have not seen my mini-プレコ. There are many places for him to hide in that thing.

-Yesterday I sent my first batch of money home via means of the Llyods account! It is nice to have an easier way to send money home.

-I have new books from Mom and Dad! They shipped a package to Jess….but accidentally put my address on the box. So to get around any hassles we might have trying to claim the package after we received the first “hey we tried to deliver this package and you were of the not home status” slips, we called the post office and had them deliver it to the Banana Kids office. That way neither Jess or myself had to be around to claim it.

Back in the day when I first moved to the apartment above Adam’s we had the plan to share a set of the interwebs via means of an old wireless router I brought back from home. Well that router had been giving me troubles when I tried to use it at the old 山崎ハイツ – Yamazaki Haitsu apartment, and it wasn’t working out much better here at the わかばハイツ – Wakaba Haitsu apartment. I took it over to Jess’s to see if it would work out over there for her and her PS3 and sure enough with out a hitch we got it hooked up. It has not given her troubles since.

I forgot to try out sharing a connection after I picked up a new router when I bought my PS3. So today we hooked up the router downstairs and I will be testing it out over the next week to see if it has enough oompf to meet my needs. If so I will cancel the internet here and Adam and I can save a little money.

The three biggest checks I need to make are;

-using skype

-playing a game online

-and uploading

Friday night was great. We hit up a German Restaurant in 宇都宮 – Utsunomiya by the name of Hogarden (That spelling is a bit off). Adam and Dustin have been there before, but it was a first for the rest of us. The food was great. The German potatoes, cheese potatoes, and scallops were too good. Memories of when I was a kid keep welling up with every bit I took. Miki and I split a sausage, by the name of which I cannot remember to even a little to try and type, and a pastrami sandwich. Both of which were amazing. I really want to go there again.

We followed up the food with a couple rounds of bowling. Adam took the first round with Jason in a close second and I took the second round beating Adam by one pin.

It is spring! because;

-I saw flowers blooming.

-I can ride a bike in a long sleeve t-shirt during the day.

-I don’t have to turn on the toyu heater at night.

-I can sleep without a shirt on at night.

-I can sit down on the toilet and not scream because the seat is too cold.

-I have to open a window at the office because it is too hot inside.

-I can run in the morning with out wearing 5 layers of shirts.

I have talked about banking in Japan before, but here is an article that should provide a better picture of it all.

The deed is done! I have sent out Hannah’s Christmas card! I hope I got it in the mail before the Christmas rush starts, ensuring that it makes it there on time for the holidays.

I used the 500円 “send anything anywhere in 日本 provided you can fit it into this cardboard envelope” option because I am also sending Hannah a couple of books! I sent her “Anansi Boys” by Neil Gaiman and “The Color of Magic” by Terry Pratchett.

Now to get Lindsay’s in the mail. I don’t think I am going to get her letter out in time to beat the rush. I have to gotten word back from her. I may have to once again delve into the depths of the book of many faces to contact her.

I set up googlereader this weekend in order to help keep up on the news. Every morning while eating the break of fast I usually skim news and other websites. But going through all of the bookmarks can take a while. Hence my search for a RSS reader.

This was the first morning putting it to the test, and it worked out really well. I managed to skim about 300+ news/blog/other posts in 25 minutes.

About two weeks ago a bit of a situation occurred in the tank. I have always had a bit of red brown algae growing. Algae in a tank is normal. But two weeks ago it just kicked into over time. In no time at all the walls were not looking too good and my plant leaves looked brown, not because they were dying but because they were covered in the diatoms. Well if I didn’t get the diatoms off them they would start to die because they could not get the neccessary light.

Time for a plan. My counter strike consisted of increased water changes, which were helpful, and rubbing the diatoms off the leaves and sides of the wall. Josh also suggested putting in some more plants and fertilizing the ones I have to take away the source of food for the diatoms.

Recently one of my guppies found the fantastic final fish bowl in the sky, so I had room for another fish. I always wanted to pick up a プレコ – Plecostomus, but didn’t want to crowd my tank. Also if they are big enough they will accidentally root up plants while looking for food. Right now I am trying to provide cover for some shrimp in my tank so that would be bad. When  I went to Pet Forest looking at plant fertilizers they had some mini plecostomus! It has now been about 4 days since we put him in the tank and he is doing a great job. The tank is clearing up nicely.

The past 2 weeks it has been snowing, and snowing often! Often enough that a decent little build up of it will occur. It is usually small tiny snow or big fluffy and slightly wet snow, but hey I will take any kind of snow I can get. It will generally melt after two days, but as soon as it does the weather decides it is time for another good dump.

I finished up Final Fantasy 13 this weekend! Making it the first PS3 game I have beaten! Next up is Assassin’s Creed 2.