I at a grapefruit. It was awesome, and it made me think.

I really like having plants in my house, and outside on my balcony. Wouldn’t it be great if I could plant one of these seeds. Just planting a seed usually doesn’t work. I threw on of the seeds into my fish tank to try and germinate it. I checked up on it most days and last week I finally saw that it was starting to sprout! I “fished” it out…(hehe like that pun?) and tossed it in a pot outside.

Now we play the waiting game.

Naoki’s race was this past weekend. Saturday was the time trials and Sunday was the actual race. I was not able to go on Saturday though. Naoki wasn’t too lucky on Sunday. It was raining all day. Naoki is a great driver, he took first over all last year, but he cannot drive well in rain yet. Naoki ended up taking 5th place. It is his Achilles heel. This was the first time I remember seeing a race in the rain. The jet streams of water behind the cars kept me amused for most of the race.

I hate walking up stairs one step at a time.

Saturday morning Miki asked me what time it was. I reach for my time keeping device, my cellphone, and open it up.

Nothing.

The battery seems to be dead. This is not a rare occurrence with me. I usually let the battery drain all the way before charging it again. Oh well.

Flash forward to when we get back to the apartment. I take out my charger, plug it in, and try to turn my phone on.

Nothing.

My phone is not taking a charge. I check where the cord plugs into the phone to see if anything looks broken,

Nothing.

I take the battery out and put it back in.

Nothing.

I take out the sim card or whatever it is behind the battery and put it back in.

Nothing.

Well. I just tried all the normal checks for a cell phone that I know of. I told Miki and we were off to Softbank. But this time we went to the Softbank by FKD and not the one that is on the route to 作新-Sakushin, the one that we used to go to. We went to the Softbank by FKD because I really don’t like one of the workers at the Softbank by 作新.

Lets take a brief trip to the past.

About a month back we went there to see if it would be possible to sign a new 2 year contract and get in on the iphone promotion that Softbank is running right now. A side goal was to put the new accounts under our own names since we now had our own bank accounts. That way we would not need Kumiko there when ever we needed to go to Softbank. After talking with one of the workers there it all seemed possible so we called Kumiko, because we are under her name with our phone contracts, and set up a time to go there with her.When it was our time I immediately got a bad feeling after seeing the worker that would be helping us. It was not the same helpful worker that Miki and I talked to the day before. I remembered this worker for some reason but I just could not remember why, and what I remembered (or thought I remembered, I could just be full of shit.) is that she does not know what she is doing. That or she just doesn’t want to do work so she makes things harder than they need to be. Either way back to the story. Long story short, because I do not want to think about that frustrating day too much, is that we did not get the phones that day because there were many different steps we would have to go through according to this new lady. The difference was we should have been able to put the remainder of what we owe on the phones themselves onto the new contract with the iphone. This lady said we had to pay off the phones first, but you can only pay that when you pay your phone bill, and then you had to wait 10 days, and then yada  yada yada the list went on.

Back to the present.

Miki and I took the phone to the FKD Softbank to get it checked out/fixed. Well Kumiko needed to be there even for that. Softbank really needs to allow the workers to just call the contract holder to verify that we are with them at times like this. Docomo allows you to do that. Since we were there we talked with the worker about the iphone again. To see who was right from our past experience at the other Softbank. Turns out is seems the first worker was right. We should have been able to get iphones. We called up Kumiko to see if she could go to Softbank with us the next day to get my existing phone fixed and possible get an iphone. This time I asked the worker we were talking to if she would be working tomorrow. I wanted to deal with the same person if possible to avoid a situation like the last time. She said yes she was.

Flash forward to the next day.

We get in. Go through all the possibilities and options available to us. Adam and myself end up picking up the iphones. Surprisingly Kumiko also decided to pick up an iphone as well. The whole time while going through the paper work I was joking around and kept on trying to show my drivers license even when they didn’t need to see any id, because since I have gotten my license I have not had a chance to show any form of id for any reason. And I really want to.  The one problem is since my old phone was broken I could not import my contacts from my old phone, as well as loosing all the pictures that I had on it. Oh well. My number and e-mail did not change so it is not too bad. I just need to slowly re-add everyone, but is someone needs to contact me they still can…I just might not know who they are just from looking at the incoming number

Now we just need to go back there after our visas are renewed in August to change the accounts so they are under our own names. That way we don’t need to have Kumiko go there all the time on our behalf.

During Golden Week I had a chance to take the road test again. This was my fourth time to take the road test, but my fifth time at the 鹿沼免許センター (Kanuma Driving Center). One time I went there when my visa was being renewed. I had the stamp saying all my paper work was finished. I just needed to wait for the paper work to sent off and stamped by the right person and come back, but the workers at the 鹿沼免許センター said no. Either way that was in the past.

Being a big holiday and all the place was packed. This seemed to be everyone’s chance to make it to the DMV. All the workers, who normally seem pretty unhappy, looked down right pissed off. Out of 16 people or so 4 passed. For the one girl it was her 13th try, so I have nothing to complain about having to take the test 4 times. The one part of this whole experience that I hate the most is that it takes the whole day. You have to have the paper work in before 10. and no mater what you are there until 3. 3 is when the results are announced. The if you pass you end up having to wait for another hour, hour and a half. That is way to much time, for them looking at your forms and taking a road test.

One more game to wait for…

Adam just bought a PS3 so we it up so he can stream media from my computer, and vis versa, so I could stream media from his.

I really wanted to try playing SSF4 online against Adam while down stairs watching his tv. We started up a game and after the initial set up I ran downstairs with my controller. It worked out perfectly. I just had to be careful when I was picking my characters because when you play online your who your opponent picks is kept a secret. I just needed to remember who I picked last and I could figure out where I was going on the character selection screen.

Now Andrew has a PS3, as well as Adam…whose nextかな.

The Continuation.

I had an Idea. Oh yeah, that’s right. Idea with a capital I. Stage one complete. After having this Idea pop into my head I talked to Miki and Jess about it, and they too liked the Idea. Well the Idea just reached stage two of it’s development. Stage three was fulfilled when we went shopping in 東京 (Tokyou). Stage four will be complete after we get together again to ship over the Idea.

Well that is enough vague talk for now.

The best part about this Golden Week was by far being able to see out friend Allen again. Allen was an ALT down in 長崎 (Nagasaki) who joined our party for many of our adventures. I am glad Jess, Miki, and Miki’s cousin Asuka were able to meet him. Lucky for us he was in 東京 looking at Universities. He is planning on going back to school here in 日本 (Nihon (a.k.a Japan)). I really hope that happens. Jason and I will have a reason to go to 東京 more then.

In the words of Jason, Allan is a classy guy. He is one of the nicest people you will ever meet.

We met him at the start of our adventure and had lunch together at an awesome Mexican restaurant that Jess and I have been to before. One day early though for the Cinco de Mayo. It was May 4th. The bad bit was this time we had a really pissed off worker. Last time all of the waiters and waitresses were really nice. Oh well the food was awesome. After this we parted ways for a bit. He had to drop his bags off at his friends apartment. When we tried meeting up again we had a little bit of a miss communication. He said he was in “a big camera store” near 新宿駅 (Shinjyuku eki(train station)). Well we thought he meant he was in the Big Camera which is the name of a camera store but not the one he meant.

After the camera store confusion it was time for dinner. We were going to try out a Turkish place but it was a bit more than we wanted to pay, and they were being a little difficult about what we could order. The didn’t seem to like us piecing together bits and sharing course meals between a few people. When she saw that she was loosing us she quickly ran to get some drinks or anything she could serve us to try and suck us into staying. We took a quick party poll and got out of there as fast as we could. We ended up trying out a nice Indian curry store about 10 meters away.

I forgot about the little awesome quirks of Allan. We are at an Indian restaurant, where the works speak Indian, passable Japanese, and a minute amount of English. But that never stops him from throwing up his hand and yelling out, “すみません (sumimasen).” Which is saying, “excuse me” and a way to get the waiters attention at a restaurant. Well usually when  a waiter hears this he is thinking that the customer wants to order some more food or something is wrong. He comes over not expecting Allan’s , “This is really great, good job! これはちょうおいしい。” in his Trinidad accent. He does this all the time at restaurants, and pretty much anywhere else he goes. That and breaking out into song.

After eating it was time to part ways and head home. It was a good day.

Monday I made my way over to Jess’s to hang out and then go to Tokyo the next day. I did end up leaving later than I had planned but it turned out okay. I still arrived before noon.

For the beginning part of the day we just walked about town, watched an awesomely horrible movie, and played a bit of video games. The original plan was to have a movie night with Jess’s friends but that fell through seeing as most people are away/busy for Golden Week. Instead we had a little picnic in a park and then we were going to go and play billiards somewhere. Well, where ever it was that we were going to go was closed. We fell upon plan B which was to check out a pirate themed bar that Jess had always wanted to check out.

Flash forward to the “bar.”

It was quite thoroughly decked out in a pirate fashion all right. There were barrels for chairs, a few of the booths had bars around them to make them look like a cage, and of course nets and a whole slew of other nautical related items were strewn about the place.

First thing we noticed that was out of place was that it was in fact not a bar. It was a ramen/isakaiya place. They had ramen, drinks, and a few other bits of food you could order and nibble on while you drank. The second thing we noticed is that the only music they played was Disney music…yeah… Disney music. Like music from Winnie the Pooh, Bambi, Micky Mouse club, and so much more…

We had just eaten so no one wanted ramen, and we didn’t want to just give up and leave, so we settled on ordering a round of drinks and playing some cards. The game of choice was Yuker. Who’s name I mixed up with the computer game Chuck Yeager’s flight simulator which I often played when I was a kid. I did not catch this mistake of words until the following morning though. We played one round openhanded to teach me the rules and then it was time to get serious. One game passed and everyone was hooked. We ended up ordering some snackly bits and a few more rounds of drinks and before we knew it we had played four games and two and a half hours had passed. We had to stay for one more game though, we were tied at two and two. All in all it was a great time.

horrible lighting...I should of had Jason take the picture.

I have a bookshelf!

Well…I had two before but I put them in the closet in the living room to help store everything. I didn’t want to put them in the living room because it would make the living room feel crowded. But, that is just not the same as having one out in the open. Contents open to be seen at all times. It really does feel nice.

Originally I wanted to find one short enough to put under the windowsill. Good thing I did not find a shelf to fit there though. If I had put one there it would have made the room feel a little unbalanced. It would feel like all the the furniture and fixtures are shoved to the one end of the  living room.

For those wondering the answer is yes. I use the balance ball as a chair. It is awesome.