At 5:07a, a little over 10 minutes ago, there was an earthquake in Shizuoka Prefecture. In some areas, the earthquake registered a 6.6 on the Richter scale. Thankfully, I'm far enough away that, although the earthquake was felt all the way out here, it registered only a .5 -- enough to cause my apartment to shake quite a bit, but nowhere near enough to do any damage.

It's amazing to see the news reports going on right now. Some stations had video coverage of the quake, so it was quite interesting to see how bad it was in the other areas.

Not sure if any of you have had this problem, but lately it seems that whenever I'm browsing the internet, there'll be some sort of web advertisement on a page that will cause my browser to crash. It's been happening quite a bit lately that it's become quite frustrating. Not sure if it's just due to an incompatibility with Safari or bad scripting, but regardless of the reason, it's enough to make a guy want to start punching small animals.

*Browser crash*
Take that adorable puppy! *Punch*
*Browser crash*
It's to the moon for you cute little bunny! *Punch*
*Another browser crash*
Say 'Sayonara' LOLcat! *Shoryuken*


*Grumble, grumble*

Went to Nagano yesterday to see Matsumoto castle -- one of the four original castles left in Japan. The weather as of late has been incredibly rainy (it was even raining all morning), so I was worried that it would be bad all day when we got there. Thankfully, albeit cloudy, the weather was just fine, allowing me to get some decent pictures of it. How they turned out, though, I'm not sure since I haven't uploaded them to my computer yet.

On the way back, the rain started to come down really hard, which was pretty worrisome considering the fact that many trains tend to stop at the stations for long periods of time when this happens. Luckily, the trains continued along and we made it back just fine. Even better was knowing that it had finally stopped raining in Nagoya.

Right now I'm currently on summer holiday. Which basically means I'll be spending almost 7 weeks wishing I could go back to work. While I like holidays and all, 1) I'll likely end up spending a majority of the holiday doing nothing, and 2) a 7-week holiday makes my wallet want to cry. (While I do get paid, the amount I receive is small and reduced to almost nothing once I've finished paying the bills.) I do plan on going out of town at some point, but I have no plans at the moment.

Anyway, this December I plan to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. For those of you who don't know, the test is broken up into 4 levels. The fourth level is easiest since it is for beginners while the first level, if you pass, means that you're on the same level as a native Japanese speaker. This year, however, the creators of the test decided to release a new third level and make the current third and fourth levels the new fourth and fifth levels, respectively. My plan for the summer, when not working my part-time job at the coffee shop or traveling, was to spend my time studying Japanese so that I can take the new third level test and -- with luck -- pass.

Unfortunately for me, I just found out a little while ago that the new third level test has been postponed until summer of next year, so I've been fairly lost on what I should do. I mean, one year is a pretty long time to wait and it's possible that by the time next summer rolls around I'll be to the point where I can aim for a higher level instead. So, I've decided that I will study harder and take the second level test to see where I'm at. At the moment I'm not too sure I can pass it considering that I still have a long way to go and a ton of stuff to study. Although I have a few months to go, how much I can accomplish is hard to say. I guess the only thing I can do is just try my best and see how things go.

I'm kinda worried, though. One guy I know who took the test scored in the 80 percent range for the level three test but then scored in the 20 percent range for the level two. With how large of a gap that is, I can only imagine how tough it's going to be for me if I take it. (;_;)

Since I hadn't recovered by the time work started on Monday, I was sent home to rest. Sadly, my condition hadn't changed at all yesterday so I ended up having to take another sick day. I went into work today since my fever had finally gone away, but it was still pretty difficult due to the fact that the body pains were draining my energy like crazy. As soon as my last class for the day was finished, I was allowed to go home early, so I took the chance to finally go to the hospital -- something I should have done on Monday but didn't (because I'm a retarded).

As it turns out, all the symptoms I'm currently troubled with -- headaches, bodyaches, etc -- are due to a virus which has caused my stomach to become inflamed. It should take only a few days to make a full recovery so long as I take the medicines that were prescribed, so I'm happy. What also makes me happy is the fact that the powdered medicine I received this time around tastes more like whey than than ass (which is the main reason why I hope never to catch the flu again).

Anyway, I look forward to recovering soon. Constantly feeling like someone has drop-kicked me in the abdomen really sucks.

Feeling horrible and very warm, so I decided to buy a thermometer. Right now my temperature is over 103ºF. (T T)

Man, this sucks.

....did you hear about this?


DETROIT (AP) -- Police in Detroit have ruffled some feathers after they cracked down on an organized pillow fight at a downtown park. The Detroit News reports that police at Campus Martius Park prevented the feathery fight Saturday by disarming pillow-toting participants. The bout was part of a worldwide event organized on social networking Web sites. Michael Davis of Hamtramck says police confiscated the 32-year-old man's pillows but returned their cases. He says he was told that he needed a permit. Scott Harris of Ferndale told the News that it's "not illegal to own a pillow." Detroit police spokesman James Tate says cleanup was the issue.

Find out Which Movie Villain Are You at LiquidGeneration.com!

Which villain are you?

Things have been pretty hectic since the last time I posted, but as of Monday I now have a bit of free time to get stuff done. Or at least, I would be if I hadn't managed to get my hands on a copy of Final Fantasy Dissidia....

Monday marked the end of the second school term, so there's been much to do in order to prepare for it. Nothing that I couldn't handle, but had I been in perfect health, I wouldn't have had any difficulty. With the students catching colds and passing them around so easily, it's been a little difficult to keep my health up. To make things worse, I had an accident about a week-and-a-half ago. I don't know what happened, but I received a bruise on the lower right side of my back, an enormous bruise on the back side of my left leg and sprained my left wrist. The bruise on my back is gone but the bruise on my leg is still in the healing process. My wrist is almost back to normal as well, but I've still got a few days left to go. I've been doing rehabilitation exercises in the shower, so I think that's helping quicken things. I really need to be more careful, though.

At the moment, I don't really have any plans for the break. Everyone has been suggesting that I head to Kyoto, but I think I'll do that another time since I went there in the summer. By the way things are looking, I may just end up hanging around my apartment for most of the vacation. I've been considering going to an onsen in one of the neighboring prefectures, but I haven't looked into it at all yet so we'll see how things go. There are travel brochures in the local train station, so I'll pick one up the next time I'm in the area.

Anyway, if you're wondering how Dissidia is, it's a must-have. Seriously, when they start taking preorders, get yourself signed up for one asap. It's freaking awesome.

Went to tennis camp last weekend in order to work on my serves. Kinda overdid it a little, though, and after about 4-5 hours worth of practice on the first day I pulled a muscle in my shoulder. Since I had played a few games as well (grinding my shoulder to hell and back) I was completely sore throughout my entire body. I had thought I was doing fairly well with my health via gym classes with the students and whatnot, but sadly it seems that it wasn't enough at all.

Thankfully, I had the day off on Monday due to the students going away on a one-day school trip so I was able to take some time and rest after heading out to the store to pick up some medicine wraps for injured/sore muscles. Although my body has recovered quite a bit over the past few days, my shoulder is still not faring too well. I can move it fairly decently as long as I have the medicine wraps and bandages on, but it starts to hurt quite a bit without some sort of medicine applied to it.

Anyway, I decided to take a break from participating in gym classes until I've managed to fully recover and, instead, watch the classes from the sidelines. Quite heartbreaking, really, considering the fact that the boys are practicing judo right now. I'd love to practice judo as well. For the girls, they're doing hurdles, which I figured would be fairly doable since my injury is in my arm and not my legs.

The goal was simple: Run the 50m hurdle dash as fast as possible.

The only problem that lay ahead was the fact that I've never run hurdles consecutively before. I learned the jumping technique last week, but due to the fact that it was raining we had to practice in the gym. Since the gym isn't that large, the most we could do was practice jumping over one hurdle. So, for today, it was a learn-as-I-go type of situation.

Things were looking fairly decent as I crossed the start line, but a problem arose as soon as I went over the first hurdle. The muscles in my arm began responding strangely to the movements of my body and threw my balance off. Luckily, I was able to recover fairly decently, but there was still the problem of the six more hurdles in front of me. Although it probably didn't appear that way to the students (since most of them were also doing this for the first time), for me it was a total awkward mess; completely off from what I had practiced.

In the end, my time was 9.6 seconds. Not bad considering what had happened, but I think I could've done better. Oh well.

Dunno if there'll be gym classes tomorrow or not, but I think I'll be taking a break from the gym classes to rest a bit more. While I don't think the students saw it (at least, I hope they didn't), my arm started to spasm a bit after the class ended. Definitely a good sign that I need to take it easy for a little while longer.

今日、三年一組女性達と高飛びをやった。いつも道り楽しかったのに、本当に上手くできなかったんだ。女生とやったら、できそうだろう。でも、男性とやるなら、全く違うよ。本当の高飛び方を使えないので、前向きでやらなくてはいけない。その飛び方で、１３０センチだけ飛べる。（T　T）

もっと運動しなくてはいけないナァ、僕は。

A fun little game on one of the forums that I frequent:

============================================================

Your Debut Album

1 - Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Random quotations: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

If you want to do this again, you'll hit refresh to generate new quotes, because clicking the quotes link again will just give you the same quotes over and over again.

3 - Go to flickr's "explore the last seven days" http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Put it all together, that's your debut album.

============================================================

Here's mine:

Band Name: Mandeville v. The Union Bank of Georgetown

Album Name: "Revoke At Any Moment"

Album cover: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23886502@N07/2929540923/

Although I enjoyed the storm the night before last, it really messed the trains up quite a bit yesterday. Most trains were so off schedule that they'd go 20-30 minutes over the original posted arrival times. Since it's continued to rain since that night, I wouldn't doubt things are still pretty messed up with the train lines. Because of that, I've decided to cancel my plans for today and try to get things done around here just in case things get really bad. Hopefully the weather will be better tomorrow.

In other news, I finally decided to get myself a new DS. The one that I have was starting to annoy me quite a bit since the touch screen's calibration has degraded to the point that I end up quickly failing any games that require accuracy, so I went out yesterday in order to buy myself a replacement. (Why it degraded like that, I haven't the slightest idea. I did what I could to keep it protected and used only the required amount of pressure for stylus recognition.) I had wanted to get one of the black models, but due to the color's popularity it was sold out no matter where I went so, in the end, I bought a white one just like the previous. While it sucks spending so much money like that, it feels good to be able to successfully play my games once again.

Not sure what's going on, but there's a siren going off. Not an emergency vehicle siren but a building siren. Dunno if it's for a break-in or something happened, but I can hear it pretty clearly going off in the distance. It's not very loud, though, so it's probably relatively far from where I live. (Meaning, I'd like to go over and take a peek to see what's going on, but with the storm still going on and how far it'd probably take to bike, it's too much of a hassle.)

A storm rolled in about an hour or so ago. Probably the best one all summer. It's been raining pretty hard, but what really makes the storm enjoyable for me is the magnitude of the thunder. Some are rolling sounds, but quite a few have boomed like you wouldn't believe.

So happy right now. d(=^w^=)b

I need help. I'm trying to run an MMORPG, but every time I start it up, Windows blocks it from running and shuts it down. I've been playing around with the firewall and security settings (as well as the software's properties) to see if I could find a way to get it to allow the program to run, but haven't had any luck. If any of you guys are running Vista, can you explain to me how to get Windows to acknowledge that it's a game? I'm thoroughly confused.

This isn't the only program that Vista has been blocking, so any help that I can get in fixing this problem to allow me to run all my programs will be greatly appreciated.

Been watching quite a few movies since the beginning of the vacation. Most good, one laughably awful. Some of the movies that I can remember off the top of my head:

-- The Simpsons Movie (It was okay, I guess. ::Shrugs:: )
-- TMNT (A lot better than I was hearing. Makes me wonder if they'll be making a sequel since it just didn't feel the same without Shredder.)
-- ライラの冒険 (Although this is the movie "The Golden Compass", the Japanese title translates to "Lyra's Adventure". For the movie, it wasn't all that bad, but it kinda felt like it needed more. Hopefully the sequel, if it's made, will do better.)
-- Beowulf (Really good. I liked how the CG was done, but it does make me wonder why they didn't just do it live-action and then add in the CG stuff. Not that it matters, really.)
-- I Am Legend (Pretty good. Would've been better if I weren't watching it while tired.)
-- Gotham Knight (Really makes me look forward to Dark Knight, which comes out this Saturday.)
-- ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 (Live-action movie. Pretty family-oriented so it was a simple and fun watch. What made it really interesting was the fact that the DVD had the option for English subtitles -- something that you pretty much never see in a Japanese DVD.)
-- 魔法にかけられて (The Disney movie "Enchanted". Way better than I had expected.)

There were a couple more, but unfortunately I don't remember what they were. Oh well. Anyway, if you wanted to know, the laughably awful one was titled "Snow Queen", which is a really cheesy B-movie horror flick. Although it wasn't as bad as some of the B-movies I've seen in the past, this one had me laughing pretty good. Some highlights:

> Craptastic story
> Terrible editing (in one scene, you could actually see when they used the green screen)
> Mandatory topless scene (if it weren't for the fact this chick had a laughably horrible boob job, I wouldn't have mentioned this)
> Odd way of emphasizing that it was cold (which was shown by having the chick, who went topless at the beginning of the movie, not wear a bra underneath a very form-fitting sweater throughout the duration of the movie until her eventual death)
> Make-up (which was surprisingly good, so kudos to the people who were in charge of that)

Definitely not worth wasting your money on, but I was really in the mood to watch something crappy at the time.

Next up: Sweeny Todd




-------------------------------------------------

Update:

Watched Sweeny Todd last night. Definitely a strange movie, not that I was expecting anything less from Tim Burton.

Tonight I watched ナショナルトレジャー２：リンカーン暗殺者の日記 (National Treasure 2: The Lincoln Assassin's Diary (Book of Secrets)). Just as good as the first movie, to put it simply.

I also rented ファンタスチック４：銀河の危機 (Fantastic 4: Universe's Crisis (Rise of the Silver Surfer)) but I haven't watched that yet. I'm a bit wary on this one since I wasn't exactly too enthralled with the first one, but I figured I'd give the sequel a watch just to say I did.

I really want to watch Dark Knight, but I'll probably have to wait until Monday or so since it premieres tomorrow in the theaters. Unlike US theaters, they have more of a reserved seating type of arrangement going on (you get to choose where you want to sit from a seat map when you buy your ticket, which is then marked on your ticket to prove the seat is yours), so I'd rather not be stuck down in front like I was with Spider-man 3. (Like US theaters, the seating arrangements are, of course, first-come-first-served.)