TOKYO TIME: 9:34AM, WEDNESDAY

yes, we’re here and doing fine. happy halloween, i guess, americans.

we’re off to a good start even if so far the trip seems to be the vacation of ‘nice tries’. we couldn’t go out sunday night when we got here because we were falling asleep. monday we tried to go to the imperial palace garden but once we got there, realized it was closed mondays and fridays. oops. then yesterday we had two; tried to hit up a cool church-themed restaurant for lunch, but it’s only open for dinners. then tried to hit up a neat 80’s nostalgia themed bar in shinjuku after dinner, and walked around for an hour and couldn’t find it. oh, stupid americans.

the main problems we’ve run into are a combination of jet-lag keeping us from going out and having crazy nights, and the somewhat bothersome fact that tokyo’s not really into the whole ‘streets and addresses’ thing. most of the time the only way to match where you are with a map is based on landmarks cause you can’t always tell which street you’re on, plus our sense of direction hasn’t really solidified yet.

i think we’re getting the hang of it though, and we managed to stay up past midnight finally last night, so it should be smooth sailing from here. it’s not all screw-ups though, we ARE seeing lots of cool stuff and we have walked around a lot of parts of the city already. got some great pictures i can’t wait to share. getting the feel for the subway system. had some delicious ramen and gyoza (dumplings). ate at a super-fancy restaurant with the best view of a city i’ve ever seen in my life.

and we have almost a week left so it really feels like we’re just getting started. plenty of time to make up the couple things we missed, and do all kinds of other stuff still on the list, and hopefully now that we’re caught up on sleep, have some wild nights.

well it’s only a couple more days… time to do some laundry, start packing, and get ready to hop a plane across the pacific. exciting! slightly nerve-wracking!

also, i hope i don’t run out of money. tokyo is not like my past vacations where a favorable exchange rate puts everything at a discount. this is essentially going to be like one long, expensive weekend of partying in LA, which could get ugly. we’ll see.

you know a great feeling though? the last few days of work before vacation. wrapping up current stuff, knowing no one can really bring any new problems to you because you won’t be here to help them in another day anyway. not that i wouldn’t normally be happy to help, it’s just that at the moment i’m already booked for two weeks of having fun with my girlfriend, sorry buddies! so it’s all just finishing things and no starting more. very satisfying.

[quick aside: you know what’s been fairly unsatisfying? the office so far this year. maybe it’s because they can’t sustain for a whole hour? all i know is that it’s felt a lot less funny and a little too wrapped up in everyone’s relationships. i like the sweet moments and all, but don’t forget to keep the jokes in, please.]

i’m gonna miss playing halo with my homies for a bit, i’m gonna miss seeing the big USC vs oregon showdown this weekend, which is too bad. but the more i read and research the more i’m looking forward to this trip. i’m fairly sure it will be unlike anything i’ve done before.

mere days away from our departure for tokyo. if you have any last minute travel tips for the region, get ’em in quick! two weeks not at work sounds excellent right now too, because it’s been a busy couple weeks.

although part of me foolishly wishes the vacation wasn’t happening just yet… everyone just got halo and there’s a LOT of fun to be had playing it online with all my friends, whose fervor i can’t imagine will last past the next month or so.

oh, and there was a weird twist to the xbox tragedy. after a long, pointless, disappointing call to the service line sunday night, where they said, ‘it’s still in the factory, call back after wednesday and we should be able to update you’, to which i responded, ‘really? it’s almost been a month!’ before eventually hanging up, i got a monday surprise. a box arrived for me with a new (or at least different, refurbished) box in place of my twice-broken one repaired again, and a coupon for a month of free online service with an apologetic form letter. i guess it’s nice of them, although A) it should have taken way less time, and B) it’s extra strange that the service number people had no idea they had already sent me a box back. maybe i’ll get another one through some fluke in the system if i call back? re-selling one for a few hundred bucks might be enough to make the whole ordeal worthwhile…

finally, an addendum to the bizarre near-miss of our day-before-the-fire wedding trip to malibu. i found a photo of the hotel that my coworkers who decided to stay the night locally all slept in. this is it the next day — the hill in the back that appears to be getting dumped on is right where we had a few beers on a little patio area the night before. crazy.

Animation Show – Tony vs. Paul

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i’m working on a sunday, which is too bad, but i did find this video, which is neat and i bet was super fun to make. i should get a video camera.

also, i went to a super cute, very fun wedding on the beach in malibu last night, where one of my coworkers got married to a really cool guy and a bunch of my work friends had lots of fun. the ceremony was right before sunset, the weather was perfect, and it was really beautiful all around. the party was great too.

this morning, malibu is on fire. not only is that terrible in a general way, but we’re all very lucky we got out last night/early this morning, and my friend is super lucky she planned her wedding for saturday.

time for more music-related bitching. sorry, but i can’t hold it in.

i’m slightly bitter toward something that has come from music blog culture as i’ve experienced it. as i’ve pointed to in the past, better men have already described and decried the race-to-be-first, obscurity-craving tendencies of music writers on the net, which i fully agree with. i think there’s a corollary to that though that goes like this: sometimes you’re going so far out of your way to get to a band first that the band isn’t ready to be known or heard about yet.

there are probably examples of this where early hype set too-high expectations on a band that was just barely getting started, but i’m complaining about this for more practical reasons. i read on this blog, which i heard about on blog fresh radio, which i listened to originally because my friend james was on an episode, about this band called nana grizol (of which kevin bacon is a member…haha, not really).

the problem is, the song in question, ‘circles round the moon’, is amazing, which normally wouldn’t be a problem, except that i want a full cd by this band right now. i would go out and buy it this weekend if i could. the problem is that this band doesn’t even have an album yet. i’m really excited to give my money to some musicians who don’t have an ounce of physical output for which to exchange it.

which would be fine, except that i could very well listen to this one song to death for a month, let it drift into the depths of my itunes library, and have essentially forgotten about them by the time they’re ready to trade my well-intentioned dollars for their musical labors. then who wins, other than the music blogger who got to say, ‘oh yeah, i heard about them way before they even made an album?’.

now i’m not pointing fingers at this blog in particular — it’s a local music blog, and those locals have the benefit of going to see this band live, so perhaps it’s a half-assed example. but i am a little bummed at this pattern. say what you will about the extensive downsides of the radio & record label system, but at the end of the day after they took their too-large cut of the profits, at least they had the courtesy to time their hype machine leading up to a product release, and get a band’s fully conceived piece of work into the hands of as many people as they could.

having said that, here i embark to do just as i said, and listen to this song to death. it’s really, really good.

in another little music drought, of sorts. haven’t picked up anything new in over a month i think, but thanks to some excellent mixes by my friend ted (download them for yourself on his page!), i’ve at least had some fresh beats to spice up my commute. i heartily recommend the first one, which is a little disco-rockier if your tastes are closer to mine. i especially love him for bringing my attention to this justic remix by mstrkrft, which is banging all over the damn place. and so it’s a ‘just’-ly deserved pay day song. ha! puns.

other than that i think the only album i’m feeling the need to go out and purchase any time soon is the new beirut album, flying cub cup. check out that website, they did a live video for each of the songs on the album, all in interesting organic locations. i can’t stop listening to them lately, possibly because of what i can only pin down as a ‘gentle beauty’ their songs have. i don’t know if i’ve ever been excited by a band i’d describe as ‘gentle’ before (maybe iron & wine?), but the olde tyme euro gypsy vibe is just hitting some spot for me lately. seriously, check out those videos (#1 is even filmed walking down a stairwell, it’s so perfect somehow).

the darjeeling limited – 2 stars

nothing’s more sad than seeing an artist you used to love get less and less good at the things that made you love them. i ADORE rushmore as a film, because it was a quirky love story told in a visually interesting way. i really liked tenenbaums too, because it was a quirky portrait of a family full of great characters, even if there wasn’t quite as much of a satisfying story arc.

i think from there it’s gone downhill, as mr. anderson has since devolved in terms of storytelling and spiraled out of control into his own quirky visual style of film-making. i was pretty strongly disappointed with life aquatic because as much as i wanted to like it, i was honestly bored by it. i’ve been told, ‘but the style matched so well with the emotions of the character’, to which i counter, ‘yes, but i didn’t like the character either. that’s the problem.’

with darjeeling, which is at least only 90 minutes, i find the same problems continuing to disappoint me. instead of applying his stylish eye for detail to a strong narrative, all you really get for your 12 bucks is an hour and a half of some spoiled rich people aimlessly trying to ‘figure themselves out’, who you don’t necessarily like or care about in the beginning, and who the script never bothers making you care much about by the end.

it looks nice and there’s good music, but when the slow motion dancing happens at the end of rushmore it feels like a triumphant moment. when the same visual trick gets dragged out with three brothers running in slow motion to catch a train in darjeeling, i was mostly just glad it meant the movie was over.

i know i should be saying, ‘not much to talk about because all i’ve been doing is playing halo’, but that’s not the case, actually. i mean, aside from working a lot and sifting through all the fall tv shows trying to weed out the ones not worth following (reaper was the first to go… sorry kevin smith but i think it’s aimed more at 13 year olds than me), i’ve got a whole new time suck. i picked up a game called skate.

it works a lot like i imagine skateboarding does in real life; when you get it in your head that you have to nail a certain trick in a certain place, you can easily spend hours just trying that one thing over, and over, and over. and over again. until you finally get it. one example you can even see on the internet, since they also incorporate a feature where once you do finally nail something, you can save and even upload it for public viewing.

anyway, since i never got to be much of a skateboarder in real life, this game is intensely satisfying to me. and every night after jessica has gone to bed this week, i have been perfecting my flip trick to grind to manual combos with much thumb flickery. it’s pretty much awesome.

now, we weekend.

On the train i almost missed this morning for a work trip. Forgot my book, my magazine, my psp, my ds, have my ipod and laptop but left my headphones sitting on my desk at home. There's only so much power point one can stand per train ride, so now i'm staring mostly at this, because i also wasn't smart enough to pick a seat on the ocean-facing side. Ugh. It's only tuesday.

xbox red ring purgatory update:
customer service call made: 9/26
coffin received: 10/2
coffin sent back: 10/3
arrived at service center: ??
fixed box sent: ??
fixed box received: ??

so we’ll see how that goes. can it beat the one full month mark and show up before i leave the country on vacation? stay tuned!

speaking of which, i found the most excellent tourist activity for japan yesterday. can you guess? of course you can’t! who would have thought you could go to a NINJA MUSEUM?