Last night I had a few things I wanted to do. First, I wanted to pay some bills (yuck) and after that work on Bay's page. I pretty much know what I want to do with the design, now it is just executing the plan. After that, I was planning on going for a quick bike ride around the neighborhood. Finally, I was hoping to get a few games of Battlefield 1942 in with the [KrshFrkz] crew.

But my body and mind would not cooperate, and I fell asleep at 8:30... At least I got some much needed rest and am fully refreshed this morning.

Claw Theater is a site that Chris found and it is totally awesome. It features cats starring in some classic stories ranging from Snow White to Titanic. The graphics are top notch. I don't know what they used for their CG, but it's gotta be high-end SGI stuff. And the music is pretty neat too. On par with Vangelis or Philip Glass, I would say. Make sure you have Quicktime installed to hear the soundtrack to the plays.

Bad Spam:
Today I checked my email and there were 35 new messages. 33 of them were spam (unsolicited) email. Some of the best subject lines were:

"When can I see you again?"

"what is this"

"fwd: you'll like that"

"Re: when"

"No More Spam for Barron!"

Oh, when will it end? I have been using the Junk Email filter in MS Outlook and it works ok. I think my list of Junk Senders is probably about 200. When I check email at night, about 20% gets filtered into the Junk Email folder. Hopefully the spam epidemic will subside in the future as Microsoft, America Online, and Yahoo! have reportedly joined forces in the war against spam.
*update*
"In the toughest move to date against unsolicited commercial e-mail, Virginia enacted a law Tuesday imposing harsh felony penalties for sending such messages to computer users through deceptive means."

Good spam:
Spam musubi is so awesome! We usually pan fry our spam (low sodium) and season it with garlic powder. We have a plastic musubi mold that is the perfect size for spam musubi. I prefer to eat it without any kind of sauce on it like some that I ate in Hawaii. Spam n eggs on rice is a great breakfast too.

In my search for a Honda Passport/Supercub, I ran across this group of moped enthusiasts: The Moped Army. It looks like a totally fun group. You should check out their photos. You don't see too many mopeds around anymore... it's a shame because they are pretty fun. Gotta love Moped Army's slogan/dvd title: "Swarm & Destroy". :)

Mariko sent me this link to the Gas Buddy. Here you can check on the latest prices in your city/state. What's cool about it is that you can find the cheapest station near you. It works good for us because Austin is not a big town, so it is possible to find one of the stations listed on the "cheapest gas" list.

This morning I awoke to the sound of a gas-powered mower. One of the neighbors had decided that 6:30am was late enough to start mowing their yard. Does that seem strange? Not to mention rude. I am not even next door and it was loud enough to wake me.

An old obsession of mine is back! When I was in Japan, I fell in love with the Honda Super Cub. There were a lot of cool variants, for instance, the Press Cub (for newspaper delivery). These motorbikes are so uncool that they are supercool. Here's a link to the Honda website in Japan that has the super cubs. Here in the States, they are hard to find and expensive. I am hoping to get lucky and run across one in the classifieds. If you know of one for sale (cheap) in Austin, let me know!

I was reading an article in Bike magazine last night and at the bottom of the page it read "continued on page 82". So I tried to find page 82. But there were page numbers on only a few random pages. And when I finally found the continuation of the article, there was no page number. I hate that!!! I think magazines should have page numbers on ALL pages, and have them in the same location on each page. Grrrrr...

This week we have been subjected to the awful fundraising drive for NPR/KUT. This year the theme is "Pledge Early, End Early" and is limited to five days. Last year was the first time I sent in a contribution, and this year I actually "became a member". Woo hoo. Now I won't feel so bad when they give the guilt trip. I wish there was a way to tune into a secret frequency that did not have the fund-raising going on for those who have already contributed. I guess if radio was digital, that would be easier to accomplish. At any rate, I feel better for giving a little to them, since I listen to NPR on my commute to and from work.

Things left to do: Fix typos! Check on stylesheet weirdness (text running off the right side of page). Layout adjustments for all you Mac people. If you see any problems in the site, let me know what they are, and where it occurs, onegaishimasu!

Yesterday I had a terrible stomach ache and the unpleasant side effects so I worked at home. Today I feel much better, and so am back at work. It's already Wednesday which is great! I can't wait for the weekend. I want to work on the front yard by pulling up most of the plants. Then I will buy a bunch of dirt to build up the bed since much of it has washed away with the heavy rains. Mariko and I saw a really nice design last weekend, so I am going to try to imitate it, but I can only remember the general design... I don't think I will get to do any planting this weekend, but that is fine, as long as I can prepare the bed. And then I have some time to look at more designs.

This past weekend was a lot of fun. On Saturday we packed up the car and headed down to Houston. It was about a 3-hour drive, but was nice. I like the scenery on Route 290: lots of green and many cows and goats. And driving past Kickapoo Rd. always elicits a chuckle or two. Bay had his new CocoPad to play with also. CocoPad is the Japanese Leapfrog book. We took a different route to the dim-sum restaurant that we usually go to, and it was much faster. Actually, we got lost and asked for directions, but it was still faster. It involves taking the tollway (and paying $2).

Dim-sum at Ocean Palace was yummy as usual. In addition to the regular siu-mai and har-gow, we got clams in black bean sauce, chow mein, juk, and other delicicacies. After stuffing ourselves, we walked around the attached mini-mall. It's always interesting to see all the Vietnamese cafes and boutiques. We eventually ended up at the Hong Kong Supermarket which is huge! Bay had a lot of fun because in the back they have a big seafood section with live fish/crabs/crawfish. He even saw live eels swimming around. After Mariko bought some groceries and gifts, we got some bubble-tea and headed back to the car so we could go to our next destination which was...

Daido Japanese market. It's a small market, but I heard it's the only true Japanese market in the city. We didn't actually buy anything there, but I had wanted to get a can-coffee for the drive back. I forgot, though. Oh well. After that we drove down Westheimer Blvd. to go to the Crate & Barrel. Westheimer is a monster of a street. There are so many restaurants and stores all along the sides in strip malls. We saw about five Japanese restaurants in about three miles. On the way, Bay fell asleep so when we parked at Crate & Barrel, I stayed in the car with him while Mariko shopped solo.

Next on our list of places to go was IKEA. They have a lot of cool stuff there, not the best quality, but good prices. We bought a few things and Bay had tons of fun rolling around on all the beds. By the time we left there, it was about 5:30 and we figured we should get something to eat before hitting the road back home.

We decided to go back to Westheimer and try one of the Japanese restaurants. The first one we passed was called Sasaki, but it was closed, so we stopped at the second one, Kaneyama. It was very nice inside, but we didn't see any asian people eating there, so we were wondering how authentic it would be. I ordered oyako-don and Mariko ordered udon. They tasted just ok. My oyakodon was kind of dry, it seemed they used chicken breast and not the thigh. And there was zucchini in it too... Mariko said her udon wasn't great either. But the sushi rolls we ordered were very tasty. I don't think we will go back there, but it filled us up, at least. Bay was very popular with the waitresses there. They liked to hold him and play with him. One of them even gave him some Pocky!

The drive home was interesting because there were so many insects flying around. You could actually hear them smacking into the windshield. When we got home, the rear-view mirrors were caked with gnats. And there were a few big wasps stuck on the grille. It's really pretty gross-looking.

Anyways, we had a great time and look forward to going down there again. I actually want to see the Dodgers play the Astros next time...

Last night as I was falling asleep, Cal Worthington and his dog Spot popped into my head. I have no idea why. I could see his commercials in my mind and heard his song (that goes to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It") and I really wanted to get up and fire up the old computer to see if I could find some old commercials, but it was getting way too late. Well, this morning I did a search and struck the goldmine. He's got an extensive website, with a link to an archive of many old commercials and songs.

If you don't know what I am talking about, Cal Worthington is a car dealer in So. Cal. (maybe other places now?) who had these great commercials with his dog Spot. But Spot was a chimp, tiger, elephant, etc. and one of Cal's claims was that he would stand on his head to beat anyone's deal.

So, you guys still living in So. Cal., does he (and Spot) still make commercials?

I was looking around at some of the things that my hosting company offers in their website control panel, and I stumbled onto some site statistics for takoyaki.org. One of the interesting stats is a list of the search keywords people have used in various search engines that brought them to my site. Here is a sampling:

: takoyaki
: takoyaki recipe
: takoyaki grill
: takoyaki gen
: okonomiyaki restaurant los angeles
: okonomiyaki los angeles
: funnel cake los angeles
: rent shibuya room
: chinese market in austin tx
: totoro store
: gaijin houses tokyo
: houses for foreigner japan gaijin house
: takoyaki los angeles
: japanese snacks takoyaki
: gaijin houses japan
: best dim sum in austin
: japanese cd's
: r o slaw

I have been gathering some links for takoyaki information and recipes, so that people actually looking for takoyaki info will find at least a tiny bit of value with my site. :) I will add them this weekend.

I have been doing some more updates to the site. What I have found out is that pMachine (the php/MySQL publishing program I am using) is even better than I thought. I won't go into any details, but I will just say that it is really really cool!

I updated the Episode 1 story of my Japan life and linked it in the menu. I think the template is good, so I will use it to convert all my other old content. After that, I will figure out how to get Bay's site going again (with the subdomain bay.takoyaki.org).

You have probably seen this website before, but I just have to post it. It's so funny. Some of my favorite quotes of his:

"I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad."

"they are nowhere near the airport ..they are lost in the desert...they can not read a compass...they are retarded."

[On surrenders] "Those are not Iraqi soldiers at all. Where did they bring them from?"

Enjoy!

Last night I fell asleep at 8:30 with Bay. I wanted to wake up and work on the webpage for a bit and hopefully play an online game with some friends. But I just kept sleeping all the way through to the morning. In fact, I was falling asleep as soon as I got home from work yesterday!

I had a dream last night that Mariko, Bay and I were in Hong Kong watching fireworks. It was very cool!

Yesterday I saw the first fire-ant hill of the season in our backyard. It was small, but pretty gross when I stomped my foot next to it and they all came pouring out. I forgot to put some poison on them last night. But now that Bay is running around the yard, I should really make sure there are no fire-ants back there.

I HATE FIRE-ANTS! I must win the war.

my bike, more or less

You can now buy/sell artwork thru vending machines using Art*o*mat. Pretty cool... I wish there were one here in Austin. There is one in Houston, though. Lots in North Carolina... Thanks to Sahala for finding this.

I was checking out the Japan Today website and noticed that they have a nice little visitors' guide section. It was kind of neat to read about lots of places that we used to visit and hang out at when we lived in Tokyo/Yokohama. And it looks like there are tons of new things to do/restaurants to try.

The guide is good for American ex-pats looking for stuff from home. I remember going to the Oshman's in Shibuya not because I needed anything, but just because it reminded me of the States. And we went to Tony Roma's a few times for some good ribs. When we lived in Yokohama, we were lucky because near us was a big store called Olympic which had some food stuffs from the States, like American mayo (not Kewpie). And in Kichijoji there was Sony Plaza and Miuraya. For clothes, I would shop at Eddie Bauer at Queen's Square in Yokohama or the one in Shibuya. What was really weird was that there was a candy store in Yokohama and on their display window was listed all the cities that they had stores in. And of course, I found Torrance (where I grew up). Speaking of stuff from back home, it was really cool when we went to the movies in Yokohama to see Jackie Brown because I could recognize most of the So. Cal. locations in that movie. Lots of it was filmed within a mile or two from my parents' house. I think Mariko was tired of me saying, "I know where that is!" every couple minutes...

Some workmates and I were taking a little break talking about Airplane! and some of the classic lines. I found the script on google, so here are some good ones:

Joey : I think you're the greatest, but my dad says you don't
work hard enough on defence. And he says that lots of
times, you don't even run down court. And that you
don't really try . . . except during the playoffs.
Murdock : The hell I don't!! ( grabs joey by collar ) LISTEN KID!
I've been hearing that crap ever since I was at UCLA.
I'm out there busting my buns every night. Tell your
old man to drag Walton and Denier up and down the
court for 48 minutes.
.......

Oldlady2: Oh... its my stomach. I haven't felt this awful since
we saw that Ronald Reagan film. uhh.
.......

MCrosky : MAYDAY? What the hell does that mean?
Johnny : Mayday? Why that's the Russian New Year. You know,
we'll have a big parade, we'll serve hot hor'doevres

Here's another link to some pictures and sound files.

Kiki's Delivery Service, Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi), and Laputa:Castle in the Sky are released on dvd today in the U.S.! They are all 2-disc sets, with English/Japanese/Spanish audio and a few extras like commentaries, storyboards, artwork, etc. We already have these on Japanese dvd, but we cannot watch them downstairs on our Region 1 dvd player, so we will probably be getting these. At least Kiki's and Sen...

Anyways, these are fantastic movies! Kiki's is so great! My favorite scene is when she is flying over the ocean towards the new city. And the opening and ending songs sung by Yumi Arai (Matsutoya) are cool too (the Japanese ones)! My favorite scene in Sen was when she took the train to Swamp Bottom. That artwork was so neat, and the music is great too. I bought the soundtrack to Sen, which I highly recommend!

I am hoping that the English version of Sen has the correct color. The Japanese release had a reddish tint to it that the distribution company would not even acknowledge existed. There was a lawsuit in Japan brought up because the dvd was not the same color as the theatrical version. I think it was only the version sold in Japan that was messed up, but you can definitely tell that it is reddish...

*Update* The US version does not have the reddish tint. Yay!

It always seems to be super-cold in my office building. And in the summer, it gets even colder. I used to have a scarf here for me to use, but I lost it. At least I have a jacket. It would be nice to have an electric blanket to use while I work. But until I get one, I will have to make do with my jacket and a hot cup of coffee.

I heard Mariko get up and turn on the shower. A few seconds later, Bay sat up and said, "Mama?" That was at 6:30am. Surprisingly, I am not too tired. It must be because I didn't watch tv from midnight to 1am as I have been doing lately (watching war coverage).

I figure I would just leave the site open for you all to see while I update it. Maybe that will motivate me to get it done faster! :)

I am also going to redesign Bay's page, hopefully it will be easier to update with pictures so that I will do it more often!

In the meantime, I am going to convert pages to the new format and add them to the menu as I complete them.

This weekend was another fun, but busy one. On Saturday morning we went to our monthly Japanese Kids' playgroup. This time it was an Easter egg hunt at the park in Davis Springs. Bay had a good time and found lots of eggs. The food was terrific too, with finger sandwiches, karaage (fried chicken), meat pies, pigs in blankets, bagels and cookies. Mariko also made a wonderful cake!

In the afternoon we went to Jeff and Hiromi's baby shower. It was fun. We hadn't seen them in a couple years, and it was good to see them both again.

Today we went with Mikey to see Disney on Ice. This year's show was a jungle theme, with the stories of Jungle Book, Tarzan, and The Lion King all being told. The skating was great as usual and the costumes were really cool. Especially the elephants, which were huge.

Bay and Mariko already fell asleep, and I just got back from a bike ride around the neighborhood. Now I will continue updating the site...