It will probably only last one day, so I got to celebrate while I can.

What a nice weekend we had! On Saturday, Koa, Bay and I went to the neighborhood pool for the first time. There are two pools available to us, a big pool which is just the normal all-around type, and a smaller, kids pool. We went to the latter. When we arrived at 10:30am, there was only one other person there, so we pretty much had the pool to ourselves. The main pool is divided into two sections, and are only 3.5 and 4.5 feet deep, and there is an area that is only a few inces deep for the toddlers to play in. There’s also a smaller pool which is only 1.5 feet deep, and is covered with a big shade. That was nice, but the water was too cold that day. There is also a pretty good sized waterslide that goes to the bigger pool, but it wasn’t working. The lifeguard said that some of the rubber pellets that are stuck on the bottom of the wading area were getting stuck in the pump, and they needed to replace it. We had fun anyways, floating around the pool in our inflatable contraptions. A couple other families arrived at the pool as we were leaving. Speaking of leaving, that was an adventure, since Koa didn’t want to go and then threw a giant tantrum, screaming at the top of his lungs. A fellow father helped me carry our cooler and Koa’s sandal that he kicked off to the car, saying, “I feel your pain.” Anyways, it was really nice to go swimming again, and I’m sure we will visit many times this summer!

Two weeks in a row we have had takoyaki parties! This last one was at a friend’s house, and not only did we have takoyaki, but we also had Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki. It was basically a small amount of batter, like a creped, and on top of that went cabbage, egg noodles (like yakisoba-style), and thinly sliced pork. There was also fried egg, plus the toppings of okonomiyaki sauce, green onion, that green stuff, bonito flakes, and some kewpie mayo. I took some video, so I will upload that soon. It was sooo good! There were also other goodies, like karaage, edamame, a small taco bar, chips, queso, and salsa. It was quite a combination! To go along with the meal, we had lots of beer, including some ales, Mexican beers (Carta Blanca and Tecate), Japanese beers (Asahi Super Dry and Sapporo), and Margaritas. We all had a great time eating and drinking and watching various things on the background TV, including Anpanman, Stanley Cup Finals, and Harry Potter. It was a great evening!

Here’s a neat little site called Visited Countries that will make a simple map of the places that you have traveled to. I added some gradients to the map so that it doesn’t look too boring.

[via Kokochi]

I have been enjoying my iPod (and iTunes) a lot lately and spend quite a bit of time organizing my music library. I am trying to get cover art for all my music, which usually involves www.amazon.co.jp and google image search. It’s very easy and I can usually find anything in a minute or so. I have also started fine tuning the way my smart playlists work. Since I started ripping all my music to .mp3, I have usually lumped all my Japanese music into the Jpop genre. But I am starting to convert my mp3 tags and iTunes xml tags to use the comment field to put in the language. First, to all the songs that are currently labeled with the genre Jpop, I put Japanese in the Comment field. And now I am starting to update the genre fields to be a bit more specific. The problem I was having was that artists like Utada Hikaru, Zard, M-Flo, and Morning Musume were all in the Jpop genre, but their sounds are very different. Now I tagged my Utada songs with R&B, Zard is Rock/Pop, M-Flo is Rap/HipHop, and Morning Musume is Pop. I think this will give me a lot more flexibility when I make my smart playlists. Not sure yet if it will really be easier or just a hassle, but at least it will be more accurate. **-_More below_-**

I think the comment field is great, because I can tag a song however I feel like it. Sometimes an artist is hard to fit into a single genre, or maybe I just don’t know what genre it should be in. I am still fuzzy as to what Acid Jazz, Ambient, and Electronica are exactly, but I am pretty sure I have some of that type of music. Someone like Furuuchi Toko is a good example of where I use the comment tag. Her music is a kind of “jazzy sophisticated soft Japanese pop”. So, I put all of those things in the comment tag, and leave the genre as Unclassified. There are other artists who might be in R&B which I would consider sophisticated, so I put that in their comment field. And in the end, I make a smart playlist that has sophisticated as one of the criteria, and there you go! I also tag some songs with “sleepy”, and listen to the corresponding playlist for when I am dozing off. That’s got a mishmash of soundtrack songs, classical, game tunes and ambient. I can think of a few other comments tags I would use in the future, such as “silly”, “bubbly”, “dark”, “love”, and “driving”.

Another thing I do is use the 1-star rating as a flag for a song that I need to edit or fix. If I am listening on my iPod and see that a song has funky tag or incorrect album art, I will rate it 1-star. Then later in iTunes, I just click on my “Songs to Fix” smart playlist (which is just where my rating is 1 star), and I can take care of them. By reserving the 1-star for this purpose, it leaves me with 2-5 stars, which is enough for me. 2-stars is a song I don’t like and don’t see myself ever wanting to hear again. 3-stars is an ok song, 4-stars is a song I like, and 5-stars are my all time favorites, of which there are about 30 at the moment.

And lastly, I always backup my xml files that iTunes uses to keep track of it’s tag data, as well as my actual music files. I don’t want to lose all my hard work!

My mini-infatuation with Yukie Nakama, Yankumi from Gokusen, has led me to the Japanese movie, Shinobi: Heart Under Blade, which was released last year. It looks really good, with some cool fighting and beautiful scenery, and of course Yukie Nakama in the starring role. I haven’t found any info about a U.S. release, either big screen or dvd, but I’m hoping it comes out, as I’d like to have my precious subtitles. It’ll be on dvd in Japan in a couple weeks, but poor Mariko is not into the whole “what is he saying?” bit throughout the entire movie.



QuickTime Trailer: 320x137 | 480x205


You can view the HD version here.