The information diet continues. After deleting most of the feeds from my RSS reader, I started to look around the house to see if there wasn’t anything material I could purge. The logical target was my book shelf. After 17 years of living in Japan, I’ve accumulated a lot of books. I have Amazon to blame for that. Readers of this blog have probably come to the conclusion that I buy lots of computers and keitais and cars etc. Well, the truth is I spend more money on books than anything else. I buy books like there’s no tomorrow. I read all my books but I never finish any of them. Most of the books I read are non-fiction and after years of reading so many non-fiction books I’ve come to the conclusion that only about 10% of any book is worth reading, the rest is just filler. I usually only read the information that I need and then the book gets shelved. Over the years I’ve been more careful about my book purchases but that hasn’t really kept me from accumulating a fairly large library.

When I moved house a couple years ago I got rid of half my books, about 200 or so, by just dumping them in the trash. I put out 5 boxes of books one night and in the morning the boxes were torn open and half my books had been liberated. It was a bit surprising since all of them were English books on boring subjects like javascript and English teaching methodology. This time I decided to try and sell them at one of the used English book stores in Tokyo. Shari has a good post about trading your unwanted books which is what motivated me to get off my butt and sell my books. I could have (should have) done this year’s ago but I’m lazy and have too much space in my house.

Anyways, since the last time I junked my book collection I managed to accumulate 3 times as many books in only a few years. To prevent this from happening again I decided that I would limit my book collection to 100 books and for every new book I purchased I had to get rid of an old one. The criteria for which books to keep were based mostly on subjects which I am currently interested in and or refer to on a regular basis. These include finance, trading, health, business, marketing, some science and sociology and a couple new age books (don’t laugh). I used to read lots of fiction and literature in the past but since I hardly ever read a novel these days I decided to get rid of all of them. I did kept 2 of my favorite literary novels though, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. I reread these every other year. I also kept all books related to Japanese language study. If I got rid of these books I’d be subsconsciously saying to myself that I’ve given up on studying Japanese and I can’t be doing that. I’m still in denial.

After a few hours of sorting out my books, I discovered that 100 proved an impossible limit for me, so I extended it to 150 books. Of the remaining 400+ books, about a third were computer related and were already out of date. These went into the trash along with some books in poor condition. The rest I threw into 3 big boxes, loaded them into my roadster, and took them to Blue Parrot Books in Takadanobaba. I’ve never been to this book shop but it’s a lot smaller than Good Day Books. The owner was very nice though and we chatted about a bunch of stuff as she went through my books. In the end, they didn’t want half of my books and offered me ¥15,000 in credit or ¥6,400 cash. Not much considering the amount I must have spent to buy all those books in the first place. Since the whole point of the exercise was to reduce books I took the cash instead of the credit. I told them they could have the rest of the books to do whatever they wanted with. I was happy just to be free of the baggage.

Next I’ll be targeting my closet and dresser!

Endings are everything. It doesn’t matter how much something sucks, if the ending is good generally people feel satisfied and happy. This is true of things like movies and dates. A movie can be really lame for 2 hours but have a kick ass ending in which case you’ll like it. On the other hand, the movie can be great for 2 hours and have a dumb ending which will make it suck. Same with a date. You could be on the worse date in history but if you end it right you’re likely to get a second one. You could also be having a wonderful time only to say something really ignorant at the end putting a sour taste in the girl’s mouth. And so today, was one of those days that sucked from the time I woke up but had a pretty good ending, kind of.

This morning, I was out of the house earlier than usual and wanted to get to the office to get some work done. I get to the station to find 10 times the usual number of people standing on the platform. Uh oh. The announcement says that the trains have been delayed because someone ran onto the tracks. The delayed trains get more and more crowded. As a result, some people got crushed and had to be taken to the hospital. This caused further delays. In Tokyo rush hour, if the train is delayed even a few minutes it throws the universe out of whack and total chaos ensues. Well, sometimes anyway. So the train came and I decided to wait for the next one. But that was too crowded too so I waited for the one after that. That was even more crowded but I didn’t want to wait anymore, it was already 40 minutes late, so I pushed my way in. My chest was crushed for 4 stops as the train crawled slowly. It’s been a while since I got on a truly crowded train.

Finally get to work later than usual, so didn’t have time to get any breakfast. I’ve got a lot of work to do and am happily in the zone doing it when suddenly out blue a whole bunch of urgent emails (the kind with the exclamation marks) and telephone calls and other miscellaneous stuff needing my attention come at me. When sh*t happens it happens and broadsides you when you least expect it. I won’t go into the details but basically I need to be more prepared for emergency situations. After that a serious of other unfortunate incidents occured which I’ll just group together as one big pile off “CTRL+A and DELETE from my memory”

As I am multitasking this stuff, I’m also trying to get some people to do some things over the phone but something is wrong with the communication. It seems that all my instructions are being misinterpreted and no one is doing anything I want them to do the way I want them to do it. Not that I blame them. This happens all the time but it just seems like a years worth of this it is piling up in one single day. TODAY!!!

Then finally it dies don’t a bit and I get the worse news of all in the form of a keitai email alert. It’s from the weather news. “Rainy Season has official begun.” I almost cried. Tomorrow I’ll be getting my nice little convertible but we’ll be having a month of continuous rain. Well, of course I was expecting this but the email was just not what I needed at that moment. The nail in the coffin.

Anyway, I make it through the day and decide to head to Autobacs in Daikanyama to buy some stuff for the garage. The shop is completely empty and that tire and gasoline smell makes me relaxed. It’s my kind of aroma therapy. I spend a leisurely time looking at all kinds of car accessories I don’t need and end up buying a HotInaZma Pocket (see photos) It’s this fob thing that you stick into the cigarette lighter. It raises your torque output, increases HP, improves fuel economy, makes your stereo sound better, your headlight shine brighter, removes bad smells, has a blue LED light and relaxes you by sending out minus ions. It’s like MAGIC. And as you can see it won the eco car goods award in 2006.

The girl at the register was really cute and flirted with me a bit. I still got it! Things were looking up. Since it was pissing rain outside, I flagged down a taxi along kyu-yamate-dori. The taxi driver was this old guy from Okinawa and we had a great time talking about roadsters and girls from Okinawa and pork fat. In my experiences riding in taxis in Tokyo I’ve found that most taxi drivers are very nice and fun to talk to. You can learn a lot from taxi drivers in Japan, although don’t take stock tips from them. An ex co-worker of mine says that most taxi drivers in Japan are failed daytraders who lost their fortunes margin trading. Anyway, that’s another story. When I got out of the taxi, the driver gave me a discount for no particular reason. How nice of him!

I opened the door of my house and dumped all my junk at the genkan. My house has this strange smell that you notice when you enter. I’ve been trying to get rid of it for a year now without success. But tonight I found the odor relaxing and smelling alot like home.

Some of you may have noticed the recent lack of “out in Japan” type of blog posts which I’m accustomed to bringing you. Truth is, I’ve been quite the homebody (read hikikomori) since the beginning of the year. Just going from home to office, office to home. I feel like Tom Hanks in Joe vs the Volcano. Even the roadster has been neglected. I filled up the gas tank yesterday and when I looked at my notebook where I write down my mileage I saw that the last time I got gas was October last year!! All those beautiful sunny weekends wasted!!

The problem is not that I don’t want to go out but rather that I want to stay in. My house is getting comfier and comfier and I just like staying at home, watching a film, reading a book, studying, playing Wii etc. The other day I rearranged my office. I had the desk in the centre of the room for some feng shui reason which I completely forgot what it was. I pushed the desk against the wall and the room suddenly felt bigger and welcoming. The space seemed a bit empty so I got a monster cushion (170X112cm) which is a great alternative to buying a sofa and extremely cozy too. Once you lie in this thing you’ll never want to get out. It’s soo comfy. Unfortunately, it smells like toxic waste and I’ll have to air it out some day soon to get rid of the odor. You can see the monster cushion in the crappy stitched panorama I made above. Also note that Keroro was a gift from a friend so I was obligated to display it somewhere, so don’t get the wrong idea. Tomorrow, I took the day off, and not to do something lame like my taxes, but to meet some friends of friends who are visiting Tokyo for the first time. So maybe I’ll get some nice photos of the city.

As I’m writing this, strong winds are pounding Tokyo, yesterday it was freezing rain, and I can feel my house shaking from the wind, despite being protected between 2 taller houses. I’m beginning to feel like Dorothy, any minute now and my house will be swept up to Oz. It’s common knowledge that houses in Japan are not built to last more than 30 years or so and my 8 yr old house is no exception. The first floor is made of concrete and from the second floor up it’s wood and dare I say, paper. PAPER!! If I punched hard enough I can put my fist right through the wall and make a hole for cats to come in. No kidding. If you visit your Japanese friend’s house, try it and see.

Tomorrow is 成人の日 seijin no hi or “coming of age day”, a national holiday in Japan. Go and check out all the young girls in kimonos. When I first came to Japan I thought it was nice to see all the young ladies dressed up in traditional Japanese kimono. But I don’t do it anymore. After many years and having had enough experience to judge whether a kimono is wore properly I realized that there are so many people who do it all wrong. It’s almost painful to watch sometimes. Like when I saw a girl in kimono cross her legs! But if you aren’t as jaded as me, you will have a good time seeing all the colorful kimonos. Just visit any nearby shrine.

On Tuesday, it’s back to work. I’d like to say that my holidays have been fruitful but it was a laid back couch-potato-movie-marathon. Zebraman was on TV around new years and I missed it, AGAIN! I’ve been wanted to see that film for ages but I’m too lazy to go and rent it. Anyway, I watched over 25 movies in the last 10 days. Some of the films were crap, most were OK, a few were great. The documentary film about the NY Times crossword puzzle called Wordplay was an entertaining and intelligent film that I thoroughly enjoyed, although it made it feel very stupid and I realized that my vocabulary is like, sh*t. Don’t watch it if you feel insecure about your IQ, you’ll want to hang yourself. Fortunately for me, I watched Idiocracy right after and instantly felt better. The CG animated film Happy Feet took me completely by surprise. I was expecting yet ANOTHER talking animal film but this one was surreal. It’s like Moulin Rouge! meets March of the Penguins. Very bizarre yet refreshing. I cried.

For those of you who follow the same TV shows as I do, the next episode of LOST begins on Feb. 7th. What’s Kate gonna do?!! She gonna run!? Finally a new episode of LOST after a long hiatus, so that they could film the rumored LOST movie. I don’t remember where I heard that rumor so don’t ask me. And Heroes continues on Jan. 22nd. Save the Cheerleader, save the world.

Here are some scans of random sketches from many many years ago when I thought it would be a cool idea to draw shōjo manga. I would have scanned the manga I drew but it was just too lame. It was embarrassing just reading it again. Bleh!!

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Way back in another life I was an animator and unpublished manga artist. I didn’t work on anything I would brag about, mostly just garbage for TV. I gave that up many moons ago for various reasons and the last time I actually drew a picture was about 10 years ago when I was teaching English at a salon type school in Shinjuku.

All the teachers were required to design their own lessons and promote their own classes. We had to decide our “topics” and then write them down on these slips of colored paper, which would then be posted on a weekly schedule board for students to view and choose. I spent time drawing mine and then laminating them to be reusable. Some of my favorite ones were stolen right off the topic board! I was soo pissed. I have over 300 of these and am scanning all of them for the gallery. I don’t know when or if I will actually finish doing this but here’s a few as a preview. I’ll also be scanning some of my sketches from my manga days. A few more after the jump.

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These kinds of lists are prevalent on many blogs and I’ve always tried to avoid doing one because they’re kind of narcissistic, aren’t they? I absolutely refuse to do those dumb whatever-batons too. But then Shari made her 100 things list and I figured what the hell. So here are 100 fascinating facts about me. These are all absolutely 100% true, swear to god cross my heart, except where I say I made it up. Do you share anything in common with me? If you have made one of these lists please post the link in the comments.

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Yes, I’m afraid so. This morning upon leaving my house I noticed a parade of ants marching up the side of my front door. They were smaller than your usual garden ant and some were of the winged variety. Where did these ants come from and what did they want from me? Upon closer examination they appear to be shiroari, otherwise known as termites. Well I wasn’t sure until I did some research and looked at some photos.

This is a termite:

And this is a regular harmless ant:

I need to go back home and examine the creatures under a magnifying glass so I can be absolute certain that they are indeed shiroari. The ones I saw were not white but brown so I may be lucky, however they didn’t have long legs and they were crawling up and down my door frame which happens to be made of wood. If they do turn out to be termites, at least I can milk it for some blog posts. :-(

UPDATE: Came home just now and got out the flashlight. The ants have gone to sleep but there were a few wandering about. These definitely look like normal ants so I can relax a bit. I will have to check again tomorrow morning when the ants are awake.

Here are some photos of various apartments I’ve lived in over the last 15 years. I thought it would be interesting for people who’ve never lived in Japan to see what an average apartment with an above average amount of clutter looks like. And these pictures are old anyway so I figure there’d be no harm. The above photos are already in my gallery. I stayed in a Gaijin House in Yokohama for a few months and each person had their own 4.5 tatami mat room (about 2.75 square metres?). The rent was around ¥66,000/month. It was basically like a college dorm with 50 or so units and the toilets, bath were shared. The place was very old but kept fairly clean. The walls were thinner than toilet paper and you could hear what every person was doing, what they were watching on TV, whether they were getting lucky etc. As you can see, I literally crammed it with all my stuff. But it was comfy and the guys always came over for a game of scrabble.

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The desk I ordered arrived yesterday and I finally got my workplace set up. I haven’t had a proper desk at home for as long as I can remember. For chairs, I use a balance ball and the ayur chair I got a few weeks ago. I changed the wallpaper on my iMAC just for the photo :-)

Here’s some photos of the “L” in “LDK”. Not much to show really but I don’t have anything else to blog about so here it is. As you can see, it’s a very small “L”. It’s not complete and there are still lots of things I need to get but I’ll be doing that slowly. I returned the sofa from Ikea and bought this antique sofa set instead. I got it off of Yahoo Auction and had it shipped from Kobe for a price much cheaper than the one from Ikea. And I’m so glad I got this one instead. It has more character, weighs a ton and is very well built. I can’t get enough of those retro strips! The wide angle lens makes the sofa look a lot shorter than it really is. I was going to get a nice coffee table but now I think I’ll find a better chabudai instead.

This is my roadster’s new home. I tried parking it in the house for the first time tonight. There’s a slight slope and the front end barely makes it over the curb as I back in. I guess I won’t be able to lower the car any more. As you can see the garage is a mess. So after work I went to buy some cleaning products at Home Centre Kohnan near Haneda. In the 23 wards, there are few home centres because it’s hard to find enough space. This Kohnan is pretty big though. I’ve visited a few times before but there was nothing I needed to buy. Tonight, however, I spent so much time looking at all the DIY stuff. Now, light fixtures, curtain rails and garbage cans have suddenly become fascinating subjects for me to obsess about. I have to be careful of accumulating things I don’t really need. You know, power tools, kitchen appliances, junk like that. Also, I had to call Ikea and cancel most of my order. I realized that the sofa was just way too big and same with the desk. I was dreading an awful encounter with their customer support but the person I dealt with was very helpful and polite.

For security reasons, I have decided not to post pictures of my house on the blog. But you can take a look at this site which has detailed descriptions and photos of Japanese homes. And also a very nice virtual Japanese house for you to enjoy ;-)