Haircut and Jumper

I got a haircut today. But didn't I just get one a little while ago? Since I'm going to Taiwan for 8 days and will be staying in cheap hostels with shared bathrooms, I decided to get a low-maintenance do that I won't have to spend time on. I went to my hairdresser and said, "I might not be able to take a shower for the next week, so give me something that's easy to style."

This is what I got. I don't like it. He tried to keep it stylish which I appreciate, but now I've got widower's peaks. He cut that part extra short to emphasize the semi-mohican look and it looks like I've got a receding hairline. At least hair grows back.Oh yeah, so I'm going to Taiwan for a week. When I found out that my workplace is closed for spring vacation, I daydreamt about going to Italy or Egypt, but I was just too busy to plan anything and then all of a sudden the vacation was upon me. I didn't want to just sit around my apartment the whole time so I looked up some places to go.

Taiwan and Hong Kong were the best options - cheap and close, and signs are in English so travelling by myself with little planning would be okay. The bookstore didn't have any English travel guides for Hong Kong, so I got the Taiwan book and reserved a ticket. The travel agent told me to just show up at the airport counter and they'll print me a boarding pass. I'm a little wary of this ticketless system.

It's been a while since I've travelled alone. I booked a single room at a hostel in Taipei for my first two nights, and if I feel comfortable I'll try for dorm beds when I head south. I've got my heart set on some mountain temples in remote villages, but that depends on if I can get train tickets heading out of Taipei. I'll be there during a long weekend and everyone might be travelling.

To get back to the title of this post. After my haircut I went to see Jumper. You might be wondering why I've been seeing so many movies lately when they cost $18 a pop. My credit card is connected to the movie theater, so the more I use the credit card, the more free movie tickets they send me (I pay all my bills and buy all my groceries using this card). For the past five years I've been collecting these tickets, and they all expire this coming August. Thus, the sudden movie spree.

The effects were good but I didn't like the main character's personality. He was a bit too selfish and egotistical for my tastes. I wonder if that's how he's portrayed in the book, which I'll have to read simply because it's written by Stephen Gould. What a fantastic author. My first touch with Stephen Gould was through required reading at university, probably because he deals with topics related to science and technology and my university was overrun with pre-meds. I didn't realize he wrote fiction. Most of what I read dealt with evolutionary anomalies and biological hypotheses.

And that's all for now. Goodnight!

The Golden Compass

Starting today my workplace is closed for spring vacation!! We don't get any national holidays but two weeks of spring vacation makes up for that.

After finishing some errands in Oita City I decided to check out a movie. The Japanese title was pretty dumb (Lyra's Adventures) but the Narnia-like smell attracted me to it.

I loved it. There were interesting side plots and secrets left untold. It not only kept my interest but pulled me into that world, and kept me wondering what life would be like having our souls beside us in physical form. If you check out the official site you can watch the first five minutes of the movie and learn a little about the world the movie takes place in.

When I got home I did a little searching to find out more about the movie and discovered that a lot of people didn't like it, simply because it wasn't loyal to the book. I guess some people are unforgiving of artistic liberties and don't realize that it's impossible to turn hundreds of pages of detail into a 2-hour visual story. Personally I enjoy movies more when they differ from the books because we aren't simply watching what we expect to happen, and have something to look forward to. Also if I've read a book before the movie, I don't want the movie to try and replace the images I had while reading the book, which are usually much better.

In any case, I'll try to find the book to see if it can answer some questions I had while watching the movie. And since the book is supposedly different, I'll probably be able enjoy it by itself as a separate story.

White Day

In Japan there are numerous occasions where a gift is appropriate and often required, and today happens to be one of those times. March 14th is known in Japan as White Day, where men have an obligation to give presents to the girls that gave them chocolate on Valentine's Day (on which day girls feel an obligation to give chocolate to male coworkers, friends, etc).

Here's my rather bitter take on Valentine's Day and White Day.

In my humble opinion, gift-giving should come from the heart. It should be about generosity and sharing. I feel that if you give someone a gift and expect something in return simply because you gave them something, the focus turns away from the person receiving the gift and onto yourself, which makes the act of gift-giving seem a bit selfish. And for the person on the receiving end, having to give something because it's required of you makes gift-giving become a simple act of reciprocity, without any of the feeling that makes gifts special.

Having said that, there was one gift that I put some thought into. On Valentine's Day you see a lot of truffles, small chocolate squares and round bon-bons in pretty little boxes. For the most part you're paying for wrapping and presentation. In the case of a friend's mother, she gave me 10-pieces of individually wrapped chocolate that were tied into a stack. Each 2-inch square piece is a simple flat piece of chocolate mixed with a variety of unique flavors, and she chose that one because its originality and simplicity stood out from everything else in the store. I got home and ate the first piece thinking the tiny stack probably cost about $20.

I should preface this by saying that I spent the last month testing different chocolates to figure out what makes some more expensive than others, and after eating tons of chocolate that cost more than $3 a piece, my tastes have become sensitive to good quality chocolate. You'd probably think I was retarded if you heard how much I spent on this "taste-test" so I'm keeping that a secret. Anyhow, after eating the first piece in the stack, I realized that each piece probably cost between $4 and $6 and there were ten of them. Pretty shocking, but believable when thinking about how much this woman spends on other stuff (sometimes it's nice to have friends from wealthy families!).

Since she had spent time trying to find something original, I got something unique for her. If this were back in the States, I'd be weirded out thinking it was for a friend's mother, but since it's Japan that makes it okay. I found a store in Kyoto that sells a high quality tea called Uji Matcha and they were selling sweets for White Day. I had some delivered and got some for myself, too, because they looked really good and I wanted to know what makes Uji Matcha so good.White chocolate covered in Uji Matcha Tea powder. So nice! Not too sweet and the tea blends well with the white chocolate. They just melt in your mouth. Each piece is about the size of my pinky finger until the first bend. There were twenty in the small box and I greedily ate them all in one go.I absolutely love these! The outside is Cherry Blossom mochi and the inside is some kind of paste made with Uji Matcha. The tea is fragrant but not overwhelming. So smooth and creamy. Green tea usually has a bitter aftertaste, but this one doesn't taste bitter at all and is so good! I might have to order more before they sell out! (I won't tell you the price, because again, you'd think I was retarded.) They look kind of big in the photo, but each one is the size of when you put your thumb and forefinger together to make a circle. They come six in a box, and I forced myself to use restraint by not eating them all in one go. I gobbled up three yesterday, and just had the other three a minute ago.

Additionally for myself I got some Green Tea mixed with toasted rice (Genmai Cha) and flavored with Uji Matcha. I haven't opened the package yet but can't wait to try that out, too!

Warcraft

I have the potential within me to be a total game nerd, but unfortunately lack the time to feed my game cravings and let them blossom into a full-blown obsession. I was in university when the Playstation came out and since I didn't even have a TV during those four years, I didn't have the option of rotting my brain through video games, and had to rely on simple alcohol. Then I came to Japan and bought a Playstation, but I couldn't play anything because of the language barrier so my Playstation got more use as a DVD player (game consoles and software are marked by region, so my Japanese playstation only plays Japanese games). I missed the whole X-Box rush that happened back in the States because it never made it over here.

Last night I was reminiscing about how back in university someone had installed a game called Warcraft on one of the computers in the lounge, which (to my downfall?) I discovered and became addicted to. I couldn't stop playing. I loved the thrill of racing to beat the computer... it was tough finding a balance between building up a camp and raiding nearby villages. I generally chose to be the orcish horde and crushed those pesky little humans. The voices of each character were also comical enough that I still remember exactly how they sound when you click on them. My favorite was the peon - it sounded like Scooby Doo was saying "Ready to wooork!"

So anyhow last night I remembered how much I loved Warcraft, and I looked it up. Apparently in 2002, Warcraft 3 came out and there was a link for a downloadable demo. As you can already imagine, the game freak inside me flared to life and I played for 4 hours straight. The demo had whet my appetite and I craved for more. I got on-line and was about to order the full version, but when I saw that international shipping cost more than the original game, the extension pack and two guidebooks put together, my dream came to an abrupt halt. It was fun, but not worth spending that much on shipping.

Then tonight I was talking to someone who happened to mention a game that he just finished playing. Warcraft 3!!! What a coincidence!!! He'll lend it to me next time we see each other. Now if that's not fate then I don't know what is. I'm meant to be a game nerd.

The nerd inside me shall live.

It's only a matter of time before my obsession completely overwhelms me and I become a true game nerd - the kind that's too busy to eat or sleep or shower because the game must come first. The countdown begins...