code_fu

On my trip to Oz over the festive season I tried out Bluefire Grill at the Docklands in Melbourne. It's a churrascaria style restaurant, offering seafood, calamari, chicken, lamb, beef & pork served on skewers and carved at the table for AU$50. It's fine in itself, but doesn't hold a candle to Barbacoa in Omotesando, Tokyo (Map).

As usual with my last few trips I brought the rain with me to Fukuoka, the main city of Kyushu island. It was my first time there but we didn't really have a lot of time to do the tourist thing, since we were there to meet Uzuki's relatives and visit her family's cemetery on Sunday.

Usually I don't drink beer when I go out since I'm more partial to a drop of red wine; however, one of my favorite places to go out for a meal and drinks is Les Hydropathes in Shibuya (usually as a regular meet up joint with my good friend Mikihiro).

I got a postcard from Tokyo Immigration telling me to go to there within a week to receive my Working Visa extension. I ended up popping down there this morning to be safe since my current one ends this Saturday! It definitely took less time than the last visit.

So a few weeks ago I had to go renew my visa. Luckily the HR guy at my company was kind enough to organise the supporting documentation to show I was still working. He was also kind enough to point out that the immigration office in Shibuya had closed down and replaced by the Shinagawa office. This added another 20 minutes travel time at an extra cost of over 500円.

So in the past month I have been feeling a bit technologically outdated and went out to buy a new mobile phone and a digital SLR camera.

So what happens when you pack a few thousand gamers, hundreds of new games and mix in some half naked women? The Tokyo Game Show 2003. I used to consider myself quite the gaming geek, but after seeing real gamers in action I was completely humbled by the experience. I mean, how do I compare to these guys ? Really, I would be too embarassed running around in my underpants doing action poses and having photos taken of me

So what do you do when a typhoon is heading your way? Visit the Aquarium!!! Yaaaay! Luckily for us, the bad weather cleared up on the day we actually had to go, so we were quite lucky in that respect. Here are some nice pictures

So what pearl of wisdom can I pass onto you guys? Hmm, how about do not mix a lot of alcohol with oysters. I was taken to a nice Oyster bar (no, not the Blue Oyster bar) named after a famous fish market here in Tokyo (Tsukiji). The restaurant itself was very trendy and was located in Roppongi. They had an all you can eat oyster buffet with a free glass of wine for ¥1800 ~ AU$25. Most of you probably know how much I love oysters so I didn’t pass up the opportunity to stuff my face especially at such a discount rate. However I kind of drank too much and overate (two dozen or so). The next morning I woke up with a bad hangover, upset stomach and smelling like day-old seafood. Not a Good Thing™.

So the investigators are either in cahoots with the Japanese fishing industry to make the public feel less guilty about eating sentient life-forms (okay so they really needn’t worry about that but I needed something to start the either bit) or blaming foreigners for unexplained crime has became soooo passé. Apparently a fire has been attributed to some overexcited tropical fish jumping in a fishtank and splashing some water onto an electrical socket. I can just imagine the impending debate in parliament over enacting laws to curb rising fish crime. Actually, since they were probably imported fish they are blaming the foreigners!

Well, close. Spring is here in Japan, and the sakura have come and gone. Sakura is Japanese for cherry blossom; during late march to early april they reach full bloom and over a period of a week or so, their blossoms drop and it looks like it is snowing. I went trampling around various places, gazing at the wondrous sights of women … errm … I mean flowers, in full bloom. And plentiful there were! Flowers I mean. Mind out of the gutter peoples! Some pictures can be found here. Of flowers.

Damn these old japanese women. If you don’t recall my first experience with an old Japanese woman, let’s just say crowded supermarket, her hand, my bumb, and some rubbin’. This time it wasn’t a sexual assault but verbal and physical abuse.

After many weeks of nagging I finallly caved in and we bought a pet rabbit. She’s four months old now and a nice caramel color with floppy ears. Pets are extremely expensive here, which is one of the reasons why I didn’t want to buy one (the other is our landlord doesn’t allow them! So shhhh). A lot of Pet stores only stock pure-bred cats and dogs; some of which go for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. I saw a french bulldog going close to AU$6,000! I even found a cockatoo and rosella at one of the other stores. Ferrets are also quite popular, although their tiny human-like hands give me the chills.

Well, how long exactly has it been since the last update? So many things have happened here that I don’t know where to start! The project that I have been working on was release at the end of last year. Doing bug fixes, improving performance and the like now. Finally some rest after months of late nights and working on the weekends.

One of Uzuki’s friends ended up going to Japan for a couple of weeks. The significance is that her friend is a director and Uzuki had previously been an actress in one of his pilots for a comedy show. He was doing some shooting for a short film in Tokyo which we got dragged into being a part of (kicking and screaming of course ;P)