Month: January 2006

Entering Japan, refugee-style

Good morning, Frogheads! I got back to Tokyo earlier this week, but thanks to my school’s very poor taste in temporary housing, I haven’t been able to get online. Fortunately there are Hotspots all over the place, so all hope for blogging hasn’t been totally lost. I’m currently reporting to you live from a Mos Burger overlooking the Yamanote Line, or “the ringworm of Tokyo” as Adamu calls it.

I had a different experience arriving at Narita this time, because I did it without a visa. It’s not that I was too stupid or lazy to get one; there were circumstances. Continue reading Entering Japan, refugee-style

Jenkins Pulling a Debito!

Looks like he’s had it: Charles Jenkins, the American who defected to North Korea 40 years ago and wound up marrying Hitomi Soga, a Japanese woman there against her will, has decided to turn his back on America once again, only this time he’s doing it legally. As early as next week, the former US Army Private (who is living on Japan’s Sado island with his wife and children) intends to apply for Japanese citizenship.

Note: Check out the video (will probably be taken offline shortly because TBS sucks) for great footage of him doing some weird thing in a swimming pool.

(Japanese story follows)

Continue reading Jenkins Pulling a Debito!

Nippon TV’s Online Video News Site Improved

The video news site of Nippon TV (日テレ) has undergone a rebirth; no longer known as Nippon News Network 24, they have renamed themselves “NTV News 24.” In addition, the video streaming is much smoother at 300kbps and comes in clearer. Try the full-screen version!

Now all they have to do is make it a constant stream for it to be perfect. I wouldn’t mind if they included commercials even, as long as it kept me up to date on the goings-on in Japan. Sometimes the print news sites (such as Asahi with its appallingly tiny photographs) just don’t cut it.

Taiwan’s pigs grow ever more fearsome

You may have already heard that researchers here in Taiwan have just perfected the technology of genetically modifying pigs to glow in the dark. This is apparently going to be very useful for research, since every scrap of pig material also glows green, and I imagine lets you more easily locate bits that you’ve dropped on the floor.

According to the report, “In daylight the researchers say the pigs’ eyes, teeth and trotters look green. Their skin has a greenish tinge.”

There is no word yet on how bioluminescence will affect the God Pig industry. According to a report last year in the Taipei Times “some farmers even pour metal into their pigs before a contest in order to increase the swine’s weight.” All said, we seen to be well on the way to one-ton partially metallic bioluminescent god pigs. All it takes it one minor lab accident and we’re in the middle of a 1950’s horror movie.

More Kabuki

Meaningless charade

The moribund hearings have been as predictable as a Kabuki drama. Barring a major miscue, Alito’s inscrutability will carry him to the Supreme Court

As predictably as a Kabuki drama, the media is using the metaphor of a kabuki drama to describe boring politics.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the Daniels/Eichwenwald Kabuki dance reflected a conscious effort to avoid invoking the homosexual angle in the story.

Newsbusters refuses to watch gay kabuki.

International dialing

Figuring out exactly how to dial a phone number in one country while in another country (particularly if neither one of them is a country with which you have much telephonic experience) can be a huge pain in the ass.

Just a few minutes ago, while making sure I was telling someone in Japan the correct way to reach my apartment line, I stumbled across this very handy website. It lets you specify a dialing and target location and very conveniently breaks down the entire dialing sequence into whatever international, national, or local dialing prefixes apply.

Windows uptime

I was just wondering how long it had been since I reset my computer (which I tend to do rarely if I can possibly avoid it) and remembered that at some point I had a simple command line utility that would tell you exactly that. After a quick search I found Uptime.exe over on the ancient Windows NT 4.0 server page.

\\MUTANTFROG has been up for: 8 day(s), 11 hour(s), 57 minute(s), 6 second(s)

“Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time”

That’s what my fortune cookie once told me. And despite being a flavorless and generally unneccessary part of my Chinese food experience, it’s right. So keep it real folks.

I turn 24 this year, and if the Chinese zodiac is any guide, when your age is a multiple of 12, you’re supposed to have an unlucky year.

So far, 2006 has been pretty good, actually. I started the year in Japan, seeing my precious Mrs. Adamu for the first time in three months (She currently lives in Thailand doing world things).

Hm, that’s all I’ve got for now. Expect some pictures of Japan among other personal posts I’ve got lined up including a trip to New York I took a few months ago to eat ramen that ended up being really crappy.