Category: Personal/Blog News

Site Problems このサイトは故障中です

UPDATE: I take it back. I’m too lazy to post anywhere right now, so I’m sticking with MF.

We seem to be experiencing some problems here at Mutant Frog. The site won’t load a lot of the time under Internet Explorer, and the comments link is occasionally broken. We plan to reinstall WordPress and see what happens. For now, I’m going to do a couple posts back at Adamu’s Jappanica. Look for them there.

Random Picture!
Beckham style
Beckham’s $800 hair from 2003. Found in an image search for “笑われる” (To be laughed at) in Japanese.

REPOST: My reply to FG flames

Enjoy. This is a continuation of the discussion on the TokyoDV boards. I figured I said enough for people who don’t give a shit about some flame war to get a kick out of it as well:

It’s funny, I was totally wrong about why FG exceeded its bandwidth (didn’t know about the Tsunami-induced traffic surge), but I get all the flak over something I’m more or less right about.

It doesn’t take some genius or seasoned Japan expert to get an impression of what some website is all about. All it requires is a few months (if that) of watching the posts.

I don’t know what the selection process is for front-page articles on FG is, but they are available in an RSS feed (how I get them) and in that sense can be taken as if they were a collaborative blog. You’d have to be a fool not to realize that the point of posting articles on a website is to entertain, inform and maybe get the scoop faster than the other guys. Continue reading REPOST: My reply to FG flames

Be careful what you wish for Part 2: The Backlash

The Fucked Gaijin didn’t like what I said about them in my post about their shutdown for exceeding bandwidth. Take a look at what they’re saying:

Since I spotted his comment, he’s gonna have more “fun” ripping us a new orifice. On his blog he says that:
“I lived in Japan for two years, learning the Japanese language and irreparably damaging my psyche in the process…and dreaming of one day making it big in Tokyo.”
He just might find it a wee bit difficult “making it big in Tokyo” if he pisses all the FGs off, hee, hee.

Gee wiz, being ripped by who has lived a whole two years in Japan and writes a “Mutant Frog < !insert something about glass houses and stones > Travelogue sounds real scary. Yes, ” be afraid… be very afraid!!!”

No, don’t be afraid. Never in my life did I think 2 sentences where I call some people insecure would warrant old pictures of me being thrown up on a forum for ridicule. Just goes to show I don’t understand how the Internet works.

Enormous Subway Stick?

I just got the following email from the study abroad office at my University. Please post suggestions for a response in the comments section. Let’s see who can get the best combination of goofy and believable.

Hey Roy,

Sara from study abroad…hope you’re doing well. hate to take up your
time, and i’m not sure how “for real” this question is, but it’s my job to
get them all forwarded to you guys who are better equipped to answer these
questions than I am! Umm, feel free to just give him a silly answer if
you want! Thanks!

Sara ******

email: Matt****l@hotmail.com
subject: Ask the Expert
firstName: Matt
lastName: ******
message: Is it true that in Japan in the subway stations there is a man
who pushes people into the cars with an enormous stick?

Meitantei Adamu (Adamu the Sleuth)

Today was quite the day. The gf had her bag stolen today so we spent the afternoon trying to track down the culprit. She was in the basement of the library and left her bag unattended for two seconds when some crackhead-looking guy made off with it. She lost $200, her license, a nice wallet, her bag that went to India and Canada with her, her Social Security card, and the guy used her credit cards to buy dog food and a tank of gas of all things.

When we cancelled her credit cards it showed what he bought and where, and it looked like the cops werent gonna do shit so we went and checked it out. The guy left an authentic looking signature on the receipt at the pet store in addition to showing up on camera, and the gas station manager was very cooperative and said he’d help us out in the morning.

Our hope is that the gas station caught his car, so we can get a model and make and maybe the plates. Then we can submit the signature and the car info to the cops and ask them to run it for people with records in the area. At first i didnt even take a photocopy of the receipt at the pet store because i assumed the cops would come check things out. But then i tried calling them with the info and the woman who answered was a BITCH. We asked to talk to the officer we were speaking with before and she was like ‘he’s gone try back tomorrow at 7am’ and then took down our info really curtly.

All in all it was kind of fun playing detective, although not quite $200 worth of fun. I’ll let you know what kind of dogs the guy has if we catch him.

Man claiming to be Mito Koumon’s Descendant Cheats Woman out of 5 Million Yen

Funabashi, Chiba — Unemployed Miyabe Hideteru (57) of Kasuga, Saitama, was arrested Jan. 5th by Chiba Prefectural Police at the Matsudo East Precinct on suspicion of defrauding a woman out of 5 million yen by telling her he was “the descendant of Mito Koumon.”

(Mito Koumon was a Tokugawa-era shadow ruler who was famous for traveling the countryside and checking up on the various fiefdoms. He’s been the subject of many many movies and TV shows, where he was famous for revealing himself by flashing a card showing his haiku pen name and shouting, “Can’t you see this seal?!”)

According to investigation, the man told a woman he met at Funabashi Health Center in April 2001 that, “I am the current head of the Mito household. That makes me his grandson,” and “I am going to sell land in Hokkaido to the government for 3.6 billion yen, so lend me the money to pay for the paper work. At the end of May I will pay you back double,” upon which he took 5 million yen from the woman. Continue reading Man claiming to be Mito Koumon’s Descendant Cheats Woman out of 5 Million Yen

Ohio Until Monday

Tomorrow morning I’ll be driving to Columbus, Ohio with my friend Alistair to help our friend Imara move back home to Montclair, our home town. Amazingly, this will be my first visit to a US state not bordering the Atlantic Ocean. I’ll be gone until Monday evening, just in time to get ready for Tuesday classes when the new semester starts. I’ll be taking my new camera along on the trip, and hopefully I can get some good photos out the window of the car.

New Camera

Canon Digital Rebel

After using my trusty Canon Powershot S40 (the camera which took almost every single previous image on this site) for over 2 years, I’ve finally upgraded to a more serious piece of equipment, the Canon EOS 300D, aka the Digital Rebel. This review will give you far more information than you would ever want to know about it, unless like me you engage in painstaking research before making a technology purchase. I took the Rebel with me on my recent trip to Florida, but I don’t yet think I have any pictures worth putting up. I’ll be sure to try and take some good ones soon though.

And now that I’ve got a decent digital SLR camera, I can start pining for the gyro-stabilized telephoto lense.