Wednesday, July 04, 2007

update

today involved band practice in takadanobaba and then ftls and a private at ginza.

practice went pretty well - i'm getting a little better at screaming, and we've managed to come close to getting another song finished. when we get them polished enough, I can email them to you if you're reading this(not sure if that's actually anyone - i've
resigned to the fact that i'm writing this as much for my own records as anything else....)

anyway, today, dave(drummer) and i decided to go and have lunch(as usual) after practice and befcore my shift. i suggested we try to locate a studio i read about in shinjuku. our search did not yield good results. i got irritated and dave got hungry. we ate.


i played tennis with a coworker(yuichi) from jiyugaoka school on saturday. I was a little reluctant being that it was on sunday( my only day off) and at 9 in the morning about 30 minutes from my house by train, but I went and I'm glad i did. i had gotten sort of satisfied with my "health" activities being that i have been biking a lot recently, but that complacency was soon supplanted by a lot of sweat, heavy breathing, and sore muscles. felt good though. Yuichi was the only one I knew and the only one who spoke english. All of the guys were also much better than me at tennis(especially since it was the first time i'd picked up a racquet since coming here), and they didn't really pull any punches. being there were four of them and three women, I was assigned to the "ladies doubles" match. my team won.

afterwards, yuichis friend, yuichi, and I went to lunch at Jonathan's(somewhere in between denny's and a japanese restaurant - known as one of the "family restaurant" chains in japan) - the food was pretty good. i've been going to a lot of those restaurants recently because there's one next to the university i teach at on tuesday's (nodai) and also one next to the place in yutenji where i take classes. They're pretty inexpensive and the don't mind if you sit there and work for a long time.
anyway, yuichi's friend professed his love for ska-punk( alive and well in japan) and asked me if I knew of 'hi-standard'. heh

later went to a "canada day" party mostly attended by australians and japanese people. was pretty fun, but I ended up getting into a dumb argument with a girl about some swedish guy who was angered she had spoken english to him - i'm not even really sure what we argued about.

i've been trying to get back into watching more movies - i'll write more when I watch some of them. vinay lent me starship troopers after i informed him of my love for total recall and robocop(both verhoeven films) - he said it's his "favorite one" - i don't remember liking it the first time, but i'll give it a chance.

also watched "the kingdom" with meaghan - part of my continued ambivalent relationship with lars von trier. i liked it, especially his addresses to the audience at the end of the show - makes me think he's got a good sense of humor after all. i still hate breaking the waves, though ;)

waseda's tomorrow, so I'm going to bed.

ps. zodiac was alright

update