tonari no shibafu

Pistol Pete.

Posted without comment.

My favorite Christmas song

There's some weird stuff that happens over here musically. For example, for some unknown reason The Carpenters are unbelievably popular and are well represented in every karaoke songbook. Another example is that I've heard the song Last Christmas about 30 times in the last two days. Not just the original, but more covers than is reasonable for a song like that. Now let it be known that I love George Michael, in spite of his unfortunate plastic surgery, but Last Christmas? Puhleez. So many better Christmas songs around. Nat King Cole, anyone, anyone? Even the Boyz II Men stuff is worth playing before hitting that song for the umpteenth time. My personal favorite is the Bowie/Bing Crosby Little Drummer Boy.

This one goes out to Gavin 'Gava Gav' Brady, wherever he may be...

Merry Christmas!

Boro boro

Today and tomorrow the Boro-ichi flea market is happening. It's a pretty good time if you don't mind fighting through a sea of people... actually the sea of people is one of the main draws and it's a favorite among Tokyo-area bloggers.

So, if you're a street photographer or are just looking to pick up some old-school knick-knacks or paddy-whacks, you should check it out. If you can't make it this weekend, there'll be a repeat performance on January 15-16th.

Technorati Tags: boro-ichi, Japan, 世田谷, Setagaya, Tokyo, ぼろ市

How little they think of us

Kozak, my fellow worshipper at the altar of Sorkin, sent me a link to the Charlie Wilson's War trailer. This was my reply:

Looks good.

Couple of things I noticed right off:

1) All Along the Watchtower (Hendrix version)

2) American Pie

These are two songs that appear (one or the other if not both) in just about every Vietnam movie that has ever been written.

What's the significance of them being used in a trailer about a scandal from the 80s? What are they trying to say? Seems that the whole trailer <snip> seemed a little Oliver Stone-esque.

My tag line would be 'Bartlett. What's he hiding from us now.'

S

I'm all over it, but now I'm going in with baggage...

There's now two things better than ruckin'

It's in the news today that some members of the rugby team at Kanto Gakuin University have been charged with cultivation of marijuana. Somehow I had a feeling that foreigners, the root of all drugs in Japan, would somehow be implicated. Checking out the article in the Asahi online, I see that one of the accused claims that he got the seeds from Britain via mail order. Seems he didn't know that they are readily available for sale in Tokyo.

It's unfortunate we can't go back to the time when Japan had no relationship to cannabis<Japanese>.

Technorati Tags: Japan, marijuana, marijuana laws, 大麻

Japanese Proficiency Exam

In about an hour I'm off to take the test. I'm relatively confident that I can pick up the 2% that I missed it by last year and thence move on with my life. Of course, I won't get the results for a few months, but I'm hoping that I at least come out of it with a better feeling than last year.

Time for a languid bath and some food and then I'm out.