Friday, December 23, 2005

Happy Holidays



My holiday season started to hum like a nuclear reactor when I went to the 10th annual Acid Mothers Temple year-end blowout at a small club in Nagoya called Tokuzo. This year AMT melted faces and hearts with Afrirampo and Yoshida Tatsuya from the Ruins. Once the dust settled from that sonic explosion, things started to become a little less radioactive.

The following day I held a Christmas party for all my private students with the help of Fumio & Toshiko Soga and Rowena, a new JET teacher who lives nearby. We gave the kids an opportunity to goof off, play games, eat snacks, open presents, and pop lots and lots of balloons.



Check out this short video set to a tune by AMT here: Atomic Christmas Balloons

The week leading up to my return to America for the holidays, I was too excited to teach an actual English lesson, and it had occurred to me that Japanese people didn't really understand the gift giving spirit of Christmas. To them it's just a fun day for little kids to get presents from a fat man in a red suit.

I tried my best to explain to my students that Christmas is more about giving than receiving, and they should give presents to the people they care about. We spent the rest of the week making Christmas cards, playing bingo, and I gave them all a bunch of chocolate. All in all I think they enjoyed trying on the various antlers and afro wigs I picked up from the local ¥100 Shop.

Check out all photos here: Christmas Photo Album

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Wired News: Say Sayonara to Blurry Pics

Wired News: Say Sayonara to Blurry Pics

A prototype camera made by a Stanford University graduate student could herald the end of fuzzy, poorly lit photos.

A computer science Ph.D. student at Stanford University has outfitted a 16-megapixel camera with a bevy of micro lenses that allows users to take photos and later refocus them on a computer using software he wrote.

The student, Ren Ng, ran out of patience with taking pictures the traditional way -- adjusting the distance between the camera lens and sensor or film before snapping each shot. So he created something that far surpasses Photoshop. A photograph can be modified after the fact even if nothing is in focus, he said.

"We just think it'll lead to better cameras that make it easier to take pictures that are in focus and look good," said Ng's adviser, Stanford computer science professor Pat Hanrahan.

Ng calls his creation the "light field camera" because of its ability to capture the quantity of light moving in all directions in an open space. It stems from early-20th-century work on integral photography, which experimented with using lens arrays in front of film, and an early-1990s plenoptic camera
developed at MIT and used for range finding. By building upon these ideas, Ng hopes to improve commercial cameras' focusing abilities.

Traditionally, light rays filter through a camera's lens and converge at one point on film or a digital sensor, then the camera summarizes incoming light without capturing much information about where it came from. Ng's camera pits about 90,000 micro lenses between the main lens and sensor. The mini lenses measure all the rays of incoming light and their directions of origin. The software later adds up the rays, according to how the picture is being refocused.

The technology could help snap-happy amateurs and professional photographers, as well as aid security cameras in capturing sharper information.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,69594,00.html?tw=rss.TEK

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Outdoor Music Festivals Cash Cows

The Japan Times Online

Outdoor music festivals where concertgoers can pamper themselves with hot springs and barbecues are growing in popularity as resort areas learn how to reap the economic windfall.

"At night, you can enjoy seeing a starlit sky and feel relaxed in nature," said Miho Imamura, a cafe manager from Tokyo who came to Asagiri Jam, an October music festival held in Fujinomiya, Shizuoka Prefecture. The show allowed her to camp out while catching her favorite groups on stage.

The music at the festivals is mostly pop or rock 'n' roll. Outdoor music festivals started in Europe and North America in the mid-20th century and started getting popular in Japan in the late 1990s.

http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20051119f2.htm


Monday, November 14, 2005

Shirakawa-go



This past weekend I went with my friend Mika to Shirakawa-go, a World Heritage site meant to commemorate the mountain lifestyle of Japanese farmers in Gifu Prefecture around the turn of the century.

I met Mika back in July at a party in Nagoya, and we started seeing each other when I returned from the Philippines.

This weekend was our first and possibly last weekend outing because Mika is moving to Seattle later this month. She's taken a job with CICD to work with and assist Japanese residents in the Seattle area.

Anyway, we drove up to Gifu Saturday morning and spent the day walking around Shirakawa Village checking out all the gassho-style farmhouses and taking in the colorful mountain scenery.

That night we stayed in a minshuku, had an incredible Japanese feast, and took a relaxing onsen.

Sunday morning we drove over to Takayama and walked in and out of the tourist shops snacking on ALL the local delicacies. Dango, Gohei-mochi, Hida-beef koroke, Hida-beef sushi, Hoba-miso, giant sembei, Takayama Ji-zake. You name it.

I took quite a few picture over the course of the weekend, so I put them together in a photo album using my dotmac account.

To view my photo album please click here: Shirakawa-go Photos.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Monday, November 07, 2005

My New 'Old' Toy

Since I started using iTunes about a year ago, all I've listened to is mp3 formatted music. If I buy a CD, I immediately encode it, put it on my iPod, and put the disc on the shelf never to be noticed again.

Due to this massive evolution in my listening habits, I decided I need to have some kind of balance.

I bought this second hand record player while shopping for a replacement center speaker which I blew at a home party about a month ago.

With the cold starting to creep in through my paper doors and tatami mats, I've been curling up under the kotatsu table; only getting up to flip the record and drop the needle.

It's gonna be an interesting winter.

Film file-sharer sent to prison

BBC NEWS | Technology | Film file-sharer sent to prison

A Hong Kong man has been jailed for three months for film piracy after he shared movie files over the internet.

The authorities say he is the first person in the world to be prosecuted for passing on files using a popular file-sharing program called BitTorrent.

It makes the sharing of material easy by breaking a file up into fragments and then distributing them.

The film industry says it hopes the sentence handed down to Chan Nai-ming will prove a deterrent to others.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4413540.stm

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

US death toll in Iraq hits 2,000

BBC NEWS | Middle East | US death toll in Iraq hits 2,000

Two thousand United States military personnel have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq, according to figures issued by Pentagon.


A sergeant wounded by a bomb in the insurgent stronghold of Samarra earlier this month died of his wounds and officially became the 2,000th death.

Unofficial estimates put Iraqi civilian deaths at at least 25,000 since the US-led invasion began in March 2003.

President Bush has called on troops to persevere in "spreading freedom".

Staff Sgt George T Alexander Jr, 34, died in hospital in Texas of wounds he received when a bomb hit his vehicle in Samarra on 17 October.

A spokesman for the American-led multinational force in Baghdad appealed to media not to make too much of the 2,000 figure.

"The 2,000 service members killed in Iraq supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom is not a milestone," Lt Col Steve Boylan told AP news agency.

"It is an artificial mark on the wall set by individuals or groups with specific agendas and ulterior motives."

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Tiff's Sayonara Party



This past weekend my good friend Tiffany returned to France to be with her beautiful young daughter.

Tiffany was instrumental in starting our bi-lingual magazine LightHouse and helping me learn the joys of creativity.

She will be greatly missed by all, and we wish her the best of luck in France with her family.

Monday, October 17, 2005

Flower Headland Festival 2005



My writing has fallen way off this past year, and I kind of like the idea of making this blog a multimedia experierence, so I recorded this post in audio.

Click here to listen to my audio post: Flower Headland Festival.m4a











The Flower Headland site



Prankster #1




Prankster #2



Click here to watch the video: Afro-Stilts



Click here to watch the video: The Mask



Prankster #3



Teepee Stage w/ a mushroom



Autumn Sunset

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Asagiri Jam 2005



I've had several problems with this post and I don't have time to write the full story or captions. I'm just ready to get this up and out of the way.

The pictures (and now videos) will have to tell the story of the amazing people and wonderful weather.


















Click here to watch a video: Yosuke Improv






Thank you to all the people who shared their photos with me for this post, and special thanks goes out to Tiffany who will be leaving Japan soon.

Tiff, you will be missed.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

DJ Shadow/Kenji Yanobe/BBQ Party/107+1

Last weekend was legendary.

It started Thursday night when DJ Shadow, Keb Darge, and Dante came through Nagoya with their special brand of Deep Funk.

They played a really small, underground club called JB's, and the majority of the audience were Europeans working at the Aichi Expo. It's the first time I've been to a concert in Japan where the foreigners outnumbered the Japanese and I couldn't see over everyone's head.

Rather than each DJ playing their own set, it was an all at once, triple tag-team, onslaught of what Shadow called 'body movin music.' The tiny club heated up like a sauna while they spun lots of 60s and 70s funk on vinyl 45s.

On of the funkiest Nagoya nights on record!

Keb Darge


Our posse


Scary Will


James


Hey!



The very next day I went with a group of friends to the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art to see a Kenji Yanobe exhibit titled Kindergarten.

Kenji Yanobe is a native of Osaka and creative brain-child of the fabled Expo '70. He created Kindergarten to put a cheeky twist on the current Aichi Expo's theme of Nature's Wisdom... adding an apocalyptic twist.

7.5 meter tall robot


Rocking Mammoth




Tora-yan




The day after that I hosted a small private BBQ party at my house for some close friends. It was a pretty relaxing day cooking meat until about midnight when a large group of JET teachers came over and we started blasting music and watching DVDs.

I introduced them to a really crazy Japanese band called Hifana, which is kind of like if Future Man from the Flecktones was crossed with Mix Master Mike, multiplied by two, and had a dash of Japanese thrown into the jumble for good measure. Later I cranked out the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots 5.1 at full volume and blew out my center channel!

I polished off the already great weekend by going into Nagoya Sunday afternoon to see a special screening of a Japanese documentary film called Tentsuku 107+1.

Simply put, it was about a group of people in Okinawa trying to make positive impact on their local surroundings by completing three projects: 1) raising a town's awareness of solid waste management, 2) knitting a 1km long rainbow scarf for children in Afghanistan, and 3) rowing a canoe from Okinawa all the way to Kagoshima.

This was the first time for the film to be seen with English subtitles so foreigners could understand and enjoy it, but it was also cool because it was shown in a Rakugo theater behind a Shinto shrine.

Rokugo Theater


I can't say enough good things about last weekend. It left me feeling funky, artsy, noisy, and pro-active. All the things I truly enjoy in life.

Monday, September 19, 2005

Lotus

I wanted to write about this weekend is great detail. I wanted to tell the story of how my friend Toku missed the exit off the highway when he was coming to pick me up in Toyohashi, so I had to take a local train to meet him in the next town of Hamamatsu.

I wanted to write about the full moon concert the band Lotus played in Shizuoka Prefecture and how it traveled through a cloudless sky for the duration of the night.

I wanted to write about the largest fireworks show I've ever seen in Tahara-shi

Instead, things are happening too fast here for me to keep up this blog, so I just posted a few pictures and movies of the event.



Lotus playing in a tee-pee.



Tee-pee Moonrise



Tee-pee Moonset



Above is a short video clip of Lotus playing in the tee-pee while a Japanese lighting engineer called OverHeads projected insanity on the tee-pee. Please click here to watch the video.


Mt. Fuji at sunrise.



This is a short video clip of the sunrise over the mountains while Lotus is playing in the background. Mt. Fuji can be see in the distance. Click here to watch the clip.


This is a short video the Ozutsu in Tahara-shi. Ozutsu are kind of like giant roman candles crossed with sparklers. They are carried out platforms by teams of about forty young men. It's quite the spectacle. Click here to watch the video.



Tahara fireworks