MutsuriOtaku's Xanga

I Have No Willpower, But I Do Have Plenty of Wii Power!

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 03:40:01 GMT

So the other day, I was in the Bic Camera to buy printer cartridges...and I passed by the video game section (like always). As I stood marveling at the Gundam Musou game (PS3) and Fire Emblem (Wii)...I casually wanted to confirm with the store clerk if they were sold out of Wii's...he just replied a little surprised and said...nope, fully in stock!!!

I whipped out the credit card, bought a Wii, an extra controller, and all of their games! All of this while I'm too busy to play it, since I'm in the middle of moving, doing my taxes, getting my Japanese driver's license, and getting ready for my trip to Australia. Oh, but I couldn't resist...and as I was walking out, people saw what was in my bag...and immediately ran over to buy a Wii...(haha, and they sold out again like an hour later...;p).

So, I'm looking forward and trying out the goodness...including Fire Emblem, the Naruto game, and the Eyeshield 21 game...(note to Tim-tachi, I'll send the games over to you guys as soon as I'm done with them, and they're finally out with the Freeloader ;p).

These are the Signs of the End Times...

Tue, 26 Dec 2006 05:43:30 GMT

So like everyone else, I've been reading stories about the new console wars...people lining up in the freezing snow to get a new PS3 or Wii, people getting shot over stealing PS3's...and then I saw something that caused me to rub my eyes in disbelief...

...I went to the AM/PM convenience store in the basement of my office to get my usual mid-afternoon onigiri pick me up...and I saw them selling PS3's at retail price! That's right, they were selling PS3's in a conbeni, and were even including free games!!!

I even ran into my friend who was walking out holding a PS3, now he was all set to buy a Wii, so I asked him why he bought the PS3...

"Well, I can't even get my hands on a Wii now, but I can buy this guy in a conbeni!", he said.

To make things even stranger, they were sold out of onigiri! I could buy a PS3 but not my onigiri...needless to say, I emerged empty handed from the store. ;p

I think Sony is officially getting it's @ss handed to them by the Wii...so here's my trade idea...

-Short Sony

-Long Nintendo and AM/PM (or any similar conbeni exposure)

-Hedge with Onigiri Futures...;p

飼い犬に手を噛まれる。。

Mon, 25 Dec 2006 01:36:50 GMT

。。。お前らちゃんと説明してくれ！　彼女を泣かせしちゃった。。。許せへん！

他の皆に。。。メリクリおめでとう！　良い良いお年を！

Not to be Inflammatory or Anything...

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 02:54:48 GMT

If you keep tabs on this blog with any sense of frequency, then you should know where I stand on the abortion issue, so I won't go into it now...anyhoo, I ran across the following article by a Sydney Morning Herald columnist, and it is a very honest, not overly preachy take on where a guy fits into the whole equation. I find it a rather refreshing read as supposed to the dense philosophical papers I read in my Bioethics and Medical Ethics classes...and I like how unlike most abortion debates, it's not really judgmental, more a relation of rational thoughts and ideas, as supposed to a salvo of inflexible, inflamed rhetoric...it brings to light what I believe is truly needed in this debate, coolheaded discussion and more open minds on both sides...

"Confessions of an Abortionist"

I should have two children; one of them would be turning 17 this year, the other should be 11 years old.

Both the kids would have been striking; their mothers were olive-skinned, long-limbed and brunette, with more than enough natural beauty to dilute the genetics of my rough head.

I'd like to think they'd also have been intelligent, as well as naturally athletic, ambitious and happy. But I'm never going to find out.

That's because both of these kids were aborted in-utero ...

I don't need to tell you that abortion is one of the most divisive issues on the planet, with opponents on either side of the philosophical spectrum more than happy to question the morality and intelligence of the other.

In Australia, the Federal Government is happy to leave the issue up to the states, which means we have a hodge-podge of laws that see women in some states treated as criminals for acts they can legally request a hundred kilometres away.

Whatever your take on the debate, it's a fact that abortion is widely available in this country and most young women have some knowledge of the procedure, either through direct experience, educational materials or the stories of their female friends and relatives.

For a lot of young men, however, it's just a word, perhaps even a punctuation mark, a full stop if you will, that sits heavily at the end of the sentence "I'm pregnant".

If you're a man and your partner conceives but decides to terminate, a lot of time that's where the conversation ends; it's her body, so it's her decision.

Both times I was involved in an abortion, I felt relief when the women involved chose to have terminations. On the first occasion, I was young, just 20 years old, and terrified how much my life would change if the girl chose to have the baby.

The second time, the girl was the young one, and it seemed an impossible arrogance on my part to make her do something I'd considered impossible just six years before.

Having been brought up to believe that this was a woman's choice, that I had no right to tell her what to do with her body, I kind of slept-walked through the process: helped with the costs, drove the girls to and from appointments and was as supportive as I could be.

Abortion is a traumatic experience for any woman, but then the medical support, the grief counselling, the social sympathy is weighted in a woman's favour.

If you ever want to feel like a criminal without having committed a 'crime' per se, go sit in the waiting room of an abortion clinic: it's deadly quiet, no one wants to make eye contact with you and the staff give you smiles you could filter krill through.

About 80,000 men go through this every year in Australia and I wonder how many of them truly consider the ramifications of the act?

As the years have passed since my decisions, a kind of phantom history has spooled out behind my two kids: birthday parties that never happened, schools they didn't attend, fun they never got to have because I found them inconvenient.

I can't tell you how many times I've wondered what they would have been like. The more I've thought about it, the more unsettled I've become about the flippancy with which I made the decisions.

I'm friends with a solid 75 per cent of my ex-girlfriends, but I never or rarely speak to the two women with whom I shared this experience.

One of them has married and has kids of her own and I'm glad I've not met them because I reckon I'd throw up seeing their faces, knowing I'd rubbed out two just like them.

You may accuse me of having a bob each way here, but I'll be honest, I don't regret my decisions, just wonder what sort of person it makes me.

東京ゲームショウに突撃！

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 06:45:43 GMT

http://tgs.cesa.or.jp/

ふふふ。。。ＰＳ３とかＷｉｉとかやってみる！　楽しみ楽しみ。。。

Some Would Say That's Excessive...

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 02:41:51 GMT

I think she's better off taking Social 1...

Latin dancer milks 'lazy cow' for $7200 a day
Rowan Callick, China correspondent
20jun06

MIMI Monica Wong, the 61-year-old head of HSBC's private banking in Asia, likes to dance. So she booked $21 million worth of lessons from her Latin dance teachers, for eight years of exclusive tuition - and paid half up front.

But the salsa turned sour when instructor Mirko Saccani, 31, allegedly lost patience with her as they danced in front of a crowd of 50 at the Li Hua restaurant, a centre of the Hong Kong dance scene, and called her a "lazy cow". Another dance instructor, Philip Redmond, said Saccani went on to threaten: "If you do it again, Monica, I'll smash your head against the wall."

Ms Wong is suing Saccani and his wife and dancing partner Gaynor Fairweather for the up-front payment, in a case that is attracting huge attention, even in Hong Kong's often colourful courts. The couple is counter-suing Ms Wong for unpaid fees.

The prominent banker said her huge investment in dance was driven by her desire to "look for the last bit of glory in life".

Saccani admitted that he had told Ms Wong to "move your arse" in an attempt to motivate her to perform better.

He said he had deposited the $10.8million advance fee in his bank account in Switzerland.

Ms Wong had originally been paying another instructor just $28,800 a month.

Then, in 2000, she turned to Fairweather, now 49, a 14-times world Latin dance champion, for which she was awarded the MBE.

Fairweather, originally from Manchester, England, had danced for 23 years with Scotsman Donnie Burns until she met the Italian Saccani.

Burns was in Hong Kong's Causeway Bay, dancing alongside Ms Wong and Saccani, when the row between the banker and the instructor erupted.

After two years learning from Fairweather, Ms Wong had turned to Fairweather's new husband, paying him $7200 a day and buying him a Ferrari.

The banker then sought to cement this tutorial arrangement - in part, she told the court, because she wished to help Fairweather improve her lifestyle in expensive Hong Kong.

So they negotiated a long-term deal. The couple had sought $70million for a 12-year contract but finally agreed on the $21million deal for eight years of lessons.

Ms Wong said she paid the $10.8million in advance when Saccani threatened to halt the lessons. She claimed that $314,000 of this was spent by Fairweather on plastic surgery.

When the threesome fell out of step at the Li Hua restaurant two years ago, this was not the last tango in Hong Kong for Ms Wong, who now has another instructor and who, according to the South China Morning Post, performed "impressively" in the HSBC-sponsored stage version of Moulin Rouge last year.

Not that I Want to Reinforce Stereotypes or Anything...

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 03:15:37 GMT

I don't what changed in me...but back when I was in the US, I prided myself on being a keen observer of my surroundings. Particularly at Stanford (maybe because the campus itself is breathtaking), I would take careful notice of where I was walking and what I was walking past...I'm probably one of the only people who actually read those plaques next to the Thinker (formerly in front of Meyer), the Burghers of Rhodes, and the Gates of Hell...

I guess as soon as I left the US and was inducted into the world of finance...I learned to be more "selective" on my information gathering. Whereas I used to be a little curious kid and searched out and picked up any bit of trivial trivia, now there's just too much information...and I learned to tune out what I didn't think was important. It started with the news, financial reports, business stuff. (Yeah, I'm glad that you think that A Company's valuations are a little high because of the current lunar cycle, founded on a new interpretation of Ito's Lemma...but I don't think you can trade off that )...but it eventually found it's way into everything.

In a city, that truly never sleeps, where there is nearly as many things to do during the night as there is during the day (arguably, much more to do at night), where it seems like every day, "the new hot club" is opening up, or "there's this amazing restaurant that you have to try" shows up on the radar...I kind of learned to tune out the things that I could afford to (read: where someone didn't drag me kicking and screaming, literally...btw, Y-kun, sorry about that, pretty sure there won't be a scar ). Somewhere along the way...I developed the attention span of a hyperactive rabbit suffering from ADD...

Is this a good thing? Is it a bad thing? How do you know what to filter out? How do you know what to ignore, what to concentrate on?

Anyhoo, this is a really long-winded prelude into how I finally went to this restaurant by my office that I would walk by everyday. A sempai told me that it was really cool, and that I should check it out. So being the wuss that I was, and not wanting to eat alone, I dragged the KJ along to check out:

http://www.zauo.com/

So from the outside it would seem like a normal izakaya, but the moment you walk down and step into the restaurant...you're transported to some tiny, inaka fishing village. There are lots of little side rooms that do the normal sushi izakaya thing...but the main attraction is the main room.

The main room houses a mock-up of an old Japanese fishing ship, and surrounding the ship is a moat...but unlike the usual Japanese koi pond that you find here and there in Japan, the water is populated with fish big enough to catch and eat...which you do...

That's right...in this izakaya, you can opt to actually try your hand at fishing and catching your dinner.

The KJ and I opted to get a normal sashimi platter along with the fish that we would catch (lest we fail in our attempt...and go hungry...). The sashimi itself was quite good, and on par with the more ã“™ places...but that was still mere ŒäØ to the ’Þ‚è!

The KJ tried her hand fist at fishing for a good ten minutes, frustrated by the less than attentive fish ("‰½‚Å‹›‚¿‚á‚ñ‚ðH‚×‚È‚¢‚ÌH@”ü–¡‚µ‚¢‚Å‚µ‚åH"). Finally, pouting like a little kid who got coal in her stocking, she shoved the pole in my hand and told me to try my hand at catching dinner.

I tried my hand in the same place for about five minutes and realized that she had freaked out all of the fish...so I moved to the other side of the "boat", dropped my line in the water, and in no less than three seconds, BAM!, a nice snapper is served up for dinner.

...somewhere along the exlamations of uƒWƒ‡ƒi‚Á‚¿ˆÌ‚¢I@‚³‚·‚ªIv the neanderthal part of my brain said, "Ugh! Me catch fish! Me done good?"

Haha, anyway a lot of fun, so anyone in Tokyo or anyone coming to visit...good place to go that's a little different from your average fare...

Seen but not seen...

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 04:36:34 GMT

Not the best way to start a work week...

Head of HF Sales: Mornin' mate! (...gotta love Brits... )

Me: Hey, good morning! How can I help you? Pretty early in the day for a trade, eh? We have something over the weekend from London? (Japan, the land with no Blackberries...yet...)

Head of HF Sales: No no...just an interesting observation. I saw a tall Filipino chap in Roppongi Crossing last night...

Me: Oh...(...me thinking: hey, it could have been any of the other five tall Filipino guys in Tokyo...)

Head of HF Sales: ...and, he wasn't alone...

Me: Whoa, look at the time, Nikkei's opening and JGB markets are coming in...shigoto shigoto...I'll catch up with you later!

...man, getting caught in Roppongi with a girl. I was heading to Roppongi Hills for dinner with the KJ, still, not the best way to start the week...a week to be filled with many rumors, jibes, and false accusations...

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Fri, 25 Aug 2006 03:58:42 GMT

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Ok guys...here you go!

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 10:08:46 GMT

Just cuz everyone's been asking...