I love brain teasers and this one is right up there.  Go to this webpage.  Watch the video, counting how many times the white team passes the ball.  Got the number?  Good.

Now watch the video again without counting.

Tell me what you think in the comments.

When I go to the seafood section of my supermarket and see something moving I’m intrigued.

沢ガニ（さわがに, sawagani）, or freshwater crab.  The one on the bottom had seen better days but the rest were alive and kicking.

Japan has a new political party just in time for the August 30th election, the Happiness Realization Party.  Yes, that is their proper English name.  It’s a direct translation of the Japanese (幸福実現党) which looks just as silly.  A political party with “happiness” in their name is probably full of liberal, hippie pot smokers, right?  Wrong.  They’re right wing crazies.  And their message is clear – vote for us or die.

The full Japanese version also has shots of businessmen running around right before they get blown up.  Good stuff.

(Aside:  As crazy as these guys are you have to give them credit, their English translations are pretty good.  It looks like they ran the script past a native English speaker and then had it typo-ed up by a native Japanese speaker.  Better than most.)

The HRP’s to do list – turn North Korea into a pile of rubble asap.  Reduce consumption (sales) tax to 0%.  Build a worldwide high-speed rail network.  Develop a sub-orbital plane/space shuttle that can go from Tokyo to New York in two hours.  And did I mention that the party is connected to a religion/cult called Happy Science?  It’s all out there, unreasonable, and kinda scary.  Their posters are disturbing, too.

Those smiles aren’t natural.

There are always going to be people at the extreme ends of the political spectrum, that I understand.  The HRP is different somehow, though.  First there’s the religion thing.  Second they’re extremely well funded.  Third they’re putting forth more candidates than any other party in the upcoming election.  At least most people recognize them for what they are – nuts.

I am now at day 457 of my 101 in 1001 – nearly halfway done!  Looking at my list I found some things that need to be updated so this morning I armed myself with a favorite pen and went to work.

Removed

14. Review 10 pieces on PRX (0/10)

Great website but I don’t use it any more.

18. Make 10 new cookies/treats (0/10)

Managing cholesterol and sticks of butter don’t mix.

26. Take vitamins every day for a month (0/30)

Recent studies have shown that taking multi-vitamins don’t really improve your health.  As long as I eat healthy (leafy greens!  fruit!) I think I’ll get all the vitamins I need.

51. Write 10 bilingual blog posts

53. Write a letter to Ken’s grandmother

Both designed to keep my Japanese fresh when I wasn’t in Japan… not really a problem now.

55. Buy a rice cooker

There was one here in the apartment waiting for us!  Woo!

Six out, six in.

Added

107. Get 10,000 cards and 5,000 facts in Anki (my flashcard program)

108.  Get 2,000 kanji in Anki

New study goals.  Current counts – 4,172 cards, 2,076 facts, 1,186 kanji.

109. Buy a fashionable outfit for “going out”

My American wardrobe is woeful – 20 somethings don’t really do the t-shirt and jeans thing here.  That is, unless it’s a really hip t-shirt with really hip jeans and accessorized to the hilt.  I may not be hip but I want to look at least “with it” now and then.

110. Buy a bicycle

Freeeeedom…

111. Go to Okinawa

112. Go to Hokkaido

All the way South, all the way North.

When I was done I crunched some numbers.  If you count multiples like “try 20 new recipes” as 20 items I have 339 things on my list.  I have completed 124 of them, or 36%… not so great considering that nearly half of my time is up.  Time to get cracking!

There are a couple of things I can do right away to help.  I’ve been trying out new recipes (#17) but haven’t made them in big enough batches to freeze (#18).  I’ve been eating out (#71) but haven’t had many “me” lunches (#72).  I’m way behind on watching documentaries (#11) so I’m, uh, acquiring some right now.  To finish half of my items I’ll need to polish off 45 things in roughly 50 days.  It’s worth a shot.

My Snow Queen shawl is coming along nicely.

Okay, so it may not look nice right now, but just wait until it’s washed and stretched as tight as a drum on my blocking wires.  It will transform from cat barf into lacy goodness.  At least, it better!

I have a feeling that this Avril yarn might be magical – the yarn cake never shrinks.

It was roughly five inches across when I started and it’s roughly five inches across now (I’m pulling the yarn off the outside).  Hey, if it’s a never-ending ball of yarn I’ll take it.

Today the longest total solar eclipse of the century will pass right over Japan.  A few lucky people on some very remote islands will get to see the full shabang but near Tokyo we’ll still get roughly 75% totality.  Not bad.  That is, if we could see it.  The view from my window not five minutes ago:

Can’t exactly tell from the pic but there’s rain falling, too.  Ah well.

The word for solar eclipse in Japanese is 日食（にっしょく、nisshoku）.  The two characters mean sun and eat/food, respectively.  So… the sun is being eaten!  Ahhh!

Summer has officially arrived – the cicadas came out this weekend.  They sound like this:

It’s one of those sounds that reminds me that I really, truly am in Japan.  I kinda like it.

In some areas (and I have to stress some) Japan is way ahead of the US as far as being earth-friendly goes.  In the States if you recycle you’re golden.  In Japan you can actually reduce your recycling “waste” with handy refills.

This is one of my household cleaners.  Buying the spray bottle with cleaner in set me back something like $3.50.  The refill is right around $2.  Not just spray bottle stuff but shampoo, conditioner, body wash, fabric softener, and so on have these handy pouches, too.  They always seem to short you 50 ml on the refill but still, nice on the wallet, nice on the recycling dudes.

Today is exciting – it’s Ken’s first day of work.  He found a job at a smaller game development company.  He likes the size because he’ll be able to do all sorts of things (3D, background, character design and what have you) without being pigeonholed into one category.

This marks a big change for us.  Up until now Ken has been mostly at home while I’ve been working mornings and afternoons.  I usually get home by four and we would have the late afternoon and evenings together.  No more.  Ken will probably be leaving the house around nine (the company gets a late start) and coming back around eight.  So those chores we used to share?  Those are mostly mine now.  Grah.

I knew this was coming.  Japanese companies value time put in at work, sometimes more than the actual amount of work done.  An hour of overtime each day is du rigueur at many offices with more around deadlines and other big happenings.

While doing a mad google search for “daily/weekly cleaning schedule” I came across the Flylady.  Her philosophy is that your house didn’t become dirty in a day so it won’t become clean in a day, either.  By slowly establishing a cleaning routine and not overwhelming yourself you can get a lot done.  One mantra on the site is to take baby steps and not rush anything.  The first baby step?  Cleaning your sink until it shines.  Sounds corny, but my kitchen looks much better with a happy, gleaming sink greeting me.  Not to mention that it’s such a big piece of real estate the shine adds an extra 10 watts of light to the room.

While there are a lot of things I’ll have to modify to fit my needs (“air the futon” isn’t exactly on her list) I think it’s a great foundation for my own cleaning routine.  Leo at Zen Habits advocates a similar approach but the Flylady makes everything dead simple, telling you where and how to concentrate your efforts each week.  I like.

In other news I had a very interesting class today.  One of the Japanese teachers I work with is part of a program developing new ways to teach English in Japanese schools.  This guy is amazing – he lived in England for over three years and is quite conversational.  He uses English every day and as a result his kids know things like, “Let me try!”, “One more time!”, and “How do you say ___ in English?”.  This is leaps and bounds ahead of most sixth graders.  In other classes I pretty much run the show but in his I sit back and enjoy, providing pronunciation models and playing the games with the kids.

Well, today a bunch of people came to evaluate his technique and discuss his methods.  I knew that much.  I didn’t know that there would be two people with home movie cameras recording us and that the people coming were mostly higher ups from the local Center for International Education.  Wah!

Luckily the class went off without a hitch.  The kids were great, the games were fun and everyone spoke a lot of English.  Success!

Afterwards a nice lady from the Center complimented me – she was surprised to hear I’m a first year teacher, my technique was so good.  Woot!  She also said my voice was clear, easy to understand, and overall very nice.  I was interested in a career in radio at one point (heck, I still am) so that made my day.

Only two more days of work before my six week summer vacation!  May it be filled with sunny days and gleaming sinks!

Avril, a one of a kind yarn store in Tokyo, recently had their annual sale.  Looming JLPT or not, I knew I had to go.

Walking around Kichijouji Station is like going back in time 20 years or so.  They don’t build quite like this anymore.  That’s probably good – this may look like a pedestrian thoroughfare but buses managed to squeeze through every few minutes.

In Avril there were boxes and boxes of discounted yarn.  A lot of it was in spring pastels I could do without but I did find a couple of gems.

This yarn is listed as  HK 5100, a 70/30 wool/silk blend.  It’s fine even for laceweight, almost cobweb I think.  There’s 180 grams here and the yardage is insane – it took me two hours to wind using my ball winder.  The sale price came to 945 yen, or roughly $10.

The tag was kind of vague:  “Sale yarn, silk/wool, 370 g”.  It looks like a blue silk single plied with a slightly thinner black wool single.  It’s a wonderfully rustic laceweight, just begging to be made into a Moonlight Sonata shawl [ravelry].  I should really get a digital scale so I could get some idea of the yardage but I’m sure there’s a ton.  It set me back roughly $15.

Most things at Avril are wound off of cones and sold by the gram, making it a little intimidating for a by-the-hank knitter like me.  The shop is small but the ladies were super nice and didn’t seem to mind that I was digging through their boxes for oh, a solid half hour.  Next time there’s a sale I’ll have to splurge on some laceweight cashmere… it looked positively yummy.