Misadventures in Translation

• “Wear u updates be, dawg?”
• Shut up. I’m busy.

I would’ve updated earlier this week, but I’ve been busy with various things during the evening this past week. Meeting people for dinner, tutoring English, work, and studying take up too much time. However, other than teaching and hanging out with friends, the only other big thing I’ve done lately is go snowboarding at Hakuba Goryu in the Nagano Prefecture. It was a great weekend of snowboarding and debauchery. I’ll definitely be going there again.

The snow at Hakuba was excellent. We went up Friday night (Jan. 26th) and stayed at the Hotel Lady Diana. During the night, it snowed and we had about eight inches of fresh snow in the morning. Then, it continued snowing all day at the resort. The fresh powder was excellent. Here are some pictures from the first day of snowboarding.

A picture just outside the Hotel Lady Diana.

Too much snow.

My fellow snowboarding companion, John.

Mid-afternoon, it finally cleared up to provide a splendid view of the area.

Later, we hit up a nice outdoor onsen in the area to relax after a full day of boarding. We then had a decent dinner at the hotel before preceding to party the night away. The highlight of the night was meeting a young married Japanese couple who were apparently swingers. I promptly gave the guy instructions on how to hit on the nearest blond haired foreign girl. He put forth a good effort, but ultimately failed. Poor guy. Oh, well. No time to fret. I had another day of snowboarding ahead of me.

Just chillin’ on the second day at Hakuba

John’s a dirty Mexican.

The view from about half-way down the advanced slope.

Saturday and Sunday were both very crowded. There were also many Europeans here on vacation. I saw some Brits, French, Germans, and Russians.

A decent view up the slope.

If you want to see the rest of the pics from Hakuba, click here.

This week, I had a dinner party with a few of my teachers from the elementary school. The usual shenanigans occurred.

Today, I went snowboarding (again) at Koumi Re-Ex in the Nagano Prefecture. John and I met up with Rumi, a teacher from Akeno Elementary School, and her friend. We tore up the slopes from eight in the morning till late in the afternoon.

John, Me, Rumi, and the Ski Ninja (I couldn’t remember her name)

The big plans for this week are to go night snowboarding on Tuesday and fly to Hokkaido on Friday. The trip to Hokkaido is going to be awesome. I’m looking forward to checking out the fantastic snow sculptures at the Yuki Matsuri (Snow Festival), sights in Sapporo, and the slopes at the Niseko Ski Resort. I’ll be going with a few other friends from Yamanashi. It will be an epic adventure.

—Random Thoughts—

Every now and then, I discover something interesting. Marty Friedman, a former guitarist for Megadeth, has been living in Japan for sometime. I can’t remember the name of the show he was a guest star on. However, I found out he has his own show on TV Tokyo called Rock Fujiyama. He also has own studio in Shinjuku. Too bad I’m never up late enough or around to watch it. It would be nice to have his level of Japanese skill. Here are some links to some more information about good ole’ Marty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Friedman_%28guitarist%29

http://avexnet.or.jp/marty/

http://www.tv-tokyo.co.jp/fujiyama/

Now, for your Japanese moment of Zen:

This is Shoko Nakagawa. She is better known by the nickname Shokotan. Although she is a singer and actor, I think she is more famous for being a female gamer/geek. This makes her the wet dream of many otaku. However, her love for her video games (she wants to marry Dragon Quest V) and her cats kinda creeps me out.

If you can’t see the video, click youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJhi7TOXmC4

Shokotan is also a well-known cosplay model.

Meow indeed.

If you feel like looking at a bunch scribbles, you can read her blog at http://yaplog.jp/sdtrawberry2/ I can give you a brief summary: it’s here talking about her damn cats too much.

You can go to her official website at http://www.nakagawashoko.com/to hear her sing, but it’s nothing but a bunch of clicks and whistles.

Japan is crazy. I love it.