 | Michelle on Free Japanese Books |
 | azumarisan on Free Japanese Books |
 | Michelle on Free Japanese Books |
| Michelle on Free Japanese Books |
| azumarisan on I went overseas today… |
…you’re going to love this store i found online called Krappy. Their motto is “Gifts from the Edge of Popular Culture”.
My favourite gifts are the Chairman Mao Lighter, and The Kewpies. Interesting to see that their Krappy Music includes Rod Stewart Live! I’m glad it’s not sold out though! haha 
If someone were to buy you a gift from that website, which one would you like to receive and why?
I’ve noticed something scary. Yasu is addicted to Wikipedia Japan. I only just found this out the other day because we have an activity room where the computer desk is, that has a window in the wall, so i can see through from the kitchen, and every time i walked past i noticed he was looking at Wikipedia. Before that, i didn’t even know they had it in any other language besides English.
Tonight i confronted him about being a Wikipedia geek. If there is such a thing. I mean who wants to read Wikipedia for fun? I only go there if i’m researching something. Facebook is for fun. Wikipedia is not. But Yasu seems to think it’s great quality entertainment. “What’s wrong with it?” he says. Hmm…lots of things!
Yasu is seriously behind. I speak to all his friends on Facebook. Meanwhile he doesn’t even have an account. Anyway, i’m just wondering if anyone else out there views Wikipedia as entertainment, or is Yasu the only one?
Last Friday, Yasu decided to take 4 days off from work as he was feeling rather run-down and had been having trouble shaking a cold he had caught in Tasmania.
We settled into home life together, it was nice to have him home i must admit. I cooked some great meals for him while he was home, Chicken Carbonara, Pork Roast, Tuna Patties, A chocolate Cake, Pancakes with butter and Canadian Maple syrup every morning from scratch, (none of those store bought ones for me!) Roast pork and salad sandwiches for lunch, afternoon teas with chocolate cake and bikkies in the afternoons….ahh life was such bliss….until…Yasu opened up his passport and discovered it was due to expire in less than 30 days.
If he was living in Japan this wouldn’t have been a problem. We are in Australia and this presented a bit of a problem considering the time it takes to get a passport from Japan is longer than the time we had before his passport ran out.
Being a Sunday, we could do nothing but wait. However, Yasu kept on coming up with all kinds of scenarios such as “what if i have to go back to Japan? I won’t be able to stay here without a passport will i?”, “Maybe i’ll stay 2 weeks in Japan…there’s no point going all the way to Hokkaido for 1 week”. At this stage my fear started to turn into resentment at the thought of him going to Japan without me. I could just see him thinking what a great opportunity it had turned into. Time to go back and visit izakaya’s with his mates. Meanwhile worried wife sits at home by herself in a land far, far away.
Monday couldn’t come soon enough. We made our way to the Japanese Consulate in Perth. I hate that place. Why? Because they make you stand on one side of the glass and talk into a telephone, and it seems like you’re in a prison visiting an inmate, rather than talking to people from your own country. What are they afraid of? A looney Aum representative spraying some sarin? I don’t know…but it’s not a friendly place. We walked in and immediately the security guard came over and asked Yasu to take his cap off. I was like “what the?” and he explained that if you’re wearing a cap, the security camera cannot get a clear shot of your face. Oh…so you’re treated like a criminal before you do anything! Just in case you do do something. Great one.
After alot of to-ing and fro-ing and many signed pieces of paper later, the attendant informed Yasu that it would take just one week for application and he would have his passport renewed on July 14th! Wow..that’s great, only 1 week total! How come it takes such a little amount of time? Australia has less people, yet it takes us a month or more to get our passports.
So we were immediately relieved that Yasu would not be kicked out, and Yasu was a bit sad that he wasn’t going to get deported back to Japan for his izakaya holiday. And i was relieved he wasn’t going to have a holiday without me! Yes, i know that’s kind of selfish isn’t it… ;o)
After that we parked the car in Northbridge and had a look for somewhere to have lunch. Along the way we came upon Emma’s “Nihon Shokuhin” Supermarket. We were in wonderland. There were 3 very distinct rooms of endless Japanese / Korean / Chinese groceries that just went on, and on, and on. From frozen monaka’s and icypops, to Chocolate and potato chip snacks, soups, noodles, desserts, pancake/hotcake mixes, lollies, Japanese drinks like Kirin gogo tea, Sangaria mixed fruits, coffee in cans, matcha, even Qoo. In one room is a whole 2 aisles of Hello Kitty and Kuromi items like bags, photo frames, lollies, snacks and gifts from Japan. Then there is the limited edition Koala no March, Pocky, Pucca, Meiji, Morinaga snacks! Wow! It’s such an amazing place. We didn’t have alot of time so we had a quick look, stocked up on Kewpie 1kg bottle of mayo, 1 litre bottle of beef bulgogi sauce and Yasu bought me a muscat flavoured Qoo.
On we went and found a little Korean restaurant called Cori Anna. It had some lunch specials so we decided to go in. I got beef bulgogi set with rice and Korean tea. Yasu got bi bim bap set with rice and Korean tea. We also got served some complimentary side dishes. (will post pics later)
After lunch, we were pretty full and felt sleepy, so we made our way home, on the way reminiscing about our first date at a Chinese steamboat restaurant in Northbridge. Thanks to our passport panic, we actually had a really nice day out together!
It has been a while since i’ve posted. In fact, it seems like forever, but it’s been about 2 weeks truthfully told. All because our computer had a melt-down and needed a new hard disk.
We still had internet connection via usb cable on Yasu’s 10 year old Compaq Presario which was a total nightmare. It’s terribly slow even with broadband, and has a tantrum about every 10 minutes where it fails to load any pages whatsoever, and then you have to restart and keep going for another 10 minutes before it happens again.
Before it was installed with Windows it was used primarily for Yasu’s game playing and it worked well enough for that. And it will now be relegated back to that, and i hope that i never have to use it again! Ever! I didn’t realise that a 10 year old laptop would be such a dinosaur. When it comes to cars, our Daewoo is fast approaching 8 years old and it still runs like a dream.
Another thing i dislike about using a laptop i have found is the mouse. I am so used to using a mouse that is attached to our desktop pc that you can click with and move around. But the flat surface on a laptop is so hard. I never did get how to highlight something…it was too far above my limit.
To say i was happy to see our tower again is an understatement, i felt like kissing and hugging it. I didn’t because it’s a little bit dusty, but it’s the thought that counts.
I’m happy to be back. I no longer have to cram all the important internet use into 10 minutes. It’s so glorious! I’ve been on here a whole 1 hour without a glitch, life feels good right now. It’s amazing how something working well can make or break your day.
Just when i thought i’d seen it all… i read this article today. Getting romantic with a robot? Honestly…would someone be that desperate?
If something like that puckered up to me i’d run a mile! Not to mention the feeling you would get when getting kissed by a robot. It’s made from synthetic material, not warm inviting flesh, how could you possibly have feelings of ‘love’ for it?
But the fact is, that “EMA” is only 15 inches tall, not even half a metre, so it begs the question, are these men getting into something they shouldn’t be? Isn’t it more like going out with a child robot, than a woman robot? At least if they are going to make something like this, they should make it to size. What do you think?
