November 4th, 2008, 2 Comments »
On this historic day in American history, I wanted to reference Sarah’s excellent report from the coincidentally-named town of Obama, Japan:
I spent the past weekend in Obama, and awesome doesn’t even begin to describe how awesome it was.
Obama, a fishing village on the Sea of Japan, has transformed itself into a hotbed of Barack Obama activism. Although, I suspect the people of Obama are rooting for Obama not because they like his politics, but because they like his name.
The charming portrait of Obama featured in the flags and posters that line the town’s main street looks like it was sketched in about five minutes.
She includes plenty of photos, including this crazy clay statue.
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August 22nd, 2007, No Comments »
I’ve been catching up on my RSS reading, and happened upon these two tales of voyages gone wrong. I’m very envious of Sarah’s plan to migrate westward across Asia after bidding a tearful goodbye to Japan. I’m not so envious of her tumultuous trip across the China Sea:
Everyone stayed locked inside their cabins because it was too dangerous to go outside. It was horrible. I was taking a gravol every four hours to keep the nausea at bay. I couldn’t keep any food down. I spent the entire day and night in bed just sleeping or listening to the Chinese girl in the bunk above mine vomiting. At least she was able to contain her vomit in her plastic bags and nothing landed on me.
Closer to home, Jen spent an unpleasant couple of nights on a canoe trip. Caution, some grossness and use of the term ‘turd-burglar’ follow:
At least the camping was nice, though! Except, not so much. I understand that part of the allure of visiting a BC Forest Service campsite is the fact that they’re a) usually fairly remote and b) usually free. The downside to that is the fact that they rarely had any facilities. No worry - people will just dig a hole. Except they don’t. The campsites are COVERED in landmines. People seem to just shit where the urge strikes them. It’s completely gross. Add to that the fact that our dog fancies herself a turd-burgler - we learned pretty quick we had to keep her tied up in camp, or risk having her run off and return with an upset tummy and some VERY bad breath.
This was preceded by plenty of portage-related tomfoolery. As a rule of thumb, if I have to carry my mode of transport, I give up and go home.
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March 21st, 2007, 2 Comments »
A kindly, bilingual fellow named Jun volunteered to translate Get a First Life into Japanese. I’m not sure how the humour will translate, but hopefully people will at least grasp the gist. In any case, here’s Get a First Life in Japanese.
If it looks like gobbledegook, do the following:
- In Internet Explorer, click the View menu. Select Encoding, then select, then select More and choose Japanese (Auto select).
- In Firefox, click the View menu. Select Character Encoding, then choose Japanese (ISO-2022-JP).
Coincidentally, next month Second Life is apparently releasing a Japanese language client for the game.
Because my Japanese is limited to “nori”, “edamame” and “salmon maki”, I have idea how to promote the site in the Japanese web. Is there a Japanese Digg?
In unrelated news, tonight I accidentally visited www.cbc.com instead of www.cbc.ca. It’s a “Comic & Break Club” in an eastern Asian language with creepy avatars and scantily clad women.
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