Running over old ladies on the way to school.
posted by Shurakai @ 2:36pm, Friday 27 June 2008.
A few days ago I was, as usual, riding my bike to school. Things were going well. No random trucks stopping and launching yellow plastic tubes through the back window of a car. Just the usual nobody paying attention to their surroundings.
Now, in Japan every bike seems to have a bell. This is supposed to be used to warn pedestrians and other, slower moving, bikes that if they don't take heed and move out of the way you will surely crash into them as it's impossible to slow down or otherwise try to go around the object infront of you. At least this is my take on the matter.
I on the other hand have this inabilty to use the bell because I'm a foreigner and I'm afraid it looks weird enough biking to school with a granny basket on the front of my bike and drawing more attention to myself just isn't something I want to do. So I break the mold of Japanese society and try to go around objects in my way.
To make this sound more dramatic I've decided to tell it from the old lady's point of view.
[not-so-old-as-to-need-a-cane-and-walk-with-a-slow-crippled-foot-dragging-behind-but-old-enough-old-lady]:
I was walking along the street when I decided I should cross the road. So I began to make my way to wards the crossing. (by leaning ever so slightly to the right , making a slow, gradual approach unnoticable to the human eye) As I reached the crosswalk I noticed the light was red, so I decided to stop as I always do. (suddenly and without any warning, not quite off to the side causing uwary foreigners to gain 10 points)
Out of the corner of my eye I suddenly noticed this huge, grotesque, light skinned beast of a man with hair growing out of every which way of his body like he was the human rainforest appeared right behind me. At that moment I saw my entire life flash before my eyes. I flew back 30cm (apx. one foot for the metrically uninclined) and fended him off with my hands.
He appeared slightly angry and confused so I quickly backed off a bit and began my appology guesture routine with my hands, as taught to me by the how-to-survive-an-encounter-with-a-scary-bestial-foreigner handbook. Confused and unsure as to why I was appologizing, he continued on his way to replace the clear-cut trees of South America.
[end old-but-not-that-old--old-lady-talk]
So there you have it. Moral of the story... In Japan it's not just the drivers, it's the bicyclists and pedestrians that can't drive... walk.. bike.. run.. due to lack of paying attention.
Narnia II
posted by Shurakai @ 1:52pm, Thursday 19 June 2008.
First... I got the calendar thing on the right there working properly. Had to rip apart a small section of code to do it.
I went with Miyuki and her friend Aya to see Narnia today. Overall it wasn't a bad movie, but the ending was a bit quick and had a really strong Lord of the Rings feeling to it (not in a good sense).
*SPOILERS (so don't read it if you haven't seen the movie and want to)*
Up to the point where Peter was fighting the bad king guy, the movie was doing fairly well. Of course I'm not expecting a LotR movie, it's more of a kids movie. But when Aslan is found, and suddenly decides to wake up the trees (sound familiarω) and the badly beaten Narnian army is being wiped out... and these trees suddenly come and start ripping up the other army.. yeah, it just put a sour taste in my mouth.
I won't forget to mention the fact that the attacking army was HUGE in comparison to the Narnian one... but suddenly when the trees attacked it shrank to a good 1/10th or less of it's size. I guess some of those casualties can be blamed on the trees.. but there only looked to be about.. what, 5 treesω And the army didn't even think of bringing weapons that would set fire.
And why don't the swords have blood on them after someone is stabbedω Must be magical self-cleaning swords.
Anyway... I have a feeling that reading the book will reveal a lot was left out of the movie. Not that I really want to read it.. I'll probably twitch with the somewhat blatent rip offs... I just remembered one. The river swelling up and attacking the bad guy army.. meh.
New blog version and stuff
posted by Shurakai @ 3:17am, Sunday 15 June 2008.
Hey everyone... I've upgraded the version of eggblog I'm using to the latest one. It seems there have been a few glitches in the coding somewhere though since it doesn't play well with my provider (or something). I finally edited it enough to allow me to post new articles and hopefully the photo uploading will work this time as well.
The current term at school ended friday. So now I'm just waiting until the placement (level) test on tuesday. Other than that test I have the week off. I don't have a lot to do but I'll figure out something to fill the time.
Anyway.. back to tinkering with the code.
(update: looks like the photo thing is a problem with teh provider.. maybe they'll be nice and fix it)
(update2: have the calendar somewhat working, has bugs to fix still though)