Friday night a few of my friends and I went out to a Japanese Restaurant in the city called Yu-u. Trav looked it up and said it was reputably hard to find and that it had good reviews. We were wondering around for ages going "it must be along here somewhere!" whjen i saw 2 Japanese businessmen emerge from the door in fits of laughter. Felt like i was back in Tokyo :( *sigh* Here is Josh after we finally found the door:
January 29, 2010
a week in my shoes
Friday night a few of my friends and I went out to a Japanese Restaurant in the city called Yu-u. Trav looked it up and said it was reputably hard to find and that it had good reviews. We were wondering around for ages going "it must be along here somewhere!" whjen i saw 2 Japanese businessmen emerge from the door in fits of laughter. Felt like i was back in Tokyo :( *sigh* Here is Josh after we finally found the door:
January 28, 2010
aloe aloe!
I forgot my camera cable so pictures of my crazy 5 day weekend are still to come, BUT i can tell you this... we are suddenly naming everything in the house. Our toilet is now called Keith. Hayden has this, dare i say, obsession with naming inane objects. I like it though.
And I liked my 5 days off. Think Japanese underground restaurants, flashy bars, a kitchen tea in the sun, dinner on the couch watching ponyo <3, drinks at a friend's, bbq lunch and pool times at trav's on sunday, massive sunburn, seeing the decemberists sunday night and jizzing all over the place from how amazing it was, cleaning out the house, 1 new housemate: maki, australia day shenanigans, fruit picking in the sunshine, triple J countdown - congratulations mumford and sons, late dinner and a beer on tues, helping hayden move in yesterday, having a vegan welcome feast outside watching the sun set. siiigh. now im back at work.
stay tuned
January 22, 2010
vegie patch, dinner date & dresses
January 20, 2010
family follies
So the year was 2000, and I was at the ripe young age of 13. Over the Christmas school holidays my dad, a fencing contractor by trade, enlisted the help of myself and my brothers to assist him on a job. This fence was along a main road and was the boundary to a large housing estate. So we were working away, lining up pailings etc. and my dad said we could have a go with his nail gun. He showed us that you need to push it hard against a surface for a nail to be released, and we thought that was the most awesome thing since Tazos, or when Oreos made their way to us via a friend going to USA. Anyway, Dad seemed to like the way that it had transformed us from squabbling to overjoyed in mere seconds, and decided to show us another trick. He chocked a bit of wood or something in near the nozzle so that the nail gun "thought" it was pressed against something at all times, thus allowing you to fire it like a gun.
He started shooting it at the dirt and we were all backing away laughing. He then started shooting it near my little brothers feet (he was 10 at the time) going "dance, dance!" maniacally. You think I am joking.. but my dad really does that shit. My little bro Daniel was squealing in a mixture of fear and excitement, then started to run away from us. He was running over a slight hill, and my dad kept shooting the ground a few meters behind him. As Daniel was slowly going up-hill dad had raised the nail gun more and more after him. When he started on the decline, he turned around to look at us and my dad shot again but had the gun raised too high. All we saw was him laughing and waving - then he clutched his eye and fell to the ground screaming.
I don't think i have ever been so close to actually shitting myself. We ran up to him expecting the worst, and finally we pried his hand away from his face, and saw that the nail was not sticking out of his eyeball as feared... it was nowhere to be seen. all he had was a little nick under his eye and a bit of blood. We all breathed a sigh of relief but i don't think I have ever seen my dad so worried. He swore Daniel not to tell my mum what happened or else she would probably leave him or something.
Now, Daniel is definately not the most subtle of people... i think somehow he wanted my mum to find out. When we got home she asked what happened to his eye and he explained "i um, tripped on a rock.... and fell onto another rock...." which she miraculously believed. Obviously he would have to try harder to let mum "find out", so he started drawing pictures of the incident and leaving them around the house. Here is a fairly accurate one that i remember...
(In hindsight, i probably shouldn't have done a backwards "e" as he was 10 at the time, which i calculated after creating this masterpeice in Paint.)
Anyway, Mum still didn't realise what was going on, and Dad was thinking it was just a matter of time before Daniel wrecked the whole arrangement. So around the table at Christmas Lunch my dad told my mum he had to confess something, and told her the whole story. What an awkward finish to a lovely day THAT was :s
So yeah, Daniel is the accident-prone one in the family. I don't think he has done any damage lately but he used to hurt himself in horrific ways all the time. There was the time he stepped on a piece of roof guttering that was up the side of our house, and it sliced deep in between his big and second toe. There was a trail of blood to the back door and everyone was freaking the fuck out. Then there was the time he cut his calf on a bit of sharp wood and his skin kind of folded back from the cut exposing the fat layer. It was like on star wars when Han Solo cuts open the Tauntaun's stomach and all that shit spills out. He was asking me to get mum and i was yelling "no! I'm having too much fun atop the spinning clothes line" that was until i saw WHY he wanted me to get mum and i nearly vommed. Anyway, enough of that. It is lunch-time and i don't want to lose my appetite :P
January 18, 2010
one weekend in january
Friday night i went to a local night spot called POW! with some friends. I am not drinking booze at the moment, possibly until Jan 30th at which time i have a Hens Night, so i was on the cola and raspberry train. I dont usually drink soft drink so i was feeling pretty drunk and hypo as a result! It was a really fun night doing some people watching, and it was nice to be able to leave when i was ready and drive myself home to bed. Note to self: sobriety is your friend.
The next morning i had a massive sugar hangover from the soft drinks which was really bizarre, haven't felt that kind of low since i was a little tacker. I got up at around 7.45am and went to the local gym. I must point out that I am not a member, but my friend works there and i possibly snuck in for a few hours for free :) This could become a regular thing maybe, we'll see. I am undergoing an unofficial change of life right now. I am going from NO excercise to SOME excercise. This is huge, people. I am trying not to alter my diet too much at this point. We eat vego dinners everynight and i usually take leftovers for lunch. I feel that i eat quite healthy and have a pretty good vitamin intake, but i have a desk job so i am not what you might call 'fit', and i reeeeeeally don't want to end up with Kankles or one of those huuuuge office chair bums!!!! EEEEP!
Anyway after i recovered from the gym and cleaned the house a bit, and had a nap, i went to my friend's house for a vego mexican dinner party!!! It was amazing! We played Flash UNO which is an intense electronic version of UNO, and you have a time limit to make your move otherwise you have to pick up more cards haha, so many lols to be had. also we played a few games of jenga. Tensions were running very high by the end of the night hehe...
Well that's that people. Hope you enjoyed my weekend vicariously through my blog. Tonight i have to do a clean out of the 2 spare bedrooms for the arrival of my new housemates. It will be a cleansing feeling i'm sure :) kind of like a colonic but without all the poop.
housemates
So in order to not become all lonely (and of course to keep paying my mortgage) i have recruited 2 housemates, who are already our friends, to move in NEXT WEEK! Josh will still be there when they come so it will be a full house and lots of fun! Just like a little family!
Ok, so with the nicest photos i could find...
Introducing Housemate #1: HAYDEN
Full Name: Hayden (???) CroninNicknames: Gazedo (phone dictionary), H-dizzle, my Vegan Friend, H-unit etc.
Background: Dutch Australian
How we became friends: Friends with Josh's older brother Bradd with two D's
Interests: Veganism, Power Lifting, gaining weight, playing bass - mostly slap bass when i am around, music, wearing dresses (i imagine)
Potential Quirks which start off as endearing but become fatal: liberating animals from abbatoirs and bringing them all home.
Introducing Housemate #2: Maki
Potential Quirks which start off as endearing but become fatal: falling off the roof and seriously injuring himself. that, or setting the house on fire.
January 15, 2010
more japan stories
Picciture 1:
ah yes, our first night in Japan...So the story goes that we had a 6am flight out of Melbourne and a few of the guys thought it would be a good idea not to sleep the night before the flight so that they would be able to sleep the whole way there on the plane. In theory I suppose it is a valid idea, but it didn't really work like that as i had anticipated. I think they couldn't sleep sitting up, try as they might, and were getting frustrated and grumpy and still dead tired. It was kiiiind of funny but also really bad.
We flew into Osaka airport and got a train from the airport station (best thing ever) into the city where we were all super excited at everything we saw. Think "Oh my god, look at those lights!", "Omg, we're in Japan!", "Oh man, i want to come back here and look at this shop tomorrow!!". We wanted to walk to our hotel cos we didnt want to blow money on taxis and plus we wanted to take it all in. i had the lonely planet guide map open trying to navigate to our accommodation. One thing i have found about those maps is that they are sooooo not accurate. Only the main roads have street names, sometimes. All the little alleys, which in Japan are...well... EVERYWHERE, are not named. Plus the scale is all whack, you think you still have like 5 minutes of straight walking until you reach a street, and all of a sudden you realise you walked past it already. I remember walking along a main 4 lane road wondering where we were on the map. I think we got lost inside this undercover shopping arcade, it was like a black hole and we came out somewhere totally different than where we thought we were. The guys couldn't figure it out either.
we eventually stopped and asked a Japanese guy for directions who was the owner of this buffet restaurant. He was a funny character. He had an American English accent and was trying to use his GPS on his phone to help us find the address. He was telling us to come back the next day for lunch and explained that "soft drinks... all FREE" in this heavy american accent. so strange. Anyway he sent us back the way we had come. After a while we worked up the courage to ask this other Japanese guy to help us with directions, he was a hippie and we thought he looked nice and friendly. Cos a lot of Japanese people get scared off when you start talking to them or try to get their attention. Anyway we asked him to look at the map and asked if we were close to the hotel and he shook his head and laughed and indicated that we were way off. None of us could believe how lost we were and how no-one could help us cos our map was in English. So yeah then we got in 2 taxis and asked the drivers to take us to the address and they said they didn't really go to that part of the city, they only knew the other part of the city. Weird.
We eventually got to the hotel like hours after we got to the city and wouldn't you know it.... they didn't have our reservation and were fully booked. 6 people, little sleep, tensions running high, no place to sleep. I showed them the email that they had sent me which said "thankyou for your reservation" but apparently by saying "thankyou for your reservation" they actually needed me to reply confirming again that yes, ontop of the last email with all of our details and credit card details, i would AGAIN like to say that i would like to book. I wanted to blow myself up and take everyone down with me. So after much conversation we discovered that they had a sister hotel on the other side of the city and we managed to get a suite for all 6 of us. Then we had to get cabs again over there and the poor night guy had to stay back and wait for us before he closed up for the night audit. We crashed hard after laying out the futons on the ground - which is what is happening in the picture above. I was so embarrassed and angry at myself cos i was meant to be the Japan expert and first night i looked like the biggest dick head. It was a pretty shit night but also really funny at times and we were all joking about things we saw and Stevenz was imitating the American accent of the Japanese guy for the next week, it was hilarious.
Piccy-ture 2:
This isn't a story per se, but i like the picture. That flower I stole from the entrance of a Pachinko Parlour. I would link to a description of Pachinko, but i could just give it: it is a gambling machine similar to the pokies. you put all these little ball bearings balls in the top and they clatter down and somehow you win money. like that carnival game where you have to get the ball in the clown's mouth. Pachinko is massive in Japan. They have gigantic buildings dedicated to it. People sit in rows and it is a sensoral RAPE when you walk in the doors. You are accosted with a wall of deafening techno/j-pop music trying to rise above the noise of billions of ball bearing balls clattering all over the place. And as in Japan you are allowed to smoke indoors the building is so thick with smoke you feel like you are in a nightmare club. anyway for some reason they all go overboard with the fake flowers to decorate the entrances.Pici-ture 3:
this was after a big night of drinking - maybe after our little episode at Club Pure in Shibuya i think (someone correct me if i'm wrong as we seemed to be hungover a lot). We had to check out the next morning and we were all pretty devoid of happiness or life. We caught a train to harajuku and locked our big bags away so that we might be free to roam around a little. On the map we saw there was a park near the station called Yoyogi Park so we stumbled over there hoping for a bit of peace and quiet. We all had a little nap on some benches - hobo stylllle. It was so relaxing. Eventually we were awoken by a strange smelling smoke that wafted our way but were too chicken to investigate it's origin. We watched the rockabilly dancers for a while before heading off into the gigantic park for a stroll. It was the end of autumn so the leaves were falling so delicately and serenely from the trees, i have never seen anything like it before. it was like a dreamscape! We eventually came upon a big dog pen where everyone put their dogs so they can play off the lead. We stood looking at those dogs for hours... i think they saved our lives a little bit. I'm pretty sure that at some point we were plotting the dognapping of a few of our favourites. I didn't like the ones in clothes. A lot of them were wearing clothes. It was intense.Piccyture 4:
This was a poster at the train station, trying to reinforce the Japanese peoples love for peace and quiet on trains. The man who is disapproving of the behaviour looks so freaky. His eyes are dead. I think the poster should read "this party is a zombie free zone" and the poor zombie is left out *cry*. The most rowdy behaviour i saw on a train there was at night... this one Japanese guy was on his was home from a night of drinking, and he was falling asleep but was leaning on the girl next to him and he dropped his phone. He was trying so hard to stay awake, and trying to appear normal....but everyone was like *DANGER DANGER* and cleared out the carriage. It was bizzare! Here i have seen people "nodding off" on the trian but not because they are sleepy but because they are needle junkies. I have seen people take pills in unicen on the train, seen a few people smoking and a lot of people drinking, see a few fights, seen a near stabbing... yeah different worlds. kevin bacon: celeb frenemy

yucky! Josh and i once had a Kevin Bacon marathon like 5 years ago or so, and we watched a few of his movies and ate only bacon products. Cheese and bacon shapes were plentiful. I also dated a guy when i was about 14 or 15 whose nickname was bacon because he looked so much like Kevin Bacon. What the fuck was wrong with me? I shudder to remember. anywayyyy i just had to express that. ok, no more bacon talkmuerta: the fallen
Lately, my most beloved possessions (only the ones i blog about) have been under attack from the forces of death- the very ones, i suspect, that were at play in the tragic real life story "Final Destination". I don't know what i have done to deserve this dark cloud of death to be hanging over my homestead. Either someone out there has some seriously misguided grudge against me and has laid a curse upon me, or the ancient Greek Gods have cursed me for being so subarashii and having an interesting B-LoG. Probably the latter.
I hope that by commemorating the fallen, I will in effect reverse the curse (lol rhyme) and save everything else i blog about from dying too. Here it goes...
UNO
PS. I'm sorry I blamed Chester for smashing you, it was clearly my fault. Chester wasn't even inside..
DUO
