Woe / Japanese TV

It has been a long time since I updated. Some days have been interesting, some boring.

Last Friday, we (Olga, Tolia, Sasha, Wu, Tomoki, Jyun, Utsuki, and I) had a drinking party after sadoubu (during which I had found out that it's actually supposed to be pronounced chadoubu and that even most Japanese people have it wrong). It was originally supposed to be at Tomoki's place, but there ended up being too many people to fit, so we had it at my place. There was a wide variety of alcohol and food.

Taste-O-Meter!

Brinni: 5
Russian pancakes. Not as sweet as American pancakes, and eaten with sour cream instead of syrup.

Russian Salad: 5
No lettuce here! Potatoes, onions, carrots, eggs, and mayonnaise and a couple of other things to hold it together. So tasty.

Sausages and Potatoes seasoned with Chicken Broth: 5
Tomoki started cooking the sausages around the time that Olga finished the salad. There were a couple of potatoes left over, and Sasha jumped up to slice them and cook them with the sausages. I didn't have any salt, so... chicken broth powder. If you've ever eaten that stuff raw, you'll know that it's more salty than chicken-y, so it worked just fine.

Shrimp Senbei: 4
Shrimp senbei is very different from the plainer senbei I had at chadoubu the one time. Same sort of thing -- a small, crunchy, rice-based buscuit -- but the flavor is very different.

Peanut Butter and Honey Flavored Snack: 5
This stuff had the texture of cheese doodles with none of the cheese. Good stuff.

Squid Jerky: 4
Nacilik was right about this stuff being good, though I personally still prefer beef jerky.

Jack Daniels Mixed with Plum Wine: 4
I don't like Jack Daniels much, but with the plum wine it was pretty good.

Jack Daniels Mixed with Pepsi Twist: 2
Don't like either of these drinks much. Together, they weren't good.

We generally chatted a lot. At one point, Sasha had my frying pan lid and was goofing off with it. Its handle is on the edge instead of in the middle; the middle is given over to a clear window so that you can see inside, unlike the outer edges. So he had it over his face and was looking out. I also found out that there's a Russian superstition about putting empty bottles on the table; supposedly, if you do, no food will come to that table again.

Woe is Alcohol

This being my third drunkening ever, I still didn't know my limits well, and drank too much. :( The part about this that makes me saddest is that I lost all the good food I had eaten. I remember everything up until throwing up the second (and last time). I am also fairly certain that I will know when to stop drinking after this.

The next day was bad. No hangover in the usual sense (headache and OMG my eyes), but I couldn't stand or sit up for more than like 20 seconds without my stomach clamoring badness until like 5 PM. I managed during that time to make myself some soup when I got hungry, and drank a lot of water. I also played FFXI, as I could do it laying down.

Once I was able to actually get up and do stuff, I did laundry and took stock of my apartment. More trash than normal, but all of it in trashbags; my guests had stayed for a while after I passed out (which I hadn't minded), and then cleaned up after themselves quite nicely. They also put the leftover food on the shlack (if not needing refrigeration) or in the windows. For those of you who've never lived in a cold place, once you hit a certain point of year double windows (or even single windows with a wide windowsill and some vanetian blinds if it's REALLY cold) can be used as a refigeration device.

However, the next day I realized that the leftover sausages had been left in the window that gets direct sunlight all day. Oops! A quick trip to the store to get flour and some pepper, and I was soon using the leftover sausages, milk, and onions to make gravy. :D It was a tasty dinner.

Other than that, there's not really been much blog-note worthy until day before yesterday. That, combined with me being lazy and playing a lot of FFXI, has led to the extremely long distance in blog updates.

Woe is Inability to Read Paperwork

I got offline to take a bath, came back, and discovered that my internet had stopped working. Specifically, the internet provider was no longer accepting my username/password combo for some reason. I tried calling the support number, but ended up on hold for 20 minutes. Called Bflets in the morning, and they sent a guy to help me.

Turns out that although I am currently not being charged for my internet as part of a promotion they are doing, one of the pieces of the paper they sent me was not, as I had thought, an example of a payment form, but a form for letting them know how I intended to pay. Without it, I get no service. Oops. So the guy helped me make sure I had the form filled out properly, then spent like 45 minutes on the phone trying to find out how long it'd take me to get internet again, since I had arranged the day before to go on a key hunt in FFXI with my friend Sean today. Turns out that after they receive the form in Tokyo, it'll take four days to reconnect the service. Grand total, approximately a week. Ouch.

Japanese TV

So I turned on the TV and worked on other stuff that I hadn't gotten around to doing. One of the television shows I had going was daytime housewife stuff -- cooking, arts and crafts, etc. At one point, my attention was drawn away from my computer by FFVII's "Song of the Ancients". Same show, but they were talking about fossils for some reason, and the background music of the moment was "Song of the Ancients". Another show I watched later used the theme from The Incredibles (side note: the Japanese title for that is Mr. Incredible). It still kinda surprises me, sometimes, what music the Japanese people will use where.

I have also seen the best video game commercial ever. Before I tell you about it, I need to explain about a piece of Japanese culture. The Japanese don't generally go to each others houses/apartments. If they do, they usually stand in the foyer to conduct whatever business they have, then leave. If they do, in fact, go into your residence itself, they always say "Ojama shimasu." I can't remember what it means, but not saying it is just totally impolite. If you're at someone's residence and someone else who lives there comes home, you say, "Ojama shiteimasu," which is the same thing only in the present tense. It lets them know that there is a visitor in their house.

You see two guys dressed as Mario and Luigi, who say "Hot Mario!" You're then taken to a Christmas-y living room where people are playing gamecube together -- two people to a pad, one old and one child. They show you some gameplay. I thought it was for Mario Party 6, but it turned out to be for Mario Party 7 (Whose mini-games look good, BTW). The commercial ended with the guys dressed as Mario and Luigi saying "Mario Party 7" together while crouched under the couch in the Christmas-y scene, causing everyone in the scene to start. Looking kind of sheepish, Mario and Luigi say, "Ojama shiteimasu..." at the same time.

I dunno if this is new or not, but the good old game Operation is currently being advertized on Japanese TV. It has a different name (Buzz! Dr. Game), but it's good old-fashioned Operation.

I had intended to not play FFXI yesterday anyway, in the interest of getting caught up on homework and the like, so it wasn't a big deal, but I lost all my plants in FFXI. Grr! Two of them would have been blooming yesterday, too. :(

And here I am, posting from the library again. That's what I get for not making damn sure I knew what I was doing.

Oh! It snowed yesterday. The snow will stick, making it officially winter now.

Realizations of the Period

1) Microsoft is using the power button symbol to plug the Xbox 360 on commercials. WTF?
2) If I get to the point where I can no longer stand not having an oven, I can go find myself a convection oven. Yay!
3) I need a brain.
4) I can't find oatmeal.
4b) You can substitute flour for oatmeal in a no-bake cookie recipe, but it's a 3 parts oatmeal, 1 part flour ratio instead of the 3-2 ratio I had figured for. :P And that's the way the cookie crumbles (quite literally).
5) People need common sense reminders in Japan, too, apparently. Watching a cooking show, and these messages keep flashing at the bottom. Finally read the first one. It's "Don't put saibashi [long, wooden chopsticks made for cooking] near the flame." Well, duh.
6) Japanese weather forecasts represent snowfall to come with angry-looking snowmen. Really heavy, driving snow is represented as an unhappy snowman trying to get out of the way of pelting snow. It's pretty funny.
7) Some Japanese commercials are entirely in English.
7b) Some Japanese commercials are entirely in Engrish.
7c) Some Japanese commercials are dubbed. (Herbal Escences commercails aren't any less weird in Japanese dub format.)
8) Since English-speaking newscasters all speak clearly, the Japanese assume that all English-speakers speak clearly. They're gonna have fun with my friend Nekram when he comes over to teach English.
9) Japanese TV is good during the day and in the middle of the night, but I do not like prime time stuff much.