13 posts from March 2009

The cherry blossoms are blooming in Tokyo! They'll be in full bloom soon, and then before you know it, they'll all be gone and leaves will have replaced them. The week that they're in bloom is the most beautiful time of the year.

He's a pop star. Well more like one of the non-singing dancers in a pop group. And she's a TV personality famous for being a little rough and very stupid.
I'm a vh1 junkie.

On the second Rock of Love, the runner up was a short seriously tatted up stripper named Daisy De La Hoya (yeah, she's Oscar's niece), who despite not being all there, was kind of my favorite. Even though her face is a little jacked.

Anyways, for reasons not quite clear, Daisy now has her own show, imaginatively called "Daisy of Love." She's gotten some extra collagen injected into her face, some extra saline in her boobs, and she's gained a little weight -- which is exactly what New York did when she got her own show after Flavor of Love (and yes I'm aware that I am speaking a foreign language right now if you've never been to Planett VH1). All in all, she looks like the most awesome hot mess ever, and I can't wait for the show to start airing (or in my case, streaming online at vh1.com).

One preview shows her inexplicably performing a choreographed song and dance with backing dancers. WTF? I love it!

Meanwhile I've been checking out her man lineup. I've got to say, these boys look as perfectly reality-tv-crazy as ever. Check it out. The comments are pretty amusing too. I kind of like Chi Chi for some reason, although Dropout's hairdo is truly amusing. And even though Fox looks like a spaz, his smile's kind of cute.

Remember these songs?

Or how about this one? Now what happened to her? This has got to be one of the best songs ever.

Here she is singing it live in 2008. Still wow.

I don't think I was myself for awhile, because the stupid old weird man that lives down the hall started talking to me, and I actually talked back, instead of ignoring and glaring at him before walking into my room and slamming the door. Which is my usual routine.

Anyways, of course this old dude is a weirdo. All he talks about is how he got this for free or how he got that for cheap or blah blah blah (shuttup!). He kept giving me weird random stuff too, and he lent me DVDs. It was all just an excuse to talk to me.

Then he started knocking on my door and looking around my room. Then he wanted to take me out somewhere that served cheap food [bet you I'd have to pay, he's made lots of quite frankly rude comments about how I must be rich because I work at night]. Then he asked for my phone number repeatedly. Then he asked for his DVDs back.

Somewhere along the line I started being rude, like I should have been from the beginning. I ignored him when he called my name, threw back his DVDs, and asked him rhetorically why I would ever give him my number [actually I told him to fuck off about my phone number, and THEN he asked for his DVDs back].

Seriously, what makes him think he could even talk to me?

If I need a toothless cheap old man in my life, I'll ask for one.

Does the following sound familiar to you ladies?

Douchey Dude: [after acting like an asshole] Hey, so you wanna go out sometime?

Me: No.

Douchey Dude: You know what? You're not even that hot.

Me: [walk away, but in my head think "yeah, nice move, that really makes me want to go out with you now."]

What's up with that?

What the hell is happening with Mexico right now? I can' believe it. It's insane, how long is it going to take before it just becomes completely out of control and America's in ANOTHER war. This time on our own turf. Jesus.

In vaguely related news, the Mexican girl at work told me her little brother has a tattoo of....a cockroach! And when he visited her in Korea, he got another one. He got the word for "cockroach" in hangul (Korean) across his back. I guess he likes cockroaches.

If you are my father, stop reading. You're not welcome in my life.

I woke up this morning not feeling too good, fell back asleep, and had the weirdest dream.

For some reason, I had a whole bunch of money in the bank and I was visiting my dad's house, and he took me out to go car shopping. We went around to different places and somehow he convinced me to buy this huge, bulky, SUV-type car. I drove it back home (which wasn't really home, it was some big parking lot), and had a hard time fitting it into a parking spot.

When I got out of the car and I was really angry. I said, "I need a small, easy to drive compact car, why did I get this big huge car?" My dad said, "I thought this was what was best for you. It would be useful to me when you're not around, plus it shares spare parts with our cars so if it needed any work, it would be easier for me to take care of."

I said, "I don't even live here, why should I waste my money on a car I can't even drive because you have spare parts for it and you want to drive it?"

I told him we had to return it, he said I'd probably lose like 1,000bucks in the process and acted like it would be such a pain but he would do it if he had to. Then I got really annoyed because I realized that I didn't even need a car and I needed every penny I could save for grad school. And I had yet again gotten myself into a stupid situation because I just let myself get convinced into the wrong decision again.

And then I woke up.

Good customer that takes me out to expensive places and always tips me in 10,000yen bills came in again today.

When he put me in a taxi with a crisp bill folded into my hand, I suddenly felt a little creepy. What had I done to deserve this tip, why was he giving it to me? I felt kind of like a piece of crap. And he looked a little weird too, like he was maybe thinking, "this girl thinks I'm just a lonely piece of crap." We were both pieces of crap, basically.

But the way I see it, if I wasn't filling the role, another chick would be, so I might as well get the money. Maybe he thinks that if I wasn't with him, I'd be with some other paying schmuck, so he might as well be with me. Who the fuck knows.

I think I'll buy him a gift and give it to him next time I see him. Just so I don't feel as creepy.
*****
If you were Chris Brown, and Rhianna somehow matured by leaps and bounds and found the strength to tell you to back off and get serious help, would you:

a) get serious help, you know you need it
OR
b) tell Rhianna that she obviously has problems with reality, she's crazy and needs help, you're fine just the way you are

Which would you choose? Obviously a) is the right answer. But if you're anything like my father, or like Chris Brown, or like many lost souls, you'll go straight for b). That's your answer and you're sticking to it.

So last week, a guy from a company I did a big project for like two years ago suddenly contacted me with another small little job. He asked me for my quote, I told him my standard (average to lowish) rate and told him I could get it done in about five working days (I got other stuff I gotta do!), but this is all open to negotiation/adjustment depending on the actual work.

He emails me back, and has obviously misunderstood and calculated my rate per word as rate per letter. "Since we are on a budget, could you adjust your rate slightly, and bring it down to approximately $1,000?" This is for a job I thought would get me less than $400 if I was lucky.

I thought about correcting his mistake, but ended up not drawing attention to it, and offering to do it for somewhere in between $400 and $1000 (I admit, it was a little closer to $1000).

And there's nothing like money to motivate you. I got it done in a single day.

I figure that if you get one or two customers into the club a week, my boss stays off your case. Since I'm rapidly becoming notorious for having the world's most cheapest customers, I'm not sure if my boss exactly appreciates my work, but it's better than nothing, right?
Guess what, MexicanRobot!? I totally have something to tell you. There's a new girl at the club, and she's from Mexico! She's from Chihuahua! She seems alright, I didn't really get a chance to talk to her that much. Her name is Maru, which means "circle" in Japanese. So I don't know why she chose that name, but that's cool.

I'll try to get a photo, and then blur it up and post it, so you can get an idea.

I forgot one thing on my previous "things I need to buy" list:

• contact lenses, possibly glasses

I've been thinking for a long time that I want to get lasik surgery. But I heard that your eyes will go bad again if you have bad habits, and I strain my eyes constantly with my work, and (god willing), that's only going to get worse if I get into grad school. So maybe I'll just continue shelling out ridiculous amounts of cash on contacts and glasses.
Suddenly, all the weird old guys in my building are being super friendly. Well the guy downstairs/next door to me has always been pretty friendly. He's Japanese American, and kind of funny. He's basically American, but I guess he hit middle-ish age and decided to come to the motherland for the first time ever. He was a window washer (he went to UC Berkeley on a gymnastics scholarship so he's not scared of heights, he said), but got fired.

Then there's a funny old guy who sometimes makes brownies in the microwave (they taste pretty bad, tasteless flour blobs with raisins in them), but he's so happy when he makes them and he always gives me some. He gave me some today that he saved in a jar. Then he told me that he invented and constructs these special scissors that cut in shapes, and if I know anybody that needs them to let him know.

Then there's this guy who is always in the kitchen, and he's always smoking, and he's kind of young. Apparently he's married to this other chick, this short, squat woman who works in an office every day. Today she announced that she was divorcing her husband and moving out. "He's lazy, he doesn't work, I can't support him anymore, I'm leaving!"

Fair enough. If I worked hard everyday while my husband never worked, never looked for work, sat around a disgusting share house smoking all day and barely showed up to construction day jobs, and who thought that living in a disgusting share house was any way to live a married life, I'd leave my husband too.

Well I wouldn't marry the dead weight in the first place.

There's going to be an exodus from this building. She's leaving, and so are a whole bunch of the younger guys because they found a place a little farther out where the rent is less than 30,000yen (that's less than 300bucks)! Jesus christ.

Not that I care because I try to keep to myself. I don't think I have anything to gain from becoming friends with everyone. It's hard enough for me to keep up with my real friends.

Cleaned and rearranged my room and did my laundry and hand washing. Lets see how long I can keep this place nice. Right now I'm feeling really happy and motivated.
I have decided that I don't want a full time office job. Not now, not ever. I'm dying my hair red again tomorrow.

I will:

• pay my overdue phone bill
• put money aside for rent that's due very soon
• get my iPod fixed
• buy shampoo, rinse, special leave-in conditioner for fried hair, detergent
• this
  
• these super duper dental floss sticks
  
• maybe food
• some shelfie things so I can put things away more nicely
• some new clothes
• a new bra
• tights
• new shoes
• pens
• portable mirror
  
• maybe get a haircut
  

and yes, these are all absolute necessities. After paying for all of the above, I should have negative money again.
I thought this was pretty funny. It's the Hebrew edition of Lea's book, "Bar Flower." They have a girl making a Mt. Fuji-like shape with her kimono, tipping her head back and downing a bottle of wine. It's simultaneously really cute, beautiful, and disturbingly wrong. And of course, funny.
Which reminds me, there's a certain breed of people who seem to particularly dislike Lea's book. These are what I call the hater-gaijin. They are foreigners from an English speaking country who, for some reason, look down on all other foreigners in Japan and are in a strange, private competition with all of them for the title of, "I know more about this country than you do."

Very bizarre.

Like this one weirdo on amazon who's negative review included strange details like,

"how can the writer be so broke that she couldn't even pay the moving van? I know from experience that moving vans only cost 300 bucks. She doesn't know anything about the real Japan, not like me, I know all about the real Japan."

I'm paraphrasing, btw. But I'm sure his review was written in a virtual nasally know-it-all drone.

Anyway, for someone so disappointed, he seems to have read the book pretty carefully.