(no subject)

[sjcarpediem]

Cloudy, 20C (18C)

Look! More headings!

Work
Ugh. Fucking work.

God help me.

Other reasons why Judaism rocks my socks
This is a really fascinating talk on laziness, vitality, and nihilism...!! and it's free to listen to for now. (That link might show you my account--you can 'log out' or use this link and search for #ZY 410...)

Sleep
In other news, I felt pretty good going in to work, today. Maybe I'll just shift my sleep time completely from the 2AM-9AM that I had been trying to maintain to the 4AM-10AM that I got for today...

Igo
So teaching my coworker go is going... so-so... Sometimes he's super naive, and other times he plays the right move. So I never know if I should go easy on him, take advantage of him, or play him evenly and seriously. Mah... that's fine. It's fun to play. :-)

Comments

[xiaomi.livejournal.com]

Hey, random question for you... it looks like I'm actually going to Japan, going to be in Tokyo for a few days... have you been in Tokyo before? Any suggestions on things I should be doing/seeing? It's not scheduled yet, not sure when I'll be there, but... starting to look at things I should be planning

Random is fine!

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

I've been to Tokyo on business, and through Tokyo on pleasure. I don't really know it and any suggestions I'd have would probably be *really* Japanese and not actually interesting--off the top of my head, most foreigners would want to see shinjuku/ginza/akibahara, asakusa, and kabukicho (during the day!). Day trips from Tokyo that I would recommend are to Nikko (Toyotoma Hideyoshi shrine), Yokohama (China town and Jazz), and Kamakura (Buddhism and the seat of one of Japan's earlier military governments)--If you're here for a week, you could probably take two of those to punctuate the onslaught of Japan!TOKYO. So much depends on details of your travel such as how long you will be here (about a week, right?), but also what you're more interested in--Tokyo's past or it's present... I highly recommend Lonely Planet travel guides for their range and completeness. Sorry I'm not so helpful, but if there're any other questions I can answer, please don't hesitate to ask and I'll try to answer.

Re: Random is fine!

[xiaomi.livejournal.com]

Hadn't thought of lonely planet, thank you :). I speak a little Japanese, enough to get myself in trouble basically, and am never a fan of doing hugely touristy things (you won't catch me dead at Tokyo Disney or at all the nonsense on Odaiba), but I'll be traveling with my father, who speaks zero Japanese, so I'll have to temper my desire to do really neat/off-the-wall things with the fact that he had never counted on being in Japan in the first place - there will probably have to be some kind of balance. I'm in a wheelchair, and while I can do some steps with help, huge amounts of steps/elevation will be a problem.

Nikko looks really interesting, but it also looks really cold, and it's possible that the trip may be over Thanksgiving, though I'm hoping to push it back to spring for better weather and hanami (we're traveling on airline miles/hotel points, so the time slot is either available or it's not). I'm a history dork so Kamakura also looks really interesting, but because of my father and my limited kanji I'll have to make sure anything we do has at least some kind of English involved.

Re: Random is fine!

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

Another friend of mine has just returned to Malaysia from a year-long stay in Tokyo. I asked for her opinion, you can read it here (http://sjcarpediem.livejournal.com/1542665.html?thread=3883273#t3883273).

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

Oh, but I do know that the two most popular omiyage from Tokyo are Tokyobanana (Tokyo banana; banana -shaped and/or -flavored food-goods) and Tokyogoma (Tokyo goma, or sesame seed, usually the black variety ; cakes with goma paste).