Today is May 5th, Children’s Day in Japan. It’s also my daughter Ulan’s birthday! This lucky girl has her birthday on a national holiday. So the picture above is a cake for Children’s day (Kodomo no Hi) for the rest of the family to enjoy, and this was her own personal birthday cake:
Here’s the neat crap she got for her birthday. I got her a Dragon Quest Slime pillow with some Chiikawa character stuff. Chiikawa is some new cute character animation she’s really into and watches the videos on YouTube. I think it’s boring, but whatever. Happy girl is happy. We love you, Ulan-chan.
Oh yes, and while we were having cake, a mag 6 earthquake hit Ishikawa Prefecture, right on the peninsula. Klaxons were going off and there was even a countdown to what was supposed to be a mag 3 here, but we couldn’t feel a thing.
I was in Numata Terrace, the city hall for Numata, Gunma Prefecture last week. On the 2nd floor is an art gallery for local artists. I saw some neat Spy family art from students on display. My daughter Ulan and I have enjoyed this anime series.
I was going through a box of photos and found this picture of two right wing terrorists massacring some aluminum cans. This was over two decades ago! I believe this was autumn 2002, after we had moved back from Japan that August. My uncle Gary took us to his favorite spot called Yellow Jacket off of the Black Canyon Highway and Mayu got to shoot my .22 rifle. I still had some hair then. I think we had a picnic and it was a fun day. The only ones who didn’t enjoy themselves that day were the aluminum cans.
Here is Mayu with Uncle Gary. She enjoyed shooting that day.
The neat thing about Yellow Jacket is that the soil has washed away underneath the tree roots, so the trees just stand up from out of the ground. It’s pretty wild. Here is Mayu sitting underneath one of the trees.
The local grocery store now carries pita bread, so I made Greg-version Turkish/Greek kebab sandwiches for dinner Saturday night. While eating, I put in the Aliens DVD again. My daughter Ulan voiced her displeasure at the first chestburster scene. I said, “Hey, this movie is about FRIENDSHIP. Because when everyone is getting killed in horrible ways by hideous space monsters, friends are all you have left!”
She probably thinks I’m crazy, but someday, she’ll learn. She’ll also learn that there were only TWO Alien movies ever made. The rest are feldercarb.
This song reminds me of a wonderful girl from Ireland I once knew. She was a girl whose kindness had helped lift me from a dark cloud of loneliness and despair, yet I couldn’t do the same for her as she was wasting away from anorexia and became withdrawn. I then found love with another girl, so far away in Japan. But this Irish girl was a kindred spirit, a hurting soul like me. When she transferred to a college out of state, I felt her absence and it made me sad. Although I married the girl in Japan, I wish I could have held onto the Irish girl’s friendship forever. I was always such a lonely nerd, yet I found myself in a love triangle between two beautiful, lovely foreign girls with black hair. This was 24 years ago…
Silly girl You don’t look so good There’s nothing here that makes you feel the way you should The summer’s gone and you’ve lost your way Why hide your heart You know it’s always such a waste Seeing you cry and it makes me sad Makes me think that I should hold you everyday Miss you always Even if you hit the ground Miss you always Even if you’re here someday
Silly girl It’s just a way to go There’s nothing cool that makes my heart stay away I’ve seen you cry and it makes me sad Don’t hide your eyes You know it’s always such a waste Miss you always Even when you hit the ground Miss you always Even when you’re here to play
I’ve changed my desktop wallpaper. Here’s what it looks like now. Some side street in Japan. I cannot recall if this came with my distro or if I found it somewhere on the net.
Will you get down on your knees right now and accept Linux as your personal computer’s operating system and renounce the demons of Gates and Cook? Hallelujah!
This bizarre plastic model kit by Imai comes from the days when Japan blatantly plagiarized stuff. Here is the “Command Robot VR-1” kit from their “Star Command” series, also known as “Nazi R2-D2.” I’ve actually seen this kit in person (at an IPMS show in Phoenix) and it comes with swastika decals. Sieg heil, you overweight glob of grease.
Today I took the day off to spend with my daughter. Every year we do a father/daughter picnic under the cherry blossoms (sakura) for flower viewing (o-hanami). We went to Family Mart to buy sandwiches and walked to the small river lined with cherry trees. A pleasant pedestrian path runs alongside, with the blossoms overhead. We had a picnic in the gazebo there. When the wind picked up, it would shower flower petals on us as we walked along the river. It was a beautiful day.
