feed the animals

first up, new music. my sister indirectly reminded me that girl talk released his latest album (it's pay as you please, so check the link). i've listened once or twice - doesn't have the shock value of night ripper, the songs are prolly less classic, but it's still pretty good. it doesn't have the same gestalt value as the first one, but it took me a few listens on night ripper to learn to listen, so maybe this will also grow with time.

we also happened to go to tower records tonight (we were going to not-so-ironically watch 'the last samurai', but that fell thru). there, they had an ed banger recs display (because vol 3 is out now). i didn't get vol 3 (uffie: yes. justice: yes. dj mehdi: yes please! but mr oizo, so me, krazy baldhead ... mmm not for my $bank$). but i did find a black ghosts album and mixtape with some songs on it that i like. i also saw a cut copy album, listened to a few tracks (the word for track in french is 'piste'. isn't that nifty?*) and bought it too. i've listened to them now and they were gooood picks. i desperately needed new music and it will be good to have with my 4+ hours of travel time tomorrow (i didn't go for tha carter III because i have already listened to 'lollipop' hundreds of times and have had the rest of the leak for months.)

the travel time tomorrow is so much because we are going to 2 diff. panasonic factories. one is the matsushita eco-technology centre (METEC). from what i have heard it does some serrrious recycling, maybe i will throw some digits at ya after tomorrow. later in the day we are going to have our last dinner with miyazaki-san (he is a panasonic rep who has been one of our many tour guides over the last few days) and then meet up with another mac student after dinner. jun was a mentor with me my 2nd year and she was haider's mentor as well. she is from kyoto, but couldn't meet us on friday. she'll be in osaka tomorrow so we are gonna meet up for mentor fun!

speaking of kyoto and being there on friday, that's where we were on friday. we aren't the only ones who think it's a good idea to visit kyoto in japan, evidently 70 million tourists go every year. crazzzy. we started with a boat ride down the hozugawa river. ayumi was our tour guide, and provided me with the above fact, and generally kept us well informed throughout the rest of the day. the boat ride brought us down a river that crept between misty mountains covered in heavy forests. it wasn't a sunny day, but it was beautiful. we saw turtles, herons, and cormorants, and went down a few little rapids. above is a picture of the boat we went on and below is a picture of a train line that followed most of the river from the mountain side. it's an old line, used for only for the 'romantic line' these days, a sightseeing ride.
at the end of the ride, a little motor boat pulled up alongside of us and tied itself to us. they sold drinks and snacks. the guys got some kettlefish and i tried some dumplings, it was a nifty little schooner and the people on it were nice!

with the rest of our time in kyoto we went to some temples and a castle.
one of the temples we visited is the rokuon-ji temple, home to the golden pavilion (see below). i don't remember everything that ayumi taught us, but i believe the temple was built by a shogun, who built the pavilion in three layers. the bottom layer represents the aristocratic class, the middle layer the samurai (not sure on this one???) and the top layer the monks. the top of the pavilion is graced by a phoenix. the phoenix means 'uniting people' and its presence on top of the 3 layers was meant as a symbol of his ability to preside over all 3 different classes ... it's a pretty building. we weren't allowed inside, but they did tell us that george w. was when he visited ... which doesn't seem quite right because wasn't there a certain kyoto protocol that he opted out of ??
i'm having trouble remembering the name of the other temple that we went to, but it was also fun building to visit. i like seeing the different style of architecture. check my fbook for some more pix of that one. finallllly, we went to the NIjo-jo castle and walked around. the floors were built to be squeaky in case of ninjas, and they were noisily effective. everyone kept laughing when i told them that i wanted to live in a castle, when i grow up, but i still want to do it. miyazaki-san said that i would have to either win the lottery or marry the daughter of a duke of japan. for the record, i am willing to do either of those 2 things to live in a castle. anyway, here's a picture of me and haider in front of my future house?
once we got home from kyoto we all collapsed before going back out again. i am actually experiencing the worst jet lag of my life right now (the rest of the group is also suffering), i think it's because i have little control over when i do things (very tight itinerary) like sleep or how much i am eating (miyazaki-san always orders way too much and i eat a lot of food that i don't like to be polite). when we went back out we went to karaoke, without any tour guides. maybe we could have used them this time, because the people there spoke zero english. but, we made it to a room, and then had some fun.



















sometimes certain people (the writers of 'lost in translation' and even me) have been known to highlight the japanese difficulty pronouncing 'r's and 'l's in a comedic fashion. i don't know how culturally insensitive the practice it is, but fooooo real it's not culturally inaccurate. please see this karaoke listing for the FUGEES:
that amused me to no end, but i was pretty much the only one in the room who cared.

on saturday, we went to universal studios japan, which was ... universal studios. the only noteworthy thing there was that panasonic supplied us with some special bracelets that allowed us to cut to the front of any line for a ride, which we definitely took advantage of. the jurassic park ride was wayyy more fun than i remembered (basically just the big dive and splash at the end). but never ever ever go to see backdraft, under any circumstances. oh yeah, all of the movies and presentations were in japanese, which was prettttty annoying by the end of the day. once we came back from the studios, we crashed again. or in my case once we got in the car to come back from the studios.

then we had a dinner with someone important from panasonic. the restaurant was on a converted estate that had been owned by a duke, and was really impressive. it had a waterfall and a garden (with fireflies) that surrounded the estate. plus there was a rolllls parked out front (but no bentley). we ate more saga beef and i had lobster (for the first time in my life i think). the lobster was pretty good, but they cut them in half and then cooked them on an open stove while they were still alive. right in front of us. that was definitely disturbing (tho evidently not disturbing enough to prevent me from chowing down).

after dinner i am pretty sure we slept some more, and then haider and i tried to go gambling at an arcade. i say tried because we couldnt figure out the yen to token converter, and then we couldnt figure out how to get the tokens into the slots for about a half an hour. after finally asking for help (with hands, because no one spoke english) and being directed by staff to another floor of the casino, we spent 100 yen (about one dollar) losing at slots. we settled on some basketball, air hockey, and the drum game again before calling it quits.

today we finallly got the chance to sleep in, and did so until about 3 pm. we had lunch at 4 and then went to visit some multi-brand electronics retailers (one of the stores was 10 stories tall).
these visits had something to do with our internship, because the japanese electronical market is perhaps the most mature in the world and therefore can serve as a role model for al-futtaim group electronics retailing (which is also multi-brand) ... but i think i'll save that discussion for my presentation in a couple of weeks (have to talk to omar when we get back from japan, 100 milesperhour)

this weekend is the first time that i have started to feel homesick (for macalester, for madison).
i have plenty of things to do, and they are mostly fun. i get along well with all of the people, but
it's hard to tell them exactly what i want to say because they are all new people to me (you could say that this problem is killing me softry). plus i don't have a working phone here, so it's been harder to have realtime conversations with people from back home. not that i was able to all of the time in UAE, but i could more regularly.

speaking of home, where will home be next & when will i arrive there?
right now i am planning to come back and get a place in madison this fall, and spend some time visiting twin cities, oberline (mik is going), ples elsewhere. casey and i talked and she might take over a lease from me in jan. so i can scoot out somewhere (?) again. hm. i'll find out soon enough i guess.

time to think a bit about total quality management (tqm) as its my focus for our presentation (110 milesperhour) and we are going to the factories tomorrow.

night.













*base taught me that