i am nUtZzZZzzZZ!!!!

my friend asked me to be the photographer at her wedding...

and i said yes! omggggggg

ahhhhhhhhh - so much pressure for someone who doesn't know as much as she should know about her slr camera.

but the good news is, she says i can be BOSS. woohoo!

"miss jeannie, are you married?"

"no, not yet."

"aw.. well i hope you find your prince charming someday." carolyn, 7 years.

"me too, dear - me, too."

happy 26th birthday to my dear friend, margalatte!

we met our freshman year of college back at UT.. we would go to the same parties, hang out with the same people, yet we were never really that close. during one of the toughest years of my life (2002) melissa and andrew sent me to new york as a christmas present..  i ended up going with my friend, bee (which happens to be marg's cousin) & marg.. so we spent about 5 days together roaming around ny for the first time. although we got to know eachother better then... we still didn't become close.

fast forward to 2006 - she decided to get up and leave her texas life behind and join me in this crazy big city away from everyone.. and this is how the real story started..

now she's become one of my closest friends here in japan..i've had the best times with you, marg! thanks for always being down for whateva! =) even though your bday was low key - hope you enjoyed it as much as i did.

:: we went to the mtv japan cafe called "cafe studio" and 'surprised' her with a cake and a funky "Happy Birthday" song playing throughout the restaurant ::

:: "happy birthday to you.. happy birthday to you.. happy birthday to youuuuuuuuu" ::

:: doesn't that ketchup bottle make it look so appetizing? ha! ::

:: kenny & i celebrating with the bday girl ::

:: then i surprised her with tickets to see dralion! i made her walk with her eyes closed for about 3 blocks (b/c there were show signs everywhere!).. i was trying to talk really loud so that she wouldn't hear the crowd around us talking in case she picked up the words "cirque de soleil" or "dralion" ::

:: we couldn't take pictures inside the show (oh how i wish we could have.. it was feckin amazing!) so we settled with this ::

:: this was the BEST show i've been to in japan... a heart stopping, superb performance! i recommend this show to everyone! if you can only see one show in your life.. please go see a cirque de soleil show (any of them!).. it is worth every penny! the whole place was filled with "oooooohs" and "ahhhhhhs" & of course with marg & i cheering the loudest! ::

WOW. WOW. WOW.

:: last week rika took us to a korean bbq restaurant in shin-okubo (korean town in tokyo).. it was soooooooo yummy and i totally felt as though i was in korea! guess i don't need to go to korea anymore for the food! haha ::

:: we walked around and ran into this guy that ana & i recognized from church.. ends up he was there b/c he's a photographer for K1.. he told us this guy named choi hongman was in town eating at the restaurant we passed by.. suddenly all these people appeared and out walks this GIANT!!! (he's 7'2!) ::

:: he's a super famous korean k1 fighter.. everyone seemed to know who he was except for me.. =/ but i joined the crowd and took pictures of him anyway.. i like how the girl is poking his stomach and he's "trying" not to bust out laughing ::

:: on saturday i met up some new friends from church - seiko, ricky, me, james, & humphrey and we had a grand ole time! - eating at tgif then walked around and got dessert at cafe milly in ueno ::

:: that same night.. i went straight to meet up marg and kenny (he just arrived in town) to go out for marg's early bday.. we ended up at AGEHA where we spent most of the night people watching and telling their life stories - we were laughing all night - kenny thought he could do the 'extend-a-arm' shot since he "has long arms" but this is what came out of it ::

:: my 'extend-a-arm' shot.. much better =) ::

Japan Trip: The Finale

Man, this Japan trip was like the Prestige. I just saw that movie and it's still fresh on my mind. I mean, remember when I went to Japan a year and a half ago? And then I disappeared? And then all of a sudden I came back? You didn't see that coming did you? SURPRISE ENDING. And then you find out I've been blogging the whole time. Also, Borat was just released on dvd, but I haven't seen it so I guess I will have to stop comparing my sad little life to movies now and get on with the update.

Friday would be my last night in Japan. I met up Jeannie at Roppongi Hills by the large spider sculpture. It looks like something out of War of the Worlds.

We each had um, rice balls. With tuna or something. I didn't realize rice had a gender.

Then we went to eat at Coldstone. Did you know that if you tip them, they sing? They do a hilarious rendition of Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah in broken English, worth more than its bargain asking price. I wish I had recorded it because I actually had to listen to it twice.

After dinner, we headed out to the Mori Tower and art museum. For the asking price of $15 for an elevator ride to the top with free admission to the museum, it's more than a bargain- it's a spectacular sight to see. The view tops that of Tokyo Tower and the Shinjuku office building. This is my favorite snapshot of the city, handheld. I wish I had brought a tripod.

View of the Tokyo Tower

The spider sculpture at night.

Mori Tower at night

I was coming down the escalator and managed to pull off this candid shot. It's my favorite shot of Jeannie this trip.

Afterwards, Jeannie and I met up her coworkers to eat at an Israeli all-you-can-eat restaurant with live bellydancing. Jeannie can caption her coworkers.

So when I first met Rika, while we were chatting I would occasionally hear her say "Ta-ta-daaaaa!!!" before saying another sentence. So I would think, oh, that's a cute Japanese expression- so enthusiastic! I told Jeannie this and she almost fell down the stairs laughing- apparently Rika was actually saying something like "Tat ka da" (Jeannie, you'll have to correct the spelling on that one) which means something to the effect of "Hold on, let me think."

So then Jeannie tells her coworkers and they all bust a gut laughing and so here's Rika posing and saying "Ta-ta-daaaaaaa!!!" Her coworkers must think I'm such a fob.

See that face? That's the kind of face where someone comes to you with bad news like, "I broke both my legs", but they have this booger totally hanging from their nostril and it keeps flopping around as they say it but you can't do anything about it but try and put on this concerned expression because you want to seem empathetic. That face is about 2 seconds away from laughing at that misfortune.

As per my worst fears, the bellydancer pulled people from the crowd to dance with her.

Luckily, Jeannie's friends took one for the team. Well, except that they enjoyed it.

Jeannie & me

Bye!

We then rendezvoused with Margalatte and Tu's Live Crew in Roppongi for my last night in Tokyo. We started out at the sticker machine. This pic makes me laugh because no one is looking at the camera except Jeannie, and she is cheesin'

Geez, how much space is in this photo booth?

Margalatte has been in Japan long enough to develop a reflex where any time a camera flash goes off, she instinctively pops up and flashes the peace sign

Haha, my gangsta face is so stupid

Editing the photos after

Ok, fine, I have a stupid face in all my photos. I think Jeannie posted the other ones earlier, but I am too lazy to submit this post and then scroll down and then come back up to this post and link it.

Haha, I like how Tu will randomly flash the peace sign at any given moment. Such is the power of the Japan effect.

I am not quite sure who he is throwing the Longhorns sign at now, but that face is awesome.

We went out til around 4 AM. I was dead tired and we stayed at a Japanese restaurant until the trains started to run again. I had this delicious tempura plate with udon.

Mike was so hungry the camera couldn't catch how fast he was moving his chopsticks

Yes, the bowls there were enormous

Tu fell asleep but immediately began throwing the Longhorn when it was time to leave

We pulled our belongings out of the lockers in the subway around 5 AM and parted ways.

Look, Jeannie has a penguin shirt!

Jeannie had bought me flowers at the airport while waiting for my flight to arrive to welcome me into Japan. I guess Japanese customs are different. I was kinda hoping that in Japan, when girls meet guys they give them robots. The flowers still looking pretty good a week later.

At the airport we ate weird octopus balls.

And octopus thing in dough.

Anyway, that's the last of my photos. I suppose this is goodbye then. It's been fun and thanks Jeannie for letting me alienate your readers and hit on all your female readers. To all you guy readers, I just wanted you to know that I am diplomat in Japan regime and I have come into possession of large sum of money by a Mr. Yamamoto [deceased]. The bearer of his inheritance has not been found and you are the possibility next of kin. I have therefore, been delegated as a matters of trust by my colleague of the panel to look for a next of kin into whose account we would transfer the sum of US$21,320,000.00...

Japan Trip, Part 2

On Wednesday, Jeannie introduced me to her cool friend Rika and we went outfor some Thai for dinner. Ok, right now I am sitting on an clean unmatched pile ofsocks on a metal folding chair as I type this and it's very uncomfortable. Why do some socks dig deeper into my underside more thanothers? I'm just going to hurry up and slap some pics on here becauseI'm too lazy to just throw the socks on the floor and write a proper update.

Afterdinner we wandered around the Ginza strip. Jeannie decided she wanted a picture of her standing in a traffic intersection. I mistook her grinto be directed at perhaps a semi barreling down on me behind my back and hurriedly snapped the picture.









I went to HMV, which is like Tower Records and picked up some J-pop cds.Can't leave Japan without at least one sugary pop song, and the one I bought came with a free poster that I lugged back to America.





Ithink I was waiting at this Uniqlo store for like half an hour waiting for Jeannie and Rika to finish browsing. My feet were killing me. Also, Japan has no benches or seats in clothing stores for tired men. I wanted to pop a squat out front, but I thought maybe it would be rude.





Jeannieis pretty good at finding weird things to do in Japan. They have a lot of theme restaurants out here, and we went on a hunt for the VampireCafe.





Vampire Cafe turned out a little disappointing. Aside from the dim lighting and gothic decorations, there was nothing vampiric about the place. No Dracula, no bats, not even this. The servers dressed goth, but wore no fangs nor capes and were all polite as Japanese people are wont to be.





Maybe the way Jeannie was posing in this pic was probably the scariest thing I saw all night.





Bland red wine that accompanied the "sitting fee".





Salmon strips with... onion? Not very appetizing.













Jeannie's dessert





Whenmy dessert came out, the waiter said something in Japanese and Rika started laughing. She explained that the waiter told her one of the cream puffs was actually spicy. We played russian roulette and took turns eating one at a time.





On the very last turn, we all ate our pieces at the same time. Rika finds out the hard way which one had the horseradish.

As you can tell, hanging outwith Jeannie pretty much entailed eating all the time. On Thursday, Jeannie took me to Kua Aina for Hawaiian burgers.

The avocado burger is probably one of the best burgers I've ever had





We headed out to Harajuku next in search of Jeannie's favorite ramen shop









Jeannie apparently had no idea what Ramune was prior to going to Japan. If you're curious, you can probably just go out to your local asian supermarket and give it a try.





Ramen was pretty good, but this was after eating the Hawaiian burgers an hour before.





Afterwards,we headed off to look for the cushion cafe- a bar/cafe consisting ofbig cushions. I think we were both imagining sitting on huge beanbags,but it was not the case.





All the individual cushiony sections had been reserved and closed off, sowe were seated at the enormous lit central table by ourselves.





Not quite as cushiony as I thought, but it sure did look comfortable.





Probably best food and drinks I had, surpassing Vampire Cafe.





Jeannie and "the best" strawberry mojito evar.





The flatbread/pita with three separate dips were alright, but nothing to write home about. Which I guess I just did.





Dessert was pretty good though





On the way home, Jeannie saw this mirror and wanted me to shoot a picture of us in it. The camera wouldn't focus on us- just the mirror- and so Jeannie was actually in that pose for a while. The best part is that people were walking by and there was even a woman facing us on the phone.





Usually while Jeannie gets ready to go to work in the morning or as we're heading home for the night, I bust out with deep philosophical questions like "Would you rather make out with a guy with really yellow straight teeth or white really crooked teeth?" My questions are usually met with a "I don't wanna hear it" from Jeannie. ((((((((((

Japan Trip, Part 1

Hi, I'm the bestfriend. You may remember me from such blogposts as Weekend at Jeannie's III or Birthday Bonanza: The Revenge.

Kudos if anyone got that tip o' the hat to the Simpson's. That almost proves that you are old enough, but not too old, to read this blog. If anyone's been wondering what I've been doing since my last guest blogging stint, I've been wandering around as a free agent and Jeannie's contracted me to ghostwrite her blog again. Except I guess it's not technically ghostwriting since you know I'm writing it and it's not really as scary as it sounds, though the jokes may be frighteningly bad.

Anyway, I was apparently in Japan for a week and Jeannie was all, "I don't need to bring out my camera!" Don't expect anything wildly hilarious- most of the trip I was trying to deal with the calluses that were growing on my calluses from walking so much, rather than take copious amounts of pictures. If you're really bored, later on this week you can click on the link to my page and see the pictures I took when she wasn't around, but for the most part see the same recycled jokes from this page during the evenings. My goal is to bring in the sophomoric flatulence jokes this blog has been sorely lacking. Not sure why she agreed to let me update again, but my guess is because I work for cheap.

Oh yeah, and as a disclaimer, keep in mind some of this is a bit exaggerated or completely made up. Like how I'm her bestfriend, because I will probably be demoted to "acquaintance" after she sees this.

My first night in Tokyo, we scoured the streets looking for a place to eat. Guest appearances by Tu's Live Crew and Margalatte!





As we went looking for a place to satiate our hunger, apparently Jeannie had a different kind of appetite as she led us past rows and rows of the infamous "Hourly" hotels. The Japanese workers rubbed their eyes in disbelief as Jeannie passed by, seeing four dudes in tow. Us guys were all sorts of scared because we've all seen the movie Hostel* and were expecting a gruesome (but polite, because we're in Japan) end**.

Margalatte in a desperate gambit for food begins to scrape away skin cells for sustenance, calling them similar in taste to the tempura flakes on rolls





We finally end up at a Japanese version of a tapas bar/dimsum place.





Margaret scours the english to japanese dictionary for a translation...





...for her craving for a gigantic rocky mountain oyster. Everyone is perplexed and disgusted.





Up to no good.

This, unfortunately, was bland tofu and rather untasty









This is a bed of nothingness, after everyone had eaten the skewers of meat off of it









































Coming to Japan is worth it to use Jeannie's restroom. Every time you flush, the water comes through a faucet at the top of the toilet that you wash your hands in and the runoff fills the toilet tank. Jeannie has this cool add-on to the faucet that makes the penguin flap its wings as water goes through it.





This is Jeannie's humble abode. The poor girl had to listen to my jetlagged snoring every single night I was there.





This is Jeannie's elevator. It seriously only fits two people at a time. Or one American. Hi-oh! See where I went with that one? That's right, I am totally calling you fat, America. And I am totally sleeping on the couch tonight.





Day Two in Tokyo, I rendezvoused with Jeannie and Tu's Live Crew in Shibuya.





The making of the picture, with director's commentary.





As you can tell, when you hang with Jeannie, you roll dudes deep. Which is truly saddening if you think maybe you will meet girls through her.









We stopped off at Beard Papa before heading out for dinner that night




Ummm...





Errr...





Okay, now you're starting to scare me, Jeannie.

So after dinner, Jeannie says to me, she says, "Let's go visit some of my friends." I'm like, "Cool, cool", because Jeannie's friends have always been pretty cool, even if she rolls dudes deep. We start walking a while when I notice we're walking back to her place and I ask her, "Wait, so where do your friends live?" And she's all
"ONETREE HILL!!!" And then she started cackling.

Cackling kinda like this.

So basically I came to Japan to watch Jeannie watch American tv shows. ((((((((((

it's set! my buddy minh & i are going to china (your, your, and YOUR motherland) for spring break! i'm sure it'll be challenging since both of us have no clue what we're getting ourselves into, but i know it'll be an adventure (as it always is).. if im going down, he's coming with me! haha..  i've always wanted to see the great wall - and now i am! oh how wonderful life is.

now if only i knew what i was doing with my life. now that would be awesome.

you KNOW you want one.

:: galaga - the newest addition to my watch collection ::

:: spent my whole weekend - 2 FULL days at a teacher's conference : my awesome colleagues - yasuyo, julie, jennifer, shelly, ikuyo (my boss), & me ::

:: shannon came from osaka to go to the conference so we spent countless hours catching up on our lives (and then went to get ice cream at coldstone - i got "berry berry berry good" flavor just so i could say it) ::

:: went to an organic restaurant in aoyama after church yesterday with marg, vivien, & michelle ::

today my superstar friend called me MANIC = "extremely energetic, active and excited" not manic depressed. just MANIC. i'm not manic.

am i?