I had a whole train of thought for what to write as a blog earlier but it has totally escaped me. It’s officially Day 9 of my move to Japan and the feeling of permanence is gradually starting to sink in. Earlier this week I looked around a few apartments in Tokyo and ended up asking the Agent to hold a place. The contract details and arrangements of rent have yet to ironed out but if all goes smoothly I should be moving in before I start work. However as there’s only a week to sort out all the paperwork I will most likely commute from my brother’s current apartment for at least the first part of next month.

My mum is returning back to London this weekend; I don’t really know how to take that fact. I have to figure out when to move to Tokyo next week.

I had a long talk with my grandfather today – well, it was more a listening session on my half than a two-way conversation. He spoke of his time during the war and his experiences. He showed me a pocket watch he received from the Emperor at the time. I mean, he didn’t actually go out on to the battlefield but I was still amazed by his stories. His intelligence continues to impress me with talk of mathematics and topping school rankings at every level. Anyway, I suppose it was nice for him too to have someone to talk to.

Anyway, I had my first earthquake since arriving this evening. I just thought it was a bit windy outside and didn’t feel the ground shake at all but the TV confirmed that there was one. I think I probably mentioned this before but I find the slow rocking motion of earthquakes quite soothing. Obviously it would be a totally different story if it were destructive or violent, but fortunately I have yet to experience one of such calibre.

So, what to expect over the next few days? I have realised that there is so much yet to learn about Japan – the culture, the people, the traditions, the rules, regulations, laws and how to do things. From the simple to the complex, it is all very unfamiliar and the slight barrier caused by my poor reading abilities of the Japanese language will make the next few days, weeks and months an interesting challenge!

Whilst reading blog I found this link. I have yet to read it but the idea is quite funny anyway.

Basically, there’s a new manga series called Afganisu-tan featuring various Middle Eastern and Eastern European countries as animated characters.

A couple of the websites I regularly frequent have rolled out changes to their site design.

BBC New (about)

I noticed these changes this morning but they don’t seem to have cascaded throughout all the pages yet. The main noticeable change is that the whole layout is now centred in the browser window; it’s about time really! The whole left-aligned web design has been somewhat out of date for a few years in my opinion. The second change is that the new design uses a lot more whitespace than previously, which is a welcome change – another feature that I believe websites should be implementing. With the old design, news stories with multiple links to videos, photos and related links below the main text description appeared slightly cramped.

I do feel though that it does feel a little messy in places. I suppose with any website that has so much content to publish, the placement of navigation links, headlines, features, commentary and what not can be a major task. It may take some time before I feel comfortable with the new design.

Amazon UK (about)

So I checked out Amazon for a little market research last night (read: trying to find a website with Mario Kart Wii still available for pre-order) when I noticed the redesign. The first thought that popped into my head was whether I had typed the address in wrong or that through some bizarre sequence of events I had fallen into some strange phishing trap. Fortunately, it was neither.

The redesign itself is quite appealing. I like the larger search text field at the top. The navigation links are also very intuitive. To be honest I can’t really remember how I navigated the site previously by I do know that they’ve fully removed the top horizontal navigation for each of the departments. They’ve also changed the colours a bit.

As with the BBC News site, it may take a little while to familiarise myself with all the changes but I don’t have any major gripes with the change.

What do you guys think of the new designs? Does my site layout need a little refreshing?

The great Wii fast came to an end today. I had exiled all Wii gaming, excluding Wii Fit, from my life since the turn of the year but it all collapsed in a few hours of weakness. I had ordered a new game, Battlion Wars 2, a few weeks back and it had been sitting at home for a while. My plan was to wait until post-exams until I played it but teh temptation just sort of took over.

The X10 Protocol returns with a vengeance in the form of a reference in an episode of “The Big Bang Theory”. Some of you guys may know that we did a group project using the X10 Protocol to create an intelligent home of sorts to remotely control lighting and other electrical appliances through the electricity network. Anyway, the episode clearly used/referenced a more high-tech wireless version with more advanced features like access over the internet.

Anyway, the episode marked the return of the series after a short hiatus due to the writers’ strike. I don’t know whether everyone would enjoy the comedy in the episodes but I do find the mix of “intellectual talk” and the innate geek appeal to be somewhat enjoyable to watch. It is also reassuring to watch as it reminds me that there are far more geekier people in this world than I am.

Also, the episode makes reference to YouTube and about posting a video to it…. the video actually exists:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMA_mMG1Scg

It’s definitely a great way of interacting with the viewers on a deeper level and drawing them in further.

** may contain spoilers **

So, I just watched the pre-mature season finale to “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles”.  It definitely ended on a massive cliffhanger and I was definitely not expecting it. I really do hope that it’s not the first casualty of the Writers’ strike and returns for a full second season. The show definitely had a strong religious undercurrent with Agent Ellison quoting passages from the Bible throughout the series. It gave the series an extra dimension along side the gripping action sequences of Terminators and humans busting some moves.

Some memorable moments of the short 9 hour chronicling of Sarah and John Connor’s lives include references to the Terminator trilogy, such as Cameron wearing the Police biker uniform + shades a la T1000. Direct conversational references to past characters, such as Kyle Reese and John’s foster parents and so forth. Further, the time-travelling nakedness remains true to the films with the super strength and bizarre trains of thought by Cameron being equally intriguing.

The show started off a bit slow after the premiere but had definitely picked up to a good pace with the plot unfolding very nicely over the past few episodes. I’d be lying if I said I understood everything that has gone on… but I’m not lying when I say I’ll be damned peeved if it does end up being terminated!

On a similar note, today was my last ever day of lectures. With the spring term of my fourth and final year at university drawing to a close, all I have stretching before me are exams, project work and then graduation. I was somewhat overwhelmed with excitement prior to my final hour of lectures; it was a Distributed Algorithms lecture, which is not the most exciting of topics. I believe the expectation of the occasion outstripped reality and it ended up being somewhat of an anti-climax. Boredom, playing games on my phone, and lack of paying attention ensued.

Anyway, it’s over. Apparently university has taught me all that it needs/wants to. I don’t really know how I feel to be honest. I can’t say that I’m exactly looking forward to graduation but neither do I wish to go through it all again from the first year, or even do another year of studying. I think it’s been just about the right length of time.

Tomorrow is iNite day. Rehearsals from early in the morning and the actual performance in the evening. I’m not entirely sure whether I’ll get a chance to do any work tomorrow…

but yeah, a lot of things haven’t really sunken in of late….

• moving to Japan
• end of university
• iNite tomorrow
• project work
• other stuff…

That time of year is just around the corner. I suppose it could apply to a lot of things that are on the horizon but for the purposes of this email I’m referring to International Night. This year, the theme apparently is “United Colours of Imperial”, which, to be honest, is rubbish. The fliers they have printed are awful and the money could have been far better spent on keeping the ticket prices down – significant above inflation price hike this year – and it would have also been nice if they had managed to book the Great Hall instead of some shabby town hall down the road. Admittedly I haven’t actually seen the town hall so I cannot judge but the fact remains that the Great Hall was not booked and thus tradition has been broken.

Happy New Year. 明けましておめでとうございます。今年もよろしく!All the best for 2008!

It’s been close to 10 years since I’ve experienced the turning of the year in Japan. A significant change to how I spent it last year. Last year I counted out 2006 with my parents standing in the freezing cold on Westminster Bridge watching the fireworks around the London Eye.

This year, I spent with my grandparents and my mum at the ancestral home here in Japan, pinning an お守り / omamori / amulet to the North corner of the 茶の間 / chanoma / living room. Although I feel Japan is not that religious it’s times like this that I realise that there is a deep rooted tradition in religious rituals, etc. I look around this home and there are amulets and various “blessed” objects on show everywhere.

It’s a real pure, refreshing atmosphere to be in.

I’m 23.  What can I say? I feel like I haven’t had much to say recently. Ever since I got back from Tokyo and especially more recently it just feels like there’s less to talk about on here. I’m also a bit disappointed that I haven’t managed to dig this blog from its emotional roots into something more substantial. Oh well…

It’s definitely been one of the longest breaks from blogging. It wasn’t planned. I would love to put it down to being incredibly busy and having no time for expressing my thoughts but it’s more a case of not knowing exactly what to write and generally not feeling like it.

Anyway, I suppose even though most you that read this know me well enough anyway but I’ll try and fill you in as much as possible on the last few weeks. I’ll start with this weekend as it’s all that’s on my mind at the moment.

Eri came to visit for the weekend from Warwick. It was awesome to see her again. It felt like a lifetime ago that I saw her last but then again it felt like yesterday. She came down with a coursemate and we spent the day together visiting this random football stadium in the east of London and going to see Spamalot in the evening, finishing off with a drink down the pub with Dan and Sam. Thank god it was only a day that we spent with this coursemate. To be perfectly honest, he was not funny, a bit in your face, and gym obsessed, amongst other things… but then again, I don’t think I’m the one to ask for an objective opinion of the guy!

Spamalot was an incredibly funny musical. I would recommend it to anyone that has a reasonable understanding of history, culture and preferably monty python. I would say it was more of a guy oriented musical but I think it would still be a good fun musical to see anyway! ^^

Anyway, Sunday. Sunday, we went to the O2 to catch the Tutankhamun (Tutankhamen according to Firefox spell checker) Exhibition. Anyway, it was a tad expensive but it was interesting and there were a lot of things to see. Plus, it was nice to know I remembered all that Egyptian stuff from primary school! Yey!  The evening, we rocked up to Maple Leaf for a few Canadian beers and a mini lesson on the intricacies of ice hockey.

aaand, finally, today, we did the whole shopping thing on Oxford Street, yey!

Ok, so, if we rewind back a few weeks and recap; I’ve pretty much been busy with job applications, courseworks and projectwork. I would love to say that I’m on top of all of it right now but it’s definitely still a case of being partially buried. I have one last coursework due tomorrow… which I’m going to review tomorrow, and also a report for my project due in January. Ah well, that’s final year for ya!

I can’t really think of what else to say. One thing I will mention though is that there is this immense feeling that I should really make the most of now but somehow I don’t want to… I don’t want to accept the fact that this really could be the last Christmas as a student, in education…. in London? I don’t really want to leave but with every passing day it is becoming an increasing reality. This weekend I was able to forget all of these tormenting thoughts and even though the topic was never far from my mind it didn’t trouble me. I want more weekends like this one.

But yeah, I don’t think this blog entry is a very good one. I will endeavour to make more of an effort in the coming weeks to keep this entertained – I definitely don’t want to turn into one of those people that say they’ll update and never does.

O, I’m a Manchester United fan btw… for all those fb users!