a consequential

Yea, Ronaldinho is famous. Women throw themselves at him. Whatever. Who is the team to beat Brazil in the next four weeks? I'm temporarily moving apartments, so that I'll be able to find out. I haven't been this psyched in quite awhile.

Tomorrow, in my fair yet small city, Minoru Kawasaki's film, "Executive Koala" (Koala Kacho, in Japanese), will begin showing on the big screen. I have seen the ads for quite a bit of time now, and I'm totally psyched to see this. It also features a frog in a convenience store costume, but that's essentially only icing on the cake.

Here's the synopsis:
"Tamura is an average divorced salaryman in Japan - and also a man-sized, suit-and-tie wearing, upright-walking koala bear. Though not a human being, he's a successful businessman with ventures overseas who refuses to play office politics. He hopes to marry his girlfriend, Yoko, and raise a child. His visions are of an ordinary life with an ordinary company until his ordinary retirement. But when his girlfriend turns up dead one morning, the police finger the Executive Koala as their prime suspect. Temura runs from Detective Ono and fights to prove his innocence. Tamura wants to know why there are gaps in his memory. Is he a murderer? Does he have multiple personalities? And what does his bartender (the frog) and his boss (the rabbit) know about the two-hundred year old terrifying secret behind the EXECUTIVE KOALA?"

The movie's official site is here, and if you enter the site and click "こあらの歌"(it's in the top right side of the page), you are in for a pretty awesome Flash movie.

Oi, long time, no see. Here are a couple things on my mind:

1. I broke my glasses! If you know me well, you will understand my pain. After a school drinking party where the object of the party was to test my drinking capacity, I wandered home, pulled out my futon, changed my clothes and fell asleep. Unfortunately, I slept on my glasses, and when I woke up, I smashed them by accident with my hand. Busted.

2. Anyone have any job ideas or housing suggestions in NYC/Philly area? I think that's my next stop, unless Aaron and Kristy physically force me to move to SF with them.

3. How in the hell is this possible? Two months from World Cup 2006, the US team is ranked 4th in the world. The FIFA rankings never mean anything though, and we will be lucky to get out of our first round group with always strong Italy and 2nd ranked Czech Republic...



4. I'm consumed by soccer lately. It's unhealthy, because the Champions League matches are on at 4am, and I'm usually at school by 8am. Doesn't leave much room for sleep. Also, my Akita team just played in a big tournament 7 hours south of here, and you can see some pictures at Flickr.

5. Lastly, a social studies teacher today came up to me and asked me, in perfect English, "Kevin-sensei, are you a WASP?" It seemed a bit direct, but I told him that I was Catholic to lessen the harshness. Is that a little weird?

A week back from a short trip around Japan. It's spring vacation in schools, and so it's one of my last chances to travel here before I leave in August. My main goal was to meet up with Cem before he ventures off to Morocco and his new job with Nikkei Weekly. I won't bore with details, but I wound up with a couple of nights in a huge Tokyo apartment, which was completely awesome. Cem and I saw Mt. Eerie at O-Nest, just barely missing Jens Lekman, so the next day, I tracked down his show in Ogikubo. There were only about 15-20 people there, but you wouldn't know it by the way he performed.

I ventured to Nagoya and learned about the city a bit, visited art galleries, and was able to catch up with Cem, Ethan, and their crew. They've built a little enclave of DC down there in Ichinomiya. I somehow lost my train tickets home, and decided to head back via Kyoto on the Shin Nihonkai ferry.



The ferry was shockingly comfortable. They had a public bath, a pretty nice restaurant, a table tennis room, and loads of interesting vending machine snacks. There were only about 30 people on the whole ship, so it felt pretty cool to have the run of the place.

( Soccer Saturday in Japan )