125/60

Every year I have watched a steady decline in my blood pressure (Which was dangerously high before leaving the States). Today I went in for my annual health check.

The doctor ran a check on everything; Kidneys: Nominal, Heart: good, Blood pressure: 125/60... he stops, "Wow, that's pretty good!" Last year it was substantially higher (But still 140/70 or something... I blogged about it... but I'm not going to look it up). Just before I came to Japan, my blood pressure was somewhere in the 150-160 range... enough that at my first health check (a week in) the doctor gave me a grave look when he took my blood pressure.

Okay, so my luck isn't improving with my weight just yet (We chubby-cheeked cuties, you and me, Sawbones :D), but at least my blood pressure is not critical any more.

I have changed my diet, I don't eat as much McDonalds (There are no other fast-food chains out here, but there are two McDonald's...). But I do drink more coffee than I used to in the States... Anyway, I think stress plays an enormous part of blood pressure... and though I have a lot of responsibility, I am pretty stress-free over here. :D

--That's MISTER 125/60 to you! :)

The Last Night of the year

Bet you are all wondering where I went... well... I was working on yet another comic... yes, it's my Star Trek comic (I'm not obsessed with Star Trek, I'm obsessed with not quitting another comic 20 pages in).

You can find it here: http://usstamerlane.foxtailgraphics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=492#492

This puts the total pages of comic book done on this story line (Tamerlane) at 20+40+12= 72 complete pages of comic. I'm not going to be happy, though, until I approach the size and scale of Tods Dracula comic (He's on page 200+ and still going). I figure if I can clear 200-some-odd pages of Tamerlane, not drifting off topic, or stopping because I'm bored, or whatever, then I'm capable of taking the "training wheels" off and going back to my original works.

I've spent many years starting projects and not finishing them, I'm so very tired of it. So every page now with this comic is a success for me.

You are, however, free to make fun of me at your leisure. :D

I'd like for folks to read them, though, and give feedback (Pointy-ears notwithstanding) I'm still very serious about my Tamerlane stories, and I work very hard on them, so they should still be entertaining. :D I am putting my soul into the stories... I just can't ever publish them for money... which is okay, I'm not really in a "Money" mode these days... I'm a little... disenchanted with money...

Erm... another shocker...

This is a page from the sports section of the Prefectural paper:

This is (And no, I'm not making this up) my name in the sports section of said prefectural paper:

(In a sea of kanji there are those lone katakana characters... woah...)

I think when the wheels of that lovely 747-600 (And it was a pretty aircraft I would like to add at this time) touched down at Narita airport, the furthest thing in my mind would be that I would be listed in the sports section of a Japanese newspaper... Heck, being in the sports section of any paper would be among the last things I could imagine ever doing in my life...

If you are curious, that's a list of those that made Shodan (Black Belt) during the Kyudo tests (Apparently it's a much bigger deal than I thought...) two weeks ago.

But now... (And I really can't believe I am saying this), I can add "Listed in the Sports section of the newspaper" as one of my accomplishments in my life...

Of course, this paper belongs to Mr. Graves, and I'll have to give him the original back... I'm going to see if I can't find a copy at school tomorrow (It's only a couple of days old). If I can, I'll save it for you, Dad. :D

I am rather stunned... Sure, it was hard... but I never thought it was this important... perhaps it was better that way: I know I would have blown it if I knew that it was this big of a deal...

-Spending my 15 minutes of fame in rather unexpected ways

A good day...

Maia and I are on Golden Week (Which, this year falls mostly on the weekend, so we've taken to calling it "Golden Weekend". It's 3 national holidays in a row, which, added to a weekend, makes for 5 consecutive days off...

That is, unless the holiday falls on a weekend. In Japan Saturday is a workday, well... for everyone but us school folks. So, we get Saturday off! Well, isn't that nice...

Anyway, Sunday is also on the holiday, so they are giving us Tuesday as a "Switch day", it's not really a holiday, but since "Green Day" (Midori no Hi) falls on Sunday, we get Tuesday as the switch day.

Anyway, enough about the why... Maia is staying at my place this weekend. Friday night we go to the mall and, completely on impulse, we buy a Wii (Actually, it was impulsive to buy it on Friday, we have been pondering buying one for a while, it seems like it might actually have games designed to exercize the body more... I'm into that). We had both gotten our year-end bonuses, and I was going to buy a new computer with mine... but my company is sneaky, and they pro-rated my final paycheck of the year (See, I technically ended work on March 24th...), so they took away $700 from my paycheck and then gave me a $1000 bonus... Needless to say I really only got a whopping $300 bonus. So we bought a Wii instead. The computer will have to wait.

Anyway, Saturday morning we wake up and eat breakfast and then, completely on impulse, we get on a train to Tokyo (This too, wasn't really an impulse. We bought Mario Kart, and the Wii version has a cute steering wheel thingie which you put the remote into so you can drive. We only had one, and we wanted another... and everywhere was sold out, so we thought; if we can't find a wheel in Akihabara, there isn't one in all of Japan). We have no idea where we are going after our short mission to Akihabara. We are thinking of all kinds of places to visit. But we have no plan... By the time we arrive in Akihabara, we are thinking of going to Ningacho, via Nihombashi.

Nihombashi was the first stop on the very famous Tokaido road (The road that linked Tokyo (Then called Edo) with Kyoto, the capital of old-time Japan). It was a bridge that crossed the river that defined the very edge of Edo. It's now a very central ward of Tokyo (How times have changed :D).

During my Kyoto trip, I visited the last station of the Tokaido Road in Kyoto. And now I have been to the first station (Nihombashi)

The most interesting thing is that Highway 4 goes over Nihombashi... Think about that for a second: the freeway goes over... the river goes under... Highway 4 is built over the river... it just travels along, suspended about 100 or so feet above the river, going the whole way down. They had no more room along here to build the freeway on land, so they just built it on the river.

We then walked to Ningacho, which is interesting, but is really just a series of little teeny shops which didn't really interest us that much.

Upon returning to Akihabara, though. We ate at a Burger King! A real, live, Burger King (Which was surrounded by McDonald's...) I enjoyed the first Whopper I have had since I landed here... :D

Then we went to the book store.

See, I have a little goal; I discovered (Before I came to Japan) that one of my favorite Authors, David Weber, has had his series of Honor Harrington books translated into Japanese, and with some cool artwork, to boot. So I made it a goal to be able to read these books. In light of this, I've been collecting the books over here in order to read them when my Japanese level is high enough (This is still a little ways off). Well, I was pleasantly surprised to find "Echoes of Honor" at the bookstore, so, of course, I picked it up:

Poor Nimitz!

(These books are in Japanese order, book 1 is on the right, book 2 is on the left)

but then, while I was there, I spotted something wonderful!

These are the original Dirty Pair novels! Yes sir, the girls of 3WA are all here in the original novels that started it all (Well, okay, started one of my favorite Animes of the 1980's... which is probably why most of you, except Jer and James are saying "Whu?"). I saw a whole mess of the books, but I only picked up these two novels.

I've read Honor in English and so I want to read the novels in Japanese for the practice and the curiosity (How do they translate "Impeller Drive"?). The Dirty Pair novels don't exist in any language but Japanese. Which means I can't cheat. I have to learn Japanese in order to read these books. I have a whole new goal! (And I'll probably pick up all the other DP novels. I really just love Yuri and Kei! (Gads, look at Mugi... he looks downright terrifying... not fluffy and sleepy like he does in the series) :D) The girls of Collateral Damage are back! Or... Never left... or something...

I love the collars! I keep forgetting these books were written in 1982...

So that was our impulsive trip to Tokyo. I walked across five Wards (Akihabara, Kanda, Nihombashi, Chuo and Ningachoo), which racked up to 8,500 steps on the pedometer (Whomever said "10,000 steps a day" is on drugs). We only took a train back to Akihabara because we were totally beat.

-3Wme