badmigraine

Amazing! He did it again!!

Ever notice how when you make a post, your "number of posts" figure changes to reflect it, ON EVERY PAGE OF THIS SITE? Kudos to the SJG guy who has to sit with coffee, 24/7, watching for new posts, then opening up every page and changing all of these numbers individually. What a job! I really appreciate it. Let's hear some recognition please folks!

Watching, unable to help, as something horrific happens to a person I love.

Yeah, enderzero, I wonder which is really worse. It would seem that the nastiest part of Japanese prisons is the brutality of the guards and the feudalistic, petty rules enforced by beatings(can't wipe the sweat off your face until the appointed time, can't open your eyes before the appointed time, the manacle set some have to wear while eating their food off the floor like a dog, the pants with a slit in the back so you can poop [but not wipe] while manacled, etc.). This in contrast to the nastiest part of US prisons, which seems to be the constant, unregulated brutality of other i

Upon arriving in Japan years ago... 1st motivation to learn Japanese: need to eat and get around. Later on...2nd motivation to learn Japanese: meet girls and all that. Later on...3rd motivation to learn Japanese: make my life easier at work. Later on...4th motivation to learn Japanese: to finally be able speak to my wife's parents. Next motivation: to speak fluently enough that my kids' Japanese friends don't tease him about their pidgin-speaking weirdo Dad. I think the last motivation will be the strongest. As much as I wanted to be able to get around, to eat,

I've never been to Osaka. Is there a river in Tokyo of comparably execrable condition? I live on a small lake here in Michigan, and when it rains, the rain washes all sorts of excreta (duck, goose, swan, dog, cat, squirrel, bird, racoon, possum, skunk, etc.) into the lake. There is a lot more of this sh*t than you would believe due to the amount of forestland and wildlife around the lake. Then the sun warms up this broth and the water's percentage of bacteria--including fecal coliform bacteria-rises significantly. If you go wakeboarding on a day like that, you better not swallow

When I see what a hullaballoo this kind of staged media event makes, I realize how far outside the target audience for that stuff I am. Almost everything about it just passed me by... I don't like blondes, bubblegum pop music, MTV award shows, Madonna, Britney, staged media events or dance shows... I've already seen plenty of girls kissing each other and even once dated a sexy, fiery bisexual El Salvadoran nurse who'd put me in a dog collar and take me to lesbian bars...frankly speaking, even THAT sounds boring and trite to me now. I sure enjoy my life and what I am up to now, but it

The much-vaunted US system isn't really that great or "first-world" either. In fact, judging by what I've read, there's hardly a country on the planet where I'd want to serve even a short jail term. Here in the great USA, you'll get a longer sentence just because you're not white. You may find drug-related convictions give longer sentences than violent crimes. The unbelievably expensive, failing and ill-advised "War on Drugs" packs our jails with minor offenders who haven't stolen or damaged property or committed violent acts...all at the expense of my tax dollars. DNA tes

I had a doc in Tamachi who was telepathic...he must have been, because he knew what was wrong with me without even performing any tests. I entered the curtained-off examination room and the nurse motioned me to sit on the table. I was leery of touching the dirty styrofoam pillow. "What can I do for you?" "Well, about a week ago, I began to get extremely tired around 7 pm...not sleepy at all, just suddenly exhausted...happens every day at about the same time...never had this kind of feeling before..." "Hm. You've got a cold. Here, take this prescription to the pharmacy...NE

When you don't have many potatoes, even the small ones seem big. Takeshi's films get a lot of notice because most other Japanese films are derivative, insularly coded and often irrelevant to non-Japanese. I'm no movie director so I can't say I'd do better. But I am an avid movie VIEWER, and I can critique from that viewpoint with impeccable credentials. Some media figures in Japan--real-life as well as fictional--get unconditional admiration from other Japanese merely for expressing an opinion or idea articulately or aggressively...even if that opinion or idea is old-hat, naive,

Oblivion, nice poll, but what about Windows ME? The one that came after Win98...

It seems my brain only allows me to use 1 foreign language at a time...as if I don't have enough mental RAM storage to load 2 foreign languages at the same time. I was almost fluent in Italian over 15 years ago. Now my brain and mouth won't let me speak it anymore. A strange, broken mix of Japanese and incorrect Italian comes out.

Mr. Matthews, it's even worse than you imagined! Starbucks DOES have teas, and they, too, are shite, absolute shite. Perhaps the most forgivable feature of Starbucks in Japan is that, as a non-smoking shop, it functions as a haven for attractive young women. Those interested are probably better off trying to pick up women in Starbucks than at the bars.

Eminem--his pinched, snotty adolescent sneer always on his face, and his early-teen, arrested-development childish anger at his Mommy and all the stuff I remember from 8th grade. Another scrawny-but-wanna-be-big-man with tattoos and muscle shirts on his twiglike torso...another talent-free white rapper promoted by vampire record execs to utter superstardom over hundreds of better rappers who don't happen to be a white boy appealing to white middle-class suburban whining brats... There's no other music that makes me change stations faster than Eminem.

What are the rules? Do you get to actually BE the person and make your own choices and actions? Or rather, are you merely a spectator riding along in their brain, seeing and feeling and thinking and knowing what they know, but unable to affect what they do that day? Either way is OK, but it makes a difference to my choice... For example, if I chose to be Ali on the day he beat Foreman, and I was in total control, I'd probably be killed in the ring. I can't box. But if I were merely a spectator inside his brain, I'd know exactly what he went through that day and that would be a l

It IS expensive...we drink gallons of beer on the boat, and I can't afford it much longer!

Davo, those kiwi cafes sound great. I've already heard all about the great beer from Mogski. Wakeskating is the latest thing...a wakeboard type shape, but with no bindings...you might call it a skateboard on the water. You can do spins, kickflips, rails, jump the wake, etc. Read all about it at www.wakeskating.com and here is a pic of someone much better than me doing a trick...looks like a backside pop shuvit?:

Niseko Hirafu on a powder day. No snow at all. Now move along, please!

The prices don't seem very different from those in the US. Davo, are you a coffee man? Wish you could be here to share a cup with me now here in sunny Walled Lake, Michigan. We're going wake-skating on the lake this afternoon...would be fun to see how your board technique adapts to lake water and beer. Coffee. I couldn't live without it. I'm always checking out sites like Coffee Geek to see reviews of the latest high-end home espresso equipment and beans. There's a lot of good coffee in Tokyo and personal preferences often change with the seasons, but when I left last October

Last I checked, he's on those old T-1000's.

Legally speaking, no. The commonly used definition of "murder" in the US and UK (and many other countries too) is: "Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being, with malice aforethought." The first element, "unlawful killing", is not satisfied by a person not giving a dollar to starving folk...because there is no law that says we are to do so. Therefore the failure to do it is not unlawful. Nor is it easy to prove failure to give the dollar caused the death. Why was the person starving in the first place? Probably not because of that dollar. The second element, "with malice

Kamoshika, how is Opera doing on Japanese character display? Normally they release non-Asian versions first, then the localized versions for various languages appear. Also, will an Opera browser with Japanese language support run on a non-Japanese OS such as US Windows XP? I suppose I could go to the Opera site to find this out but if you know the answer you can save me a trip. Ta!

Sweetaz, I suspect the fact that many sex trade workers are "junkies" is not a result of their jobs as sex workers, but rather, a result of the fact that a significant percentage of people who end up in the sex trade end up there because their other habits make "traditional", office or 9-to-5 employment either unworkable or motivationally out of the question. Meaning their drug habits are not a symptom of their jobs, but rather, their jobs are a symptom of their drug habits. In statistics, we call this a "self-selecting sample". As an additional note, I found a number of "junkies" am

Quote: We've also forgotten that the sex trade is totally discriminatory, if you are overweight, disabled etc you won't be allowed a job. This itself is a world of debate. Mr. Matthews, really! You've made some great points, but this one is a red herring indeed. I had too much coffee and I can't let this one go without voicing my opinion on it. Are you suggesting that the ideal we must strive for in thought, practice and legislation is to make all jobs do-able by anybody/everybody? There is no world of debate to be had here. The fact of nature is that people don't want what they don'