badmigraine

Ocean, glad to see a man acquire more tools. This is always a good thing. If you don't want the allen wrench, then how about some hubs and clutch housings then? In a pinch they double as cruise missiles it seems. What a world.

Thanks, Dims! Actually, I am under a constant rain of turds at the moment, and the only reason I feel fine is that my little baby girl is on the way! I haven't yet decided whether she's going to be a pro athlete or a financial genius. It's hard to choose. Maybe both? One thing's for sure. If she has my teeth, then she is getting braces. For sure. My parents are Brits and they just didn't see the value of orthodontia. Well, if my company goes bankrupt, maybe I can get braces and reinvent myself as a guy with perfect teeth.

Orange, I'm no doctor, but I always figured the flatulent feeling results from the difference in pressure at altitude. Sure the cabin is "pressurized", but it is still at a lower air pressure than ground level. That's why your ears pop and shampoo bottles and little coffee cream tubs with foil covers become tight as drums. The air trapped inside of them is still at ground level pressure, but the cabin pressure is lower, so they want to bulge out like balloons. And this is going on inside your gut and intestines. The gases expand, your intestines plump up and the only way to g

Ocean, there's a chance I probably have a 3/16 allen wrench in my kit at home. If you're needing it, I'd be happy to takyuubin it down to you. Don't have much use for it lately, so you could keep it around for as long as you want, maybe even forever. Let me know if you're interested, I'll check my toolbox and could send it tomorrow (Saturday). Dims, I'd love any chance to show off my board. Right now is not the best time though! At work, I am presiding over the looming bankruptcy of a well-known Japanese company (if it happens, I am out of a 70-hr./wk. job...I kind of hope it happens )

I'd love to check out southern Tassie, but I hear it works best when winter's icy flakes are in the air. Yikes! My board cost more than usual because of the wood veneer. The price was about US$750. It is a beautiful looker and I'm pretty sure I could sell it at a profit, but I never would. The non-wood boards are cheaper. I ordered it at the end of summer in Japan, and told Stranger I was in no particular hurry. They were busy with some existing orders right around then, and they also probably surf a lot so in the end it took a couple of months to get to me, including shipping. I was

Oh, I forgot. It's a 7 foot Cruiser, done in wood veneer...you can check it out on the Stranger site heh.

Hey Dims, I do have one of Nick's boards and it is a beaut. How do you know about Stranger boards? All my J friends here are on them and one of them helped set me up with this one. Sadly, I left surfable Japan for Walled Lake, Michigan just as it was done, and had to live for almost 2 years staring at this thing in the living room, without a surfable wave around. Don't tell Nick and Mark, but I paddled it around Walled Lake all summer last year. Best done in the mornings. By noon, you have the drunks in powerboats and you could get shredded. Last weekend we camped in Ibara

Wholly Schitte!! Nice vid, Ocean. Is that vintage footage? The cars in the background don't seem new. As for wakeboarding, it's really good fun but highly structured and eventually a pain in the a**. You need a lot of people, a boat and all the goods, gas money, flattish water, not many other boats around, and it is noisy and stinks of fuel. And riding around on the boat gets old. Somebody is always blasting their favorite "core" music on a CD they burned themselves, as if what they understood from vids is that any balance sport must have blaring music playing the whole time, like we

Sorry to say it, but due to the expansion of tissue and gases at altitude even in a pressurized cabin, on long-haul flights I spend most of my time farting or waiting for the next fart to work its way down. Severe in-flight flatulence...I can't be the only one. What about the rest of you?

"uptick" I really hate the word. "The economy showed a slight uptick in April." I hate it!! A lot. It seems stupid, pretentious and, well, just BONEHEADED DUMB. Another fake fad word that CNN Money talking heads now must use while that "cha cha cha cha ding" sound plays really fast in the background to make you feel like all kinds of important things are happening really fast and you are kind of in there in the special fast-paced space being informed.

For me, there are 3 main subcategories of "unnatural English". 1. Plain old grammar and vocabulary mistakes. EXAMPLE: "Regarding your proposed, here is an answer. Please review the followings." 2. No particular grammar or vocabulary item is blatantly wrong except perhaps for the run-on sentence problem, but and everything is in reverse order, in the passive voice, and, well, vague and confusing. EXAMPLE: "This was a company secretariat which was established under the guidance of Informative Life Principles, being held in agreement with notions of the exchange of information

"I am a staff of the Sales Department."

The key money ("rei-kin") is just a straight gift to the landlord. They keep it all. Your security deposit ("shiki-kin") is pretty much what it is in your home country. The landlord can keep some of it to cover damage to the place. How much do they take, and what is the standard? Again, it's a lot like being back home. Some landlords are angels, others crooks. And most are somewhere in between: "BUSINESSPEOPLE". Most landlords find that withholding part or all of a security deposit is good business practice for them. If they do it 10 times, only 4 people will actually complain,

Yes, the tattered grunge look in 1st or business class makes them all think you are a rock star or professional skateboarder. Makes the suits nervous! Heh.

So you're saying the hangovers are the same, whatever country one's in?

brit-gob, it was the compromise of all compromises. Herewith follows the sad story. My Japanese wife is pregnant, and prefers to have the baby in her own language and hospital culture. Her English is not great, so I can understand and honor this request to return to Japan for childbirth. We would have liked to do this in her hometown in Okayama...if not just for the pleasure of finally being within striking distance of a glass of red with Ocean, who lives across the great Seto bridge in Shikoku, but also to be with my wife's family in a pleasanter part of Japan than I've ever lived i

I hate mailing off my passport anywhere. Even if you ignore the risk of loss or theft, I hate to be without it. Not that I may suddenly need it. It just bugs me to send it off anywhere. Compulsive stress. I guess you're "required" to appoint a "tax representative" before you leave Japan. That person, by signing the form, effectively becomes responsible for your tax payments if you don't make them. I hope your visa rep doesn't say sorry, but we earn our living by following the law and getting cooperation from J bureaucrats so as rule-followers we report to you the fact that before we can a

They wouldn't let ya? What's plan B? I know what you mean about leaving. Part of it is just the Being Done with a place and the appetent pleasure/excitement at going to the next place. But a big part of leaving Japan is being back in a place where the culture and lifestyle are your native ones or close to them...a place where you can read every publication without a dictionary, where you can give customer service reps a dose of the clean truth when you've been done, where you can handle your relationships with everyone from homeless to Hollywood in your own tongue. And part of i

Hey scouser, I was living in Rome in the summer of 1984 when Liverpool came into town and beat the Italians! For weeks afterward, you could find "Thank you, Liverpool" carved into benches and ancient monuments throughout the city. A very fine time to be in Italy.

Sheesh, meant to be a troll and a joke, boys! I wanted someone to explode at the idiocy of my post and keep me amused through the end of this blah workday. I guess either: (i) you guys are too serious about your football to have noticed the absolute BS content of the post including "Arsenhall" spelling and the preposterously American concept of a "Soccer World Series", or (ii) you [probably correctly] estimated the post to be a fairly indicative representation of the average American's understanding of the sport. As for this American, I, a Kiwi and a J guy have an ins

What airport did this happen at? People leaving Japan (for good) before their visa expires can ask the immigration officer at the port of exit to stamp or mark their visa "cancelled" or "used". Why would anybody do this? Because one of the documents you submit to get your pension tax refund is a photocopy of every passport page including your cancelled visa. If the visa is still valid, then it appears to the tax office that you have NOT given up your Japanese residence and could still be living in Japan, or could come back again. That's why some people (me included) ask th

Deebs, job well done! Let us know how the tax refund etc. comes out. This is useful stuff for the lot of us. Taxes...the government is making this a Personal thing.

As an American, I predict that one of the stronger European teams might win the soccer World Cup. There's a team in Italy called Inter Milan I see in the paper sometimes, they might take it all. That is, if they can beat Beckham's Arsenhall...he's a threat they say. I've not quite figured out the elimination rounds. Shouldn't the aim be NOT to get eliminated? We should be working on figuring out which teams will be IN the Cup, not eliminated from it. M aybe there could be a Soccer World Series to determine the best teams. The teams that don't make it could send their best playe

How would the average Japan leaver prove payment of ward tax? It's normally deducted from my salary, but they don't pass out pay stubs anymore. Pay history can be viewed on the company intranet, but not from the airport. Would the effect of this rule, if that's what it is, be that the airport people have to verify every case before letting people quit Japan?

db, this is exactly what I did a couple years ago. I left Japan when the first or second of my ward tax payments had come due (bill in the mail), but I had not paid any of it. I surrendered my gaijin card at the airport customs counter (nobody there knows anything about any taxes, you don't have to worry about it), and had them be sure to stamp my visa as "cancelled" or "used". (I don't think this is required, but I wanted clear evidence that I was no longer residing in Japan.) Then when I got back to my own country I claimed the pension tax refund, giving my home address.