look, I'm a spam blog

Had to delete cookies before I could get the word verification graphic to appear. That's a bit of a showstopper bug. Effectively prevents people from posting.

Nothing much going on here; I'm still battling the epitome of entropy that is my room. And I need to do taxes. So I'll give you a picture from NY.

how to get an apt. in japan

I ran across a link to an excellent guide to apt. hunting in Japan (for foreigners).

music gigs!

Took me three years to stumble across this web site listing music gigs in Tokyo. Now I need to find people interested in checking them out.

This blog brought me to the above website, and I found the blog on gaijinpot.com.

New Year, new resolve

Resolutions:
* exercise (nice and vague; I'm thinking either hip hop or belly dancing)
* study kanji (pass at least level 8 of the kanji kentei, hopefully get up to level 6 by the end of the year)
* pass Sun Certified Java Programmer Exam 5
* learn to cook 1 new dish (not ambitious at all; I learned one last year! Maybe that chinese potato dish... Or scallion pancakes)
* sleep semi-normally (I sense I am out of luck tonight)

Happy New Year

Shanghai steamed dumplings from Din Tai Fung in Taipei. The best so far.

Happy Holidays!

Best wishes for a wonderful 2007.

the best invention for winter

Other than long underwear, the best winter invention is disposable body warmers! 使い捨てカイロ（つかいすてかいろ）in Japanese, these little packets of heat are great in cold weather. They're apparently made of carbon and other things and are bio-degradable. One packet lasts the entire day. I may go through a lot this winter! It's about 300 yen for a packet of 10.

edited: weird, random span tags sneaked into my post. The dangers of cut & pasting text.