The Telegraphic

I just saw the most random video clip I have ever seen. This clip eclipses the ‘Alannis Morisette’ song, the song with the midgets singing about sandwiches and even the badger badger badger badger mushroom flash cartoon. Below is a recount of the trials and tribulations contained within the clip.

Imagine, If you will, a pear tree. Now imagine a pear falling off this tree and a gigantic, aboniable mandarin with antlers sprouting from said pear. Of course, the mandarin is quite friendly and if a small child should come along trying to reach a pair in the tree, it would help out.

Now, if you were a child and a mandarin helped you get a pear off a tree, I’m sure you would immediately fall in love with it (as happens in the clip). You’d go and watch a movie. Stroll through grassy fields. Play hide and seek. But of course, you’re only a small child and when it comes time for your family to move on, you have to go as well. You must tear youself away from the mandarin as much as it hurts to do so. And so in the clip the girl leaves the mandarin with antlers her hat, as a memento of her visit.

I think now would be a good time to mention the clip is in a paper-cutout animation style cartoon. Now back to the story.

The Mandarin waits, as seasons pass. As spring comes around again, we see a tear run down his cheek. He does what any good mandarin would do, he goes on a journey to find his beloved girl. He faces many adversaries, such as the wolf which he scares off with his evil mandarin x-ray stare and fangs. Over the course of many years, he eventually finds the house of his one true love.

But she is all grown up and has fallen in love with a human boy, not the mandarin that she once played hide and seek with. And so the mandarin lets out his last tear, and turns into a pear tree, under which said girl gets married.

It really is the perfect love story, although adapted to include a huge personified piece of fruit. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Mandarins don’t grow on pear trees.

Shigehiro worked for Hitachi for 40 odd years and you can tell he has loyalty to them just by looking around the house. The 3 TVs, DVD player, microwave, toaster, fridge, lights, air con, etc. are all made by Hitachi. There are 2 amazingly cool Hitachi products in the house – the carpets are warmed by Hitachi carpet warmers and the bathroom is powered by a Hitachi console. You press a button and the bath fills itself up, whilst monitoring the temperature to make sure it’s perfect. Once it gets to the temperature and level you set it to, it plays a little melody and then TALKS TO YOU. It is very very cool. I have some doubts about the shower though, the shower head is very low because you sit on a stool and use it, which is strange.

The other thing that features a lot around the house is dog memorabilia. It isn’t over the top (I can safely say I’ve seen over the top, in Australia), but there’s lots of dog calendars and a few dog trinkets scattered around the house. The dog is very well treated as well, because he’s old.

Something that I’ve had to figure out is ‘shoe etiquette’. You take your shoes off when you get in and use some slippers around the house. If you go outside there are outside slippers. If you go to the toilet there are slippers in the toilet (it would be a faux par to wear them outside the toilet). If you go in the tatami room you must take your slippers off. To be honest, I don’t always wear the slippers inside the toilet because NOBODY KNOWS (muwahaha). As a side note, the toilet seat is heated which is a luxury seeing as I was expecting a ‘Japanese style’ toilet. The toilet has a set of buttons on it which I have yet to try – the buttons translate to ‘shower’, ‘charm’, ‘blowdry’ and ‘stop’. I have no idea what the charm feature does and I don’t think i’m psychologically ready to find out.

So far I’ve been really spoilt by Kyoko. I’ll have to tell her ‘less calories, please’ because she keeps buying me snacks. I have half a can of pringles sitting next to my bed, and today she’s given me caramels and bought me an icecream, as well as cooking f##king huge Osumiyaki (savory pancake things – very tasty). I’m so glad I (lit: my parents) bought them both Opals and some Aussie bucket hats for Omiyage (presents). Kyoko thanked mum on the phone, for the ‘Opals and the helmets’, which I found most amusing.

My room is very nice and unlike the youth hostels I can move around it. I have a cool Japanese table thing* and a desk so I’m sorted. It’s in the attic.

Finally, In the unlikely event that somebody cares, there’s a strange clown sculpture on the wall, with a clown bearing his belly button. It caused a strange dream, where the clown had a car with wheels that looked like his belly.

* Imagine a heated rug with a table on it. Now imagine a douvet draped over the table, with a piece of wood put on top. The rug and the douvet are both to keep you warm – you put your feet under the table and the heat from the rug and your body warmth are kept in by the douvet. Pretty cool.

I have a cold. It sucks.

In Japan you’re expected to walk around wearing a face mask, so you don’t cough on people. Handkerchiefs and nose blowing (in public), is frowned upon. Screw that. I don’t think the masks make a modocon of difference, as I think is evidenced by the amount of sick people wearing them. There was this one guy who was wearing one in the supermarket, just walking around sniffling making that ‘I have snot in my nose’ sound.

Ah well.

Apparently 1/5 Japanese people have pollen related allergies, so companies put adverts on tissue packets and hand them out. Especially during Hanami (Sakura Blossom season). “Intruiging”, I hear you say.

By the way, I think I fixed most of the problems with the site. I’ve also added some new photos.

Stay tuned for more useless but intruiging facts.
Dan

Some of you may have noticed that I have “royally fucked” a few of the pages up. If you did, I hope you also noticed the new entry page I made which allows you to choose a stylesheet. Yeah, at the moment they’re all pretty much the same, but it’s pretty cool nontheless. When I get a chance, I’ll fix them. I need to have my laptop hooked up to the net though, so that’s gonna take a little while longer.

I’m doing fine. I just got a haircut (which cost $30 – but it was good.. It’s the first time I’ve got my hair washed (before and after the haircut), and also got a neck massage). My hair has never looked so Japanese.

The orientation camp was pretty fun but a complete waste of time. The following day we were forced out of our beds at 7:00 to raise a flag, then have breakfast, which sucked balls (also could have quite possibly contained them). We then had until 12.00 to kill time, so we went for a walk around the base of the mountain which we were told not to climb, because we’d more than likely get ravaged by wild boars.

We’ve also started Uni, which entails 2-3 hours of learning Japanese a day. Today we just had words thrown at us to do with facial features. I don’t remember 90% of them and I don’t think that many of them would ever come up in conversation. Which is what I want to learn, so I can talk to people in Japanese. Call me crazy.

Well I’m off now, so to quote the Mr. Scruff album:
Keep it unreal
Dan

I’d like to point out that this entry has nothing to do with the movie of the same name. You have to admit it’s a good title though.

I’ve just hopped on to my host family’s computer for a while for a quick ‘news flash’. I haven’t been able to connect up my laptop to the net (for all of those CISCO buffs, I think the most of the ISPs over here do MAC address filtering), meaning that the amazing, amzing changes in store will have to be in store for a few more days.

Tomorrow we’re going to a orientation camp, which is actually on a different island to the university. It’s supposedly just a ‘big piss up’. The morning after we get to make sake out of crushed up rice in a sake factory. I think it sounds more fun that it’ll actually be, because:

a) Sake smells like shit; and
b) We hit rice with a hammer, potentially for hours.

Aaaanyway I wont be ‘blogging’ for a little while so yeah. Have a good ‘un.

Dan