MatthewMeyer.net

I don’t know if that’s what I have, but I have something. I’ve been sick for over a week now. Last week was horrible, feverish every day in class (and Japanese are insane about temperatures — it’s late April and we’re having freak weather that is actually more like the end of May, and the HEAT is still on full blast!), delerious from a cold… which eventually evolved into what seemed like a sinus infection. Now I’m on Golden Week vacation, which is wonderful — 10 days of vacation for me — but I’m spending it in bed with what is more like the flu now! Aghgh. Luckily Hitomi is taking care of me though… and I’m loading up on all kinds of medicine now, so hopefully I’ll get better soon — in time to enjoy at least half of my Golden Week vacation.

Hitomi and I bought oil paints and easels recently, and we’ve started painting together. It’s great! Now that my schedule is more relaxed (since mid April), I’ve been able to draw again. It feels great to get back to creating artwork. The weather is gorgeous now, so even though I’ve been sick, we went out to paint landscapes by the riverside. And if I can get better this week, we’ll do it for the rest of Golden Week. Some computer troubles have prevented me from finishing my digital painting of the cliffs at Tojimbo, but soon that should be solved and I can finish that too. With any luck, I’ll have some nice art posts up here by the end of the week.

Now it’s bed time…

Check this out! How awesome! A robot that plays the keyboards. Apparently this incarnation was made in the 80′s, so just imagine what a robot build today could do — a One-Man-Band-Bot!

Also, WABOT is just fun to say. WABOT. WABOT. More on the WABOT here: http://www.humanoid.waseda.ac.jp/booklet/kato_2.html. WABOT.

Working on the Cherry Blossom Festival in Philly gave me a bit of a sense of how serious the beauty of spring is here in Japan… I mean, I knew it was taken a bit more seriously than we do in the US — or at least taken a bit less for granted. Last weekend I went out and about a bit, and at times it really was just breathtaking. Especially in Fukui city, which I never really saw as all that beautiful before.

Hitomi and I went to the Hino river near my house, which is lined with cherry trees. It was just the right time to go — they were all in bloom. Next week would’ve been too late, I think. The river is a very pretty place to relax, with nice views of the bridge and the nearby mountains. That big one you can see is Hino-san, from which the Hino river gets its name (I can only assume…).

At night we went to Hitomi’s elementary school in rural Imadate. Apparently, this is the oldest cherry tree in Imadate, and probably in a bit larger radius than that. It’s absolutely huge and has a gorgeous shape to it. Unfortunately the camera had trouble capturing the beauty of the entire tree in the middle of the night, but you can get a good view of the underside of it here:

The biggest surprise for me by far was Fukui. I went there yesterday to meet Minako and really got lucky seeing all the cherry trees in town. (Actually, I didn’t see all of them — I didn’t even see the most famous ones, as it was pouring rain and I wasn’t able to travel across town. However, what I did see was breathtaking.) I went to this shrine with Minako to see the weeping sakura…

…but I was most impressed with the castle ruins. I’ve mocked Fukui city in the past because of how poorly they seem to have managed their cultural heritage. The city was firebombed in WW2, and instead of rebuilding the ruins, they build ugly cold-war style buildings on top of them that served the same purpose as the original, beautiful, ancient buildings. For example, the center of the government — the castle — was destroyed, and in its place was erected a monumental mud-yellowish brick compound which serves as a government and prefectural office of sorts. It’s hideous and a travesty to the culture of this place… but I digress.

Anyway, the cherry trees around the moat and castle grounds are absolutely gorgeous. Just amazing. And I think I was actually lucky to see them in the rain, as the raindrops turned the normally vomit-greenish moat into a beautiful, cool aquamarine with no reflections of the ugly buildings surrounding the castle foundation. Even more, I was totally shocked to see that, this being the 400th anniversary of the building of Fukui castle, a castle bridge had recently been rebuild. Not only is it just plain awesome on its own to see castle buildings, but to see them brand-spanking-new, just off the presses so to speak, is something special. The wood smelled so beautiful, and looked so squeaky clean I thought it was plastic from afar. The old wood buildings in Japan are generally so dark with age that they look near-black. They’re still beautiful, of course, but seeing a place like this makes you really think how majestic these giant buildings must have looked when they were brand new way back when…

So amazing! Anyway, I hope that they find the sense to tear down the crapfest built on top of the ruins and rebuilt the whole thing. That is one spectacular location for a castle.

Finally, on my way home I made a nice blunder… I made it to the station 1 minute late, and I was in a rush to get home, so rather than wait an hour and a half for the next local train, I paid a bit more money and took the express. Woops! I should have taken the Limited Express! So, instead of taking a 10 minute ride to Takefu, I took a 2 hour ride to Kyoto, waited for the next train home, and took a 2 hour ride back. So much for saving time… UGH!

The guys came to set up my high speed internet during the middle of last week, but I didn’t have a chance to set it up until last night… and boy, is it fast! This is great!

I just read on Digg and Slashdot the other day that Comcast just came out with 50 Mbps fiber optic internet (which of course includes Comcast’s speed throttling and download capping, as well as having all of your internet activity dutifully reported to Mr. Bush) for about $150. And I’m paying less than half that price for more than twice the service. Huh.

America really seems like the place to be when you live there, but man… as far as internet and cellphone services are concerned, the US is in the stone age. Everyone’s phones interfere with nearby speakers, and of course are slow as hell and generally pretty ugly. Our internet is overpriced, underpowered, and really just a spy tool for the president… In any case, I’m glad to be living in a much more technologically advanced country.