There are many other reasons, of course, but I just discovered is that our baseball team is called the Miracle Elephants. How cool is that?

It's a miracle!

The Gary’s Mod Rube Goldberg was really cool, but this one is infinitely cooler because it is real. And it has an ethnic band in it.

This latest one is a painting of the shrine to the paper gods in Imadate, next to Takefu. As an artist, I find it just so damn cool that there is a shrine to the paper gods here. During Golden Week in May, I visited the shrine with Hitomi during a festival, and we got to see the townspeople fight over the mikoshi containing the gods, and carry them from shrine to shrine throughout Imadate on a cold, rainy, rainy day. At night, we returned to the shrine to witness the end of the festival. At a shrine at the foot of a tall mountain, lit by torches and lanterns, a bunch of priests played traditional “music” (a.k.a. noise) that gave the area this otherworldy feel, and they enshrined the gods once more, and took them up to the top of the mountain to their summer home. Really, really awesome.

I’ll be updating this painting just a bit more in the future, as I did with the Mikuni shrine and as I am currently doing with my Nagoya-jou painting. One of the things I like most about the ukiyo-e prints hanging from my walls (the complete series of 53 Stations of the Tokaido and a few other random prints) is the “little people doing things” — a term I learned at Ringling from Mr. Perez, the computer illustration teacher. Apparantly, “little people doing things” is the secret to success in art, and as evidenced by the popularity of my Cherry Blossoms on the Schuylkill River over my other prints, I believe that to be true now. So sometime soon you’ll see some “little people doing things” added to a few more of my Japanese prints.

Just because I need to write more, and because this was so dang epic, here’s a video of an amazing Rube Goldberg machine made with the Half Life 2 engine and Gary’s Mod:

Yeah I know… I’ve barely touched my blog in the past month. Every other day or so I think of a good post to write, and then I just never do it. >_<

Have I mentioned how much I love the Japanese news? Tonight’s headline: a monkey was found in a park by a high school student. The monkey climbed on his arm, then his head, then he decided to take it home. That was the news. Front page material. It’s like that every day here, too. Watching the daily news in Japan is about as good as watching Bob Ross painting.

The rainy season started here today. It’s hot as a gorilla’s grundle and twice as wet. Yuck… I’ve got to rely on my air conditioner from now on, as I really despise waking up sweaty and getting out of bed into a humid, sticky room.

Let’s see what else is new… well, I finally broke down and bought a Japanese Wii! It’s really awesome, although a little difficult to control without English. I got Wii Sports and Mario Kart Wii, which are totally awesome! I love the controller. Tennis and boxing are pretty fun. I’d love to get Metroid, Mario Galaxy, and Zelda as well, but I’m afraid of getting any RPGs or games that involve lots of reading. For now, just action games for me.

I’ve been painting a lot lately — both oil and digital — which is partially why I haven’t been writing in my blog. I guess that’s a good thing. I’ll post some new paintings soon. Oh! My pizza just finished! That’s all the update I can manage for now. I’m starved!

A few weeks ago in one of my classes, I taught a newspaper article about ways to improve your sleep. One of the points suggested using white noise, like a fan, to help you sleep. Ceiling vents here are pretty common — you know, just like the vents you see in showers to keep the fog down, or in bathrooms to keep the poo smell down.

So for the past two weeks I’d been sleeping with my ceiling vent on — and let me tell you, it’s probably improved my dream retention 1000%. My dreams have been so vivid and so bizarre, and I’ve been able remember them throughout the next day. The problem was my sleeps were less refreshing. Probably because I had been running around in my sleep, diving off of exploding cruise ships, escaping US and Iranian submarines, punching sharks, getting tangled in jellyfish, padding in an escape raft to Canada and then trekking my way through the wilderness, battling grizzlies… And that was only one night! I’ve been having some serious adventures, but I’ve been so tired. Even my coworkers noticed.

Now I’m facing a dilemma. Keep my awesome dreams and remain tired throughout the day, or go back to ordinary, fading dreams in order to feel better throughout the day. I’m in a pinch… What would you do if you were me?

Totally cool. Weezer’s new video is like a tribute to the internet. How many of these memes can you identify? You know, it really makes it feel like the thousands of wasted hours were worth it.

Who am I kidding, they totally were.