train

bikes

i took these pics of bikes in Vietnam last christmas.

crazy dave

this is dave, my semi-adoptive chinese half cousin from Boston by way of Bellingham. normally when u think of the word crazy, u think bad things. crazy drivers, crazy parents, crazy dreams.

when i think of crazy dave, all i get are warm fuzzy feelings. warm fuzzy get drunk walk around wasted type feelings. im gonna go visit him and cassie in boston/new york this spring.

christmas

went home for the holidays. its always a mental strain to make myself go, but once im there i always enjoy it. It was super snowy there this year. i mean....seattle has gotten a few snowy days this year so far, but nothing compared to wenatchee.

Studio Ghibli Museum

i love Miyazaki movies. Porco Rosso. Howl's Moving Castle. Nausicca. all of his films are beautiful to watch.

Sera got us tickets to go to the Studio Ghibli Museum in Tokyo. luckily she purchased them in the states, because we were told there was a huge waiting line to order them in japan. some people told us they had waited over a year to get in.

this robot in the video clip is a life sized replica of the robot that guards the floating city in Laputa (Castle in the Sky). Miyazaki designed the museum himself, and intended the public to "get lost" within its walls. each room had something animation related. my favorite was seeing all the hand painted backgrounds for the movies pinned up on the walls. they were alot smaller than i imagined they would be. there was a mini theater that played a brand new short based on the flying cat bus from My Neighbor Totoro and the tickets to the theater were actual film cels that we got to keep.

after touring the museum, we went to the gift shop where we all got our fill of Miyazaki souvenirs. i got a cool clock in the shape of the guardian robot's head.

back in the day

This picture was taken roughly 27 years ago. its weird how much we've all changed in that time. im the chubby one in the middle with the blue jacket.

i took this picture and made a t-shirt out of it in highschool. check out the moon boots and mismatched plaid...!

treefall

seattle had a windstorm the other nite, and i woke up to see that this tree had been been blown over outside my apartment. it doesnt really look like it from the photos but the tree is huge. the tree trunk itself looked as if it could have withstood a head on collision with a range rover. sometimes i park my car where it fell, but i reminded myself not to park near any trees that nite.





i also saw several uprooted stop signs, and two traffic lights were out near my work. i drove by interbay golf course and all their trees were leaning to one side as well, and on the west side of queen anne, there was a big mudslide that flowed onto several unfortunate houses and a couple businesses.

ShiBoooyaa....!

we took this picture in the Shibuya district in Tokyo. the photo booth was inside an arcade just like we have here in the U.S. but the odd thing about the place was that they didnt allow any men inside unless they were accompanied by a woman. jesse got kicked out when he tried to go back alone. i was told this was because they dont want creepy men coming into their establishment and try and pick up on little girls.






one day in osaka, when we were sitting down on the ground in the hallway of a big shopping center, our friend david, whom we were staying with, told us that if a cop walked by we would be told to stand up. apparently guys sit or crouch on the ground to look up girls mini skirts.



this banner was in one of the trains we travelled on. NO BAD TOUCH...!

all the heads

yukie, shu-ha, RAHIEM!, chie, jesse, tony, and me combining powers. photo: jesse peterson


one of the best things about travelling to japan was catching up with all the people i hadnt seen forever. it's been five years since id seen yukie and chie. rahiem visits seattle on occassion, but it was good to see him in tokyo.

pool hall junkies

Kyoto is a chill place. it is a fraction of the size of Tokyo and alot easier to navigate, not having to rely on the trains to get around the city. the second day we were there, we got caught in a huge rainstorm while visiting temples, and decided to take refuge in a shopping mall downtown. the mall itself was huge...at least three city blocks long with tiny alleyways and corridors branching out from the main walkway.

we saw a sign for Billiards and went in to shoot some pool and get some drinks. turned out the place was closed, but luckily on our way back to the main shopping area, sera saw a tiny sign down a dark alleyway for a different pool hall, so we made our way in. the place itself was small....dimly lit with only six pool tables. there were only three people inside, an old married couple and a younger pool player, all in the corner watching a tiny tv displaying a video of a trick shot pool player. as we entered they looked at us as if they were wondering if we were lost or had taken a wrong turn.

we ordered a few beers (i think they actually gave us their beers, having not actually had any to sell), and started shooting some pool. the room itself was pretty standard fair, except for several framed news articles and pictures on the wall in the corner, depicting a legendary trick shot pool player named Yoshikazu Kimura on the covers of various publications. on a nearby table, last weeks' japanese Newsweek had an article on the same man, claiming he was the best in the world.


newsweek



after a few minutes (and more than a few beers) we looked over at what was playing on the video that the others were watching. it was a collection of video clips from tv shows of that same trick shot pool player, making incredibly impossible shots. it wasnt long until we noticed that the guy on the video was the same man in the magazine articles, and in fact was the same man who stood there with his wife, watching himself on the videos. we went up and asked him "is that...you?" he nodded and asked us in perfect english "yes. you want to see?"


the master




Kimura proceeded for the next hour, to set up and sink some of the craziest shots ive ever seen, most of which were made first try. we all broke out our cameras and sat back, watched in awe, and drank his beer.


the master



he even set up shots for sera, and instructed her in the ancient japanese art of kicking ass.


breakshot



afterwards, we got our pictures taken with him and sat and talked for a while. we told him we were from seattle and he told us he had visited a few times. he went and rummaged thru an old stack of papers and produced two greeting card sized invitations. the first read: "you are invited to the first annual World Trick Shot Pool Player competition, featuring Mike Massey and Yoshikazu Kimura". Mike Massey is the 2000, 2002, and 2003 World Artistic Pool champion, the 2000 and 2001 Trick Shot Magic champion, and the 2003 WPA World Artistic Pool Jump Shots champion. he then showed us the second invitation he received, dated three years later. it read: "you are invited to the fourth annual World Trick Shot Pool Player competition, featuring Yoshikazu Kimura and Mike Massey". the fact that his name came first on the second invitation blew us away.

we said our goodbye's and paid for the table and drinks and walked away....in disbelief. what were the odds of us coming to some tiny back alley pool hall in kyoto, only to meet the worlds best trickshot pool player? we took it as a good omen that the rest of our trip was going to be dope.

doodles

bodies

i went and saw the Bodies Exhibit downtown. it's two parts interesting, one part creepy, and one part WTF.

the exhibit is made up of different rooms with real human bodies (and parts therein). it starts off with the human skeleton.......nothing too shocking, as ive seen these in health class and in the doctors office. upon closer examination tho, you can see the muscle fibers and a few blood stains upon the bones. and thats when it hits you that these are real bones that used to belong inside real people.

from there on out, it got more...involved. nude specimens are displayed cut EXACTLY in half right down the middle so u can see all the interenal organs and layers of the human body. cut up sections of the brain, showing clearly the pituitary gland, cerebral cortex, the thalamus, and every other thing you've only heard about in books. whole bodies were shown with skin stripped off, showing all the muscleature of the human frame. alot of the exhibits were really kind of beautiful, others were downright puzzling.

there were displays specifically for diseased body organs. did u know that for every pack of cigarettes u smoke, u lose about two hours off your life? it showed a cancerous lung as well as a heart riddled with heart disease, and its wasnt a pretty site. its amazing how much stuff is in the human body, from tiny nerves to the large intestine, that needs to work in unison for a human to function properly. all i know is that i never want a stroke, cancer, or even a stubbed toe.

the controversial part of the exhibit is that the bodies themselves are said to be former prisoners of war from china. its not quite clear how "legal" the channels were in obtaining these specimens. some of the bodies were shown in....somewhat disrespectful poses, holding tennis rackets, giving each other high five's, or playing basketball (shown above). regardless of this fact tho, it was an interesting exhibit, and did a good job of reminding me how fragile and complex we are.

Playing with your Wii

i went over to tonys house and played his new Nintendo Wii. Wiiii....!! id seen it down in LA two years in a row at E3, but this was the first hands on gaming id gotten to do. i was very impressed.

i tried out Wii Sports, a compilation of games (tennis, boxing, bowling, golf, baseball) that is really just a demo of what the Wii remote is capable of doing. the graphics are very basic, just general shapes and bodies. even so, i had fun trying out the games with the controller, especially boxing. in that demo, you hold the two controllers (nunchucks) in each hand and box as u normally would and the Wii recognizes the depth and location of your hands. you can juke, slip punches, do jabs, rights, uppercuts....pretty much anything u can do in real boxing, except lose calories, work up a sweat, and lose weight.

i also watched jesse play the new Zelda (Twilight Princess), and even tho i wasnt blown away by the graphics, the gameplay looked really fun. running around as a wolf, using your Wii remote to shoot arrows, it all looked good.

i dont think i'd buy a Wii....just yet. right now it seems like something i'd play in a group setting, but maybe eventually as the library grows i'll pick one up.

david gemmell

i found out the other day that my favorite author had died, having actually passed away July 28th, after a failed recovery from heart bypass surgery.

i discovered this fact after doing some research on his new book entitled Troy: Shield of Thunder, his second of three books in his Troy series, the first of which, Troy: The Lord of the Silver Bow, i absolutely loved. i moped around work all day after i found out he had passed on, saddened and a bit angry. he was only 57, and had really only begun hitting his stride as an author. out of the 30 books he had published since 1985, all have remained in print.

ive read all his works, save White Knight, Black Swan, which he wrote under the pseudoname Ross Harding. His new book does not get released here in the states until this spring, but i ordered three of them from the UK the morning i read about his demise. i got all giddy when the package came in the mail yesterday....only to feel empty again. his wife Stella will be completing the last book of Troy, as she had been helping him plot out the series since its inception in 2003.

David Gemmell, you were an inspiration.

*bows*