ビーーーーフ！ ・ BEEEEEEEEEEF!

Much more coherent & interesting English below...

まず、皆さんのバースディメッセやコメントやメールをありがとうね。本当に、本当に最高な誕生日だった。

注意：以下は正直・・・ちょっと長いっす。書いた時に頭はグルグルしていたからちょっとバラバラな日記になっちゃいました。orz

土曜日: 天気は晴れて、ちょっとだけポカポカで、昼からMさんと一緒に出かけました。最初マックに行った。

ずーと前から「メガ・マック」を試したかったけど各店の毎日売れる限定があるからいつも「すみませんが今日はもう売り切れです」。今日もなければフレッシュネス・バーガーに行こうと決めて、一か八かやってみた。

さすが誕生日でしょう。まだありました！ラッキー！

ジューシーで、かなりボリュームあり・・・ニク～ゥッ！って感じ。食べ終わったら100％満足満腹マンでしたもん。

次、今年の誕生日プレゼントとして、Mさんは任天堂Wiiを買いあげたかったから大型箱型電気屋さんに行ってみた。無し。次の店もない。実は旭川にでこにもないっす、そんなに大人気だ。

Mさんはちょっとガッカリだったが僕は全然問題なかった・・・だって、僕にとって一日中一緒にいてくれるのは十分嬉しかった。Wiiは後でいつでも買えば良い、そしてゲームやプレゼントより一緒に過ごせる時間の方が大事です。：）

とりあえず、Wiiを買うことにギブアップして、大きいショッピング・センターに行って、大好きな輸入食品店に立ち寄った。この店に行くといつも買いすぎますが今日は誕生日だから特に買いすぎました。

なんと：

• ベーグル　（！）
• 高級ポテトチップス　（！！）
• ハワイのコナ・コーヒー　（！！！）

ワウ!

しかもそれだけじゃなくて、夜にMさんはバースディ・ディナーを作ってくれました！僕の誕生日の為にMさんはいつもステーキを料理してくれるけど今年は本当に特別でした。

はい。神戸牛でした。

焼きすぎにしたくなかったからちょっとレイヤだったが全然問題なかった。口の中で味はシュワ～っとして、ものすごく美味しかった・・・が、去年の誕生日食べた美瑛牛に比べて、そんに変わらないかもしれない。やっぱり北海道は最高だべ。；）

日曜日：完全「アメリカ人」の気分でした。お父さんからもらったスーパー・ボールを見たり、ビールを飲んだり、ポテトチップスを食べた。

外から普通の教員住宅みたいかもしれないけど中はやっぱり時々「プチアメリカ」だね。

コメントは下　・　ホーム　・　メール

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First off, a big thanks to everyone for all the birthday messages, mails & comments. It was defo one of the better birthdays I've had in a while!

Secondly, my apologies but this is a bit of a long post. Lots o' brain farts and disconnected thoughts went into this one, so...well, you've been warned. ;)

Saturday: For the first time in a while, nice & sunny and even a tad bit warm as M & I set out during the early afternoon. First stop: Micky D's.

I'd been wanting to try the big "Mega Mac" (a Big Mac w/ 4 instead of 2 beef patties) for a while, but supposedly each store has a limit to how many they can sell each day, and everytime I've tried to buy one it's always been, "Sorry, we've sold out for the day." We figured we'd still give it a shot though, and if no Mega Macs, we'd head to Freshness Burger.

No sell outs today, baby! Yes, birthday luck was on my side and I was finally able to get my grubby little paws on giant McFat burger. Beef...salt...cheese...grease....*slobber*

Next up was a trip to our local big box electronics store. M had been bugging me forever as to what I wanted for my birthday, and I couldn't really think of anything other than a Nintendo Wii. Surprisingly enough though, she said "OK" and we were all set to get our Wii on...until we got to the store, that is.

Turns out that nobody has any Wiis. Not the big box retailers, not the malls, not Toys R Us and none on line. Nada. Gee, thanks for hyping us up with all the commercials for nothing, Nintendo.

M was pretty bummed out as she really wanted to get it for me but I certainly didn't mind that much. I mean, we can pick one up later, right? Besides, as corny & mushy as it may sound, just being able to spend a nice Saturday afternoon out together was enough to make me happy.

Giving up on trying to find Nintendo's latest hell spawn, we headed over to Asahikawa's big shopping mall and to my favorite foreign foods store. We always end up spending way to much money in this place, but seeing as a) it was my birthday and b) I think M wanted to make up for not being able to get me a Wii, we really went whole hog this time. Our shopping list included:

• Bagels (!) ⇒ Always a favorite, and a must buy when we can find 'em
• Terra Potato Chips (!!) ⇒ Expensive, but the best chips on Earth & worth every yen
• Hawaiian Kona Coffee (!!!) ⇒ Oh God...so good, but you don't even wanna know how much we ended up paying for a measly 200g

After a quick coffee @ Tully's (Cause Starbucks is overrated) we were off to the grocery store to pick up supplies for my big birthday dinner. Last year M fixed me this amazing Biei beef steak that was out of this world and we were planning on having it again this year, but fate was to throw a bit of a wrench in the works. Turns out that that they only had one Biei steak, so that was a no go. What ever were we to do? Well, we just had to bite the bullet and go with the alternative...

Friggin' Kobe beef baby!

Yeah, that Kobe beef...the one where they massage the cows and feed 'em beer so that the meat ends up marbled like you wouldn't believe. Like to the point where M said that as she was putting it in the pan to cook, it started melting in her hand just from body heat.

With a piece of beef like this that you can really only afford to eat maybe once a year if you save up for it, we sure as hell didn't wanna overcook it. It turned out a bit rare, but that certainly wasn't a problem for me, as the second it went in my mouth it...just...wow, hard to describe. If you can imagine a slowly expanding cloud of the most amazing beef you've ever tasted multiplied by about 50 inside your mouth, that kinda comes close.

To be really & truly honest, it wasn't that much different from the Biei beef we had last year, and I think M was a bit disappointed, but I was sure as hell a happy boy. :)

Sunday: Day 2 of the big birthday weekend celebration and "Manly American Man" day. *grin*

Seriously, I felt more American on Sunday than I have in a long, long time. And why would that be?

1. I towed M's car out of the ice & charged her battery since she hasn't driven it in so long (ok, admittedly nothing to do w/ being American, but certainly manly, nonetheless)
2. I was finally able to watch the Super Bowl tape that my Dad sent me, complete with the commercials (although sadly the "beard combover" Sierra Mist spot was the only real winner this year)
3. I had a Corona & ate my ridiculously expensive Terra Yukon Gold potato chips with real cheddar cheese & Tennessee Sunshine hot sauce.

Oh yeah...sure it may look like your normal Japanese teachers housing on the outside, but every now & then it's Little America on the inside, no doubt about it.

Wonder what next year'll bring?

Happy Birthday To Me!

今日はさらにおっさんになっちゃいました。

そうだべ・・・もう32才だ。

実は時差を考慮したら、明日の午前5時半くらい（日本の時間）まで31だけどまあ・・・十分近いだ。

今日は何の誕生日プレゼントをもらう？♪　もしかしてまた憎悪発言のコメントかな～

Well, today I slip yet even further into the depths of middle age. Yup. I'm now 32.

I mean, technically with the time difference & whatnot I won't officially be 32 until 5:30AM-ish (JST) tomorrow morning, but oh well...close enough. ;)

Wonder what kinda birthday present I'll get this year? Another hate-speech comment perhaps? *grin*

Me, Part II

Ok, so continuing w/ yesterdays self-intro, if for no other reason than to entertain myself on an otherwise boring day in the office and maybe one day be able to Google myself...

Things That Make Me Happy: Open source software, non-DRM'd media, good porn, My Dilbert desk calendar, my coozie turned pen holder from my brother-in-law that says, "A quaint little drinking village with a fishing problem. ISLAMORADA" (boy, that was a fun one to explain in Japanese to coworkers), the sound of kids laughing, q-tips (yes, I have an unhealthy obsession sticking things in my ears), snowboarding, the beginning of summer in Hokkaido, salt & vinegar Pringles, import food shops.

Things That Make Me Sad: Proprietary bullshit software, DRM, bad porn, Having 6 classes of munchkins in a single day followed by a 2 hour baseball practice, fighting w/ my wife, slack jawed Japanese idiots who point at me with eyes as big as quarters and yell, "FOREIGNER!!!!!!"

My Weird Quirks:

1) I hate spiders & flour with a passion. Some might do a cartoon-like double take "does not compute" on this one, but lemme try to explain. First off, spiders may be beneficial, in that they eat other bugs & whatnot, but why must they decide to come into my house? On top of that, the spiders in Hokkaido tend to grow into these evil gigantic monstrosities the size of rats that look like they could easily devour small animals, children & little old ladies. I literally feel like puking whenever I happen to find one. Secondly, flour. I have no idea what dark seeded childhood memory this stems from, but flour is just...wrong. Ya know how some people can't stand the thought of finger nails on a chalkboard (not me, BTW, I could do that all day long, even though some people reading this may be cringing right now)? Well, for me, that's flour, in all of its forms. Even the thought of flour gives me goose bumps. *shudder* Yes, that goes for powdered sugar, corn starch, chalk (kinda sux to be me, seeing that I ended up as an English teacher, huh?) and any other powdery substance, too. The thing that really bites the big one is that since Hokkaido is so cold in the winter, the only kind of snow we get is the really fluffy, powdery kind. Great for boarding, but ya know what that stuff sounds and feels like when walking on it? Fucking flour.

2) I'm a weather junkie. Seriously, I check the weather forecast on my phone like 20 times a day. Why, other than the fact that I probably have OCD? Will the weather forecast really change in the 5 minutes since I last checked it? Hey, it could happen! Maybe it's just that I got used to checking the radar last summer when I prayed every day that it'd rain so baseball practice would have to be canceled. Yes, I have issues.

3) Not so much a quirky thing, but somewhat related to 2) and as mentioned in one o' my posts from last year is that I help coach little league baseball to 2nd & 3rd graders here in town. I played baseball as a kid from the time I was 5 until high school, so like the dork I am, I figured, "Hey, that'd be a fun way to get involved in my community!" Now, you have to realize that baseball in Japan is sorta like the evil twin of baseball in the US. There's a really great book by a guy named Robert Whiting called You Gotta Have Wa that explains it better than I ever could (and in convenient book form, even!), but in essence, baseball, and sport in Japan in general is the modern day evolution of bushido, or "samurai spirit". Boys of summer? HA! No, Japanese kids practice the whole live long year round, baby! The guy I coach with is a bit of a nutter, but at least he's better than a lot of Japanese coaches, who, in an attempt to create "fighting spirit" don't let their players drink water during 8 hour daily practices in the middle of summer or make their pitchers throw 300 pitches a day until their arms fall off. This is what we in the real world tend to refer to as "a crock of bullshit" that only wears kids out mentally & physically by the time they hit high school. No, I'm not bitter! Argh. Think I may have to table this topic for a "Things I Hate/Love About Japan" post as it's only serving to piss me off right now. My appologies, er apollogies...um, apologies. Why the hell can I never spell that word right? See what Japanese baseball has done to me?

4) I can never seem to keep up a blog for more than a few weeks. I've tried it both in English & Japanese and it never seems to work out very well. I even have an account on Mixi, a sorta Japanese MySpace (with much nicer layouts...and BTW, why does every single MySpace page that I've ever laid eyes on look like it was coded by a crack addled chimp?) that my wife got me hooked on, but wouldn't ya know it, after 3 months, I was burnt out, dude. This whole re-emergence o' bloggery after a 6-month hiatus makes me feel like I'm some mullet-headed redneck telling his girlfriend, "C'mawn baby, gimme 'nother chance. Ah prawmis ah won't hit ya no mowr." Who knows? Maybe now that winter's finally got around to making Hokkaido it's bitch again I'll be able to keep it up for a while until the snow finally begins to thaw in July or so...

Ok, guess that's it my little exploration into online narcissistic self-gratification for now. Too many other things going on in my head right now that I just simply must write/read/blather on about.

Time for the twice a year posting...

Ok, so I may have made a little teensie weensie mistake in posting the addy o' this little read and even less updated page. See, just by total dumb luck, I found a really cool blog by some Auzzie chick named The Hot Librarian. Long story as to how I found it (more on that later), but in anycase, she's totally off her tits and laugh out loud, snorting-milk-through-nose funny with the kind of dirty minded, sophomoric humor that I thoroughly enjoy, so I thought it'd just be a grand idea to leave a little comment on one of her posts...with the address for this page. Oops.

Even though I seriously doubt that anybody would be so inclined to visit my acre & a half of the virtual equivalent of 20 miles off Al Gore's Info Superhighway in the middle of Wyoming, I feel like I have to clean house like a madman, as you know...I can't let people see how I really live, afterall...

Seeing as I live in BFE Hokkaido, Japan, and seeing as I haven't written a post in like, oh, half a year or so (me & keeping up a regular blog, either in Japanese or English seem to not get along), and seeing as there might be people that take a wrong turn off the expressway and end up lost here (HA! yeah, right), and in the grand tradition of the Japanese self-introduction, and in the grand tradition of using entirely too many "ands" and (Hey! There's another one!) run-on sentences, here's a little bit about me, dear unwitting layer on of eyes of my prose:

Name: Hokkaido Hillbilly. No, I'm not an actual slack jawed yokel, and no, I'm not from Arkansas or have horribly bad buck teeth, but yes, I do live in the great white Northern tundra o' Japan and yes, I am from a southern state that rhymes with "Ennessee."

Age: 31 & change. I refuse to be labeled w/ the moniker of "middle aged" until I'm 40, & besides, I do way too many dumb things to be thought of as an adult. As you might gleam from the "About Me" blurb to the upper right, I'm a Pisces (and no, I DO NOT enjoy long walks on the beach...the beaches in Hokkaido are toxic waste hell holes and that shit is a bitch to walk on), born in the year of the rabbit (i.e. I have stupid, dumb luck like you wouldn't believe), and even though none of you have a clue who she is, according to Kazuko Hosogi (my wife's favorite astrologer, i.e. I watch her on TV, too) I'm an "Emperor (-)"...whatever that means.

Marital Status: As noted above, happily married to a wonderful, if somewhat quirky Japanese woman from Sapporo for the past 2 1/2 years. Sorry girls, I know you're all bummed out now. Yes, that's sarcasm talking. I'm so lucky to be married to this woman that it's ridiculous (especially seeing as I had a bad case of fear-of-commitment-itis during the 4 years we dated). I'm nowhere near Hunchback o' Notre Dame status, but I am one o' those "how the hell did he end up w/ her?" kinda guys, so I'm a pretty happy bunny...when she doesn't beat me *grin*

Job (1): Shougakkou Senzoku Eigo Shidoujyoshu. For all of you that don't speak furin' talk, that's just a fancy Japanese way of saying "Paid Dancing Monkey for small Japanese children", i.e. Elementary School English Teacher. I mainly teach at 3 elementary schools, with occasional stints at the town kindergarten (cuteness personified to the point where you just wanna puke) and Jr. high (which I somewhat dread going to. Was I really that much of a dork at that age? Wait...don't answer that question...) One school I teach at out in the boonies has 9 kids. Yeah, you read that right. Nine children in the entire school (would really like to use a certain NSFW word between "entire" and "school" that rhymes w/ "ducking" right now, but family members may be reading...my apologies). A 1st grader, a 2nd grader, two 3rd graders, two 4th graders, no 5th graders & three 6th graders. They show up barefoot in their cute little overalls & buck teeth and I larn 'em sum Anglish. No, seriously though, their great kids, and it's my favorite school to go to, even though it has no wireless Internet access. Kinda sucks big ol' donkey balls that the powers that be're gonna shut the place down & ship the kids to the big (350 ankle biters), new school in town. Sigh.

Job (2): Translator/Proofreader for a media company in Sapporo, but...shhhh ...don't tell anybody! It's sortuva no-no to moonlight according to my teaching gig contract, but then again, nobody that I work w/ here in town actually speaks English, so I guess I can blab it out as much as I want to here! Score!

Time in Japan: Way too damn long. I would think that almost 7 years would be enough to pay for my crimes to humanity by now. I wasn't always here in Crazy Demented Watermelon, Rice & Freaky Cave That Looks Like Mouldy Bread Town, mind you. I was in slowly, but ever so surely dying Glider & Cosmos Flower City for 2 years before that and We Like to Ride Sleighs & Whip Big Horses City as a translator/interpreter/"internationalizer o' the community" for 3 years before that. I really wish that I could live in Airplane & Shroom Town, if for no other reason than that they have a kick-ass town mascot. Then again, that town's only about a 10 minute drive from here, so maybe that's close enough.

What does this say about me? 1) Yes, I am a masochist. 2) I've been here almost as long as I was in college (the best 7 years o' my life for a double major and 2 minors!) 3) Is this some sorta pattern emerging here? 4) #'s 2 & 1 are probably related somehow.

*We interrupt this blog to bring you a public service announcement: Yes, I speak Japanese & can get myself into & out of trouble quite easily in said devil's tongue, but take a look at the "hobbies" part of the "All About Me" section. Although you'll find that I have quite an interest in females of the Asian persuasion (hey, I married one after all, although sadly not involved in porn), you'll notice nothing about manga or anime or any kind o' foolishness of the sort (as my Dad would say). Sazae-San is about as far as I go down that path, which is sad enough as it is. I am enough of a geek as it is with computers, video games and home theatre equipment. I do not need to "bring it up a notch" to the all out maid cafe and otaku level. If that's what you're into and Pikachu melts your butter, more power to ya brothers and/or sisters, but please don't ask me about it, for a) I could really give a rat's ass and b) um...see a). :)

Ok, now where were we...oh...Best. Movies. Evar: Blazing Saddles, Trainspotting, Tampopo, Lost In Translation (although if you've never been to/lived here in Happy Land, you probably won't get it), Osohshiki (The Funeral), Tonari no Tottoro (My Neighbor Tottoro in English. Stop laughing. Now. And no, I'm not gay and even though it's technically anime, it's a kick ass movie, so shut up).


Alright, all the time we have for now boys & girls. Translations from my double-secret probation part-time gig await, and as my sweet little southern grandma used to say, "They laws!" this has turned out one helluva long post. Stay tuned for more, where I'll regale you with more on life as a token white guy.

Boys be ambitious, onigiri be delicious,



HH ;)