it's been rainin' for da past 10 hrs!! aaarrgghhh....

anyhow, most of my free time lately has been studyin' up for da big 20 team, $800 grand prize draft this saturday. the latest big trade was j.magloire for d.mason. gonna have to make adjustments to my draft sheet.

the chiba lotte marines won game 4 last nite to sweep the hanshin tigers in the japan world series. bobby valentine becomes the first foreign manager to ever lead a team to the pennant in the 70 year history of japanese baseball.

kaz out...

a new addition, bday dinner, circus, wifi network, fantasy football, japan series

just want to announce

ronan wong
7.7 lbs, 22 in.

congrats to russ, arlene & bryson


so on fri nite, had 2 buddy's bday dinner @ sakura. good times, met one of da guys' old buddies. had way too much nihon shuu. almost got into a fight.

took chinami & ai to the circus on sunday morning. it was pretty interestin'. saw some things for the first time. can't believe they had a frickin' giraffe!?

finally set up my wifi network. had a little bit of problems but got it all worked out. tri also helped me get started on bittorrent stuff.

got lucky this past week. played hayame (da #1 in our league) but LT2, mcgahee & palmer didn't have good weeks.

the chiba lotte marines are now 2-0 against the hanshin tigers in the japan world series. tonite is game 3 @ hanshin.

not sure how this guy did it, but he got front row runnin' on a mac mini.

in da news:

- pretty big (6.5) earthquake last nite. phone lines were tied up for like 15 min. luckily, nothin' fell. click here for more...

- da nba has a new dress code in effect

not sure why the players think this is such a big deal. it's not about race. it's part of their job. when the people who pay you tell you there's a dress code....what do you do? sure you can complain, but in the end, you gonna have to go thru with it, no? just my $0.02

- apple had 3 announcements

upgraded power macs (dual dual processors)
slightly upgraded powerbooks
new digital photo tool called aperture

all the teachers (includin' myself) had a 3 hr. computer trainin' yesterday. we gots a lot of new toys that i'm excited about using.

looking back

today is the 16 year anniversary of the loma prieta earthquake. on oct. 17th @ 1704, a 7.1 on the richter scale earthquake shook northern california for 15 seconds. at that time, game 3 of the battle of the bay world series was takin' place @ candlestick. i was playin' football outside w/my buddy jon. my father told me durin' previous earthquakes that he could see the ground move in wave-like manner. i never believed him cuz a: i never saw it before & b: i was always inside durin' all the other earthquakes. however, this earthquake was the first one i was outside. light posts were swayin', cars were jumpin' and yes, the street became rollin' waves. tho it only lasted a short amount of time, it seemed like it lasted forever. didn't realize how much damage it caused until i watched the news. one of the bay bridge sections collapsed and the a big portion of the 2 level cypress freeway structure became one. for the general population, sept 11th and dec 7th are days that everyone remembers. for me, oct. 17th is also a day that i will never forget.


in da news...

- rocky VI!?!

- the chiba lotte marines go to the japan series (japan's equivalent to the world series) for the first time in 31 years! they go up against the hanshin tigers.


da past week...

had a great time hanging out with a friend from back home. went 'round my hood and ended up in tokyo on da last day. it kinda sucked cuz the weather was rainy. discovered some grubbin' food in one of the shinjuku food courts as well as not to drink @ bars in nice hotels. another thing i learned was that i could be vegetarian if i really wanted to...however i don't "really" want to.

finally got to play madden '06. kicked b's @$$! there was a pretty big quake that occured that shaked b's place pretty well. ricky came over to kick it. we chilled and hit up the famous yakitori place. since da 15th to the end of the month, all the yakitori is 50% off!!! so we went nutz!!! 3 ppl = ￥７６００, and that's after the 50% off!?! ate way too much but refused the ochazuke for the first time.

so, i'm officially in this high stakes nba fantasy league. currently there are 18 teams. draft if on da 29th. gonna be a fun & competitive season. won both my matchups in fantasy football.

kaz out...

apple does it again

new imacs are pretty dope. same price but totally upgraded. mighty mouse, new gpu, built in isight and front row w/remote.




new video ipod. pretty dope. a lot thinner than the 4th gens. same price. good thing i waited. think i want a 30 gig ipod now.




with the new vid ipod comes a new itunes 6.

what's on my mind

the furutas left today. our circle is slowly startin' to migrate back to cali...

hmmm....big announcement should be comin' from s.jobs tomorrow.

yanks lose = me happy! (down wit da evil empire) i think st. louis deserves to win the pennant this year.

still debatin' whether or not to join this high stakes, 20 man fantasy bball league. should be really fun and competitive.

went to see the leonardo da vinci exhibit in roppongi this past weekend. they actually had one of his manuscripts (the codex leicester; one of them that was written in mirror) on display. it was in an almost completely dark room and since the ink and paper are so old, they could only illuminate them for about 2min @ a time. so it made goin' back and forth from about 20 displays quite difficult. this exhibit is special in the sense that it only appears in one country, once per year. the owner is none other than mr. william gates. ;b

met up with dean the past weekend. showed him around harajuku/omotesando/shibuya. took him to the bomb @$$ yakitori place. drank some whiskey @ this pub in shinjuku and then chilled with a chu hi.

chill week at work. started my phone lessons. kinda trippy but definitely an interestin' experience.


in da news...

- some awesome dunks

- some sick soccer moves

- robotech: protoculture edition

- ceatec 2005

- blu ray vs. hd dvd

- ipod tax comin to japan???

- kddi au, the 2nd largest cell phone carrier in japan is havin' a contest to find 2 girls to deliver the news via their "ez channel" for mobile phones

- an interestin' fact (taken from the espn.com mix podcast)

20% of golf retail sales come from japan

fantasy football update

Rank Team W-L-T Pct Pts Streak Waiver Moves
1. Roid Rage 4-1-0 .800 500.74 W-4 8 11
2. Feo With A Vengeance 4-1-0 .800 491.29 L-1 3 16
3. kazimoto 4-1-0 .800 455.61 W-3 12 8
4. Spam Licks 4-1-0 .800 412.41 W-2 7 6
5. Jookie's Cheddar 3-2-0 .600 460.72 L-1 6 6
6. Killa Panda 3-2-0 .600 428.49 L-1 10 6
7. Pogi's Twerps 3-2-0 .600 422.79 W-1 1 -
8. DAB'S RAMS 2-3-0 .400 384.68 W-1 5 5
9. Sofa Kings 1-4-0 .200 415.00 L-4 11 8
10. Mac's Fridge Raiders 1-4-0 .200 374.83 L-3 9 14
11. Baka_Laka_Daka_St. 1-4-0 .200 367.92 W-1 2 19
12. Pathetic Bitches 0-5-0 .000 377.27 L-5 4 10

speakin' of sports, if ya'll are in japan and want some koo sportin' gear, check this page out!

so, it seems as tho i'm gettin' some comment spams lately. just turned on word verification. so screw all you coment spammers!

in da news...

- not sure what s.jobs is gonna talk bout on 10.12, but rumors are sayin' a video ipod and/or upgraded powermacs and powerbooks.

- ntt docomo's prototype 4g service

Officials from NTT DoCoMo say the phones could receive data at 100 megabits per second on the move and at up to a gigabit per second while static. At this rate, an entire DVD could be downloaded within a minute.

- toyota brings out angled dual display gps


- 10.11: robo cafe to open in osaka

- for those of ya'll that have a 15" or 17" powerbook, here's whatcha need to span onto 2 screens


well...it's thursday and it's been a long week. had our city's annual teacher's conference yesterday. was able to gather quite a bit of information however not sure if it's gonna work with my school.

had dinner with megu last nite. went to this one french/italian place in funabashi. was pretty good and the owner is was pretty koo.

today was the speech contest. still waitin' to hear how my kids did. also curious bout my students from my previous schools.

UPDATE: just found out that my 9th grader placed 2nd in the speech contest! i thought his speech was a little short but we worked A LOT on it. just goes to show that hard work really pays off!

til next time...

kaz out

sometimes you just have to...

today, durin' 3rd period (the rowdiest 8th grade class), i had to unload the fury on one of the distractive students. i gave him many chances to get his ish together. first, just ignored him. second, stopped my lesson and gave him the stare down. it was only about 5 min later that kid decided to test my patience and receive strike 3. i raised my voice to about a 75% level and released the anger. i was debatin' whether or not to speak in japanese but it has been a long day already and i was tired. yamamoto sensei was kind enough to translate what i said to the boy but nonetheless, my point got across. didn't have a problem with him for the next 30 min.

btw....

just wanted to give bday shouts out to don & cal, 33 & 29, respectively.

da weekend

a pretty packed weekend i must say. chilled with the ikko crew on fri nite. since chi-mama was there, the topic of conversation was a little, hmmm.....i mean A LOT edgier. it was really interestin' cuz i've never been with the fam when this subject was talked about.

next day, woke up hella early to get to 運動公園 for the city jhs relay marathon. my school's girls placed 4th and the boys placed 6th. it was good to see my students & teachers from my previous schools. my current school's pta chairman gave me a ride to 天沼公園 for the foreign relations culture festival. got to see all of my pops' friends and grub on food from: peking, korea, indonesia, phillipines, etc.


then i headed out to tokyo for bball. only about 15 ppl came out but we got to play a lot of games. my team lost the first 2 games but we came back and won 3 in a row. we lost the last game tho and me crampin' up didn't help. i got pretty banged up. i bruised my wrist, my rt. foot is hurtin', got all these black/blue spots and am totally sore. after bball, headed over to da tashiro's. misuzu fed us some snacks and beer while we browsed thru sean's 70+ dvds he picked up in bali. after that, we ate @ mos burger and then headed back to b's place to play some madden. blew him out the first 2 games but the 3rd game he played solid. i was down 13 headin' into the 4th quarter (this is, VERY RARE, that i'm down). but i prevailed cuz my def picked it up and culpepper settled in a made some key passes. caught last train home and met up with cha cha mama for a few drinks.

had to wake up early again and head to funabashi arena for my boys and girls bball tournament. girls team lost. they got ran. didn't get back on def and made tons of to's. boys team lost but they came back. when they worked it inside, they were scorin', but for some reason, they wanted to start hoistin' 3's with 3min left while only bein' down by like 9. was also good to see one of the asst. coaches i worked with at my first school. came home, took a nap, then headed out to 駒沢大学 to eat @ kula (this hawaiian joint where maki works at) for the furuta's goin' away dinner. we had the whole 3rd floor which was koo. haven't seen rick, mika, satomi (eug's wife) & jt for a minute.



yas gettin' her hula on

me & eug

jt, scotty & sean

ryan

eugene & satomi

jt & junji

sisters: yas & yoyo

misuzu & ryan

scotty & jt

ricky & me

kyoko, rick & yas

satomi w/ryan & jt
hey eug, i think satomi is ready...

b, scotty & rick

kyoko, b, mika & ricky

the grubbin' french toast w/kinako and vanilla ice cream

da fam group shot
top: rick, me, bryan
middle: mika, yoshiko, kyoko, john, sean, satomi, eugene
front: misuzu, ryan, scott, yasuko, junji



in da news...

- gamestop is offerin' the xbox 360 omega dell plasma bundle pack.

what you get:

- Xbox 360 Game Console
- Wireless Controller
- Combination High-Definition Component & Standard A/V Cable
- 20GB Hard Drive
- Ethernet Cable
- Headset
- Universal Media Remote
- Xbox Live Silver
- Xbox Live Gold 30-Day Trial

da games:

- Perfect Dark Collector's Edition
- Project Gotham Racing 3
- Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
- Dead or Alive 4
- Call of Duty 2
- GUN
- Quake 4
- Tony Hawk's American Wasteland
- Condemned
- Madden NFL 2006
- Kameo
- Amped 3
- Ghost Recon
- NBA 2K6
- NHL 2K6
- Ridge Racer 6
- Top Spin 2
- Need for Speed: Most Wanted
- Tiger Woods 2006
- FIFA Soccer 06

da extras:

- Dell 42-Inch Plasma TV
- Extra Wireless Controller
- Extra Wireless Controller
- Extra Wireless Controller
- Wireless Network Adaptor
- Memory Unit
- Fuego Faceplates
- Play & Charge Kit
- Rechargeable Battery
- Xbox Live 12 Month Card
- 1-Year Product Replacement Plan

that sure is a lot of stuff, huh? wanna know da damage...a koo $4,499.68!?!

- news in japan
:: unknown assailant cuts schoolgirl's hair. ppl in japan got problems yo!
:: the 山口組 has a new boss


- random stat (taken from foodge's page)

Fatalities from airplane hijikings over the last 30 years:

1975 : 2
1976 : 15
1977 : 114
1978 : 3
1979 : 1
1980 : 1
1981 : 6
1982 : 1
1983 : 12
1984 : 7
1985 : 65
1986 : 80
1987 : 2
1988 : 13
1989 : 1
1990 : 86
1991 : 6
1992 : 4
1993 : 4
1994 : 8
1995 : 0
1996 : 125
1997 : 1
1998 : 1
1999 : 3
2000 : 5
2001 : 268
2002 : 2
2003 : 0
2004 : 0
2005 : 0

Taken from :

http://aviation-safety.net/database/dblist.php?Event=SEH