Uplink: Uplink. Question the answers.

November 16, 2004

Uplink. Question the answers.

So - I'm at sho-gako. To those of you not in the know, that means elementary school.

... whoa. My laptops screen just ... kindof.. pow. Now there's a big rainbow on the right side, and a big black looking crack. I'm not sure if that's hardware or software or something in the thousand crispy layers between. Hold on here.

Ok, rebooting didn't help. Looks like that's some kind of crack in the screen or somethin. Huh. Well that's too bad.

Oh dear, it seems to be spreading or growing or something. I'd better stop touching... OK now we've got some horizontal bars going across. I'm just gonna slide this window down into an unobstructed region, and type this out there, and try to ignore that flickering organo-cyber-plasma-nexus that's encroaching on my thin-film-transistors.

OK, so, elementary school. The kids here are really little. I guess that makes sense, but still. And they know english about as well as any of the kids in my middle schools. THey are far more curious however, asking me countless questions on topics as disparate as Wheter I had watched the athens olympics to whether one could climb up the statue of liberty. (Yes, and, I believe, yes, respectively. Although I'm not sure that the statue is done being renovated, any NYC dwellers know?)

Yeah. Even though there are tons of these kids, and they're like 10, you can still tell who the smart ones are, or at least the ones that will end up smart. Cause they're the ones who are good at simon says. I'm actually starting to get in to that game. Here's the secret: start out with a non-simon-says command, and immediately you'll lose like 90% of the kids, right off the bat. Brutal, but effective.

In class today there was a girl who basically would crack up any time I looked at her. At the end of class, they had a chance to ask me questions. They were all in japanese, but simple enough japanese that I got it. Her question was probably the best one of all. Raised her hand, and said, "smile." So I did.

Maybe not really a question in the traditional sense, but I still thought that was pretty awesome.

So that's sho-gak so far. It's out there.

In other news. I bought a laserdisc player. Duff found this odd, saying "Um, but you like small stuff." Au contraire, mon frère. (Get it?!?) I like big things. Like america, and 4x5 cameras, and the earth's atmosphere. Well, I like small things too.

But anyway, here's why I got a laserdisc player. Well, most of it was completely irrational and impulsive. I was like "I need a laserdisc player!!!" and ran out and got one. No, really, that's pretty much accurate. But it's cool, cause laserdiscs are like CDs, but they're totally huge, like records. And you think that cause they're basically big CDs with video, that they're digital.... but they're not!!! The video on them is analog, and the pickup from the laser on these things feeds a composite video signal. No digital anything involved. Crazy.

That's all well and good, but here's the deal. Laserdisc was never popular in either America or Japan. But it did a bit better here, selling I think 4 or 5 times as much over its lifespan. But it was always super expensive in either country, and aimed at the high end market. And rightly so -- it looks vastly better than VHS, which was its competitor. But here's the key: movie buffs, the dudes who buy the high end stuff, want subtitles. They don't want dubbed. So almost all the LDs of american movies here are still in english, with japanese subtitles. Also, these movies are about $1-$2. And at any junk shop or used shop, you'll find hundreds of em. What's even more fun is seeing the original price tags they came with, for like $78.
To me, that's a good deal. So far I bought "alien" which I intend on watching at some point, and "the snowman", which I vaguely remembered waching on channel 2 one christmas when I was maybe 10. It's still just as cool now.

Oh, yeah. Also friday was quite hilarious, with unprecedeneted events occurring at the local bar. I generally go there with the other english teachers on fridays, and get french fries or something. This time, two japanese girls were sitting with us, and one of them, Aya, seemed to take quite an interest in me. At one point, she turned to the other girl (her sister), pointed at me, and said, "Kakoiiiiiiiiii!!!". Which was funny, cause I of course know what that means (roughly "coooool!!!!")

So she was quite intent on where I was from, when we could hang out next, etc, until the subject of age came up. Once it got out that I was 22, she hesitated. When she confessed that she was 25 (and for her, this was truly a confession), she pretended to cry. So with that, there was clearly no hope. And then she said that she had a boyfriend. OK. She still seemed conflicted about it though, insisting, as she was leaving, that I e-mail her, and laborously working on this scrap of paper, giving it to me with a very serious look. Scrawled upon it were not one but two totally uninteligible addresses, random, lenghty jumbles of letters, numbers, symbols, and ... dates? Who's e-mail address contains "October 10th, 1909"????

Needless to say I haven't tried to e-mail her back. But maybe I'll see her again at that bar sometime, and the hilarity can resume.

Posted by tadge at November 16, 2004 07:11 PM

Comments

So, coming back home I stopped at another "hard off". This one had a pretty huge laserdisc selection, but they were much more expensive, like $6-$8. Despite this, I bought raiders of the lost ark, and TRON.

Raiders cause I love that movie.

And TRON... cause, I figure, if you're going to own a laserdisc player, you should have at least SEEN tron. And if you're going to own TRON, really, you have to own it only LaserDisc. Preferrably with a big japanese logo on the front.

Posted by: tradge at November 16, 2004 10:59 PM

tron is *key* to your laserdisk collection, you big huge nerd. that stuff is toooootally sweet.

remember how hunt had that really extensive laser disc collection? apparently it was because they had been waiting to update their video library, did a massive overhaul in the dawn of laserdisc technology, and...slowly watched their precious motherlode slip away. shoulda waited for dvds, guys.
actually, maybe not, of laserdiscs are really that cheap now.

Posted by: ashley at November 16, 2004 11:39 PM

jim maples had a laserdisc player--are you surprised?--and on it, i saw raiders for the first time, so it seems very appropriate that you should have it. tron also seems appropriate, more for the reasons you mentioned.

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