WHY AM I BEING INVESTIGATED

Is it September 2010 already?

xandorthejanitor — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 11:28:31 +0000

So here I am, having completed one year teaching in Japan and starting another. I’m going to give updating this blog another shot, and just post stuff that I’ve been doing.

This past year in Japan I had a lot of great experiences, some not so great experiences, but whatever happened, they were all definitely experiences. I made a lot of progress in Animation Mentor as well (3 whole classes!) and here is my newest demo reel:

Animation Mentor Demo Reel: Class 5 from Alex Harms on Vimeo.

Well I’ll hopefully be back again soon! (Emphasis on that hopefully. I really have no idea whether I’ll be back or not, but I’ve been thinking of a lot of things I want to do, so hopefully I’ll be able to do them and put them here. Also, is there a like grammatical limit as to how much information you’re allowed to put in parenthesis?)

Test from my iPod

xandorthejanitor — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 18:18:03 +0000

Cool now I can update this thing on the go! Provided I have wifi

I’m still here!

xandorthejanitor — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:53:31 +0000

So my work has officially started! I’m now waking up at 6am everyday to make sure I get to school by around 8. I would love to sit and tell you more about my job, but unfortunately at the time of writing this, it is now just about 10pm and I’m really sleepy. I’ve been having this problem a lot, it seems like this is the only time I can remember to update my blog (times when I am unable to update my blog)

I’m going to do my best to give a big ol’ update tomorrow though. Lots of interesting stuff is going on! And I think it would also help me out a lot to put it all in perspective. I’m working on a fun way to do that too, so keep in touch!

Back to school! =D

xandorthejanitor — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:45:08 +0000

Tomorrow I’ll finally go to my first school for the first day of classes. I’m super excited and I’m filled with expectations. What kind of expectations? Why, interesting things to put in this blog of course! Nothing gets more interesting then young children, and I’m hoping that when they are Japanese, that will multiply that factor by…a lot!

Talk to you soon, Mr. Internet!

Fun dream

xandorthejanitor — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 03:39:35 +0000

Two nights ago, I was having a great night of sleep on my little futon in the living room as usual, when I had a very interesting dream. I wouldn’t be able to say what the dream was about, since I have completely forgotten in the last 24 hours. I had another weird dream last night as well, but somehow that one has also been forgotten. Anyways, in my first dream two nights ago, two people who speaking in Japanese and had a small short dialogue which I thought was the funniest thing in the world. It was so funny that I woke up. I couldn’t think about anything but writing down that little exchange so I could remember it forever, so in my sleepy daze I searched for a pencil and my sketchbook and quickly wrote out exactly what I remembered and then collapsed back into my bed and went to sleep for the rest of the night. I had completely forgotten this entire thing happened until just today when I checked my sketchbook again. I’d like to share with you what I thought at the time was the funniest thing in the world (translated into english):

Person 1: Since it’s a toy, hogtie it!! AHAHAHAHAH
Person 2: hogtie?
Person 1: With a hogtie, YOU CAN’T IMPROVE. AHAHAHAHA

I think we’ve all wasted a little time writing, reading, and experiencing this whole ordeal so how about we just forget about it

A hard and fast look at Japanese television advertising

xandorthejanitor — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:09:05 +0000

As I haven’t officially started teaching, or even going to schools, and as how I will continue to not be doing these things for the next couple weeks, I have found myself watching a lot of Japanese TV. In any case, the television is almost always turned on, so I’m almost always listening to it. So, I’ve found myself watching a lot of Japanese commercials in the process, and I’d like to take a short look at impressions I’ve gotten about how this country goes about advertising on what is apparently this country’s most important medium.

Pictured: Actual Japanese telivision program which probably had some commercials

From what I have gathered, at any given time, Japan has about 3 or 4 commercials in circulation among the networks. From this point, every commercial also has a fun and catchy, or emotional and saddening, song or jingle playing at the same time. So as you’re watching TV, you watch them over and over again. And then over and over again. And the really special thing about these commercials is that they are that special kind of irritating, where you know you hate it, but at the same time you can’t help but look. And so every time you hear that commercial come on, you’ve already heard it and seen it at least 20 or 30 times already, but you just can’t help to look up from whatever it is you’re doing to watch it one more time. I’d like to show some examples and hope they can illustrate my point:

First we have this little number, advertising a computer graphics and special effects technical college:

When I first saw this commercial I had absolutely no idea it was advertising a college. I thought it was some kind of new…well hell in this country it could have been anything. I just went with it. But upon the 10th or 11th viewing, I realized it was for a college, and I thought that if I would have seen that kind of commercial for a college which all but guarantees that I’d be able to meet attractive women and then give them the power to summon a car with robot arms, turn into a cartoon and back, and then blow a whole into the very fabric of reality for some reason, then I probably wouldn’t be sitting here writing this. I’d be doing that. I researched the school a little bit and found out that its specialized for computer graphics and video games, so the commercial made a lot more sense at that point, but I still enjoy to watch it again any chance I can get.

Next up we have this touching little number staring musical artist and actress Ryoko Hirosue:

Again, upon watching this for the first time, I had no idea what I was looking at. Is she in love with me? Do her feelings for me go oven deeper than that? Are the words that she speaks to me supposed to impose deep and tragic stomach pain not unlike is shown in the next shot of the salaryman? Does it get so bad that is it comparable to two small grenades being thrown into your stomach and then encapsulating your very insides?? What terrible problems are we having that they have risen to this level of seriousness?!

Don't look at me like that, Ryoko! We can work it out!!

Upon further research, this whole commercial is trying to stress how important the stomach is to everything you do in life and you should take care of it. How do you take care of it? Give it these cabbage pills. I’m not sure whether or not taking these pills makes Ryoko Hirosue love you or not, but after 3 weeks of eating cabbage pills I can say with some confidence that no, no they do not.

And finally we have my personal favorite commercial of my time in Japan so far. No matter what I’m doing, whether it be in the shower, in the bathroom, or in the kitchen doing whatever it is I do there, I will run to the living room to watch this commercial. Unfortunately I can’t find the cut that’s on TV on youTube, but these three combined will have to do. First of all, the most basic:

The the cut I’ve been watching on TV, that dramatic cut of his head blasting upwards at the camera occurs 3 times, in the same 15 second time frame. And it gets more and more hilarious every time I see it. If possible, watch that last one again 3 or 4 more times to get an idea. This next one is the extended, possibly original version (director’s original unedited too extreme for theaters)

Mr. Wakeup’s introduction from 0:08-0:12 might be the coolest thing ever. You just can’t help but to root for this guy. He clearly does not need whatever kind of energy drink this is. The rest of the commercial is kind of boring, he doesn’t even do the cool eye sweep up to the camera. Luckily, one very wonderful person on youTube was kind enough to edit a version that perfectly portrays my feelings when watching this commercial:

Can’t wait to see what kind of batch of commercials next week brings.

My two rooms

xandorthejanitor — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 04:43:23 +0000

So here it is, my first post from Japan! This is the first time I’ve really been able to access internet here, so I’m just going to go ahead and skip a lot of the stuff that happened in the last 3 weeks, since most of it wasn’t very interesting anyways. But I’d like to spend this first post talking about my new apartment. To get more specific, the apartment has two Japanese style tamami-mat rooms, and I have managed to put all my stuff into one of them. Check it out:

TV, futon, computer, air conditioner. No reason to leave this room!

And my second, more empty room

So, as you can see, I have one empty room that is not currently really being used for anything. I want to do something interesting with this room, but I’m having trouble deciding what. So, I’ve decided to ask the internet for help. What should I transform this room into?? Here are some ideas that I’ve been toying with:

・Setting up a scale model of Tokyo and pretending to be Godzilla and crash my way through it!!!

Kinda like this but without whatever weird...fetish thing is going on...gross.

Advantages:
-Never bored on Friday night.
-Can feel like Godzilla
-No one gets hurt
-Will probably become talk of the town
Disadvantages:
-Probably none

・Sumo Wrestling Ring

Caption needed? I think not!

Advantages:
-Meet lots of new and interesting people
-exercise!
-Again, chances of being bored on Friday night: Very low

Disadvantages:
-Again, probably none.

・WORLD’S GREATEST HOT WHEELS TRACK!!

Make it so this guy has nothing on me!!

Advantages:
-everything
Disadvantages:
-none.

So can anyone else think of anything that would be cool?? If None of these plans pan out, I’m leaning towards a bedroom. I could really use a bed. This futon isn’t really doing it for me. Oh yeah, here’s my kitchen:

And a big open space in front of the kitchen, where I hope to buy a table:

If anyone has any ideas, let me know! I feel like I need to make this apartment amazing, since I don’t know how long I’ll be living here

Japan! Tomorrow! =D

xandorthejanitor — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 06:15:53 +0000

So as of tomorrow I will officially become the proud owner of a blog with the center theme of which being a douchebag white guy in Japan. I’ll do everything I can to make sure my blog is just like every single other one out there ever. And it will be glorious.

Yeah lets keep this short. There’s lots of attention spans i don’t want to lose.

packing for Japan

xandorthejanitor — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:51:02 +0000

I have all my clothes laid out on my pool table. It’s everything I’m going to be wearing in the forseeable future and its all laid out on one table.

its like a really dull rainbow!

Well I really don’t have much more to add. You wouldn’t believe how tough it is making blog posts about packing interesting to read. So instead, please enjoy Conan O’Brien’s trip to ILM which is the same place I went to last week!

And Charles, the guy he gives a hard time to, was nice enough to give us a tour when we were there! He’s an awesome guy, despite what Conan might have you think:

6 Days Left

xandorthejanitor — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 03:05:29 +0000

Today is Sunday July the 19th, and I have spent my weekend mostly with my grandparents and family. On Saturday we all went to the Mall of America and out for pizza, and they were here for more of the day today as well. Then they left. And I went shopping for luggage and last minute supplies for my move to Japan, which, as you can see by the title, is coming up in 6 short days.

Nothing has really hit me yet, I’m just doing what I usually do and going with the flow of this whole thing. It was a lot more impactful a year ago when I was leaving Chicago and I spent those last couple nights with friends. That was a lot of fun. Maybe because I’ve been hoping to get off on my own again for a very long time now and it’s finally happening. Exciting! Only 4 more days until I take a little trip to Chicago, which I’m also looking forward to.

Anyways, thats about it. I found a bunch of tips on how to make these wordpress blogs more secure, so I think I’m going to go ahead and try them all out.

Oh yeah, I got back from California last Wednesday. It was amazing and really got me inspired to work harder on animation and do my best to waste time in Japan and get back to San Francisco as soon as possible. Lets do this!!