The RoggBlog

What a couple of weeks. Aside from being landed with a job at work recently which is not unlike trying to juggle chainsaws while wearing handcuffs, university has kicked in for realz. Not for me, the Sunday night spent curled up with a good book, a pipe and a glass of sherry. Oh no. I was designing a subtring search algorithm (which probably has more holes than the average The A-Team episode plot) and all but pogoing off the walls.

Last weekend was better. My darling adoptive mother and big sister took a trip up from Kitakyushu, so we had one night out in Shinjuku and a day in Yokohama.

J-nee likes to think she can outdrink me. She cannot, but she staggers in such a cute way I pretended to be more drunk than I really was to make her feel better.

Oh, and before we hit Yokohama’s Chinatown for late lunch, we visited the Meguro Parasitological Museum.

Try to think about parasites without a feeling of fear, and take the time to learn about their wonderful world of the Parasites.

There was a photo there, now seared into the area that I used to keep my happy place in, of a man whose scrotum had swollen to the size and length of his leg.

Wonderful.

Here, have a look at the Japan Memorial Day Association if you don’t believe me.

Since Japan is into frankly ridiculous methods of personality categorisation, I looked it up. Apparently, those born on the day of the Tyre Gauge are:

Quiet. Calculating. Never the life of the party, but you can always depend on one in a pinch. Prone to occasionally violent mood swings. Their lucky number is eighteen, and their lucky colour is maroon.

Huh.

Update: Apart from the Tyre Gauge Day thing, I made it all up.

I only really started running during my last year of university. At the time, it was more a way of getting away from my dissertation and thus reducing the risk of hurling my various computers out of the 11th floor window in SHEER MANLY RAGE. That said, it was fun, in a kind of masochistic way, and while I went out maybe once every couple of months or so after I moved to Tokyo, I did miss the regular thrice-a-week schedule I’d once kept. (more…)