pulang pagi lagi

akhir minggu lalu lagi-lagi di luar mulu. hari sabtu ada meeting kantor. lalu abis meeting biasa kalo orang jepang pasti ada acara ke izakaya (bar jepang) buat minum2 gitu sesama rekan kantor. kelarnya sekitar jam 8-an.

nah abis itu ada janji ketemu temen brazil. dia barusan diterima kerja di perusahaan lain jadi ajak ketemu ngobrol bareng. totalnya ada 3 orang. 2 orang brazil dan 1 orang jepang. awalnya makan ama ngobrol2 di Mr Donuts. terus katanya ada temennya orang amrik yang ultah. so pergi ke bar namanya maverick buat ketemu temennya itu.

keluar dari maverick uda tengah malam lewat. so uda pasti kereta pulang ga ada. akhirnya kita ke bar namanya hub buat ngobrol2 lagi dan terakhirnya pergi ke family restoran gitu buat minum kopi terus bobo sekitar 2 jam-an.

hari minggu nya ga jadi pergi ke tempat belajar bahasa jepang deh soalnya uda cape badan. tapi jam 2 ada konser tradisional musik jepang, jadi istirahat ampe siang terus jam 1:30 an cabut nonton konser. uda keujanan, badan cape, dingin pula. but worth it lah.

di konsernya ada koto (alat musik petik tradisonal jepang), shakuhachi (alat musik tiup tradisional jepang), flute, clarinet ama piano. abis konsernya abis dapat makan2 snack terus ngobrol2 ama orang2 yang masi memilih tetep tinggal disono. oh iya btw tempat konsernya itu di temple buddhist.

well that’s how I passed my last week end.

Lenovo X200 Impression

On my current line of work, sometimes I get the chance to taste the cutting edge newly released laptop. So far I’ve tried these laptops :

• Dell Inspiron Mini (a small netbook from Dell)
• Dell Latitude (currently the highest end of business series from Dell, up to 19 hours long battery life)
• Lenovo Thinkpad X200 (ultra portable notebook that keep the balance between price and features)
• Sony Vaio G series (stylish ultra portable notebook from sony)

in this post I will try to give my impression of Lenovo X200. The reason is because they let me to set the notebook from the fresh start, so I spent more time to operate this one rather than the other 3.

Pro

• No sound at all. Just like Mac Air from apple. you wouldn’t notice the sound.
• I got the SSD version so I experienced the fast response from SSD. windows shuts down in less than 3 seconds. (the experience might be differ if it’s not the SSD version)
• very light
• very thin
• Keyboard is comfortable
• Filled in with the latest technology in current generations (it just came out)

Con

• no optical drive, just like MacAir. which is a big no for some people
• the screen is not that good. I’m kinda feel that my 4 years old Toshiba Satellite’s screen is better
• full of bloatware by lenovo (no big deal since you can opt to remove it, but still it’s the default settings)
• only trackpoint with no touchpad. the trackpoint itself is awesome but it gets dirty only after couple hours of touching. And I knew that most of the people still prefer touchpad over trackpoint
• the F1-F10 button on the keyboard look and feel cheap. but the rests are okay though

some interesting fact that I got when downgrading the Vista to Xp with the Lenovo downgrade CD

• the downgrade process from Vista to Xp took approximately 2 hours
• on Vista, the empty space is only 29 Gb, after downgrade to Xp I got empty space around 49 Gb. Mind you this Lenovo X200 is SSD 64 Gb version
• I only tried Vista for about an hour. after downgrade to xp and do the setting etc. I found that the system was more stable in Vista.

capoeira and jiujitsu

I haven’t get enough exercise or workout for quite a long time. And yesterday there is capoeira try-out and I say to myself “hey, this might be a good chance for me to do some workout”. And it is.

since the event itself targeted heavily for brazilian. so I invited one of my brazilian friend there so someone could interpret what the instructor said in the class.

I’ve known capoeira quite a while ago since the movie “only the strong” starring marc dacascoss (I don’t know to spell his name LoL). the movie is quite good and I always been a fan of martial arts (even though I don’t do martial arts)

so my capoeira knowledge has been added. at least now I know the right theory of doing jinga (the basic dance step from capoeira). why did I choose the word dance if you ask me. well that’s because capoeira is basicly a martial arts wrapped in a form of dance.

the session is supposed to be 2 hours long but my friend got a jiujitsu class so we just joined the capoeira for about 1 hour.

after that I went to the jiujitsu gym and seeing they training etc. quite fun actually. one man there actually ask me if I want to do the exercise. but because I felt tired and the peoples there are quite scary in some extent so I decided only to watch it.

the class is brazilian jiujitsu (made popular by royce gracie from the gracie family). in the early days of UFC (ultimate fighting championship). some unknown guy named royce gracie with his brazilian jiujitsu beat almost everyone in the arena and made him the first legend born from UFC. but jiujitsu (almost the same as judo ) emphasize the ground technique. well I’m the one who always prefer the standing technique martial arts such as karate or kickboxing. so I dont get enough motivation to learn the jiujitsu when I was there.

so there it was. brazilian martial arts filled my weekend this time.

Blassreiter review

When I went to Bic Camera ( the biggest electronic chain shop in japan ) months ago. I saw a dvd commercial on the anime called Blassreiter. Normally I wouldn’t care about another “hard to spell” anime’s name but something drawan my attention. That is the mechanical designer of this anime is the same people that deliver metal gear solid. So that was giving me the urge to see this anime, I mean I love mecha and this anime came from the people that design metal gear rex and ray.

But Alas, after few days passed I forgot the titles (thanks to the hard to remember titles *sigh) and last week (months after I saw the commercial the first time) when I went back to Bic Camera, I saw a figure on the toys section ( I love mecha plastic model so I always went there everytime I had the chance). Hence I remember the title is Blassreiter.

anyway here is my thought since I like the anime and mecha design.

Pro :

• Cool mixture between Mecha and Tokusatsu (japanese super hero like kamen rider)
• Reminded me of the anime Gungrave that I really like (the story, especially toward the end)
• A beatiful combination of Macross / Front mission like mecha and morphing super hero
• nice 3d effects

Con :

• I found some inconsistencies for the history time-line in the anime (personal opinion)

OK and then for some SPOILERS :

I’ll type the spoilers in white so for those who wanted to read can drag and select them with mouse to read them.

• they spent the first 7 episodes to tell a story about a guy who we all would think is the main character and suddenly kill him. I mean when a main character dies, usually it was only the matter of time before he came back alive. but not this time. he’s dead. so the story of first 7 episodes just like a prologue.
• almost all of the important key characters die in the end
• the final boss is defeated not using a force, which made me dissapointed

新しいスーツ

日本に来てから、体重が減っていて、服装のサイズもどんどん合わなくなってしまった。スーツもその一例だ。今のうちは全然スーツとか要らないけど、必ずいつかいざというとき、必要だろうと思って、数日前、新しいスーツを買った。

限定の商品で、1着は2万円だが2着なら2万五千円、思わず2着を買うだろう。僕は結局それを買って、店員さんのお勧めによって、一着は少し薄いもの（夏に着れる）と1着は冬でも着れるものにした。そうすると1年中着れるから、お得だろう。

やっぱり商売の人だから、スーツを買ったから、別の商品もほぼ半額できると言われて、つい冬のコートも買っちゃった。そこまで衝動買いは思わなかったな。実はそれだけでなく、もう少し靴も買うところだった。だって全部半額だから、誘惑じゃないか。でも買う気を抑えて、2着のスーツと1着のコートだけ買った。

面白いことに会計のときは4万円出した気がしたが（合計は3万五千円）だけど、店員さんから1万多かったと言われて、また一万戻った。そのときまさか5万円も出したなのか、今更もう覚えようがない。だけどもし本当に4万だったら、すごいラッキーだよね。まー、覚えようがないから、ほったらかすしかないね、

魚釣り(fishing)

人生の中で始めて魚釣りをした。結果はハゼを2匹つれた。つったじゃなくて、つれたんだ（笑）。やっぱり魚釣りって僕が一番苦手なところはえさをつけることだ。最初はえさを触るなんてもなかなかできなくて、だって気持ち悪いんだもん（笑）。でもなんとなく動機が出てえさをつけることができるようになった。

This is the first time ever in my life that I went to go fishing and as a result I got 2 fishes.

funny pic

this is gotta be the weirdest picture that I took this year.

let’s see the point of interest here (click the picture to see it bigger).

• an old guy riding a harley davidson motor-cycle (checked)
• the problem is he riding it on reverse (checked)
• not only that he also had a dog on top of the harley wearing little helmet and sunglasses (checked)
• the great thing is the dog’s sunglasses is COOLER than his (checked)
• as to make things more interesting, the background is some japanese preparing a festival which includes people with full make up and dress on top of horses (checked).

optician and dentist

in Japan here, put aside the yearly medical checkup provided by the company, the only time I went to see a docter is to get a flu shot, to see optician and lastly the dentist. This time I want to talk about my experience regarding to the last two.

the first one is the optician. My job is regarding heavily to the computer, so I need to be in front of computer quite long hours per day. Doing so made my vision getting blurry over the time whenever I see the monitor. so I decided to went to see an optician.

I went to 2 opticians. the first one is quite old and because there is a lot of patients there, the optician uses a lot of helper. one with the eye measurement, one with the eyechecker etc. so the conclusion that I got is not from 1 person, but a lot of different persons write something on my card and lastly the optician just read the card and give the decision. I’m not satisfied with this so I went to another optician.

The second one is a young optician, much much much younger than the first one. and he only has one helper. but the optician himself do all the measurement etc. and the patients number is quite low. so I get the impression that the optician really focused his time to check my eyes and I’m very glad I made the choice to see a second optician.

ironically the experience that happened to me when I went to see the optician repeat itself. This time it’s a dentist. the first dentist that I went is so busy, I even have to book my appointment 5 days before. so the place is really crowded and the system they have there is similar to the first optician that I went to. A lot of people asking me question, wrote it on the card and lastly give it to the doctor in charge. which means the decision is bias because the information needed to get through another person in order to reach the last conclusion. nevertheless I decided to see another dentist.

almost the same things happened twice here. the second dentist’s place is much quieter. and the dentist is also younger than the first one. there’s no many patients so the dentist quite focused his time to really check my teeth. so I’m quite satisfied.

that’s it. my experience when I went to see a dentist and optician is almost the same. When a  doctor’s place is crowded and full of people, it means that place is good. but ironically I found the opposite in my experience. perhaps it’s just me.

ps: note to myself. my english is getting worse, need to work it out.

ketombe

setelah 1 tahun lebih di jepang. gue menyadari bahwa ketombe di rambut gue menghilang pas waktu summer dan balik lagi setelah summer.

mana rambut uda semakin menipis lagi. at least sekarang gue tau sekarang setelah nantinya target diet tercapai, goal berikutnya adalah melawan kebotakan dan ketombe.

tanuki

I finished this weekend with these schedul :

saturday : went to eat sushi at 河童寿司

sunday : bus tour to shigaraki and see a lot of tanuki(es) and finished up visiting one of brazilian friend and eat together (7 people) at chinese restaurant.

my latest pictures :