Jeff

So I have been on vacation for the past week and a halfish. Last Saturday, we left for Oahu. The occasion, to get married. Yup, that is correct, I am a married man. On that Tuesday, we got married on a beach. Then the next day we went to Kauai and spent five nights there for our honeymoon. I will post pictures soon, just uploaded them all to my computer, need to pick out the ones worth posting (spoiler, nothing will be from the wedding, just scenery and such from the trip, didn’t bring my camera to the wedding, had enough going on).

I had wanted to have a beach wedding for a long time (read: before I had met Kim). She grew to like the idea, so when time came, we started planning it. I liked the idea of a small wedding, one where only a handful of people were there, less meet and greet and more fun. Sadly, it also meant having to tell many people I would have liked there that they were not invited (including my aunt and uncle). I also liked the destination idea because it meant the location didn’t favor either side of our families (hers being based in Malaysia and mine primarily in the eastern to midwestern U.S.). I also liked the idea of not doing every wedding in existence (granted beach weddings are pretty common). I have been to enough “classical” weddings to not be able to differentiate where one ends and the next begins. This was my wedding. It lasted under half an hour, everyone was barefoot on the sand. Sunny, waves crashing behind, no music, lots of smiling (and Christy cried :D). We all posed for pictures afterwards and enjoyed the view (it was pretty amazing, again, pictures of the location soon). It was pretty much my dream wedding (only thing really missing was doing shots at a bar).

I had wanted to see Kauai, so we planned for our honeymoon half to be there. That is an amazing island. Every picture taken looks amazing, even the bad ones. Every place you like is picturesque, I could just stand and watch the scenery for days. Truly one of the most beautiful places on earth. One day we drove up the western side of the Waimea Canyon and I took tons of pictures, another day we traveled up to the north coast and had drinks with my parents and sister (and Joe), on another, we spent the day in Poipu, sitting on the beach and then having extended happy hour right next to the water, and then on another, we took a helicopter tour of the island (probably my favorite part). I will try and caption all of the photos too. I got to see a beautiful sunrise and sunset, tasted some rum made on Kauai, fly through the area used for Jurassic Park, and spend some relaxing time with my new wife.

Now it is all over. Tomorrow, I return to work. It is tough getting used to that. Tough coming to terms with the idea that I probably won’t be back there for a few years. Waking up and making that train tomorrow is going to be tough, but each day after will be a bit easier. It is nice seeing that life can be that beautiful, but sad to see that it cannot always be that beautiful. We are already discussing our next vacation, that is what will keep me going. So, until then, life becomes just a bit less beautiful and a bit more tough (but hey, that is where character comes from, right?).

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So, I am currently in Tokyo. I remember why I love this place so much. The atmosphere and the lifestyle it exudes is awesome. I love being able to go just about anywhere via train and all the things around. I love the food, I have already had tempura, sushi, curry, katsu, and yakitori. It is all so delicious. I love not having to worry about things getting stolen. It is such a wonderful place to be and would be such a wonderful place to live.

We arrived on the 25th around 5 and got to the hotel around 8. We are staying in Shinjuku about 10 minutes walking away from the station. There is a really neat nest of shops right next to the station that has all sorts of things to eat and do. The night we arrived, we had dinner at an izakaya with Kim’s friends Lily and Ken and Lily’s boyfriend, Bryce. An izakaya is a sort of bar that serves small appetizer like dishes. We split 6 pitchers and some large number of dishes. It was a fun night, joking around and drinking. We all then went back and crashed. On Monday, we went to Asakusa and looked around. We walked down the shopping street to the shrine at the end, I got a fortune that was “Excellent Good”. I will try and scan it when I get home. We then ventured down to Kappadashi, aka Kitchen Town, where most of the nice kitchen supplies are bought. A friend of ours wanted Devin to buy her some fake food. There is a big culture of fake foods used for window displays throughout the country, so they sell them in this area. I got a small set of fake sushi, which looks really cool. We then came back to Shinjuku for lunch and I crashed for a long nap in the hotel room. We then went and got tempura and checked out Ginza for dinner.

On Tuesday, we went to Akihabara. It is called electronic town and has an insane number of electronics stores that sell anything electronics based you can think of. I was eyeing some nice headphones for work, since my earbuds suck something hard. I also saw a Wii game, albeit in Japanese, of this arcade game that Kim loves. It is called Taito Drum Master, and I am pretty sure I will buy it so she can play, and maybe I can try to suck less at it. I didn’t buy anything while there, but I may see if the Yodobashi Camera next to the station has any of these things. After checking out Akihabara, we went back to Shinjuku and I went and got ready for some Ultimate pickup. I played with a group that plays competitively as Iku, they were in Prague a few weeks back for Worlds. It was refreshing to play with such a talented group. They played fluidly and with a lot of strategy. They kept a priority of getting the disc off the line and liked to switch the force mid point. The count rarely climbed above 4 and they spread the field amazingly. I wish I could play with a group like this more often. It seems they play more with the philosophy I always think of, but which seems to get ignored. shrug When I got back, Kim had been sleeping almost the whole time I was gone and didn’t feel like getting dinner. So Karim, Devin, and I went and roughed it at an izakaya. It was interesting trying to eat with no Japanese knowledge available. Usually Kim can help cover the barrier with her knowledge, but without her, it became painful. It was enjoyable with a nice server though. We tried some different dishes and just talked for a while. Eventually we went back and I got Kim some ramen to eat for dinner.

Yesterday, we went to Shibuya and hung around the area all day. We found Devin the giant Tower Records store to explore and he bought some Japan only releases. We eventually decided to see Inception there but found the next showing wasn’t for another two hours, so we bought tickets for the next showing and then chilled out around Shibuya. I got some great pictures of the famous crossing that floods with people once it gives the green. We then had some cheesecake and waited until the showing. It was a good movie, with lots of little twists that kept it fresh. After the movie, we went back to Shinjuku and had dinner, then walked back to the hotel. I crashed immediately, even though I was supposed to play Dominion with Devin. Oh well, I guess that will have to happen tonight or tomorrow night… Back to Japan!

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• japan
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So I have slacked hardcore at writing on this for about 6 months… But you can see (if anyone still reads this) that I have redesigned it. This design is a lot cleaner and more “professional”. I have used some subtle javascript bits to make it more pleasing (like try hovering over the image on the top for a bit). Some of it is still in need of some fixing, which may happen eventually, but not until I return from Japan.

Ha! I haven’t written on this for so long that I have not discussed my trip to Japan. This Saturday (as in 5 days from today) I will be flying from here to Tokyo to spend 2 weeks in Japan with 2 of my friends and my girlfriend. I have been planning this trip for a while and almost all of that planning is coming to fruition. I will be staying in Shinjuku and exploring the city and surrounding area each day. We plan on at least climbing Fuji (again for me) for sunrise, going to see a game between the Hanshien Tigers and Yomiuri Giants (Japanese Baseball), visiting the Studio Ghibli museum, and seeing the Sumida River fireworks show. I have purchased a nice Nikon D3000 DSLR camera for pictures (since my ancient P&S Canon died on me) and plan to add plenty of shots from the trip. I also hope to write in this often during the trip, so people can keep up with my trip as it goes on. I will get to spend 2 weeks without work and with my friends. After the trip, I will be dealing with two weeks of questions at work, but my girlfriend will be staying with me until she returns to school at some point. So check back on here to see what is going on during my trip. Hopefully the server this is hosted on doesn’t take a shit while I am gone. I turned on the auto-on on power loss, but during this discovered that most of the case fans are not running and the CPU is running over 100 degrees while idle. But that will hopefully be for another day… post Japan :)

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