PIE and Sushi. What a great combination!

So, another amazingly fun trip to Tokyo come and gone.
This time it was less of a sightseeing trip and more of a "I want to do things other than sit in my apartment" type of trip.
As mentioned earlier, I went to the Photo Imaging Expo in Tokyo. That was pretty fun.
Big names, such as Canon, Pentax, Fujifilm, Nikon, Kodak, Epson, Adobe, and Apple participated.
Unfortunately, my camera battery died within the first 30 minutes of being there, so I didn't get a chance to take many pictures, but I did get to pick up a lot of reading material and try out some demos.

Epson Handheld Photo Viewer

• This product currently has three versions. The 40GB, 80GB, and new 80GB with more features.
  It can read from SD or Compactflash cards or the 80GB harddrive. It also has USB and AV out adapters to plug into a TV or Projector, and can be used to create a slideshow.
  A neat product, but pretty expensive

Personal Photo Printer

• I managed to do a demo with both Kodak and Cannon's photo-quality printing devices. Unfortunately, my camera died and I couldn't use a picture I had, but they did take pictures with their cameras. I found the colour of the Cannon model to be slightly better, however the printer and printing costs are decently costly.

Sandisk SD Ultra

• This is an SD card which can turn into a USB drive. No adapter required. This is amazing.

I also managed to get a sneak peak at some really awesome (and expensive) binoculars, SLRs (which I want now. haha), and some hands-on time with Apple Aperture.
Of course, there was also the obligatory models.
(What little photos I got here)

Anyway, after the photo expo, I met up with a friend and we went out to get some lunch and check out a few stores.
After which we met up with another friend and headed to our hotel. After taking a short break in the hotel, we headed out again.
Now, they had their hearts set on eating at that French restaurant again. The one I ate at last time. However, dinners are even more expensive. Somewhere in the vicinity of $100 a person. Yea, seeing how this month I've already spent too much money, I decided to just go some place cheaper... Because I can't really jusitfy paying $100 for a meal... That and I'd get slaughtered by my parents. haha.
Anyway, I ended up going to Shibuya and walking around, because I wanted to go to the Apple store first. The ginza store is much more impressive, but that's not a big deal. What's surprising is that i managed to go in without buying anything! haha.
Although I did get the chance to try out the new Apple iPod Hi-Fi. It's a neat little device, had a decently good sound. However, the attached price tag of $400~ didn't really appeal to me... Although a good pair speaker system would be nice.
Anyway, after that I decided to look for a restaurant. Since i had no clue where to go or what was good, I just started wandering and ended up finding this great restaurant. It was a bowl of fried rice with meat, veggies, cheese, and spicy sauce. It was pretty darned tasty, and only 1/10th of the cost of that French restaurant! :P

Anyway, after they finished off their 9 course french crazy meal, we met up and started walking around Aoyama area looking for a lounge. However, we didn't really find anything so I just ended up going back to the hotel while they went out to a bar in Roppongi.

Next day we headed out for a great sushi lunch. It was this great place in Shinjuku that came around on these conveyor belts. It was a tad more expensive than one of the restaurants i go to frequently in Ueda, but it was a lot more tasty. It was really really amazing.
I'm definately going there again next time I go to Tokyo.

Anyway, after Lunch we were walking around Shinjuku looking for stuff to do.

First off, I definately wanted to go to the Square-Enix Showcase. It was a really really awesome store! If you look to your right, you will see a very life-like model of Sephiroth in a glass case in the floor of the store (pictures of the whole case in my set on flickr. Link below)
Pictures here. Go now!
I ended up buying a Tifa model. Next time I go I'm getting the Sephiroth model :)

Later, we went to an arcade, where I found this game called "Quest of D". It's an MMORPG game that uses cards as items, a touch screen for interactivity, as well as a joystick and control buttons. Just doing the introduction was a lot of fun (Luckily, the arcade in Ueda does have that game so I think I'll be visitng quite often ! But the arcade is a 50 minute walk from the downtown station :/). I can't wait to play some more!
After that little bit of fun, we went over to get some Ramen at a really great store in Shibuya. At first I didn't get anything, but later realized I was pretty hungry. And I'm really glad I ate, because it was amazingly tasty. Another "must return" place.
Anyway, that sadly ended my weekend and I returned to the boring land of farms. haha.

Now to study for my econ exam :/
... And write work term reports... Which I need to have three of done by September... Which I have 0 done so far... crap.

Hi, I'm Matt... このプレゼンテーションは...

So, in about 12 hours, I'll be heading over to Matsumoto (Nagano Pref, if you're wondering) to make a presentation infront of a group of Japanese people... 「完全に日本語で」 (Translation: In Japanese)... Yea, I'm definitely nervous, why do you ask? :P
What's worse is that my boss and coworker have coerced me into Introducing myself in english, making it seem like the presentation will be done in English, and then starting off the presentation with the title and everything else in Japanese while my co-worker records everyone's reactions. I don't know how I'm going to recover from that. It's going to be all short and random bursts of laughter from there-on out. Oh well :P

Final Fantasy Potion/ファイナルファンタジーポーション

Final Fantasy Potion
Originally uploaded by mkeoshkerian.

So as many of you know Final Fantasy 12 came out in Japan a week or two ago, and along with the game came out the crazy products for all those hardcore fans.
So I decided I might as well give it a shot.

Matt regains 100HP!
------------------------------------
今日、ファイナルファンタジーＸＩＩのポーション飲み物を買った！
味は面白いです。好きけど。

マットは１００ＨＰを取り戻します

火曜日のか？！やばい！！[Oh crap! It's Tuesday!]

So... today I was doing some Japanese practice like I do everyday at lunch.
And then I noticed people from my group had their laptops in arms and were leaving their desks.
It was then it dawned on me today was Tuesday and I had my weekly presentation to make. One of those“what did I do last week and what will I do next week” type of presentations.
Well... I had all of 5 minutes to get a presentation together to present in front of my group.
Luckily it was a bit of a copy and paste job, but the making stuff up in Japanese on-the-fly in the meeting was interesting. I didn’t quite have the opportunity to say what it was I wanted to say, but I did manage to get the point across apparently! It's so much harder to "BS" your way through things in a language you can't speak all that well.
All I can say is it’s a good thing I was practicing Kanji right before this though, because a few words I used in the presentation I just learned 30 minutes ago! Haha.

Japanese ftw?

So, I'm now pretty determined and believe I can learn enough Japanese in under a year to know enough to write JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) level 2 this december in Canada.
This means I need to:

• Learn approx 700 more Kanji (Chinese Characters). I can read maybe about 500, but have a decently solid knowledge of 300. Level 2 requires 1000+



• Learn a LOT more grammar and build a much stronger vocabulary. The vocabulary thing shouldn't be too hard, as most words come from combining different Kanji. Since the book I uses throws a lot of examples of the usage of certain Kanji, your vocabulary tends to rise. Not enough though.
  As for Grammar... well, lets just not go there :P

I've focused far too much time on Kanji recently, even though I need to master a vast majority in a short time. However, I need to really power through my Japanese textbook and maybe even get the second one. My grammar is severely lacking right now.
Also, I really should start reading that book I bought (which I also got for my sister) called "Japanese in MangaLand", which teaches more colloquial Japanese. Obviously thats not going to help too much for the JLPT test, but at least I'd be able to socialize without sounding like a completely uptight person. That and it's really hard to understand what people are saying when they use many obscure and informal verb conjugations.

Anyway, next school term in September is going to prove very interesting. I'm probably going to be taking two maths, a physics course, and potentially two CS courses (that depends, though), AND studying Japanese for the JLPT in December...
Fun times are not ahead.

Back off you foreign infidel, you shall not have my daugh­ter­s!

Someone give me link. It is funny. I reccomend you go and read!

My english broken.

Back off you foreign infidel, you shall not have my daugh­ter­s!

Tokyo Photo Imaging Expo 2006

Just as a note, the Tokyo Photo Imaging Expo is coming up at the Tokyo Bigsight on Odaiba Island, March 23rd to the 26th, which I will be attending (on the 25th only though). I'll be there providing some coverage regarding the coolest and latest in Photographic technology! So stay tuned for that.

So anyway, if any of you out there that read my blog and are in Japan (I know there are a few of you out there. haha) and are interested in photography, check out the site linked from the title.

In other me news
• This past weekend was pretty cool, I managed to get a Tennis racquet and a couple of other pieces of Tennis gear. I'm playing with a friend and his friend and her friend in Nagano next weekend, so hopefully I won't look like a complete moron... seeing how I haven't played tennis a long while. haha.
Also, I found out there is a tennis court available to employees of companies within the Ueda Research Park, which my company is a part of, to use free of charge, so I'm definitely going to take advantage of that.

• In a couple weeks I'll be having a long weekend. I was planning on going to Himeji Castle, Kobe, Osaka, and Kyoto but as things turned out, Sakura won't be in blossom at that time so I'm going to have to put that off. Anyone have ideas to pass the time? And no, I won't go to Tokyo because thats for the weekend after that :P

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２週間後「PIE Photo Imaging Expo」がありますから、東京に行きます！
イベントは、２３日から２６日まで、東京ビッグサイトであります。
２５日に参加ですけど。私は調査して、ここで報告します！（たぶん、英語だけですけど）

また、私に関する
• 先週末、佐久平に行きました。ここで、テニスラケットを買いました。今週末しますから。
私は友だちと彼の友だちと彼女の友だちとテニスをします！たぶん、前回は３年前にしました。下手ですね？
また、上田リサーチパークで、会社員のためのテニスコートーがあります。これから、よくするでしょう！

• ３週後、長い週末です。姫路、神戸、大阪、京都に行きたかった。でも、花見がありません。たぶん、４月１日ですばらしいです。
たぶん、この週末に行きます。

以上、よろしくお願いします