Yeah pretty beastly.
I have a whole 4 part video on just one of the events there. It was a motorcycle show, and let me tell you guys. These motorcyclists used those motorcycles as if they were little toy bikes. They had perfect controll over the machine and it was just awe inspiring.
One of their best demonstrations of their controll was when they got one of the volunteers out and put them in front of the track. They would charge at her at full speed and when they touched her shoes they would stop or turn.
There was also a competition that I couldn't record because my iPod ran out of batteries. It was a target competition where from hot air balloons the contestants would have to drop a marker as close as possible to the X. Korea lost to Japan sadly. But on the good note, Korea got runner up. Anyways, the rule is, you can go as low as you want with out touching the ground to drop your marker. Japan got pretty dang close to the ground that it looked like it was gliding on the ground.
Some of the contestants I thought were retarded or something. Because they would go about 200 feet off target before they'd drop their marker. Some would not even get CLOSE to where they were supposed to drop their markers. Some even started sailing into the city, which I thought was hilarious. Out of the 100 contestants, I think only 24 got on to the target field. Out of the 24 that got on the target field, I think that only 7 got moderately close (1 from America got really close, 1 from Korea and Japan got the bull's eye).
The most hilarious team probably was the Australians. They had an advertisement on their hot air balloon and they were on the field and it seemed like they purposely turned into the crowd and dropped their marker into the crowd. I thought it was hilarious.
Go check out my new videos on my YouTube : XAlphaZEROX
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Dance Festival and Taiko Drum Master
Hopefully my vlog doesn't suck TOO badly. Check it out on my YouTube by the way at XAlphaZeroX. It took me like an hour to get a decent take, and when I did it turns out to be 2 seconds too long. So I'm using the SECOND best take.
So yeah, about day... 6 (full day) in Japan. Two days ago I went to a dance festival and let me tell you, it is pretty beast. You got people doing a bunch of martial arts moves mixed with traditional dancing and each group (there was multiple colleges and dance groups there doing their own thing) had a specific theme to their dance.
One funny thing at the festival was that each group had a singer/announcer, and a majority of them sounded like Franky from One Piece.
Anyways, my two favorite themes were a Ninja Samurai type (I'm uploading it on YouTube) thing where the martial arts was most noticable within the dancing. The next favorite theme was a cartoon hero type thing. There were the bad guys (who were dressed as devils) and the good guys (who were dressed like power rangers with out the helmets) and they would fight while they were dancing.
There was this one group that gets a special honor, I forgot what they were called but they had little preschoolers in it, and they were so cute. They were REALLY REALLY cute!!! When ever they had to yell you could hear little tiny high pitched voices screaming along with the college (and elderly) people. If I recorded it, most of you guys would agree with me. But those little kids could dance, normally if we tried that in America, I'm pretty sure most of them would mess up. But these kids were as good as the older kids.
The food at the festival was also awesome. Everything was made right before your eyes. If the food you wanted was grilled, they would grill it open flamed. The food was also VERY fresh. You know how most meats in America are really tender when they are just finished cooking? Thats because of fillers and other meats mashed in destroy some of the connective tissues. Thats why you always have to know what quality of meat you're getting. So anyways, these meats were extremely juicy and chewy.
Some of the vendors at the festival would have signs making special deals like 2 for 1 if you beat them in Rock Paper Scissors. There was also this one where it was like an avalanche based game (where the ball rolls down a series of pegs to change the course) where you pick the jack pot (out of 15 slots and it was 3 for the price of one) and see where the ball lands. You could either get 1, 2 or 3. So Seth tried it out, and he was 1 slot away from his jackpot, but he got 2 for the price of 1. The food that the vendor was serving was a hamburger type patty on a stick. It was delicious!
Seth also tried the Rock Paper Scissors one for a chocolate covered frozen banana.
Random fun fact : One of the bananas had a face with a marshmellow Hitler moustache.
Seth won that one. The bananas were good (ahaha, thats what she said).
Later we hit the arcade (which is a long mall, the one near my house is about 1.25 miles long) and Seth got to try this Taiko Drum Master game (due to the fact we couldn't find a DTX machine anywhere) and he did really good on his first try ever. After the first song (which was level 1/10) he skipped to a level 7/10 and still got 99% of the notes and only missed 10. Video is going to be on YouTube too.
So yeah, about day... 6 (full day) in Japan. Two days ago I went to a dance festival and let me tell you, it is pretty beast. You got people doing a bunch of martial arts moves mixed with traditional dancing and each group (there was multiple colleges and dance groups there doing their own thing) had a specific theme to their dance.
One funny thing at the festival was that each group had a singer/announcer, and a majority of them sounded like Franky from One Piece.
Anyways, my two favorite themes were a Ninja Samurai type (I'm uploading it on YouTube) thing where the martial arts was most noticable within the dancing. The next favorite theme was a cartoon hero type thing. There were the bad guys (who were dressed as devils) and the good guys (who were dressed like power rangers with out the helmets) and they would fight while they were dancing.
There was this one group that gets a special honor, I forgot what they were called but they had little preschoolers in it, and they were so cute. They were REALLY REALLY cute!!! When ever they had to yell you could hear little tiny high pitched voices screaming along with the college (and elderly) people. If I recorded it, most of you guys would agree with me. But those little kids could dance, normally if we tried that in America, I'm pretty sure most of them would mess up. But these kids were as good as the older kids.
The food at the festival was also awesome. Everything was made right before your eyes. If the food you wanted was grilled, they would grill it open flamed. The food was also VERY fresh. You know how most meats in America are really tender when they are just finished cooking? Thats because of fillers and other meats mashed in destroy some of the connective tissues. Thats why you always have to know what quality of meat you're getting. So anyways, these meats were extremely juicy and chewy.
Some of the vendors at the festival would have signs making special deals like 2 for 1 if you beat them in Rock Paper Scissors. There was also this one where it was like an avalanche based game (where the ball rolls down a series of pegs to change the course) where you pick the jack pot (out of 15 slots and it was 3 for the price of one) and see where the ball lands. You could either get 1, 2 or 3. So Seth tried it out, and he was 1 slot away from his jackpot, but he got 2 for the price of 1. The food that the vendor was serving was a hamburger type patty on a stick. It was delicious!
Seth also tried the Rock Paper Scissors one for a chocolate covered frozen banana.
Random fun fact : One of the bananas had a face with a marshmellow Hitler moustache.
Seth won that one. The bananas were good (ahaha, thats what she said).
Later we hit the arcade (which is a long mall, the one near my house is about 1.25 miles long) and Seth got to try this Taiko Drum Master game (due to the fact we couldn't find a DTX machine anywhere) and he did really good on his first try ever. After the first song (which was level 1/10) he skipped to a level 7/10 and still got 99% of the notes and only missed 10. Video is going to be on YouTube too.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Get well soon Juli-chan
Title says it all, the poor little baby is sick D:
I met Nana-chan and Juli-chan yesterday. They're really adorable, Nana-chan just started preschool. Juli-chan was sleeping when my family got there. Their parents are motorcycle technicians.
Nana-chan also has the beastliest ride there... a Retro Flyer.
I met Nana-chan and Juli-chan yesterday. They're really adorable, Nana-chan just started preschool. Juli-chan was sleeping when my family got there. Their parents are motorcycle technicians.
Nana-chan also has the beastliest ride there... a Retro Flyer.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Yngwie Malmsteen and Takamoto-san
Well, it was the first full day at being in Japan.
It was filled with mountain climbing (via car) and lolly gagging.
The mountain climbing was unbelievably scary, there was railing when you didn't need railing and no railing when it was a matter of life or death if you slip up once. To make matters worse, 90% of the roads going up the mountain could only fit one car at a time. It was exactly like Indiana Jones style when he's like wall hugging across a huge casm.
When we finally got to the top (which took like 30 minutes of constant screaming and turning), the view was beautiful. You could see the ocean, and all of Sasebo. The buildings look so small and insignificant compared to the towering mountains that they were on. The sight was literally breath taking, being hundreds of feet in the air made it hard to breathe. It felt like you were breathing in nothing and I found myself to be constantly gasping for air just from a simple walk up the stairs.
The descent was even scarier, you would easily accelerate because the roads were so steep. Good thing we made it in one piece.
Later in the day, around 5 pm we went to my dad's friend's house to eat dinner. Let me tell you, his mom is a beastly cook. I mean everything was so delicious I wanted to keep eating but I got really really stuffed that I took the biggest nap in my life. My dad's friend's name is Takamoto-san, he's really nice and a fellow guitarist.
Turns out, his favorite guitarist is Yngwie Malmsteen and when he was my age he bought a Yngwie Malmsteen Custom Fender Strat. It was pretty old looking though. He decided to actually give the guitar to me as a welcome to Japan present. I was speechless, and I was just playing it for like several hours and in the car too. He also gave me some Ernie Ball strings, but the high E string was rusty and broke when I was putting it on... lol. So I had to keep the ancient high E string on. It doesn't sound as good as the other new strings (which weren't rusty) but still I can atleast play.
So before I decided to put the new strings on, I decided to clean it. It had like dust and weird crimson red and black marks everywhere. I must've spent an hour just cleaning and polishing it. Now it looks like something you can shred on. The strings also are made for lower tensions, so I have to keep it at atleast half a step lower or else it hurts my fingers. The pick ups are all authentic (DiMarzio YJM Pickups and a DiMarzio HS-3 Stack Humbucker Pickup). The fret board is scalloped meaning that the frets indent creating a wave shape through out the whole neck. The tone of the guitar is a lot different than my S Guitar (Standard Vintage Fender Stratocaster), the sound when flipped to the upper pick up reminds me of the sound that you hear in the recordings when Yngwie is soloing. Its a nice smooth and metallic sound. When it's switched to the bridge pickup, it sounds really crunchy and pretty deep. Its a great guitar to have and I'll be definately playing it a lot.
Now I have to decide in which types of songs that I'll play it in.
I didn't have a wire cutter with me so I had to keep the excess string on, so now it looks like I have like noodles sticking out of my tuning pegs. I guess it makes it look cooler. I can't wait to plug this baby into my amplifier. I think I'm going to learn how to play Red Devil and make a tribute to Takamoto-san for giving me this super awesome guitar.
He also gave Seth a 5 string bass. I forgot what brand it is, but I do know that it's the same bass guitar as the bassist has in Alien Ant Farm. So this will make recording a lot more better.
Later we'll be getting an electronic drum set, so just stay tuned for that. Well I think thats all for now. Peace, love and keep rocking out!
It was filled with mountain climbing (via car) and lolly gagging.
The mountain climbing was unbelievably scary, there was railing when you didn't need railing and no railing when it was a matter of life or death if you slip up once. To make matters worse, 90% of the roads going up the mountain could only fit one car at a time. It was exactly like Indiana Jones style when he's like wall hugging across a huge casm.
When we finally got to the top (which took like 30 minutes of constant screaming and turning), the view was beautiful. You could see the ocean, and all of Sasebo. The buildings look so small and insignificant compared to the towering mountains that they were on. The sight was literally breath taking, being hundreds of feet in the air made it hard to breathe. It felt like you were breathing in nothing and I found myself to be constantly gasping for air just from a simple walk up the stairs.
The descent was even scarier, you would easily accelerate because the roads were so steep. Good thing we made it in one piece.
Later in the day, around 5 pm we went to my dad's friend's house to eat dinner. Let me tell you, his mom is a beastly cook. I mean everything was so delicious I wanted to keep eating but I got really really stuffed that I took the biggest nap in my life. My dad's friend's name is Takamoto-san, he's really nice and a fellow guitarist.
Turns out, his favorite guitarist is Yngwie Malmsteen and when he was my age he bought a Yngwie Malmsteen Custom Fender Strat. It was pretty old looking though. He decided to actually give the guitar to me as a welcome to Japan present. I was speechless, and I was just playing it for like several hours and in the car too. He also gave me some Ernie Ball strings, but the high E string was rusty and broke when I was putting it on... lol. So I had to keep the ancient high E string on. It doesn't sound as good as the other new strings (which weren't rusty) but still I can atleast play.
So before I decided to put the new strings on, I decided to clean it. It had like dust and weird crimson red and black marks everywhere. I must've spent an hour just cleaning and polishing it. Now it looks like something you can shred on. The strings also are made for lower tensions, so I have to keep it at atleast half a step lower or else it hurts my fingers. The pick ups are all authentic (DiMarzio YJM Pickups and a DiMarzio HS-3 Stack Humbucker Pickup). The fret board is scalloped meaning that the frets indent creating a wave shape through out the whole neck. The tone of the guitar is a lot different than my S Guitar (Standard Vintage Fender Stratocaster), the sound when flipped to the upper pick up reminds me of the sound that you hear in the recordings when Yngwie is soloing. Its a nice smooth and metallic sound. When it's switched to the bridge pickup, it sounds really crunchy and pretty deep. Its a great guitar to have and I'll be definately playing it a lot.
Now I have to decide in which types of songs that I'll play it in.
I didn't have a wire cutter with me so I had to keep the excess string on, so now it looks like I have like noodles sticking out of my tuning pegs. I guess it makes it look cooler. I can't wait to plug this baby into my amplifier. I think I'm going to learn how to play Red Devil and make a tribute to Takamoto-san for giving me this super awesome guitar.
He also gave Seth a 5 string bass. I forgot what brand it is, but I do know that it's the same bass guitar as the bassist has in Alien Ant Farm. So this will make recording a lot more better.
Later we'll be getting an electronic drum set, so just stay tuned for that. Well I think thats all for now. Peace, love and keep rocking out!
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Japan, yeah pretty chill
So I arrived in Japan yesterday. The first flight was about 13 hours long, then followed by a 5 hour wait, then the second flight was 2 hours long, then we had a 1 hour drive back to the new house.
Where am I staying?
I am going to be at Sasebo, Nagasaki. If you guys want to visit me, make sure you email me and I'll send you the adress. But make sure you have something to do for 21 hours.
First flight -
At first I was estatic to be able to go to Japan. It quickly was crushed by crying babies and lot of air pressure changes.
I watched a couple movies that were repeating as soon as the credits roll. So you never were able to know when the movie is going to start unless you're watching other people watch the movie and wait until the credits start rolling. I did that in a non-stalker type way.
The movies I watched were as followed, Ice Age : Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen, Angels and Demons and Pelham 123. Ice Age was pretty funny, I found myself being the only passenger on the plane watching it laughing obnoxiously loud. Transformers, I say skip it, enough said. Angels and Demons, I thought that the movie was pretty good but they missed some of the best parts and changed the last brand to two keys instead of the Illuminati Diamond. Pelham 123 was a great movie, but it had a ton of swearing in it, but you have to be pretty smart to understand it... or maybe I'm just dumb.
I also wrote into my journal, I must've filled out 8 pages in that one day instead of my usual 1 or 2 pages. I just had a lot to write.
I didn't touch my DSi at all, I found no need to play.
I used my iPod a lot, but lost interest in it and took the oppertunity to sleep instead. I must've slept a lot, but in reality I only slept about 2 hours through out the whole flight when I thought I slept 5. Take my tip and don't sleep on the plane because there's a lot of turbulance on the flight and this turbulance is like on drugs. It was absolutely brutal.
The games that we could play on the plane were pretty broken. Yes, there were video games on the plane, but they were pretty simple. The reason why I say it's broken is because it's almost impossible to beat the computers and there's no option to face a human opponent. In connect four the first 2 levels are insanely easy, just place your pieces in a horizontal line and you win. Level 3 was almost impossible to beat, and level 4 is literally impossible and if you lose against level 4, you go back to level 1.
Reversi was even harder, my mom only won 3 times out of like 100 games. The reason is because they always make the players go first. You can skip a move, but if you do it as your first move then you automatically lose. The only way you can win is if you get 3 of 4 corners that are on the grid.
I didn't bother to play any other game (out of the 8 crappy games available) because I was so angry at how impossible the games were.
The wait -
So we had 5 hours until our next flight, it was filled with getting lost. We got lost and told the wrong directions for 4.6 hours. We barely got on to our next flight.
The next flight -
I don't know, I slept through the whole thing. I got 2 excellent hour of sleep.
Where am I staying?
I am going to be at Sasebo, Nagasaki. If you guys want to visit me, make sure you email me and I'll send you the adress. But make sure you have something to do for 21 hours.
First flight -
At first I was estatic to be able to go to Japan. It quickly was crushed by crying babies and lot of air pressure changes.
I watched a couple movies that were repeating as soon as the credits roll. So you never were able to know when the movie is going to start unless you're watching other people watch the movie and wait until the credits start rolling. I did that in a non-stalker type way.
The movies I watched were as followed, Ice Age : Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen, Angels and Demons and Pelham 123. Ice Age was pretty funny, I found myself being the only passenger on the plane watching it laughing obnoxiously loud. Transformers, I say skip it, enough said. Angels and Demons, I thought that the movie was pretty good but they missed some of the best parts and changed the last brand to two keys instead of the Illuminati Diamond. Pelham 123 was a great movie, but it had a ton of swearing in it, but you have to be pretty smart to understand it... or maybe I'm just dumb.
I also wrote into my journal, I must've filled out 8 pages in that one day instead of my usual 1 or 2 pages. I just had a lot to write.
I didn't touch my DSi at all, I found no need to play.
I used my iPod a lot, but lost interest in it and took the oppertunity to sleep instead. I must've slept a lot, but in reality I only slept about 2 hours through out the whole flight when I thought I slept 5. Take my tip and don't sleep on the plane because there's a lot of turbulance on the flight and this turbulance is like on drugs. It was absolutely brutal.
The games that we could play on the plane were pretty broken. Yes, there were video games on the plane, but they were pretty simple. The reason why I say it's broken is because it's almost impossible to beat the computers and there's no option to face a human opponent. In connect four the first 2 levels are insanely easy, just place your pieces in a horizontal line and you win. Level 3 was almost impossible to beat, and level 4 is literally impossible and if you lose against level 4, you go back to level 1.
Reversi was even harder, my mom only won 3 times out of like 100 games. The reason is because they always make the players go first. You can skip a move, but if you do it as your first move then you automatically lose. The only way you can win is if you get 3 of 4 corners that are on the grid.
I didn't bother to play any other game (out of the 8 crappy games available) because I was so angry at how impossible the games were.
The wait -
So we had 5 hours until our next flight, it was filled with getting lost. We got lost and told the wrong directions for 4.6 hours. We barely got on to our next flight.
The next flight -
I don't know, I slept through the whole thing. I got 2 excellent hour of sleep.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Hey guys, introduction time
Okay, here's how everything is going to go down. Hopefully I know you guys in some way, if I don't you're probably a stalker of some sort. Not that I really care.
So anyways, I created this blog to be some what of an online journal, I'll try my best to update it at least once a week. If I don't update it in like a week, probably means that I lost interest in posting. Which normally I will do eventually... but don't worry, I'm a lot more responsible than I was before... where I almost flunked out of the 6th grade... but anywho, just sit back and enjoy.
If I DO forget to post, you can always find me on my Facebook (where you can also find my AIM and email) and also you can always go to my YouTube and watch me shred the plastic and real guitar (occasionally my clarinet too). Here's my email too if you guys want, just email comments, questions or concerns and I'll try to get back to you as soon as possible.
Email : ultimateff@gmail.com
Youtube : XAlphaZEROX
Today is Seth's birthday by the way, so I wish him a happy birthday, we got him a pretty beast cake. It's Rock Band themed. If you guys didn't know Seth is [Team Cena]Nitroxelerator as their drummer. I thought of getting him something Rock Band related for his birthday, but being the poor teenager with 20 dollars in his pocket in yen (the currency of Japan), I don't think I can buy anything really nice... yet. ;P
If you guys didn't know for some weird reason (be it that you don't read the description on my videos of Peace of Mind and Perfect Drug, or you are just socially clueless) I am moving to Japan on the 20th. I won't be getting any of my stuff back until mid November and I won't have wi-fi 24/7 for like a week. I've done quite a lot of crying (yes, manly men like me cry too), when I thought of not seeing your faces as often as I do now or not hearing your voice through my own two ears in person, I just started breaking up. I want to thank you all for making it so hard to want to leave this place, it shows that I really care about you guys and that you guys care for me too.
Much love everyone!
-Sam
So anyways, I created this blog to be some what of an online journal, I'll try my best to update it at least once a week. If I don't update it in like a week, probably means that I lost interest in posting. Which normally I will do eventually... but don't worry, I'm a lot more responsible than I was before... where I almost flunked out of the 6th grade... but anywho, just sit back and enjoy.
If I DO forget to post, you can always find me on my Facebook (where you can also find my AIM and email) and also you can always go to my YouTube and watch me shred the plastic and real guitar (occasionally my clarinet too). Here's my email too if you guys want, just email comments, questions or concerns and I'll try to get back to you as soon as possible.
Email : ultimateff@gmail.com
Youtube : XAlphaZEROX
Today is Seth's birthday by the way, so I wish him a happy birthday, we got him a pretty beast cake. It's Rock Band themed. If you guys didn't know Seth is [Team Cena]Nitroxelerator as their drummer. I thought of getting him something Rock Band related for his birthday, but being the poor teenager with 20 dollars in his pocket in yen (the currency of Japan), I don't think I can buy anything really nice... yet. ;P
If you guys didn't know for some weird reason (be it that you don't read the description on my videos of Peace of Mind and Perfect Drug, or you are just socially clueless) I am moving to Japan on the 20th. I won't be getting any of my stuff back until mid November and I won't have wi-fi 24/7 for like a week. I've done quite a lot of crying (yes, manly men like me cry too), when I thought of not seeing your faces as often as I do now or not hearing your voice through my own two ears in person, I just started breaking up. I want to thank you all for making it so hard to want to leave this place, it shows that I really care about you guys and that you guys care for me too.
Much love everyone!
-Sam
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