April

April was terribly busy for me and Rassell. Not just because of work, but also because we had several groups of people visit us during this time. April being the month of Spring, Sakura, Hanami and tourists -- especially in the Kansai area -- I guess that was to be expected. I should also add that it was this month, towards the last week, that Rassell and I visited Beijing. So that added to our very busy social calendar.

I intend to post pictures of all the above activities here soon; and also to tell a very interesting and rewarding experience that we had while we were in Beijing. Sorry if this Blog has been "unusually" quiet for the past oh-so-many weeks. I have no excuse except to say: I guess that's just bound to happen every now and then. Which, then again, is not really an excuse. So, er, sue me?

If I was a hero, I would be...

Micah Sanders You scored 54 Idealism, 33 Nonconformity, 66 Nerdiness

Can we play Scrabble tonight?Congratulations, you're Micah Sanders! You're good-natured, intelligent, perceptive, and naturally inclined toward technology. You're also quite innocent and loving. You've got a fondness for computers and Scrabble. Your best quality: You're extremely perceptive Your worst quality: You can be a little demanding at times

Been watching this show for quite some time now. A friend suggested it to me and said I would probably like it. I guess she was right. If I could choose, I would rather have been Peter Petrelli (who wouldn't) or, at least, Hiro Nakamura; but I guess being Micah will do for now =). If you don't watch Heroes, then you probably have no idea what this is all about. If you do watch it, however, you may also want to take the test and find out which "hero" you are. Click here: The Heroes Personality Test

Promises

This is, I think, the third weekend this month that I have had to work. I don't mind having to work on weekends every now and then, but this is starting to get really annoying and scary. Yes. SCARY.

I wouldn't want to end up working every weekend here because that would make it really feel like I never left the Philippines. When I was a legal slave there, Saturdays or Sundays, or both, were often reserved for working so that I'd be able to catch up with my work load. Now, everything here is starting to feel dreadfully familiar. And, from the recent assignments that I've been getting, it seems that things are just going to get a lot worse.

Anyway, I don't want to talk about that anymore. I still have hours and hours left to deal with that later. The reason for this post, and for the title, is that I sort of promised that I will write something more about our recent trip home. Out of laziness, I decided that, instead of writing about our trip, I'd just post some pictures. Our trip was mainly, or solely, to attend my sister's wedding. So, the pictures I'm posting here are all from the wedding. I'm actually posting only four -- the ones that I especially like. The first, because it has a very anime feel to it. The second, because it's a picture of my just-about-to-be-married only sister and my eternally beautiful wife (that's for when she reads this post). And the last two, so that you'll know how my new brother-in-law looks like (it also doesn't hurt that I'm in one of them).

Hope you enjoy the pics. My break time's over!

Koyuki 小雪

The actress that should have played 小百合（Sayuri)...

Top 300

After more than two years of being married, Rassell and I have finally come around to choosing our final 300 pictures out of, roughly, 3000 taken during our wedding. It's for our wedding album, which up to now, thanks to our constant dilly-dallying, is still to be made by our photographer -- much to my Mom's annoyance.

Ever since our wedding, my Mom has been asking us to have our album made already. She wanted to put the album in our living room for all her guests and friends to see (that's the punishment privilege one gets when one marries first amongst his or her siblings). However, we just didn't feel like sifting through 3000 odd pictures to pick out only the best ones. If I had my way, I would have just picked each and everyone of them, except for maybe one or, at most, two that didn't show my photogenic side.

But, finally, on one really quiet evening (which did not end to be that quiet since Rassell and I couldn't agree on some of the pictures), we finally decided to hunker down and do it. And do it we did. Surprisingly, it didn't even take us the whole of two hours to finish it. Now, if I had only known that before, I would not have made my Mom wait for so long. =)

Anyway, while we were picking our top 300, I came across several that I wanted to post here. It's been a while since I last saw those pictures and I've sort of forgotten how truly fun and beautiful that day was. So, following are some of my own picks. If you want to see the rest of the 300, then I suggest you go to our family's house and ask my mom to let you in and see it ;-)...

つかれた!

I just came back from a four-day trip home to the Philippines, and now, I feel dead tired. I tried to make my trip there longer than it really was by just foregoing sleep. Did it work? Of course it did...but right now, I just want to sleep. More about my trip later... or, maybe not. We'll see.

By the way, someone (from somewhere in Europe) has been visiting my blog almost everyday since the start of this new year. My blog often gets random visits from people from all over, but rarely, if at all, do I see someone anonymous visiting this site regularly.

I don't mean to scare you (dear European reader) but I am just curious about who you are. I have been observing you for the past couple of weeks now and I see you visiting this site almost everyday. You see, not many people bother to visit, let alone read, this blog. And when I see someone regularly visiting this site -- someone that I do not know -- then I am pleasantly and egotistically surprised. Anyway, thanks for the visits!

Finally, I would like to congratulate my only sister, our youngest, and wish her all the best wishes that one could possibly wish for. She just got married, and everything, during her wedding, was just so beautiful. JJ and Val, おめでとうございます!

My.first.time

Since I've been riding the train a lot lately (at least 2 times everyday; well, sometimes more if I haven't been paying close attention to the trains and I get on the wrong one by mistake), I have had plenty of time to look at the numerous advertisements that are posted inside the train carriages. Some of them are tastefully done and are rather nice to look at, while most of them are just a lot of (Japanese) Kanjis that I don't even bother reading or understanding anymore.

Well, this blog entry is not about those train ads -- just wanted to make that clear. The train advertisements only explain why my title for this blog has dots in.between.the.words. (See them now?). I have been seeing a lot of the Sony ads while riding the train and theirs is one of the ads that I rather enjoy looking at. Not too many words (sometimes none), just their new product and their slogan, "like.no.other". So, I thought I'd copy Sony's style for this post's title and put more dots in there than necessary. (Weird? Not really? That's what I thought.)

Anyway, this post is about my first time to see a real-life geisha; thus, the title "my.first.time". I have seen a lot of fake geishas before -- women dressed up and made-up as one who go around Kyoto for a day -- but, despite having been to Kyoto, oh, so many times, I have never seen a real one. That was, until a few weeks ago.

I went to Kyoto to take a few photos of the place at the tail end of autumn. Next to Spring, Kyoto is, arguably, best visited during Autumn. So, there I was minding my own business, when, right after stepping out of the Kyoto Central Station, I saw the geisha. Well, she could have been a lower rank-maiko (geisha apprentice) -- but I didn't care, I was just really excited and felt really lucky to have finally seen one. Her make-up, hair and kimono was so exquisite, that, if she just stopped moving for a while, she could have passed off as a wax sculpture or a giant geisha doll.

I later found out that, that day, the geishas were doing some green tea preparation shows in public. If I had only known that before hand, I would have ditched my plan to do an Autumn-shrine-and-Kyoto-visit and would just have searched for all the geishas I could find. Anyway, 'nough talking. Here are some more pictures of the geisha and then some...

fake ones...

Happy New Year Everyone! Wish you all the best in the coming year!

Japanmanship

Found this really funny Blog about Japan while I was searching for something, err, Japan-related. Some of his entries are just hilarious. It also doesn't hurt that they're written with such wit and humor, which, *sigh* I often wish I had. Anyway, I won't hold you, if you're interested about Japan or the Japanese (i.e., their quirkiness), or, have been to or have lived in Japan before, click on the link... you'll like it! Have fun!

Future me

Last night, I received an email from myself. Before anyone thinks that I'm such a loser for sending myself email, allow me to say this first: I sent that email more than three months ago...and I only received it last night. =)

I found this nifty website called futureme at around the same time that I sent the email. It allows you to send emails to your future self. Well, it also allows you to send future email to others but I don't think that's a very good idea.

Anyway, the email I sent myself was really interesting. It felt both weird and funny to read what I was feeling at that time that I sent it, what my expectations were and how I thought I'd be feeling more than three months after. When I sent the email, our stint at Kyushu University was just about to end. We were about to graduate in a few days and we only had a few weeks left before we all had to go home. So I talked about that stuff and then about some other stuff as well. It felt like I was telling my story then to my future self. Come to think of it, I was.

So, last night, I felt like sending another letter to myself... and I did. This time, to futureme a year hence. Here's hoping that, if I'm still around to read my letter, at the very least, I would find it interesting and/or funny -- I don't really care, as long as I don't find it depressing.

Moving On

I feel that, after several weeks, I have finally started to accept reality and adjust to my new surroundings. I am no longer a student...I am again part of the workforce -- the Japanese workforce.

Everyday, I am part of the train-riding, suit-wearing crowd that get on the train and walk really really fast to wherever it it is that we have to be. That was, once, one of the things I hated about Osaka; everyone seemed to be always in hurry to get somewhere. Now, I don't hate it as much. I understand them more -- I guess ;).

Work. So far, my work has been really interesting and exciting. I think I came at a somewhat busy season for OHB (The initials of firm where I'm training now). On my first week, I had to go to the office on a holiday as I had to finish drafting something which was due that Sunday. I also spent my first weekend there :(. I have been included in two ongoing merger deals and have been asked to review and draft countless commercial contracts and documents -- I've lost count. I have to admit, I was never really into commercial law practice before -- being mostly a litigator -- so a lot of the things that I'm doing now are really new to me. I must say, though, commercial law practice has a very different approach to it as compared to litigation.

Okay, enough of the boring stuff. On my first day at the firm, they gave me my business cards (it has two sides: Japanese and English), my all-you-can-ride JR train card (this is really neat, I just press my wallet against the turnstile scanner -- no need to take out my card), and assigned to me an English-speaking secretary (Her name is Naoko and she studied for a year in Australia). Naoko has been with OHB for a little less than a year, so she's also almost new to the office like me. Everyone at the office calls me Jiao-sensei now (i.e., Atty. Jiao) as compared to being called Jiao-san (Mr. Jiao), a few months back.

Most of the lawyers are very nice also, especially the foreign lawyers with whom I usually hang out with. In my 2 1/2 weeks of stay at the office, I have been treated out to several lunches, dinners and a couple of drinking sessions. Sometimes, on my way home, the lawyers would see me at the lobby and then kidnap me to join their drinking "meeting". Sometimes I wonder why they do that because everytime they invite me, they're forced to have their conversations in English. hahaha.

Our Home. This is my favorite place in the whole of Osaka. I feel so lucky to have discovered this place and to have gotten it for the price that I did. I'm in a neighborhood that's so close to everything. We have a grocery downstairs, a huge hundred yen store near the corner, a really cheap grocery store beside it, a huge department store a few meters past the 100 yen store, a GEO (a video store) beside the department store, and the Osaka gymnasium, which is less than 10 minutes by bike away. I already bought two bicycles, one for me and Rassell.

On weekends, I usually clean the house, do my grocery shopping, run or go to the gym. I have also been doing a lot of movie watching -- but this I do almost everyday. Since Rassell is not yet here, I've been staying-in most of the time. I've been thinking of going to Kyoto for several weeks now (I want to see it during autumn), but the weather has not been very cooperative.

I really like our house and I absolutely love our living room. Our living room is where I spend most of my time watching movies and, now, using the internet. Sometimes, I fall asleep on the sofa and just transfer to the bedroom early in the morning. Rassell is not here yet to wake me up =(.

Well, that's how I've been surviving so far. I only know one other Filipino family here in Osaka and this weekend, they have invited me to their house. This Thursday would be a holiday also, so, hopefuly, I'll finally be able to go to Kyoto -- That is, if I don't have to work ;(. Ciao!