Han-dou-tai means "Semiconductor"

I finally got mustered up my courage and got a haircut in a Japanese salon. It was scary!! Mostly because I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to communicate what I wanted and would come out of the parlor bald.
Me and my scruffy hair were finally driven to the barber by Takeshi's endless offers of cutting my hair himself. "I have experience!" he said. "I once used an electric buzz razor on my friend in junior high!" I think my right eyebrow managed to riase itself a good inch above my left. "Oh really, and how did that turn out." "Well, it turns out I forgot to use the attatchment, so I shaved him completely bald. But he looked great!"
Needless to say I wasn't exactly enticed by that offer.. ^^ Anyways, my barber (excuse me, I mean stylist! not so good with the girly lingo..) was friendly and competent and gave me a nice haircut. thank goodness!!

In other news, my contracting company is placing me at NEC, where I will merrily be working on a quality control program for semiconductors.
Geez, just when you think you're safe from Electrical Engineering, it comes from nowhere and bites you in the butt. I'm suddenly very glad I took the 3 semesters of EE at school, even if the class average was a D+. (<- true!) My senpai working at the company sent me a page to study up on the intricacies of semiconductors - luckily NEC's site is bilingual, so with a little bit of hunting I found the english version of the page. On the japanese version there is a cute little 'factory tour' shown with animated characters, but the english version is much more business-like.

Random stuff:

*nearly done with Kingdom Hearts 2. That's right, you can't play it in America yet. Take that, you movie watchers! This country is good for something!
This is the sequel to the video game featuring Disney characters and worlds, but a Final-fantasy type storyline. Very fun!
Note for those who plan to play the game: you can't see the hidden movie at the end on beginner's mode, you can only see it in standard mode if you do about a million side-quests, but you can see it with 'proud mode' (the hardest setting) if you just play through it. The side quests are a pain, so I recommend proud mode!
Its so weird hearing japanese voices for my old disney friends. Imagine Ariel singing (instead of 'look at this stuff, isn't it neat' singing 'kore mitte, sutekki ne?' .. its so weird!!)

*went to karaoke with takeshi and sang disney songs in english. hee hee. So dorky and fun! ^^

*It snowed last weekend! A lot! All day on saturday!... that's a big deal to this california girl. And it hasn't snowed in Tokyo in about 5 years, so I wasn't the only surprised one...

*It's my birthday soon! ^_^ I am slowly but surely making the progression to Old Fart. Actually I'm kind of looking forward to it, I have a whole list of things I'd like to do when I'm old and can blame my horrid behavior on senility... like setting off fire alarms, poking people with umbrellas, and saying "whipper-snapper". (admit it, you know you've always wanted to call people that!) I have some more, but I've already started losing my memory. ^^

*Got a lunch set of sauteed pork on rice with a side of soup and salad for $3. This was at a major chain restaurant called 'suki-ya' very close to my office. It had free tea refills and fast service. I don't see why everyone thinks Tokyo is so expensive, it can be positively cheap! (happy and full)

*Thinking of getting a real domain name for my comic, probably geminicomic.com or something. Any bright ideas?

*Hooray!! I can read at a 3rd grade level!! Haha, in Japanese. I've been reading "Fairy Realms-the charm bracelet" by Emily Rodda in Japanese. Its got a lot of words I have to look up, but a fairly interesting (although a bit predictable) story. I tried reading Harry Potter but lost interest because 1)Its too hard and 2) I already read the books in english so I knew what would happen next : thus, I wasn't as compelled to look up the words I didn't know. Anyways, if you're looking for books for your 9 year old girl cousin, this is a fun series.

And all you guys who haven't been updating your blogs, shame on you. I need them to stay up to date on what's happening on the other side of the pond! I swear, sometimes this blog is just for me to stay sane and say 'this is weird, right?? I'm not insane, right??' ^^ For instance, the other day I saw a cafe with a small red sign on the door that reads: "EAT IN SPACE." I stood there, scratching my head. Do they really want you to eat in space? like an astronaut?...Until I realized they had a couple of chairs in the tiny nook they ran the shope from, making it the "Eat in" space. AAh!! It suddenly all makes sense, and I am at peace with the universe once again.
... at least, until the next crazy sign...

Kyra