The Lord's Prayer in Japanese. I'll have to get down to transcribing this soon.

The pews at Kamimizo Church (Kamimizo Kyoukai)

Kamimizo Church where I spent 6 hours Easter Sunday.

I thought it was funny..."US Mail"...hehe

Well, I've been back in Japan for nearly two weeks and doing mostly nothing. I've sat around, chatted with my girlfriend (nearing 20 months -- w00t!), slept a lot, studied some LSAT, read some manga, and studied a few kanji.

I thought I would share a few words of Japanese that I've learned the past few days that have popped into my head.
滑り台（すべりだい） - playground slide (lit. slipping platform)
オービー - alumnus/alumni (lit. O.B. -- abbr. of 'old boy')
When my hostmother found out about that one, she decided to start calling herself an オージー (O.G. for, you guessed it, 'old girl'). She went to a volleyball game for her old high school (東高学 - Higashi Kougaku - East High School) in Hokkaidou (北海道 - north sea path), the northernmost of the 4 islands of Japan; the other three are 九州　(きゅうしゅう - Kyuushuu - 9th State), 四国 (しこく - Shikoku - 4th Country), and 本州　(ほんしゅう Honshuu - Main State). Tokyo is located on Honshu.

But enough about geography. I wish I had a scanner; my hostmother showed me her photo album from when she was a baby all the way through high school and then her kids. I never saw a pic of her husband, but then I only saw 2 pictures of her with kids, so it is most likely (since she wears a wedding ring still) that there just weren't that many pictures of her when she was over 18 or so.

Another interesting word -- 全道　ぜんどう zendou "All of Hokkaidou"

So I was in DORAMA, a store near Fuchinobe Station with all kinds of CDs, DVDs, video games and systems, and old books and manga. I went up to the second story (old books section) and, as I was browsing, I found what some would call the greatest book ever written. It had 金正日　(キム・ジョンイル) written on it. Those of you who can read katakana may have already guessed, and started laughing, that the man whose name means (roughly) True Golden Day is none other than N. Korea's (北朝鮮 - きたちょうせん - kitachousen) Kim Jong Il. The manga is all about his rise to power, but is humorous yet historically accurate. Apparently it was popular in Japan a few years ago. Anyways, it was 600 yen, so I bought it. Score one for Kyle and his Search-For-Awesomeness-Mobile.

Today to eat (I really should be writing this if for no other reason than to keep me writing in the blog consistently) I had this French bread with pizza sauce, cheese and some salami, along with red peppers and some thin slender green salad vegetable that I don't know, even in English. For dinner I had spare ribs (!!) (スペアーリッブ - supeaa ribbu), tomato, some buttered French bread, and some tea. This was an excellent tea of rosehips, licorice root and hibiscus. It was Red Zinger by Celestial Seasonings. Very tasty and sweet. Good warm.

OK. I'm going to go. I'm getting tired.

Oh yeah, and I weighed 75Kg (165 lbs) according to my hostmother's scale one week ago. Let's see how my weight drops over time!

Translation of Elecom Article

Well, I'm back in Japan.

Here is a translation I did of an Elecom release for Slashdot before Slashdot threw the lameness filter at me. What an ungrateful filter!

Forgive any ugly translation, I did it fast and made some ugly englishifications with hyphens instead of racking my brain for real fancy ways to say it in English. Additionally, I may have missed the actual English technical terms in my translation. My notes are in italics.

News Release
Elecom, High Persistance LAN Cable and Sash for Outdoor Wiring on Small Form LAN That Can Pass Through Narrow Spaces Now For Sale

Elecom Corporation (Head Office: Osaka, Chuo; Managing Director: Junji Hada) is now selling outdoor LAN cabling (LD-VAPF/BK series) as well as cabling which fits in narrow spaces (LD-VAPF/SV05) bundled with waterproof outdoor tape and relay connector (LD-VAPF/RJ-45WP).

The LD-VAPF/BK Series uses a high endurance sheath of polyethylene. Weatherproof outdoor cabling is now feasible (I'm not sure if they said it's "expensive" here, it seems silly for them to do so, but they said "takaku" which refers to "high" or "expensive" or "tall"). The cable is Cat5e compliant and gigabit ethernet 1000BASE-T enabled.

LD-VAPF/SV05 is thin-mould LAN which can pass through the space of a crevice. In case you must run in cabling from outside, neither opening up a hole in the wall nor large construction work is necessary. With aluminum tape, it is strengthened while actually being 1.4mm thin. While being this thin, it is Cat5e cable.

LD-VAPF/RJ45WP is a LAN relay connector with waterproof tape attached. LD-VAPF/BK Series and LD-VAPF/SV05 are optimally connected. Upon connecting these goods, anyone can have simple outdoor cabling.

Planned to go on sale in mid-March.

[picture of the cabling]
---------------------------
High-Outdoor Resistant Cat5e Cabling Using Polyethylene Sheath.
Outdoor type Cat5e LAN Cable (single line specification [24AWG])
LD-VAPF/BK Series (10BASE-T 100BASE-TX 1000BASE-T)

LD-VAPF/BK10 (10m)
-High-Outdoor Resistant Polyethylene (in order to always be weather resistant) Sheath has been improved twofold.
-Supports Cat5e
-Supports Gigabit Ethernet 1000BASE-T and FTTH/ADSL/CATV

Connector for Both Ends
LD-VAPF/BK10 (10m)
3780 yen with tax (minus tax 3600 yen)

LD-VAPF/BK20 (20m)
6300 yen with tax (minus tax 6000 yen)

LD-VAPF/BK30 (30m)
8925 yen with tax (minus tax 8500 yen)
RJ45 Connector part does not handle being outdoors. As soon as it has undergone the necessary waterproofing treatment, you may use it outdoors (this is a note that you must waterproof the RJ45 yourself).

Cable Only
LD-VAPF/BK100 (100m)
25200 yen with tax (24000 yen without)
LD-VAPF Series Cable only
Simple-Type Cable Stripper

Sash can pass through the window from outside bringing the LAN Cable indoors.
High Resistance, Passes-Through-Holes, Aluminum Strengthened LAN Cable (10BASE-T 100BASE-TX 1000BASE-T)
LD-VAPF/SV05 2520 yen (after tax) 2400 (without tax)
-Optimally runs through the window crack from outdoors to indoors, under floors, and such
-Strengthened by Aluminun tape yet 1.4mm thin
-Cat5e
-Gigabit Ethernet 1000BASE-T and FTTH/ADSL/CATV compliant
-50cm long (aluminum-strengthened portion 20cm long)
-both ends connector and slim connector (gettin kinda tired of translating here, so I'll say blah on this line)
-With the exception of the aluminum tape portion, it is not waterproof. Concerning the part you can use outdoors, please waterproof it.

Outdoor LAN Cable and Aluminum Strengthened LAN Cable Relay Optimum Connector
Outdoor RJ-45 Relay Connector (10BASEt 100basetx 1000baset)
LD-VAPF/RJ45WP 1575 yen with tax, 1500 w/o tax
-LD-VAPF/BK series and LD-VAPF/SV05 relay optimum
-the hooked-up cable connector is made waterproof with the waterproof tape (i think)
-relay connector size: w18xd40xh20mm
-relay connector weight 50g
-butyl gum tape length 500mm

The contents of this release were true at the time of announcement. They may be changed without notice so please know this beforehand.

The press release is here.