Glad I Aint a Frenchie
I was fortunate enough yesterday to experience World Cup Fever. Those poor Frenchies though... I would feel bad for them if I had not won 500 yen from a gullible Brit (at the top of the second inning, he wanted to bet that France already down by one, would come back to win... if they tie we would be even. No odds, nothing.)
Watch Dr. JJ's reaction to France getting trounced
Anyway, I think I have another theory as to why Americans aren't so consumed with soccer. My new theory is that we are just too smart.
There where so many times when the ball would get close to the goal, and everyone else was on their feet yelling and screaming. However, Based on my past observations of soccer, 99.9% of the times the ball gets close to the goal, the player kicks it over, or too far to the left. The fact that I (we Americans) have the mental capacity to fathom these odds, greatly diminishes the excitement factor.
Furthermore, I find it hard to identify with the players and to understand what is on their minds when they kick the ball over the net. I have made some scientific calculations and performed test cases with a miniature soccer goal and paper wad. What I discovered was that kicking the ball over the net almost always results in no points.
Kumiko presented my idea to make a web-site for her art class in exchange for free art-classes. Unfortunately, the artists don't know so much about the Internet. I guess I will have to start with some education. In the meanwhile, I have decided to start paying. I can't afford lessons really, but for only 3000 yen a month, I can go draw a nudie lady every Friday night.
Tomoe is back (to England) from the US. She was out of reach of the Internet for about a month causing a communication black out. Toward the end I was getting kind of crazy without the ability to email or chat with her in real or near-real time. It is times like that I realize just how great the Internet is. I shouldn't admit it, but I am basically an un-believer in the Internet as far as most of our clients think about it.
A web-site for a company is great, and they really should have one, just as a shoe store should have a sign in front of it, but when it come to such things as e-shopping and such, I have to admit that I find it extremely annoying. If the foreign books on amazon.co.jp weren't so much cheaper than in the bookstore here, I would never buy online. When it comes to making reservations for plane tickets or hotels? No way I would do that online. Especially not when there is a friendly travel agent a phone call away that always finds cheaper tickets in 1/100 the time it would take me to find it online. Not to mention that I would never trust a reservation made online was actually made. I would have to phone the seller to confirm in person anyway.
The point being however, The Internet is great once you get past the commercial uses most people have in mind. There are still a lot of companies in Japan that don't have email. I can't imagine how they do business. I only started using online chat a year ago, but I can't imagine not having it now. I remember when I was a heart-broken teenager writing letters to Sweden. Can you believe it used to take over a week to get a reply to something I commented on today? Now if two days go by before getting a reply from Tomoe, I go into withdrawal. I don't know what would happen if we had to wait two weeks on a regular basis. Even with her being so far away as England, it is like she is still here in some respects. In fact, I am afraid that once she actually gets back here, she will seem further away than now as a result of her new job... no time to meet, and hardly any time to write an email.
Finally, since I had to mark arrows from the station to my apartment today for Brian and his frineds, I took the opportunity to take a few photos of my neighborhood.
