M-LoW

だいじょうぶ。。。だいじょうぶ

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:08:57 GMT

ごめんねJamie!

Jabba and Joey at SBDC

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 22:29:16 GMT

Finally upoloaded the vids I took at the show on Thursday, here ya go.

Jabbawockeez

Joey Guila

Sacramento's Best Dance Crew

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 08:43:59 GMT

still have no idea who it is but i really really wanted to know...yeah...i had no big posts lately, haven't been doin much. been doin the same routine almost every day aside from the occasional get togethers with friends.

tho, today was awesome...yesterday i posted a small advertisement about the Jabbawockeez performing in Elk Grove. so i went down there with ray, gemma, earvin, and damien to check it out. the event was to crown sacramento's best dance crew and from what i've heard from ray, the Boogiemonsterz was the ones to look out for.

the event was in ses elk grove, pretty much a dance studio and 103.5 set up a small stage in front of the entrance and had the audience stand in the parking lot to watch the show.

there were a bunch of performances for the first half of the show with some of sacramento's dance crews/bands/singers/etc. they even had some of the audience members come up for a dance battle. i tried to nudge ray into participating but he backed off after hearing that you can get booed off (which didn't happen but it should've).

there were some good performances that i enjoyed like "That One Company" and "Press Play" and even a cute little performance by "Those Kids" (yes, those were names of those crews) btw, i didn't like the song that "Those Kids" sang only cuz the boy in the group can't sing but the little girl was just adorable. "Press Play" really amazed me though, i really didn't expect it but they are a good crew and i think they should try out for ABDC in the future.

oh and there was one random comedian out of san francisco by the name of Joey Guila that did a stand up act during the show as well. he was awesome and he tried to keep to the music theme for the show. i have a vid of his routine and i'll post it tomorrow along with some other stuff.

and of course the Jabbawockeez were frigin awesome, blew me away like always. they threw in some of their performances from ABDC like Apologize and Red Pill and threw in a bunch of new routines that were just awesome. and i did get the performance on video, tho excuse me for making the camera off center a few times (i get caught up in the moment and it's hard to hold my hand in the air for almost 10 minutes).

though, there were a few things that i didn't like about the performance today...
-lines and more lines and long lines grrr...
-"15" minute breaks which ended up being like half an hour
-people who can't dance
-always reppin filipinos (i swear almost every performer was tryin to represent the filipino community...tho it was cool, it got old after a while and i think it disrespected the other cultures that were at the show, only the comedian tried to rep the other cultures)
-Sac PD breakin up the event before the competition even started (it was shortly after Jabba's performance too and I didn't get to see the 3 crews competing for Sac's Best Dance Crew compete)

aside from that, i had a really good time and i got some vids of jabba's performance, joey guila's performance, and jabba's post-comments after their performance. i'll post them sometime tomorrow

btw, for those of you watching ABDC this season, Jabba wants everyone to vote for Super Cr3w. AND HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!!

really late but ATTN: Jabbawockeez Fans

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 03:25:44 GMT

i kno ray contacted some people about this but i'm jus gonna let everyone else kno

Jabbawockeez will be performing in Elk Grove along with the finalists of Sacramento's Best Dance Crew.

The show is tomorrow (doors open at 5pm) and tickets will be sold until 1pm tomorrow. Here's a link to where you can get the tickets. Since it's late, I recommend just marking down your tickets for Will Call.
http://www.groovetickets.com/OrderSystem/groove/eventviewqb.asp?Affilid=93&EventsID=40242&PGName=www.iamfilam.com

bored...

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 19:47:57 GMT

well...i haven't done much lately, aside from watchin machine girl for like the 3rd time w/ chris, ray, andrew, and james and playin some smash until almost 3 in the mornin.

i've mostly been workin, late closing shifts (fun =P). i'm also been looking around for another drama to watch while more eps of shinigami no ballad gets released (sad but good show, not great tho)

well, anyways, i'm plannin on watchin majo no jouken (forbidden love), i've heard good things about the show and from the short snippet that cindy used for her presentation, it seems interestin enough for me to watch (pretty much a story about a teacher/student love relationship and how that fits into society).

also i rewatched 2ldk (2 bed, 1 dining room, 1 kitchen). i watched it a few years ago when i used to rent movies from blockbuster and i stumbled upon the movie and liked it. the movie was part of a challenge that a producer gave to 2 directors. the challenge was for the director to film a feature-length film in a week and the film must have a major fight sequence between 2 characters in 1 setting. 2ldk involves 2 actresses that auditioned for a role in a movie but a fued breaks out between the two and they go all out trying to kill each other in their apartment using anything they can find (fire extinguishers, tatami mats, ryou (old japanese coins), curling irons, eggs, etc. i'm trying to download the other movie that was made for the challenge. it's called aragami which looks like a good old fashioned battle between samurais.

well, thats about it, i'm gonna start watchin majo no jouken now tata!

Lists...

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:54:02 GMT

Took me a while to write this up, I think I'm missing a few things here and there. This is for Amber and anyone else that's interested. I'll prolly add animes to this list eventually and I'll update this list at the end summer when I stack more shows on top of this. Oh and I put an * on the things on that made my top 10 favs and I'll put an ^ for all the stuff that I still have if anyone wants.

JDramas
=======
*1 Liter of Tears
^Attack No. 1
Beautiful Life
^Densha Otoko
^H2 ~Kimi to Itahibi
^Hana Yori Dango
Hanazakari no Kimitachi he
Hotman 1
Hotman 2
Gokusen
Gokusen 2
^*Great Teacher Onizuka
Kamisama mou Sukoshi Dake
Kimi wa Petto
^*Kurosagi
^Long Vacation
Love Generation
^*Orange Days
Nobuta wo Produce
Rondo
Sekai wo Chuushin de Ai wo Sakebu
^*Summer Snow
Taiyou no Uta
Yoshitsune

Tokusatsu
=========
Chou Sei Shin Gransazer
^*Garo
Kamen Rider Den-O
Kamen Rider Ryuki
Sailor Moon - Live
^Sh15uya
Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger

JMovies
=======
^2LDK
Battle Royale
Battle Royale 2: Requiem
^Cromartie High School
^Death Note
^Death Note: The Last Name
Densha Otoko
^*Grave of the Fireflies
*Happiness of the Katakuris
Ichi the Killer
*Ima, Ai ni Yukimasu
Ju-On 1
Ju-On 2
^Nana 1
^Nana 2
Picture Bride
^Rashoman
Ringu 1
Ringu 2
Sakebi
Seven Samurai
Sky High
Swing Girls
*Tampopo
The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers
^The Machine Girl
^The Princess Blade
The Wall Man
^This World Of Ours

JConcerts
=========
Asian Kung-Fu Generation - Live in Budokan
^Kumi Koda - Live Tour 2005
^m-flo - Beat Space Nine Tour in Budokan
Otsuka Ai - Jam Punch Tour
^ZONE - Final Concert in Budokan

JMusicals
=========
^Bleach ROCK Musical v1.0
^Bleach ROCK Musical Saien v1.5
^Bleach ROCK Musical Dark of the Bleeding Moon v2.0
Bleach ROCK Musical No Clouds in the Blue Heaven v3.0
^Bleach ROCK Musical Live Bankai Show Code 001

dramas...

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:39:39 GMT

so...i finished watchin orange days today, loved it, i've been meanin to watch it for over a year now since cindy did a documentary on jdramas for japn120. i loved it and it almost made me want to learn sign language...yea...almost...

anyways, i started watchin shinigami no ballad, both live action and anime, i'm about halfway through both (live is 12 eps and the anime is 6 eps). it's an interestin show, its mostly about this shinigami girl that dresses in white and she always ends up sheddin a tear before she has to kill someone. a little sad and little amusing, i'm waitin for the other half of the live to be finished subbing, or i can find the raws and try to understand it.

i need to remind my boss next time when theres big games on the tv...the nba finals kicked off today (go celts!) and i got slammed at work, 5 people and a delivery driver can not handle a splurge of crazed b-ball fans and little league baseball players that love to sing queen. o well, i got a good share of free food and $15 in tips.

anyhow, like i said earlier, if anyone wants to do anythin in sac tomorrow, i'm free...i'll prolly jus end up workin on some vids...which i haven't gotten around to doin yet...or upload pics...which i haven't gotten around to doin either...wow i'm lazy...lol

fun times

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:18:50 GMT

thanks randy for the invite to rurulala last night, fun times =). well back to what i've been doin before...watch more dramas/movies, sleep, and work.

i'm currently downloadin しにがみのバラッド, it sounds interestin and the eps are only 25min long. i'll watch an ep today and see how it goes. i'll prolly finish watchin orange days today before i go to work.

anyways, if anyone wants to do anythin tomorrow, i am totally down, only day off i have all week.

it's been a while

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:03:36 GMT

so...i haven't posted anything since finals...i would say that i've been busy but it's been on and off with me lately...hmm...the last time i posted was on the last day of finals...before everything happened.

i won't go into details of what happened during the weekend after finals mostly cuz everyone's posted stuff about it but let's see...

Friday (5/23): after pulling an all-nighter after coming home to write my essay i got a chance to hang out with my high school buddies art and marc for some good ol fashion gaming playin smash and mario kart. haven't done that in months because i've been so busy with school stuff. afterwards, i was gonna go to ray's place and play some more smash but he called me up and invited me over to earvin's place for his grad party which was really fun. i got to sachiko break into gamer mode almost beating one of earvin's buddies in smash.

Saturday (5/24): went down to concord for nick/shar's grad party which was awesome! i was amazed at how awesome nick and shar's family are! got a chance to play some hold'em and was the first one out...lol...oh well...

Sunday (5/25): woke up around 10am for the j-club bbq. and headed over for some good teriyaki bbq. got a chance to see shawn, whom i haven't seen in hella long. played some soccer and took a bunch of pics...i uploaded some pics and i'll upload the rest of them when im not lazy. i waz plannin on goin over to cara's place for her party but when i got home i fell asleep...3 parties and little sleep results in me sleeping from 4pm-10pm. when i woke up, i decided not to go and play on my psp for a bit before goin back to bed

Monday (5/26): went down to antelope for gemma's b-day (happy b-day again gemma) which was loaded with karaoke madness for about 4-5 hours. most memorable moments was the boy band moments and the serenades.

Tuesday (5/27): dead day and i spent the whole day sleepin

Wednesday (5/28): went down to placerville w/ aliza, takuma, and sachie for lunch at aliza's parent's cafe. her dad was nice enough to give us a free meal YAY! we also went down to apple hill and visit the countryside. i also bought like 3 gallons of apple cider from one of the orchards...hella good cider mmm...oh and i guess i got a call from my boss sayin that i was supposed to be at work monday and tuesday but never showed up cuz no one tells me anything until is too late. i got it straightened out tho.

Thursday (5/29): started a mass spree of downloadin jmovies and jdramas and went to work

Friday (5/30): woke up at 4am for a flight down to LA. my tita mie was graduating (gettin her MS in Nursing) and i flew down for her graduation. i also got a chance to hang out with my socal relatives which i havent done since last summer. we went to downtown disney after the grad ceremony for a dinner at catal, hella high class restuarant. we got some good food and stayed until the launched the fireworks.

Saturday (5/31): i hung out with my relatives for the day, i swear, the houses down there are huge, we ended up doin some karaoke and swimmin.

Sunday (6/1): flew back down to sac and crashed for the day before startin my spree of watchin stuff on my comp. Started watching Orange Days and Gurren Lagen.

Monday (6/2): Watched a bunch of japanese movies and more Orange Days. I watched The Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers, The Machine Girl, Kabe Otoko, This World is Ours, Princess Blade, and Nana 2.

Tuesday (6/3): Same as Monday, lol, cept I work today.

Oh and my goals for the summer
-Make as much money as possible for my trip to Japan in January (Goal: at least $1500)
-Put English subtitles on my vids from the last 2 semesters and make a DVD and upload it on youtube.
-Make another short film before summer is over

And before I forget...Alan has mentioned this and so has bunch of other people, but 皆さんに会ってよかった。本当にありがとうございました！

I'M DONE!!!

Fri, 23 May 2008 19:23:57 GMT

finished my paper, turned it in, and now the semester is OVER!!!

now, i can finally get some rest...and when i wake up later, i'll prolly head on over to ray's place for some well-deserved smashing

君のために歌

Fri, 23 May 2008 03:34:02 GMT

Well...I can finally put to rest the video I've been working all week on. It's nothing special and I've lowered my standards this semester due to J-Night and the flurry of papers I had due this week but it's done and in the record books.

The presentations for 116B were good this semester and some of the presentations were really good. I particularly liked Thomas's Otaku video, well done. It was educational and entertaining. Other honorable mentions included Toure's Life/Future Video (which was a little long but it taught me a lot about Toure when he's not at school) and Bethany/Sutaka's Enka and Rap songs (I did record their rap on video). Both of which were amazing.

I feel a little sorry for Ray though, he's pretty much going through what I did last semester when I did my video last semester. He pretty much did an all-nighter and did so much crap to get his video done up until the last minute. His case this semester though has been much more worse than mine but I'll let him talk about it if he wants to.

I did enjoy the video though, particularly James's character evolution and Ray being the mysterious antagonist. Chris had the sinister but cool mentor going which worked really well. I can't wait to see the full version of their skit.

As for mine, the songs (the part that had me worried) turned out fairly well. The video could have been better but it works. Oh and for those of you who watched and wondered why the hell we did the whole sad ending was because theres were too many films with happy endings where the protagonists always win so we thought the protagonist should have the sad ending just to mix things up a little. Oh and major props to Francisco for doing a majority of the editing work, freaking genius!

Anyways, I'm currently uploading my group's video 君のために歌 (A Song Because Of You) on youtube. It should be completely up by tomorrow. I'll also upload Bethany/Sutaka's rap prolly tomorrow when I finish my last paper.

Just one more paper and this semester is done for good!

EDIT: Heres the vids, divided into three parts

movie =)

Tue, 20 May 2008 05:06:02 GMT

i decided to split the other bright side of my post into this.

anyways, as i was driving home, i was thinking...i mentioned last week that i wanted to make a movie with everyone to make up for the absence of video projects in JAPN 110. And on the way home, i came up with some ideas for the movie. take it for what its worth, i'm jus gonna type it up now and look back on it in august or september.

anyways, i'm thinking the best of all worlds, combine everything that's been done before into one movie. everything jus needs to all blend into one storyline with a fusion of japanese and english dialogue. so here it goes...
============
the story is about a guy/girl, your ordinary everyday person who gets introduced into japanese culture by one of their anime-lovin buddies. well, our hero gets introduced to anime via My Neighbor Totoro (i'm thinkin, take a scene from the movie and make it live) but something strange happens, the characters from the tv screen begin to talk to our hero, warning him/her of something bad is going to happen in the next 3 or 4 days. the hero, weirded out by what jus happens goes to sleep

next day, our hero heads on over to school, still weirded out by yesterday's events. now, our hero is a goofball, sits in the back of class, doesn't pay attention, usually plays games on his ds/psp. our hero's friend introduces our hero to a few people, some students from japan or some people that can speak good japanese...whatever, anyways these students...aren't your typical students, more like...problem solvers...and they end up helping our hero from his/her slump in class

with our hero and his/her friends (problem solvers & anime lover) they ended up having lunch together and strike up a conversation...at least until our hero looks over and sees an attractive guy/gal (hero's love interest) but due to lack of confidence, our hero can do nothing. our problem solvers have a solution to our hero's dilemma, but requires the need of a puzzle to solve it...anyways its a lead to a duo who specializes in complete makeovers.

after meeting the duo at their company, our hero undergoes a three-day transformation into becoming better looking and more confident. well our hero, had completely forgotten about the warning from the totoro video, and on his way to talk to their true love, they get kidnapped by an evil villain...

our hero along with all of his/her friends rally together to save the victims. enters the ouendan team to cheer the team on in their fight against the evil super villain...
=============================
and well...i'm stumped after this point, but if i think of something i'll post it...if u didn't notice i'm makin an attempt to link past projects together but i kno i'm leavin out a bunch. but please, feel free to tell me what you think

i hate finals week...

Tue, 20 May 2008 03:46:42 GMT

well...jus got back from my first and only final of the week...and it kinda sucks too. i spent most of today typin the papers for the class and when i actually get to class i'm about 20 min late cuz i thought class started at 7:30...gah...well at least my teacher was nice enough to let me turn in my papers and take the exam. the exam itself was alright, considering i spent about 3 hrs studying for it, i did somewhat well (like mid C to low B range). I really don't think I'm gonna get anything better than a C in the class but thats what I get for waitin to do everything until the last minute.

well at least now i can focus on my other assignments. i got my late japanese work and my puppetry journal due tomorrow and luckily for me, my research paper for english isn't due until 3pm on friday...(i'm still prolly not gonna work on it until thursday night.

and i also got my vid for japanese...we're done with filming, just need to edit and record the songs...gah...so...hard...to...write...lyrics...

on the bright side, i have plenty of things to look forward to this weekend...BBQ!!!

wow...can't believe i just did that...

Sat, 17 May 2008 03:01:18 GMT

I am embarrassed to say that I did about 10 embarrassing things while filming my final project today. At least we got almost all the filming done, jus gotta record the songs and edit and we are good.

It may not be the best skit but it will be unusually funny. I'll try to post a short 30-45sec teaser trailer on my youtube account before the end of the night. Well, I'll be working on the editing work for my skit the rest of the night and prep it for Francisco to edit tomorrow.

A look to the future

Wed, 14 May 2008 06:26:10 GMT

On a side note, and this is to J-club members and the JAPN 110 students of next semester. This came as a thought and I mentioned it to Sachiko yesterday.

Is anyone interested in making an epic movie (in Japanese or English or Both) next semester? I bring this up because the past few semesters, students in all the Japanese classes have been making videos for their final projects. And from what I've seen, they've been getting better and better. Well, since JAPN 110 is a literature course, there won't be a chance to make such any videos that we enjoy watching. So I was thinking, the we get together and make our own video and possibly show it at this year's Bounenkai. We could possibly make a video that the J-Club can be proud of.

Sachiko mentioned doing a live-action My Neighbor Totoro, which I think would be really interesting. I was something along the lines of informative but fun...kind of like the play we did during J-Night.

This is just an idea I'm going to leave on the table. It's open for discussion. Personally, I want to help film and edit this bad boy and I want to make another semester film, more epic than any film any student at Sac State has done before. If anyone wants to bring this up at the meeting tomorrow, feel free to do so. I would do it myself but I have to film my project and write papers GAH!

I hate procrastinating...

Wed, 14 May 2008 06:11:38 GMT

So...I scheduled my group to film today for our final but because it was Ray's B-day, we decided to rework our shoot schedule and go to Ray's B-day in Mizu's in Natomas. I have wanted to go to the new Mizu's for a while but haven't had the chance to go until today. I would say I enjoyed it pretty well but I have come to the conclusion to never go to restaurant with 20+ people again. Mostly because today was so horribly organized and it has been the same for every dinner I've been to in the past few months. Well...if I do go, I will make sure someone is going to pay for me and I will just pay them back in the near future...speaking of which, I got to remind myself that I owe Jeff $2. Anyways, I just hope Ray has a wonderful 25th B-day!

On an ugly note, I just looked at my schedule for the next 2 weeks and I will overloaded with work up the wazoo! This is what I get for procrastinating. As it turns out, with the exception of 1 simple 10-page paper due Monday. I have 2 other papers, a journal for puppetry (1 page critique on 6 multicultural articles, 2 3-page papers on multicultural events I've attended, and 2-page write-ups on my puppet show performances) and a 10-12 page research paper on free speech. Oh and I have to do a bunch of make-up work for Japanese due by Tuesday as well. All before 5pm Tuesday. Less than 7 days to do all that and film/edit for my final project in Japanese.

I just hope that if Francisco is available to edit, I will be more than happy to give him all the power. I want to edit cuz I love to do it but there is little time and I have too many other things I have to do.

Well...let the stress cannons fire cuz it's going to be one hell of a week.

On a side note, I probably might go to school early tomorrow (assuming I wake up early enough) to watch Nick/Shar/Khai's final video.

J-Club Blog and Final Projects

Thu, 08 May 2008 04:41:37 GMT

Just want to let everyone know that I'm starting a LJ Community for J-Club, I've sent out invites to all the J-Club members on my friends list. But since were starting this out, I'll only give moderator and posting status to Jamie and Ces. This may change in the future. It needs a layout page if anyone someone wants to make one.

Anyways, aside from that, I went to the Lighting Company this morning to see how much of the deposit we can get back. Apparently the price for a replacement extension cable is $52.50 and with tax, the total comes up to $57.19 which leaves us $182.81 left of the deposit.

I worked with Francisco and Aliza the rest of the outlining and writing up our script for our final project. We're going to start filming Friday afternoon after I get back from Franklin and hopefully we can finish filming by next Thursday...this gives me about a week to edit everything and work on my other finals...gah...so much crap to do. 2 finals exams, 3 papers, and 1 video project...all in the next 2 1/2 weeks.

I'm looking forward to my group's final in Japanese, our script is going short but we got a few 3 songs to throw in as well. It might not be as interesting as Shura but it should be interesting none the less.

EDIT: Here's the link to the community, it's open invitation cuz i probably mispelled everyones sn
http://community.livejournal.com/csusjclub/

Major Problems

Mon, 05 May 2008 19:11:53 GMT

Well...I just got back a while ago from the lighting company to return the lighting equipment that the J-Club used for J-Night. Turns out that we are missing a 25 foot extension cable. I double checked the equipment and counted the cables myself and it turns out that we are missing one. I made sure to check my car to see if one of the cables were hiding under seat or something but still I couldn't find any.

Chris E. checked with the Union to see if the cable was in the Union but it turns out it wasn't there either...or at least no one turned it in. Chris said that he saw Ces use one of the cables for the video camera so I'm praying for dear life that Ces has it.

The lighting company is giving us until tomorrow at 4:30 to return the cable or else we lose the deposit.

Japan Culture Night...long version...(another bible-esque post)

Mon, 05 May 2008 06:46:30 GMT

Epic performance from everyone, we had a few technical problems but it was amazing none the less. This past week, everyone has been working insanely hard to put on a good performance and it showed.

As for me, I'd say I did quite a few things: hold the lighting equipment in my mom's car (which I accidentally damaged today, more on that later), did backup dancing for para para as a member of team chocolate, sung shima uta with minimal knowledge of the lyrics as well as danced in the cluster of people during the Okinawan number, and performed in the play (which I thought was kickass).

I got on campus around 9am and it looked like Antonio and Brian got there around the same time. I tried to play the role of ninja and sneak into the Union via Round Table and open the door from the inside. After a while I hit a dead end of locked doors but it gave me a good chance to explore the back area of the Union. Chris E. opened the door at the dead end and I found Earvin, Gemma, Antonio, Brian, and Chris (and maybe a few more people that I don't remember). This was at about 9:15. Me and Chris worked on unloading the lighting equipment from my car and brought it to the auditorium so that we can hopefully get the system set up before everyone gets back.

Though...we weren't supposed to be inside the Union until 10am, let alone use the auditorium until 10:30 so we did get pegged by the Union for that. Considering everything we had to do, I think it was worth it. Once the majority of people came in, we started our stretches...which was supposed to be led by Khai, but he never showed up (at least not until about 1 or 2ish). Still, it was pretty fun. We also worked on going over the changes to Para Para with Team Chocolate. To make things easier for the people who don't know the dance, we had the backup dancers retreat to the back and grab bite size candy for the audience to hand out. This is all during the KimuTaku dancers part and Antonio's MC bit.

Most of the time spent between 11 and 2 was spent rehearsing for the play. This included voice practices (led by Takuma), line-throughs, and Soran Bushi practice. We also spent a bit of time working with the set, which was a little frustrating at first but it worked out in the end. Our final run-through before the performance turned out really good and I think it gave everyone confidence for the performance (though I think Gemma was a little bummed out that she messed up on the dances...note for her: everyone screws up but we only feel that we screw up because we mess up on something that we worked hard on. for the audience, they will barely even notice it).

For the next 2 hours I ended up eating and rehearsing for Shima Uta. I kind of stumbled into doing Shima Uta last Tuesday and followed through and did it today. I still don't know the song, and apparently My and Bethany didn't either, so I ended up holding the lyrics behind Hokkaido so that we can occasionally look at it in case we forget. We also worked on an Okinawan dance which felt really sloppy with the mob of 20 some odd people on stage but I did it anyways. The dance ended up with everyone "dancing" while moving around in a circle. I think it probably done better with less people but whatever. It looked like everyone had fun and that's what matters.

When we opened the doors (a little after 4pm) I worked a bit with Jordan handing out programs until there were no non-reserved seats left. after that i kind of backed off to see if i can organize a more arranged seating. turns out, for the first half of the show, we had people from outside trying to watch and a few people sitting in the aisles, i'm pretty sure we broke about every fire safety rule imaginable. the second half of the performance was a little more organized (cuz i think a few people left...at least enough to close the doors). next year...we seriously need to book a bigger venue (like the ballrooms, the recital room in capistrano, or the mainstage theater in shasta...heck, even the redwood room would work too).

the show went by smoothly aside from the minyo dance routine. i guess their cassette wasn't rewound enough (seriously who uses cassettes nowadays), good job everyone for fixing the problem though. we ended up rearranging the schedule to make things work. let me see, para para performance was awesome, i would like to give props to antonio for coming with the mc and candy idea, i think it contributed really well to the audience being hyped up. the national anthems were good (though I only heard the american one since i was trying to round up the para para dancers in the back).

for the first part of the show, i ended up as the backstage guy on the walkie talkie until i had a mild breakdown with the minyo dance performance and gave the headset over to brian berry who worked everything like a pro. after the third year presentations, i sang shima uta with the other japanese students and the shamisen/taiko players. the number was ok, i could've done better...like actually learning the song but what can ya do.

i would like to say that khai did a brilliant job with the workout session, i kind of joined in during the last few parts but it worked out pretty well. khai was awesome and was really funny and i think the crowd loved him.

the actors went on stage to put on in what i would say was an epic performance. everyone was in the moment and everything felt goofy but natural...serious but touching. we kind of threw in some new things we didn't do before which worked out pretty well. i was tempted to throw my hat at ray again but after seeing my hat fall off stage during the run-through i passed on the idea. we kept the book pass at the end which i thought was cool, that was a little something that came from the run-through as well. and to clean up some loose ends, i stopped jamie when she chased ray near the end so it wouldn't leave any awkward moments at the end. i was really surprised as the audience reaction following soran bushi. it almost through me off for a second but i guess it was from all the energy we through in. i think i did the soran bushi today beyond the levels i normally do and shouted off the top of my lungs. and with everyone following suit, i think that led to audience cheering for us afterwards. i'd like to thank francisco starting the standing ovation, he is awesome for that.

after a performance like that, i think it was hard for laguna creek to put up an equally entertaining performance to close out the show...i think it would have been better to move em up to close out the first half of the show to lead into intermission and leave the second half of the show to the actors and their play.

overall, j-night was a big success. i hope we can do it again next year and plan it to be in a bigger venue because i think after this performance, we can easily draw more people to our performances. we had many contributers that all lead everyone to help and to perform in the near-perfect show we had today. the comments we had today were generally positive which was good.

and...i'll post the slightly negative stuff that happened in the parking lot later...along with some of the conversations i had with the people around me at denny's...mostly involving the future of j-club and random talks about japan.

Beware...

Mon, 05 May 2008 05:28:21 GMT

Epic Post in the works...

男女？

Thu, 01 May 2008 20:03:56 GMT

I think Ronald and Abe rewrote the song...

J-Night Update

Thu, 01 May 2008 06:44:32 GMT

Ok, for those of you involved with J-Night...I'm just gonna provide my updates from today.

First things first, I finished my crummy flyer prop for the show. Made 6 copies which should last until J-Night. Though, after rehearsal today, I'm kind of liking the idea of throwing my hat at Ray instead of a crumpled up flyer (if that's ok with him).

Around 11:30, Gemma, Brian, and I went over to Laguna Creek to pick up the Soran Bushi outfits from Sanchez-sensei. Luckily, we got there during her free period so we didn't have to do it in front of her class. Though, out of stupidity, we went to the wrong room on the first try, completely oblivious to the fact the room number was written on our visitor tags. Anyways, we talked to Sanchez-sensei about the show and the outfits. She gave us 9 coats (2 brand new unaltered, 3 short, and 4 medium length). I guess I'm the one in charge of most of the coats (I have everyones' coat in my trunk except for Gemma, Jamie, and Kouji). I also talked to her about the Laguna Creek Yosakoi performance since that was one of my major concerns. From what I know, Laguna Creek has 10 students coming over and Sanchez-sensei organized it so that the event is completely unrelated to school so she doesn't have to deal with the paperwork. She told us that she will have her students e-mail J-Club about what they will do for the performance on Sunday. There is also another problem that was brought up but I will mention it later.

During the J-Club meeting we just informed the participants of Sunday's schedule. I think everything went over smoothly aside from the anthem debate. I personally think we should do the national anthems for both America and Japan, to maintain traditions and I don't want to see some of the audience upset. I just hope it doesn't turn out as bad as the national anthem from Multicultural Night last Thursday (that was horrible). After the meeting we were handing out J-Club shirt for everyone that ordered them.

We had Para Para rehearsal after the meeting. With the help of the other J-Club members, we limited the number of performers to the ones that were there and to save stage space. We had to makes some major changes to the numbers due to the amount of expected audience members we have coming in. We can't use the aisles or the front of the stage anymore, which really hampered Sachiko's plans. I really liked her ideas but if we have some audience members in the back and in the aisles, then we can't use them. So we broke everything down to 12 performers (6 main, 6 backup) and maybe Yasu if we can somehow fit him in. I'm hoping Ray can shorten the song a bit so that some of the dance moves will be a little less repetitive for the audience's sake (I don't think there is enough variety in the Mickey Mouse Para Para, to last the whole 4 min). But if we can make sure everyone is on the same page and if we can shorten it (at least by a minute) we should be fine.

Afterwords, we had the actors rehearsal (which is getting more and more productive). This was our first official rehearsal using the Yosakoi outfits and Ray wanted to add a few adjustments to emphasize the costumes. I think with our Soran Bushi is fine at its current state and it can only get better from here on out (basically, we don't suck anymore...at least I don't think so). The rest of the rehearsal went by smoothly with a few dropped cues on my part when we were fine-tuning each scene. I think we had a good run through with a only a few more spots left to polish. If were going to use boxes for the show, we need to start practicing with those cuz moving them around will be a lot different than chairs. AJ needs to get his chairman lines down (he did a good job today considering he just got the part a short while ago). And organize some of the set pieces (like identifying location for some of the scenes, Toure and Shar mentioned that they didn't know about the language school portion and didn't know brian and AJ's purpose in the show). I think the actors will be ready by Sunday.

As for the Laguna Creek performance, as of now, I don't think J-Club should participate in their performance. Mostly because we haven't rehearsed it at all and we probably won't have any extra space to fit the dancers due to the size of the audience. If we only had more time or a bigger venue, we might have been able to make this work, but unless if theres a few people really committed to learn the dance, we probably shouldn't do it and let the LC students get their 3-4 min of glory.

Well, this is just my take of the current status of things. A few of us is going to go down to Sacramento Theatrical Lighting to pick up the lighting equipment and I need to grab some glow tape for Sachiko. Let's do our best everyone, we got less than 4 days until showtime!

The coming days

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 03:41:31 GMT

Now that today is done and over, I look forward to the next few days especially Sunday (J-Night whoo!) And after J-Night is when Francisco, Aliza, and myself begin to really work on our Final Project for 116.

Tomorrow: Rehearsal, Final J-Night Meeting (before J-Night), Picking up Yosakoi outfits at Laguna Creek, and finishing my puppet for my Theater class yay! I'm also going to talk to my puppetry professor about borrowing some glow tape for J-Night.

Thursday: Finally Registering for classes...btw out of impulse last week, I ordered myself a copy of 電車男, the novel (and not the manga) and I just got it in today (small book, about palm size, but it's about 350 pages). I was thinking about reading it over the summer and using it for JAPN 110, which is now full and I will end up on the waiting list. I wlll also try and help out Chris with picking up the lighting equipment for J-Night.

Friday: Probably going to visit Franklin High School since I have Fridays off from work. I'm also going to try and finish up writing up my song for my final project.

Saturday: Work (only day I'm working this week), and if Chris was serious the other day about making onigiri for the people helping out with J-Night, I'll help out with that.

Sunday: Going to spend all day helping out and performing in J-Night...I think I'm also going to end up singing 島歌 with the first year students. Not sure yet, if I can memorize the song this week I'll do it, if not, then I'll pass.

Aside from Friday/Saturday, this week is going to be super busy. Everyone がんばれ！

いじわるな犬とやさしいねこ

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 03:24:43 GMT

Here's my scripts of the 3 1-minute speeches I did this semester. The story of a dog and a cat in a 3-part tale of friendship, sadness, and love. Oh and this is probably already obvious, but none of these were a minute (more like 3 minutes).

Part 1 (2/26)
昔々、いじわるな犬とやさしいねこがいました。

その二ひきは友達でした。でも、ある日、ねこちゃんは泣きました。

ねこちゃんは魚をかっていました。でも、魚は犬君に食べられました。だから、ねこちゃんが悲しくなりました。

ねこちゃんは犬君に「どうして、魚をころした？魚はあたしのペットだったよ」と言いました。

犬君は「ごめん、おなかがすいていた。ねこちゃんが魚をテブルの上におかないほうがよかったんだよ」と言いました。

そして、ねこちゃんはもう一同泣き始めました。

三年後もう、ねこちゃんはまだ泣いていました。犬君はねこちゃんが泣くのを聞きたくないので、すぎの日、新しいペットを買おうと思いました。

すぎの日、犬君はねこちゃんにちさいさるをあげて、犬君は「本当にごめんなさい」と言いました。

ねこちゃんはよろこびました。そして、また泣きました。

Part 2 (4/8)
昔々、いじわるな犬とやさしいねこがいました。

犬君とねこちゃんはビーチーに行きたかった。。

でも、犬君とねこちゃんはみずぎを忘れました。

犬君は「だいじょうぶ、僕たちはみずぎなくてもおよげる」と言いました。犬君は海に曲がって走りました。

ねこちゃんは「みずぎを着ないで海に入るなんてばかな犬ですね」とねこちゃんは一人
ごとを言いました。ねこちゃんはすわって犬君がおよぐのを見ていました。

三十分の後、犬君はおよぎ終わりました。犬君は「さよなら、ねこちゃん。ここが好きだよ。ここに住みたい。」と言いました。

ねこちゃんは悲しくなりながら、ねこちゃんは「さよなら、犬君」と言いました。ねこちゃんはうちにかいりました。

実はねこちゃんは犬君がちょっと好きでした。

たぶん、ねこちゃんは犬君にまた会うでしょうか。

Part 3 (4/29)
昔々いじわるな犬はビーチーに住んでいました。その間、町でやさしいねこが悲しんでいました。

ねこちゃんはとてもさびしかった。毎朝、ねこちゃんは犬君とねこちゃんの写真を見ていました。ねこちゃんは「どうひて、どうして、犬君はビーチーに住んでいるの」と言いました。

実は犬君もさびしかった。犬君はねこちゃんに手紙を書いてあげました。

すぎの日、ねこちゃんは犬君の手紙をもらいました。ねこちゃんは手紙を読みながら、ねこちゃんは犬君と会いたい。

すぎの日、ねこちゃんはビーチーに行きました。でも、犬君がいませんでした。三時の後、犬君のビーチーの家で、ねこちゃんは犬君を見つけました。

犬君は「久しぶり、ねこちゃん。来てくれてありがとう」と言いました。

ねこちゃんはうれしいから、ねこちゃんは何も話せませんでした。

犬君はねこちゃんをだきしめて、犬君は「好きだ、ねこちゃん」と言いました。

ねこちゃんは「あたしも」と言いました。

スーパー疲れた！

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:42:32 GMT

I just got back from my COMS class and finished my first of many big projects for the semester. I spent all weekend and today preparing for my debate today and I think I did alright. I had the awesome opportunity to be the first person to present, and I must say it sucks. I had nothing to go off (I feed off of my opponents when it comes to debates) so I was stuck with my regular points which weren't very impressive and showed little meaning. Oh well, I think overall my outline and my debate earned itself a high C or low B.

Next up on my list is J-Night which is going to be awesome. If anyone would like to help us out we need a pick-up truck or an SUV to help pick up the lights and a place to store them until J-Night. I still have no idea whats up with the Laguna Creek Dance which is my major concern with J-Night at this point.

Anyways, I'm currently sitting in the tutoring room waiting for my 7pm class with Ray, James, Chris, and Kodani. I'm trying to come up with something clever for my last 1-minute speech, the conclusion to the Cat and Dog story. I'll post the complete story tomorrow after class. I also need to write some lyrics for my 116 final. I'm slowly becoming inspired by a lot of j-idol music especially from the game IdolM@ster. The theme for my song is friendship. I think this song from IdolM@ster is my biggest inspiration to my current song.