Stoat - Where?

Japan doesn’t celebrate Halloween at all. Although it’s not as important in England as it is in America, it was still a shock to go through an October without seeing any pumpkins, decorations or “scary” costumes. A couple of gaijin bars realised the possibilities and so arranged fancy dress halloween nights with a few special offers. As the 31st fell on a Sunday with work following the next day for most, the event was moved forward to the 30th, pragmatism winning out over tradition. Naturally, any excuse to dress up and go drinking is warmly received (see Pimps and Hoes for more evidence) so there were quite a few people out.

My costume was a pretty last minute affair and I had use of a wig but no real inspiration. It was only on the day and under the threat of being made to go as a woman that I finally pulled my finger out and got something together. It started off as kind of Ossie Osbourne with brown hair, (well actually more like Justin Hawkins from the Darkness) but then the face paint meant I ended up looking like a poor man’s Kiss. The shirt (yes alright it’s a blouse) was kind of like Adam and the Ants. A top-hat later on was a bit like Slash I suppose. All in all, it was a kind of rock stars mish-mash. In any event I looked sufficiently silly and that’s the general idea I guess.

Some of the costumes were great, from zombies to skeletons, with a gimp and even American white trash thrown in somewhere. And as if the night couldn’t get any better, we also got free karaoke all night and free gifts. Mine was pop-up pirates, which provided literally minutes of fun…

You can see the photos in the gallery or follow the quick links below.

And finally, congratulations to Jeff, who completed a half-marathon today. 21 kilometers, the only gaijin, no walking and a time of 2 hours flat on his first ever try. Good on’ya mate, you deserve the rest!

No, not that American idiot, though the sooner he goes the better…

Enough politics, this is about a fellow gaijin who shall remain nameless for fear of further inflating his ego - (I bet you think this post is about you, don’t you, don’t you?) He’s a pretty clever guy, (though a little slow in the way the few Californians I’ve met seem to be), and graduated from an Ivy League school, majoring in Linguistics. Recently, he’s been having a think about his future and has decided that he wants instead to pursue a career in physics (if such a thing exists). This I can understand, - after all, I changed my entire career path from Law to Computing pretty much on a whim a few years ago.

Apparently, most of the universities in the US have a rule saying that people with university degrees can’t start a new undergraduate degree. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty certain that there’s no such restriction in England, and a couple of my friends in uni were doing exactly that. My gaijin friend has this great idea to “screw the system”. When taking his undergraduate course, he was incorrectly awarded some course credits that he shouldn’t have been. This, he says, now creates for him a loophole through which he can go back to the very same school to study a second degree.

How will he manage to achieve such a feat? He explained it to me yesterday, in a conversation similar to this:

“So what’s this great idea then?”
“I can’t go back to school because I have a degree? Fine, I’ll voluntarily invalidate my own degree.”
<stunned silence /> “…What?”
“I’m going to ask them to disqualify me because I didn’t get all the required credits.”
“Your degree from an Ivy League university wannabe Ivy League university that took you four years of hard work loafing to get?”
“Yes.”
“Your degree that cost you roughly $40,000 and will probably take you half your life to pay for? cost you and California’s taxpayers around $70,000 and which you will be paying off forever?”
“Yep.”
“You’re going to call them up and tell them to withdraw it?”
“Uh-huh. Well, it’s only a thought… And it probably wouldn’t work.”
“But you’re going to try?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you’re insane. What happens if you don’t get accepted onto the Physics course?”
“Um…”

And there the conversation ended. Not exactly the most positive or supportive I’ve ever been admittedly, but really? So, now a request. If you have any thoughts on how best he can achieve his aims, without removing the single most significant achievement in his life on a technicality, please, be a kind soul and let me know!

Edit: Thankfully, it seems that the situation has been resolved. Hurrah for sanity! And thanks to Said Gaijin for the factual corrections!