I'm staying in Kariya, a town near Nagoya (fourth largest city in Japan) for two weeks. Many of you probably know that I'm learning Japanese so I plan on dramatically improving my speaking skills. I'm also going to try out all the possible sorts of washoku (traditional japanese food) and visit Shinto temples. I can't wait.

Therefore I won't be commenting on blogs (I know you'll miss my comments...) or posting in unions for two weeks. Sorry people. I might give a detailed account when I come back, or not...

I normally don't blog about levelling up but this time I just had to. I've finally reached level 21, after a few months on 20. To anyone that's still on that dreaded level, I share your pain. Just hang on and eventually it will be over. (I'm taking this way too seriously...)

Anyways I got a new profile banner, courtesy of Eucalypta. Now you may be thinking that I'm a Bleach, Final Fantasy and Linkin Park (well done to those who may have recognized them), and you would be... wrong. I'm not a particular fan of any of these, but the banner was so good that I had to put it up. Thanks again Eucalypta for making it!

Finally when most of you will be reading this I will have sent a union invite to all my friends. I normally don't do this because I know just how irrate people can get when they recieve multiple ones each day, however I lack any better way to make the union known. It's called the "All things Anime, Games, Music and stuff", and I would highly recommend you join. We now have only few members, yet the activity (due mostly to dedicated officers) is huge, and it would be nice to see you all there! Do make sure you take a look at the anime recommendation thread, one of the wacky threads that I've posted, or just the crazy off-topic thread.

Here is teh linky:

http://uk.gamespot.com/pages/unions/home.php?union_id=ATAGMS

Now I'm sure you're all expecting me to rave about some Gorillaz related thing or to talk about music that's so loud it busts your eardrums. If you were expecting the former you're wrong, if you were expecting the latter, you're right but in for a surprise. I am indeed going to dedicate this blog post to loud music but not to hard rock or metal. Instead I'm talking about classical music. "How can classical music be louder than rock and metal?" I hear you exclaim. Well it can, if it's played on the organ.

Today I've just spend a few hours listening to one of my friends play music by Bach and other composers on the organ. I was right besides him and one thing I can say is: it's loud, very loud. Before I met this friend I wasn't really into classical music, and definitely not organ and choir music. But he did a good job in getting me into it. Indeed there's nothing better than listening to a real organ play. CD's just don't do them justice, no matter how good your sound system is. That doesn't mean that I don't listen to other kinds of music anymore, but I've been adding some variety to what I listen lately.

The great thing about playing the organ in an empty chapel is that sometimes a random person will come in. Since the organist cannot be seen from down below the poor fellow has no idea that there's somebody in there. My friend and I had so much fun scaring these passer-bys by suddenly playing a really loud piece just as they were getting close to the organ. Yes, we're evil...

My school waterpolo team (in which I'm in) had one of the biggest matches of the year today. We were told that our opponents are one of the roughest teams out there. Those rumors were right. Being pit man (the equivalent of striker if that helps, ie I'm right up in the center) I was probably the most molested person. I've got two bruises on my back, a swollen lip, and a cramp in my right leg. To be fair I look like I've been boxing rather than anything else. But hey, who said that waterpolo wasn't a rough sport? We beat the opposition 10-2. Good score, we could have scored even more but we're quite happy.

Thank you for reading (and commenting if you do so), here, have some of these:

@ rosesforever89 - Payback for all the ones you gave me...

EDIT: New avatar, thanks to rosesforever89 for it!

First of all if any of you reading this haven't commented in my last blog post, I would appreciate it greatly if you were to scroll down a bit and post a comment. Have a bit of the food too. I'm sorry to do this but I'm so close to my record that I'm not giving up now! Thanks to all those who've already posted!

As suggested by rosesforever89 here is the description of a week of my life (I tried to keep it short as I don't want you all to fall asleep):

Monday: Back to school after a week's holiday. Quite unhappy but no work due in apart from an essay on something related to Japan (my subject was "Bushido", wrote about 3000 words so it was OK).

Tuesday: Lessons, work, monotony, blah blah. Rowing training in the afternoon (I row for my school team), bad weather so I ended up being soaked.

Wednesday: Lessons, work, monotony, blah blah, rowing. (My life is fascinating).

Thursday: Rowing regatta in an eight (as the name suggests that means we were in a boat with eight rowers and a cox: guy who doesn the steering). We didn't do so well but it was still fun. Loads of catching up on work afterwards...

Friday: Lessons, work... Going out bowling with friends. I managed to score three consecutive strikes, which I was amazed at considering that I'm useless at bowling. I suppose I got lucky... Drank a bit too much...

Saturday: Hangover. Rowing regatta again! In an eight again, we did better this time. When I got back home I crashed on my bed and slept until the next morning.

Sunday: Massive catching up on work to do, I'm way past many deadlines. Played some waterpolo (I'm also part of the school waterpolo team) but failed to score. That's annoying me as I usually manage at least 1 or 2 goals...

And that's it.

Did anything cool happen to you guys (and girls)?

About two years ago I made a blog post to see how many people actually visit my profile page and read my blogs (check "Hi everyone"). I was asking anyone who read that post to leave a comment saying they were there. To my suprise I managed to get 20 comments (not including the ones I made myself)! Which was incredible. However now it seems that all those people have left GS.

So I was wondering how many people read my blog nowerdays. If you're reading this, please leave a comment saying so! You will be greatly contributing to the achievement of beating my previous record, and thus your post will be greatly appreciated. Also state your favourite food so that I can keep updating this post with pics of what you guys like to eat (or drink) and make a massive meal!

Meal starts here:

for myself

for rosesforever89

for bojocon40

for scnut

for cnav

??? for quadraleap

for Forte310

??? for gameshark5

for MaDNuGgu

for IppaiMetaru

for sabru8

for hiccup

??? for Nude_Dude

for smith92

for Funkyhamster

It seems that a common goal for many human beings is happiness. Some would even go as far as saying that the pursuit of happiness is all that humans are concerned about. Although I wouldn't quite agree with that, I have to admit that happinness is certainly very important in our lives. I would like to ask you, dear reader, whether you find that you are "quite happy" or "quite unhappy" generally? And do you think that people are generally "quite happy" or "quite unhappy". I would also like to ask you what you do in order to be happy. Videogames I guess is an obvious answer, and appreciating any form of art (music, film, etc.) is quite a safe bet, but is there something (or someone) special that makes you happy?

As a side note I've caught a cold again, my nose is running, I'm starting to cough, and I look like one of those zombies in a badly done horror movie. I really need sleep, in fact that's what I'll probably do for the whole of today...

I cannot imagine living without my music, I listen to music all the time, and when I'm not (because of school) I mostly think about what music I'm going to listen to later. Do some of you not listen to music much? I've got a friend who just doesn't, I can't really understand why...

I'm an (obvious) Gorillaz fan, but I like all kinds of music. Does anyone here listen to Jazz, or even (dare I say) classical music? What's your favourite band / who's your favourite singer...?

See ya all later!

I would like to ask you, dear reader, whether you have a hero that you admire. An idol of some sort who's path you follow. It could be someone famous, or someone special to you.

I was wondering whether our society needs more role models, more people to show the way. Is it unreasonable in our modern times to consider these people as prophets? People preaching a new way of life, even though it may have nothing to do with religion. Would they be followed or discarded as lunatics? Does society want to be left alone or is it in need of some inspired leader?

As a sidenote it's sunny outside, which is incredible, but still damn cold. Why won't the sun's rays heat this place up a bit!

I've just discovered that Apple is finally going to release a long awaited superportable computer called Mackbook Air. When I first saw a picture of it before knowing what it was and immediately guessed that it was made by Apple (the design is too obvious), but thought that it was just a concept. I was actually quite surprised to find out how slim it actually is, and predicted that it would have very bad specs. I was surprised to find that it could have a 1.8 Ghz Core Duo and 2GB of RAM, but even more amazed by the graphics card. How the hell did they fit it in? Anyways I'm quite scared that it will overheat like crazy if used over long periods of time. And of course there's no disk drive. Plugging in a disk drive through the USB port is a pain, and since there is only one of them that will mean removing my external harddrive... But I need a disk drive to watch DVD's! Especially on such a nice screen (the full size keyboard is also a very nice touch)! I'd have to see it in real to make my decision on whether it's worth it or not however, also because it is quite expensive for what it does.

Well otherwise there's still the usual ramblings about school, which prevents me from being here often or even playing video games. In the end I find that I spend most of my time on messenger talking to friends... As always I've been taking pictures, writing stories, and drawing stuff (although I draw so badly it's embarassing). I've also been watching Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo (anime series for those who don't have a clue what I'm talking about). I really got addicted to them, and I also got a few friends of mine addicted too. If anyone remotely likes anime then you must watch them. I've also been reading short stories by Akutagawa (such as "Rashomon" and "In a Bamboo Grove", which were made into a movie by the famous film director Akira Kurosawa) to complement my Japanese studies, although I read the stories in English (I'm nowhere near good enough to read them in Japanese). Again highly recommended, as well as all the Kurosawa movies if you're willing to watch anything slightly more challenging than the usual Hollywood blockbuster movies. They're mostly samurai films although some are also set in modern Japan, but arguably the most interesting ones are Kurosawa's adaptations of Shakespeare's plays: King Lear as "Ran" and Macbeth as "Throne of Blood". Watch out for the movies featuring Toshiro Mifune, he's an incredible actor. Oh and "Seven Samurai" is probably Kurosawa's best film.

Wow, that was probably one of my longest blog posts... I would like to give special thanks to MaDNuGgU for his great list of rock artists he would recommend, quite impressive, although you missed out two obvious bands: ACDC and Led Zeppelin. Where those ommisions due to the fact that you don't like them or is it that you haven't listened to their songs? Anyways thanks. You're all probably either really bored by now or just not reading this at all. Just to see if anyone actually read this to the end could you add a dollar sign ($) at the beginning of you comment to show you have? I will show my appreciation (possibly by reading your blog posts fully and commenting...)

That's all folks!