Batzirra? Carbzirra?

Today's post comes to you via The Canadian Press.

It seems that unbeknownst to me, there was a Batman craze over "here" in Japan in the sixties, and the comics drawn were quite bizarre and disturbing (much in harmony with Batman's character). So for the true Batman afficionado, I give you, "Bat-Manga! The Secret History of Batman in Japan"! And if there are any Batman-addicts out there who purchase this manga, please DO let me know what you really think of it.

I also hope you have a wonderful New Year's Eve.

I love you!

Cam

P.S. If anyone is interested, I have been conducting yet another very interesting "carbohydrate experiment" while I have been here. I have not changed my diet; I continue to eat meat, eggs, cheese, vegetables. I haven't eaten the cookies, the cakes, the crackers, the chocolates because they just don't interest me.

I go for a 30 minute walk in the -30C weather every day, therefore my exercise level really has not decreased either so that cannot be used as an excuse.

The one thing I have been consuming that I just don't ingest at home is beer. In the 11 days I have been here, I have consumed approximately 10 cans of beer.

I weigh 7.5 pounds MORE than when I came here!

This pretty much proves beyond the shadow of a doubt with real life results how even a tiny little big carbohydrate such as "one beer a day" can put on almost a half pound of useless bodyfat within the blink of an eye.

Would you like to cut your weight effortlessly and feel good while doing it? Don't waste time by starvation diets such as reducing your quantity of food... don't try to exercise your face off... don't go on any weird "hot pepper watermelon" diets.

Simply cut your carbohydrates back. The more you cut, the more you will lose, and the more energy, vigor and good mood you will have.

This is simple science, and it simply cannot be refuted by anyone, anywhere who understands how the body utilizes ALL carbohydrates (sugars). To the biochemical processes of our bodies, a carbohydrate is a carbohydrate is a carbohydrate. It simply cannot function as anything else.

It really IS THAT SIMPLE.

The Christmas Catalyst

It all started back in September or October of this year...

I was thinking that this year for my Dad's 71st birthday I would surprise him by showing up at their door on the eve of his birthday. I spent a fair deal of time searching the Japanese internet for good flights that would offer me some sort of flexibility at economic prices (very hard to do these days). In the end, I opted to get my ticket via Osaka - Detroit - Minneapolis - Winnipeg (NWA) through Carlson Wagonlit Travel, the travel agent my mom and dad have been using for years here in Winnipeg. (photo: street decorations)

I purchased and paid for my non-refundable discount ticket in October... and then the financial sector of the USA tanked, the American and Canadian dollars fell, and the yen rose... Of course had I waited the exchange would have made my flight much cheaper. But had I known this, I would either be in prison due to making millions of dollars on insider information re. the stock market... or I would ... or I would nothing!

I only told a very small group of friends I was doing this. I didn't even tell my brother Bruce who can absolutely keep not one single secret in the world from anyone... however it was Bruce I needed to come and get me at the airport. I had planned for this in advance, of course and told Bruce that I needed him in front of his computer Friday night (Dec 19th) so that I could show him some of the stuff that I was sending to my parents for Christmas, and explain some stuff to him. He was there, waiting for me.  (photo: looking down our street... twice the width of Japanese streets)

Vonage (public payphone) in Minneapolis rejected my mastercard... rejected my visa... rejected my american express... and then it was time to board. So...I ended up taking a taxi to the head of the street, paying the cabbie the $35 for the 30 minute drive, and pulled my suitcases up the street at -28C (before windchill adjustments) to the house and rang the doorbell. I didn't want them to accidentally walk past the living room window and see a cab pull up with me getting out as it would ruin the surprise so I did it this way.

When I rang the doorbell, my mom was just about to come upstairs and go to bed. I looked downstairs through the thick plate glass window and smiled. She looked upstairs through the thick plate glass window and was dumbstruck. I guess her brain wouldn't register ME standing there because I was supposed to be in Japan! Well, she suddenly came up the stairs, flung open the door and hugged me as I stepped in. Then the "fight or flight" reflex took hold and she had to run off for a pee!  (photo: me walking to Tim Hortons @ -37C... thought I had lost my eyelashes)

Dad came up with a big smile as I handed him his personally delivered birthday bottle of Suntory Old whiskey. He wanted to shake my hand, but I would have nothing to do with that nonsense, so summarily gave him a great big hug.

It isn't nearly as cold here as I had hoped it would be; I want the -40C + windchill bringing it down to the low -80s of my youth, but I guess with global weirding, that is no longer to be...

We just opened the Christmas presents and will have dinner at our friends across our back yard tonight. Tomorrow will be Boxing Day open house and all of my parents' friends will be coming by. I enjoyed this exactly two years ago as well (and then I went down to Fargo to meet with Robin, Adrian and Steph, and subsequently got stuck there an extra night in a snowstorm, if you recall!)

All of this traveling and visiting people in 2008... this is my third trip this year (thus I got a glorious upgrade to first class on the 1.5hr flight from Minneapolis to Winnipeg!!) and I have really had a great time meeting a lot of people.  (photo: SuperValu in the neighbourhood... madhouse this time of year)

I have been to Tim Horton's coffee several times to enjoy the coffee and listen to the weird Winnipeg Accents and hear all the Canucks using the word "eh". I have visited Sears and the mall to buy a bunch of towels (we can't get good towels in Japan that last for 20 years like our towels from Canada have). I went to SupeValu to stock up on anti-perspirant (can't get in Japan) and allergy meds (too weak in Japan). I did all this walking back and forth from the house, enjoying the bite of the wind on my face as it tried to crack my exposed skin...and wished for colder weather yet.

This past Sunday I visited my old best friends and their families for brunch. Then we went back to his place and enjoyed a hot tub party in the night at -38C. You can see the video on YouTube, entitled, "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDZZvFXYiEY". (photo: Sherry, Brad, Cam @ brunch)

On this trip, I am "stepping into my fear" to meet my high school friends and stop feeling indifferent to them due to the extreme bullying I got during those school years (hardwired into the brain... this time I choose to see things differently). There is an informal gathering of anyone from our graduating year who wants to pop into a (forget) place about 7pm on the 29th. And I intend to just pop in unannounced! Other than that, it is time with family, and time with anyone else who might like to meet with me (I haven't had a chance to contact them all yet but will).

(In case you are wondering where Mayu might be.. she has stuff to do in Tokyo at year end so I'm on my own on this trip. I'm hoping that we don't get too much snow while I'm away over the new year and that is the reason why I worked on the special snow protection before I left.)  (photo: blowup penguin street decoration)

The economic situation around the world is really difficult for us all. As strange as it may seem, the collapse of the American Empire has dramatically affected my business in the tiny village in which we have lived for the past 15years. So much, so, that I really don't know if we will even be in Kamishii for the full year next year. It seems that perhaps it is time to leave our Shangri-la and move on... And who knows where the future will lead, right?

 

I have asked my parents if they might like to come for a visit next May or June when the weather is nice. I know we will be there until June for sure as I have a little bit of contract work that keeps me tied to Fukui. As long as I have work in Fukui we will stay in this home as it is beautiful for the small amount of rent we pay. Sure we could leave it for a tiny apartment somewhere, but the space would be dramatically reduced, and the rent would dramatically increase, so why bother, right? I will see what they say as 2009 rolls in...  (photo: my ancestral home, front view)

So with that.. I would like to once again (as I always do), open my home (while we have it) and my heart to anyone and everyone who might like to experience Japan not from a "tourist in a hotel life" perspctive, but from a relaxed, country living view. We could move in and out with ease, wining, dining, laundering (clothing not money), laughing, walking, talking, driving, RELAXING and most of all moving about through time as if we are LIVING and BEING in the NOW moment with no hotel-life restrictions.

I welcome any one of you who might think you would like to visit my beautiful Shangri-la. Feel free to write me privately and let me know you are interested. I would be more than happy to adjust my schedule for you, help plan stuff, and offer you suggestions on the best times to come. I am, and have always been serious. Just as Paula took me up on my suggestion over 2.5 years ago, I hope that in 2009 at least one person out there in our community will say, "Yes, I think I seriously would like to come and see your wonderland, Cam."   (photo: essential gear to get to, and enjoy Tim Hortons Coffee every day)

Consider this post a "catalyst", something that gets you started on a new adventure in 2009. I plan to have MANY new adventures in 2009 with many new challenges work-wise and life wise. I hope to grow, and expand physically, mentally, educationally and especially spiritually as I challenge myself to new heights, never-before experienced. That is what life is all about, right? As Mayu so aptly put it recently, it's time we "stopped just sucking air". And I agree. Ever onward, ever upward!!

And on that note, I wish you a most wonderful and Merry Christmas for 2008, I hope your Boxing Days are full of joy, and that on January 1st, 2009 you are not praying to the porcelain gods!  (photo: crossing the playground to get to Tim Hortons)

I love you as I always have and always will: UNCONDITIONALLY.

Cam

P.S. If you wish to see more photos, please visit the slideshow on my flckr that is located in my "Christmas 2008 in Winnipeg, Canada" Set.

Hogwarts Uses Canada Post!

Well, this will be attempt #3.... I will have to roll back and delete this Internet Explorer Ver. 8 Beta I am testing as a HUGE blog I just wrote got all scrunched up into one line when I tried to add a photo... and it was gone! Poof! Just like Harry Potter might make a cockroach disappear. And then gone again... POOF POOF!!! (now I need to add photos...)

This has been a very busy two weeks; We've been winterizing, and getting ready for the new year. Last week Mayu and I took a mid-week driving trip to Tokyo for some family business (no worries, no condolences needed, thanks). This week we have been busy winterizing the house in a different way than usual.

When we get heavy snowfalls, the snow from the roof of the house can break things if it breaks off. Three winters ago, the sunroom roof exploded when a big chunk fell off the peak of the roof onto it. Also, as there are barely any overhangs, when the snow hits the deck, it is often perilously close to the sliding glass doors. And if it falls or bounces the wrong way, we could be looking at major damage.

It hasn't snowed much at all since that huge snow of three years ago, so we could be getting some big snow this year. It often happens that our snow patterns follow North America by about two weeks. So if you look at heavy snowfalls in the midwest, two weeks later we often have ours. And I don't want to be out there changing my tires, or cleaning glass out of our living room just because a big chunk decided to fall the wrong way.

I took these leantos you can see here, and affixed them to the deck, and to each other. But because we also get winds here, due to the angle, they can easily blow off. And if they are affixed only to the deck, that means they will go vertical, then fall the other way, damaging the deck as they crash against Dickhead's concrete wall and explode, quite possibly bouncing into our glass doors, and exploding them, too. That wouldn't be nice.

So, I took our bazillion kg deck chairs that even Mayu can't lift and bound the leantos to the three chairs, and now I cannot budge them. SO... I think we are good. The added benefit is that during the day the sun reflects off of them and Dickhead's Dad cannot come peering in like he often tries to do. I like these so much that I may even keep them up until the end of March!

Today I went into town to pick up my video camera that needed some repairs. On the way in I saw a store I hadn't noticed before and took a stop for a look-see. They had a lot of really great furniture, knicknacks, pottery, beds, wall hangings, drapes, fabric, and a ton of other stuff. I really enjoyed visiting.

The thing that caught my eye, though, was THIS plastic post box!

I was attracted strongly to it, however the $400 price tag is too rich for my blood. And really, the inside box is only good for letters, not for boxes, or any care packages that people may send this way.

But I loved it! And the first thing I thought became the title for this blog: Hogwarts Uses Canada Post!

Have a great end of the week, and I hope you don't freeze your asses off in the winter!

I love you!

Cam

P.S. Multiply is acting funny tonight...

Snot Quite What I Expected

Last week I finally decided to try and auction this Karcher Steam Cleaner on Yahoo Auction. We had originally paid about JPY 35,000 ($350) for it at the home center many years ago.

In the old house, using kerosene heat, the entire area would get a thin film of oily greasy dust that was never easy to clean off, and clung to everything. Add to that the mud walls, and you have the perfect conditions for greasy living.

I can't remember exactly when we purchased it, but it may have been a few years before we finally moved out of the old house into this one. We used it for one final steam cleaning of all of the floors, etc. cleaned it up, boxed it up, and never used it again.

We decided to let the auction begin at JPY 8,000. One week later we had amassed 631 people who had accessed it, 59 who put it on their watchlist, and finally sold it for JPY 21,500 (about $215)!  We sold it on the auction! Yaaay us!

Today we needed to take it to Lawson's Convenience Store to send it off using the Yahoo YuPack Postal network tie-up (very cool system). I wanted to wrap the box up so decided to use a few of the kimono paper wrapping bags that all of my most recent batch of kimono came in. I went upstairs to the spare room where all of the bags are sitting, grabbed two, and taped them nicely to the outside of the box.

My nose felt a bit runny from the musty smell of all the kimono, but I had kind of expected that. What I didn't expect, however, was that for the next 30 minutes a green, bubbly, frothy liquid kept dripping, and sloshing out of my left nostril! Every time I blew the tissue (*salivation has begun here...*) turned this bizarre yellow-green, and then all of a sudden it would pour ot of my nose!

Thirty minutes later I was finally able to stop the flow, but Mayu had to take the package to my car, and we drove with the windows open to Lawson's in order to get rid of it! And now, just from that 30 minutes of foamy green flow, my nose feels like it is burned as if I had been blowing it for days!

I need to back up a bit here and give you some history now....

***** SHIFT! Back to July *****

In July I got the shingles. I'm still struggling with scars on my face, and a tickling itchy sensation that runs through the nerves on my face, but I guess I can get used to that. However, as the information on shingles says, it can take often over six months to completely heal, and energy is often down, while the immune system is also often compromised for long periods of time.

I have seemingly had one cold after the next from August on. It got especially bad in September, October and November with my sinuses completely clogged, tons of coughing, phlegm and such. I assumed it was due to a compromised immune system. Then in November I started getting severe sinus pressure over the left eye in that sinus cavity, in and around that eye as well. It was so bad that several times I had to sleep because I couldn't do anything. I KNEW it was a sinusitis of sorts as I used to get it regularly as a child because I suffer from a deviated septum in the left nostril which is often the one that gets plugged and has caused me the most trouble through my life.

I wanted to go to the doctor and get antibiotics but that was just at the point where Mayu and I had our "human docking" medical tests and I didn't want to interfere with the testing. As soon as that was done, I went and got five days of antibiotics. It didn't seem to help and I was really wondering what was going on because the pressure in the sinus cavity and my eyeball was intense (left one only, nothing in the right cavity) every day, about the same time of the day (between 2-4pm).

One day while I was doing my ab exercises I noticed the huge amount of dust under the piano, and I thought, "Aha! That must be it!" So we spent a good half day pulling, pushing, rocking and rolling the piano just enough to clean out the dust. It didn't help.

Nearly every day about 3pm I would start to get the pressure headache over my left eye and wondered why. Normally I am here from morning until night, and then shut down about dinner time, and come and go after that. One night I was here reading until 2am and I found that about 1am I started to get the exact same pressure headache! So I knew it had something to do with this room...

To make a long story shorter, eventually it dawned on me that the piles of vintage, MUSTY kimono in the closet next to my computer were causing me to have an allergic reaction! So I took them all upstairs to the spare room, put them away in clear boxes, cleaned out the drawers in my closet, and all of the congestion, all of the headaches, all of the watering eyes, and phlegm, and coughing and general malaise of the past three months disappeared!

And life was good...

**** SHIFT! Back to this morning *****

Well, after having that green frothy, foamy, bubbly, pouring liquid attack coming out of my left nostril and soaking the front of my sweater... I decided to ask Mayu to throw away all those papers!

I soo wanted to use them in a recycled way and let them become my wrapping papers for ages to come. But after that attack... to hell with recycling!

Now it's time to see if I can start another auction to sell off one of our two industrial kerosene heaters that get the rooms so roaringly hot that we have never been able to use them in this house at all! These babies rock!

You may be wondering why we have two... well, one year in February, the coldest month of the year, our old beloved one kind of went on the fritz. And we had no heat exactly when we needed it. We could not live in our house with no heat in the coldest time of the year, for three weeks while they overhauled the components.

But that's life, I guess... Now we have two, and both of them sit in storage so it's time to try and sell them off!

I love you!

Cam

Globalized Love Rules! or Mitch Got the Futon

Hey Gang! Mitch got the futon and made a video. So without any long explanations from me, please watch Mitch, over in Nova Scotia (Canada), enjoy our futon!

I love you!

Cam

P.S. It's a fantastic video. Mayu and I were laughing the entire 10 minutes! Those crazy Canadians!