How to Become Creepy

Hey guys!

How was your valentine's day?
Last year I posted about valentine's day and how it is all about marketing scheme and we are all victims of marketing master minds.

But I still love valentine's day. I just like festivities in general. Or just excuses to consume alcohol perhaps.

ANYWAYS, today I am going to write about ways to become creepy.
There are creepy people everywhere I realized.
But then, it got me thinking, "what exactly defines creepy for me?"
So I went through my memories and thought about some creepy people I have encountered and before and tried to dissect the Creepy-ness, in my 20 minutes of bath time I just had. So this guide is probably going to be quite incomplete but hey, what was ever complete in my past blog posts, what the heck.
So here we go!

1. Completely believe that you are totally desirable by everyone and act as if you are doing people favor by showing you are also interested in them. 
 - What does it mean? It's easy. Believe that the person you are hitting on (or harassing them) are also totally in love with you, without any plausible evidence. What? He/she looks like they are denying you? No, no, no way. They are just shy. Keep doing that, no worries. They are getting red-faced... ohhhh maybe you are turning them on too. Yikes for creeps!

2. Be obsessive about someone in "out-of-norms" manner.
- It's hard to define what out-of-norms are. But maybe something like, collecting his/her strings of hair and keep them into your wallet like a lucky charm. Or steal their dirty sock (somehow) and sleep with it, next to your face. Or go through their trash and re-chew the gum that they chewed and spat out. Yes, it's kinda like a cult. Of course, you can do all these things in a secretive or non-secretive, or perhaps the most difficult semi-secretive manner. Semi-secretive manner is that you are not doing these acts in broad daylight for everyone to notice, but just bold enough so that the person of your obsession sorta realizes. Way to go!

3. Make us think (imagine) what you are thinking (imagining) about, when you are imagining something that should probably be kept as a secret. 
- Perhaps somewhat similar to the first one. Yeah tell us your dirty fantasy. Tell us about OUR baby's name, though we only spoke to each other only once before. Tell us how you want to put life-size dolls that look like us which you can talk to and eat with everyday. That's pretty damn creepy (wink).

4. Be obsessed with violence. 
- Everyone likes a little bit of violence. We are human. It's our nature. But no, BE OBSESSED. Like your daily morning routine should include watching a horror (really gory kind) movie just to get you started. When you watch it, you shouldn't be able to help but smile watching all that blood and disfigured corpses.  And of course, be so obsessed that you tell everyone that you one day want to try the movie scene yourself. When you tell that to people, don't forget to look dazed, to slightly smile, to use really low or hyper voice, to make your lips tremble with excitement, and to describe in details how you would. That's out of the world creepy. Maybe more like dangerous. You might have people calling cops on you. That's the down-side.

5. Look dirty and proactively approach people in a really uncomfortable way
- Get your hair greasy. Wear some dirty clothes. Don't brush your teeth or wash your face. Approach people panting. Stand to them really close, as you are panting. With the stereotype "creepy-ness" so deeply imprinted in us through media, this is an easy way for you to get labeled as "that creepy person."

These are all I could come up with during my 20 minutes bath time. It may not have covered all the qualities of creepy-ness, I think practicing these will definitely get ME to think that you are creepy.

I think definition of creepy differs from person to person. I don't immediately think of a physically unattractive guy hitting on a girl at a bar as "a creepy guy." It's when he is completely in belief that the girl is loving it though she is saying "fuck off" that makes him "creepy" to me. Or I don't immediately think of a girl stalking a guy on facebook being creepy. It's when she prints out all the conversation history on his facebook wall and make it into a book so that she can read every night that makes me kind of label her as "creepy."

It's all subjective right. It's all subjective and a very obscure line. We all are creeps in some ways or others. We all fantasize or do things that you may not want everyone in the world to know.

But, it comes out creepy to me when people are in utter belief that other people totally agree or approves whatever you do / say / think. Maybe it is a combination of ignorance and self-centeredness mixed in with adult desires that create creepy-ness... Still can't put my finger on it.

What is YOUR definition of creepy?

Word of the Day

Hey guys-

One of my colleague left the company for another company.
It was for good and I am truly happy for his advancement in career but at the same time, I was quite sad to see him go, as he was kind of like a big brother in the office for me.

Before he left, earlier in the week, he taught me one word that he thought was so important and captures the beauty of Japanese language, which hit me as well so I would like to share that with you.

The word is "お陰さまです," (Okagesama Desu).

The word "Kage" means "shadow" in Japanese. So the directly translation would probably be like "your dear shadow."

"Shadow" in Japanese can mean a lot of things. like we use idioms like "he was supporting you in shadows," meaning "he was supporting you secretly or quietly or unnoticeable ways in the back."

But this idiom is used more as "thanks you" or "fortunately." It's not even a big word or anything special. In fact, it is used in a pretty light way a lot of times.

"Okagesama Desu." The mentality of this word is more for showing gratitude for those who have been supporting you in very non-obvious ways.

There are a lot of people who support us in very un-noticeable ways.

I think when we achieve great things or accomplish something, we are often tempted to credit ourselves.
True, in a competitive place, you have to find a way to shine and beat the race.

But this simple word, though people use it as a "thank you" linguistically, has its beauty in its mentality to remind us that we can never accomplish anything ourselves.

Yes, if you are a project manager, you should be the one in the spotlight. But when you are making a big presentation in front of these clients or management board or something, probably you are not the only one who worked on that presentation, especially if you are in a corporate setting.

You may have 3 bar charts in your slides, which 3 different people took 3 hours to come up with using complicated database.

In the eyes of audience, these may be just 3 bar charts. But you should never forget that these people also took time and effort to complete your slides.

It is quite easy to forget that there are army of people who are behind your back, when you are so blinded by the bright spotlight to make you shine.

"Okagesama Desu." That's what my colleague taught me.
And I will be forever in his debt to be reminded that I should never forget the fact that whatever I achieve, I could not have done it alone.

Oh there's also great read if you are interested in the relationship between "shadow" and japanese culture. It's called "In Praise of Shadows" It is a beautifully written essay and I highly recommend it!

Les Not-That Miserable Me

Hey Guys!

From the title, some of you... probably most of you can already guess what this post is going to be about.

Yes, it is going to be about food.


Just kidding!!! Of course it's going to be about the movie "Les Miserable," starring Hugh Jackman, Russel Crowe, Anne Hathaway and of course, the gorgeous Amanda Seyfried and Eddie Redmayne. Oh yeah and Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena B Carter as well.

I had no idea Cohen is starring the movie and I was like "is that... Borat...?" in the theatre. yeah ok, whatever.

I am here NOT to write critique for the movie.

I am actually here to talk about how I learned something new.
About how to prepare myself before watching a movie.

Embarrassingly, I didn't know the synopses of Les Miserable before.
Never read the book or never watched other versions of the novel's movie.

SO, basically I was asking around if anyone has seen this "Les Miserable" and if they have, I also asked them, "how was it?" or "what did you think?" or "did you eat popcorn?" or just you know, mediocre questions.

I was told by several people that they balwed their eyes out in the movie.
OR some told me that they were depressed or thought about life and stuff like that.

After hearing all these comments and such, I decided I should DEFINITELY bring something to wipe my tears and snot during the movie.

I thought, handkerchief?  Oh no. It wouldn't cut it if I need to blow my nose. Snot all over your face if you need to wipe your tears after blowing your nose?
GROSS.

So I bought myself 4 new packs of pocket tissue papers. You know what those are right?
These.

Not particularly these but I bought the ones that were soft and had moisturizers in them and all these fancy stuff to treat my nose nicely.

I watched the movie last Friday.

What happened to the tissue papers?

I USED NONE. WHAT! WHAT!

I did NOT shed a single tear before, during or after the movie.

I was in shock. with myself. I was thinking, "am I so cold-hearted that I couldn't cry in a movie that others bawled???"

But then, after the discussion with those I watched the movie with, we concluded that we were over-hyped or over-prepared to shed thousand tears.
You know, it's kinda like... uh... when you are SO hungry and dying to eat tacos and thinking you can gobble down 500 tacos but when you actually sit down for tacos, you only manage to eat 2 tacos.

Do you get it? I was just over-prepared.
I thought I would look puffy-eyed, red nosed, and still hiccuping coming out from the theatre. ... I guess at least I didn't look gross and miserable that way... but I was SO ready to cry.

The movie itself was good! and I liked the music and stuff.

BUT next time I know that I can't be over-hyped or over-prepared or set the expectation to cry or laugh or be scared or be hungry too high. I can save tissue money that way. Lesson learned.

HENCE, I shouldn't be asking around people about the movie that they have watched, which I have not watched but want to watch.

... Does that make sense...?

Well, I don't watch much of movies anyway. Pff, whatever.

Anyways, if anyone has not it yet, I recommend it.
Trust me, you won't cry. or maybe.... maybe not...

Go away mucus.

Hey there.

I'm sick. I was SO sick yesterday that I could barely function to eat dinner, which was quite rare for me.

When I get sick, I usually get sore throat or headache but I usually function fine.

But this time, I have to blow my nose even at the platform of train station and spit out gross mucus every 20 seconds or so. On top of that, my head feels like I'm carrying a 3 tons of cow or something.

Anyway, so much about my symptoms.
When I had to spit out mucus every 20 seconds ( now it's more like every 1 minute. I'm getting much better!!), I was thinking how wasteful it is to use tissue for every shit that I spit out.

And then I remembered. Apparently there was a thing called "Mucus Jar" in Japan. In Japanese it's called "Tan-Tsubo" (たん壷). I was not sure if it was something mythical or real. I've only vaguely heard of it.

So what do I do? I googled.
And yes, there was.

As gross and disgusting as it sounds, in 1951, there was a law referring to this "Mucus Jar." In short, there were mucus jars in train stations, or even IN trains for people to spit out this bacteria-filled crap.

WHY???? Mainly to prevent the spread of tuberculosis, by having people spit out the contagious stuff into A JAR. Well...I guess it seemed like it was a pretty good idea...
But think about it. If there were such jars, obviously someone had to clean right???? Ew.

Instead, I present alternative solution.

How about personal mucus jars that are filled with chemicals that turns mucus into sand which is harmless. We can even use the sand as nutrient for plants.
Can someone invent stuff like that?

Instead of using tons of tissues, ultimately killing trees OR using mucus jars that may expose the jar cleaners to the evil tuberculosis bacterias, we can turn our gross shit to something that actually is nice. Pretty hybrid, no?

These jars, however, are not in stations or trains anymore, since tuberculosis is quite preventable in other ways now. THANK GOD.

Sorry if anyone read this before eating. I just had to share, cause the idea of mucus jars was too gross not to share.


I'm not sick anymore, by the way. Thanks for caring.
What, you forgot about the fact that I was sick cause the topic of this post was too gross. OH WELL! Sorry!

ALERT ALERT! Watch your blood sugar level!

Hey Guys!!!

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG Time No Write!

Since I have been SO absent from this little blogging of mine, I won't even bother trying to come up with excuses for WHY I haven't posted anything in 1 year.

But thanks to those who told me to "start blogging again!" for such a random and kind of pointless blabbing outlet of mine.

Anyways, let's go straight to today's topic eh?

Something pretty interesting happened to me today at first day of work, after the world turned to the year 2013, safe and sound, despite all the hysteria about "OMG THE WORLD IS GOING TO END IN 2012 Decemberrrrr!!!"

Remember how I wrote in one of my first posts that Japanese people go to shrine in New Year to wish for a good year to come?
So my team at work decided to go to nearby shrine right before lunch today.
It was around noon time.
And the shrine is called Atago Shrine, which is famous for having a long ass stairs like this:

It may NOT look like much, but each step is like 30cm high alright. 

Legend has it that a man who climbed up these stairs by horse had gotten fast track to promotion. (Mind you that the legend is set in ancient times of Samurai and such) 

SO, What Do I Fucking DO? 

Climb up the stairs as fast as I can before ANYONE ELSE for the fastest promotion. Greedy greedy. tsk tsk. 

After furiously running up those magnificent things, I stood on top, looking down on my fellow teammates. I was taking pictures of those who were struggling to climb up and was making fun of them and what-not, when I started feeling strange....

I started seeing stars in my eyes, I was nauseous, I was dizzy, I had urge of vomiting, I was shaking like an alcoholic, I felt disoriented.... so on and so forth.  

All of the above? Symptom of goddamn glucose crash after intense exercise. 

Shame on you YURI SHAME ON YOU!!!!! All these eating and sleeping and being lazy had finally hit me physically, after blindly lured by this legend of fast promotion. More embarrassing thing was that Everyone else seemed totally and completely FINE. What. I mean what's wrong with these people. 

So, Moral of today's story

Do NOT climb up 100 stairs too fast when:

1. You are Hungry

2. You haven't exercised in a long time

3. You are doing this because you are purely greedy and doing it just to show off and want to laugh at those who are climbing slower than you. 

Because you are just going to feel sick and look stupid. Those people who went with their pace were.... uh .... smart. 

I felt fine after lunch though. Oh maybe next time I should eat a banana or something before climbing up. 

So here's another moral of today's story:

Promotion does not come easy, and you should stock up before you furiously try to climb to the top... 

What a great analogy. Yes. 

But please watch out for your sugar level. I swear it is NOT a good feeling to have your blood losing all this precious sugar. 

See you soon in next post!! 

If you'd like to melt your heart...

It's been quite cold these days in Tokyo...

and my heart is cold too...


AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! I NEED SOME LOVE AND WARMTH!!!!!!


I didn't actually scream these words but you know what I mean?

No? NO? what? I'm not lame and sad like you Yuri...??


fine then....

BUT if anybody is feeling low and cold, I have a perfect website for you. before that take this survey to find out if you are suitable for this site:


1. Do you like animals in general?
2. Do you like small things?
3. Are you feeling low and cold?

The survey was kind of a spoiler but WHATEVER.
If you answered yes to all the questions, you will be addicted.

one warning tho; you might get addicted and might not able to get out of this site.

ENJOY!
http://attackofthecute.com/

creative ad...?

HI!!!!!


I was flattered to find quite a few view counts of my last post after my long absence.


It definitely pumped me up to start blogging about.... ehhhhh random crap that I see/come up with/ think about/ hear or even dream about again. 


But really my excuse was probably way too lame so I'm not going to keep my hopes up about attracting too many readers... 
BUT I SWEAR I WAS SO SO OVERWHELMED BY WORK!!!!!! 


It's funny because when I physically talk a lot, which I did for the first month of my full-employment, I tend to not talk to myself too much. Like I'm doing right now. Obviously, I didn't talk to real people much today. 








What? Yuri, your excuse is still too lame, now shut the fudge up??? 


No, I can't. I'm sorry..... 


What??? then why don't you either stop talking to real people OR stop mumbling to yourself completely so you can focus on one thing at a time???




HEEEEHHHH, good idea mate. But that is going to make me socially inept soooooo no. 










ANYWAYS. Today I would like to talk about this creative advertisement(?) that I saw in Shinagawa station couple weeks back. 


For those who are not familiar with Shinagawa station, it is one of the central stations in Tokyo, which is a nearby station from my house. 
It's pretty scary in the morning, since there are probably 1,123,940,946 people walking to the SAME direction towards to their offices. We have a lot of office buildings around the station.
Unfortunately, I go against the heavy current of 12039846570870976543 people every morning when I go TOWARDS the station. 
GO AHEAD OFFICE PEOPLE, DROWN ME HERE. NOW.


YURI GET BACK TO THE MAIN POINT!!!! sorry. 


So yeah, in a ginormous station, there was an ad for Sony. I saw this around 6pm after coming back from work. Here are some photos. 

NOW everybody, find differences between the two photos. 

hmmm, what? yeah there's a guy in front of the box on the bottom photo. true true. 

What? ok fine, the angle of the photos is different. yup the screen is showing different things. great!!!

NO, YOU BLIND, THE GUY INSIDE HAS MOVED, GODDAMN IT. 

There was a real human inside this glass box in the MIDDLE of the station. 

No idea how long he had been in there or FOR WHAT PURPOSE, but he was there. 

Viewing something through that robotic, futuristic, and kind of unstylish headset thing. 

It's called HMZ, 3-D TV set. 

WOW. REALLY. 

The 3-D movies have been in some serious trends but now TV??? 

WITH THAT HEADSET??

Apparently, that headset itself IS like a TV and you can enjoy watching 3-D Spider-Man through by wearing it. How cool.

And it's only $799.99, £799.99 or ￥59,800!!!! WHAT A BARGAIN!!!! 

My suggestion?? We should all buy them and gather up in one room and watch a movie through that headset TOGETHER. 

No, no, it doesn't matter if we all look dorky or maybe even a little creepy. 

I feel like Sony kind of left out that movie watching is also a group activity/entertainment for some people... including me. 

Of course, for those who like watching movie regardless, this headset should be quite ecstatic. 

Good job on the advertisement though Sony!! 

But I must say the guy inside the glass box looked a little... mmm weird. that's all.