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. 

Why I stopped Blogging

Ya'll probably wondering why I haven't updated my blog for the longest time.

What? I know you Yuri you are just plain lazy rotten little thing...?


Well... I got no excuse... I'm sorry....

BUT HEY!!!! I GOT NEWS!!

I STARTED WORKING!!!!!!!!! wheeeeee!!!

What? That's still not good reason to stop blogging.??

With all respects, you know WHAT, you're right. I'm so rotten.


But really I started working, like really working, like wake up at 7:30 am in the morning and come home at 6:30 pm in the evening working, I realized how EXHAUSTING real work is. DAMN IT.

Now I miss my 4 months long bum life terribly!!!

But the real problem with me blogging is that my blog is way too frigging long.

WAY TOO LONG. I WRITE TOO MUCH.

SHUSH YURI SHUSH! STOP TALKING AND SHUT UP!

but all these words come up and I just can't stop once I start writing.
Hence, I stopped blogging cause it's just gonna disrupt my sleep.

SO, from now on, I will try to cut down on my blabber and condense my contents...

BUT IT'S SO HARRRRRRDDDDD. see? all I wanted to say in this post was,
"i'm sorry i stopped blogging. it's because i'm too wordy and lazy."

there you have it.

my blog is going to be like that from now on. although quite unlikely.
if you would like shortened version on my blabber follow me at

yuriistweeting on twitter.


but twitter requires me more thinking that blogging. how ironic.

but a french mathmatician called Blaise Pascal  once said in his letter,

"I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."

It takes so much more time and effort to write short and concisely eh?

Wait.... does that mean I'm without effort and too dumb....???

WHATEVER BLAISE.

see you next post in... a few days.... I promise.... this time....

you lucky people.

HELLO YOU LUCKY READERS.

Why lucky? 

Because you got 2 posts in one day.

That's a miracle.

You don't get 2 posts in the same day on Yuri's blog.

OH BY THE WAY

I just started twitter so if you.... just IN CASE you wanted to follow me, my twitter name (is that what you call?) is yuriistweeting 

SO ORIGINAL RIGHT?

I wanted to be "yuriisontwitter" but apparently it was already taken. Fascinating. 

I really have nothing much to tweet about but I gave into the peer pressure and the temptation to look "cool and trendy."

.... I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE THINKING.

'YURI YOU ARE SO BEHIND THE GAME, JUST LIKE WHEN YOU STARTED THIS STUPID BLOG."

well.... I know I'm actually just a tech deaf trying to keep up but just a loser who is unable to do so... 

whatever. bite me.

that's all.

How to get rid of garlic smells.

Ok, so last post was quite heavy and it had nothing to do with "guide" per se.

But I just had to do it!!!! I needed an outlet for my confusion and anger. And therefore this blog was  the victim.

But let's talk about something totally random and trivial and not-so-useful for some but extremely useful for others.

GARLIC. Right. Let's talk about garlic.

I'm sure most of you have eaten it.

It's pungent. Yes. That may be an understatement but it smells.

I love that smell in the food personally, but some despise it.

But I'm not here to talk about how to get rid of the garlic smell after you eat.
What? That's what you expected? Well, too bad. haaarrhaaarrrr

I mean you can brush your teeth and chew gum or something!!
I heard eating apple also erases the garlic breath but not sure.

What I'm talking about is the garlic smells that you get on your HAND when you cook with it!!!


What??? I don't actually handle garlic, I just buy the ones that's already processed in jars???




Well, I have one word for you: GET OUT.

For those of you who use ACTUAL garlic and suffer from its lasting smell on your hands, here is the solution:

Any guess what this is??????

Wanna know??

Wanna know????

Drumrolll.....

It's just a pebble!!!!!

JK. it's a stainless steel stone.

Believe or not, after you handle garlic, you just use soap and just use this stainless steel pebble to rub your hands and finger, magically the un-sexy garlic smell goes away. 

now you can go ahead and touch some hotties in a bar without those people telling you "are you a chinese cook food by any chance?" and get into an awkward situation. 

you can thank me later. What? where to get it? 

I don't know.... my mom had it and forgot to ask.... JUST AMAZON IT GODDAMNIT.

Somebody please explain to me.

Why Troy Davis was executed?

Yes,I know everyone's sick of this topic and I am just here to write another entry like EVERYONE ELSE to cry out the injustice of this messed up world.

No but really, why?

For anyone who's taken basic law class, which I did when I was in college (although it was business law class, it also covered basic criminal laws), there is a term called "reasonable doubt" when somebody is being tried. It's one of the fundamental rules in criminal laws, well, at least that's how I perceived.

And? How was Davis executed "beyond reasonable doubt?" After 7 out of 9 witnesses flipped their stories? And when there was no physical evidence present? And when some witnesses named another guy as the real murderer? When most witnesses confessed that they were pressured by police?

And all these claims were dismissed as "it was too late" and without "substantive claim of innocence?"




REALLYYYY????? REALLY????? HOW????


Yes, maybe some years passed when these witnesses flipped stories. But 7 out of 9???? And did these prosecutors and justices think these witnesses have forgotten or developed Alzheimer that the new claims were bogus or not "substantive" enough????




And after all these organizations and public figures and millions of people protested against
so-obviously-not-legally-justified sentence, the Georgia state still had the authority to kill this man, who was potentially innocent.





I would like to know, what kind of legal loop hole this is.


Troy Davis, we would never know now whether you were truly innocent now.
If you were, I am so sorry and please rest in peace.

Driver's License Boot Camp.

That's right, you heard me. I said I would talk about it in last post.

Driver's License Boot Camp.

Did I just hear a loud "HUH??" from you?

Well, I don't blame you. Not this time.

Even if you live in Japan for a long time, if you are not really part of local community (for various reasons, maybe you are foreigners, went to American schools, etc etc), you might not know the existence of this camp. Hell, if you have never lived in Japan, you would probably never understand this concept from just the name of it.


It's pretty straight forward though.
It's a camp for those people who want to learn how to drive.

That's all!!! See you guys til next post!!!......

What? Too simple? Explain more?
Ay fine. I will do, since I promised that I would...

okaaaaayyy. So some of you may know, in Japan, to get a driver's license is quite lengthy and expensive. Pretty much everyone who is a first timer needs to go to driving school to learn how to drive in school's property with this special car that has sub-brake and sub-accelerator in the passenger seat. All the while you are practicing, instructor is sitting next to you the whole time.
You will also have to take classes to learn all these rules of driving and also some ethic classes to prepare for you to be a driver with a manner.... well it's mostly to prepare you for the written test OBVIOUSLY. Then you take the written AND road test to get the freaking permit. THEN you can drive on the normal road WITH instructor next to you. After like 20 hours of driving, you are finally allowed to take the road test to just GRADUATE the driving school. After you graduate, you have to take the final written test at your local police center or whatever and FINALLY GET THE LICENSE.






God, I hate writing so much. My head hurts now. Can I quit now? What? You haven't even talked about the camp part? UGHHHHH FINEEEEE. But now you get how lengthy it is.

SO the whole point of this camp is to do ALLLLLLL that stuff in only 2 weeks!!! You can indeed do all that in local driving school but it's harder to do, especially during summer vacation, since it could be crowded and harder to make reservation for each lesson/class. And in metro area like Tokyo, it's more expensive.

How expensive???


About.......Three F$%king Thousand Dollars.

I'm not exaggerating. And that amount is calculated as if 1 dollar is 100 yen. Right now 1dollar is about 80 yen or less so that would make it a little shy of $4,000.

Ridiculous right? Yeah I agree too. I'm sure there is a cheaper, more manual way to get a license on your own, but typically people go to schools and pay that much.

Boot camp is a little cheaper, since you usually go to country side and stay there fore 2 weeks and take classes intensively. They also provides you accommodation (usually business hotels) and  3 meals per day (through meal coupon kind of thing). Everything included it was $2400 per person ($1.00 = 100 Yen). Good deal right? Since it's a country side, it's quite nice to relax and people are generally nice... Some people say you can make friends with other camp kids. But being anti-social, I didn't make a single friend. Thank god I went with my sister.

I went to Niigata by the way.

No, no worries about radiation. well.... at least for now.

Did I get a license in the end???



YES.


So a piece of advice from me?

Get a driver's license elsewhere in the world and convert that into Japanese one.
You would save tons.

I should have f$%king gotten a license when I was in states...