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- a&w root beer vs suntory.. you can guess which is mine

AT&T replaces google search with yahoo in android phone.. but yahoo is a portal co. not a search co. good for bing? http://j.mp/9aIZCR

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- another 30kg of rice arrived today plus present of tons of pickled and regular veggies

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- Genki tamagohan from @slicesjapan

新しいパソコンを買うつもりですか？ベストポイントは何ですか？何が大事ですか？ @ 答えてください　（＾＿＾）ｖ

Buying a new computer? What points are important to you? @ reply me back with your opinions (^__^)v.

New Sony Xperia has a good weight and feel in my hand, but is it worth switching to NTT DoCoMo when AU(KDDI) is getting android phones too?

AU by KDDI is finally joining the "smartphone" market and will be bringing both Android and Windows Phones to market! http://j.mp/d2HDn7

I really like what SonyEricsson has done with User Experience with the Xperia! Windows Phone 7 takes the same direction even further. (^_^)v

Great Interview from Engadget showing off the first branded Windows Phone 7 Series Experience and Q&A and more http://j.mp/cUWGgR

Rather ignorant misconceptions. Of course, Japan is NOT the most expensive country & programmers make relatively LITTLE. http://j.mp/aQXxEC

How did Marketing stack up during the Olympic Games? http://j.mp/cjmEzA Sounds like some had the right idea and others opportunity lost.

RT @dru46: http://bit.ly/bXKVZc - "Some interesting facts about the 2010 Games." That's a lot of Glitter and Sequins!

█ ♥ █ This concludes our Vancouverage of the 2010 Quadrennial Cold Weather Athletic Competition

What have we learned?

1.) The Spirit of the Olympic has two important tenants
A) The international spirit of being part of a global community with friendly rivals on the athletics field of battle (rather than conventional or economic warfare)
B) The olympics is about selling things. The more popular an athlete is the more capable they are in performing their duties as a promoter.

2.) Of course, Vancouver and British Columbia is a beautiful place full of culture, nature, and hockey (in addition to the drugs, materialism, and traffic)

3.) Canadians have a lot of pride in particular when pitted against the USA especially if there is Hockey or Curling involved.

4.) Of course, Team USA made a strong effort with more athletes than any other country

5.) Japan and Korea could only realize success in sports that involve skates and don't involve sticks for 1 important reason: They don't give enough support to other sports. I really hope this will change in the future... sports that don't sell enough marketing time should also be supported.

6.) Team Aomori = Awesome in more ways than three.
All the athletes are excellent and world class and deserve to be in this international event, but Team Aomori is the awesomEST (I know that's not a real word) Team from Japan in the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games for a variety of reasons. Because Japan is so media-focussed on Figure Skating, then I would add that Suzuki Akiko had a great performance where I thought that she could have fun and enjoy her Olympic Experience.

7.) There are a lot of great stories to be told of the athletes and teams... hopefully these stories will be adequately facilitated in such a matter that they can be enjoyed by the international audience.

8.) Europeans kick ass with a high disposition to communicate with their neighbours

9.) Many Japanese athletes (and a number of other countries') could have further enjoyed their olympic experience if they were more easily able to communicate with people from other countries. All too often we see the Japanese Athletes on NHK standing around looking lost, cliqued with only other Japanese speakers, or looking bored when they don't understand what is being said. I wholeheartedly wish their future experiences to be more enriched with better and greater interactions with people from around the world. (I'm not picking on Japanese Athletes, rather living in Japan, it is the Japanese Olympic coverage that I see)

10.) The olympics are probably the pinacle of Vancouver... just like Expo was. In another 10 years, I hope Vancouver can still be competitive in the world stage. Everyone on facebook and olympic fans around the world, I think people could really enjoy these Olympics, weather aside. (if the 100,000+ condoms says anything about people enjoying their experience and being concerned about health)

I look forward to future Olympics, hopefully with better coverage... Props to the Australian coverage! Disses to the Japanese coverage.

みんな、いろいろありがとう！
I hope you enjoyed the Olympics as much as a huge number of Vancouverites did.

Congrats to Canada on its triumphs (successful olympics, most gold medals for a home country, most gold medals in a winter olympics, and australian media confirming that Canada has indeed *OWNED the Podium* )

Addendum:

As a Vancouverite, the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games has been building up since 2002 unlike the rest of the world who have likely only been spiralling towards the Vancouver Olympics since 2008 or 2009.

The Games have been greatly hyped and a LOT of money has been spent on improving infrastructure, facilities, etc.

Vancouver was in dire need of infrastructural improvements, particularily Transportation ones. The Olympics have been the push to finally justify spending money on these things. Vancouver can now boast an amazing conference centre with the largest living green roof in the world and the regional district FINALLY has train service to the airport (I mean, come on! What kind of supposed International City doesn't have train services to their major international airport?!?!)

While some of the spending and construction was controversial, like destroying areas to "improve" the Sea to Sky Highway (Between Vancouver and Whistler) that we all know is a deathtrap claiming the lives of oh so many past dearly departed, I am -however- not opposed to it since it will have a long lasting legacy in the Vancouver region improving the lives of generations to come as Expo had.

Addendum Two:

My thoughts on various events:

The Opening Ceremonies were surprisingly good and well done although I missed the part before the athletes entered. I was most impressed with the lighting effects and the whale blowhole effect. It showed off a LOT of British Columbia culture and some from the rest of Canada. That being said, it was way too long and where there were a HUGE number of celebrities and even Terry Fox's mom, a huge portion of the International Audience doesn't know who any of these people are. Terry Fox and Rick Hansen are Canadian Heroes but the rest of the world doesn't know who they are or the feats they have accomplished. Famous musical artists like Bryan Adams, Nelly Furtado, Sarah McLachlan, Ashley MacIsaac are really unknown in the world outside of Canada and the USA... especially in the non-english-speaking world.

Furthermore, the NHK Coverage of the event was not particularly good. During the excessively long dance scenes, their camera would also focus on the ONE Japanese man participating in the dance even when it did NOT make sense to focus on him to produce a quality program. I can understand showing him and explaining who he is, then continuing on with the show, but to instead violate production quality?!. Furthermore, the coverage often focussed on the Japanese Athletes in the stands looking extremely bored yawning, checking their email, and generally looking lost as if they had no idea what was going on and what people were saying. (Again, why weren't things translated for them?!?!)

Even furthermore, the NHK commentators spoke over the "moment of silence" for the Georgian who lost his life during the practice runs. This is not only unprofessional for the broadcasters, it is outright disrespectful to the Georgians and the everyone else in the world mourning their loss. The commentators must have already had translations of everything but their timing was deplorable.

However, all in all, I was impressed with the actual event itself.

Other Events not involving skates were pretty good and extremely poorly coveraged by NHK's so called "Best Selection" programming. Even when Japanese Athletes were competing in events sometimes they would show NOTHING rather than air the live event! The mogul events did manage to get some airtime and everyone had great performances despite difficult course conditions. The curling events were amazing, when I could actually catch it on TV at 2am in the morning.

Instead of supporting their athletes, mass communication media (MASUKOMI - see article masukomi distrust) instead ridiculed a snowboarder for having snowboarder fashion and dreads rather than being cleancut, short hair, and in a suit. It seems that the sensationalist media is looking for a story and to reinforce the status quo devoid of International Culture or perfectly legitimate subcultures.

Japan and Korea's excessive focus on events with skates but without sticks is pretty obvious (extremely unfortunate for athletes from these countries in other sports we really need more support!! Support your countries athletes in sports that aren't the main spotlight sports!)

These athletes are all obviously world class athletes. For the Japanese Women's Figure Skaters, I think Suzuki Akiko had the most fun (despite being very nervous) and I can appreciate that. Asada Mao had huge amounts of pressure and will be over-analyzed on TV for the next 3 weeks. People have made really good points about Mao's music being horrible. Her music sounds like her Coach... but really does not fit Mao. I'm inclined to agree. Ando Miki, is quite a capable skater but where she goes from here she can spend some time considering. For both Mao and Miki, changing coaches might be beneficial for them. Takahashi Daisuke, had a great performance (that was also replayed countless times on TV). Oda Nobunari had a very difficult time when it skate laces snapped. Kozuka is on his way and Sempai Takahashi is helping him along (according to the baseless NHK commentary).

Moving along to sports with Skates AND sticks, Hockey is the pride of Canada (possibly followed by Curling with more than 3% of Canadians belonging to a curling club). Canada's Women's Hockey Team are the long standing champions and successfully defended their title. Great job for a great team! Canada's Men's Hockey fought until the epic climax of the Olympics only hours before the closing ceremony (at least for Canadians... the rest of the world probably didn't care) and into Over Time. This was an amazing game! The USA Team was awesome, but the Canadian team was slightly awesomER (I'm coining the term for this particular context). This was a pride match and the Canadian Team managed to defend Canada's pride for another four teams. Great job!! Especially Vancouver Canucks Goalie, Luongo!! But, it was pretty obvious in these Olympics that USA Team Goalie Miller was also the core backbone of the USA team. In Hockey, that's really what we want in the end. Closely matched teams fighting it out with world class hockey into bitter overtime. Thank you to the Canada and USA Teams for delivering.

Finally, the closing ceremonies featured a lot of famous people an artists. Unfortunately this time, the NHK commentators were even MORE clueless than usual. Again, I don't doubt that they have been thoroughly briefed on the events but AGAIN were ignorantly helpless. Like the opening ceremonies, the closing ceremonies celebrated a lot of British Columbia and Canadian culture which the NHK commentators struggled to understand. In the end, they really should have pre-planned and subtitled the event rather than pointless commentators who just didn't get it and didn't really try. I know it may sound harsh but they poisoned the Olympic experience.

It was great to see people up there like Vancouver area local, Michael J Fox (which Japanese people SHOULD know since Back to the Future is a famous movie here) and William Shatner. For the musical artists, I was expecting Shania Twain but that did not come to pass. For the Japanese audiences, at least they knew who Avril Lavigne was even if Ms. Lavigne's performance was not so 元気(spirited/energetic).

While the cameras primarily followed the Figure Skaters around as they looked lost, would find each other, take some pictures together, look lost again, etc...
They did show the Japanese Curling Team, Team Aomori, in two situations: (1) Enjoying themselves listening to the rock music of A Simple Plan (2) Actually going up and talking to other athletes! They showed Hashimoto, getting her picture taken with one of the Canadian Men's Hockey team players. Quite impressed with Team Aomori; I hoped they really enjoyed their Olympic Experience and the whole International atmosphere of the event, meeting people from around the world, etc. I hope Japanese Athletes will post pictures with people from other countries in the spirit of the Games.

In the end, as a Vancouvrite (albeit one not living anywhere near Vancouver) these Olympic Games were a once in a lifetime experience. I wish I could have been in Vancouver for it but I still really enjoyed the experience. Truly once in a lifetime. Unless there is some serious climate change and Osaka becomes host to the Winter Olympics, I'm sure I will never be as excited for another Olympic Games ever again.

Thank you Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games for the memories, tension, passion, fun times, and infrastructure improvements!

All Your Base Are Belong To Us Canada!

Takahashi Daisuke and Suzuki Akiko are sitting together looking close. Ando Miki and Oda Nobunari also. Wonder if Asada Mao feels left out?

Team USA was Awesome! Team Canada was AwesomER! Canada's Pride remains intact for another 4 years! Amazing Olympic Hockey Game to close

More overreactions from the Japanese Masukomi (Mass Media). as many as 7 problems from bad passwords so online is evil?! http://j.mp/a7Ji8I

█ ♥ █ X [ ● ] Curling Tension -- The Titans narrowly escape the Underdogs --

It was a very impressive match on February 18th 2am-5am (Japan Time -- That is the Morning of Feb 17th Vancouver Time) between the seasoned and powerful Canadian Women's Curling team and the young yet strong Japanese Women's Curling team.

This was the one event of the Olympics that I was actually looking forward to watching (as opposed to seeing highlights) aside from wanting to see the Opening Ceremonies.

The only problems were:
1) This event was from 2am to 5am
2) I hadn't decide which team to cheer for.

The Japan Team has be getting a lot of positive media attention lately. Even comedians did a mock curling match between a fake Canadian Team vs. a fake Japanese Team.

It all really draws attention to curling as a sport and helps to promote more people becoming interested in it. There are over a million curlers in Canada (for a country with only 30-34 million people total). The news has commented on the Canada team being in their 40s (their youngest member is 30) while the Japan team is pretty young from 20-31 with most of them being about 23 or so. Does age matter when it comes to curling? No, not so much... but it does matter if they want to the number of curlers (because you need to get people starting from a young age to build up a bigger and bigger curling community, in my opinion).

This match, however, was a really good one. Both teams did very well and it really came down to the wire and the final few stones of the entire match for a winner to be decided. The Japan had a lot of good throws but the Canada team really showed off their technical prowess defeating three Japanese stones on the button with "curve ball" so to speak. All in all I think the Canada team took a lot of gambles that really paid off when matched with their skills. In this match, however, I ended up rooting for the underdogs: Team Aomori representing Japan.

Team Aomori's lineup consists of: Meguro Moe目黒 萌絵 (Skip), Motohashi Mari本橋 麻里 (Second), Ohmiya Anna近江谷 杏菜 (Third), Ishizaki Kotomi石崎 琴美 (Lead), and Yamaura Mayo山浦 麻葉 (Fifth/Alternate). Apparently, Team Aomori battled it out in Nagoya to clinch the Olympic berth for Japan. But, not surprising since Team Aomori seems to be the strongest team in Japan for quite some time and even represented Japan in the 2006 Winter Olympics.

At times the Canada vs. Japan was really intense. I think fellow Canadians @Judy315 and @dru46 were also rooting for the Japanese team (Dru was at the Live event!! I'm jealous ^^) and I think Judy and I were pretty shocked at times, impressed at times, and saddened at times throughout this match. Until the match was decided, the tension just built and built and built. How would the match turn out?! Who would be victorious?! なんか残念だけど楽しくて面白かった。みんな一生懸命カーリングした。みんなよくがんばった。そりゃ良かった。

By far the most popular curler in Japan and one of the most popular curlers in world at the moment would be Team Aomori's Second, Motohashi Mari (although people call her Marilyn for some reason). Only 23 years old, this is already her 2nd Winter Olympics representing Japan's curling. While she and her team are certainly inspiring a lot of new fans, Motohashi in particular seems to gaining celebrity status. Recently she was Ranked as one of Japan's most attractive athletes possibly with a character and PR strategy even designed to allure new fans to her career and the sport. And hey, why not?! If it means more success to the athletes and to a sport that claims NO full time professionals, selling idol-esque DVDs and even some merchandising.

All in all, I really enjoyed the match. Now that the Canada vs. Japan fake grudge match is over, there's not much incentive left to sit down and watch actual events (just the highlights instead). I hope the best of luck for Canada and Japan in this year's remaining Olympic events.

13 useful code snippets for wordpress development http://j.mp/bGXc72

Not surprising, in Japan Yahoo! is still #1 and Google weakening. Nothing new but good information. http://j.mp/aQQITK

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- Delicious Taiwan style chicken @ Tenoji Hoop. check it out

█ ♥ █ X [ ● ] Great Game! Great Throws from Japan and Great Technical Shots from Canada. Canada really had to "earn" their Victory.よくがんばったな

█ ♥ █ vs. [ ● ] Am I the only one enjoying the Women's Olympic Curling Match?! But who to cheer for? （＞＿＜）But, Good Game （＾＿＾）ｖ

Bloomberg says over 1 million curlers in Canada! but Full Time Pro Curlers don't exist http://j.mp/delYKU

RT @inhabitat: Vancouver Olympic Athlete’s Village: Greenest Neighborhood in the World http://bit.ly/978lqb

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- home made takoyaki - cheese ham beef negi yakiyaki

Nicely written and informative review of Windows Phone 7 Series http://j.mp/dDsOWM

What's the point of facebook/social media integrated into olympics if it is just full of racist nationalist remarks?!

RT @VanConventions Here's a video with more information about Vancouver Convention Centre's Living Green Roof http://ow.ly/17Iiw

Inhabitat Article: http://bit.ly/aiPJrl

Even Linus Torvald seems to like the Google Nexus One phone http://j.mp/aqanyT