As you may or may not know - I am trying (although slowly) to learn Japanese using Rosetta Stone. It's going well, but I was having a tough time remembering letters to read the words that are shown in the software.

Well, turns out there is an e-learning site run by a friend of a friend - where I can just learn to read hiragana and katakana.

Enter SMART.FM - awesome name for an e-learning site, huh? Their iknow software is pretty sweet and gives you specific items to study.

In 2 weeks, I've 100% learned 8 pieces of hiragana and am familiar with the 96 pieces.

my one gripe with the site - is that they should dump all the social networking features - they make for a REALLY wonky and confusing User Interface. Just because you are a good instructional designer does not make you a good interface designer.

and this would be the friend that recommended the site:


Photo courtesy of my husband - the amazing photographer

Rollip takes your images and transfers them to polaroid format for posting to your own site, Face Book, etc.

here's mine:

One of the places we went in our otaku visit to Japan was Nakano Broadway Mall. Nakano is a little suburbanesque area of Tokyo that happens to house one of the best old toy collectors mall we could find.



Nakano Broadway Mall houses the largest Mandarake Husband and I could find in Tokyo and they happen to have their main distribution center in the mall as well. They buy and sell just about any anime stuff you can find and have an AMAZING super old school shop that is essentially a museum. Think of them as the Half Price Books of Manga.



Here is the entrance to the super high dollar,super, super rare store that will make pot belly robot fans cry...



My favorite thing in this store was the Vaseline Glass they had on display. I had no idea what it was until after I came out of the store and Husband gave me the low down. But this stuff is the most beautiful glass I have EVER seen. It glows green because of URANIUM!

I mentioned it one of my previous posts but I didn't tell you whole story. My mobiky died about half way through our trip. What I didn't tell you was that husband's broke before got on the plane. I'll let him tell the story of the differences in our two bikes and how I will be buying a bike friday early next year.

Meanwhile - have a gander at the AWESOME photo he took of his bike.



READ HIS AFTER TRIP REPORT.

good canned coffee:


See the sandwich in the back ground of that one? AMAZING! It was a crustless egg salad and a crustless turkey with cucumber!! NOM NOM NOM!

good soda:


Best soda in Japan by far! light and refreshing it was like drinking liquid ginger but it strangely NEVER gave me heart burn.

Great candy:
Crunky = Nestle's Crunch



See off to the left under the red package? Can you make out the little durian fruit on the package?

It was AWFUL!!! I will never be convinced to eat durian now - I tried some of the hi chew candy in the durian flavor and omg - I almost spit it out because it tasted like moldy wet gym socks. definitely not my favorite.

I will post more pictures later.

really, I am

I'm wrangling the updates but here are a few for now

1) The dog is doing better
2) Mobiky sucks - it died on the trip
3) Paper Olive won best vendor bug on weddingchannel.com
4) Hurricane Jane has a new line out - check out her lower pricing!

I'll be back in LA on Saturday and back to the blog soon. see you then!

I have to sleep two more times before I can go get on a plane!

I'm so excited!!! BUT we spent a fair chunk getting the fuzzy one back to normal before we went so will be SUPER strapped for cash the first week.

Check him out though:


He turned on the hazards - the button was right next to his shoulder in the picture but he got up higher and put his elbow on the button.

We borrowed a car from a friend for the weekend to take him to the vet and get the MIL from the airport.

so... TWO MORE SLEEPS TIL TOKYO!!!

Pup is doing much better - getting back to his normal routine even more. We have another check up on Saturday. So relieved!

because....we don't have to cancel the trip.

Mother-in-Law will be here Sunday to take care of teh apartment and the puppy.

We take off on Wednesday.

Here's our pile oh stuff at Narita from the last haul...

He's a little better now - Faust is trying to get back on his "schedule." Saturday was a HUGE scare for us, running him back to the vet after he didn't want to eat (EVEN CHEESE) or get up to go outside. The vet seems positive and we're all hoping he'll be back to normal soon.

I love my doggers - he's a big part of our little family and I wouldn't' know what to do without him.