L'Arc-en-Ciel World Tour 2012 NYC

 
This past Sunday, March 25th, marked a first for me. I attended my first concert ever at Madison Square Garden.

Who did I see playing? Well the greatest Japanese bad, L'Arc-en-Ciel! I have followed their music for a few years and have grown fond of some of their songs. So, it felt only appropriate to go see them perform live.

What made this performance extraordinary was the fact that this concert signified the first time a Japanese band headlined Madison Square Garden. In short, not only did I attend my first concert, but I also felt a part of something historic.

Indeed, L'Arc-en-Ciel had been together for 20 years and during that time they have given us such great hits as "Ready Steady Go!", "Stay Away" and "New World" just to name a few, but their global popularity has finally landed them here on the greatest stage on the planet. I for one felt they deserved the honor to play here and in front of a nearly sold out crowd. I mean, it was a packed house!

I sat right on the show floor about 50-70 yards away from the stage and enjoyed every minute of it! The music started blaring and my ears took it. By the end of the night, my virgin ears came out in one piece with some minor soreness, but I cheered along with everyone else in attendance. It was great to hear my favorite songs: "Drink It Down", "Stay Away", "My Heart Draws A Dream", "Good Luck My Way" "Ready Steady Go!" and "Niji".

What would have made the night perfect was if they had also played "The Fourth Avenue Cafe" or "New World". Man, I was waiting for it, but neither came. Still, I wasn't going to complain. The feel of the energetic crowd and the loud screaming and singing made the night for me. It was an experience and one that I'm glad I got to attend and join in on.

Here are a few photos that I took.

What a great night that will stay with me forever!

Until the next one!

An End of a Week!

Hey, all,

Well, another week has or is coming to an end, depending on where you are when you read this. It's been a fairly good week. Nice warm weather in the 70s one day and 50 degrees the next day. Yeah, it's still crazy like that, and it drives me insane.

I going to complain - when will the weather stay constant and warm! Ha!

Besides that, I have another update to give. This past Monday marked the end of my first 3-month Japanese class. I can't believe how quickly those three months went by and how much material my class learned. My instructor, Miyashita sensei, taught us and guided us through 16 lessons that covered simple sentence structure, positive-negative and present-past verb and adjective conjugation.

She covered time, asking questions, and setting up meeting places. These are just a small fraction of all the material that we learned, but it felt like a long and fun semester! 

I really enjoyed it and my understanding of the Japanese language grew just a bit more. I will probably register for the next 3-month cycle which will begin soon, but for now its review time because I'm forgetting a lot of what I learned at the beginning of the course. Ha!

Stay well out there, and until then!

Japanese Classes

Well,

I finally committed to one of my goals, and I started taking Japanese classes. After years of watching Anime, Dramas, and the show Utaban, I finally decided that it was time to just register for official classes and try to learn this language.

I've been off and on for several years about actually taking classes, and at one point I even tried to teach myself. I got as far as learning Hiragana and a bit of Katakana, but my focus was slowly diminishing at the amount of no direction or lack of guidance I was dealing with.

Bottom line, I needed to be in a classroom setting and be taught by a professional. So, here I am.

As of this post, I have completed the first week of classes. I am enrolled at the Japan Society and my group meets twice a week, every Monday and Wednesday. It's a pretty diverse group with students my age, younger and older. Everyone is very enthusiastic, and our Sensei Mrs. Miyashita and her assistant Mrs. Hamada are both funny and very encouraging!

Just some of the introductory phrases and the Japanese alphabet that I look forward to learning, and in some cases relearning!

Worksheets and practice writing exercises!

More practice exercises from my textbook!

My textbook for busy people, how appropriate!

And, I have homework!! On top of my regular graduate studies obligations, I now have homework from my Japanese class. Cool!!

I'll manage, like everything else in my life. Besides, it's something that I want to the do, so it will be fun and productive. Trilingual status, hopefully, here I come!!!

Until next time, sayonara!!

PS3 Status and Japan Society

Hello, all!

Happy New Year 2011!! I hope everyone had a great Christmas and are enjoying or at least planning a fantastic agenda for the new year.

Anyway, a few things I wanted to bring you up-to-date on.

Yesterday I had a pretty fulfilling day. A friend and I went to the Japan Society in lower Manhattan and registered ourselves for their spring semester Japanese course. We even signed up to become members, so we could enjoy the discounts to all their events and classes.

I had been planning to enroll at the Japan Society for some time, but never really committed to it or I didn't have the money for it. So, it was a big deal for me once I finally went there and enrolled. I'm excited to say the least! One thing is for sure; my hands are gong to be quite full during the next five months. My schedule and live will be divided between my part-time job, teaching martial arts, grad school and now Japanese classes.

My plate is pretty full!

On the good side, I have a year left of grad school before I'm finished with my MFA! This semester I will handle the infamous third semester project. I have a couple ideas of what I want to do, but I'm still a little nervous about it. I sure that during the residency I'll get a chance to speak to several potential mentors and get a better idea of what I will work on.

Also, my martial arts teaching schedule is going to shift a bit, and that will allow for flexibility. Yeah, I'll find my middle ground to balance the work load that will hit me during the next few months.

On another note, I finally put my PS3 back into working order. A few posts before I had mentioned several hiccups that I ran into during my PS3 upgrade project. Luckily, all those bumps are past me and I completed the upgrade flawlessly.

Out with the old! I backed up the hard drive to my portable storage device before removing the old 60 gig HDD.

I never was able to remove the tray, so I bought an extra tray. Funny, out with the old, entirely!

Originally, I was going to replace the 60 gig with a 320 gig. In the end, I settled for a 500 gig.

Afterward, I uploaded the backed up data onto the new hard drive. I was surprised when I realized that everything was transferred over. The entire process took about two and a half hours. An hour to back up the data, and another hour to upload it again, with twenty minutes in-between to swap the HDD.

I spent several hours afterward downloading game updates, synchronizing my trophies and installing games on the new hard drive.

Like I said, a pretty eventful day!

Well, that's it for this post. Until next post!!