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I went to Disneyland in Tokyo and returned last night.

Today is also my birthday! Happy 21st for me!

Expect a more detailed post, with pictures, about my trip!

Here’s a little sci-fi/geek cheer for you all: Happy Towel Day and Happy Universal Day of the Jedi!

Towel day is a tribue to Douglas Adams, the creator of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2) – the radio series, the tv series, the book and series and the inspiration for the movie! H2G2 has been on of my favourite book series for almost a decade now.

6 years and 2 weeks ago, today, Douglas Adams died. Unfortunately, he was in the middle of his newest novel, The Salmon of Doubt. Luckily, for us fans, what he did write was published among many other short literary works of Mr. Adams in a book of the same title.

Also, today marks the 3oth anniversary of George Lucas’ Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

I remember first coming to the internet. I didn’t even have a computer! I was using WebTV, now MSNTV, which is an ISP which broadcasts internet through a reliever to your television set, rather than a computer monitor, and can be controlled with a remote control and a remote keyboard.

WEBTV was also a client (similar to a program) and as soon as you are connected, you don’t look at something similar to a desktop on a PC but, rather, the WEBTV home which includes access to several built in features: search, profiles, homepages, chat (which connected to TalkCity) and e-mail.

Despite this, there are several limitations such as the fact that you couldn’t actually download anything and there were no actual programs to use so, oftentimes, when I needed to type up a paper for school I would use WEBTV and search for a website application which functioned like a word program.

However, for someone who wasn’t a serious web user, WebTV was perfect. There was no computer or hardware to purchase or take up extra space; you could use your regular television set and simply turn off WebTV and tune into your favourite channel. You didn’t need extra programs because all of the basics were provided and your profile contained all the information and tools you needed in one hub.

However, if you wanted to expand your horizons, you were SOL. Unfortunately, I soon wanted more than just the basics and WebTV just wasn’t going to cut in anymore. I wanted to do more with my webpage but saving web content was a hassle and more trouble than it was worth because WebTV didn’t come with a hard drive. If I wanted to communicate, there were no real time options, really. I could use the built in chat or e-mail or, what I would more frequently do, was use HTML based chat such as the former sites The Park and WBS.

We kept WebTV for a while longer before eventually purchasing a PC. Sometime before we upgraded, however, an awesome new feature was added to WebTV, probably because of a merger or buyout with Microsoft: IM! And it wasn’t any crappy IM service, either; it was MSN Messenger which allowed you to communicate with any other buddy on MSN, even if there were less features supported.

This was great because now I cold have real time conversations with my friends while I was browsing the internet, sometime that was unheard of before. WebTV didn’t have the option to minimize a window or multi-task very well so this addition was absolutely ground breaking.

Granted, WebTV users like myself could use options like emoticons so our conversations were laced with letters in parentheses – like so (6) (a) and half of my replies were “What emoticon is that supposed to be?” but it did represent a huge leap forward and helped make WebTV a more viable solution for at-home internet services.

From then on, I probably spent much more time online than I should have because I could actually talk to people! MSN Messenger has since been my favourite IM service, probably because I knew it first and best. And when we did finally buy a PC, of course I had to download MSN Messenger to use on there!

For those who might be interested, I think a fair deal of issues with MSNTV have now been sorted out. Modern MSNTV has storage similar to a hard drive which makes accessing files much easier. You can also view MSWord and Adobe PDF files as well as listen to streaming music with a media player. Furthermore, the newest version of MSNTV– MSNTV2 – can be hooked up to a home network with your PC and even utilize a mouse!

All of these characteristics, old and new, make MSNTV a perfect tool for many internet users to integrate into their homes.

I haven’t experienced a lot of culture shock since being in Japan. People expect me to and they expect me to have hilarious or horror-filled stories about my time here but I just don’t. part of that has to do with our location; we are pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Like Wausau, my hometown, this is farming country. Off base, there’s a lot of countryside filled with fields. There are no shopping districts around here. No big city, no night life. People aren’t dressed outlandishly. It’s just a working community.

I’ve only ever seen 2 or so traditional Japanese buildings and one of them was a museum. Many things are constructed similar to the way I’m used to, save for the roads which are smaller. On the outside (and even the inside in many ways), Japan looks like any other place I’ve ever been.

However, I also think the lack of culture shock can be attributed to the fact that Japan is a modern country which seems to be doing its best to assimilate, to mimic the developed western-world, most specifically the United States. Perhaps, since it’s advanced in many technological areas, it’s not Japan mimicking the USA but the other way around.

Things just work in the same manner, some things are even easier and more up to date. There’s a lot of electronic things which seem to make life easier and i’ve noticed that most Japanese airports are slightly more advanced than American ones. There’s more machines and electronics and less human interaction and, surprisingly, there seems to be less computer problems. LOL

Many things are only slightly reminiscent of traditional Japanese culture. In fact, I think the one thing that still may work in a more traditional fashion is the language, which I do not speak.

Most of the differences have been geographical. Obviously, Japan is a much smaller country than the USA and more mountainous. In fact, you can even see them from our balcony. Unlike home, there are many cherry blossoms here but I’m not sure if they’re here naturally or planted on base symbolically because there’s just so many. Unfortunately, i think they look much less pretty close up than they do in pictures.

I feel a bit disappointed in my experience here but i always feel as though I am disappointing people by not having stories.

I could tell people about the hole in the ground toilets or the ones with the bidets but then I’d have to admit i’ve never used either one because I’m such a chicken.

Hopefully this all will change in a few weeks when I go to Disneyland in Tokyo with Wendy and perhaps will have the chance to do some shopping, see more traditional and more unusual characteristics of modern Japan and its people.

So if you were wondering about Japan, I haven’t much to say. I think it’s definitely difficult to experience new and exciting things in a rural area of a country which tries so hard to be like everywhere else.

I have never, in my life broken a bone. The most serious injury I’ve ever incurred was a sprained ankle. I’ve probably had more than one but I’ve only ever been to the doctor once and, yes, that did include x-rays. Aside from that and some nosebleeds, I’ve never been to the doctor for anything more serious than feeling generally crappy, needing a check up or annual pap smears.

I’ve never had major surgery though I did recently have an abscess which became infected and I had to have cut open, drained and filled in. I’ve never spent the night at a hospital, that I can remember nor have I ever caught the chicken pox, mumps, measles, mono, bronchitis or even poison ivy.

I might add that, because I’ve never had the chicken pox, I was never vaccinated until last year (on my birthday) after I was tested and found that I was not immune to it. My mother always joked about how she would put me in a room with infected children so that I might catch the chicken pox to prevent me from catching it at a higher age and the effects being more serious. I believe that my sister, Amanda, not only caught it, but caught it twice!

One might consider me pretty lucky in that respect and, I’ve come to understand, something of an unusual specimen.

However, I have been plagued over the years with 3 issues: nose bleeds, strep throat and ear aches/infections.

The aforementioned nose bleeds are not a regular occurrence anymore but I used to joke about having them in seasons which was probably pretty accurate because nose bleeds are much more common during the dry, winter months. My nose bleeds first started being an issue around the time Amanda was hospitalized and the doctors were worried that they, too, were a result of the cancer-like blood disease which she had contracted. Luckily, they were not.

They escalated to the point where I’d visited the emergency room and the walk in at the local clinic. I was simply told that I was a “bleeder” and given a sheet of instructions to try to prevent nosebleeds and, in the event that those steps didn’t work, to end them quickly. I’d heard a million different home remedies to deal with them. Of course, as the way things go, most of these tricks usually made the nose bleeds worse and, when it comes down to it, the best thing is to just hold your nose consistently closed for 15 – 20 minutes and maybe apply ice.

Strep throat and earaches haven’t bothered me in a while but I would have them consistently as a child. Many times I would cry myself to sleep because my head was pounding and my ears were burning. Usually, it was not from infection and often I was given ear drops and told to put cotton in my ear(s) which was a little to no use.

In the case of strep throat, I’d take antibiotics, I guess. I remember that one time I had some great strawberry flavoured pills which weren’t actually supposed to be flavoured but I wasn’t complaining.

In my “adult” years, my most common ailment is headaches which might actually be migraines and I regularly take over the counter and prescription medicine to remedy them. Unfortunately it doesn’t always work.

Admittedly, I am surprised I am as healthy as I am considering my less-than-healthy lifestyle but I figure I’m on par with just about any avenge American and I’d rather be happy and unhealthy than miserable and healthy.