Jennifer and I had a pretty good weekend leading up to her birthday yesterday, superbowl sunday in fact. Saturday involved a trek to the neighboring city of Ueda, one of the top 3 sunniest cities in Japan. The aim of our trip was beef, big and bloody and brasilian. For some reason, Ueda has a lot of Brasilian immigrants and therefore hosts a lively subculture that is very interested in BBQ. After procuring our 2 kilos of red flesh we returned to lovely Nagano and socked it in the fridge. The evening was filled, incedentally with the always lovely but now ridiculously popular because it's illuminated in several colors Zenkoji temple. We stopped on by and then on to dinner and what else? Karaoke!! It wasn't my idea and Jennifer and I had planned to maybe do something else with our time and avoid hangovers, but what can you really do when everyone wants you for your lovely personality and great looks? Nothing, so you go and you sing your heart out to a room full of drunkards and a TV while the shocked attendant brings drink after drink to the room. Such a lovely hobby. Such despicable things done to fine songs.

For me, karaoke is one of those things that I don't really have a good time doing but at the end I can look back and say, "Hey, I'm glad that I did that." In particular there was another midwesterner there saturday, Tim, from Milwaukee. It was great to be around another one of my own kind, people who know what High-life is and who can appreciate mosquitoes. I can't wait to get back to the motherland people, it's calling my name.