Last Thursday, went to Scissor Sisters' concert (one of those "hum.. what do I. random choice. ok, here!"). The music was better than I expected, although the live concert's audio mechanics were rather droll compared to your average CDs - the vocals are difficult to hear and some instruments dominate too much. I found their CD after the concert from the internet and then was like "oh.. so that's what those songs were all about.". Fairly unremarkable concert, went too early there, ate as-much-as-you-can-eat shabu shabu afterwards.

Went also bouldering twice last week (Wednesday and Friday), and doing it alone is definitely tricky. Usually when doing it with friends it is easy to remember to keep pauses, but when alone you mostly get the feeling of "I'm in bad condition" due to lack of pauses unless you remind to keep them. On Saturday, didn't do anything except book skiing trip to Gala Yuzawa for Sunday (bullet train ride from Tokyo station, about 2 hours from home door to the skiing slopes). Unfortunately, the wind wasn't co-operating and due to strong wind gondola lifts at Gala were not operational so I got to some other resort instead (NAPSA). It wasn't as fun, supposedly, and considerably smaller..

Despite not having gone downhill skiing for over year, still did mostly recently - did expert-grade course 3 times and fell all over the place (with DSLR in my pocket to boot). The intermediate-level courses weren't challenging at all though, so I guess I'm somewhere in the middle I guess. Returning, I committed major faux pas at a local bus when I was returning from dinner to home; in Tokyo buses there's separate money exchange slot and "exact fee" slot where you pay the driver, and of course I put too much money to the wrong one.. after that, I got 200 yen back from the next customer's payment (apparently driver could not access the contents of the moneybox), and finally didn't get last 100 yen because when I was leaving, the driver offered me the rest in 10 en coins and I was said that I didn't really need them. After that I laughed my way home, as this wasn't first time I had amusing experience on a bus recently - when going hiking two weeks ago, I changed money in the money change slot and assumed that the fee had been deducted from the remaining money, but apparently not, so the driver wasn't happy when I tried to leave without paying ;-)

Monday, hated the idea of going to the US so much that I had great difficulty actually packing, so I think I did lots of irrelevant stuff with my toys and finished the packing effort like 3 am. Tuesday (today) found out that going to US is even more painful nowadays than it used to be.

Airport quality experience:
- Go to United Airlines counter - after some queueing, some nice lady handles checkin and only result is "go to ANA counter" (damned codesharing)
- At ANA counter, there was insanely slowly moving queue for the people going to the US; I understood the reason when I got to the counter, as either I had completely clueless clerk or regulations are somewhat strange these days. She first wanted to see all my documents (e-ticket, passport, mileage card) which is mostly normal. Then she asked about my visa which isn't, and then she returned the passport to me and fiddled with computer many minutes. During that I filled in the assorted imigration/customs forms needed for leaving Japan / entering US, and she muttered something about passport online check or something. Then she wanted my passport AGAIN and after minute or two of deliberation I actually got it and boarding pass(!). I think this took almost 10 minutes or something..
- Of course, there was normal security screening where they wanted me to get my laptop out of the bag (normal, but tedious)
- Then there was 'special' America-only section of the airport (few gates) where everyone got ALL of their hand luggage hand-searched; I was seriously tempted to answer "no" when the lady asked me if it was ok for her to go through my bag.
- And THEN another tedious new thing; apparently, the US of A wants MORE than one paper about where people are staying; in addition to normal visa waiver paper, they wanted some blue sheet which supposedly airline will provide to the US govt about where the customer in question is staying.

I'm starting to consider NOT going to the united states of dystopia any longer, as this is starting to get ridiculous.. Of course, it remains to be seen how long I will work in my current job, or in Japan, or both; my new work project's considerably more boring than my old one, my old boss that I liked is being replaced in two months, and additionally even our office's possibly moving further off (to Roppongi, ugh.)

.. later.. .. on the positive note, immigration guy in SFO was (for a change) nice guy and didn't cause trouble.