Par Avion
I'll admit, I had my doubts. I didn't know if he was gonna come through. But sure enough, Mark delivered as promised with an awesome mailing from Canada. Sure, it was about 5 months late, but as we all know better late than never.

Check this out- Canada-edition Smarties, complete with Maple Leaf and extra "eh" suffix. Pretty cool, but what's even more surprising is that Smarties is the same name for two completely different candies in the US in Canada. Canadian Smarties are M & M looking things, while in the US Smarties are these small sugary tablet things. That almost blew me away as much as when I realized Canadians say the letter Z as "Zed" instead of "Zee". What a strange, strange place Canada must be.

Special Edition Pineapple Hi-Chews, straight from Okinawa. Great!

Finally, a real honest to God offical Malaspina Mariners badminton jersey. Pretty slick, eh? Too bad it's not Yonex, though. That would have been prefect. I can't wait to rock this thing around Mooresville. Thanks again Mark, and have fun in Yokohama you lucky bastard!

HAPPY NEW YEAR
Happy New Year everyone. All I can say about 2006 is, this year suckas are going nowhere. But hopefully Fro will be returning to Japan in '06, at least that's the plan son. Certainly the #1 priority. I feel like I real chump not making it back to Japan in 2005 and that is one of the reasons that I won't miss this past year at all. Outside of a couple high points (writing for the school paper, graduation, ... um something else) the year stunk pretty hardcore and I can't say "good riddance" to it quite fast enough.

I did get to see my home fry Sammy recently. Always a pleasure to see a Nave. Of course there was much Taco Bell to be had, late night shopping at WalMart, and a guided tour of Hickory's "big box" shopping district (very impressive). Afterwards, Mario Kart DS until about 3 in the morning. Needless to say it was one of the best times I've had in a while and a much-needed break from the usual.

As for my previous post and lack of updates, I apologize. Working retail over the holidays will in fact drive you crazy. Today was my first day off since Christmas, and my first real day off (i.e. no obligations) in about 3 weeks. I haven't had two days off in a row since Thanksgiving. Basically, I need a break from work which is hopefully forthcoming. A 40 hour work week never sounded so good.

This is it.
This is it.

I think I've finally lost touch with all reality. It sure took long enough. When you reach a certain point where you don't quite care anymore, it's actually quite liberating. Well, it's been fun. Catch you guys on the flipside.

Word Wrap
Today marks the last day that I have off from work until Christmas. That's 10 straight days of work, for those of you who are keeping track. That's probably normal for many people but it's a lot for me, and I tend to sick of dealing with the general public pretty quickly. On the plus side, business has started to pick up, and there's only a few weeks left in the holiday season to worry about.

In other news, the AMC 14 screen theater finally opens up at the mall today. I love going to see movies at a theater and being able to catch a movie right after work sure sounds appealing. The timing as good as two movies came out recently that I'm really excited about seeing. The first is "syriana", a politically charged thriller with Matt Damon and George Clooney. It's from some of the same folks as "Traffic", and looks like it will have the same gritty, complex style to it. The other is King Kong. It's like getting a bonus summer action movie in December. I always love going to see those big blockbuster "event" movies and Kong certainly seems to fit that description.

Also, my Mom is having surgery on her hand and arm on Thursday to correct Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Trigger Finger. It doesn't appear to be anything too serious, but she will have to wear a cast for a good while. No doubt Mom will milk this opportunity for all that she's got. Looks like the rest of us will be doing dishes for awhile.

World Cup Draw
Probably the biggest sporting event that I'm looking forward to is the 2006 World Cup. It will be the first world cup since I got really interested in soccer again, so I'm really geeked about it. Anyways, FIFA recently held the draw to determine the matchups in the first round. Unfortunately, it looks like the US may have gotten stuck in this Cup's infamous "Group of Death", where there are too many elite teams and contenders are knocked out early. The US will have to face off against perennial powerhouse Italy and current world #2 Czech Republic, plus African champs Ghana. Even worse, the US has never scored a victory against any of those nations.

This makes qualifying for the second round a dicey situation for the US, but don't count them out. Many of the players have tons of international experience, and the US is still ranked eight in the world after all. If they can get a win and salvage a draw, a lot of times that is enough. The first match is gonna be a burner against the Czechs June 12. Mark your calendars now! I'm looking forward to it already.

I hate talking to people on AIM
Girls be TRIPPIN!

What's up.
I got off from work a little bit earlier today, so I've actually got a little bit of free time here. I'm pretty much just sitting around eating pretzels, so I might as well post about things are going lately.

Work. Of course, hours are up with the holiday season and all. But what's shockingly not up so far is sales. After a strong Black Friday, our volume has dropped way off to where last week was absolutely terrible. I mean, just way off from where it ought to be for this time of year. Remember, I work commission so I do actually care how much the store sells. We consider ourselves to be good salesmen, and the product's pretty good, so there has to be an outside reason for the low sales. This has led to all kinds of theories.

- The mall's target demographic. Affluent shoppers are sticking with Southpark, as it still has a high prestige attached to it. If we can't attract the shoppers we are supposed to, that is a problem. And remember, outsite the I-77 corridor there is mostly sparse, poorer demographics who aren't going to be buying Coach handbags (or $110 Wallabees for that matter).

-Design of the mall. I've had people tell me they disliked it as too "angular", and malls in general are on the way out anyway- people are getting too lazy to actually walk through a mall (I'm serious)

-Poor Promotion- there still seems to be a large amount of people who don't know that the new mall is there. There has been pretty heavy print and radio advertising for the mall, but still a lot of folks don't seem to be getting the message.

- The actual customers. My manager theorizes that everyone is 'house-poor'- all their money is tied up in their house and car, leaving little else to spend.

- People think the mall will be so crowded, that they don't even want to bother going. I've heard this from several customers. It's not helped by the fact that the front parking lot is always full, because people don't want to drive around to the other side- creating an illusion of a packed mall.

-The big thing this year is electronics- iPod, Xbox, DVD, whatever if it doesn't have an acronym it's not selling. I guess things like shoes are too old fashioned for Christmas gifts.

-But finally, and most probable, people are just being cheap this year. Either it's a sale, or they're not buying. Customers are also staying very disciplined this year as well, apparently- they know exactly what they are going to get, and that's it. I'm gonna have to blame high gas prices and the fact that most people aren't feeling too hot about the economy. Which leaves me feeling cold each Friday when paychecks arrive.

One Day later...
One Day later...

And I'm still here. I worked through Black Friday (and Saturday) and lived to tell about it. There was certainly a lot of shoe sellin' going on, and fortunately most folks seemed to stay pretty level headed. I guess I'd better knock on wood, cause it's still early in the shopping season, so who knows what will happen later on as we start running out of Wallabees. I managed to get most of my Christmas shopping done already, which was a big goal of mine, seeing how I get all of 3 off days (including Christmas) during the month of December. Katie, you gotta let me know what you want for Christmas! Or you'll be seeing a whole lot of surprises under the tree Dec. 25th. Have it your way.

I finally got my JET application finished up and sent out on Friday. I'd actually been looking for getting that done and mailed out for quite a few months. Now the real wait begins. I'm real nervous about this, hope that everything goes well. I figure my sterling grades and previous study abroad/language experience should help out, but who knows. I'd better get a "Plan B" ready just in case.

Turkey Day
Sometimes you feel like blogging, sometimes you don't. I guess for a while there I returned back to my famous "lack of updates" from my old Frodaddy website. I apologize. I've been pretty busy with work and everything, and besides I figured I should let Bobby Valentine and the Chiba Lotte Marines be my top story for awhile. And if I haven't been working or vegetating, most of my free time has been spent working on my JET application. Got to get that thing sent out for sure.

Today is Thanksgiving, and for my readers from other countries, all I can is you're missing out. It's a nice big holiday in the middle of the week where you can sleep in, watch the terribly corny Macy's parade, eat a ton of food, take a nap, enjoy the fall weather, watch football, and all for a reason that's actually decent (giving thanks) and hasn't been pimped out like all the other holidays have. So yeah, Thanksgiving is definitely nice.

Now, the day after Thanksgiving is a different matter altogether. It's the biggest shopping day of the year, when everybody decides to go friggin' insane looking for bargains. And I get to work that day, from 9AM to 9PM, when the mall will be packed with psycho holiday shoopers. Fantastic. But I'm looking forward to it in a sadistic sort of way, just to see how I will handle it. On the plus side, I will make a ton of money and I will get free pizza from Clarks (hopefully). But 12 hours though... phew. That is a lot any day of the year.

More Nihon Puro Yakyuu
Y'all ready for this? More Japanese Pro Baseball news. To follow up on my previous post, Valentine and his Marines won the inaugural Asia Series cup against top teams from Korea, Taiwan, and China. After getting into Japanese baseball since my trip to Japan I'm convinced that such international competitions (i.e. the World Baseball Classic) could be really great for the sport. Studying baseball in Japan certainly helped increase my interest of it in the States, at least a little bit. In more Valentine news, he recently re-upped with the Marines for 3 years, which seems like a very smart move for both of them. I'm interested to see if Valentine can repeat the success that he's had this past year. Can he keep it up, or did he just get lucky? We'll find out.

Also, Kenji Jojima (formerly of the Softbank/Daiei Hawks) signed with the Seattle Mariners this week. Big surprise there, as of course the Mariners are owned by former Nintendo Chairman Hiroshi Yamauchi and has had big success with Japanese ballplayers in the past. My impression of Jojima was that he was like a Japanese Mike Piazza- an elite slugging catcher who has a lot of charisma and has been fairly famous outside of sports. Of course, seeing how he is the first "import" catcher, effectively communicating with his English-speaking pitching staff could be a real problem. But definitely keep an eye on this guy- he's got the skills and the look to make as much of a splash as Ichiro if he succeeds.