Of Love and Other Demons...

I popped into the city today to pick up my visa for entry into Japan.  Going to the consulate is pretty serious business though; they make you sign in, state your purpose, and show a photo ID, then you have to be escorted up to the 18th floor by a security guard, then put your bag through a x-ray machine and walk through a metal detector, and then take the right colour tab (depending on what you're there for) with a number and wait for your turn.  Luckily it's usually not very busy, so there's not a long wait or anything, but they're very strict with the security.  After all that it only took me literally, like 2 min. to actually get my visa and that was it...getting into the place was the most time-consuming part! ^_^;

Haha, that reminds me, speaking of security...last time I was in Chinatown, I noticed that there were cops closing down the shops that sell fake bags...like, cordoning them off with yellow tape and everything.  There were whole blocks of shut down stores with closure notices from the city posted on the metal pull-down gates.  This really surprised me, because for years the city's done nothing about the fake bag sellers, although I've seen police chasing the dvd and cd bootleggers down the street and stuff.  It seems like they're really cracking down this time and seriously shutting people down though, so if anyone wants fake bags, etc., you better hurry up and get them soon, because before long they may not be there anymore (well, I'm sure they'll find some secret, sneaky way to sell stuff once everything calms down..but for now at least there's probably gonna be a lull).  I mean, who knows, now they might start closing all shops that sell anything that's fake and violates copyright laws...which means big trouble for like, at least half of the stores in Chinatown. -_-lll

Anyways, after going to the consulate I headed down to Union Square and browsed through Strand for awhile...I picked up a copy of Gabirel Garcia Marquez's Of Love and Other Demons, which I'll try to finish by the end of summer.  I still haven't finished One Hundred Years of Solitude, but honestly that book, although good, is such a marathon...I'll get around to it one day. :D  This one is shorter, so it should be easy...I tend to prefer Marquez's shorter works, like Memories of My Melancholy Whores, since in the longer ones he tends to draw things out and have a more spacey plot that can be difficult to stick with and read straight through, in my opinion.

Now for something fun...I stumbled across this video awhile ago and it made me LMAO like crazy.  It's the pv for T.M Revolution's 1998 single, 'Hot Limit'.  Now, T.M Revolution (aka. Takanori Nishikawa) has always been very..flamboyant, but as I discovered this was particularly so in the early days...to a degree that surprised even me (and I've seen my fair share of extremely feminine-looking, strangely dressed, awkwardly dancing male Japanese musicians).  The lyrics to this song are insanely funny, not to mention his costume, the dance, the location...ok, pretty much everything about the pv.  Aaah seriously, words cannot adequately describe it...