Pretty stoked about going back home for two weeks in the beginning of June. For those who don't know and are interested... June 2nd-16th. For those who did know... there's some reinforcement. For those who didn't know and weren't interested... too bad, now you know.

In preparation for the trip, I've been meaning to call some of you by phone, but it seems that once again NTT (the Japanese phone company) has made things unnecessarily complicated. Because NTT charges so much for international calls, I signed up with a third party international phone call company. To use the third party company I have to use my regular NTT line to call the third party company (an international call) for a brief second to show that I want to use their services. For some stupid reason (and I emphasize the word STUPID), NTT changed the way to dial out internationally, and so now, I can't use my third party company!

So I called NTT's help line to see how I can continue to use the third party company... well, apparently, for me to be able to do that, I have to upgrade my contract with NTT which of course costs more. I hate NTT! I hate their cell phone branch company DoCoMo! I hate monopolies! Come to think about it, I don't like the Milton Bradley board game very much either.

On a lighter note, the cherry blossoms have finished blooming. They started blooming about a week and a half ago. Beautiful. Here's one picture. And here's another. I now understand why there's a Cherry Blossom Festival at SF Japantown. It's beautiful.