300th Post

Welcome to the 300th post for The Perfect Architecture Company. I'm sorry it took a bit longer than expected to get posted. I really wanted to do something extravagant and historical to commemorate my blog's 300th post, but, being a blog, e-celebration opportunities are quite limited. I considered all the obvious choices: animal sacrifice, throwing a party , a marathon blogging session, or hiring a crack advertising company to deploy a viral marketing campaign on myspace.com to increase traffic, but, instead, finally settled on a detailed account of the name of my blog.

I am pretty sure the wower part of my page's URL came from a nonsense word I made up sitting in Mr. Ogulstone's Math 20 class during high school. In those days, the classes were held in portable units in the back of the school and Mr. Ogulstone was not a teacher to mess with. He would probably be upset to learn I daydreamed through his presenation of quadratic equations. I also used the word as a nick name during my old Quake 2 days.

The orgin of the name the Perfect Architecture Company: The name of this webpage is important to me. I stumbled across the idea doing university research. Focusing a great deal of time of modern architecture, I was confounded as to the reasons why people create architecture; how can people motivate themselves to do anything when it will never reach perfection? I guess this question can - in reality - be expanded to cover a vast range of artistic endeavores, or, for that matter, to anyone that has ever questioned their reasons to get out of bed in the morning. I intend for the name to be propelled into the future because it accurately represents my thoughts toward architecture; that while perfection will most likely always be just beyond our grasp, it really is the only thing worth aiming for. In hindsight, it was a pretty good choice because I get lots of traffic by people searching for "architecture company." A review of my website states states:

Why on earth trust a company whose architecture is only just good enough? We at the Perfect Architecture Company have set the bar higher then any other company in the world. For your project, we will settle for nothing less than perfection. If one is going to put for a herculean effort toward architecture, you might as well reach for the Sun. We at the Perfect Architecture Company will set aside semantic ambiguities about the nature of perfection, and also cost, to bring you, the client, perfect architecture.

My weekend: I would also like to include a short summary of my weekend trip to Iwanai Gorge for a Tokachi English teacher conference. The meetings are always helpful; not only to learn new pedological nuggets to use in the classroom but also to discuss issues surrounding living in Tokachi. ("Where to buy such-and-such?" was an often heard question during the weekend.) The location was great for a gaijin conference; a lodge tucked away on the side of a mountain with a sharp gorge below. I feel stupid for not having considered my camera essential for the trip. Everyone was up very early on Sunday as a result of a very loud siren going off at 6:10 AM to ward off bears. It gets light here so early that no one minded, except for those who were exceptionally hungover. I, for one, felt genki, and savored the French toast for breakfast (secret ingredients: vanilla and cinnamon). I snuck out for a short mountain walk on a path above the gorge before breakfast. I'm glad I didn't take my iPod with me because the quiet morning soundscape of bird calls and rushing water was perfect. The air felt so fresh and good on my skin that it really struck me as the highlight of the day. You must realize that most people in Japan, as a result of living in crowded cities, don't have the oppurtunity to take deep breaths of mountain air like we can do in Tokachi. I think the air got to every cell in my body. It made me feel very alive.

And, as if on cue, in honor of my 300th post, I present a classic moment from my life in Shikaoi: Arriving at Shikaoi Elementary School ontime Monday morning for what I assumed to be a day of teaching English, I noticed the school grounds to be suspisiously quiet. No bikes. No students. No cars in the parking lot (except mine). Was it Sunday? Was my watch wrong? In the end it turned out there were no classes on Monday and everyone had forgotten to tell me. I am use to learning this sort of thing on short notice; normally late in the afternoon the day before. But it is rare thing indeed to learn in person the day of - just in time for this post.

Headline of the week: Many on the web are filing this headline under the Only in Japan Department: Kanagawa man arrested for stealing more than 2,500 items of women's underwear.