7:13 p.m. While I was driven around with tons of work, Cow seems to have been watching a movie of a Japanese comedian, ESP (extrasensory perception) Ito on YouTube. Not again... Apparently, he had been dying to show me the movie of this comedian, fly off and dive into the sea on a PET bottle rocket. Okay, okay, be with you in a mo.

7:18 p.m. AHA-AHA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! It IS funny, all right. He wasn't going to be shot off that far, I suppose. The startled expression on the guy's face was hilarious. And the guy can't swim!

7:28 p.m. Ooops! Better run. Have hung my washed clothes out on our veranda to dry since we hadn't had good weather for washing these couple of days, and my laundry bag was about to explode with dirty clothes, but there might be a chance of rain. After all, it's the rainy season and you can never be sure about the weather. Best get home before it starts to rain...

The End

Caterpillar

3:41 p.m. Eventually, it didn't rain yesterday, and my clothes weren't wet. Good, good. Won't have to worry about washing them until next week.

4:04 p.m. Cow has asked me to drop by Lawson (convenience store) tomorrow, to get some packets of ‘The Premium Roll.’ Have heard of it before in some TV program. It's a swiss roll packet that Lawson had released earlier, which was drawing attraction of convenience store sweets lovers, though hadn't had one myself. According to Cow, this swiss roll is said to have won the gold medal in the Monde Selection. Wow. He went right on to searching and in no time, showed me the screen of his lap-top with a picture of this ‘Premium Roll.’ Hmmm. Looks like a Dyson fan...

The End

Caterpillar

1:56 p.m. On my way to work this morning, I bought two packets of ‘The Premium Roll’ at Lawson. Pretty unusual for me when I forget things so often. Had been determined to write about them since yesterday, but can't now because we haven't had it yet... Am saving it for a late afternoon snack.

5:10 p.m. Yippeeee! ‘The Premium Roll’ time! The rolled sponge seems only about half an inch thick, and whipped cream is filling the big hole in the center. Mmmmm. Cream tastes good together with the sponge. Personally, don't think it's actually ‘premium,’ but more than enough as sweets on convenience store shelves. It's good I had something to cheer myself up after having a terrible fart attack from a client. Grrrrr.

The End

Caterpillar

6:12 p.m. A legendary Japanese racing horse, Oguri Cap has died yesterday. Oguri is known as a rare horse to start his career in the local tracks of Kasamatsu, later winning grade one titles in the JRA. He had become a stud horse after winning the Mile Championship, the Yasuda Kinen and the Grand Prix, Arima Kinen however, his juniors couldn't follow in his steps.

6:46 p.m. I've seen him once when I went to Hokkaido in 2002. He was munching green grass quitely in an undisturbed pasture all his own. His coat was completely white then, and it took me some time to link him to the dapple-gray warrior who finished his final race with a dramatical victory after losing three races in a row and being whispered to be ‘done,’ driving the stands into roaring "Oguri" calls from as many as 170 thousand fans that packed the Nakayama race track that day.

Apparently, Oguri was found in his paddock with one of his hind legs broken and, having been considered his age with the slim chance to recover, he was put to death. The legend has gone. But the memory stays. Thanks, Oguri.

The End

Caterpillar

4:07 p.m. Was just checking the Yahoo! News when I spotted a headline saying, "Bon Jovi beats Michael in Number of Shows." What!? Does that mean they're coming to Japan? Pressed ‘read more’ right away. It says the band's doing a two-nights stand at Tokyo Dome on November 30th and December 1st, as part of their "The Circle Tour." Hooraaayy! Have been waiting for this moment for years (some of you might remember that I had to give up their last show because of lack of funds...)! Tuesdays I work late but think I can make it on Wednesday.

4:17 p.m. Trying to collect more info from the article, I ran across a part that said Bon Jovi is setting 400 Premium Circle VIP seats, right in front of the stage for 50,000 yen per seat... Bet it'll be occupied by celeberities and rich people while a working poor like myself, being the band's fan for fourteen years though cannot afford a 50,000 yen ticket, will be looking hard at the tiny figures on the stage from the back row in the stands of that huge dome. Hate the words ‘premium’ and ‘VIP.’

The End

Caterpillar

4:07 p.m. There's this famous shopping mall near Sugamo station called Jizou-Dohri, where it's always crowded with elderly people, and also well known as Otoshi-yori-no Harajuku meaning, Harajuku for the elderly's. This Jizou-Dohri is said to have a humidity of only 50 percent, while other areas in Tokyo is currently suffering from average stickiness of more than 70 percent. A couple of minutes ago, Cow has thrown a question at me asking why only the Jizou-Dohri is so dry. What? Is this a quiz? Do I get any prizes if I get it correct?

4:18 p.m. Hmmm. Can't come up with any geographical features that could keep the humidity low only within that mall. After some thinking, I took a wild guess. "Isn't it because there are so many old people that the moisture in air is taken in by these elderly's from their skin or something? They must be dried up considering their age." I got scorched. Well, Obaba is eighty-nine and she's got chalky skin.

The End

Caterpillar

3:11 p.m. Have realized that I made a mistake about how long I had been a Bon Jovi fan. Fourteen years gao, I was already working. I meant twenty-four years. I've been their fan for nearly a quarter of a century. To be a fan of a band for such long time I think, is something, but the problem is that I can't even get a simple subtraction right...

3:30 p.m. Come to think of it, it's Tanabata (star festival) today. According to the traditions of Tanabata, it is said that your skills will improve in academics and arts if you write what you want to achieve on slits of paper called Tanzaku, and hang them on bamboo-branches as decorations. One of our neighbors came to our office yesterday, and offered us a Tanzaku on which I've written, "Love and Peace." Maybe I should've written, "Hope I can do better with numbers," as you can see, I'm terrible with numbers...

The End

Caterpillar

4:05 p.m. Small Solar Power Sail Demonstrator "IKAROS" is rapidly gaining attraction throughout the world. "IKAROS" is the first space yacht to travel in space catching tiny particles of light on its sail, remarkably using only solar power. After the recent miraculous return of "HAYABUSA," the solar-powered sailship is gathering attention of the world as "IKAROSU-kun" with as many as thirty-four thousand followers on Twitter. What's also surprising is that the project team members are especially young, with half of them consisting of graduate students.

6:58 p.m. Well, that's another exciting project from JAXA. Wonder if the space yacht was named with a twist of sarcasm? Anyway, wish all the best for the success of their project!

The End

Caterpillar

5:34 p.m. Writing about "IKAROS," I remembered a TV show on NHK called "Nipponn-no Kyouyou" hosted by Bakusho Mondai (Japanese comedian). There was an episode once featuring someone, a professor, who invented a particular way of folding construction materials to bring out into space.

5:51 p.m. Have done bit of research and found out it was called "Miura-ori" named after the emeritus professor at the University of Tokyo who used to work in NASA, Kouryo Miura. Miura, while studying rocket wrecks at NASA, discovered that the smashed rockets all had the same diamond patterns which to his surprise, increased strength of the material itself as a result. Given a hint, he later came up with a geometrical style of folding "Miura-ori," that enables huge construction materials to be folded into a compact size, unfolded to its original form just by pulling a corner, and put back again into folded form without much power. I suppose this "Miura-ori" must be applied to the solar panels of "IKAROS's" sail?

The End

Caterpillar

11:11 a.m. The World Cup champion will be decided tonight (Japan time). Didn't expect the final match to be the Netherlands against Spain though, since I thought Germany was a splendid team... Wonder which team will become the champion.

2:19 p.m. Have been watching "Claymore" after lunch since Cow had been badgering me to take a look. Hmm. Pretty interesting. How girls take in the flesh and blood of Yoma to become a Claymore reminds me of Dracula (this might owe a lot to the book "Historian"), and I see a sort of Samurai spirit when a Claymore desires to end her own life before turning into a Yoma while she still has the heart of a human. Anyway, I shall take off my hat to whoever put the Spanish subtitles. You must have put in a lot of energy and time. But I'm sure that somebody will be rewarded, for it seems the octopus has already decided the winner of the World Cup as.. Spain! Let's wait and see what happens. If the Netherlands wins, the octopus simply must have been lucky. If Spain wins... he could be a Yoma.

The End

Caterpillar

7:03 p.m. Have gone to vote. We had the Upper House election today. Wonder which party the octopus would choose if there were the same number of boxes containing food as the parties? The creature had predicted the wins and losses of all Germany's games and the semifinal correctly so far. Who knows? It might predict the outcome of the election too, though it doesn't involve Germany.

7:12 p.m. Just seen Hime at the door and asked her if she could get a ticket to the Bon Jovi concert for me. She's been a member of a promotor's club which I had already withdrew from years ago, since I couldn't afford to keep paying the annual membership fee, and still receives DMs from time to time that tells the date for the guaranteed ticket reservation. She said she would if only the DM would come, however, she's been throwing away the mail after checking it for some time, and she might have thrown away the Bon Jovi mail too, after she'd seen it quite a while ago. Oh, no. I have the most terrible feeling that she alreday has... What am I going to do? Arrrrrrgh!

The End

Caterpillar

2:22 p.m. Seems bad things come all at once. While I was searching how to not burn jiao-zi to the surface of the pan yesterday, trying to cheer self up from the deep shock of having lost my chance to get a ticket to the Bon Jovi concert, the hard disk of my lap-top suddenly started to go Wooosh, Woooooshh, without any warning... Tried to shut the browser in panic but zilch. It froze. No reaction to my force-quit command. Eventually managed to shut down PC by pressing power button for 4 seconds. But as I rebooted it, the screen showed only the blue error screen. Oh, God.

2:47 p.m. Have done a bit of searching in office, and found out that memory could be broken or, some part of hard disk could be doing damage to memory. After I've added memory only a month ago... Last night, have struggled to launch my PC a couple of times though in vain. What am I going to dooooo? Guess I'll try the disk check tonight. Have nothing to lose anyway. By the way, my congrats to Spain! Spanish soccer was beautiful.

The End

3:36 a.m. Came in late today since couldn't wake up. Probably because it was rather cool this morning, perfectly comfortable for sleeping over besides, have been up late last night tempting to reboot my lap-top. If it could restart somehow, I could try the disk check program to fix or avoid the broken parts of hard disk in case there are such parts. Pressing the power button was a thrilling moment, but I had butterflies in my stomach while waiting for the computer struggling to start from a recovering point. Come on, baby, you can do it! After nearly ten minutes that seemed like forever, the screen flashed up and showed the familiar words of "Welcome!" Hooooraaaayy!

3:56 p.m. Cow has been bugging me making me watch a series of old TV commercials of the &lsquot;Cinderella Express’ by JR Tokai... But am not that sleepy this afternoon, since have slept enough though I was forced to stay up till 3 a.m. this morning, before my lap-top finished the check disk program.

The End

Caterpillar

5:11 p.m. The TV forecast had said this morning, that there was a chance of rain but the radio forecast I heard around noon, said no need to worry for rainshowers for the rest of the day. Which should I trust, or should I not trust? Surely, the sky has turned from the dull white in the morning to a cloudless blue in the afternoon. Could it be that Tsuyu (the rainy season) has been over? The unreliable weather forecast (both TV and radio) have just said it will be hot and sunny in Tokyo until the beginning of next week. Hmmm. I smell summer.

5:28 p.m. Perhaps Cow did, too. He told me that he recalled seeing a huge dragonfly as a youngster, when he went to Yunishigawa, an Onsen (hot spring) resort in Tochigi prefecture during his summer vacation. According to Cow, he witnessed a dragonfly about eleven inches long, gracefully flying in from the window and then fly out again, after having an argument with his mom and staying alone in the room while everyone else went out to dinner. A dragonfly eleven inches long? Horrifying thing is, there seems to be other witnesses in other parts of the country. Eeeee!

The End

Caterpillar

4:04 p.m. Oh, dear. Must apologize my imprudence. The norhtern coast of Sanin area including Yamaguchi, Hiroshima and the northern part of Kyushu, has constantly been hit by heavy rain while I have been leaning back in summer-like weather. It seems Tokyo is one of the few cities having fine weather today (and yesterday). Wish for everyone's safety out there. Hang on, everyone, it's supposed to clear up by the end of this week according to the unreliable weather forecast...

4:20 p.m. One of our neighbors has brought us several ears of boiled corn. Mmmm. Smells super. Will have it in appreciation, especially for those who might be suffering from hunger. Thank you.

The End

Caterpillar

3:42 p.m. It was Monday or Tuesday, when I heard that they were giving away Bon Jovi's Premium Circle VIP seat ticket on the radio, and from fear the band would not do any extra show, I applied for that 50,000 yen ticket but in vain. Perhaps I should have kept my expectations realistic... Though the very next day, I got home after a day's work to find a DM with Bon Jovi's name printed on it. Yeessss, yyeeeeesssss!

3:49 p.m. Thanking for the late arrival of the DM, have just called up for the guaranteed ticket reservation. Have had a minor trouble of phone not working properly at first, but eventually was able to get myself through to the operator and reserve a ticket. 11,500 yen for a ticket isn't a cheap price to pay, but I'll manage, hopefully, somehow...

The End

Caterpillar

2:26 p.m. Japan Meteorological Agency has announced the Tsuyu-a-ke (end of rainy season) for a large area from the Kanto region to northern Kyushu. Seems like the rainy season this year, was shorter than usual. But it surely is hot. The temperature has hit 30 degrees celcius already in the morning here in Tokyo. If this isn't summer, my name isn't Caterpillar. Had better stay inside in this air conditioned office.

2:42 p.m. Cow seems to have been fixing the printer. Think this heat must be making things tough not only for us humans but also for machines and computers... Meantime, my lap-top has been showing a blue screen, announcing the beginning of check disk program every time it's launched, though it doesn't actually check disks. Thinking of trying to delete command from command prompt.

The End

Caterpillar

2:03 p.m. Was awakened past noon by heat... It's HOT. Fine weather again today. It's completely summer. School vacation will probably start from this week. Suddenly feeling unexpectedly happy about today being a Sunday.

3:40 p.m. Have gone out to the nearest supermarket to get myself some cold beer, and have been watching "Ibis Summer Dash," the only straight course grade race, enjoying the beer. Ah, proper. Cold beer is what you need on a hot day like this. Mmm, what to wear from Tuesday, though. The forecast is telling the high temperature's going to be higher than 33 degrees celcius throughout the week. What am I going to wear? I like the summer season, but the problem is that you can't walk outside naked however hot it may be.

The End

Caterpillar

11:30 a.m. As I went downstairs to the kitchen to fix myself a cup of coffee, noticed a beeping sound emerging through the kitchen door. What was it? I recognized a familiar tune in the beeping. Ah, that's "Santa Claus is Coming to Town!" But why now? It's five months too early for Christmas.

11:38 p.m. Am now back in my room with coffee. Have found out that the melody was coming from a snow globe my friend had given me more than twenty years ago. It had always stayed inside the cabinet in the living room under the TV as long as I can remember, and it hadn't made a sound for such a long time, only it was ringing out like crazy this morning. The melody wasn't supposed to go off unless you turned it upside down to let the snow fall inside the globe however, it started to play so suddenly although no one had touched it, that one of Hime's kids had brought it in the kitchen feeling uncomfortable to stay in the living room alone with the spooky snow globe. Perhaps this terrible heat is driving the snow globe mad, too. I wouldn't blame the pretty little globe.

The End

Caterpillar

4:11 p.m. The snow globe was silent when I went down to the kitchen this morning. Maybe it ran out of batteries or, broke down because of heat wave. Ah, heat wave. It's doing damage not only to the snow globe but also to my lap-top. My lap-top stopped working again last night... I had a bad feeling about it because the performance started to slow down while I was writing yesterday's "Murmur," taking more than a minute to display the choices of Kan-ji characters where it ususally takes less than a second. Then it shut down without consulting me at all.

4:24 p.m. Have stayed up till late again, on a desperate attempt to reboot it from the error blue screen so I can shut it down properly though having failed to restart even from safe mode, eventually had to give up and press the power button to force shut down again... Oh, no. Had unexpected expenditure right before payday, for my Bon Jovi ticket and a talisman for my friend leaving for Canada this week, and definitely cannot afford to pay any more while my incomes are not increasing. Now I'll have to carry my fifteen-inch lap-top on my back in this heat on top of everything else, to have Cow take a look at it. Hate the stupid heat.

The End

1:34 p.m. Am almost dead. Have carried heavy lap-top in unacceptable heat of thirty-six degrees celcius. Look like have been soaked in pool or something, though am dripping with sweat, not fresh cool water. Am fighting burning thirst.

1:35 p.m. Have emptied a bottle of Mugi-cha (barley tea) in ten seconds.

5:30 p.m. Cow is running the check disk program on my lap-top. He's been complaining the computer is too slow. Well, it must be the heat on top of its original performance speed. It's not a brand new hi-spec machine, you know.

5:34 p.m. Wonder why there isn't a law to have all the businesses except public offices closed, on hot days like today when the temperature goes above thirty-five, since nobody would be in a mood to work and you can't expect anything to be done properly or efficiently.

The End

Caterpillar

1:42 p.m. Cow has asked me what I had done exactly when I'd rescheduled the check disk program last week, since my lap-top does not check the disk though he's been trying to make it execute the task for hours. I had kept the URL of the site I referred to at the time, so I showed it to Cow and told him I did exactly what it said there.

4:23 p.m. My lap-top has been failing to check disk...

7:07 p.m. After a lot of searching and checking and command prompting, it turned out that hard disk has been broken somehow. Doooooommm. Well, it was a used computer anyway. Have got it for nothing come to think of it. But what am I going to do now? Should I get a new computer or get a new hard disk and replace it with the broken one? Suppose I get a new computer, how much would that cost? Will I be able to afford it? How am I supposed to squeeze out more money when I'm spending far more than I had expected already? Oh God, oh God.

The End

Caterpillar

12:24 p.m. Have overslept from deep shock of my computer being broken. Actually, we don't know if the hard disk is physically damaged in any way yet. It could be just the OS that's damaged, though the possibility of broken OS having done additional damage to hard disk, cannot be denied...

6:17 p.m. Cow has searched a lot to miraculously come across this free software, that repairs bad sectors on damaged hard disk drives without losses of the existing data. He's downloaded it and said would try that on my lap-top tomorrow. Still, that gives me only a faint hope. It could all end in vain. All I can do now, I guess, must be just wait and see.

The End

Caterpillar

2:23 p.m. Cow and I have been struggling to burn the repairing program on to a CD in order to make a rebooting disk however, so far we've been failing... Every time we press the ‘Burn CD’ button, a pop up appears saying that the CD has been successfully created, but it doesn't work when we try to boot the desk-top in the office before we actually try it on my lap-top. Why? Why? What's wrong? We checked the contents of the CD and vast amount of disk seems to remain empty... How come?

2:33 p.m. We're stuck. And even if we got over this burn CD crisis, there'll still be a lot of work left since we have to reboot my lap-top from the CD we've created, take out important files to save them on memory device (which have to go out to buy one), then run the repairing program on my lap-top and have it check the damaged sectors and fix it (which would probably take a full day) and, and... Who knows? It might turn out to be irreparable. But I can't give it up easily. We're talking about at-least-fifty-thousand-yen expenditure here. No, I won't give up my lap-top.

The End

Caterpillar

3:32 p.m. Realize cannot edit "Murmur" since my lap-top has been left in the care of Cow's hands. He'd probabaly be running the repairing disk by now.

4:21 p.m. Try to call Cow on Skype! to see how things are going and realize that cannot use Skype! either. Ring him on the phone only to find out that the repairing disk didn't work so he had made another one with a different free-ware and tried running the disk, but the computer had only spat out a message saying that there were no damages detected... Can't be. Am halfway into giving up.

The End

Caterpillar

5:10 p.m. Have been tied up in helping stupid Cow who attempted to rescue data from my computer via remote assistance and somehow copy it onto the office computer, because he thought it would be easier than going out to get a memory device. As for me, have never even heard of the term ‘remote assistance’ which means I have absolutely no idea how that works, but Cow is Cow, as usual, and he started off with a confidence built on nothing. Unfortunately, his idea didn't seem to work out and although we were able to remote control my lap-top after about an hour of sending, receiving, checking message sort of actions, we eventually found out that folders were not able to copy and paste onto the controlling computer...

5:23 p.m. We started all this around 3:10 and are now worn out... Is going out to get a USB Flash memory that troublesome? Hey! I just remembered something. How about using my iPod? I think it had a function to carry data in it like flash memory sticks!

The End

1:32 p.m. Oh, no. My lap-top won't launch. Yesterday's remote assistance struggle must have overworked it. How am I to save the left data if it doesn't start? How?

3:49 p.m. Cow and I have shut down the computer from power button one last time before we had lunch to let it rest a while. He has suggested to start it up from Knoppix CD which he bought when he had replaced the hard disk on this office desk-top about three years ago, and save the remaining data onto my iPod then try recovering operating system on my lap-top, so am going to accept that suggestion.

3:58 p.m. Though he's just gone out on business. That'll give me some time to take a doze. God, am sleepy. Have been made to cope with JoOusama's complaints about what a terrible mother my sister is until one o'clock this morning, and I'm dreadfully tired and sleepy.

4:18 p.m. But he's come back before I finished writing the Japanese version...

The End

Caterpillar

6:01 p.m. Though terrified this could be the last time we can, we tried booting the lap-top again after Cow had returned yesterday afternoon. Meantime, we downloaded and installed iTunes onto the office computer, connected my iPod to it with a cable and waited for the screen to indicate the iPod, in order to change the settings to use it as memory device. We waited...but zilch. The desk-top wouldn't locate my iPod! After a great deal of struggling, it hit us. Could it possibly be that this cable is only good for charging battery and not for trasporting data? It was a cable I had bought at a 100 yen shop, so I can use it in the office whenever I wanted to charge my iPod. It turned out that cables sold in some 100 yen shops cannot be used to transport data... Oh, God. But the annoying thing is, that there were cables good for both purposes for only 100 yen sold in some shops, while mine costed twice the price since it consisted of two parts, the usb cable and the iPod attachment despite the fact that it can only recharge! Grrrrr! Unable to accept cruel fact, I dropped by a 100 yen shop near my house in sullen resentment, to check which type they had. About a dozen packets of cables good for trasnporting data and recharging, hung swinging from the hook of a metal rack as if they've been there all the time. But they weren't! I swear they weren't ! That's why I had to buy one in a different shop and had to face the shocking truth that it was no good for sucking out data, after struggling for hours! But this was only the beginning of my nightmare...

The End

Caterpillar

8:22 p.m. A little correction to make. Knoppix is an operating system that moves on Linux, not a recovery software.

8:24 p.m. Have tried to boot the lap-top with safe mode and tried to suck out the data via Knoppix, but this time Knoppix will not indicate hard disk drive of lap-top... We've tried everything we can absolutely think of, including punching in commands to check disk or repair disk, though all of our attempts ended in failure. My lap-top cannot boot any more and it seems there's nothing else we could do...

8:28 p.m. Cow made a couple of suggestions he could think of at this point, so I told him I would try the recovery though my data will be lost forever, at which point he burst into tears of joy crying out, "Thank you, my lord, I thank you!" I wasn't trying to be cruel to him or anything. I just wanted to do whatever I can before giving itup.

The End

Caterpillar

2:30 p.m. After all the struggles, it turned out that there was no way I could save the data in my computer, so we decided to run the recovery disk on it. However, as we started to run the disk, my lap-top returned an error message again saying, "Time out, drive not responding." Does that mean we can't even reinstall the operating system any more? Oh, God.

2:34 p.m. My computer doesn't respond to the Knoppix CD. This time it's really, really done. I had almost given up hope cmpletely when Cow suggested that he take out the hard disk from my lap-top, connect it to the desk-top with a crossing cable, repair the parition program which seems to be ruptured and being the reason to Knoppix's not being able to open the file, then if all goes well, suck out my data onto the desk-top, re-format my lap-top hard disk, put it back again and run a recovery program. Sure, if he wants to try. But we don't have the crossing cable.

2:44 p.m. Cow has just gone out to buy a crossing cable. Wonder how all this is going to turn out.

The End

Caterpillar

1:09 p.m. Oh, no. The Meteorological Agency has just announced warning of heavy rains and local floodings for all twenty-three wards in Tokyo and the western part of Tama area. Haven't brought my umbrella today, since it has been broken by wind the day before yesterday. What am I going to do? Just have to cross my fingers and pray for the rain to either pass by, or not come down.

2:22 p.m. Unfortunately, the desk-top computer didn't recognize the hard disk drive from my lap-top via crossing cable. However, we found two efficient sites explaining how to repair partition data. And now we are running Testdisk application in order to detect and repair the partition data on the HDD of my lap-top. More than thirty minutes have passed but only 5 percent of the HDD has been analysed...wonder how much longer it will take? Ten hours, perhaps, or more?

The End

Caterpillar