Thoughts
I've been getting a bit of traffic from Aku Ender, and I'm thinking maybe it is a bit different than what you were expecting. I don't know what I think you thought this would be, so perhaps a little background so you can enter with a context.

The Wife introduced me to Aku Ender when he was a sophomore and we were both seniors; though the wife was more senior than I was. You see, Aku Ender had this passion for all things rock. I also had a passion for things rock, if by all things rock you mean, computational models. That isn't to say I don't like rock, in fact, I enjoy it, but after playing guitar for a while, I discovered Genetic Algorithms, which use fitness based evolution and ecology models to evolve solutions in complex environments. Using that as a starting point I began looking into large scale parallelism and from there to Quantum Computing, so my passion is for Bio Physical Computational Models if you will, and roleplaying games, and music...don't forget reading.

The Wife was involved with Theatre, as was Aku Ender, and they discovered they had several things in common, and Aku, being the type of person that makes himself both instantly likeable, or unlikeable within several meetings, we had fallen into the likeable category. For quite some time Aku Ender pursued his own things and we occasionally saw each other, until he felt the pull of Chan's. Chan's is like a black hole of martial arts goodness. This began our training together on separate occasions, and The Wife has just recently found out about our late night knife fighting practice. She was not pleased, but she never is when we indulge ourselves in the act of perfecting ourselves physically, mentally, and spiritually through the use of Jow Ga, Tai Chi, or Wing Chun. There is something to be said about sparring and friendship. After you throw punches at the same opponent for so long, it no longer becomes a fight, but more of a dance. That and our late night trips to Denny's where we discussed many things with our waiter Jessica, at least I think that was her name.

The Wife and I headed to Japan, and Aku Ender followed after, though his was a more scholastic endeavor, and ours was more, "This is a far better job than the one we had in GR," endeavor. We ended up being 550 yen down the Ohmitetsudo (only on Saturdays and Sundays, per km it is the most expensive railway in Japan), so we were able to meet with him on numerous Saturdays. Then Aku Ender stayed with us for about two, or was it three weeks in July before heading back home.

It has been a pleasure knowing Aku Ender and discussing a lot of everything with him, which is really the foundation of the friendship, that and kicking each other. I can't say that I like everything he likes, and I'm sure he can say the same about me, but having someone that responds in a conversation can be wonderful for building friendships.

Other Thoughts
I've been looking at various webhosting services, and I hope to have one chosen by the end of December. This will allow me to include more accessible reviews of books and movies (The movies will be reviewed by The Bitter Baron, The Wife's co-worker, aka Poohsan). If anyone has ideas of what they would like to see here, please leave a comment. I'm not going to guarantee that it will show up, but I'm debating with Me about what to put here. I want to make it informative, but not overly political, which I feel would be very easy to do. Owarimashita.