October 2005 Archives
Ever since we got back from Singapore, I've been ill. Heather was actually ill before we left. She's much better now, but she's having a hard time breathing particularly in the morning. As for me, I've had a fever for the last four days and I've been coughing up a lot, but I'm confident that I'm starting to get better. Nevertheless I think I'm going to skip work and we're going to go to the doctor to snag some antibiotics.
Anyway, this will be the first time that I stayed home from work because of illness. I feel guilty for some reason doing it, because I feel like my coworkers wouldn't let a mere illness stop them from going to work. Also, I just took a vacation, and on top of that Thursday is a national holiday. But on the other hand I have seen them take sick days; it's just the hype that creates that myth. That and the fact that there are some people who never fail to go to work. Poor Kaneko-san has had a fever patch and a mask on for the last three weeks. Nevertheless, our health is important to me and I have allowed myself to be convinced to go to the doctor by Heather.
Google, hot on the heels of its Google Map and Google Earth applications, has released a lunar counterpart. moon.google.com - the detail on the highest resolution is amazing.
reader.google.com is another cool new Google application that centralizes reading of RSS feeds on the web. It facilitates subscriptions and bookmarks. I'm excited to see how far Google will extend it.
Well, Monday afternoon Heather and I got back from our three-day vacation in Singapore. I'm telling people that it was more like a food-cation, but actually we managed to do quite a bit. We stayed in a hotel in Little India, so naturally we ate loads of great Indian food. We went to one South Indian restaurant twice, just for their curry set. It came with like three curries, yoghurt, rice pudding, and mint chutney. It was incredible.
We also visited Chinatown and a couple of Muslim districts as well. It was all a blast, and the people were very nice. Genuinely friendly and pleasant people, everyone we met. And the mixture of cultures is amazing - Tokyo likes to boast that it is an international city, but Singapore really is. Almost all the signs were listed in English, Chinese, Malay and something else - maybe Tamil? Everyone seemed to get along great as well.
On the other hand, there are stiff penalties for getting out of line in Singapore. Remember the American teenager who spray-painted cars, and then was sentenced to caning? That's just the tip of the iceberg. Eating on the train carries a $500 fine. And what's with the no durians on the train rule? Is this new? I guess they are pretty smelly and unpleasant.
That said, Heather and I were pleasantly surprised at how clean and modern all the trains and stations were.
Weirder still were these signs, also in the train station, urging people to be on the lookout for symptoms of psychosis in themselves should they crop up.
The thing to do in Singapore, if you're a conneisseur of exotic foods, is to go to one of the many food courts in the city. There you can pick and choose from a variety of foods from a variety of cuisines and enjoy them together. The problem is, Singapore sizes are closer to American sizes rather than Japanese sizes, and after two dishes between two people, you're really pushing it.
The last day, we visited a WW2 museum, which focused mainly on the atrocities committed by Japanese during the war. It seems like every country we visit - e.g. Korea, Vietnam, etc., we check out a place like this, and it's the same story over and over again. I'm not usually up for this kind of thing but this museum was actually pretty interesting. It's beside the current prison of Singapore, as that prison was used as a POW camp during the war.
After this we went to an island - ah, I forget the name. It was mostly a natural attraction, populated mainly by Malay people. We rented bikes and rode around a bit, and it was a great time. There was one point where we ended up biking off of the trail - thanks to me - and we ran into a group of excited - and BIG - wild boars. I turned around quickly and told Heather to do the same. I'm sure they were harmless but it sure scared the heck out of me.
Anyway, we had a great time, and we were naturally not too excited to get back to Tokyo. In Tokyo everyone seems so bummed out.
This weekend, Heather and I are going to Singapore! She has to renew her tourist visa in Japan, and I need a vacation. I haven't taken any days off since I started working at my job a year and a half ago, so I'm ready. Don't know what we'll do, but we have the address of a friend of a friend there, and maybe he'll take us around. Heather would like to check out the Chinese Opera and some other places that sound pretty cool. We've already booked a hotel in Little India - close to all the good food. I have heard that all the food is world-class there. Naturally we're really looking forward to it.
A few months ago I wrote about DARPA's cancelled project FutureMAP. I thought it was a great idea, one that died before it took off. Last month, there was an interesting MetaFilter article about predictive market systems. It seems that Google, in conjunction with economist Hal R. Varian, has created their own internal market, with better than expected results. Besides Google, the link lists another operational futures market that deals in real money. I'm thinking of creating an account at InTrade - however, the events on InTrade are decidedly less exciting than those of FutureMAP; e.g. Ben Bernanke to be announced as Next Chairman of the Federal Reserve versus North Korea Missile Attack.
Has anyone heard of any other predictive market systems out there?
One of my weirder hobbies, at least according to my friends, is my collecting of business and name cards. I've been collecting for about twenty years now, and I've only ever met one other collector face-to-face. The hobby, though, isn't as uncommon as you might think. There is even an International Business Card Collectors website and webring.
A lot of collectors go for specific card categories. For example, some collectors try to obtain name cards of famous people. Signed cards are particularly sought-after. Others go for cards in a particular business category - like business cards of fast-food restaurants, cat enthusiasts, or antique dealers.
I collect anything, but what I seek the most are international cards - particularly those in languages other than english - as well as cards that have an overall good design, including typeface, logo, layout, color scheme, etc.
Currently, these two cards are decorating our tiny apartment wall:
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The card on the left is from Matsumura Shoten (松村書店) - a vintage and art book dealer in Ochanomizu (御茶ノ水). The business boasts books from over three eras in Japan - an era denoted by the interval between ascension and death of an emperor. The books in the store are very cool, and actually pretty affordable. Anyway, what's not to like about this card? The logo can't help but bring a smile to my face. The best part is, that's a very accurate likeness of the proprietor of the store. Except in reality, he was frowning.
The card on the right is from the drinking establishment Seiryuumon. Actually, I forget where this place is, but probably it's somewhere in Koenji, Kabukicho, or somewhere in between. That's some crazy shirt he's wearing. And why is he winking? Is there some sort of meaning to it? Is there significance to the dragons on his shirt? Why is he wearing earrings? I think a guy can probably get away with wearing earrings in both ears if he's a foreigner, if he's in Kabukicho Ni-chome, or if he's in Koenji. Or is this a woman? Also, if you look at the middle button down, you see written the kanji for "push" (押). I wonder what that means? Another item of interest is that the business name is written old-style, from right to left. Literally, Seiryuumon (青龍門) means "the gate of the blue dragon." Incidentally, seiryuu comprise the same two kanji as the final two kanji of the Mongolian sumo wrestler - and current Yokozuna - Asashoryu (朝青龍) which means, roughly, "morning blue dragon." I think. Anyway, doesn't the pure friendliness of this restaurant's card just make you want to go there?
Lately I've discovered many holes in my shirts. I don't have a lot of shirts so I wear them often; they soon wear out and little holes start appearing. It happens in my pockets, too. For at least three pairs of pants that I own, there are big holes in the pocket. I often inadvertently put change in the wrong pocket, at which point it clangs and rolls all over the train platform. But I learn quickly to put everything in the other pants pocket. People probably think I have a tumor on my upper thigh. Today, though, I noticed that there was a small hole in the groin of my pants. I decided to don a good pair of underwear - just in case - before I put these pants on.
Yesterday, I attended the elementary English class at my company. It was the first time for me, because usually this class is in the morning, and I can't be bothered to get to work an hour earlier. This time, though, it was in the evening. I guess a lot of other students can't be bothered either - the reason the company changed the time is because there were too few students actually showing up!
Well, this time there was a large showing - nine people, in fact. It was a great time, and I got to know some of my newer coworkers a lot better. One of them, affectionately called Yoshi by fellow staff members, described a game that he is going to buy this weekend. It's called Racing Game Warning - probably this is a bad translation. In Japanese, it is "レーシングゲーム注意!!!!"
Obviously, the game involves racing. At least part of the game, though, involves speeding up your car to a high speed and colliding with some feature of the street. The driver crashes through the window and lands on or near some target. The closer you get to hitting the target with your driver, the better. [ gallery ] [ movie ]
What a wacky premise for a game. I'd like to get it.
Our movie-watching has recently undergone a revitalization. A few weeks ago, at the suggestion of my Japanese teacher, Heather and I rented the movie Tanpopo (タンポポ - literally Dandelion), by director Juzo Itami (重三伊丹). This film weaves several disparate storylines together with a common theme: food. One vignette features an epicurean gangster, his girlfriend, and their weird adventures; another is about an etiquette teacher trying to show her students the correct way to eat pasta while abroard. The main storyline is about Tanpopo, a woman running a struggling ramen shop outside of Tokyo, and the transformation of the restaurant - and Tanpopo - into something successful.
I thouroughly enjoyed this movie, but it isn't the plot that makes it so compelling. I've watched a few Japanese movies before, but none, I felt, really captured the essence of daily life in Japan. Not daily life in the sense that these are the kinds of happenings that are going on in Japan on a daily basis; far from it. However, it is the mindset of the characters - the way they act and react - that really hits the nail on the head. The characters really reflect a kind of ideal of the Japanese way of thinking. This, of course, is just my opinion.
My favorite vignette happens near the beginning of the film. It relates the tale of an aged ramen master - that is to say, a person who is skilled and refined eating ramen - teaching his student the proper way to eat. The teacher has his student rotate his bowl, glance lovingly at the pork, move the pork to a different area in the bowl and stroke it with his chopsticks as a sign of affection - to enhance the experience, and also perhaps to foster a kind of communion with the universe. The whole bit is hilarious, and is intended to be so; at the same time it is a revealing window into the intensely ritualistic - and sensitive - culture that is Japan.
So every day at work these days, I go and purchase a lunch box - called a bentou (弁当), and bring it back to the office on my lunch hour. While I'm eating, I often catch up on email, news, errands, or occasionally - like now - I create a new blog entry.
However, some days - like today - my coworkers come back early from work. It's 12:50 right now - I still have ten minutes - and yet, I feel guilty because my coworkers are here. And I feel like they are working.
And yet they're not. I glance to the right and the guy's surfing a video game website. The guy to my left is shuffling papers around, it looks like. I still feel guilty. Or maybe I feel guilty that I don't feel guilty about it, and continue to do it. Oh well.
I got good news last week. My mother is considering a trip to visit us in Japan! Heather and I are very excited. This will be the first (and probably only) time anyone has visited me in Japan. Heather and I have a really good handle on both Japan and Tokyo now, so we'll be able to show her some really cool things. She's planning on coming with someone, which is good because travelling with someone is always more fun. Anyway, I'm compiling a list of cool things that they can do while they're here - both in Tokyo and outside of it. Any suggestions?
Heather and I are thinking about going to Nikko this weekend. It's another three-day weekend, so I'm pretty excited. We're supposed to meet our friends up there. I don't know if it will happen or not, though; it's pretty late in the game to get started on this, and we're having trouble finding available accomodation. And it's a three day weekend. And this is the time of year where everyone goes out to the beautiful spots to see the changing leaves. We might be out of luck.
Nikko (日光) literally means the light of the sun. It is a popular tourist spot for Japanese that features many beautiful shrines and temples, and some absolutely gorgeous natural scenes. It was also the scene of the helicopter mishap on Mt. Nantai a couple months back! (see previous entry)
Changing subjects, Heather's Japanese exchange partner had a very interesting take on the difference between the sentence-ending particles "ne" (ね) and "yo" (よ). Up until I heard her explanation, I had always understood ne to mean, "isn't it?" For example, "it's hot today, isn't it?" Yo, conversely, I had taken to express exclamation. "It's hot today!"
Heather's exchange partner's explanation is much more sophisticated and nuanced. Ne, she explained, denotes a piece of information about which both parties - speaker and listener - are already aware, or at least this is the speaker's impression. Conversely the speaker would use yo when he or she believes what he is saying is new information to the listener. Fascinating - this explanation has changed my conception of the function of those particles a little bit.
