Ulaş On The Move

Back to Mt. Takao

2010-05-11T23:02:00.001+09:00

Mt. Takao was one of the first places I went to in Tokyo when I first came here in 2007. I guess in a weird way it made sense that it would be one of the last I would go before leaving Japan (more on that later…). With the weather getting better and better last weekend I got a chance to re-hike to the top…

The mountain itself is only a short train ride from Tokyo and is pretty popular with tourists and locals alike. While there I saw boy scouts, children hiking with their instructors who explained different parts of the mountain (as well as animals, flowers, etc…), hikers from all ages from 7 to possibly 77, and even pets accompanying their owners.

You can see some of the pictures I took here.

Trip to Kawagoe

2010-05-06T00:00:00.001+09:00

Over the course of the Golden Week, which unfortunately ends today, I got the chance to visit quite a few different places and try a few things I had not had a chance to try before. I think I should thank Derek for his visit that gave me a reason to go around each day instead of staying in.

Kawagoe is one of the places I had not had a chance to visit before. It is actually pretty close to Tokyo – about 30-40 minutes from Shinjuku but it offers a pretty different scenery, a famous temple with a beautiful garden and 500+ unique statues, an ancient bell tower and a “sweets street”. It is also famous for sweet potatoes. I highly recommend taking a day trip out there if you live in Tokyo – it’s definitely worth it!

You can see the images I snapped here.

Panasonic’s 3D Television

2010-04-30T23:52:00.001+09:00

I have so much to write about but I just can’t find enough time to organize stuff to post on here. Facebook makes one lazy, I think, by encouraging “1 picture, 1 sentence” style posts. Anywho, I will post something here as well :)

I was walking around Kichijoji last week and I came across a crowd in front of the Yodobashi Camera. It turns out Panasonic had a demo set up for their new 3D Viera TVs. I knew about a new 3D format coming for the Blu-Ray but I had no idea the players were already produced, discs published, and DVR units built to handle the 3D data (as well as the TVs to display them of course). The 3 minute demo was actually pretty impressive. I think one of the reasons is that the glasses they use (yes you still need glasses which I can’t say I will ever get used to). The glasses are actually “active” – they are synced to the TV which supposedly makes for a more natural and less headache-inducing (which of course I was not able to check within 3 minutes).

Demonstration in Harajuku against child trafficking

2010-04-18T22:58:00.001+09:00

I was out in Harajuku today which was as crowded as usual given it’s a weekend day. Sometimes it still surprises me how many non-Japanese people seem to frequent the area. Granted, the sheer number of people walking on the street is so high that one would expect to see “foreigners” here and there but the number of non-Japanese people was easily around 10%. That’s not what I am writing about today though – I came across an interesting demonstration which I think is worth mentioning here.

As far as I can tell “child trafficking” is not a particularly big problem for Japan, definitely not anywhere near certain East Asian countries. It was nice to see people getting together even for issues which may not be affecting their own country as much as the neighbors. By the way, this picture was taken from the top of the Gucci building…

Catching the last days of the cherry blossoms

2010-04-11T22:50:00.001+09:00

This season of cherry blossoms was a bit weird in Tokyo – well, maybe unfortunate is a better word. First weekend it was all rainy and gloomy for the most part. The following weekend, with the cherry blossoms already starting to shed some of the flowers, I was at the hospital. Well, this weekend was different. I spent a decent part of my Saturday walking around the Tokyo Station, the emperor’s palace and Yotsuya. I also managed to get lost and walk from Yotsuya to Tokyo station in the process but I also had tons of fun and saw amazing scenery.

My ultra-hectic schedule continues so unfortunately I cannot comment much more. Instead I will just put some of the pictures I took on here – one picture, a thousand words I hope :)

Around Yotsuya station

Cherry blossoms flying in the air

Castle moat

Another part of the moat

Couples in boats

Cherry blossoms are out but no blue skies…

2010-04-04T23:40:00.001+09:00

I am supposed to write about Sapporo but that will take quite a bit of time to plan and while I was going to do al that planning today, I could not. See, it is the cherry blossom season and this weekend is the best time to go check those out. After all cherry blossoms are only around for two, or at most three weeks a year. Since that corresponds to only 4 – 6 weekend days you can tell how important each one of those days become if one wants to go check out the cherry blossoms.

Today and yesterday were supposed to be the days I go to check out cherry blossoms. According to the Japanese Meteorological Agency, yesterday would have been the day that the blossoms reach their full bloom. It unfortunately was not to be… First, I had to spend most of yesterday at the hospital and today, I was mostly at home. Both days had overcast skies as well, in my humble opinion taking away from the experience.

I am hoping next week will be better and there will still be cherry blossoms to check out. Last year there were still a few trees left even 2 weeks after the peak date around Ueno Zoo. Meanwhile, I snapped this picture close to my apartment. Hey, better than nothing, right?

Trip to Sapporo and Otaru

2010-03-25T21:52:00.001+09:00

Ever since coming to Japan, I wanted to visit Hokkaido, the northernmost part of mainland Japan. The snow festival in February (雪祭り/Yuki Matsuri), the mountains and hills full of beautiful flowers in the spring time are just two of the biggest attractions in the region. This past weekend, unfortunately, was not the right time to experience either one of the two but the region has plenty to offer all year around!

This past Monday was a national holiday – the observation of Spring Equinox (moved to the 22nd as the original date, the 21st, fell on a weekend) and after I took Friday off as a paid-holiday, I had 3 full days to enjoy Sapporo and get back to Tokyo on Monday. Contrary to the time of Yuki Matsuri the tickets were quite reasonable too so it was quite a treat! I got to visit many places in Sapporo and even made a day trip to the famous Asahiyama Zoo (旭山動物園).

I am going to try to cover each day separately, starting this weekend. Unfortunately these days I am so amazingly busy busy busy…

A quick visit to Hitotsubashi University campus

2010-03-16T00:08:00.001+09:00

Last weekend I decided to try something different. Instead of going towards Shinjuku and ending up somewhere in central Tokyo like Roppongi or Shibuya, I went the opposite direction on Chuo Line (JR中央線)– towards Tachikawa.

Tachikawa is a relatively big city, about 15 minutes from Mitaka and it is usually possible to cut the time by a few minutes if one catches a special rapid going towards Ome or Mt. Takao. Today I won’t write about Tachikawa though, I will write about Kunitachi (国立) which is a stop before Tachikawa which is usually referred to as a university town. The main road leading off from the station is flanked on both sides by cherry blossom trees which unfortunately are not in bloom yet - I suspect it will be two weeks or so before that happens at which point I will try to go back to snap some pictures of that.

One nice surprise for me was the campus of the Hitotsubashi University. Following a western architecture, the buildings seem almost out of place in Japan. The campus is green and many people (that is to say, non-students) can be seen walking around it, enjoying the scenery. The logo of the school is pretty interesting too (see the picture I snapped above) with a decisive emphasis on medicine. I heard that the school is actually one of the best in Tokyo in terms of social sciences. The entrance examination, while not as hard as University of Tokyo or Keio, is also one of the hardest.

Of course wherever there is a university, there are students and wherever there are students, there are bicycles – at least in Asia, based on what I saw in Taiwan, Korea, and here. There were tons of bicycles parked in front of the university campus which itself is pretty close to the train station so my guess is that some students actually leave the bicycles locked here and walk to the train station, using the bicycle to get around the campus during the day or to go somewhere further.

Rain and gray skies for Tokyo

2010-03-07T22:01:00.001+09:00

The days before things warm up and Spring is fully here always bring rain to Tokyo and these few days are no exception. It does get sunny once every few days and it actually feels better than Summer since Summers are humid, hazy and therefore uncomfortable and sticky affairs. However, this week the sunny day was Friday and for the last two days it has been raining, drizzling actually – just enough wetness to complement the low temperature. One thing the rain let me do though was to grab this picture of the little puddle on my balcony. At least Sunday was not a complete loss I guess…

What one letter can change

2010-03-04T22:58:00.001+09:00

Snapped this at the Mitaka Station last weekend (the night my father was here) – it’s an ad for a massage place called “Body Factory”. It follows the usual fare of Japanese pamphlets where about 90% of the text is in Japanese with a few things in English sprinkled around. Another thing it unfortunately shares with many other pamphlets around here is the fact that it is off by a single letter. Normally this would make for something completely nonsensical but in this case, the new word somehow works in this context, albeit in a very wrong sounding way…

Venus Fort at Odaiba – Now an outlet mall

2010-02-27T23:29:00.001+09:00

Well, not completely – but it seems like they did convert most of the stores into outlet/factory stores offering 50-60% off of the regular prices. Mind you, the Venus Fort is still a relatively high-end shopping mall (there IS a huge indoor fountain after all) so in some of the stores bargain prices are still in >$100 range.

It seems like this big change happened around January but as Odaiba is not exactly next door to Mitaka, it was only today that I actually saw the new mall. Outside is changed as well and the inner decor now has more lights – though, they kept the “streets of Venice” look. It used to be that the Venus Fort was worth checking out at least once just because of the design but now the possibility of finding a brand item for 60% off the price you would have to pay in Ginza/Shibuya or Shinjuku means regular visits every once in a while may well be worth it.

Keeping tabs on what’s going on in Mitaka

2010-02-25T22:53:00.001+09:00

Mitaka, just like any other Japanese city in the Tokyo region (and possibly in general, though I can’t say that from experience) constantly has a ton of things going on for its citizens to take part in. There are cultural events like concerts, movies, and traditional Japanese arts as well as other things like marathons, competitions, fairs, and even English or Japanese language courses. To keep track of these things one can rely on the city’s website but usually those are not the best looking or the easiest to maneuver. Instead, I pick up this little, one page, newspaper. It is published only once a month but they do a good job summarizing what will happen in the next month. You can find them at the Mitaka Station (which is where I pick them up) or at the City Center.

And the snow comes and goes…

2010-02-22T23:11:00.001+09:00

Winter is almost over and we haven’t had a “decent snow” covering the rooftops more than, well, once actually. So when I woke up last week I was very surprised to see the roofs covered with a nice layer of powder.

Unlike what the huge amount of snow did for my friends in the US though, this snow did not cause any problems. In fact, the whole thing was gone in an hour after I took this picture (mind you it was still snowing at this point too). I think as long as this is how it happens, you know without any dirty slush sticking around after the snow or cars/people slipping on ice, I could use more of this snow. I mean, it looks nice when you are indoors, and when you are out you can do snowball fights for that one hour (kids in my neighborhood were doing just that when I was walking to work).

Of Winter and Japanese Water Heaters

2010-02-15T23:32:00.001+09:00

My water heater picked the absolutely worst time to break. See, if this was during the humid hell that is Summer in Tokyo, I would have probably welcomed the sudden decision by my water heater to stop working. Unfortunately though, this is the coldest part of the winter and the idea of turning into an ice cube during shower is not particularly appealing.

First a little background on water heaters around here… They use gas to heat up water and the heaters themselves are actually provided by the gas company. The heater consists of two parts – an outside unit which is hooked up to gas and water and does the actual heating when you turn on the tap, and an inside unit which is this nice little display in your kitchen. The inside unit lets you turn the outside unit on or off as well as set a desired temperature for the hot water. Pretty cool, right? Now, what you see on the right here is what mine was showing Friday night. Yup – “Minus zero”. It turns out this is an error code and also explains why all of a sudden I was out of hot water. Going through manuals online which turned out to be all in Japanese, decrypting what I can, and finally getting help from a friend, I was able to ascertain that I had to unplug the unit outside, wait for 20 minutes and then plug it back in and presumably things would work. I won’t go into the details but let me just say there was no plug outside and I had to pick which fuse to turn off and eventually the unit did work but for barely long enough for me to take a shower.

After my friend contacted the company that handles renting apartments, they reassured us that the device would be replaced and today, I came home to find a nice man from Tokyo Gas replacing the unit with a nicer, newer one. Well, I am happy to report that things are now back to normal. I have hot water and everything which is good news since I was sure the reset trick would no longer work with the older one. Oh and I like the new LED color too – nice and green :)

A Stroll Through Jindai Botanical Gardens

2010-02-08T22:33:00.001+09:00

Sorry for the delay. I usually try to update this once every few days but I bought a new camera (Canon EOS 7D bringing me to the wonderful world of dSLRs finally) and I was using my free time to try to get to know it a little bit better. It is an amazing camera (if I might say so myself) and I don’t think I even scratched the surface but I decided the best way to learn is by doing. So I picked up my camera, put on a polarizing filter, and made my way to the Jindai Botanical Gardens which happen to be pretty close to where I live.

Getting in costs 500 Yen per person and inside you find a nice, serene park complete with a greenhouse and a little pond. If you happen to be by the Jindaiji Temple, this is just a 2 minute walk from there. I also had the chance to try out some delicious handmade soba which the place is famous for. Anyway, here are some of the pictures I took :)

There weren’t too many flowers outside this being winter and all but these ones caught my eye.

The small lake in the gardens. I am pretty sure it looks even more amazing in the spring and especially during the cherry blossom season.

A water lily from inside the greenhouse.

Handmade soba (Japanese buckwheat noodles) with Tempura served outside next to the fire to keep the customers warm.

Delicious Chinese food in Kichijoji

2010-02-02T22:56:00.001+09:00

I am a big fan of lamb and my recent trip to Hong Kong did pique my interest in Chinese food more so than before – two reasons why I was very excited to find out about X’ian, a very nice Chinese restaurant in Kichijoji serving up lamb dishes from the region of same name in China.

This little gem of a restaurant is actually located on the top floor of the Yodobashi Camera (yes in Japan even big electronic stores can have restaurants and even a floor full of clothing stores) in Kichijoji. They offer both various types of Dim Sum and a-la-carte dishes like the nice and yummy fried lamb leg you can see in the picture I took. The page I linked above has more information about the place than I can ever hope to put in there so feel free to check that out. One thing is worth noting though – watch out for the symbols for spicy food. They do mean spicy ;)

Dim Sum at Roppongi Hills

2010-01-26T23:24:00.001+09:00

One of the greatest mysteries for me was how none of my friends in Japan seemed to know about Dim Sum. See, after Hong Kong I must say I got an appreciation for Dim Sum and I was sure there would be restaurants serving it in a city like Tokyo. Well it turns out I was right and people does know about it – it’s just it’s called something else in Japanese that’s all :)

So here is the thing – the kanji for Dim Sum is the same in Chinese and Japanese - 点心 but the Japanese read it as ten-shin (てんしん). This particular restaurant I went to is at Roppongi Hills, called “Hong Kong Tea House”. They offer both full dishes and dim sum a-la carte but it seems like, at least for dinner, they restrict you to open buffet if you want dim-sum. Their dim-sum list has 50 items on it and you can order to your heart’s content including most of the usual suspects (for up to 90 minutes and 3 dishes at a time) though it does cost about $40 per person… They also have this statement on there (which I took a picture of) – they charge you extra if you waste food. It’s a refreshing thing to see in this day and age where usually the opposite seems to be encouraged.

Cleaning robots at Tokyo’s Narita Airport

2010-01-20T21:41:00.001+09:00

I snagged this picture of the two cleaning robots at the Narita Airport on my way to Hong Kong a couple of weeks ago. I find it amazing how pretty much all service robots in Japan share two interesting properties – they all have cute names and cute faces. These are no different – the one on the left is a guy (or actually a boy) and his name is なり太くん (narita-kun from the name of the airport) and the one on the right is the girl and her name is エポちゃん (epo-chan from pronunciation of the word “airport”). I have not seen them in action, they were both neatly parked on the side and I was running to my gate but I think it would be pretty nice to watch them. If you look a little closely you can see the sensors on them so I am pretty sure they do have an autonomous cleaning mode but I wonder how effective they are. My Roomba does OK in my small apartment but Narita Airport is slightly bigger :)

Food at Hong Kong (updated)

2010-01-14T23:28:00.001+09:00

Hong Kong, being a pretty international city, offers yummy delicacies from both the Chinese and world cuisines. You can find good food in places ranging from cheap food vendors selling stuff outside to expensive restaurants overlooking the whole city. Here are a few I tried and what I thought about them:

Egg Tart

The Egg Tart is a pretty cheap dessert but boy, is it yummy. You can pretty much find it in any bakery but if you want to try “the best”, at least according to my amazing hosts, you should have it at the Tai Cheong Bakery in Central. It takes about 10 minutes to walk there from the MTR station, through the Escalator Link Alley. Just take the alley up until you see the small pizza place on your left then go down and walk a little to the right. You will see the small but extremely popular bakery. Alternatively you can take a cab from the station. Cabs in Hong Kong are pretty cheap (especially compared to Japan where the meter opens with about $7.50). If you are visiting Macau you can try the version of Egg Tart they have there which comes with a Portuguese twist. The full address for the HK option is:

泰昌餅家 Tai Cheong Bakery
35, Lyndhurst Terrace, Central
香港中環擺花街 35 號

Hot (Clay) Pot

Hot Pot is a pretty popular dish for locals and tourists would, in my humble opinion, do well in checking it out for themselves. Thanks to our host I was able to try out a restaurant that is very much out of the way of the typical tourist spots but is a hot spot for the locals. And why wouldn’t it be with prices around $2-$3 for each pot full of chicken/pork/beef/seafood rice all prepared by a family? Get this – the restaurant does not even sell drinks and if you ask for anything to drink they simply point you to the closest convenience store. There are no private tables, everything is connected and you sit pretty close with “strangers” but I found the experience to be enjoyable thanks to the quality of food and the friendliness of the said “strangers”. If you do go, make sure you try out the oyster omelet. In case you are interested, the place is called “Four Season Pot Rice” and it is in Yau Ma Tei. The full address is:

四季煲仔飯 Four Season Claypot Rice
油麻地鴉打街46-58號
46-58, Arthur Street, Yau Ma Tei

Dim Sum

Dim Sum is a bit difficult to describe, after all it is not one single dish but rather a collection of small dishes very much like the Spanish Tapas. You can find a much better description on Wikipedia right here. There are many different places you can have Dim Sum and I heard good things about Dim Sum in Macau but the meal I had was actually right at Discovery Bay. The image is a list of what they had on offer and as you can see there are MANY different little dishes to choose from including seafood, beef, pork or purely vegetable. If you take the ferry there you can get a free return ticket (about $4 in value) if you spend more than $10 which is actually pretty difficult since the food is as cheap as it is good.

Western Food

There are many, many restaurants to get your “western food” fix but I tried out the “Pearl” on the Peak. It was pretty good, offering various Italian style dishes and especially very tasty meat dishes. The prices are more than a bit higher than your typical restaurant in Hong Kong given the prime, touristy location and the class of restaurant but the view of the whole city below you alone is worth the cost. The staff is very professional as well.

Back from Hong Kong

2010-01-13T23:18:00.001+09:00

And the fact that I was there is why I couldn’t post anything for this long, I swear… It has nothing to do with me being lazy and stuff :P

I took two days of paid holidays which with the weekend and the public holiday on Monday (it was “Coming of Age Day” in Japan which I managed to miss once again) so I had about 3 full days to go around. I have lots of pictures and stories to write about the food, the city, and where I stayed – Discovery Bay. My hosts, Mei and Joe made this trip possible and were amazing hosts so I cannot thank them enough.

Tomorrow we start with the food…

ps. I took the picture above from “The Peak”. It came out pretty nice I think ;)

Women going crazy for pictures of shirtless guys at Japanese subway stations

2010-01-04T23:07:00.001+09:00

OK, this was the scene at various subway stations on Sunday while I was making my way back home and I could not really figure out why… Can anyone enlighten me? There were actually security guards telling the women to not stop for taking pictures since they were making it very difficult for the other travelers going through the station. At this point all I can say it is something that will happen on the 9th but… that’s about it. Oh, and I think these guys are from a music group (boy band) though I am not sure which one.

Japanese TV Programs to Watch Around New Years

2009-12-31T00:55:00.001+09:00

If you are not in the mood for braving the cold and the crazy crowds on the night of the 31st you might want to check out these TV programs on the New Year’s Eve night as well as the following day/morning.

If you haven’t watched it before, 紅白歌合戦(Kouhaku Uta Gassen), is a singing competition on the national public television (NHK) and it is broadcast both on television and radio. It has actually been on the air since 1950s. It is basically a singing competition between two teams – red team which is made up of female singers and the white team which is made up of male singers. In fact the beginning of the name of the program, 紅白, stands for red-white. To be invited to sing at the competition is considered an honor and the teams are typically made up of singers of all backgrounds from J-Pop to Enka (the traditional Japanese folk songs). Every year NHK puts together a selection committee which does the refereeing and the invitation process for the artists is based on sales in the last year as well as their fit to the theme for that year. The theme is in turn determined by a survey on various demographics so you can see that it is a pretty big deal. This year 紅白 will start on New Year’s Eve at 7:15pm and go on until 11:45pm on BShi, BS2 and Radio 1. You can take a look at the homepage here.

Another show I really like watching is さすけ/佐助(Sasuke). さすけ is the name of a famous Ninja from Japanese history and the show is about competitors trying to survive a gauntlet of challenges. This one you might have seen in other countries under a different name (for example in the US and Turkey they show it under the name Ninja Warrior). However, unlike the way they show it in other countries, which is as a season of 30 minute long episodes, the way they show it here is as one long episode per season. There is a pretty dedicated fan base here as far as I can tell and there is even a museum in Odaiba called Muscle-Park where people can try some of the challenges from the show. Some of the competitors prepare for months, building smaller versions of the gauntlet at their homes. The 24th iteration of the show will take place on January 1st at 5:45 pm and last until 11:24 (no idea why not 11:30 or 11:15) on TBS. You can find more information here and especially here.

Avatar in 3D at Roppongi

2009-12-27T23:40:00.001+09:00

Roppongi, just like the other parts of Tokyo, is lit up still waiting to welcome 2010. I was there today to check out Avatar in digital 3D.

I always like to watch my movies at Toho Roppongi Hills since it is a pretty new theater. Being in Roppongi, it also attracts a lot of foreigners so it is sometimes interesting to go just for people watching. Anyway, today was nice – the movie, Avatar, turned out to be pretty good. I had high hopes but I did not realize we actually reached a level of CGI quality where computer generated things on the screen can interact seamlessly with the human actors all the while exhibiting emotions themselves. The technology behind 3D movies also improved by leaps and bounds as well. I remember watching a 15 minute movie at Niagara Falls with 3D glasses and getting a headache. This movie of 3 hours did not give me any such problems at all…

Anyway, thought I would drop a line and check in. More holidays are coming starting the 31st so that should be a nice break from all the work I hope.

Here, have some… placenta

2009-12-25T00:28:00.001+09:00

I wonder which genius came up with this one… It’s a drink for women to give them “youthful looks” and it is called – yes, “The Placenta” (ザ・プラセンタ).

Why the name, you ask? Well, apparently it contains some of the same amino acids as the placenta(as well as a healthy serving of collagen, a favorite ingredient for Japanese ladies interested in keeping their youthful looks). Check out the picture of Marie Antoinette, holding a bottle as well (the picture is basically a painting from 1783 with a bottle added in) . One of the commonly believed eccentricities of the executed Queen of France was her fondness for using actual placentas for improving her skin. The pamphlet does mention this but there is no mention of what a placenta is it seems…

While I don’t think this particular drink contains actual placenta extract, you can actually find other products by Japanese manufacturers that does include the real deal. These usually come in lotion form however so you don’t actually “eat/drink” the placenta. The price goes up by quite a bit though – this one sells for more than $300.

Anantara Dhigu Resort, Maldives

2009-12-20T21:58:00.001+09:00

Wow, it has been more than a week since I promised I would post something about the resort. I now realize I have tremendously underestimated the workload I would be under during the week – both from my “official” work and from other stuff. Well, here we are a week (and a day) after the date I specified and I finally get to write a few words.

Anantara Dhigu Resort, where I was at for 5 days, is an example of how a holiday resort should be. It is relaxing, the staff is courteous and professional, the over water villas where I stayed at are luxuriously decorated both in terms of comfort and technology and the service, the food, everything was great. But hey, I am getting ahead of myself. I think I should make a nice pictorial thing, keep the picture number high and the word number low. That way I can give you an idea about the resort and the experience and also make sure I can actually publish something in less than a month…

This cup of fresh fruit tea is what welcomes you to the island of Dhigu while you finish up your check-in.

The island is just sand, trees and wooden buildings – that’s it. No cars are allowed and the biggest vehicle you will see will be little electric carts carrying people and room service.

The overwater villas cost a little more to stay in but they are completely worth it. You can see the water from the bath/shower as well as listen to the sound of the waves at night. You also get an Ethernet port as well as wireless internet service and a nicely sized LCD TV and a port to hook up your iPod/mp3 player to listen to music through high quality speakers hidden in the ceiling.

This is the back of the villa. Yes, it did rain on a few of the days but since the place is basically tropical it was warm enough even during the rain to go for a swim. As the island is an atoll, the water has an amazing light blue tint and it is pretty shallow. I could walk from the back of the villa to the hammock that was on a tiny island (you can see it like a strip in this picture).

This is from one of the restaurants on the island. The lighting is dim all around the island, including in the villas.

The food is fresh and tasty in all restaurants, if a bit on the expensive side. The island boasts 3-4 restaurants, with as many more in the neighboring island, accessible by a free boat service that runs every 15 minutes. The room service is pretty good too – after all, few things can beat enjoying nice food in the privacy of your own patio, overlooking the ocean.

Saying I want to go back there would be the understatement of the century. Unfortunately I am not sure when the next time will be but I am looking forward to it… (Oh well, there goes another understatement :P)

The heavenly Maldives

2009-12-10T22:55:00.001+09:00

I know I mostly talk about Japan and it makes sense that I do just that since Japan is where I live and spend most of my time. After all, even after the two years I spent here I still see so many things that catch me off guard. However, today I will talk about a place that could not be any more different than Japan – a place where everyone is laid back and you are surrounded by an amazing tint of blue and green… Maldives…

OK, let’s start with getting there. Maldives consists of many, many little islands as well as Malé, the main island. Most, if not all, of the touristic resorts are on those little islands but the airport is on Malé. Finding a flight to there is not a big problem but expect layovers unless you are flying in from certain parts of Asia. I know for a fact that Dubai and Kuala Lumpur have direct flights (through Emirates and Air Malaysia respectively) since I took those routes on my way there and back. Oh, one thing to keep in mind – Maldives is a Muslim country and they are pretty strict about it. What this means is that you are not allowed to bring in pork products or alcohol. The resorts carry both, mind you, it’s just you are not allowed to bring these into the country yourself. If you do, I am told, they just confiscate them, give you a tag, and when you are leaving the country they return them to you.

The real “challenge” is getting from the main island to the island where your resort is. Depending on how far away, this would be by boat or seaplane. If you are like me though, ahem, a little sensitive to motion, the boat ride maybe slightly problematic. My hotel was on an island about 30 minutes by boat and let me tell you, the small speed boat jumping over the waves is not an experience I want to remember. This is what the boat looks like. Notice the big white cylindrical thing in the front? That’s basically there just because it is heavy. Your luggage gets loaded safely under the cabin and you get to sit in the back, about 20 or so people per boat. I am told if you pick the season when it is “officially summer” (the islands are pretty hot, or hot enough to swim, pretty much throughout the year though you might want to check online for the temperature ranges in each month) the boat ride is more pleasant. If you are really unlucky though it will be raining and crazy windy, making up for one bumpy ride.

OK, on Saturday I will continue and this time it will be about the resort, the beautiful Ananthara Dhigu.

More Christmas Caroling – this time at Ebisu

2009-12-06T22:17:00.001+09:00

Christmas is coming and Tokyo is definitely getting into the mood. I snapped this at the Ebisu Garden Place in, well, Ebisu :) Unfortunately my phone ran out of memory space so the clip is only 13 seconds long but it should give you an idea I think. The live concert was pretty good with people clapping along though not many people could sing along since the carols were all in English.

I should say a few words about the backdrop too – every year the Baccarat Crystal Company puts up an amazingly fancy chandelier at the Ebisu Garden Place. This is the same place where they show movies in the summer if you are familiar with that event. The same company also puts up a very nicely decorated (with crystals of course) Christmas tree at the entrance to the Ebisu Garden Place as well.

The place is definitely worth checking out any time of the year but during Christmas time it gets especially festive. Oh, and I recommend the “Sapporo Beer Station” restaurant. They serve many different kinds of beer, if you are into that, but also they serve very reasonably priced food with portions uncharacteristically big for Japan. The overall theme is that of a German beer garden so they serve sausage, etc. but they also have other, fancier fare, such as lamb and sirloin steaks.

International Robot Expo 2009 in Tokyo

2009-12-03T00:29:00.001+09:00

I think the best way to write about this is with a picture-rich post, what do you think? :)

So here goes… I am going to just put a link to my gallery on Facebook (you shouldn’t need to have an account to see it) since it has been two days and this is all I could write. These days I am more than a little stressed out about my Japanese exam in the weekend unfortunately… Blah…

Christmas Carols in Tokyo

2009-11-29T22:08:00.001+09:00

It’s less than a month left until Christmas and I feel like I have been in the Christmas mood for a couple of months already. If nothing else, I have definitely been listening to carols for more than a month. So you can imagine the pleasant surprise I had walking up the stairs at Mitaka Station today and I heard carols!

It turns out a church in Mitaka is arranging a Christmas concert and this was a group from that church singing all to familiar carols, albeit in Japanese. I still stopped for a minute and hummed along in English. Even if these people were not professionals, it still beat listening to mp3s :)

There are decorations all over the city – in train stations, certain restaurants, etc… I definitely appreciate the festive mood.

Japanese arcade machines continue to innovate

2009-11-24T22:07:00.001+09:00

Not many people realize that the smash hit that is Guitar Hero was once an arcade machine in Japan (in fact it still is). The Japanese arcade scene is extremely creative. While in some other countries “arcades” mean your traditional small cabinet with a joystick and a couple of buttons, in Japan one can find touch screen machines, machines with musical instruments, machines that you need to use collectible cards to play among others.

Every time I step into an arcade here in Tokyo, I find something cool, something new… In this case it was this – a shooting game where you travel between floors in a building, going all the way from the basement to the roof. The twist? Well, there are two – There are “quick time events (QTEs)” where you need to drop the gun and use the three buttons to get your character out of tight spots and as you move from floor to floor you take the elevator. This elevator taking would not be so significant if it was not for the fact that the machine actually has elevator doors closing and opening between the floors. It’s such a small thing that it might seem like a gimmick but it is more than that. Since it is something physical it definitely helps with the immersion and when it gets stuck with enemies rushing from left and right it is definitely a rush.

Premier toilet

2009-11-18T23:46:00.001+09:00

I am supposed to write on more involved subjects – after all I did spend almost a month away from this blog but the workload and the crappy cold weather is getting to me I think. I feel like I have zero initiative to write here, at least about something substantial. So what am I going to do? Well, I am going to write about something small, and hopefully something that will put a smile on my, and your, face…

This gem comes from the mall in Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I have seen free public toilets in malls before – heck, they are dime a dozen in Japan and most of them are actually extremely high quality with auto-warmed seats etc. I have also seen for pay public toilets in other countries but I have never seen a mall containing both. It’s similar to upgrading your plane ticket to business class I guess. I just have trouble seeing the point given the free ones and the for pay ones are so close to each other. I suppose the free ones maybe really bad or these are really good. I didn’t feel up to checking either of the two scenarios – I did not have any RM that I could use as exact change and I definitely did not want to check how bad free bathrooms would be…

Back to Tokyo

2009-11-15T22:57:00.001+09:00

Oh, wow… It took a long while to update this I know but I do have a good excuse – I was in Cyprus, Maldives, Malasia and then finally back to Tokyo on Wednesday last week. As you might imagine, I was quite a bit tired. I will get to talking about each of those countries hopefully but for tonight, it will just be me typing about what I did today – a very sunny and uncharacteristically warm day given the time of year. I was in Omotesando (表参道) walking around. I heard about a good Portuguese restaurant called Perola Atlantica (Madeira cuisine) from a friend who was here last summer and decided to check it out. Unfortunately for me however, the restaurant was hosting a private party today and it was closed for anyone else. I ended up lunching at the French restaurant next door (which I must add was a VERY French place, almost surrealistic in fact: French music, all but one of the waiters were French, etc…). I took the above picture at Omotesando Hills - a very nice, if expensive, mall close to the restaurant. The place is already in the Christmas mood…

A break from blogging

2009-10-28T07:33:00.001+09:00

It looks like I won’t be able to update my blog for at least another week or two. I am going to be outside Japan (in fact I will be home, in Cyprus for about two weeks) during that time. I will be sure to post pictures and update the blog as soon as I get a chance though, I promise :)

Security and Safety Expo 2009 at Tokyo Big Sight

2009-10-22T23:16:00.001+09:00

Today I made the trip to Odaiba (well, more specifically Kokusai-Tenjijo) to attend the Security and Safety Expo (Riscon 2009) today. From robots to signaling equipment to hazmat suits, there was something for everyone but I was most impressed by the Tokyo Fire Rescue team who showed off both a rescue robot and more importantly, let ordinary people be "firefighters” but I get ahead of myself so let me try to make this more interesting and do it in a “album” kind of way again.

You can see the album here. I also uploaded two movies I made of the demonstrations I watched. I am embedding them below:

The “Japanese Wedding” Protocol – the invitations

2009-10-18T21:42:00.001+09:00

Even though a lot of things about Japanese weddings may have changed over the years (and I will talk about these in more detail later) one thing stayed the same – there is a very well defined protocol in inviting and accepting (or rejecting) the invitation. If someone invites you to a Japanese wedding they will not just hand you an invitation – no, no… They will give you a little packet containing the marriage ceremony details, invitation to a part (or multiple parts) of the ceremony such as the chapel (the trend these days), the dinner, and one of the after parties (yes there are multiple usually) and a postcard for RSVP. It is this postcard that I want to focus on…

What’s so special about RSVP you might say and I must admit it is rather similar to an RSVP card in the US but there is one little procedure one needs to follow which I think reflects the Japanese culture’s many aspects. See, there are some not-so-out of ordinary fields such as the name, address, and a message for the couple. The really interesting part is where you are supposed to circle a phrase signifying whether or not you will attend. The two phrases, 出席 (will attend) and 欠席 (will be absent) both start with the honorific “ご”. In English one can think of this as an RSVP card which has a phrase like “I will honor the party” and in Japanese it is pretty normal since it is the owner of the party referring to the presence of the invited. However, since it would be rude for the accepting/rejecting person to use this phrase for himself/herself when returning the RSVP, one is expected to cross out the “ご”.

L versus R strikes again in Japanese English

2009-10-14T22:18:00.001+09:00

Unfortunately these keep showing up. One would think a spell-checker would pick up most of these but they are still there… The first one is from the supermarket. It used to be wrapped around an apple. The second one is from a restaurant’s menu by a lake near Mount Fuji. Spot the problem? I don’t know if it is overcompensation in this case but this is something that happens much more rarely – an L for an R… Of course this one would not be caught by a simple spell-checker but something a bit smarter which aims to find L <-> R substitutions could pick it up.

Ah the researcher in me is flaring up again :P

A faster way to get to the Narita Airport – NEX version 2

2009-10-12T19:46:00.001+09:00

A pretty late (though still hopefully useful) piece of information for those out there who are going to travel to/from the Narita Airport in Tokyo (成田空港) – it looks like Japan Railways has a new, faster version of its Narita Express. Narita Express is one of the cheapest (though definitely not the cheapest – that honor belongs to the busses running to and from the airport) and quickest ways to get to the airport. This new train, comes with a bunch of new perks. According to the Mainichi Daily News:

There is an active vibration control system which makes for a smoother ride
All seats have power sockets for passenger’s use
There are new security features such as cameras, dial locks for luggage space, etc.

Interestingly, both trains share the same top speed. You can find pictures of the actual train, as well as some videos on Shibuya246’s page here. It definitely looks like an impressive piece of equipment. This new train, which has the model number E259, is replacing the older, E253 model. According to Wikipedia, so far only 10 of the 26 N’EX services are so far using the newer model. It will not be before June 2010 that all of the older models are replaced.

On somewhat related news, from the same Mainichi story, it looks like there will be a new train line for getting to Narita, called “Narita New Rapid Line” which will be run by the Keisei Electric Railway Co. Competition is always good so I am looking forward to hearing more about this new line which should open to service in the Spring of 2010.

When recycling gets picky in Mitaka

2009-10-07T22:10:00.001+09:00

I have been a big fan of recycling since moving to Japan and even though things could get a bit inconvenient at times due to only certain types of garbage being picked up on a given day I thought it was still worth it. After all, it is very important to recycle…

Very recently thought something interesting happened. Instead of letting us put our garbage in our own garbage bags, which let us recycle all the extra plastic bags we got from supermarkets and other stores, we are now required to put both burnable and non-burnable garbage in special Mitaka City bags which the city sells at supermarkets. Garbage put out in other types of bags are simply not picked up with this purple “Attention” message pasted on the bag. The “official” garbage bags themselves do have 2 sentences in English (and Chinese, Korean and a few other languages) on them but this purple piece of paper does not.

I wonder if other cities have started doing something similar and what the “official” reason is for using these bags.

A wedding in Yokohama

2009-10-05T22:18:00.001+09:00

I was lucky enough to be invited to a friend’s wedding which took place yesterday in Yokohama. It was my first “Japanese wedding” though just like most other young people these days, the wedding was “western style”. It took place at a hotel in Yokohama, with an initial section taking place at a chapel. These “hotel weddings” have become the trend among the young Japanese, who enjoy the chapel/church setting even though they themselves are not Christians.

Attending a wedding ceremony, just like many other cultural “concepts”, is a ceremony itself, based on very strict rules dating back hundreds of years. There is so much to write, both about the rules and the wedding itself but I am really busy these days with studying for the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) and working at the office so I guess these will wait for now…

A remote controlled LED light-bulb

2009-09-29T21:09:00.001+09:00

I was out searching for an LED light-bulb in Yodobashi Camera in Kichijoji – my usual quick drop in and out place for electronics when I cannot take the 35 minute trip to Akihabara. I came across this little gem – a remote controlled LED bulb by Sharp.

The remote, which does not come with this strap by the way – I just added my old strap to it, allows turning the bulb on or off, setting the light intensity (5 steps though the two extremes and the middle value can be set using the 3 shortcut buttons) as well as setting the temperature (from soft white to an incandescent-like yellow) using the same number of steps and/or shortcuts. It is a pretty cool little toy if you can get beyond the weight of the bulb, relatively low luminosity (I would say this one gets about a typical 60W incandescent bulb), and the price (about $80). It also lasts (or should last at least) more than 40 times an incandescent bulb. That, we will have to wait and see. So far I am pretty happy with it…

Tokyo Game Show 2009 (photo blog)

2009-09-24T23:40:00.001+09:00

Today I was at Tokyo Game Show (came back 5 about 3 hours ago actually) so I wanted to post this before the day is officially out in an hour and a half. I think something like the TGS deserves more photos and less text, a photo blog format if you will, (which coincidentally makes my life easier too ;)) so here goes:

Tokyo Game Show took place in Makuhari Messe, a big exhibition hall in Chiba (for those unfamiliar with Japanese geography – Chiba is not in Tokyo, it is its own prefecture). This translated to waking up pretty early and travelling for an hour and a half so that I could make it there before the show started at 10 am. It was pretty interesting to listen to all the “foreigners” on the train, talking about their impressions about Japan.

Even thought I made it there about 15 minutes before 10 am, the line already reached outside. Thankfully though, Makuhari Messe is huge and once the doors opened everyone got in. This will of course not be quite the case during the “public days” on Saturday and Sunday when the number of attendees will probably grow ten fold (if not much more).

There were a lot of famous game companies but some of the booths were pretty specific to Japan – for example this one by DoCoMo, the cell phone carrier. They had a lot of cell phone games on display and even had these huge walls with free games (though they were either feature or time limited. I did download a copy of Metal Slug M1 for my cell phone though). The lights on the wall are touchless (IC) terminals so putting your phone next to them automatically directs your phone to the download site for that game.

Some of the more familiar faces, Konami and Square Enix, creators of the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts series.

Microsoft had a pretty strong showing in a huge “booth”, showing off both exclusives like Halo 3 ODST and Forza, as well as non-exclusives such as Fifa 10. They also had a “secret” room set up for demoing Project Natal but they only let in the national television channel (NHK) and other “big media”. One could look through the transparent stripes looking into the demo-room though and watch people play with Natal – it seems like they were having fun. I saw a part of the video they shot inside on NHK Nightly News tonight.

Of course no game show would be complete without the pre-requisite pretty women calling the participants over. Pretty much all of the big booths had a few and they somehow managed to smile and pose for pictures for the whole duration of the show which is no easy feat.

Game companies used a lot of other “gimmicks” to attract attention too. From a Mercedes used by Sony for their Gran Turismo franchise to the fighting statues (static except for the floor they were on which was rotating) for Tekken 6, there were a lot of different things. One particularly interesting one was at the Modern Warfare 2 booth, which used fake snow to “snow” on the people watching their preview video.

By 5 o’clock I could no longer feel my feet from the constant walking around. I think it was definitely worth it though. And as an added bonus there was this tank/robot hybrid thing on the way to the station flanked by 2 female “soldiers” – all characters from a game of course.

“The only flower in the World”

2009-09-23T01:10:00.001+09:00

I know I haven’t written in far longer than I really thought was appropriate but what was I expecting when one combines laziness with being on holiday? In my defense though at the hotel I was staying at by Kawaguchiko (河口湖) did not actually have internet in the rooms. I still survived the two and a half days I was there though which in an odd way impresses me. But I digress… I am not going to write about my trip just yet however – I just lack the time and will needed for such a sizable entry.

I will instead write about this song that got stuck in my head. One of the places I visited during my holiday was the “Music Box Museum” and one of the most popular pieces the little contraptions they sold at the gift store played was a song by the Japanese group SMAP, called “世界に一つだけの花” which I guess roughly could be translated into “The only flower in the World”. The song dates back to 2003 and it has a very catchy tune. The lyrics are also pretty inspirational – not something typically found in songs by boy bands. Anyway, below are two videos – the original, and an “unofficial English version” which has the translated version. I really can’t get this song out of my head – tonight I must have listened to it at least 15 times, different versions combined.

Original version by SMAP

English version

Tokyo Game Show 2009 – invitation to business days

2009-09-14T23:03:00.001+09:00

My invitation is finally here! I missed this last year and I was very sad that I would miss it this year as well but nope, I actually get to go! I am so looking forward to next week to go see the show on both Business Days (Thursday and Friday) before the show opens up to the general public – and becomes an all too crowded endeavor to fully take in. Anyway, this will be a short post… Being an avid gamer and in general crazy for new, exciting technology like Microsoft’s Natal, I just couldn’t contain my joy. I will be sure to take a lot of pictures to post here next week :)

The biggest library in Japan

2009-09-11T00:12:00.001+09:00

The National Diet Library of Japan, located in Nagatacho (永田著), Tokyo, is the biggest library in Japan. It is located extremely close to the Diet, the Japanese assembly, so a visit to the library ensures catching a glimpse of the Diet, together with a level of security uncharacteristic of Japan – roughly 1 policeman per couple of square feet…

The library itself, not terribly imposing or even impressive from outside, is home to every single publication ever made in Japan (yes this includes all manga publications as well ;)). Furthermore, they have a very very impressive international collection which I tested by borrowing a 1887 copy of “Huckleberry Finn”. The services offered by the library are pretty impressive – not only you can borrow books from these extensive collections, and get copies made for certain parts, but you can even request copies of sections through the web, to be mailed to your address. A quick point of information though – this is not your typical library so “borrow” just means “borrow to read inside the library”. You cannot take any materials outside which I guess explains why it was so easy to get my hands on a book published in 1887 so easily in my hands.

If you live in Japan, becoming a member of this library and paying it a visit at least once should definitely be something on your to-do list. However, make sure you check out the procedure and the needed documents online at the website I linked above.

“A member of an organization”

2009-09-08T21:43:00.001+09:00

File this one under “so close, yet so far away” category… I took this picture of a hairdresser’s sign close to my work. One can kind of ignore the “Good sense and professional technic” tagline based on poor/awkward choice of words but the “A member of an organization” is simply baffling. Which organization? Any organization? It is not even a matter of picking the right article here since “A member of the organization” would still carry a vagueness as to which organization we are talking about here.

I have done some digging on “Zenbikanren” but came up with nothing. Now I am really curious…

Armies can have mascots too

2009-09-07T20:18:00.001+09:00

This guy, who apparently is a mascot for the Japanese Self Defense Force, was flanked by actual soldiers – definitely an uncommon sight in the middle of Shinjuku. This public square, right across from the East Entrance (東口) to Shinjuku Station, usually is where new albums of a music group are advertised – together with a small concert of sorts. I have even seen groups filming music videos here. This, definitely was an interesting change of scenery. I guess this was a music related thing too since they were advertising a concert by the army marching band as well as asking for recruits. The army people were very nice – they gave everyone, including me – a foreigner, JDF phone straps. I took a picture with the mascot too… He seemed cool ;)

The mystery of “Shoecream” solved

2009-09-03T22:51:00.001+09:00

When I first heard the term “shoecream” in Japan I was more than a little shocked. See, we were walking from lunch at a restaurant close to where I work and a Japanese friend asked me if I would like some “shoecream” as dessert. These turned out to be little cream filled puffs and I figured out that the word was simply a phonetic construction. It was not until about two years after that, or more precisely, last weekend, that I saw a box of “shoecreams” at the supermarket and realized what the original phrase is - “chou a la crème”. It’s a French phrase which, of course, means “creampuff”. It is very easy to assume that a foreign word in Japanese, rendered phonetically, comes from English as most actually do but in this particular case that assumption turned out to be worse than wrong. Still, it was pretty funny while it lasted ;)

Elections, Elections, Elections!

2009-08-31T21:54:00.001+09:00

AP video from YouTube

It looks like we are in for a change – the party that has been ruling Japan for almost five decades, the party that produced stars like Koizumi (小泉純一郎), has lost the election. The party that has won the elections came to power offering “change”, a-la-Obama. In fact, they can be considered liberals compared to the conservatives who were ousted (it is a bit funny actually since the conservative party is called the “Liberal Democratic Party” and the winning party is the “Democratic Party”). What this means in terms of real actions, both for the Japanese people and us “foreigners” alike, we will have to wait and see but so far I am getting good vibrations ;)

A visit to Tokyo DisneySea

2009-08-30T17:42:00.001+09:00

This is what happens when I get lazy – I start telling myself that I will try to post every other day only to talk back, to myself again mind you, and convince myself that there is no urgency, culminating in this blog being in a limbo for at least a week. Well, this limbo is coming to an end right now with a few words about Disney – let’s hope I can post the next one in a few days…

DisneySea feels almost like the perfect complement to Tokyo Disneyland, which is right next door and distinctly lacks water which, DisneySea, as one can guess from its name, provides in copious amounts. There is an interesting difference in focus on which Disney characters are most prominent as well. Unlike Disneyland Mickey and his lovely girlfriend do not show up much, replaced by characters which do not show up much in Tokyo Disneyland like Aladdin, Jasmine and Ariel (The Little Mermaid). In fact, the title of “host” should go to “Chip and Dale”, the rescue squirrels who keep going around and shouting with their extremely high pitched voices. I mean, Mickey has a high pitched voice but compared to “Chip and Dale”, he is like Dave Barry. This little metal statue of Mickey does grace the entrance to DisneySea however, hiding the untold horrors of “Chip and Dale” lurking inside the park…

The theme park is divided into different zones which should not come as a surprise to any Disney veteran. What makes this different than Disneyland is that every one of these zones is based on a “water related” theme – there is a Mediterranean Harbor, Arabian Coast, a small US beach town of old right next to a small New York City from the 1930s complete with a real (or at least real looking) cruise ship and other areas like these. The rides themselves are generally geared towards an older crowd compared to Disneyland save for most of the rides in the Little Mermaid’s Cove which target really young kids, complete with a soft floor in case the children fall.

The highlight of any visit to DisneySea in the summer though, has to be the show at the end of the day in the harbor – a love story between the “God of Fire”, a dragon, and “Goddess of Water”. Unlike Disneyland, there are no Disney characters in the show save for Mickey who shows up for about a minute in the beginning just to introduce the story. The way the dragon rises from under the water and lights up the harbor is a sight to behold and my picture does not do it any justice at all. Of course the “Goddess” is equally impressive and they, coupled with the light effects, make for a very powerful and visually engrossing story.

You can get the tickets online here or just visit your local FamilyMart (in Japan) – they carry the tickets too.

Matsuri (Festival) at Roppongi Hills

2009-08-23T20:07:00.001+09:00

Roppongi is probably home to the highest concentration of non-Japanese people in Tokyo, and therefore Japan (not counting military bases of course). Made up of tall buildings, expensive but good quality shops and restaurants and tons of night clubs, it is one of the last places one would expect to have a traditional matsuri style celebration. Roppongi Hills, which is where this festival was taking place is especially strange as the location since on days of popular movies, it is easy to spot almost as many foreigners as the Japanese people hanging out around the area. Roppongi Hills’ cinema usually plays home to premieres of foreign movies as well. So, you can imagine my surprise when, after watching a movie (G.I. Joe, which really, really sucked btw) I overheard very traditional melodies coming from below the movie theatre.

I did not miss the chance to make a little movie of the affair. I saw something similar in Kichijoji before which had a grander and more authentic feel to it since it took place in the garden of a temple but what actually took place, the singing, dancing, the little stalls, they were all almost the same between the two.

Comic Market (ComiKet) 2009

2009-08-19T23:37:00.001+09:00

I haven’t had the impetus to write for a while now – blame it on the humidity, the one month gap I had to take while in Cyprus… I am definitely not short on possible reasons I could quote. Well, finally I managed to convince myself that I should come back and write more since if I don’t start anytime soon I will never get back to this blog.

It is no secret that the Japanese market for comics, or Manga (漫画/まんが) is huge. There are hundreds of series followed by millions of all ages and genders. In fact, it is a pretty usual sight to see businessmen reading manga on the train home or stacks of manga from different series in any convenience store. Many of the animated series start their lives as mangas and as they gain in popularity a spinoff animation series gets developed. The manga usually keeps going even after the animated series concludes but there is a completely different type of manga that has almost a cult following – doujinshi or fan manga.

Fan manga can exist because of Japan’s very liberal “fair-use” clause for copyright (at least for manga) in that readers are allowed to draw their own stories involving characters from famous well established mangas. Not only can they draw these they also get to publish them and sell them for prices much higher than the original manga since usually the amount printed is very limited. Comic Market, or ComiKet for short, is where one can find hundreds of such artists, reinterpreting other stories or creating completely new stories, and selling the comics they produce. These events take place twice a year and the limited number of the prints make these extremely popular amongst manga fans.

The last ComiKet was actually on Saturday and I made my way to Tokyo Big Sight in Odaiba to check it out for myself. The sheer number of people there was a sight to behold on its own but as I was there in the afternoon, long after the prime stuff is already sold out, the wait was just 30 minutes or so (which was not very pleasant I should add since the corridors of the building was not a/c’d enough to handle so many people) before I could go into the exhibition hall. The manga selection was interesting – ranging from stories introducing romance between characters who are not normally in a relationship in the actual manga (both same and different sexes and all ages, some R rated, some PG) to just new storylines. There was supposed to be an area reserved for cosplayers but I did not get a chance to check that out. I did see some people in costume though… The way back was an interesting endeavor with the train stations being completely swamped by the people returning from the exhibition.

It was definitely an interesting experience for me. I don’t know if I would do it again seeing how I don’t really follow a certain manga with passion but hey maybe I will do it again just to people-watch… :)

4 Earthquakes in 5 days

2009-08-13T22:04:00.001+09:00

This map, from the Japanese Meteorological Agency, show the latest of the 3 earthquakes we had in Tokyo in the last couple of days. This one, the lightest of the four, was not so bad – in fact it was the lightest – but it is a bit unnerving to experience so many of these in such a short time.

It has been two years since I started living in Japan and I think in those two years, I have experienced my share of earthquakes. After all, Tokyo, and Japan in general, is pretty unstable and an earthquake every couple of months is pretty normal. However, this, this is something else.

They say the Kanto region, which includes Tokyo, has a huge earthquake every 90 years or so. This held true the last two times but this time it is overdue by a few years. I am hoping these four earthquakes in quick succession is not a precursor to the big one. If it is, the estimate for the number of casualties is not less than 90,000…

Update: We just had a fifth earthquake about half an hour ago… Sigh…

Watching movies under the sky – Starlight Cinema 2009

2009-08-09T00:18:00.001+09:00

From 17th of July to the 9th of August, Yebisu/Ebisu Garden Place in Ebisu is showing movies in the big open air atrium. I realize this may be a bit late since today (Sunday) is the last day but if you come across this and happen to live in Tokyo go check it out. It is pretty popular and they do have nice movies – some international ones as well as a very nice selection of Japanese movies (though I realize there is only one movie left). I knew about this event since the Christmas time when they used the atrium for a huge crystal chandelier.

I really like Ebisu – it is such a nice, peaceful place even though it is only 2 minutes from the chaos of Shibuya. There are so many nice places to eat at, from little cafes to an oyster bar to a “fancy” pasta restaurant. Unfortunately, in order to go there, the shortest way for me is through Shibuya, using Yamanote Line which can get extremely crowded. I still think it is worth it though – nothing beats relaxing, listening to the water flowing through the sides of the gentle incline that leads to the atrium.

Hungry in Dubai? How about McDonalds?

2009-08-03T23:26:00.001+09:00

My three week “vacation” in Cyprus which involved about two and a half weeks of army training drained me not just physically but mentally as well. That being the case I can hardly motivate myself to write here but I came across some of the pictures I took on my way there that might be interesting to some (and me in the future) so here goes the story that accompanies those…

The fact that there would be Mc Donald’s in Dubai is not surprising by itself of course. After all, it is impossible to go to pretty much any big city in the world and not be greeted by the big yellow “M” these days. However, seeing it in Arabic script still made me do a double take. This one is in the Dubai International Airport by the way. There is a local specialty that escapes my mind right now and if I remember it correctly, no pork products are offered. Other than that, McNuggets tasted just the same and I could pay with a credit card so all was good. Oh and unlike Japan they actually offer a 9 piece set – they only sell them by 6 here. Oh and sorry about the quality of the pictures – I took them with my cell phone so they are not the best as the light was not exactly good.

Back in Tokyo

2009-07-29T21:31:00.001+09:00

Yup, finally the army stuff is over – at least for this year – and I came back to Tokyo last Sunday afternoon. For the first time I took Turkish Airlines instead of Emirates which I always used before. Even though the in-flight entertainment system on Emirates in unrivalled by pretty much any other airline company (there are literally more than 200 movies from animations to movies in theaters to classics that you can choose from) the ease of travel is not even comparable. Emirates does not like the newer, international airport in Tokyo for some reason. As a result, to get to Tokyo, one first needs to travel to Osaka and then fly to the smaller of the two international airports (Haneda/羽田). Add to that the fact that Emirates always stops over in Dubai and you get the pretty ridiculous itinerary: Cyprus –> Istanbul –> Dubai –> Osaka –> Tokyo. With Turkish Airlines this takes much much less: Cyprus –> Istanbul –> Tokyo. The flight is a “codeshare” between Turkish Airlines and ANA so a lot of Japanese passengers use this route too. The price can get a bit high if you get the ticket in the last minute though so if you decide to use this make sure to get your ticket nice and early.

On the road again...

2009-07-03T19:21:00.001+09:00

I am going back to Cyprus tonight for three weeks. I guess my life in Tokyo has got into a rhythm of sorts and now, a change like this brings an almost subconscious fear that grips the excitement coming from visiting family. OK me will keep this short - I am typing on my phone and while it doeshave a full-ish keyboard it still is a bit of a pain to type. More soon assuming I make it to Cyprus in one piece :p

Tokyo National Art Center

2009-07-01T23:33:00.001+09:00

Located in Roppongi, the National Art Center should definitely be on your places to visit if you ever happen to be in Tokyo. Not only the art center houses certainly interesting exhibits but the general design of the building and the gift shop themselves are more than worth walking for about 5 minutes from the nearest subway stop. There are signs to guide you once you are close enough but you may have to look for them. I recommend looking up in a map before going to Roppongi – once you know the general direction, getting there is simple.

The first thing you realize when you walk through the door, other than the ticket booth which you only need to stop by if you are going to wander into the exhibit, is the design of the building which looks extremely futuristic. It was designed by a very famous Japanese designer and in a single word, is very "curvy". This idea of "futuristic curves" is followed throughout the building. The gift shop itself is pretty amazing and very different than the typical art museum gift shop which would be content with its offering of postcards based on famous artwork. Not this shop... There are a lot of small items that themselves could easily be called works of art - original ones mind you. The only slightly upsetting thing is that you cannot take pictures inside the gift shop so I don’t have anything to post on here but you should go check it out for yourself anyway :)

It’s rain and humidity for Tokyo…

2009-06-28T23:33:00.001+09:00

While we may be still in the “rainy season”, a roughly four week long period that precedes summers in Tokyo, we also get the occasional sunny day. Yesterday was one of those days with the temperature reaching 36 degrees Celsius/93 degrees Fahrenheit. The problem with sunny days is that it gets extremely humid. I have survived through the humidity of Pittsburgh summers but this is something else. It gets so humid that even when “sunny”, the sky is not blue as the clouds get lower and lower and paint the sky a gloomy gray. Thankfully when it rains it gets better – well it gets very wet but at least less humid.

Today was a rainy day and when I say rainy I mean RAINY. It started to rain in the morning and it continued until at least 6-7pm. As people expect this kind of weather in this time of the year it became second nature to people to carry umbrellas, just in case. This is why there are “mini umbrellas” suitable for the smallest of purses widely available and quite cheap actually. I am going to have another week of this and then I will be away for a month – cooking in Cyprus. It will be even hotter than here for sure but at least it will not be humid there – for the most part…

You never know what you are going to run into…

2009-06-24T22:44:00.001+09:00

… at a used clothing store. I snapped this at one of those stores close to the Kichijoji Station (吉祥寺駅). The tshirt is clearly a Pittsburgh Pirates (the baseball team) tshirt but it’s not just that. The design seems to be pretty old though I can’t really verify that right now. I think it is even possible that this tshirt was not made officially or that it was made simply because someone thought the Pirate Parrot was cute.

Seeing the Pittsburgh word made me miss the city though…

20 meter tall robot in Tokyo

2009-06-21T00:00:00.001+09:00

The love of the Japanese people for robots is a pretty well known phenomenon and it is easy to see artifacts of this all around Tokyo but this latest happening pretty much takes the cake…

There is now a “life-size”, that is about 20 meter/66 feet tall, model of a “Gundam” robot in Odaiba. It looks like it is not completed yet with the workers still on site and in fact you can see one of those workers in this picture on the bottom right corner so you can get a better idea. At night they also turn on the lights on the robot and it can also move its head. All in all, pretty impressive I would say. I unfortunately did not get the chance to look at it at night or walk right up to it because of the construction but I am hoping I will get to do both before they move the robot – I heard it will not stay in that spot forever. That gets me thinking – where are they going to move it to afterwards?

The watermelon is yellow

2009-06-17T21:39:00.001+09:00

I don’t know about you but I have never seen a yellow watermelon – well, until a few days ago that is. Apparently these guys are pretty common in Japan and actually the price is not any higher than their good, old, red counterparts. The taste is pretty similar too, if a little sweeter. I think the outside of these is also a shade of yellow as opposed to green which makes it look almost like an over side melon as opposed to a watermelon. I wonder if these are indigenous to Asia…

A box of cherries for $150 – You can get it in Japan!

2009-06-14T20:40:00.001+09:00

Fruits (just like vegetables) are very popular in Japan and the Japanese public enjoy having choices in their fruits, in the same vein as pretty much any other consumer item out there (for example Sony PSP comes in 7 different colors here for that very reason). This means apart from the run of the mill fruits one can find at a supermarket, there are "higher quality” fruits available at specialist stores with prices easily topping $100 for a box. Of course given this price point, it is easy to see how these particular fruits can be used as a present. One of these specialist stores is Nakano and I visited their location in Shinjuku close to the train station(They also have smaller stores throughout Tokyo though not all carry these fruits, with some focusing on desserts).

Cherries seem to be particularly popular, as a gift, with the Japanese. The boxes here each contain 40 “specially selected” cherries and they can cost anywhere between $100 and $150 depending on the type and quality of the fruits. Other fruits such as guavas and peaches are popular as well and are available in their own packages or in combination with other fruits. They also sell fruit jams and fruit juice made from these fruits as well and some of the combo sets include these. The same store also sells champagnes for making custom gift combinations with prices reaching $500 and up.

It is definitely an interesting place to visit and with the fruit juice bottles costing around $10 one can try them out for a reasonable price. Oh and don’t worry about the weight – they take care of shipping for you on heavier sets.

Ghibli Museum

2009-06-09T23:33:00.001+09:00

You may have never heard of “Studio Ghibli” but if you are even remotely interested in Japanese animation you must have watched “Spirited Away” (which won an Oscar), “Howl’s Moving Castle” or “My Neighbor Totoro” – all considered to be extremely good examples of the genre. Well, all of these gems were produced by the same company – “Studio Ghibli” or “スタジオジブリ”. This animation studio has a museum in Mitaka which hosts a lot of sketches done in preparation or during the production of their animation masterpieces. I got a chance to visit the place for the first time after spending almost 18 months here – something I should have done much much earlier. Unfortunately photography is not allowed inside but as you can see from the little metal cover on the floor in the garden there are a lot of interesting things outside too.

There are so many interesting things inside other than the drawings. Even the ticket that you get inside, for admittance to the movie theatre (which happens to show a special 12 min animation only shown at the museum), is made of a part of a film strip from one of the animations (though I also heard they can be from Pixar movies as well since there is some sort of agreement between Pixar and Ghibli). They even sell little set-ups that let you inspect the films closer. This is one of the two pictures I managed to take inside before I was (very politely) told off by the nice lady inside. You can kinda see the ticket inside and the magnifying glass on the side. There are a lot of models based on the animation characters, some of which actually move. One particularly amazing setup involves many little models from Totoro looking like they are dancing around thanks to strobe lighting. There are two stores in the museum as well, one selling primarily books and the other one all sorts of related merchandise from Totoro earrings to jackets with the museum coat of arms. On the second floor there is even a full sized cat-bus from the Totoro movie though unfortunately only elementary school students or younger are allowed inside the fluffy vehicle.

The second floor opens to a garden outside and through some more stairs one reaches the towering statue of the robot from “Castle in the Sky”. Saying that it is life-sized would be doing it a disservice. The thing is huge and extremely detailed, just like all the other things in the museum. If you follow the little walkway in the back you can end up by an extremely detailed cube statue with writings which is also from the same movie. It is definitely a photo-op for everyone. Oh, and there happens to be at least one (though I suspect two now) cafe in the museum. Next time I go I will be sure to check it out.

Unfortunate model name for a car

2009-06-07T23:24:00.001+09:00

I should be finishing up something else but I realized I have not posted anything since Wednesday… Well, that simply won’t do so here it goes…

I dived into the stack of random pictures I took and came up with this one which I think you might find to be interesting. This tiny “car/truck” is produced by Daihatsu and its model name, as proudly shown in the front of the vehicle is “Midget II”. Needless to say if they were to export this model to, say, the US, they might have to rebrand the vehicle (which would not be the first time of course). Car manufacturers, and I don’t mean just the Japanese ones, regularly use different names for models that would be sold in different regions of the world. It’s just I have never seen quite a name like this being used in any region.

It turns out there was a “Midget” as well – which was the original model. Wikipedia has a lot of information on the models with more pictures.

The Hydrangeas

2009-06-03T23:19:00.001+09:00

Hydrangeas are beautiful flowers native to parts of Southern and Eastern Asia. Apart from looking so pretty themselves, they have one interesting property. Their color changes based on the acidity/alkalinity of the soil they are planted in (for example from blue to pink). As the rains can change just that, these flowers are sought after during the rainy seasons in Japan. Some cities like Kamakura (鎌倉市) are particularly famous for their hydrangeas. I snapped this picture when I was in Roppongi of all places. On my way to the National Art Gallery/Museum I saw these hydrangeas in front of an apartment building and took their picture with my phone (sorry for the quality). I hope this year I will be able to visit Kamakura during the rainy season with my actual camera and take some close ups of these very beautiful flowers.

Sumo (conclusion)

2009-06-01T23:04:00.001+09:00

It’s rain pretty much every other day for now and with work piling up I don’t get much of a chance to breathe but I should update the blog and finally finish up the Sumo story, shouldn’t I? Let’s see… Where was I?… Ah, yes…

Let’s start with various gestures. As I mentioned before there is a big ceremonial component to sumo and you can clearly see that when watching the competition. Certain gestures are for expressing a message, like showing open palms indicate the willingness to engage in fair-play. Other gestures are related to showing respect to the sport and the ring. For example, the wrestlers need to “purify” themselves and the ring when enter the ring – even if they only left the ring for a second. Talking about showing respect – the wrestlers are ranked not just based on their performance but their respect and sportsmanship as well. The “wins” of course matter a lot but wrestlers who are deemed to be not “behaving well” are usually punished by the national sumo committee.

There are no advertising billboards in the arena which is a huge contrast to pretty much any other professional sport. Given that it attracts huge crowds and is broadcasted nationally, one might find that a bit strange. Well, not to worry – there are ads but they are a bit hidden under a “traditional” cover. Before popular wrestlers’ bouts, as the wrestlers are warming up, men carrying advertising signs get in the ring. Each man carries a single banner containing a single ad and the more popular the wrestlers are, more signs there are. Each banner also signifies a set amount of reward money (about $500) to the winner so, for example, if there were 10 banners, the winner would receive an extra $5000.

Let me finish up with this picture I snapped of the Japanese Prime Minister, Aso Taro. He was there to give the final trophy to the winner. I heard that even though prime ministers are supposed to give the final trophy they rarely show up to do so. This time, the elections being so close, this was a good photo-op for the PM and he did not miss it. Well, I am not complaining. I got the chance to see him in person and snap a photo. Not too shabby I would think – especially given that he looks almost certain to lose the upcoming elections…

More on Sumo

2009-05-29T01:01:00.001+09:00

The competition itself is a pretty long event. It takes place over the course of 15 days and each competitor competes only once on a given day. There are many, and I mean many competitors, divided up into different classes. At the top of the class, and competing towards the end of the day (close to 6 pm) are the Yokozuna – only one or two Sumo wrestlers can have this title at a given time. Other wrestlers compete earlier in the day, based on their ranks. Given that each match takes about 6 minutes (5 minutes of which is preparation time and the wrestlers sizing each other up) and that each day of the competition starts at 8 am and lasts until 6 pm, one can make an educated guess about the size of the competition.

The top 5 class of wrestlers start competing after 3:00 pm which is when most of the crowd comes in. The scoreboards in the arena (the white strip in the picture above) lists each match with the winner highlighted with a red line. The current match has two red lines, one of which disappears after the conclusion of the match. Between matches there can be other short events like the Yokozuna performing a traditional ceremony or all of the wrestlers in the top category coming out to be introduced. One interesting thing to note is that the wrestlers are divided into two groups – east (東) and west (西) but these merely denote which side of the arena they will start from (of course they also limit who can compete against who since two people cannot start from the same side). People do not cheer for the groups but rather for their favorite wrestlers. As the day goes on and the ranks of the wrestlers increase the amount of passion and number of people screaming the wrestlers’ names also increase.

Even though Sumo is the Japanese national sport, today there are many “foreigners” competing in the sport – quite successfully too I might add. For example both of the “Yokozuna” are actually from Mongolia and in the top two classes of wrestlers the number of Japanese wrestlers is in the minority. In the top classes of Sumo one can see wrestlers from Mongolia, Bulgaria and even Estonia. Of course all of these wrestlers adopt a Japanese name (the names of Sumo wrestlers are special in Japanese. They are not names used by any Japanese person who is not a wrestler himself. This is a bit similar to how a priest has to change his name if he is chosen to be the Pope) so it is a bit difficult – ok, impossible - to guess where they are from just based on their name.

Ok there is still more to come and it looks like this will be a 3 parter… Hey it is almost 1 a.m. in Tokyo and I have work tomorrow. Time to say good night!…

Sumo – Summer Tournament Finals

2009-05-26T21:37:00.001+09:00

As I mentioned before I was lucky enough to be invited to the day of the tournament finals by my Japanese teacher Ms. Uchida and I thoroughly enjoyed the watching the matches, listening to the crowds reactions,… the whole experience. I can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone and everyone who may be in Japan during any of the tournaments. If you are lucky you might see the emperor (he shows up for 1 of the 15 days of the tournament though no one knows beforehand which day, I am told) or the prime minister (like on Sunday ;)). I am getting ahead of myself, let me take a step back and try to cover this in a bit more chronologically proper fashion. This is likely to be a multi-part deal as well since well, I am lazy :P

So, let’s get started. The big Sumo tournaments in Tokyo take place in Ryogoku Kokugikan (両国国技館) which is, well, in Ryogoku. Getting there is pretty easy – make your way to Ochanomizu using either Chuo Line or Yamanote Line. From there on, it is just 5 minutes on Chuo-Sobu Line (中央総武線). The station itself is pretty small but you immediately know you are in the right place since you can see the tournament hall as soon as you get off the train and it is impossible to miss the huge posters of famous Sumo wrestlers inside the station. The tournament hall is very close – about 30 seconds on foot. There are a lot of signage; not that you would need it though. On Sumo days you just need to follow the stream of people to get you there.

When you get in you show your ticket and they point you to a little “store” inside with a number matching the back of your ticket. These little “stores” are basically pickup points for food and drinks that are included with the ticket. Inside, ticket holders, save for the last minute buyers who don’t get to pick a reserved spot, each get a little square of their own, with enough size to fit four tightly packed people. In fact, all tickets correspond to one of these squares and they are sold as a set of four. Well, I will end this post with a panorama of what I saw when I walked in. I think it gives some idea as to the atmosphere inside. To be continued in the next post in a couple of days :)

Invitation to Sumo

2009-05-23T23:59:00.001+09:00

I just wanted to drop a line about the invitation I got from my Japanese teacher, Ms. Uchida, to the final day of the Summer Sumo Competition. I will be attending it tomorrow and I will be sure to take a lot of pictures to post here. It should be a lot of fun. I watched sumo on TV before but I expect the experience to be quite different in person…

The song that just got stuck in my head

2009-05-19T22:09:00.001+09:00

J-Pop, Japanese Pop Music, is pretty popular in Anime circles as well as in a lot of Asian countries and one can try to keep up with all the new Anime songs or try to follow the Japanese Billboard charts online but I think nothing quite matches the exposure one gets from living in Japan. One not only can hear about the chart topping songs online or on TV but you might also hear something completely unexpectedly and fall in love with it instantly. Case in point – the song that plays as the credits roll for 婚カツ – a new, very popular Japanese TV drama that I started watching from the first episode (it’s on the 5th episode as of now). I finally found a video of the credits with English subtitles so I finally get the song. The lyrics are pretty cute and the song has a nice feeling to it (though granted, reading the lyrics does change the perspective one would have about the content when oblivious to the language.) The song also goes really well with the subject matter of the series. I read that the song itself is actually a “re-interpretation”/cover of a song of the same name - “Wedding Bell”. This new version is by the Japanese duo, Puffy and I just can’t get it out of my head….

A strange Pringles ad

2009-05-16T23:59:00.001+09:00

This one comes the courtesy of Pringles. I saw this ad on a train in Tokyo. I guess the guy on the right could not have been any more “white” – he is extra white, blonde, tall, wearing a cap backwards and to top it off wearing a US flag design top. A bit strange? I think so…

Kanda Festival / 神田祭 (cont’d)

2009-05-13T21:57:00.001+09:00

So how was the actual procession you say? Well, other than being tiring and the fact that we were being cooked a little because of the unseasonably warm day, the actual distance covered is not so much. That’s of course complicated by the weather conditions, the weight, and the aforementioned traffic jams among other things but by no means are you expected to carry the whole distance in one go. Far from it – you get about 15-30 minute breaks every 10 minutes or so where you can grab as many helpings of cold tea as you want. You also get served lemon slices which people eat including the skin (something that was new to me) and are surprisingly refreshing under the hot sun.

The final destination is the big temple which lies close to Akihabara. In fact, we passed through streets of the same. The big temple at the end of the road was completely filled up to the brim with people. Of course this meant more traffic jams. We (all the carriers) also managed to attract lots of attention at this point with photographers flanking both sides of the road. Normally they were not allowed in the road but we did have one blonde guy really getting in the faces of carriers, taking pictures from inches away as people were grunting, trying to carry the portable shrine. A policeman finally got him to the side of the road but he was back pretty quickly.

Next, the inside of the shrine…

Attending Kanda Festival / 神田祭

2009-05-11T23:06:00.001+09:00

Kanda Festival or Kanda Matsuri (神田祭) is one of the most important festivals in Tokyo. It takes place in Kanda which is one stop away from Tokyo Station and about 5 minutes from Shinjuku. I was lucky enough to be invited to this festival by my boss whose wife is originally from the area and her family still lives there. My boss’ father in law was kind enough to invite us and I spent the better half of yesterday in Kanda, attending this amazing and yet chaotic event. Since this is a huge event, deeply rooted in tradition, there are many, MANY details to give so I will separate this to multiple posts. Let me start out by first describing the overall idea.

The basic idea is carrying a portable shrine from a local shrine to the main shrine in Kanda. Of course the way this basic idea gets executed is not so basic – there are rules to be followed and certain complications, some of which arise from the rules. First of all, the “portable shrine” is not so portable – it weighs quite a lot (no one seemed to know the exact weight but the guess was about a metric ton). You might say “But hey, it gets carried by so many people” but even then the weight per person can be a lot since the number of people carrying the shrine can change over time as the tired people constantly switch out and get replaced by others from the same group if they are available which they may not immediately be. To make things more fun, the shrine is not carried just quietly and steadily. It is constantly shaken up and down as this is thought to bring good luck. Average height of the people carrying the shrine in relation to one’s height is also a big factor as being taller than average (which is the case with me) means constantly getting hit by the shrine going up and down on one’s shoulder. One very quickly learns the importance of holding the shrine tightly and moving up and down with the shrine to minimize this constant hitting.

Of course there is more than one local shrine – in fact there are tens of local shrines. Each shrine has their own portable shrine and corresponding group of people carrying that shrine. There are a limited number of ways to get to the main shrine – the portable shrines are carried on one or two of the lanes of the road, closed during the matsuri – which means there are frequent “traffic jams” resulting in stops. Each local shrine has a different design/color happi/はっぴ, the traditional outfit you can see in the picture. On the back is the name of the shrine but what is written on the front can differ. For us, it was the name of my boss’ father-in-law’s store. Some shrines also had special outfits for a group of people – like the 8 girls in the picture. Under the happi, which is pretty thick, one can wear a tshirt type of thing or, if going for the full traditional outfit, something as thick as the happi itself. As Sunday happened to be one of the hottest days we had this year wearing the happi was not the easiest thing. As for the pants, there were multiple options. We wore long pants, similar to sweatpants but we saw people wearing shorts, and in the case of some men, something similar to what Sumo wrestlers wear which is pretty scary from the back since it looks like they are not wearing anything at all.

OK… To be continued tomorrow – I am still trying to recover from the physical aspects of the experience… :P

Swine flu lands in Japan

2009-05-09T16:13:00.001+09:00

It looks like the first cases of swine flu were diagnosed in Japan. Three Japanese, a school teacher in his 40s and two teenage boys – his students. They were on a trip to Canada it seems and they were identified to be carrying the virus at the airport here. The government put them in a quarantine but the government could not get a hold of everyone travelling on the plane. You can find more details here.

Getting this news before I attend the Kanda Festival tomorrow is not something I was envisioning but anyway – I am hoping it won’t be so bad that everyone will be wearing masks…

A visit from a neighbor

2009-05-06T23:04:00.001+09:00

Just as the Golden Week is coming to an end and the first day of work is merely hours away, I got my first visit from a neighbor since coming to Japan. Apparently a family moved into the apartment directly below mine and they (a nice lady and her daughter) knocked on my door to introduce themselves and drop off a little present – a box of cookies. See, there is a Japanese tradition which states that a person moving to a new house/apartment should knock on the doors of their immediate neighbors (left, right and up and down in an apartment if they exist) and introduce themselves while offering a small gift for any troubles they may give to those neighbors in the future. I think this is a great tradition especially considering how isolated people are becoming recently. It is always a good thing to know (and hopefully care about) one’s neighbors. Unfortunately when I moved in I did not do this and I feel very guilty now. I need to find a way to make this right I think…

Another big push for Suica

2009-05-04T12:55:00.001+09:00

Starting in the last few weeks JR and no matter how indirectly, DoCoMo and other cell phone providers that support Mobile Suica, have been very aggressive in permeating the use of Suica (pre-paid touchless IC card, supported also in certain mobile phones). I have seen signs all around Tokyo in more places ranging from convenience stores (FamilyMart already supported Suica but others are slowly picking it up as well) to taxis and buses (pretty much all of which seem to support payment by Suica by now). I am a huge fan of the technology as you might have read in my previous posts so this makes me very happy. In a country where credit cards are still very hard to use in places like little convenience stores and international credit cards can randomly not work, a system like Suica is a lifesaver. This picture is from a Summit (サミット) store, a big supermarket which started supporting Suica. The blowup penguin is a part of the campaign – he keeps showing up everywhere (oh and the little sign says “Use Suica!” in a friendly way). As a part of the push they were giving away little penguin faced puck shaped fridge magnets too.

ps. I took the picture with my new phone – a Sharp SH-04a which embeds GPA coordinates into the picture so if you want to know where this particular Summit is, you can ;) I will write a review of this touchscreen phone (DoCoMo released it around February I think, as a part of its new Pro Lineup) as soon as I have used it for long enough to be comfortable with all the features.

A Super Mario statue made of crystals?

2009-05-01T22:07:00.001+09:00

Where else could you find a statue of Mario but in Tokyo? I saw this little guy at a store in Ginza. See these days I haven’t been able to write much since I have my father and sister visiting me but there was a side-effect which I think is beneficial for this blog – I get to go to a lot of stores of all kinds and see things like this. Oh and if you are interested this guy is for sale – I believe the price is around $15,000 though don’t quote me on that. I unfortunately managed to miss a part of the price tag in all 3 pictures I snapped.

Historic cars and… a giant mechanical spider?

2009-04-27T22:32:00.001+09:00

I was in Yokohama on Sunday and as luck would have it there was a historic car exhibition right outside the restaurant I was at in Akarenga / 赤レンガ. Given that there was a ridiculous wind outside I was happy to get a seat inside and almost as soon as I sat down I saw a group of people gathering right outside and surely enough in about a minute the first car passed right in front of the window followed by more. Apparently this was a part of historical tour around Japan which explains how they managed to attract a crowd even under those weather conditions. There was a nice collection of both very old (see the pic above ;)) and very new cars including a few generations of Ferraris, all looking equally impressive to my untrained eye.

It was on my way back to the train station that I noticed this huge spider towering over walls, I suppose a part of some exhibition. I couldn’t see much though thanks to my zoom lens now I can see much clearer ;) It definitely looks impressive, a mechanical spider with (at least) 6 operators controlling its moves. I would love to see this from close up myself. I am not sure what the exhibition was for exactly but I suspect it is a part of the 150th year celebration of the opening of Yokohama Harbor.

Children’s Festival

2009-04-24T00:10:00.001+09:00

The 23rd of April is Children's Festival in Turkey and the north of Cyprus. Children from all around the world attend ceremonies in Turkey and show traditional dances. I dug up this video from Youtube and they show Japanese kids from last year. Unfortunately there is no information on where they are from in Japan and the type of dance and the video quality is pretty bad but I thought it was still interesting enough to post here.

A new Japanese TV Drama

2009-04-21T23:28:00.001+09:00

If you don’t know what a J-Drama is you might be a bit confused so let me clear that up really quick – J-Drama stands for Japanese Drama and at a given time there are many different series offered by different TV channels in Japan. They are even pretty popular abroad, though mostly in other Asian counties, and even in the US one can find fan subbed episodes of popular series.

Thanks to my Japanese teacher, Ms. Uchida, I heard about a new series starting yesterday and managed to catch the first episode. This particular series is called Konkatsu (婚かつ) – a mashup of [Kekkon (結婚) – marriage] and [Tonkatsu (とんかつ) – fried pork cutlets]. The main character is an unlucky young man, who after graduating from a pretty mediocre university gets fired from the job he manages to get. Even though his father owns a tonkatsu store he refuses to work there and lands a job at a small town’s town hall. His work is in a newly formed department formed as a part a national push to find ways for increasing the number of children per family. There is one catch though – during the interview, in order to get the job, he mentions that he is planning on getting married very soon himself when he does not even have a girlfriend…

The first episode yesterday was a lot of fun, even for someone not understanding most of the individual words in Japanese. It is on Fuji TV, every Monday, between 9 and 10 pm.

“The Flame of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” at Ueno

2009-04-19T21:33:00.001+09:00

If you take a walk around the gardens of Ueno Shrine (in Ueno Park), you might run into this little statue which is very very easy to miss since it is a bit off the main walkway. The dove contains a little flame inside it which has been burning since the day it was brought here in 1990. While much smaller than the flame in Hiroshima, this flame has its source from that same flame as well as a flame from Nagasaki. There is a plaque explaining how the flame has two sources – a torch from Hoshino village (星野村) in Fukuoka prefecture and a fire in Nagasaki which was list by the rubbing of broken roofing tiles against each other. The torch I mentioned, in turn, originates from the fire in Hiroshima. After the news of the bomb reached the Hoshino village, Tatsuo Yamamoto went to Hiroshima to search for his uncle where he only found the rains of his house burning. He took the flame from the remains as a memento of his uncle and kept it burning. The flame, which initially was kept by Yamamoto out of resentment, turned into a symbol of his desire for the abolition of nuclear weapons and peace. A torch was built in the village in 1968 out of that flame and this is one of the sources for the flame at Ueno. There is a plaque which describes this and more right by the statue so if you are in the area make sure to stop by and read…

Ueno Park and the beautiful flowers

2009-04-15T23:50:00.001+09:00

While most of the cherry blossoms are gone the Ueno Park still had a few trees that had an almost full load and there were tons of people who were out for “Ohanami” (お花見) – literally flower watching. I talked about this last year when I actually had the pleasure of joining them myself at Inokashira Park. The idea is sitting under a tree and enjoying an alcoholic beverage of sorts (beer, hard lemonade, different types of sake, whatever works for you…) while watching the flower petals slowly fall all around you. In the case of these people though since most of the flowers are gone except on two trees which actually had noone under them, I think the main goal was drinking…

If you happen to go by Ueno Park you may not be able to catch much of the cherry blossoms but there is a special garden open by the shrine. There is a little entrance fee (600 yen/about 6 dollars) but it is worth it. Some of the flowers are just so pretty and hard to find outside this special garden. I am putting some of the pictures of the flowers I took below. May be they can convince you to go :)

Adventures in Nashville

2009-04-13T23:28:00.001+09:00

I am still getting over the jetlag even though it has been more than a week by now but I thought I would drop a line and let you know about at least the highlights of the trip. New material about Tokyo is accumulating with the nice weather we are having these days and I can’t move onto that without finishing up with this so, here we go…

First I need to talk about the Centennial Park. This green gem of a spot lies pretty close to Vanderbilt University and hosts a copy of the Parthenon. Granted it is a bit on the smaller side compared to the original in Athens but hey, it is newer and in a better condition (yeah, I do realize that does not make it better than the original but still ;)). Now as luck would have it we ran into some cherry blossoms in bloom there which kind of made up for our missing the cherry blossoms in Tokyo – again, not quite as special as the original but much better than nothing. The day we were there was very nice and sunny for the most part which made the view more enjoyable and I saw a squirrel or two which sure brought back memories of the US. I even spotted a blue jay which looked really really pretty.

Another highlight was this – the district. It is basically a well lit and clean street flanked on both sides by souvenir stores and live music venues. We had dinner at one of the restaurants with live music playing and it was a pleasant experience. If you are into ribs you are in luck here though for those of us who are “pork-challenged” (like me) there are other options such as catfish. Keep in mind though – the style they seem to prefer is either BBQ (in terms of the ribs) or deep fried (in terms of the catfish). The “Batman building” in the background is the AT&T building and the Nashville skyline can be seen pretty clearly from this street. It was not a very crowded night but I don’t know if this is typical since the night we were there also was the night when a hurricane touched down in Nashville and there was some heavy damage in certain areas of downtown and traffic was backed up on certain highways which brings me to the biggest highlight (after the conference of course) – the hurricane/storm…

What is this you say? This is what everyone in the conference was watching for a while on the last day of the conference… It is the tornado report on the weather channel. Shortly after my talk on the third day, during the coffee break, we all realized that it was not so sunny outside anymore. In fact, it was raining like crazy and there was lightning left and right. While we started talking about how it was unlucky we could not go out to see the town a bit on the last day we heard these sirens coming from the hotel’s PA system. It was the first time I heard such an announcement – asking everyone to gather in the lobby but it did not end there. We had to get in line and go to the basement and stand against the wall for a few minutes. Luckily there weren’t any delays at the airport the next day and we were able to get back on time. It was an interesting experience but I enjoy seeing new places and experiencing new things so this trip definitely was enjoyable for me.

Onto recent things in Tokyo starting with the next post…

Buying a PSP from a vending machine?

2009-04-11T13:49:00.001+09:00

If anyone asked me before my little trip to Nashville where, if anywhere, one would be able to buy a PSP or an iPod from a vending machine I would say it has to be in Japan somewhere. Well, imagine my surprise when I got off the plane at Dallas International Airport and ran into not just one, but at least 3 huge vending machines which, well, vend, PSPs, iPods and related accessories. There is also a little touch screen introducing each item and of course the all important credit card reader. I am not sure what would happen if an item would get stuck just like with other vending machines – I can live with wasting a dollar for a bag of chips that gets stuck, or I can pay for another one and get two at the same time but the same “trick” doesn’t work when each item costs upwards of $100. Still though – pretty interesting concept. It seems like Sony and Apple are the two big backers of this as of now.

The airport is your typical large US airport, with a multitude of terminals and a train system linking them. There isn’t really a distinguishing feature of the airport – at least internally. I am not entirely sure how it is from the outside though since it is one of the airports I have only seen from inside. Oh and before I forget – I snapped this picture of a crashed application that was on the display screens. I am wondering why no one noticed it but I suspect there is no application that watches for crashes and notifies an operator. I guess this would be something good to build for applications like this though I am surprised there is not one already.

From Tokyo to Nashville

2009-04-09T22:46:00.001+09:00

Last week I was in the US, attending a conference in Nashville and well, if I don’t start posting about this I am going to forget so… here we go…

I took the AA flight out of Narita on Sunday and had a 10 hour flight, touching down in Dallas. The flight was generally pleasant and contrary to my last experience aboard an American carrier (United back in 2006) there was actually an entertainment system of some sort for each passenger in economy. Now before you get excited – it is a VERY limited system. First of all, it has the smallest screen I have ever seen. The screen is supposedly touch screen and it does allow, um, touching, but the resolution is basically 8 by 8 or so. When you succeed in pressing a “button”, the whole screen reloads giving the whole experience a slideshow kind of feel (which I guess was appropriate given that I was going to a conference with lots of slideshows). There are a few new movies and TV series available and they even threw in a token Japanese movie but the whole collection included less than 20 or so items – when you compare this with literally hundreds offered by Emirates (which not only had recent movies but also classics) and the like you can see how AA still has a long way to go. Oh and the system they have for the videos is just strange – unlike a perfectly digital system where you can start to watch any of the offerrings whenever you want as well as pause it, rewind it etc, you have to start watching at certain time blocks (seemed to be about every 20 minutes) or you have to watch starting from the middle. Better than nothing but not by a lot…

I want to talk a little bit about the next hop to Nashville but it is almost 11 pm so, that’s it for today. More coming tomorrow (hopefully) ;)

Are you a foreigner working in Japan? Get your 12,000円!

2009-04-06T22:34:00.001+09:00

OK, so it is not a whole lot of money (about $125 as of now) but hey, it is still something. The Japanese Government has sent out “Supplementary Income Payment Announcement”s. I am posting a picture of what I got which came from the Mitaka City Hall so your version will vary. It looks like anyone between the ages of 18 and 65 who are “alien registration card holders who are registered as of February 1st” can file a claim for 12,000 yen while card holders who are younger or older can claim 20,000 yen. The amount is automatically deposited to your bank account within a month and they ask you to attach a photocopy of your documents proving your status (alien registration card or passport for example) as well as something to give information about your bank, for example a photocopy of your cash card. The window for submissions opened on the first of April and it will stay open until October so there is definitely a decent amount of time to prepare. I already filed mine though since the process is pretty simple assuming you can decode the form. Unfortunately the whole application form is in Japanese so you might need some help (Thank you Momoe :)).

On an unrelated note, can you see the little Poki character in the forms? It is by Studio Ghibli and it was given to Mitaka City as its mascot (Ghibli Museum is in Mitaka after all…). I don’t think I have ever seen a mascot character on a government form before. These tend to be really serious affairs in the US and even though the Japanese government is just as strict with respect to the bureaucratic process they do keep things more… lively… I like it ;)

Go see the cherry blossoms already!

2009-04-05T14:49:00.001+09:00

If you live around the Tokyo area, or I think possibly in Kanto region in general this weekend is the best time to go see the cherry blossoms. I haven’t posted almost a week, I am aware of that, but I have a good reason – I was in the US attending a conference and guess what, I saw cherry blossoms even in Nashville of all places. Anyway, I will try to write about my trip and my “adventures” there including the cherry blossoms at Centennial Park and of course the “hurricane alert” which forced us to the basement of the hotel. My plate is pretty full today though so I will leave you with this and the picture of the cherry blossoms as I can see them from my apartment. I made sure the linked image is a bit bigger than the usual size so you can get a better view of the cherry blossoms :)

Cherry blossoms started to bloom!

2009-03-29T00:32:00.001+09:00

This will be short since I need to wake up in 5 hours to catch a plane to the US but I just wanted to drop a line and mention how the cherry blossoms started to bloom in Tokyo. It was brutally cold on Friday and may be that will slow down the blooming but it has started… and it is pretty! I took this picture of the cherry blossom tree in front of the Secom SC building with my cell. If you happen to be in Tokyo watch out for the cherry blossoms next week. I think it will be the best time for going cherry blossom watching (お花見).

Got milk?

2009-03-26T22:23:00.001+09:00

Then you might want to get over to Roppongi, to “Motoyama Milk Bar”. I stopped by before watching Departures/おくりびと purely by luck. The “milk bar” which actually has a quick service window and a sit-down indoor patisserie is very close to Roppongi Hills though it is about a floor lower. You just need to walk into the building on your left when you are standing right at the entrance to Roppongi Hills (where you would be looking directly at the giant spider statue). Take the escalator down one floor and walk outside – you can’t miss the huge cow right outside the “milk bar”. The milk is actually from Hokkaido (it tastes really nice) and they also offer fried Hokkaido potatoes as well as milk and desserts made from milk. Check it out if you find yourself in Roppongi…

Another bit of information about the fashion model robot…

2009-03-24T07:29:00.001+09:00

MSNBC posted this video:

It contains almost the same information as before but the video has new information since it has her walking in the actual “fashion week”. Yes, it is clear that we are very far away from having her replace human models yet but still, I like the video ;)

Just back from watching Departures/おくりびと

2009-03-20T21:10:00.001+09:00

Wow… This was easily the saddest movie I have ever seen. The whole theater was crying almost throughout the movie and I am not going to lie, I shed a tear or two as well. OK, let me rewind things a little bit…

So, today was a holiday and making use of that, I went to Roppongi to check out おくりびと with subtitles at Toho Cinemas Roppongi. The movie is by no means a short one but it is really, really well made. The pace is set just right so that you don’t get bored but you do get to see a very deep story. The casting was done perfectly as well and I did not see any obviously bad choices. What can I say? If you get a chance go and see this movie. Your life will be better for it… I am enclosing the trailer below.

HRP-4C: The female model robot

2009-03-17T22:18:00.001+09:00

I have seen many, many different kinds of robots designed and built in Japan but this is the first time I am seeing a model designed specifically for the catwalk. The design differs from the earlier models where the focus was clearly on interaction (where there would be a touch screen or the face would be very detailed but the rest of the robot would not be) or on demonstrating technology like walking (where the face would not be detailed a-la Honda’s Asimo or the body would be covered with cables). Developed by Japan’s AIST, This “lady” puts the focus on looking like a person – albeit a person wearing some sort of protective suit. The face is said to be designed based on anime characters as looking too much like a human would be “uncanny”. The height and the weight though, are based on research into Japanese women and the robot stands at 158 cm and weighs 43 kilograms.

I am definitely intrigued. I don’t yet know where she will do her first runway walk but I will try to find out and go. I know that it is supposed to happen next week (the 23rd of March), somewhere in Tokyo.

You can see the press release (in Japanese) here, and watch her demonstrate some of her capabilities here, here, and here. The press release went out today and it was covered by media outlets all around the world so a quick search online can give you articles in your own language :)

Thinking of doing an internship in Japan?

2009-03-16T08:23:00.001+09:00

Now that the internship season is approaching I thought I would put down a few tips for anyone interested in applying for an internship at a company in Japan:

Doing an online search to see which companies may be offering internships is a good idea. Recently the number may have dwindled a bit because of the slow economy but that by no means stopped everything.
Different companies may have different company cultures – some are more traditional than the others on issues like dress code, etc. If you have strong preferences one way or the other make sure you find out this bit of information about the companies you are applying to.
Pay attention to the location of the companies you choose. Tokyo is a huge city and not everyone likes living in the center of the hustle and bustle or living in the more suburban parts.
Apply early!!! People don’t seem to get the idea that the process for getting a visa is LONG. The company you would work for needs to get permission from the government in order to get you a working visa and that can take 3-4 months. I cannot stress this one enough. It is very very important to act early.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. There may be others from other countries working in companies you are considering or there may be someone (not necessarily “international”) working on a topic you like. Fire off an email to them asking about their experiences. In the worst case, they would be too busy to respond but in the best case you can form a connection with them and connections are important.

“No Postage Necessary if Mailed to the USA” ??

2009-03-10T23:01:00.001+09:00

OK, this was a surprise. While I was living in the US I saw envelopes like this many, many times. You know, “No postage necessary if mailed in the USA” but this prepaid envelope that I received from an organization in the US (at University of Chicago, surveying PhD graduates) is actually claiming no postage necessary for mailing internationally to the US. I wonder how they coordinate this. I mean, the cover has things in English and French so I suppose in countries where English or French is the most common language the post office may be able to read this but how about countries like Japan or China ? Of course just being able to read is not enough. How does the post office in the country of origin, in this case Japan, get paid for the cost of sending this letter? Do they just charge through the US Embassy? :-P

Japan Security Show 2009

2009-03-09T23:08:00.001+09:00

Last Friday, which as a day was not a very pleasant one as the amount of rain was, well, unreasonable to say the least, I had a chance to visit the Japan Security Show at Tokyo Big Sight. The show was a lot of fun though and I saw a lot of interesting stuff even though the commute there and back was painful at times. I even managed to snap a few pictures though only after did I see a sign loudly announcing “No photographs”. This is the second time something like this happens to me in Japan – the first case being at Akihabara trying to record a video of maids singing on a stage… That … was embarrassing.

First off, lets start with getting to Tokyo Big Sight. I blogged before about this since I went there before in order to see the robots exhibition last year and that time I used the Yurikamome Line (which keeps on referring to itself as the “New Yurikamome Line” but it is not so new I am told) which not only can get one much closer to Big Sight than Rinkai Line which we took this time but it also offers a really nice view including the Rainbow Bridge. Heck, it even goes ON that bridge. The catch? It takes longer to get there AND it is more expensive and since we were pressed for time we took the Rinkai Line (臨海線) from Shinjuku.

What was on display? Well, quite a few different things I guess. Not just alarm systems etc. when one thinks of security but also components for such systems such as improvements on camera technology, motion sensing, as well as research related to security such as automatic detection of suspicious activity or automatically counting people in a given area. You could see big hitters of the security world like Secom as well as more general electronics manufacturers like Sony and of course key makers – physical security is as important as ever and it shows. Actually one of the coolest things I saw at the show was a key which has a “Did I lock the door?” indicator which automatically lets you know whether or not you forgot to do just that.

This is something I could definitely use…

The Japanese shower radio

2009-03-05T22:57:00.001+09:00

I bought this little radio to listen to while I am taking a shower. One thing I did not take into account was, well, the fact that the shower is like a metal box, reinforced to be a safe room in the case of an earthquake, and therefore it has almost zero reception of electromagnetic signals like radio waves. The door is not metal though and the radio does get some reception from there but out of the whole range I get only one channel loud and relatively clear – America’s Forces Network (AFN) on AM. The songs are nice and stuff but the ads/infomercials they put in the middle can sometimes be a bit weird for anyone not in the army, like telling soldiers that “sexual harassment creates friction which affects the running of the engine that is the army” or that their family members may be under the jurisdiction of local authorities but the service members are under shared jurisdiction with the army. It is not quite as weird as the AFN TV that I could watch at the hotel in Seoul but still… interesting experience… If you live in Tokyo you should be able to pick up the signal too – just search on your AM band.

A great explanation of the “Subprime Mortgage” issue

2009-03-02T22:07:00.001+09:00

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Until I saw this video I only had a vague idea about how this crash came about. This is a great explanation, even if it takes 11 minutes to do so! Yes, it is not related to travelling and not directly related to Japan but I think it warrants being posted on here since this crisis affects, as it says in the video, everyone!

First snow of the season

2009-02-27T23:27:00.001+09:00

My hopes of a “snowless winter” were dashed today thanks to a minor snowstorm going on for hours. Of course this does not even remotely compare to winters in Pittsburgh but still… Not a big fan of snow, especially when I have to be outside. I just hope it gets warmer soon. The picture of course does not do the situation justice. It was taken with my cell phone’s camera which, even though is a 3.2 MP camera, is 2 years old and well, it is a cell phone camera :) The view is from my company’s cafeteria which even offers views of Mt. Fuji on exceptionally clear days.

どうもありがとうミスターロボット! (Thank you Mister Robot)

2009-02-25T22:10:00.001+09:00

I was watching the Oscars on Monday (WoWoW showed it both in the morning [live] and at night) and I couldn’t help but crack a smile at Kunio Kato’s speech. His English was not the best but he kept it simple and smart, finishing with a reference to the song by Styx. It is a pretty well known fact that Japanese people are into robots of all kinds (even if the statement may not be all that factual) and when one says “robot” these days after a few animated offerings, one of the first things that comes to mind is Honda’s Asimo or Sony’s Qrio and Aibo.

So here is the speech and the song:

Oscar speech

Mr. Roboto by Styx

PM of Japan is “Cool old dude” ?

2009-02-24T00:03:00.001+09:00

I snapped this picture in Akihabara yesterday. The guy in the cartoon is Japan’s Prime Minister, Mr. Aso, with a huge grin, saying “I love Akiba”. While I don’t doubt his liking Akihabara – it is one of the hustling parts of Tokyo’s economy and pretty popular with tourists I believe – it is the first time I see anyone call the guy “cool”. Now, I have heard the “old dude” title pretty often but by itself that seems to imply the opposite of “cool”…