Now you see me

Wow, time really does fly when you're having fun. I've been away for a while, but I've been having a blast. Loads to talk about, but I haven't got a whole lot of time just now. I'll get through what I can, and for the rest, you'll just have to... wait longer.

Several friends have had their escaping from Japan parties in the last couple of weeks, so I've spent a few days in Saitama, the concrete bleah between Gunma and Tokyo. I forgot to bring my camera when I went to Molly and Andrew's combined sayonara party, which is just as well, because surprise surprise, I got drunk and sang my voice off at karaoke till 5 am. But I don't think I particularly made an ass of myself, which is a nice change. Everyone else was drunk anyway, so here's hoping they won't remember if I did.

On the job front, I hope I'm not jinxing anything here, but I applied for a promotion to the curriculum development team and they're going to bring me down to Nagoya to test run for a few days at Head Office. Apparently I'm one of two finalists. If it comes down to a swimsuit competition I haven't got a chance though; I have a feeling the other applicant is a girl. My sneaking suspicion is that they just wanna laugh at me and staple my tie to things, but I guess I'll find out. If that doesn't pan out, I have two other standing job offers with different companies and I might go to one of those.

My kickstand was stolen about two weeks ago. I have a fairly nice bike that saves me a ton of money when it comes to trains, and I parked it at the train station bike parking lot for about three hours while I went out carousing with some friends, when I came back the kickstand was gone. Friggin high school kids. I guess it serves me right, I had an accessory pouch under the seat and forgot my hex wrench set in there. (The whole pouch was stolen, but I don't particularly need or miss it or anything that was in it.) It was just attached with velcro, so I'm betting some kid stole the pouch, looked inside and found the hex wrenches, and thought, "what the hell, why not go for gold?" My idea at the moment, assuming I even bother to buy a new one, is to put a note inside the accessory pouch written in French, maybe make it look like a love note or something so that the kid might get curious about what it says and take it to a teacher for kicks, but it'll actually say "whoever gave you this stole it from my bike" or words to that effect. Any suggestions on what to put on the note are welcome, just leave a comment on this post. I try to keep it in perspective anyway, knowing the entire bike would likely have been stolen several times over by now if I used such a flimsy lock in North America.

Beside one of my schools there's a new ramen restaurant where the owner, a friend of one of my coworkers, never lets me pay for anything and keeps piling more food in front of me. He's like my Japanese mom. His English skills and those of his staff are shall we say non-existent, so I muddle through in Japanese as best I can and we all usually manage to get our ideas across. A few weeks ago he invited me to a seasonal restaurant he owns along with two of my coworkers and their boyfriend and husband respectively. (No, it was not a triple date.) The restaurant is on the banks of the Kiryu River and they offer very very fresh fish kept in a large pool by the entrance.

Eating this thing is a ritual in itself: first you gently mash it with your chopsticks, then use them to sever the tail and most of the head - but leave the spine intact. Then you grab the head and pull out the spine, ribcage, organs and the majority of the tiny bones intact. Voila! dig in... there's not a whole lotta meat left on one of these little guys after all that, but it's pretty good. Unfortunately I lack the finesse required to do the surgery just so, and I always ended up just pulling the head off. Then I had to rummage around with my fingers in hot deep-fried fish to find the spine and ever so gently pull it out. By far the most interesting dish of the evening, and I distinguish 'interesting' from 'good' here, was a paste made by pureeing the organs of one or two of the little guys. It's in the blue china dish in the background. It was a nasty pale brown and had to be one of the most bitter things I've ever tasted. Fotunately it was only about a teaspoon of the stuff, but even so only two of us even tried it at all. A tiny dab on one of my chopsticks was enough to tell me it wasn't for me, but Takako managed to finish hers somehow, grimacing the whole time. Ninomiya-san, the owner, had to take off early to go back to his other restaurant, but he warned us before he left that it was not a dish to everyone's liking, so we really didn't have to feel obliged to eat it. Phew. There were also several other varieties of fish, lots of beer, and a dessert that tastes kinda like a puff of dust in jello, and everyone left feeling quite content but knowing we'd be hungry again soon.

It was quite a nice evening, sitting in an open-sided building on the banks of the river that the fish came from so their cousins can watch you disembowel and eat their family, and as the five of us left we figured the bill would probably come to at least 6 or 7 thousand yen each (60-70 dollars, and well worth it), but the cashier had instructions not to let us pay for any of it, or give us any information about how much it would have been.

Thanks, Ninomiya-san!

I've got a backlog of funny pictures, but I think I'll wrap up for the day with just this one of a music shop here in Kiryu. See if you can spot the most interesting instrument they offer.



"Lessons in what? I know I have a skin flute around here somewhere... or perhaps you meant a rusty trombone?" Actually I had to check the real definition, which is disappointingly mundane, but it sure stands out doesn't it?

Go ahead, make my... order a double

(Original post and comments here.)

You know how it is. You want extra butter? Dark meat, anyone? Gravy on your salad? They deep-fry the fries here in a vat of cheese and top them with crisp chicken skin, want some? Well, according to this guy, or at least the doctor who autopsied him, go ahead. The 5'7", 140-lb last surviving WW1 vet in California died at 112, with the organs of a 50 or 60 year old, even though his diet consisted "largely of sausages and waffles." The same doctor went on to say, “A lot of people think or imagine that your good habits and bad habits contribute to your longevity. But we often find it is in the genes rather than lifestyle.” (Click the title for the article these quotations came from.)

I think that's just misleading. I'm no doctor, but I think it's a fair guess to say the vast majority of people don't have the genes to live a long life with a crappy diet and bad habits, and the burden on our economy and health care systems is on my side in this one, I think. (The Canadian site, not as good, is here.) It's absurd and harmful for a doctor to say crap like this without clarifying himself, and it's the kind of thing that hardens tobacco lobbyists' nipples. This is the crap they seize on, despite years of science, common knowledge, and a pretty good recent US federal court ruling against tobacco companies. I know there's no mention in the first article of the "supercentenarian" being a smoker, but I've already talked about obesity above and in a previous post, and even though some of the comments there made it clear that some people didn't realize I was kidding in that one, I'm gonna lay off. In any case, smoking definitely deserves a serious mention here as a huge risk factor and cause of grief for millions of people.

I'm becoming a grumpy old fart. Ah well, whatcha gonna do? To lighten the mood, here's a photo of a toilet.

Teehee, it's a toilet!

Aha, but not just any toilet. Note the sticker on the underside of the lid. Can't read it? Try this one(click for a larger version):

Instructions!

See, some very rural people or older folks in Japan who still aren't used to western toilets don't quite get the idea. Once in a while you can still walk into a public bathroom and find footprints on the seat, facing the back. So they include instructions, and pretty detailed ones at that. Meticulous folks, the Japanese.

Holy Brastrap Batman!

(Original post and comments here.)

I'm stunned. Flabbergasted has been redefined. I'm blown away, and can't decide whether I'm upset or not about there not being any photos to go along with this post. I want proof. I've just seen the most unbelievable thing yet on Japanese television, and I cannot conceive of what will take its place. When I've talked to people about what they know about Japanese tv invariably it's something about Iron Chef or maybe Takeshi's Castle, but this is something that I think the west is unlikely to ever syndicate. Keep in mind that it was only around 9:30, maybe 10.

The only thing I can do is describe the show. Please bear with me, this is my best approximation of how I experienced this and, with my limited Japanese, pieced together the details of what the hell was going on.

When I flip to the channel, there are 6 girls and 1 guy on stage. The girls all look around 13-15 so they're probably 18-19 (you get used to the age-guessing arithmetic here after a while), all wearing uniform pink shirts with a slogan and something to do with a mermaid but the resolution and focus are inadequate to know more. The guy (perhaps 20) is rarely seen, and it doesn't take long to deduce that he's not the feature here, just the emcee. One of the girls has pulled the side of her skirt down enough that she can lift the waistband of her underwear to show to the camera, which obligingly zooms in for a closeup, then two of them hold up their skirts for the cameras to pan slowly across their undies for a few seconds. The camera zooms back out to a shot of the two girls obviously being featured (the other four hover in the background and don't warrant a microphone), and suddenly a family name comes up on screen below them (Kobayashi in Osaka or something like that). The two girls are given a magic marker, with which they write/draw on the shirts they're wearing for a few moments.

There is much applause for Kobayashi-san as two of the girls in the background step forward to accept large ziploc bags and hold them out for the featured girls. They, in turn, proceed to strip off their shirts and reach under their skirts to take off their underwear, which are all destined for the ziplocs. Someone in the studio takes a photo of them standing there topless, there is much applause, and they depart.

By this time I have pieced together a few more things from the intermittent glimpses of the t-shirts and banner:

• The shirts say "Stop!AIDS" [sic] - sounds more like a warning sign, doesn't it?


• The woman on the t-shirts I thought might be a mermaid is just standing in a giant condom


• This is the 2006 24-hour fundraiser - presumably for AIDS-related causes x, y and z

Two new girls come on, very briefly introduce themselves, give a hint of what they're wearing, and a CG banner slides onscreen. They say "Start!" (well, ok, "Staato") and a white-board is greenscreened into the bottom left corner of the screen with "24 yen" written on it (that's basically 24 cents, give or take a pittance). The last piece clicks into place: people are phoning in bids to get these girls' underwear! I didn't want to believe it when it first occurred to me, but this put the nails in the coffin, even though 24 yen has to be a joke. The girls continue to show their frilly bras and demonstrate that the panties you can buy are going to come straight off their bodies. All this while the bids keep coming in, and top out at 35,000 yen($350) when, for whatever reason, the bidding ends, which the generous So-and-so-san in Wherever won. There is much applause, and the Ziploc Strip begins again.

Some kind philanthropist shells out 50,000 yen for the next two girls' dainties, perhaps because one of them was too modest to show her panties to the camera while she was wearing them and would only show them to the emcee. Someone obligingly held a thin strip of paper in front of the camera when she had to lift her skirt a bit to take them off. (NB - they obviously weren't prepared for this possibility.)

I flipped back across this channel about half an hour later and the parade was still going.

Now I realize that it's largely my North American upbringing that makes my first instinct tell me there's something weird about topless young girls on early evening TV, and I try to look past that. They're adults and don't seem to be prostitutes or anything, just normal girls trying to raise some money for a good cause. What was really tough to wrap my head around was that the society here is so used to the idea of buying girls' freshly worn underwear that this probably didn't raise an eyebrow. It reminded me of the time a Japanese friend told me to call her "Yellow Monkey", and another responded to my astonishment with, "It's OK, we're all Japs here. And you guys are Limeys, and Yanks, and ...what do you say for Canadians, anyway?"(Good question. Canucks? Doesn't really have the same connotations.) Don't get me wrong, not having to tiptoe around the PC monster 24/7 is great, but I should think there is a line somewhere between calling consenting friends Japs and Yellow Monkeys and leering old men drooling with anticipation of the first whiff when they open their Ziploc bag full of hot-off-the-press underwear.

Am I just a prude?

Fuji-san

(Original post and comments here.)

This is the long-awaited blog exclusive abridged edition; you can find my absurdly detailed version at my otherwise useless geocities page.
And of course there's also Morgan and Maya's version. Don't ask which of them is the Fat Buddha, though; it might be a touchy subject.
PS - sorry about posting this half a dozen times, the formatting around the photos refuses to behave

So a while back I heard about a few of my coworkers planning to scale the Monster (aka the Fooj, aka Mt. Fuji) to watch the sunrise, so I decided to grab me a piece of that action, having missed out the first time around Nippon. The climb is not an uncommon feat, so I wasn't overly worried as I packed my junk and slapped on a pair of sneakers.

Morgan and Maya were going along too, and Morgan figured out that our itinerary made it pretty much impossible to make it to the top by the 5:03 sunrise... which would be a bit of a downer after climbing a mountain to watch the sunrise. So we (meaning he) did some legwork and found an alternate route that would allow us to complete the mission. It was a few hours longer commute and required trainhopping that made us feel like Frogger, but you only do this once, so you do it right, right? Right. ... Where was I?

Oh yeah. The Fuji Express, a beautifully painted train with legroom for 12 at every seat. This little gem afforded us some great views of Fuji while we bobbed and weaved through the little mountains approaching the one that gets almost as much action as Ms. Hilton. It's honestly pretty impressive as you approach, and I almost think even the Japanese engineers gave some consideration to the aesthetics when they designed the route. Unlikely I know, but it's just possible. Or it might be that a few peeks at the peak were unavoidable. It is pretty big. Considering that we were going during Obon, it was also nice to see that the train wasn't full of climbers. All the guidebooks warn that Obon is a bad time, what with every Japanese person taking advantage of the one holiday they more or less all get during climbing season, plus a flood of tourists and gaijin desperate to get the same pictures and postcards as all of their friends.

While waiting for our bus to depart from Kawaguchiko we picked up walking sticks, replenished our water reserves, and sat around on our thumbs. A good time was had by all, except maybe the anonymous lady blowing chunks in the powder room. The bus trip was a bit frightening, but by this point we all dozed, waiting for our 2nd wind to arrive. Ok, be honest, maybe 22nd (there were a lot of nuts in the trail mix).

We hang out at Gogome, the 5th station, for about an hour, psyching up, pigging out, zoning in, and so forth. What I find really great about the throng of climbers that rode up with us was that while some do their stretches and/or comment about the air being noticeably thinner, some are also having a quick smoke to prepare their lungs for the beating they're about to take. Virtually everyone who arrived at the same time as us also leaves within 15 minutes.

As I said, this is Station 5 (elevation 2,305m) of the actual climb. So when I say we climbed Fuji, I only mean we got to the top (3,776m) without a giant slingshot. We took a bus this far because the slope and the time involved to this point are just not worth it. By all accounts I've heard it's just a really loooong hike up to that point, and where's the drama in that? Where ya gonna get your "Save yourself!" and "Give me the ring!" moments on a long hike, huh? You won't, that's where. So we fast-forwarded to the good parts.

For the first couple of minutes after departing Station 5 (at 21:35) we think we've fast-forwarded way too far...we're heading downhill, and as omens go, we don't exactly need tea-leaves to know that's a bad thing. Fortunately, the trail gets its act together and we're soon going up. At the 6th Station (2,390m, 22:10ish) we're a bit ahead of schedule and feeling good about the climb, so after a short break we play a couple of sets of tennis and take a cooking class press on.

Pretty much the whole climb after that is a blur of darkness, trail mix, branding our walking sticks, and replacing flashlight batteries since I didn't think ahead like M&M did to get one of those stylish and adorable headlamps. I'm surprised how much of the climb has reinforced concrete shoring up the sides of the walking trails, or chicken wire forming the loose volcanic rock into steps, but to keep it "rugged and natural" (Japanese style) the trail itself is rarely paved. They don't go quite that far.

Probably the most memorable moment comes when Morgan figures out his wallet is missing, most likely dropped on the bus. Denial, anger, bargaining, etc; 2700+ metres up we have it all, but there's nothing to be done about the wallet till we get back down in any case, and dawn at the summit is coming with or without us, so on we go through the traffic jams and lineups, guided by other people's flashlights so much that I turn off my own for long segments of the climb. My feet are getting blisters, and long periods of mostly standing in line on the narrow trails is not helping me forget about them. It's actually a relief when the trail gets steeper and rockier because people are forced to spread out a bit more and I can concentrate on something more interesting than my aching legs and the faces and voices of the people we keep leapfrogging because they rest anywhere they want while we take our breathers at the stations. You know, the way civilized folk do.

One other thing that sticks out is hearing one of the other gaijin near me get late-night cranky to his friends about the Japanese people behind us. They keep saying, "Sugoi" (in this case, roughly meaning 'wow') about every 5 seconds. Once you live here for a while, that word basically fades into the background noise because it's so versatile and overused. After Jo Schmo points it out, though, it comes back to the surface and I start noticing it every time. Plus I have lots of time to think back over the last segment or so of the climb and my mental replay is peppered with 'sugoi' too. So now I'm hearing it double and getting late-night cranky about it myself. Perfect. When Morgan leads a surge forward to get away from that cluster I'm only too happy to follow.

As we ascend, the traffic gets more and more backed up and I can't help but note how Japanese this whole little pilgrimage is turning out. You just don't get this kind of problem on the other famous mountains of the world, I should think. There were literally thousands of people all told. From maybe 15 or so to around 60, everybody was getting a little Fuji action. On the way down we even saw a guy carrying a small spaniel and leading his young daughter. Has anyone seen this kind of thing on Kilimanjaro?

		Finally, after a long period of concern about the lightening eastern sky and whether we'd make it in time, at 04:45 we reach the top, pass through the symbolic gate, find a slightly less crowded spot, and stop dead in our tracks. tadaaaaaaaaaa....! We're not about to move anytime soon and we start frantically snapping photos of where the sun will be when it gets its lazy butt outta bed, still 15 minutes off. To be fair, the cloudscape is pretty spectacular and along with everyone else there except possibly the tour guides and shop staff, we already know we'll never see this in person again. When the sun finally pokes out from behind the cloud horizon, there is bountiful if tired cheering, a bit of singing, and a deafening sustained chorus of shutter clicks. Eventually, though, we've stared at and posed in front of and clicked on everything in sight, and we proceed up the last few steps to where the crowd has more or less gotten stuck: the mall. There's no Walmart there yet, but on top of Fuji there is a string of shops for souvenirs, soup (re: everything else: "No, we've run out of that"), engravings, omemori, etc. Even the bathroom is a business, and at 200 yen a visit I think they're doing alright. There are 10 toilets and 5 urinals, and I still wait in line for at least half an hour.
Click for larger versions

There's also the crater, conveniently located between us and the weather station on the far side, at the actual highest point. It's about a half hour walk there, which means a half hour walk back, which means we take the obligatory snaps and fuggedaboudit. We're going home. But that becomes an ordeal in itself.

Just what are they up to?

(Original post and comments here.)

I saw this old weathered sign at a recycling station near my house a while ago and forgot about it until I biked by it yesterday morning. It advertises some kind of book of weight loss tips and the bit at the top says you can lose 5 kilos in 10 days.

First, if the difference between the before and after images is 5 kilos, I'm a furry yellow elephant.

Second, notice how the transition arrow points both ways. Not sure what they're implying there, or how it's supposed to promote sales of this book.

Third, why on earth should the grossly obese woman want to change at all? Can you imagine the state of our Horrible Warning System if everyone whose life expectancy was measured in hours started to get in shape? Scientists are still debating whether it would cause a new Skinny Age or Global Eating, but as I understand it, this is a summary of how they play out:

1) All the SHBC (Single Hovering Brain Cell, for those of you with less medical expertise) people who mistake a cracker for a meal would start running out of people to feel superior to and would eat less and less to keep ahead of the descending average weight. At the point that they become transparent, fashion magazines would go wild trying to take credit for the trend and begin a fresh assault on the self-confidence of the now hopelessly behind the times and stigmatized "Opaque." They would begin an even more dramatic weight purge to get in line with fashion demands, and this would be the first stage where the trend would spread widely to the male population due to the undesirability of dating Opaque men. Until this point only Gap employees and hairdressers were affected among the male population. Blown around by errant breezes and lacking the energy to save themselves, most of the anemic population would drown in large puddles or starve to death in treetops.

Pretty grim, I know. But the Global Eating scenario is no better:

2) Noting declining sales in western countries, corporations begin a desperate campaign to bring food (and the concurrent electrical supply necessary for refrigeration) to untapped markets at reasonable prices. Television follows as a marketing tool. Initially Ethiopians and rural Chinese farmers are often heard wondering what to do with Feta Cheese in a Can and Dubble-Krispy Bubble-gum-flavored Pork Rinds, among others, although the decision never takes long. Finally not having to watch loved ones starve to death, and able to watch endless reruns of Friends(brought to you by...), people lose interest in blowing each other up. As recruitment becomes more and more difficult, frenzied suicide bombers steal a nuclear warhead and detonate it at the center of the earth, destroying the ENTIRE PLANET.

Think before you diet.

Good of you to drop by

(Original post and comments here.)

Hey, thanks for coming over. Apologies about the condition of the place, I really gotta get some wallpaper up and whatnot, but for the moment, here's my foray into the blogging world.


   My life is gonna be so full of adventure and hijinks, I'm getting all tingly. I hadn't realized until today that I was in a fast-paced action movie...it just needs a lot of editing.
   This afternoon I went for a bike ride up into the mountains. No reason, no destination, just getting out there. As I left Fressay (a grocery store on the edge of civilization - more about it later), I decided to avoid the main road and just hop up the little mountain that's right behind the store. About 10 seconds' ride later, what do I see but a sign screaming about underground missile silos and tests conducted in secrecy by men in lab coats sworn to secrecy who live in a moral vacuum. One of them, probably named Steve or Kurt, may decide to help me later when a subplot reveals his boss has been taking credit for his discoveries or finding hideous new biological warfare applications for the work done there.
   Ok, well, it didn't exactly say that, but to one who knows how to read between the lines it's pretty clear when you say something like "Japan Mushroom Research Institute" that there's some impending nuclear disaster brewing up the mountainside and the sign was obviously meant to bore away intruders.
   Who would put an actual mushroom research institute in a sleepy little town like Kiryu when the local law enforcement officials are practically begging to be corrupted by money and power and the chance to be a part of a grand scheme? Sounds like Steven Seagal may be dropping by later. I can't wait to see him kick the crap out of 20 or 30 guys at a time. That'll so make six months of living in a pimple on the ass of Nowhere worthwhile.
   Sure enough, when I got a little further up the mountainside, there was not much around, no barrels of glowing waste or piles of skeletal remains, just the occasional barrier with a polite message about 'road closed'. The sort of thing that really gets the hair on the back of your neck standing at attention. A big operation like this has gotta be pretty slick to keep all that stuff hidden well. When I arrived at the main "Mushroom Research" building, it looks like it hasn't even been opened in months, yet there was a well-maintained car parked outside. Keep in mind, I hadn't been accosted by any security thugs the size of industrial refrigerators, not even a single robotic bird tried to peck my eyes out, so I can tell these guys are pretty confident in their little illusion, huddled in their miles of bunkers deep underground.
   Man, exploring those tunnels is gonna be so awesome, especially after I wrestle a gun away from the first unsuspecting security guy that stumbles over me while he's using the company mobile phone to call his girlfriend.
   Maybe I should call up the gang from Goonies, they'd be able to give me some pointers on how to avoid booby traps and that kind of thing. I gotta be careful not to go in knowing too much, though, because then they might dig up bad guys who could aim reasonably well. Or maybe not, it's not as though even James Bond runs into many of those.
   So anyway, if you don't hear any more from me in the next couple of days, don't be fooled by the lookalike they'll train to take my place and pretend everything is ok. Send help! I'll be held for questioning deep underground until some unlikely duo with funny one-liners comes to get me. It'll be a relief when I finally get thrown in the snake-pit with a little bit of blood running down from a small cut at the corner of my mouth, cause then you know a last-minute rescue is on the way. I'm just lucky I'm not a black guy, or I'd know the rescuers would get there just in time to watch the last of my crushed body disappear into the mouth of some monstrous python.