Caveman
A Friday night of beer with work peoples, get home in time to sleep, wake up the next day at 6am, bolt down to Akasaka, rent a car, disappointed by automatic, impressed by the built in amp and GPS. Spend 30minutes trying to program the GPS system, give up, pull into a garage and beg apologetically at a man: 'Suimasen, Navi kudasai - Okutama?' All understood, and he programmed the GPS, and we're back on the road. Turns out that you can't program it whilst the car is moving.

2 hours later, plenty of tolls paid, I had finished pelting the life out of a supermini Mazda somewhere near Yokohama to the tune of Belle and Sebastian, and we pulled into a campsite by a river and setup shop. Saw a great sight along the way: A team of builders preparing for work in the morning, following the instructions of the foreman, perform excercises outdoors. I'm told that it's normal, and many offices will have the same practice. Car dealerships are of particular amusement, because the group excercises are outdoors, and they all wear suits. From my perspective, humiliating, but on the larger scale, i'm starting to realise why being fat gets you stared at in Japan.


Hike up a big hill, which managed to get fogged over as we got higher, to thwart any satisfaction that could have been gained from getting tired and sweaty. And so zero hilltop photographs. I did manage to get a photo of a spider. The Japanese countryside is a marvel for someone born in London. Hills packed with trees cover the landscape for miles, without any stray plastic carrier bags, rusting disused washing machines, burnt out Vauxhall Corsas in sight.

After an unerving walk down from the hill in pitch darkness, I discovered something that I filled me with the Joy of Alcohol. A 1 litre can of Asahi. More than just your average beer, this monster can was being sold in a Seven Eleven near me. So i bought, and consumed. Multiple.

Okutama has caves, which have concrete paths inside, making it a rather busy tourist attraction. Now is my time to tell all potholing fantatics to go and die peacefully in some other place, because I am a big fan of increasing accessibility. For example, how else would a man in a tweed jacket, and his Kimono wearning wife be able to get outdoors to see the caves on a Sunday? I have no idea what value these caves held historically, and so I am going to document my conjectures instead. Lots of spiritual stuff, a with shrines to pray, and and places to stick 1 Yen coins in the dirt for good luck. I guess people came here for more than just shelter from the weather. I'm yet to read up on the details for this, so information is sketchy at the moment. Japanese mythology and Greek mythology share the notion of an underworld bounded by water. Thus it was traditional to bury coins with your dead in Japan too, in order to pay the man to take you across the river.

The drive back from the caves to the sleepy town to get ramen for lunch was one of the best I have ever had - so good, that it left me wondering if I should really go to Zurich next, or just stay here. Japan has the mountains, the climate, the cleanliness, the organisation. I like mountains, but I also like old town squares. So I guess Zurich still has some appeal. Gotta learn German - which will be a damn sight easier than Japanese.

Driving back to Tokyo, was, of course, hideous. The GPS system is not to be trusted. The highlight of the journey was seeing an unidentified race car, complete with advertising stickers, rollcage, exhaust pipe tune... I started drooling, staring, and edging forward in the traffic to try and get a closer look at the car, and maybe the driver. Long hair? Wow - it was a girl, a young Japanese girl! Driving this racecar! The predator/prey instinct in her kicked in, and she clocked us staring. So I waved. And smiled. Then Ricky gave her a thumbs up, and a smile. Success! Despite the fact that we were driving a weedy microcar, she smiled and waved back. And then castigation from our passengers for behaving like schoolboys. I wish I had a photo.

Shock yesterday, when our flat got fined because we weren't separating our rubbish correctly. So the building superintendent went through our rubbish, and came to the conclusion that there was some stuff in the burnable that couldn't be burnt, and some stuff in the unburnable that could have been burnt, and perhaps he should sent some instructions on what is and what isn't through our letterbox, together with a polite penalty. HOW THE HELL DID HE KNOW IT WAS US?

Strange: I feel rather passionless of late. Nanako claims that this is a result of age.
Change: I am not particularly jealous of anyone elses' life. I am having a good time here in Nippon.
Guilt: I felt enormous sense of guilt when someone laughed about their previous inability to concentrate on a single problem for more than a few seconds. How can I laugh, when I am still struck by this disease?
Self Conscious: I'm thinking about going to Okinawa for the weekend to dive, and i've realised that i've got to lose weight....
- posted by Daniel @ Tuesday, October 25, 2005 3 comments

 
Earthquake #2
I was in a bar yesterday as Earthquake #2 struck. Everybody started looking up, at the enormous suspended air conditioning unit, that was swaying harmoniously to the movement of tectonic plates. So I had another beer.

On Tuesday I went to Yoga class. It was fantastic. Them Injun's were onto something good, both physically {Posture, movement, flexibility, stability} and mentally {concentration, exposure to more Japanese, non internet related activities}.

Hotel lunch. Buffet for 900Yen. And a double expresso. The resultant hyperactivity has led me to start creating a test schedule, and begin designing architectural designs... It actually looks like work. And when you can make pretty colours in Excel, it is easy to pass it off as just that.
- posted by Daniel @ Thursday, October 20, 2005 1 comments

 
Yoyogi Park
I wanted to go running after work today, and Ikebukuro is not the most inspiring place in the world to excercise outdoors. So I headed down to Yoyogi park, and scared the living daylights out of myself by running with headphones on in deserted darkness in central tokyo.

Current Nearest Observations:
heavy rain 17°C
NW (3 mph)
Relative Humidity (%): 88,
Pressure (mB): 1018, Rising,
Visibility: Poor

I like running in the rain, so this was good.

Today I am angry, for, despite knowing that Japanese Equities are undervalued, and trade is increasing rapidly, my lack of Japanese means that I cannot invest. Dozens upon dozens of wholesale brokerages, but no retail. Nobody wants the poor mans money. Unless he is literate. I found it hard to find a list of Japanese brokerages online, so, if I ever learn Japanese in time to start trading shares, here are a few of the bookmarks:

www.rakuten.co.jp
www.etrade.ne.jp
www.matsui.co.jp
www.monex.co.jp

I dont believe in pensions. Not even remotely. To me, it represents the statement: "I'm so rubbish with money that I am going to hire a drunken expense account frauding loudmouth red-braces wearing wideboy to blow my cash on Porsche's, Charlie, and maybe some HSBC stock."
Ok, so i'm envious of anyone that made it in The Square Mile, but that doesn't mean I am wrong....
- posted by Daniel @ Monday, October 17, 2005 6 comments

 
Lounger
Picture of apples for sale at 630Yen = over 3 pounds.

Saturday afternoon: after lounging around the flat accomplishing a grand sum of Zero things done, I jumped onto the Yamanote and headed down to Shinjuku for coffee. Coffee and Jazz. and then productivity began, starting with a great deal of reading, followed by a flirt with writing some Japanese. I am quite useless, having been here for so long, and being so utterly incapable; so every now and then, guilt and humiliation work together to make me learn a handful of words and symbols. A shrinking hippocampus works to allow me to forget with expedition. The cafe was excellent. I will hand over my cash to anyone who can drown me in Art Pepper and play the sound of Hoegaarden flowing into a real Hoegaarden glass. Whilst staying at home results in the internet the chance to sucking my life away, being outside {reading, learning, excercing} - all developing - allow you to end the day with a feeling that somehow, your existence was, perhaps, dare i say it, worthwhile. So, to be repeated. Especially on school nights. Got home, and heard a fantastic quote from Matt: After the first date, gays sleep together. Lesbians move in together. "I like you" versus "You complete me".

Sunday was earthquake day . My first, so rather exciting. I was on the phone at the time (VoIP, of course) which was uninterrupted. The building shook a little, and then the doors began rattling, a few seconds later, it all calms down. A few more vibrations with the aftershocks. Rather exciting, and it was good for me too.

After making several phonecalls on Sunday, including one failing to convince my father to by a Tuscan villa, and another rather more unnerving one I also took some time off to wander around Tokyo trying to get lost. It's quite hard, you will eventually wander out of the residential area and into retail terrority, and find a subway. And then I found myself eating a cream cheese bagel, and thinking about heading home. Sunday evening was spent watching North by Northwest. Cary Grant is The Man.

My agency called me today to complain about the fact that I have blown 16,000 Yen on the phone they 'gave' me to use last month, despite the fact that international calls are barred.


My favourite break right now is James Lavelle's Eye for an Eye. About 2 minutes into the track, the music quietens to silence, favouring instead a sample from a film. A voice of controlled despair informs us "Where you're going you're not coming back from." Then immediately invoke heavy drums and a synthesizer. I know nothing of classical music, but I'm starting to think that breaks are reversed. So, in BreakBeat, you have slow build up, and the rhythm finally starts on break, repeating ad nausea; whereas in the Magic Flute I was listening to this morning, the great crescendo signals the end of the melody. If this is either tosh or rudimentary, I'd love to know. Comments please. I'm sure they are out there, but I am yet to meet an aficionado of Classical music (other than Benj) who doesn't sneer at my lack of knowledge. I remember being laughed at when I asked someone if Classic FM was a good place to start learning. The concept of Frasier Crane is hilarious, until you meet him. The reason why I am so bothered about classical music is that I reckon a good portion of melodies in todays house music derive from them. Again, either tosh or rudimentary.
- posted by Daniel @ Sunday, October 16, 2005 1 comments

 
Snippets of emails that have made me laugh of late
Shobie's guide to getting rid of a woman:

If you *really* wanna get rid of her, just send her a reply saying how much you miss her and that you admire her and that she reminds you of your mum... There's no way she will keep in touch with you then. BUT if she still contacts you, THEN you should really avoid her.

Advice, I dare say, that I will have little use for. Then from Geoff:

Drank 7 pints last night and feel fine, bar a certain fuzzy quality to my thinking. I take this as a sign that my tolerance is far too high. I shall try not to drink for a bit, but I will probably fail.

A summary of James:
Have finished my marking... am happy, especially that 1 student in particular won't be doing better than a B (arrogant little bugger).....Feel free to call me regarding existentialist / erosion of morality debates

The Self Deprecating humour from me:

>Thing you have done in your life of which you are most proud?
so far, i feel like God, from the perspective of Woody Allen. "basically he's an underachiever"

A job agent telling me about the how busy the market is:

Yep the market is Okay (not booming) but i'll live...

just after he told me that he is 26, and has a Boxster that he doesn't use, 'because it doesn't have aircon'

- posted by Daniel @ Friday, October 14, 2005 1 comments

 
Last weekend

this post for last weekend is rubbish, because of the lag time between event and document. thus it will be an unenjoyable read, but this is the best i can do, for now.

Saturday, and CEATEC Japan is hosting a huge fest for electronics and gadgetry. The coolest things on display were the cycling robot, a full 3d projection by Pioneer, a new harddisk cartridge-style interface from Hitachi, and a fuel cell powered notebook from Toshiba, and a smalltime guy with a wearable computer and headset. I'm sure I overlooked dozens more innovations, but quite frankly, I dont care. Come up with something more tangible to the consumer, and then i'll give you a few seconds of my ever decreasing attention span.

After CEATEC, i went to this bar near work, where Pa-i-ru (Paul) arranged to hook up prior to some rooftop party he was talking about. After many beers, we finally trekked off down to some rooftop, just in time to get to the end of the party. The Crazy Frenchman wanted to steal a boat, but settled for chucking a traffic cone into the river instead. "Mais, j'ai une licence". Which, in his inebriated state, somehow legitimized theft. The rooftop party cleared up, and we all went down to the 3rd floor to hang out in this guys apartment. The gaigin community can, in some ways, be paralleled to student life. A social minority with free wings, plenty of time, and plenty of complaints. The apartment got boring around 4am, and so i headed out in search of photos, and the first trains on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, it began to rain, so I took refuge in a 7-11 for an hour, sitting cross-legged on the floor ducking away from the staff, and read my book. Got the first train home, and passed out around 6am. Sunday wasn't so pleasant.

I did, however, manage to get enough time to wander down to the Toyota Theme Park. here, you can try ANY production Toyota car, for a small fee, around their test track, just by booking in advance. I didn't book, so i wandered across to the museum, and drooled over an E-Type, a Mustang, a DeLorean etc. And I felt sick when enduring the GT simulator. In all, lots of metal, very cool, and will be going back, after i make the bookings. The car which I liked most - a Celica which used a padlock to nail the boot down. Simplicity without elegance. Very moi.

On Monday, I took a trip to the national museum. I hate pots and ancient utensils. Archaeologists dig them up, and are so proud to polish and present them to the museums, but when are they going to realise that cooking from a pot in the 2nd century AD was not that amazing? That said, i did find the gold writing on the blue cloth fascinatingly intricate. There were lots of other Samurai related displays which were equally intriguing, and left me realising that I was actually in Japan. This feeling was battered further into me when I bought some disgusting fried squid balls on the way home.

Got back home, and bought myself a lightweight pair of trousers from Uniqlo (an), bread (an), cheese (camembert & brie), wine (SA). Of course, the cheese cost more than the trousers. I then proceeded to finish the long weekend by consuming all of the previous, bar the trousers, and watching Do The Right Thing. Woke up the next morning feeling seasick. Too much cheese, that was probably rotten, and probably French. I emailed work to say I wasn't coming in. Woke up a couple of hours later, feeling good, and having zero intention of going to work. So i went for a run, ate lots of raw tuna, and read a little. And I felt really good about not going in to work.

And then when i got to work on Wednesday, i actually felt like doing some work. which was good, because i had some to do.

On Tuesday evening, having spent most of the day quite productively doing nothing, I headed down to Shinjuku to find Some Place. After spending 1 hr roaming around, unable to understand the poor map that I had sketched out for myself, i turned to the internet, on my phone, for help. It actually saved me. del.icio.us -> Some Place's Homepage -> Address -> Japanese address. Showed it to a man on the street, and he directed me to exactly where I should be going. Magic. And then i had 30mins to kill. So, I remembered that I saw a sign in the window of a shop up the street that said "English Cafe". Wunderbar, I'll get some bacon and sausages and eggs and drool drool drool whilst I wait. There was no bacon, no fried eggs, and no certainly no hash browns. Instead, there was a sofa, which I ended up sitting on, and speaking English, to a paying Japanese audience of two. It turns out that an English Cafe is a place where people can go to practice English in conversation, with native speakers. Be warned.

- posted by Daniel @ Thursday, October 13, 2005 1 comments

 
Packaging
Japan appears to be packaging crazy.

You buy a box of chocolates. To eat the chocolates, you must:

-Take it out of the bag that will have been thrust upon you at the shop
-Tear off the shrink wrap plastic
-Open the cardboard box
-Remove the inner placeholding card
-Unwrap the individually wrapped chocolates.
-Eat an bite sized chocolate (message to grammar / spelling anal Bell: the 'an' is deliberate to emphasis singularity. but thank you for noticing.)
- Clear large pile of rubbish.
- Resist feelings of envy towards the bin, which now appears to contain a greater volume of product than your stomach.

Bentos are another great waste. Your lunch will arrive with approximately 2 kg of prepared oil and tree, and about 400g of food. I wonder if there are stats out there estimating the annual forest destruction of trees pillaged in the name of Japanese chopsticks. Comments?

I am pretty sure that one of the people I drink with is an alcoholic. He is drunk every day, and doesn't stop until closing. I am now thorougly intrigued to monitor his progress throughout my stay.

- posted by Daniel @ Wednesday, October 05, 2005 7 comments

 
Consumer Driven Madness
To me, Tokyo has come to mean materialism at it's very zenith. From the boys who drive around in LHD Brabus' because it cool, to the staple LV handbag that every girl must have.

So on Sunday I went to Ginza to drop a pill; T is for Tokyo culture, the infantile, shallow, voracious pursuit of Materialism. I kinda like it.

Only 10 years ago, Sony was a bleeding edge firm, creating both the gadgets and the notion of a lifestyle associated with it. Today, it's dominance has fallen, but not it's arrogance. And because of this, the Sony store in Ginza is cool. 5 floors of all the latest gadgetry, many yet to be realised to the public - Blu Ray Disc, the latest ultra bright Bravia TV's, a remote control LCD touchscreen that doubled as a TV, some Aibos, PSP aplenty, etc. etc.. Visits mandatory for geeks.

Random picture of central Tokyo


The Nissan flagship store was around the corner was my next stop. I think that Nissan figured showrooms are more conducive to sales if they are voluminous, plush, and teemed with gorgeous women. I think they had some cars, too.

Damian flies out today. So yesterday we went to some bars, and drunk some sake, and toasted to speed at which Japan has driven him towards bankruptcy. The main thing I remember is:

• I thought we had absolutely nothing in common, but it appears that he, too, is a less sucessful person amongst more successful siblings and friends. However, he lacks in the inferiority complex that is so core to my character.
  
• He talks a lot more when he is drunk
• I paid for the previous dinner, he paid for this one. I felt cheated that his bill was over 60pounds cheaper than mine.
• I turned up to work too late for a 10am meeting the next day.
  

Random existential thought: I'm not sure, but I think the opposite of happiness is anxiety. You can be unhappy and happy and the same time, because you can be unhappy about some things and happy about others. But anxiety appears to overrules all emotions. A line that has been playing through my mind of late: "I wanted to create a channel to bleed my spine of the emptiness that had been forced upon it". Perhaps I have been listening to too much UNKLE. At least Satre loves me...

Yesterday I was assigned the Title "Tivoli End-to-End Technical Lead, Japan". Today i figured out how to spell Tivoli.

- posted by Daniel @ Monday, October 03, 2005 2 comments