Thursday, October 13, 2005
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.
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