Monday, January 30, 2006
2 overnights, 1 weekend
Friday: spent friday in the akasaka office, trying to secure a contract renewal. Met with
Brian, who does not appear to remember the vinegar incident. Asked him for a two week break
between contracts, he agreed. If I can get Carl to give me two or more weeks off, i've got a
month to go to NZ and China, maybe HK again too. So, spend Friday having coffees, a long lunch
break, more coffee, and then sending personal emails. Leave work, and took a train out to Kamatori with Matt to a bar called Raver's Cafe. This is a seriously cool bar. We drove along some outskirt town, then out of town, and in the middle of nowhere, with no other buildings in sight, we spotted a place that was lit up, or rather decorated, like a Christmas Tree. A slightly deranged tatooed guy outside the cafe was sitting on one of the three sofas he had dragged outdoors, in the freezing cold, trying to warm his hands up against the - now raging - fire he had started in the middle of the carpark. I guess because the weather in Japan is quite predictable, you can do this. So I got a Japanese whisky - suntory owiski roko kudasai - and chilled outside. It was a good night. It was good to get away from english speakers, stare at the stars and actually feel like I was in Japan for a few brief hours. The music was cool too. Train back home, feeling miserable, 8am, sleep.
Saturday: Wake up the next day for about 2pm, read an email from Rimiko inviting me to some Lefty Peace film and discussion thing. I accept, intrigued to know what Japanese people figure about rearmanent (article 9) in the light of N Korea. Figure i've got enough time to run + change + head down there. Forward email to Josh. He's keen, because it sounds like a bunch of rainbow hippies eating organic humous. Turns out that it was. The film was interesting, yet one sided. The directory did not manage to interview an articulate rationale for disbanding article 9. Some interesting ideas from the evening:
+ army bases increase military threat, not decrease.
+ why do peace promotion organizations not target MNCs which are the only clear victors in the growing american empire?
+ japan is less nationalistic than it was many years ago, but the older generation are
desperately seeking to reignite xenophobia.
+ there has been no formal apology for WW2, and China and Korea are still fiercely enraged.
+ some South Koreans see Japan as a more serious enemy than North Korea.
+ some of the gaijin who have been here for years still struggle with the concept of being ntrinsically foreign looking in this rather homogeneous country, and thus feel unaccepted.
Get over it. It could be worse - at least they're not trying to insult you.
+ some of the youth are questioning the pressures of their elders for education, and the
correlating it with the unusually high suicide rate
Nearly gave up for the night, but as I was walking up to the gate by the metro, I got a call from Rheanna. Drunk coffee, exchanged pleasantries with Toby, called Sachin, met up with him and Omar in a bar next to Mori tower - Heartland. It was heaving, and, actually a cool bar in Roppongi. It wasn't even seedy. Impressed, and willing to return. The Sachin + Omar duo remind me of the Dipesh + Shiraz duo. Both good looking (although Rheanna didn't think so), sucessful with women, meterosexual, a similar friendly energy between them, and the Hindu + Muslim partnership thrown in for good measure. Then headed to Vanilla, where we you have to grab a flyer from outside which says "for use by girls and foreigners only" to discount entrance from 3000 to 1000 with two free drinks. that's practically subsidized. Stayed until 4am. Walked to Shibuya, Yamanote home.
Sunday: Woke up, recovered watching Sopranos, got a text from Gerald (my wap profile on my phone is screwed, so no more vodafone email) and jumped on a train to Yokohama, home of the largest ethnic Chinese population in Japan, for Chinese New Year. Yokohama is a pleasant place. Not as crowded and manic as Tokyo. Chinatown is cool, the dock area is cool. The rest is so so. I took photos, got home and looked at them on my PC. Gahhhh; horrible. I need to try harder to take better photos...
It dawned upon me, slowly over the weekend, that Dipesh may be a lazy employee, but he has a business nose like no other. I've learned the hard way what he was telling me 3 years ago. Spoke to Karena this morning. She concurred; but she always does. But: better to learn than to keep getting burned. And: using the theory 'find a new apartment before moving out of your current one' is the thought that is keeping me cool right now. Not like cool and calculated, but cool cos there is no point worrying. I'll cross the bridge when it comes to it. So: Status quo, since you can never have status quo ante. Besides, I dont want ante anyway.
I have an extremely limited understanding of economics, and am therefore confused as to how the
BoE can decide that an annual 12% increase in M4 equates to sub 4% inflation. It scares me to
think that any cash I hold is devaluing at the rate of 8% pa. Message: Dont hold cash. On the other hand, central banks, by definition, can't get it wrong, as they can just change the rules. Or can they....Lamont?
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