Category Archives: random

Starbucks New Year’s Mugs 2011

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Happy New Year! When I was in Japan before Christmas, I was worried that I would have to ask a friend to buy me one of the Starbucks New Year’s mugs. I’ve collected them the last five years. Normally they go on sale December 26, and I was heading home on Christmas Eve.

Fortunately I stumbled into the Starbucks in Kyoto on Sanjo, one of the most famous Starbucks locations in Japan (second only to the one in Shibuya that looks over the スクランブル交差点?). For whatever reason, they, and a couple of other shops in Kyoto, already had the mugs and tumblers on sale.

I’m very impressed with this year’s design. I went with the black lined with vermillion. Each of the mugs has two images embossed in gold, and the larger image on the black mug is of a whale lifting up a boat with the Hinomaru. Interesting design. Slight dig at the Australian anti-whalers?

Emergency Rinks – 1Q84 Book 3 Review, Tachiyomi Apps, Beer Gardens

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Qwick! Emergency Rink Time!

“Unresolved mystery from the mind of Murakami”

This is my review of 1Q84 Book 3. It was tough to review this volume without providing some semblance of plot summary for the first two books, so avoid it if you are waiting for a spoiler-free English translation. Although, to be honest, one thing I’ve realized from reading 1Q84 is that Murakami’s fiction is process-based and not plot-based. You’re not reading to figure out what happens; you’re reading to experience the action of the novel along with the protagonist. So spoilers shouldn’t matter all that much. This is also why I think Murakami is weak when writing in third-person: he depends so heavily on tying a reader’s feelings to a single character (easy to do in first person) to make the process feel more immediate that he can’t write complex third-person fiction. The flip flopping of chapters is kind of a weak way to mix up the point of view. At least in other novels where he used the technique he was telling different stories. Ugg. Depressing. SHORT STORIES. WRITE SOME SHORT STORIES.

“Big (only) in Japan? Rooftop beer gardens”

A little extension on the linguistic aspect of this article. Japanese commenters on various websites note that “beer gardens” are ビアガーデン rather than ビールガーデン because it’s closer to the English pronunciation of the word “beer,” but that begs the question why beer isn’t always pronounced like that. One possible answer is that ビア is one syllable shorter, making the longer compound “beer garden” one syllable more efficient and easier to say. It also prevents there from being two awkward long vowels that result with ビールガーデン.

“Tachiyomi: Do it on your device”

I can’t believe that this app hasn’t existed until now. I think the only excuse is probably the rights for the magazines themselves. Although, the real secret is that most people tachiyomi comic monthlies – not magazines – so it’s easier to read the “whole” issue. I bet they target the current episode of the stories they follow and then just skim the rest of the issue.

Ret’s Rink – KFC, Pervs, Boring People, Cheap Hotels

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Yes, it’s that time again – Japan Pulse rinkage time.

“KFC goes for finger-lickin’ health-conscious goodness”

I did KFC for Christmas in Japan once, and it was thoroughly disappointing. The most disappointing part was that it wasn’t sold out. I heard from friends in Aizu that you had reserve it weeks in advance, and a guy on my exchange program at Waseda said the same thing (and he wasn’t out in the middle of nowhere). So I was super surprised when I strolled up at 1:30PM and there was chicken to be had for anyone and everyone – I wanted special, reservation-only Christmas chicken! Oh well. All in all, probably the most disappointing Christmas meal ever. This is instructive, however. Ritual is an important part of Japanese culture; not just performing the ritual, but also drumming up the spirit to perform the ritual at an appropriate level of excitement and ensuring that others have this same level of excitement – this is something that I am good at. Damn I was excited for Christmas chicken, and damn did I eat it up. To be honest, though, I prefer to create my own rituals (which involve spending lots of money on oysters).

I love Subway’s 野菜のSUBWAY slogan. I think it’s brilliant. I’ve previously written about Subway’s “hot peppers” as well as their “veggie” dog.

Oh, and does anyone know how the new KFC turned out? Or how the new McDonalds is going? Am I the only one who thinks they’ll probably end up just as dirty as the normal Shibuya/Shinjuku places?

“Passion for ‘garage kit’ models mounts at Wonder Festival”

I knew almost nothing about garage kits before writing this post and was pleasantly surprised by what I discovered. The garage kit community, although perhaps a little pervy, is impressively homegrown and self-promoting. It’s even more impressive that the companies have made as many copyright concessions as they have; imagine J.K. Rowling attending a fan fiction convention and judging the best Harry Potter knock-off – that’s the literary equivalent.

“iPhones become ice-breakers at gokon dating parties”

I think I broke a gokon rule once. I organized one with a girl not too long ago as a favor for another girl, and I was actually interested in the girl I organized it with. Anyone know if that’s a big no no? I can tell you one thing – it was unsuccessful. I spent too much time paying attention to my friend instead of the friend she brought, who while very attractive was pretty uninteresting. Oh well.

I can say one thing about these iPhone apps – if you are drinking alcohol and need ANOTHER crutch to catalyze conversation at your group date, you are probably very boring.

“Pulse Rate: ikyu.com”

This website struck me as a Rakuten Travel for very expensive hotels. Most of the accommodations on ikyu.com are super high-end, even with the 60% discount that some of their deals get. Rakuten, on the other hand, is more affordable and incredibly useful. They have cheap rooms all over the country, and for most of the hotels you don’t have to pay in advance. You also earn points that you can save up and spend at any Rakuten shop. When my mom brought a couple of friends to visit Japan, I used Rakuten to book nearly all of our hotels and accumulated something ridiculous like 20,000 yen worth of points, which I blew on beer.

Ret’s Rink – Mixi, Free Rent, King’s Quest, Murakami

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Time for another round-up of what I’ve been writing for Japan Pulse.

“Mixi helps users socialize with new apps”

It took Facebook a while to break into Japan, but when it did, Mixi was slow to react. It looks like they are starting to get the idea. Every time I log in (which has been somewhat infrequent), I see new features and designs. The good news is that it hasn’t changed too much – it’s still a great place to interact with real, live Nihonjin. I put up messages on a couple New Orleans communities and got a reply from a Japanese couple that will be moving from France to New Orleans in July. My brain thirsts for 会話.

“Pulse Rate: ‘Free rent’ pricing aims to fill up empty apartments”

When I moved back home, I was worried it would be tough to find material for Pulse. I shouldn’t have worried – if you give to the Internet, it will give back to you. I keep the Google Keywords feed in my RSS reader and try to take a look at them every now and then. I’m convinced that TV plays a huge part in driving the ebb and flow of keyword searches (and also trends in Japan), but this was the first time I was able to prove it. I found a website describing how the term “free rent” appeared on Gacchiri Academy. Several hours later, it was at the top of the keyword search. I was able to find the official site, which has the segment almost line by line, and figure out what the deal was. Perhaps the inflexibility with rent pricing will eventually lead to the abolishment of all key money. I’m sure everyone would appreciate that.

“Big (Only) in Japan? ‘Greensleeves’”

King’s Quest! I played this back in the day on my dad’s Amiga…or maybe it was the Commodore? I can’t remember. I do remember being frustrated by the game. My dad copied it from a friend, so we didn’t have any of the manuals or anything – I had no idea what to do. My brothers and I just walked the character around, pulling carrots out of the ground, leading the goat around and falling into wells. I also remember the music – Greensleeves is the name of the tune. It was a surprise to encounter it so often in Japan.

This post was a little weak to be honest – it was fun to highlight the phenomenon (which, surprisingly, no one on the blogosphere has done yet), but I wish I could have dug a little deeper and figured out exactly WHY Greensleeves gets used as hold music. There must be someone who knows.

“Who will feed the Haruki Murakami fans online?”

Man, someone at Random House needs to be fired. Who decided that their author websites need embedded music? First of all, check out Murakami’s official English site. Yeah, the music is kind of spooky and cool…for the first five minutes or so. In the words of Mitch Hedberg, it’s like pancakes – all exciting at first, but by the end you’re fuckin’ sick of ‘em. At least Cormac McCarthy’s site doesn’t autoload the music. But, yeah, it also has music. It’s easy to excuse these guys for being born outside of the Internet generation, but come on! Their editors or publishers clearly haven’t thought this through. Maybe the editors and publishers are all old dudes, too? Oh well. William Gibson gets it. Steven Hall (granted he’s young) gets it. Their blogs take a hit when they are writing, but it’s awesome to read their posts when they do write them. Gibson had a stretch earlier this year just after he finished his latest novel where he answered a ton of reader questions about the way he writes. Very interesting stuff. The lesson is this – learn how to own your identity on the Internet. You don’t have to be a Zuckerbergian and tweet what you had for breakfast, but you should know how you’re being represented

So, yeah, hire me to do the News section on the Murakami site? I know I could do better than what they currently have. The release of 1Q84 in Japanese deserved a mention as did all the announcements about the translation release schedule and whatnot. Random House is asleep at the wheel. Inexcusable.

I’m curious to know exactly how much Murakami has to do with the Japanese 1Q84 site. Some of the posts are focused only on the people in the publishing section. Strange that Murakami would be so controlling about keeping plot details under wraps and then let other folks post freely on the official site for his book.

This user-submitted illustration of the Little People walking into someone’s mouth was my favorite. Too bad that wasn’t the reason he called the book 1Q84.

号外 – My Moment

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Meant to include this with the previous post, but…

The New York Times photojournalism blog Lens had an event called “Moment in Time” where they asked readers to take pictures at 15:00 U.T.C. on Sunday, May 2. This was midnight in Tokyo, and I submitted a photo of my room:

I narrowly missed what may have been a nice shot of the last shinkansen train to Kyoto as it passed by at five minutes to midnight, but I think the shot of my room is a pretty good representation of where I was at that point in time – confused, disorganized, indoors.

So here is a follow up:

I’m ready to go and have just about everything in order. I’ve been telling my roommates 帰らない。行ってくるよ。

Ret’s Rink – Tape, Collective Housing, Instant Ramen, Daburu Koron and お出かけ

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Delayed edition of Ret’s Rink – apologies: I’ve wanted to post this for a while but haven’t been able to. My imminent return to the U.S. has me preoccupied.

“Big (only) in Japan? Tape as proof of purchase”

Obvious to many, annoying to some, tape is a way of life in Japan. It’s an easy way to avoid using excess baggage in this baggy land o bags. Tokyo is not nearly as strict when it comes to reusing bags to throw out garbage. I remember the Lithuanian artists who lived up in Fukushima. They couldn’t understand why you had to buy special trash bags when the grocery store gives you bags for free.

“Apartment shares in Japan draw a share of the herd”

Last week I went back to the small town in Fukushima where I spent three years. I met up with the English conversation class and some other close friends to say my goodbyes. I also dropped by the elementary schools and junior high school where I taught. I ate lunch with the junior high schoolers and sat across from one of the punks who liked me as a teacher but didn’t particularly enjoy English. He was trying to be a bit of a badass throughout the meal (steal my milk etc.), so I was surprised to hear him say, “Daniel-sensei, your Japanese got better since you left Nishiaizu.” I don’t feel like my spoken Japanese has improved much, but I guess it has. Hooray for collective housing!

If you look at that article close enough, you should be able to figure out who I rent my apartment from. If you got in touch with him, I’m sure he might be able to help locate or set up an apartment share for you.

Yen for Living also had a post about increased collective housing among the locals.

“No Konbini No Life: instant maze-soba”

I’ll be honest, I hadn’t had real maze-soba before I wrote this article. I had, however, read enough of Ramen Adventures to know vaguely what I was talking about. I have since had a bowl, and everything I wrote is pretty much right on. I had the real deal at Infini over in Togoshi-koen this past Sunday after a night of boozing. The raw egg yolk, raw garlic, spicy mayonaise, roasted garlic and katsuo flakes combined to make a perfect hangover cure; I even managed to go on a four mile jog later that afternoon. But, damn, it has to be one of the least healthy foods in Japan.

“Daburu Koron hit big time with pun-riddled riddles”

Sunday night I was watching TV with my roommates and noticed that Bakusho Red Carpet had strayed from its usual formatting – instead of short gags, a panel of four comedians were doing these weird 謎掛け jokes. Nezucchi seems to be the master. I don’t see these lasting for very long – kind of like sudoku in the U.S., these will probably fizzle at some point in the near future.

お出かけ Rinks

A couple of cools links from my RSS reader:

“Shiori”

A great post over at No-sword about the origin of the name Shiori. It made me think about names in general, specifically about how long it takes for names to move beyond secondary meanings (if they ever do). I forwarded the post to a friend named Shiori, and she said that in addition to “bookmark” jokes: “When they [her classmates] grew up a little to 5th grade, they found my name becomes “oshiri” if you rearrange the order of letters. I was soooo popular in class back then ;-)”

“Infiniti Brand Journey: Hakone”

David Marx continues his journey across Japan, this time stopping at the ryokan in Hakone. His description of the feel of ryokan is great – in particular the luxurious, even indulgent, level of privacy they offer. The best birthday present I ever got was a stay at an onsen ryokan in a room that had a private onsen – they bring you food and beer, too, so you never have to leave the room.

Marx is excited to be on the road in Japan, but he leaves out the most annoying parts of driving in Japan – the constant red-light running, intense tailgating and the use of hazard lights to turn any location into a personal parking space.

“Do you, editors, take this Japan robot press release to be your awful embedded lead?”

Just started reading Our Man in Abiko. He is right on with this post. Hilarious.

“The tyranny of the sub-goal”

Great post over at Thoughts On Translation. I’ve been trying not to become slave to sub-goals ever since reading this article. I am Spartacus!

In Search of Lost Ramen

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On JET, my days started early and ended early – I was finished by 4:15 and had plenty of time after school to make dinner, watch TV, read and write. I could take my time. Moving to Tokyo, however, made my free time much more valuable. I spent more time commuting and had to work longer hours. For a long time my Tokyo life strategy was to eat meals as quickly as possible, meals that required little to no prep time so that I could get back to a productive activity. I am now a master of the 30-minute bowl of lentils and the 5-minute tuna fish sandwich. I have also eaten my fair share of bento.

As my time in Japan has started to wind down, I’ve found myself a little restless. I can’t really start or even continue many of my projects; I’m not working full time anymore; and I also feel a strong need to fill my Japan-sensors to full capacity before I disappear myself back to New Orleans. So I’ve been wandering a bit recently in search of small neighborhood restaurants – 食堂 or ramen restaurants, anything really. I’d always sought out great beer, but now I’ve been taking my time with food.

I have three trusty allies. The first is my map, which I wrote about here. I’ve had it for a long time but have never used it as thoroughly as Brian has. After hanging out with him a while, I’ve realized he carries it with him constantly, and whenever anyone has a recommendation for ramen or a museum, he marks it down on the map for future reference. Respect.

The second is Ramen Supleks Database. This I found via Ramen Adventures. Just plug in a station name and up pops a list of restaurants with reviews and pictures. Great Japanese reading practice. I’ve found a couple tasty places including an evil-good 家系 place in Omori and an interesting modern place near 戸越公園 – that gives you the full extent of my wanderings.

Another less reliable restaurant listings website is Tabelog. This site has more than just ramen, but it also has a bunch of restaurants that are promoted by ads. Basically you can always ignore the first two or three restaurants on any given search because they are ad-supported.

So my advice to Tokyo residents is this: Force yourself to explore the 20-minute vicinity around your apartment on foot. You might find a useful train line you never considered using before. Or a great restaurant. (Or at least a mediocre one run by really nice people.) Or just some cool neighborhoods that help you fill up your Japan sensors.