Day 19 cont’d, July 20, 2002

So the tasty drink that I remembered so fondly from 1997 is still here, but has a different name now. Previously it was Royal Milk Tea. Now it’s Rose Life Tea. Packaging is otherwise identical; I almost didn’t notice cuz I usually spot it by that creamy light brown color and not the words, although I actually recognize the kanji on it (thanks to my interest in it 5 years ago). If you want to find it in a store in the US (it’s definitely imported there), look for a clear bottle with a white label and light brown milky tea. It should say one of the above titles, along with, probably, afternoon milk tea, although that may only be in Japanese.

I’m going to meet Jennifer in Machida around 7:40pm, and it’s about 6:15 now. I should probably switch all my clocks over to 24-hour time, since that’s what everyone seems to rely on here as the primary reference. Fortunately many places still use AM/PM, so everyone knows what you’re talking about. I think my watch can be switched, although I’m not sure. Em?

Listening to Dogs Outside. What a beautiful record. Hot damn.

I’m starting to have flashes of what I am slightly hesitant to call fluency, but I have had many conversations in the last week or two of which I couldn’t say what language they were conducted in, even as they were happening. Not to say that I understand everything that’s being said, but the interspersal of english and japanese words is now pretty un-alarming. Still, if I speak in serious idiomatic english for a few minutes, I have to consciously pay attention to switching back to Japanese.

Day 20, July 21, 2002

Today I’m going to go back to the second-hand tent store and see what I can do about a cheap guitar, and possibly a table or something. Should be a nice bike ride.

I just sort of remembered that being in Japan doesn’t preclude my keeping up on most of my music in the states as long as I have broadband internet access. Looks like some of my favorite hiphop groups have some new stuff out. Very cool. The problem, fundamentally, with indie music, is that you can never find the damn records in stores. I did make one purchase from Amazon today, though – God Love Ugly, by Atmosphere. Hip hop. Just thought it would be neat to get an Amazon package in another country.

The second hand store still had that guitar, so I bought it.

It’s a Yamaha FG-441L, and for about 38 bucks I got the guitar and a soft case. It looks like it’s basically never been played, but has some sticker goo and a few little scratches. It came with:

No strings

No bridge

No bridge pins

A broken headstock bridge.

A 1-inch chisel-break in the rear lower shoulder.

A left-handed pickguard (FG 441 *L*).

I figure that for less than 50 bucks I can scrounge up fixes for all of those things that require fixing, and have a functional beater guitar for well under $100. The resonance doesn’t really seem to be affected by the break in the back, so a little wax or something should be fine for that, unless I want to get fancy on it. Plus this way I can sand it, paint it, and not feel bad. I think that retail, if this guitar were still being made, it’d be in the $250-$400 range. The funny thing is that the protective plastic film is still on the pickguard. Either someone took their asian “don’t take it out of the plastic cuz then it’ll get dirty” fetish a bit too far, or it’s seriously not been played. Either way, I feel very good about saving a battered guitar from a lifetime of sitting in a non-musical secondhand store. I also thought about snagging a cheapo electric while I was there, but they were not in the same value range as this one. All the electrics were at least $100, and they were all total no-namers. Tried playing one, but none had decent strings, and there’s TV/video game noise everywhere, plus a really bizarre distortion-only amp, so who knows what it sounded like. And I FUCKING HATE IT when store clerks stand over you when you want to play with an instrument, y’know? Just get out of my face and let me fool around. Oh, I found a Kate Bush CD there, too, for $4.50. The Sensual World. I think Noe had recommended this to me, so I was a little surprised to find it in the bargain bin.

I think the best part of this guitar project is that I don’t actually get to hear the guitar until I’m done fixing it – it’s kind of like a musical DIY who-wants-to-marry-a-millionaire. First I have to go to Machida and see if that music shop has the necessary gear to fix this puppy up… I think I also ought to hit the hundred yen store and pick up some rudimentary tools – all I’ve got right now is my leatherman Wave. Screwdrivers, hammer, and some sandpaper, although the sandpaper will probably have to wait until I can find a hardware store. I don’t really want to drop the big bucks at the overpriced department stores, y’know?

Unfortunately I don’t know the word for hardware store. Gotta look that up.

…shop…shop…shop

Okay, with the help of my local music store in Machida and the 100 yen store, I have amassed:

A new nut

A new bridge

Bridge pins

C.F. Martin Bronze Lights

A strap pin for the base of the neck

Mini screwdrivers (set of 5)

Files (3)

2 kinds of glue

Hex wrenches (for bike stuff)

A small hand-op drill bit (2mm)

A hammer

A small visegrip (100 yen!!!)

Scissors

35m of plasticwrap

A new Lee Oskar Major Diatonic G harmonica

Grand total, about $50

Sandpaper, 80-400grit, 5 levels

Time to get to work. That hundred yen store has some stuff I never would’ve expected. VISEGRIPS??? SO cool.

…file…sand…sand…sand…sand…sand……glue…glue…notch...notch…notch…notch….notch…notch

…notch….notch…notch…notch….notch…notch

Okay. Two things.

One: I am a wicked musical-instrument-repair DIY badass.

Two: Sweet Jesus.

Three: This guitar…

Four: sounds…

Five: AWESOME.

2180 yen in the supplies from the hundred yen store and guitar shop that I actually used

+4000 yen for the case and guitar

= 6180 yen

/116(yen/dollar)

= $53.26 + ~ 1 hour of my time (at SKK billing rate of 150000yen/(23days*8hours) /116= $7/hour )

For a grand total of: $60.29

The sound. Boy, I wish I had some good recording gear here, it’s very nice. I think in part due to the fact that the saddle is at the opposite angle from normal, the volume across the entire range is very even, in spite of the thin-body dreadnought shape. The bass strings are shorter than the treble because of that. I’m sure it takes some punch out of the bottom end, but it’s so well balanced as is. The closest thing I can compare it to is that jet black guitar AJ Roach used to play until he got his new old Martin. Actually, the balance is about the same as an old OM Martin. What amazes me most, though, is how bright it is. Granted, this is with brand spankin’ new strings, but the Seagull has NEVER sounded like this even with new extra lights. Wow. Wow. Wowowowow. I even got the action almost perfect on the first try – the D string is about a quarter of a millimeter higher than the others, which could probably use a little bit of a lift for hard playing, but everything else including positioning across the neck and action at the high end is spot-on. I’ll take some pictures.

Forgot to mention: Last night I saw two new things.

Bats.

A lowered pickup truck.

The former was neeet. They fly around the street lamps on my block, and probably live in that unused park section. The latter was something that I had hoped, up till now, only people in the Americas were foolish enough to do. Oy vey.

Milk here is very tasty. Of course, even low fat milk here is whole milk – they don’t really seem to change much. Anyhow, the milk I just got yesterday at the grocery store nearby (the store brand milk, in fact), has that delicious taste of having been slighlty scalded. I wonder if their pasteurization processes differ slightly? The butter, too, is neat. Basically all dairy comes from Hokkaido, the northen island, and the butter is remarkable in that it stays a little bit soft (still cuttable with a dull butter knife, but not easily spreadable on delicate bread) even when kept in my very cold fridge.

The only thing that remains with the guitar is to regroove the bridge so that the fret positions will be exactly right again. Having the slope of the saddle the wrong way throws the high notes flat as you progress up the neck. Will probably need a better work area for that. Where can I find a router? Hmmm. Perhaps I’ll just make do until I get back to the states – I don’t really play much at the high end anyhow… An interesting problem. Any cool suggestions for how to go about making that opposite-sloped groove?

Day 21, July 22, 2002

Dinner:

HIGH Parboil one potato chopped into ~1/2”x1” chunks for 5 minutes.

Saute ¾ to 1 medium onion in thin strips till golden brown, using 1 or 2 tbs of butter. USE LOW HEAT for best onion results. It should take a while, maybe 20 minutes, but you can do other stuff in the meantime.

Fry potatoes (in onion grease if you like, but take the onions out first. Add oil as necessary, a few tbs should do it. You want a golden brown crust on the potatoes but a soft and boiled-feeling inside. Not charred hashbrowns, although that’d be an interesting variation.

Coarsely chop a cubic inch or two of gruyere and add it to the potatoes and onions, stirring together until nice and gooey.

Toast two pieces of whitebread with a little butter (butter optional). Sandwich, mofo! The potato-onion cheese mix will need about a tsp of salt to be good, but add incrementally. Smother with pepper to taste. Makes about 2 fat sandwiches’ worth.

Mmmm.

I’m trying to figure out a guitar part for Mattie and her trusty switchblade. So pretty.

I saw a little café/pub tucked in behind the train station in Machida yesterday that I want to check out. The façade reminded me a little of a coffee shop I went to with Raj and Sofia and the rest of the Danbury kids last spring break. Oh, and on Saturday as I was on my way to meet Jen in Machida I ran into one of the French interns from Schlumberger. He was also going to Machida to meet some friends (mostly interns), so we all went together and stumbled upon a sort of Neo-Japanese-Californian place on the 4^th floor of one of the big places in Machida. Remarkably good. And remarkably cheap – entrees in the $6 range. Wow. Very impressed, will go back there.

Work today was fine. I’m actually testing a whole circuit board that I built right now. Actually, I rebuilt the whole thing in a less cluttered way this morning because I thought my previous iteration wasn’t working – actually, the previous iteration was working perfectly, but the design was flawed – incorrect values for a couple of resistors made it screw up. Oh well. At least now it’s more easily modifiable. Anyhow, I’m going to do the heat tests just as soon as I figure out one more little thing. Actually, I may start on the heat tests and build another board while it’s baking, since that’ll probably take about the same amount of time.

Perhaps I’ll make a night-trip to Machida by bicycle. That’d be…

Okay, so I decided not to go to Machida because I wanted to ride totally unencumbered – no lock, no bag, just me and the bike. I went south, past the second hand store and turned left on one of the main roads down there. Then I saw a sign for a town I recognized as on the train line to Zama. I followed that road and then subsequent signs all the way to Zama, and with a bit of help from a few people walking around actually managed to find the train station itself, and Jen and Cameron’s place from there. Turns out Zama station is actually way up on top of a hill – you don’t notice because the train climbs very gradually. ‘Twas a bit of a surprise. The hill behind their apartment is actually just the tiptop of the main hill. Anyhow, the ride was between 10 and 15km each way, so not a bad little jaunt. Took approximately 45 minutes of actual riding time each way. This place is a trials-rider’s dream – everything is a ramp, and even the slopes at either side of driveway exits go up at about 10 or 12 degrees. Infinite jumping possibilities if you’ve got the inclination (pun). It’s also a road-rider’s dream – never any required stairs, and bikes lanes or at least semi-sufficient shoulders everywhere, along with pretty good pavement if you stick to the primary roads. Wouldn’t want to ride a road bike on the sidewalks though, it’d never survive. This is all late evening, though – after 10pm. I’m sure during the day the roads are a mighty pain in the ass.

Any remaining serious worries I had about this bike have been dispelled, although I still don’t trust the tires on dirt. It is phenomenally stiff, responsive, and FAST. Also light. I can pop the front and the back with ease even without the front brake. Honestly, though, with a front shock this soft, I don’t know why they even bothered putting rear brakes on this thing – the weight transfer forward is so strong that the back tire loses grip at even moderate brake pressures. I might want to get stiffer springs at some point, but the ride is pleasantly smooth in front for now. Needs bar ends.

Day 22, July 23, 2002

I now have a fridge full of Rose Life Tea.

A bit of trivia: In Japan, Pringles sells Curry-flavored potato chips. They also have some kind of mixed-spices chip, and a flavor they call “Mild Salt.” Yes, that’s exactly what it tastes like. For some reason I’m incorrigibly hungry tonight. I had dinner (finished the potato-onion-cheese sandwich filling), then drank a bunch of water and such, but I’m still feeling like I could eat a LOT. I think maybe it’s because I had a very big lunch and got myself into that big-meal mode. I think I should go get some honey or jam or something so I can have toast for breakfast or something. More eggs, too. I had a good chat with Nicolas about how crazy asians are – they get all surprised when you mention having had something sweet in the morning. It’s kind of like if I were to go into an office in the and say “How can you drink coffee so early in the morning???” Like, duh.

I got up at 7am and was at work by 8am today. I just knew that feeling as tired I as I was from the bike ride last night, I was not going to want to stick around work until 5:30 or 6. May make a habit of that, as it gets me home with a bit more time to plan an evening out, although today I stayed in except for the groceries. My legs are readjusting to cycling. It’s amazing how less fit you can become from just a few weeks of non-strenuous but continuous exercise. Still losing weight, though. It’s just starting to become really noticeable. I’m doing my best to eat in the older japanese fashion at work – fish, rice, not much fried stuff or beef. In fact, I haven’t had beef here at all except for a bit in the food at Gohan the other night. I don’t really miss it that much – but I definitely need to find some Kobe beef before I leave. Probably Kobe is the place for that ;P Tomorrow is an intern-dinner, so the fried rice will have to wait until the following day, I suppose. I ought to go get some rice vinegar, too. I wonder if you can get feta anywhere here? The cheeses I know I’ve seen were gruyere, camembert, roquefort, cheddar and mozzarella, but I know that japanese cheddar and mozzarella are a little different from the good euro-stuff. Not a lot of strong flavors.

Day 23, July 24, 2002

Had our little intern dinner/party today at work. Good food. I went to Machida to check out the little café/pub place, but it was closed. On their shutter-slide was a cityscape sunset painting, with, get this, the silhouettes of a flock of geese, a hang glider, and a paraglider, each about an inch or two in size. VERY intriguing. Instead I went to Rick’s, a “Restaurant Bar Americain” (sic), had a Bass, and taught one of the japanese guys the International Billiard Congress rules for 8-ball. These japanese bar pool players are not very good. But boy, explaining 8-ball rules is TOUGH. A lot of subtle transitive/intransitive stuff and passives… Good practice.