Day 70, September 9, 2002

They showed Anne of Green Gables on the movie channel last night. I stayed up until 1AM watching it instead of getting a good night's sleep, but I'm glad. I had totally forgotten that that movie was burned into my consciousness. And I don't think I ever quite realized what a fabulous film it is, either. Richard Farnsworth. Wow. The music, too. It caught me totally off guard, and I was lying there in bed simultaneously laughing and crying through most of it. I think that's going to have to be required viewing for my theoretical children.

Day 71, September 10, 2002

Last night I had dinner with Sherman Abe (ah-bay), a college friend of my father's who teaches corporate finance at a business school in downtown tokyo. Had a very nice Thai meal, with the first legitimately spicy thing I've eaten here, a liberally chili'd tom kha gai coconut soup. It's been a while since I've eaten anything spicy enough to make my *ears* hurt. Y'know how sometimes a spicy dish kind of gets up into your eustachian tubes? That kind of spicy. Tasty. Sherman, as it turns out, is from San Bernardino. Which is, for those not in the know, my usual hunting grounds for flying and thrift shopping. It was really interesting to hear about it from the perspective of someone who grew up there in the 50's as opposed to nowadays -- San Ber'doo is pretty run down, and not showing many signs of perking up, even as the nearby city of Riverside is experiencing something of a boom thanks to the (relatively) new UC campus there.

We had dinner near his office in Jimbocho, apparently a sort of university/bookstore district. It's about 15 minutes from Shijnuku on the subway. On the express train back, there was a rather amusing ongoing drama centering around a VERY large and very ornate moth that had somehow found its way into the somewhat crowded train and was flying around very confusedly, bumping into heads, legs, bags, windows, and just about everything else. The reactions were so funny to watch -- everyone is totally cool until it gets about two feet away from them, and then they start flinching and cringing, myself included. It's a very strange effect. You've got to wonder what the heck we're afraid of... It was really amusing to watch it leave down to the other end of the train car and see the wave of motion flow down that way until my end was totally subdued again. Subdued, that is, except for my raucous laughter.

I went ahead and placed the order for an AD-20 Inbox mic preamp/A/D converter, the last thing I need to be able to start doing at least decent recordings. It'll be a while longer before I can record really CD-quality audio on my Jukebox because of software issues, but I'm kind of considering trying to build my own system for that anyways. All it would need:

HD Power (batteries + charging circuitry) Microcontroller Digital audio input. Optical would be nice, but I don't really care. USB2/Firewire interface to get data off of it. Record level monitoring

Good bells and whistles: Headphone output, Playback of recorded material.

Did I forget to mention that I've switched cubicles? There's a new (transferred from some other section) guy in our section, and he wanted the cubicle I was in before, so I got shuffled over to a smaller one on the other side of the section. It's actually kind of nice, my computer is now facing the opposite way, so I can watch the goings on in the office as I work. Plus, I don't have that annoying feeling of people looking over my shoulder, even though nobody ever is. Call me paranoid.

I listened to a couple of TAL episodes today that were pretty marginal. The first, called "Animals," deals with how animals are ultimately still animals no matter how much we like to anthropomorphize them, and finished with two of the least interesting stories I've heard them do -- a 15 minute radio theater bit about animals running a courtroom where the lawyers eat the witnesses and each other and the judge eats the last remaining lawyer. Totally lame. The last story was about a couple of guys who decided that they didn't like to theory that humans departed from the animal world when they first developed tools and stood upright. These guys wanted to see if they could support their own theory, which was that standing upright allowed humans to successfully run down prey -- that is, simply run after an animal until it collapsed from exhaustion in hot weather. Part of the motivation being, of course, that many animals don't sweat, and have a harder time dissipating heat than us. The problem, of course, is that walking upright is NOT good for running. We're slower than just about every other animal, we can't run as far, and moreover, quadripeds are twice as efficient as us at running. They recorded their trip to Yellowstone or some similar park where they proceed to try and run down an antelope. Not surprisingly, they don't succeed, and don't really show anything interesting in the process...

The second was called Hitler's Yacht. It was a full-hour story about a german yacht, built to avenge the German failure in the olympic races prior to the war, which eventually made it to the US and acquired the reputation of having been Hitler's personal boat. Which of course it was not. Something about how people really just value historical memorabilia as symbols, that their authenticity is irrelevant, but somehow it failed to make me care...

Day 74, September 13, 2002

so I just found out that this monday the 16th is a national holiday, which means I have a three-day weekend to go to Hakuba. That is SO nice. Even better, *next* monday the 23rd is *also* a national holiday, so I have two three-day weekends in a row! And the weekend directly following my birthday in October is another long weekend. They spread their holidays out a lot nicer in Japan.

In fact, I'm considering changing my plane reservation again from October 29th to November 5th, since the weekend of the 2nd 3rd 4th is another long one, but we'll see about that later -- what's cool is that I can change my reservation at no charge as long as I change it to a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. Could be very useful. Thank you Japan Airlines.

Weather looks to be good in Hakuba. Not great, but good enough to merit the rather expensive train ticket up there, at least this once. I'll leave work at 4:30 today and try to find my way up there tonight. If the bus is way cheaper I may do that, although it'll take a damn long time to get there. For all I know the bus ticket could be half the price of the train for an extra hour or two of travel time.

Day 77, September 16, 2002

I finally got to fly. I took the bus because it was about half as much, but it ended up being more than an hour late in arriving, and the travel to get to the bus stop, which is actually just a little turnout on the highway, took about two hours. Quite the hassle. The train can actually be had for only about 50%, maybe $20, more than the bus. Hakuba is a beautiful little mountain ski resort town. Basically all of the business there is hotels and b&b’s. There was, though, a surprisingly tasty tex-mex restaurant. People up there are WAY friendlier. They’ll ask where you’re from, talk about their own lives, and offer to help you out. Why can’t SKK be in a nice place like that? I forgot to bring my camera when I went to the actual flying site, so no pictures of that just yet, but honestly the weather was not really worth photographing in anyways, all overcast with occasional huge walls of fog and cloud puffing up into the launch area.

The local instructors are very competent, but I get the impression that the rest of the pilots in the area are *really* badly trained. They don’t follow international right-of-way rules, don’t know how to launch safely, and *really* don’t know how to land safely… On my second landing I was confronted with three other gliders coming at me head-on (i.e. downwind!) and ended up sliding in rather ungracefully whilst avoiding them.

Best part about flying there so far, since the weather and actual flying were nothing special, is being able to watch olympic hopefuls practicing their … ski jumping? That’s right, the olympic ski jump arena from the nagano games is at the bottom of the very same mountain as I was flying from, so I got to fly right alongside and above where the jumpers were whooshing from. Pretty wild perspective to have on that sport – I mean, you never realize just how steep those jump landings are until you see them in real life, but when you actually watch the whole jump start to finish from a hundred meters above you gain a really great appreciation for it. Those guys are *nuts*.

I met a few people. The first was a young japanese guy who works at a hotel in the area – he gave me a ride to the hostel/house I was staying at. Seemed like a fun guy, I’ll go hang out with him again when I go back, probably next weekend if the weather allows. The other folks were: the aussie guy who runs the house I stayed at, another aussie guy who was staying there, a number of Canadians who teach english/run outdoor adventure tours in hakuba, and a few japanese folks from tokyo, one of whom apparently worked at one of the most well-known restaurants in Ebisu and knows some of their recipes. I’m going to go hang out with him sometime soon ;)

I did take some pictures from when I was walking around Hakuba, I’ll put those up soon. I came back Sunday night instead of Monday because the weather was looking to be even worse today, Monday. I decided that getting a lot of sleep was a better option than probably not flying.

Day 82, September 21, 2002

I was thinking about attempting some sort of flan today, but I realized that the baking really wouldn’t work so good. Instead I devoted some time to caramelizing sugar syrup, which I have never actually done before. It’s a bit tough – the sugar retains huge amounts of heat, so once it even starts to turn a little brown you pretty much have to get it off the heat straight away and out of the pot. It continues to brown to a very nice shade even sitting in a cold bowl. And such an improvement in flavor. Just a little vanilla and it’d be perfect. I am all of a sudden, just this second, having a craving for lamb chops with mint.

Day 83 September 22, 2002

Rode to Yokohama, about 30 km, then turned back when the weather started to look bad. I was right, and got pounded for the last 3km home. So wet. Then I went out with Jen to a Cajun (!) restaurant in Machida that turned out to be really good. All in all a very convincing rendition, save the smaller (read: not insane) portions. We then proceeded to eat a whole bunch of cake and ice cream at a local café/restaurant, since I was badly sugar-drained after a 4 hour ride. Mmmmmmm, cake. I have missed cake.

Day 85, September 24, 2002

Today at work Andrew Goul, grand high C-something-or-other-O of Schlumberger (not just SKK), came to speak. He talked about SLB’s market position, where “we”’re weak, strong, projected trends in the oil industry, talked a bit about how renewable energy is not a real threat for a while due to simple infrastructure requirements, about how there really needs to be corporate support for research on global warming and what the actual effects will be. He even went so far as to say that he was incredulous about the petroleum lobby’s recent spate of pro-environmental laws, noting that the realities of their operations in Nigeria are anything but friendly to people or the earth. I have to say, I was impressed. At the same time, it’s easy in SLB because they don’t own oil and don’t have to do the dirty work of securing it. Still, I feel like I’m working on the wrong side of the fence. I want to be on the side of the crazy nuts who swear renewable energy can go somewhere.

Day 86, September 25, 2002

In a realization fueled by the mystical shuffle function on my mp3 player and in tandem with a recent remake of Metropolis, I have come to the conclusion that Tokyo is best experienced in combination with suitably loud and bustling ragtime. There's something about the energy and rhythm of this city that jibes with that ragtime lively proletarian feeling. It's funny, though, because the actual attitudes/interactions of people here are anything but roaring twenties. It's more in the colors and crowds and motion -- brightly dressed people like you never see in the states in an urban landscape a hundred times more convoluted and sterile, filtering in and out of bars, restaurants, malls and shops from above, on and well below the street. Two-storied sidewalks are rather common, snaking up against the monstrous department stores that line the urban promenades... The expressways are all sound-walled in, captive constrictors slithering through downtown, lowering a vestigial leg every so often to disgorge a flow of cars onto the already gridlocked streets. You ever notice how in the US people don't usually build underneath the freeways and railroad tracks? Here there are entire districts that feel as though there is nothing *but* roadways and railcars overhead.

In a city like San Francisco the buildings and streets themselves have such character, the land screams at you to be noticed, but so many people of the new San Francisco walk around in muted autumn J.Crew colors. It's a creepily self-conscious aesthetic, everyone deathly concerned about their individuality while doing their best not to stand out too tackily. SF's got its merits, and I love it dearly, but it sure is fascinating to wander in a city where Joplin, Calloway, Piaf and Armstrong sing the pulse in some unholy cabaret quartet a la Bertolt Brecht

I went down to St. James Infirmary, Saw my baby there, Set down on a long white table, So sweet, so cold, so fair. Let her go, let her go, God bless her, Wherever she may be, She can look this wide world over, She'll never find a sweet man like me. When I die, want you to dress me in straight-leg shoes, Box back coat and a stetson hat, Put a 20 dollar gold piece on my watch chain, So the boys'll know that I died standing pat.

what's your city like?

I went to dinner last night with Dave, Kei, Mariko, and Kei’s anonymous but talkative girlfriend. We ate at a place called Fummy’s California Cuisine, and it was fan-fucking-tastic. A delicious caesar salad, a philadelphia tortilla roll with a wasabi mayonaisse, deep-fried shrimp sushi rolls sans rice in a sweet and sour sauce not unlike that which finds it’s way with thai spring rolls, only tarter.

The real stand-out though, was (of course) the selection of yours truly: Tandoori Spiced Pork Chop Grilled and served with Papaya Chutney and Peppercorn sour cream. I know, I know, papaya? This was the most impressive papaya things I have ever tasted, a papaya chutney with the consistency of mint jelly (perfect for pork chops) but a distinctly fruitier flavor. The sour cream was also exceptional.

For desert there was a fabulous assortment of ice creams plus a mind-blowing mascarpone-based cheesecake and a so-so chocolate brownie cake. A very good vanilla vanilla vanilla ice cream, and deeply perplexing burnt-caramel ice cream too. Think of ice cream with the subtlety of baker’s chocolate, only flavored like slightly burnt sugar instead. Droooool. I will return there before I leave.