Thursday, December 28, 2006

Same view, 8AM.

The view from Momo's parents 48th floor balcony.

This is me trying to use Momo's digital camera to capture Tokyo at night.

Turning Japanese


Big things today. First - haircut. Unfortunately, we neglected to take that many pictures of the barber shop. Momo's father said that he was the number 3 men's hairdresser in Tokyo, and I'm inclined to agree. Not only a haircut, but also a shave and massage. Unbelievable.

Before:



After:






THEN, a fancy lunch with the elders of the family. It was at an old traditional Kyoto-restaurant, where we had the dinner version of a tea ceremony. It's the type of place where the wait staff wear kimonos and you take your shoes off in the foyer. The food was a series of 5 or 6 courses of very beautifully prepared small dishes. It was amazing. It was also on the 48th floor of an office/retail building, so it had a spectacular view as well. Pictures to follow of the courses, the view, and those involved.




It bears mentioning that the gentleman sitting to my right (who also kept refilling my beer glass) is 70 years old and plays tennis for 2 to 3 hours a DAY. Also, one of our wait staff is a world renown hot air balloonist. Seriously. She runs the hot air balloon club of Tokyo and they go ballooning every weekend.


Appetizers. I'm not entirely sure what they were, but they were delicious.


Sesame Tofu in pumpkin soup.


This was shashimi, but I ate it before I thought to take a picture.


Yuba (tofu skin) in soup with greens.


Teriyaki swordfish.


Tofu with lotus root and some sort of thick soup/sauce.


Rice with crab, miso soup (in red cup), and pickles.


The view.

AFTERWARDS, Momo and I went shopping in Shinjuku, which epitomizes the signs and masses that Tokyo is known for.


My new look. I felt less unfashionable today.


Another picture of me, but this one is inside of this crazy photo booth in an arcade where, if you're a teenage Japanese girl, you get your pictures taken with your friends and then digitally manipulate them with crazy backgrounds. Momo tells me that girls get all dressed up (with their short skirts, stockings, heels, and hair extensions) for these pictures. One wall is entirely those giant round soft lights so it has some of the best lighting you'll ever find for a photograph. The arcades are pretty crazy regardless. I took a bunch of pictures with my film camera, but I probably won't be able to post those until we're back home with our scanner.

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On the train. New sneakers.


We picked up some Inari (rice in a fried tofu wrapper) from the Depachika (the basement prepared foods shop) for dinner, and I took some more pictures to convey the craziness of it.








Momo's father at the table, we're just about to eat.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Japan, Night/Day 1

Ok, so I'm giving up on written narration because there's too much to write and not enough time. Pictures w/ captions will have to suffice. Here we go....


Obligatory airport photo


These liquids are apparently dangerous if they're outside a ziplog bag; thus contained they are robbed of their evil powers.


Momo's parents reserved the guest room in their building for our first night. It's on the corner with a spectacular view from the 33rd floor.


Japanese bathrooms are awesome.





The view from our room.


Our room in the morning.


The view in the morning.


Lunch at the Muji store. Muji is like ikea with clothes and better designed.


My excellent lunch.


Muji store. Momo and Otosan (Momo's father) in foreground.


Japan is all about cute mascots. This is some sort of beaver with a melodica. Momo demanded a picture with it.


Headphones, headphones, headphones.


Shopping for Headhpones.

Me in Ginza, Tokyo's 5th ave.


Depatchika no chika - the basement of a big deparment store that has a huge prepared foods area. Pick from an unbelievable array of food to bring home for dinner. We picked up Kimchee, fishcakes, salads, and sweets. The people working the various counters all have uniforms in their shop's colors, and advertise their foods like barkers. There's lots of samples too, enough to feed you after a couple trips around the place.


I can say without reservation that Japan is the future now. This is an uber-futuristic boat designed by an Anime artist.

Zero emissions future car at the Nissan store in Ginza.

That's all for now. More later. Today, I get a haircut and have lunch at a fancy restaurant with extended family. Wish me luck.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Valleys and Peaks

Two things to mention today; one makes me smile and the other makes me wonder.

The Peak - Great Children's Programming from Japan

The good news is that I got an early Christmas gift from my father-in-law. It's a DVD collection of interstitials from the Japanese Children's show ピタゴラスイチ (
"pitagora suichi", which means Pythagoras Switch). The show opens, closes, and is interspersed with Rube Goldberg-like contraptions of every day objects that involve marbles, magnets, and a LOT of physics.

This DVD is in a beautiful book-like binding that has a booklet explaining each of the 20 or so contraptions. You probably can find some on YouTube. I love that this is from a childrens' show that is also fascinating and fun for an adult. I'm definitely going to show these to my kids some day, and maybe we'll spend a rainy afternoon trying to make our own contraptions at home.

The Valley - Car Shopping and Car Salesmen


I suppose this frustration is not unique to car dealerships, but I think it takes what is wrong about commerce and big business and inflates it to ridiculous proportions. My overall complaint is this: it appears to me that most businesses feel it's necessary to deceive, rip-off, or pressure the customer into purchasing something they might not really want and certainly don't need.


This weekend my wife and I visited a Honda dealership on a whim to check out the Honda Fit. We were not motivated buyers - just curious. With this in mind I prepared myself to face the hard sell from the staff there(I recommend this article for anyone who is thinking of stepping inside a dealership).

Amazingly, my concerns were unfounded. The youngish salesman who helped us did not pressure us. He explained the features of the car without a lot of jargon and without implying that we need to buy this car with every word. We felt comfortable with the interaction, and we may eventually buy a car from this guy because of that. They had one Fit there, but with all the bells and whistles (which we don't want). We took it for a test drive anyway. Afterwards, we talked a little about pricing, told the salesman we'd think about it, thanked him, and left.

That was it.

It was a good car-shopping experience for us. The next day the guy's boss calls with the hard-sell voice and the hard-sell push; something like, "I'm just calling to say I'm sorry we couldn't sell you a car yesterday..." and, "what will it take to put in this car?" etc. I politely told him that we didn't want the car they had on hand, and that we don't want them to call us. Yesterday, we received a "follow up" letter from the nice guy. I'm sure his boss is grilling him to close a deal he knows he won't make right now.

Now, to get back to my original point - as far as I can see, the goal of the car dealership (this one and others I have visited) is to sell a car to any person who walks in at all costs, regardless of whether that person is ready to buy. Car sales staff use psychological tricks to keep you in the store and pressure you into a deal that's not in your favor and they wont let you out of there without a fight. There's a great difference between a good salesperson and someone who's trying to fool you into a deal that's not good for you. Instead, car shopping becomes a mental duel between you and the entire sales team at the dealership. It makes looking at cars a bit stressful, and it's irritating.

The same could be said for things like stores convincing customers to buy extended warranties that they don't need, rebates that are intentionally difficult to get, deceptive retention scripts at internet service providers, and credit card companies that hope you miss payments so they can hit you with fees and increased APR's. These business models are not based on selling a good product to people that want it - they're legitimized scams, the purpose of which is to squeeze money out of people for no good reason. What's worse: these scams benefit the salesperson only a little; they earn the most money for those at the top of the food chain in the company. Why can't companies just try to sell a good product?


Saturday, December 9, 2006

Goodbye Guitar!

My red Epiphone guitar was just purchased on eBay, and I'm a bit sad to see it go. Though the sale of it will help me afford a new guitar that has the sound I'm looking for, it's a pretty thing that was a pleasure to play. As much as I would have loved to keep it, there's no sense in me having a guitar I play rarely. I also don't have the money to go buying guitars when I feel like it. Here are some wistful shots of it in action:



It wasn't going to last forever. Coming soon: New Guitar!

Friday, December 8, 2006

Initiate blog sequence.... . . . . . . . . now.


So begins my attempt to join the online diary/journal set.
    My goals for this are as folllows:

    1. To keep friends and family in the loop.

    2. To share.

    3. To force myself to think/create more.

    4. To keep my HTML skills sharp.

    5. To post a journal and pictures from my impending honeymoon in Japan.

To those who may read this, I invite comment, constructive criticism, relevant anecdotes, and even assignments (see the gerbil run on the treadmill). In return, I will try to entertain and enlighten to the best of my limited abilities; a sort of overgrown show and tell.

Until then,

じゃ、また。

JD