Is that a fish on your leg...

I'm gonna let this speak for itself.

Take my son, please

The morning news had a feature today on matchmaking events attended only by the concerned parents of kids in their 30s and 40s.

The supertitle says "Desperate PR," but the tactics were anything but. They seemed to be competing for who could be more modest about their children - "if he could put up with someone like my daughter," "Oh, no, if she could stand living with someone who makes as little as my son."

What do you call that dance again?

Also, they have a dancing robot.

Takes one to know one

I went to the Miraikan today, which is cool for many reasons. Let's start with the name. The formal name is National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, but it's called Future Building/Center for short. Both neat. The building itself is as futuristic looking as you'd hope, with its spherical planetarium screen bulging out of the front, and a curved glass curtain wall along one side.

The temporary exhibit up now is called Aliens, and it's really well done. It starts off with images of aliens in pop culture throughout history, from old religious paintings to the grainy alien autopsy movie on a loop (with offensive alien parts mosaic-ed out, per Japanese law). Lucasfilm lent the museum stuff from their collection, including scenes from ET and a whole Ewok. A toothy alien from Alien looms at the entrance, and a partially dissected rubber cast of the star of Alien Autopsy prompted a few visitors to ask each other if it was, um, real. There's a heavy phone receiver you can pick up to hear an original recording of War of the Worlds.

Deep sea creatures in jars, plastic bug eyes, and rubber tapeworms and Venus flytraps demonstrate ways life adapts to different terrestrial conditions. A bank of microscopes focused on slides of bacteria that live in acid, without oxygen, under ice, and whose only nutrition is the rocks they eat set the stage for other lifeforms that might thrive in extremes.

That exhibit segues easily into projections of what aliens might look like, given theoretical atmospheric parameters on made-up planets. The hypothetical aliens battle each other on touch screen games.

Finally, the room on communication gives a brief history of projects to make and receive contact, including an explanation and image of the "wow" signal, and audio recordings of some of the multilingual greetings we've sent up. (Opera on a golden record? Who knew.)

It ends with a kiosk where you can snap a digital picture of yourself and send it off with a four-panel symbol picture attached. You use a rollerball to choose from (dubiously universal) icons like books and rockets and hearts and exclamation points. I'm not sure where the messages actually go, but the projection screen implied they rocket out into the universe.

The communication "zone" urges visitors to "imagine trying to read something in a language you can't understand." Easy. Happily, the English was good throughout, so the information was clear - even for an alien.

Best deal in Japan

Movie tickets cost 1,800 yen per person.
A hearty portion of hot popcorn and a medium soda cost just 600 yen.
Probably balances out to be about the same as the whole deal would be in New York?

Grandma, tell us again about "butter"

Two weeks ago, Jim came back from his first trip to the fancy import grocery store and said the prices were unbelievable. I indulged him his sticker shock - it takes a while to get used to Quaker oatmeal and Old El Paso taco mix at twice their American prices. It was much worse than that, he said - butter was over twenty bucks, and there was just one package of it. He said there was a sign in English and Japanese claiming short supplies.

Since then, I've read a few stories about the great Japanese butter shortage. I get it generally - grain prices, biofuel, meat-mad Chinese, car-crazy Indians. I'm always left feeling like there are a few dots that these stories connect with a circular argument or a jab at China instead of a fact. But that's probably due to gaps between my own world economics dots.

I'm still not sure how the glut and subsequent voluntary reduction two years ago of Japan's domestic dairy output (cream down drains!) affected the number of tubs of French Plu Gras avec Sel de Mer at Nissin. (Do top tier French farms get their butter milk from drought-plagued Australia?)

Whether or not I'd embarrass myself on a global econ test, the facts on the ground are that there is less butter in the stores here. Which is why we were surprised to find a box of it at the Mini Stop across the street, just minding its own business at a normal price, about three bucks.

Here then, for posterity, a box of Snow Brand Hokkaido butter.


Maybe I can sell it on the black market.

This can mean only one thing

But I have no idea what that might be.

I am grateful that this is the extent of my election coverage.

Home Whaling Network

A lot of afternoon TV is devoted to shopping shows and infomercials. It's mostly similar to QVC stuff - wrinkle creams, kitchen gizmos, and tacky jewelry. This one caught my eye.


A commercial for cans of stewed whale meat. The motherly announcer uses charts and graphs to show the nutritional benefits of whale meat compared other meats, and she hastens to point out that the white parts in the can are not fat, but tendons. She suggests lots of tasty ways to cook it up, like stir fried with vegetables or over rice. She was especially excited about serving it battered and deep fried: "It takes a long time to cook, but is so delicious that I hope everyone will try it!"
Call now!

Saving the Planet, 10,000 pamphlets at a time

I wandered into Earth Day in Yoyogi park yesterday looking for rockabillies. It turned out to be Earth Day (observed). I don't imagine Tokyo's Earth Day celebration is any more or less hypocritical or unfocused than anybody else's. There was a garbage tent, with running chalkboard totals of the kilos collected of different types of disposables: burnable, unburnable, plastic bottles, cans, etc. There was a man in front of this tent handing out plastic bags, urging everyone to take home their own trash. Does redistribution equal reduction? Maybe it was just about raising awareness. Maybe, probably, I missed something.
There was a man in wire rimmed glasses holding the rapt attention of a tent full of people on wooden benches. He was talking about Chinese vegetables and pointing to a projected slide of leeks under running water.
A domed 4-person tent was set up with the invitation to write or draw a "time that makes you happy" on the surface with marker. They were sweet and environmental - "When I'm with my mother and father and the sky;" "when I'm in the garden."
Free Tibet. Organic coffee. A heap of used clothes that were being sold "so they wouldn't be burned." (Clothes are tossed as burnable garbage a lot more often than they're donated here.)
Truthers have even made it here. One tent was showing a documentary in Japanese about the truth about 911. They had stacks of DVDs and eight-dollar paperbacks translated paragraph by paragraph into Japanese. They had something you could sign, too. I didn't stick around to ask what purpose the signatures were serving. Or how they were saving the planet.

But no cigar

Simply Confusing

Bottled coffee, good.

Simple design, good.

Oil blotting papers, good.

All three together in one white package, not good.

Will drinking the coffee will make me greasy? Does wrapping a PET bottle in another layer of plastic make it simpler? Why is my vending machine coffee brewer dabbling in personal grooming?

I do like "simply" as a package label, though. They just should have kept it a little simpler.

Bonus info! A quick spin on this nifty font look-up tool suggests the typeface is OCR B, one of the first machine-readable (Optical Character Recognition) fonts created in the late 60s.

Keep an eye on your glasses

I spent hours and hours in New York looking for specs that didn't cost a fortune and looked okay. I found some I liked well enough in the end, after hitting Costco and Lens Crafters and every chain and mom and pop shop between Brooklyn and West Orange. I felt like I'd gotten a relative steal even as I dipped into savings to pay for them and marked my calendar to come pick them up at the end of the week. I thought if they cost that much at home, they'd be an unattainable luxury in Japan.

Wrong again, champ.

There are huge discount glasses shops all over the place - Megane Supa, Hatch, and Dahlia (all owned by the same company) are the flashiest, with aisles of huge glass tables covered in rows of colorful frames. Jim needed to replace a broken pair, so we headed for the subway to go to a shop that we had seen. We stumbled across another branch of the same chain before we even reached the train.

He picked some frames he liked. The eye chart they asked him to use was the Landolt C, with open circles facing different directions. (The chart also had pairs of fish on it, and in the time I've been looking for an image of this I could have walked to the store and taken a photo and come back.)

His glasses were ready by the time we were done shopping at the 100 yen store across the street. They cost about as much as I paid just for the "protective coating" on my glasses. Are these the highest quality lenses? Maybe not. But they seem to be good enough.

This ad begs to differ (even though it's the same company that sells piles of cheapies). The left eye reminds the right eye that they'll go bad if they don't pay attention to their lens brand.

Ewwwmmmmm

Mmmm, Doritos. Salty, ranchy, spicy, buffalo blazing, pepper jack nacho cheezy. And sweet and buttery?

Buried at the back of the chip bin at the 100 yen store yesterday, I found Honey Butter and Caramel Doritos Sweets. (They've been out since last August here - did they come out in the states, too? Am I the long-lost forager in the woods who finds a strange, shiny object that turns out to be a cell phone?)

I imagine they'd have to make the word "Doritos" very small to sell them elsewhere, given the time and money Frito-Lay has invested in the western world forging the "savory flavor explosion" association. To see Doritos and suddenly be asked to think "sweet and buttery" is jarring.

Not too jarring to buy a few bags, of course.

They are "easy to eat twist shapes." The chip itself is like a basic twisted Frito. But they have an overwhelming artificial butter smell, and that generic sweet vanilla-maple smell that flavored coffee emits. Gross. So they're crispy, and salty, and buttery, and sweet. Something in them tastes kind of creamy. They leave a sort of margarine coating on your tongue and fingers. And the bag continues to smell even after it's empty and all the crumbs are shaken out.

Verdict: disgusting, and impossible to stop eating.

Next Level Suicide Foods

Do you know how I love the site Suicide Food? They put up and dissect (if you will) "depiction[s] of animals that act as though they wish to be consumed. Suicide Food actively participates in or celebrates its own demise."
It's an amazing collection of cartoon cows happily slicing their own mid-sections into steaks, smug pigs lounging luxuriously in barbecue pits, and chickens in aprons serving up buckets of wings. All befuddling. My Brooklyn neighborhood was known for its mom and pop salumerias, and had no shortage of its own contenders. But I think Japan, as it does, has taken the concept a step beyond.




I'm not sure if this needs explanation for full impact, but the newspaper ad the cows read and the voiceover both say, "Now taking beef orders online."

A little smart alecky, maybe

So, that's a "no?"

I applied for a few jobs online. The kind where you submit your "resume" and "cover letter" by checking off and filling in some boxes, and then clicking "send." (A cover letter to which I got a favorable reply read, "I'm interested in part time work and I live near by.")

I expected the employers would either send back form letters requesting a real resume if our key words matched up, or if not, that they would just hit delete on the robo-application, no harm, no foul.

What I didn't expect was a formal page-long email reply a few days later.

The company who sent it has a name that sounds almost like a real English word and has Audrey Hepburn's face (two stories tall on their building) as their mascot.

To roughly translate:*
Based upon the materials you submitted, we carefully deliberated as to whether we would be able offer you a position that would make maximum use of your experience and abilities. However, our conclusion, after a second round of consideration, was that, regarding employment, providing a job that complies with your wishes is not now possible. It is with a great sense of regret that we ask for your understanding.

In closing, from the heart, we pray for your good health and success in all future activities.
Chief of Personnel


I'm sure I've gotten acceptance letters that were less flattering. Today's lesson: it takes no more energy send a conciliatory rejection letter than it does to send a curt one.

Audrey would be proud.










*I think it's cheating a little bit to pepper translations like this with "humbly" and "honorable," since it creates automatic hilarity in English, even though it's just proper usage of a certain polite register in Japanese. So I have resisted, but believe me, this was rife with "humblies."

pic from here

Emergency cafe

For the price of a drip coffee at Starbucks, you can get a cup of joe and an English language newspaper at Mini Stop. They have an "eat-in corner" with a sign up asking you not to stay longer than an hour.

You don't get a choice between two different brews or a cushy armchair or Sinatra on infinite loop at the Mini Stop, but you do get a clear view of the color copy machine. Instead of European business men having casual meet and greets with clients and Japanese career women perusing the in-shop copy of Mansfield Park, you get a slow stream of people perching for four minutes to down styrofoam cups of instant noodles. The fluorescent lights are bright enough to do dental work under.
At any rate, on a day when the rain is pouring down sideways, it's a very short walk.

Sumug

I'm a Mac, he's a PC

We went to Akihabara looking for laptop for Jim this weekend. We waded through the crowds and psy-ops level noise at three electronics stores to compare prices, only to realize in the end that installing an English language OS on a Japanese PC would paralyze all the peripherals. (Or so we were told - if you know a way around this, tell.) We will remain a Mac household, for now.

Speaking of which... how about some "I'm a Mac" commercials in Japanese? Some of them are nearly word for word re-enactments of the American (and UK) ones, and some have a distinctly Japanese angle, like the one about making New Year's post cards.

Here, PC would like a nickname.




A few more.

Waiter! there's an anime character in my coffee...*

We went to Narita to see cherry blossoms, on Thursday, because we can.
We got lattes with our vegetarian lunch sets. Illy coffee! They brought them out one by one.






Alex's had a bunny rabbit in the foam. Winking!






Waka got a walrus. Or a dog. Something intricate and unusual.









For the grand finale, they brought out mine.


A squiggly flower. Ah, well.

*Swiped wholesale from Evilnick

I remember you well

...but you look a little different than I recall.

Cash On Delivery. Or whenever.

A friend helped me order a washing machine online on Tuesday afternoon, and King Kong Electronics (would I make that up?) said they would send it COD the next day, no delivery charge. As directed, I called the number in the confirmation email at nine this morning, and they said they'd be here at 10 at the earliest. Another friend chuckled and warned me to settle in for a long wait.

The delivery man rang the bell at 9:55 and wheeled the 50kg box upstairs and into my front entrance. He presented the bill and that is when I remembered.

In my surprise at the early delivery time - I was expecting them to say they'd come in the late afternoon, or even the next day - I forgot to go to the bank. To get money. Cash. On delivery.

It didn't seem worth trying to explain to the guy whose truck was idling outside that I had gone across town to get to a Citibank last night, and that the 24-hour ATM was located on a floor whose elevator closed down at 8 pm. Or that the ATMs at the four convenience stores and two banks within a two-block radius all just spit out my card. He was standing there with my washing machine in a box and an empty envelope to take back to King Kong. So I told him I didn't have enough cash and asked if I could run out to get the money. I was mortified.

"I'll just come back later," he said, smiling. "This afternoon, after lunchtime or so. Be careful moving the machine into place, maybe have someone help you. It's heavy."

He was already heading out when I said, "Are you sure? Is that okay? Really?"

"Sure," he said. "You're not gonna skip town or anything, right?" Then he bowed, waved, and got into the elevator.

You are all welcome

In a can, either from a vending machine or a convenience store, coffee costs about bodega prices. In a cup at a table, the sky is the limit. Quite a few nearby cafes serve different brewed options, from "French blend" for about five bucks, to Guatamala for eight, to some mythical bean called "Blue Mountain" for 12 to 15 dollars. This is for a single six ounce cup, no refills, served with a little plastic tub (or dollhouse metal pitcher) of bomb-shelter grade fake creamer. Granted, they often use some fussy method of preparation that involves a bunsen burner or a saucepan, and usually the sugar comes in brown lumps or crystals with a twee wooden spoon. But. It's still a very small cup of coffee that gets cold fast, and this type of cafe is often smoky.

So now, in a strange turn of events, for a generously sized coffee served with real milk and no cigarette smoke, Starbucks is the clear winner. A tall is only 3.30, and is at least double the size of the froufrou places. The chairs are comfier, and the music is better. And there are usually at least four or five people in green aprons behind the counter, all doing some kind of cleaning busy work, and they all say Konnichiwa to each customer, staggered half a beat for an echoing hello. Then, when an order is placed that goes to the barista, the person at the register repeats it right away, and then everyone behind the counter repeats it, almost in unison.
So it sounds like:

Toru aisudo ratte.
Toru aisudo ratte.

Toru aisudo ratte.
..Toru aisudo ratte.
...Toru aisudo ratte.
Toru aisudo ratte.
.....Toru aisudo ratte.

And so on.

Upon leaving, someone has twice intercepted me at the trash cans (separated into liquids, paper, and plastic) to throw away my cup. The entire staff then rallies for a grand, disconcerting send-off round of Thank-you-very-much!es.

Japanese people seem to hear these effusive greetings as so much background noise, but my instinct still demands a "you're welcome" when someone says "thank you." (Thanks, ma.) My instinct doesn't know what to do with five background people saying thank you at once. So even though I know it's not necessary, I can't help sort of almost waving and half smiling and nodding and my way out the automatic sliding doors.