So, how do we show that the gum is cool and refreshing?

Ideas?

We could do the drag queens again. Like a recurring character thing.

Don't be thick. That was juicy. We want cool.

How about ice, water, something watery...

Yes, water is good. Go on.

Water gum. Water in gum. A waterfall. A man in a waterfall. A water...

That's it, a waterman!

Chew the gum and... turn into a waterman.

Now, remember, it's gonna say "jetsplash" on the bottom. A waterman alone does not say "jetsplash."

I see. Yeah. How about a regular man and a waterman, and they're... I don't know. They're doing something refreshing together. Jetsplash... they're jetskiing, they're waterskiing, they're water-wrestling?

That's it, waterfight! The regular man is just hanging out in his suit, and the waterman smacks the him across the face!

Now that is refreshing. We just have to make sure the waterman looks kind of evil, maybe more like a water demon.

Pool on the roof

So many rooftops, so few kiddie pools. Good job, neighbors!

Things were looking up.

Last week was a good one for staring up at the sky. Well, sort of. Technically, I think I heard somewhere once that you're not supposed to "stare" at an eclipse. Old wives' tale, right? Right?

To recap, last Saturday morning, we looked off the balcony and saw a white, shiny ball hovering quietly somewhere over Shibuya. It was probably a blimp, viewed head-on.

Sunday, killing time waiting for Terminator Salvation to start, an amazing pale half rainbow arched over Tokyo Tower and then brightened and then doubled. My rainbow picture was just from my cell phone - Jim happened to have his camera out to take this because the light was nice right before the rainbow came out.















And of course, on Wednesday, the longest total solar eclipse for another hundred years or so passed over Tokyo just before lunch. Most of the coverage griped about the lousy weather and heavy cloud cover. It was cloudy. But I didn't have much work to do and wandered over to the nearby Sumida River to check it out anyway. There was a whole lot of cloudy sky and nothing else for a while. The cover was so thick I couldn't even tell where in the sky the sun would be. And then, suddenly, almost straight over head behind a thin patch in the clouds, there it was - a little crescent moon. And then gone again. But then back! A woman with a yappy dog sat on a bench and took photos with a cell phone. I thought that was a dumb idea but tried it anyway and it came out better than you would think. An old man and I pointed at the sky grinned at each other. I hung out for a while, watching the eclipse flash in and out of the clouds, a little different each time. A bunch of office workers stood on a corner nearby and squealed. As I walked back to the office, there were still little clots of people scattered around. A woman watched me as I walked by, looking a little concerned. I asked, "You see it?" She looked relieved and said "Yeah!" I imagined she was afraid I didn't know there was an eclipse on. That's how I felt when I saw joggers going along the river without looking up at all.













I think this photo came out pretty well for a point and shoot with no tripod. Incidentally, something bad happened to my Ixy's display screen on the trip home - when I got off the airplane, a plastic hairclip in my bag was snapped in two and there was a pinkie-print size dead spot on the camera screen. It puts a grey glob with a corona around it on every image. Looking at the eclipse pictures on that screen, it looks like a partial eclipse next to a (dull) total eclipse.

Total eclipse of the sun

There. Now I'm blind. You're welcome.

Roppongi rainbow

Two-storey rose sculpture and double rainbow from Roppongi Hills at about 6:30 this evening.

I loved the crowd taking photos of the sky en masse, like a practice run for when the aliens come.

Happy Ocean Day

In honor of the Ocean Day three-day weekend and my own hankering for some salt water and sand, here is a Tokyo beach guide written by the ever-awesome Tokyo Mango in Metropolis. Shirahama in Shimoda is nice but too far for a day trip. I've been to Enoshima a few times to try surfing and my overall impression was of a black and white ink wash painting. (I imagine it would be less so had I not gone on cloudy days. The surf instructor pointed toward an electronic message board and said "Point the nose of the board toward the 'Strong warning: high wind' sign and paddle!" Unsettling.) But the sand is always blackish.

Ocean, sand, jellyfish, seagulls - a beach is a beach, right? Sort of. Even going to the beach in Japan is a little different from home. At Enoshima, Mt. Fuji pokes out of the clouds and looms over the sea. Trashcans are few and concrete pylons are plentiful. The Japanese-y-est beach experience I had was in Kyushu. A few drops of rain started to splatter on the sun hats and shades. A chime rang, and a calm voice alerted beach goers a few times that rain was beginning to fall. It felt like the Truman Show.

Bonus song! I don't imagine you'll like this old song, "Umi sono ai," about the ocean and manhood and loneliness and love. At all. But I dare you not to feel a tiny bit moved when he hits the chorus at 1:01.



Uh, no? Just me? It was used in a pachinko commercial earlier this year. It featured a fat, blond Japanese man in a Hawaiian shirt running along the beach belting this out. Which is ironic, because if there is such a thing as the opposite of a beach, it is surely the inside of a pachinko parlor.

Jet lag is your friend

I dread jet lag before trips and complain about it after. But the truth is, I know it's on my side. In Seattle, sleeping til 11 and up and about til 3 am was the perfect vacation schedule; I was there and hungry when a pizza delivery guy came into the dive bar where we were playing pool at 1:30 to sell off his leftover pizzas for 5 bucks a pie. Bliss.

Back in Tokyo to a ton of work, waking up at dawn this week suited me perfectly. The only time I ever wake up before 6 and feel like springing out of bed is when I have jet lag. I savor it, falling into bed and waking up on an old-lady schedule for as long as I can, because I know it won't last.

It’s not the talking escalators at the airport or the doilies in the taxis – it’s the panicked moment when I wake up groggy and realize I've overslept that I know I’m back.

I'm back.

Delivery truck delivery truck

And back

Transportation hack for those who have mildly injured themselves on vacation and/or brought back too many bags: the Airport Limousine costs about the same as the Narita Express and is just a few steps from baggage claim. It takes a little longer to get to Shinjuku Station. This, to me, is compensated for by the fact that it requires about a half mile less walking and zero stairs.

Taking the bus also lets you step outside and get acclimated to the soupy summer air that is always tinged with burning field scraps near the airport. Nothing smells more like Japan to me than that smell.

UPDATE for Jimmy: Here is a sample of two other routes you could take, depending on the time you go. All the time and price info is there. (Use this English train route-finder to find what's available at the time you're coming in - enter from Narita to Shinjuku and your own date and time.)

How did she guess

I asked my neighbor to water our tomato and basil plants while we are on the west coast for the next week. She looked excited and asked the obvious question.
"Are you going back for Michael Jackson's funeral?!"

Bones about it

What is not to love about an exhibit that greets you with an ostrich skeleton and a chatty skull? The ostrich skeleton is real, and the human skull is even better: it was based on images of show director Shunji Yamanaka's skull and then made with a 3-D printer.


I suggest you go see bones at 21_21 Design Sight gallery in Roppongi.

Beautiful black and white photos of animal skeletons are the jumping off point for x-rays and extractions of the "bones" of everyday and extraordinary industrial objects. The next leap is bigger - interactive industrial design projects exploring what skeletons could be. What does the skeleton of your shadow look like? What if the skeleton of a bench showed you where it felt your weight?

The biggest wow was the interactive guide explaining the exhibits in English and Japanese. On a plain white table, an ordinary loose piece of white paper responds to its orientation and your touch to display information about the things in the room. (Yeah, you kind of have to play with it to get it.) It was the closest thing I've seen to the virtual screens in Minority Report.

It's not a big show. You could see it all in 15 or 20 minutes if nothing reels you in. It may have helped that I went with no expectations. I was killing time in Roppongi and feeling contemplative and it was right there. The underground gallery was cool and dark and almost empty. Soothing, subtle music was playing and strange to say, the place even smelled calm. I stared for a long time at titanium knee and hip joints in glass cases and imaginary spider bones in a rock garden and undulating amoeba arms that looked squishy but were hard plastic.

On til Friday, August 30,　￥1000 general admission.　Behind Tokyo Midtown (access map).

Extreme exaggeration?

English label: "Extreme Balsamic Vinegar Taste"

Japanese label: "Contains no balsamic vinegar."

I love that the fancy bottle says "Pringles" on the side, like they're running a little boutique vinegar cellar on the side somewhere.

Not that we expected any natural ingredients to be harmed in the making of Pringles. Anyway, they're tasty. A lot less vinegary and more sour-creamy than you might expect.

A tale of two eels

Origin has two kinds of eel lunches, one big and one small. Which one costs almost twice as much as the other? The small one, of course, which uses eel from Japan instead of China.
Under the photo of the Chinese eel there is a disclaimer that it has been chosen carefully and inspected rigorously by the government's health department [because we know you think Chinese eel is scary and gross but really, we're only using the good kind not the icky ones you read about and look, it's cheaper and you get more of it!]. Yum.

Chinese eel was at the center of the most recent food labeling scandal, too,

The police said Nakamura bought eel grown and grilled in China for ¥340 per pack and sold them for about ¥600 after repackaging the fish to make them appear as if they had been grown in Kagoshima and other places in Japan.

so you have to wonder how much to believe any of it. This is a shame, because I really like unagi-don but now I can't help thinking there's a better than average chance that the yummy stuff over rice has an icky past. I mean, ickier than the fact that it's, you know, an eel.

Arts and crafts for fun and profit

You, too, can make ＄120 in your spare time with the Japanese government's stimulus plan.

You will need:
Japanese residency
pen
claim form
instruction sheet
photo copier
alien card or passport
bank card and branch info
scissors
glue (not staples, clips, or tape)

Supervision by Japanese speaker recommended.