New math: liquid menthol cigarettes

Advanced charcoal filter times menthol flavor thread equals SkaMen!

I can't tell if the "flavor thread" in these cigarettes is really liquid or if they deliver "menthol feeling UP" in some other form. All the ads for them have these photos of emo guys with blue and green waves splashing against their heads. If the pictures were in black and white, you'd swear it was meant to be a freeze frame of a fatal head wound in progress.
There's another brand of Japanese cigarette that has a crush capsule of menthol in the tip. A slower--and more refreshing--alternative to cyanide capsules.

Terrorists, 1; Care packages, 0

It's kind of good, in a way, that the Japan Post announced last Friday that tomorrow was the last day they'd ship anything over 453 grams (a pound) to the US. Only in one small, specific way: I've had a package sitting on my desk (and before that, on top of the magazine rack, and before that, under the coffee table) waiting to be mailed. It's been sealed so long that I don't remember exactly what I put in it. I finally took it to the post office today while I still could. The woman, who is my favorite post office worker of all time, weighed my box as usual and didn't mention anything about the new restrictions. When I asked about it, she handed me the Japan Post press release that had been making the rounds online and said it was true that they wouldn't send anything over the weight restriction after tomorrow. She pointed out that the box I sent today was just a few grams over and wouldn't have gone. I asked, in an awkward sentence, if that was by order of the US. She said yes, and emphasized that they didn't know how long it would last. Her tone of voice was not too far off from the one you'd use to say, "Well, Andy's locked himself in his room again and he's never ever coming out. You know." But, until further notice, this is the deal.
So, this stupid new rule is good news for Crystal, who will finally get some nifty Japan goodies.
It's terrible news for everyone else. Because they won't get as many KitKats sent in a single box. And because this security thing feels farcical. Even if it isn't---even if there's some excellent reason why 452 grams of explosives is not a concern, or, for that matter, a few milligrams of anthrax---even if the people making these disruptive decisions do know what they're doing, it doesn't feel that way. It feels like they're running around, again, screaming DO something!! at each other and tossing out useless band-aid suggestions. (Remember the duct tape?)

 

This is Japan Post's tag line. One way to translate it is "Creating a new normal." Let's hope that is isn't what's happening.

They are really, really sorry about the construction

Signs that say "Sorry for the trouble caused by the construction" are pretty common in Japan. They usually include a mix of pre-printed and handwritten info about exactly what is being built and how long it will take, and a cartoon of a construction worker standing with shovel in hand, head bowed, often caps it off.
This construction site in Roppongi took the apology sign to the next level with a cartoon worker doing dogeza, a deep, solemn bow formerly common and now mostly reserved for the most serious of offenses. The text is straightforward (no jokey "pardon our dust!" tone), but I imagine the image is meant to be humorous. Er, right? Sometimes it's hard to tell.
Speaking of apologetic bowing and hard to tell, this oldie but goody is one of the subtly hilarious videos from the series "The Japanese Tradition." Not too long ago, a website with a famous truthy name posted this as if it were a helpful cultural guide. I think the editor should try one of the last few bows in the video for that one. Please enjoy. But don't go doing the ninja bow the next time you're late for work.

Turn off your phone, fancy man

This Tokyo Metro Manners poster has a lot going on. Background: there are signs and announcements on many trains asking that cell phones be turned off near the priority seats, ostensibly to protect people with pacemakers. Don't get me started on that one. Though, if I had a pacemaker and there were any chance, however minimal, that having a few square feet in the city where there was a slightly reduced amount of electromagnetic radiation trying to scramble my heartbeat, I guess I'd want people to turn off their phones there. I suppose. But I've digressed.

So, here, we have the usual put-upon poster lady sitting in a priority seat with her child. (And what's happened to her usual partner in moroseness, now that she's had the kid? Has he abandoned her? Is that why she looks so glassy and vacant?) Lurking above her is a golden-haired man (foreigner? host?) in a flashy white coat. He whips his phone out and holds it aloft. Is this some kind of a threat? Is he going to throw it? Make an inconsiderate phone call? Zap all the pacemakers in range? No! This prince of a man is simply shutting off his phone. He is surrounded by a sparkly aura of good manners. Mother and child are agape.
I would be, too, if I ever saw this happen. Shutting off phones near the priority seats is the most flagrantly flouted of all the manners.

Crowdsourcing earthquakes

 

What are you doing now? Shaking.

Well, not now now. Yesterday. "What are you doing now?" is Twitter's ice-breaker question. Everybody knows you don't have to answer it literally, and usually people don't. But they do when there's an earthquake. 

I haven't noticed too many recently, then I felt two good long jolts yesterday. One early in the morning, and one after work. I happened to be sitting at home looking at Twitter during the evening one, and apparently, so was everyone else I know. Those screen captures from my phone are just a small segment of all the quake messages. And those are just from the people I follow.

In the ensuing chat about how ha, ha, everyone tweeted the same thing at the same time, I mentioned that I thought I'd read or heard on the radio that the US Geological Survey used Twitter as one way of tracking quake activity. Talk about monitoring -- I got a  message from @USGS about a minute later that said "You heard right," and included a link to this story about how the USGS uses Twitter to track and map earthquake experiences around the world. The agency is doing all kinds of interesting things with social and interactive media. It will be fascinating to see what they can develop with it, and how similar work can be used in disaster and public health scenarios. They mention filtering for "earthquake" in a few other languages. Hope they've got 地震 (jishin) on their list.           

Wish upon a pudding

Cute ad for a convenience store dessert, a "layered dolce" with four kinds of melt-in-your-mouth.
"Here's hoping there's no one cuter than me at the blind-date party," it reads.
Whatever. You're eating a yummy marscapone and chocolate dessert the day before a date party, which says you don't have insane dieting tendencies. And you're wishing on that dessert, which means you're kind of quirky. Quirky and pleasure-loving beat dull and skinny any day. Hit the goukon with confidence, and don't trust anyone who doesn't order dessert.

Lost and found, after a quick lap around Tokyo

 

We were trying to go to Costco. We had a backpack with a cooler pouch inside to bring a few of the groceries home. Jim put his Japanese text book in the bag, too, to maybe study on the ride back. On the Yamanote train, he put the bag up on the rack over the seats and said to remind him to take it on the way out. I said sure. A few minutes later, we got off the train at Shinagawa, went upstairs and through the wickets to our next train, and realized we'd left the bag behind.

The stolid man in the platform office made a few calls to see if someone at another station could pop aboard and look for it. We had retraced our steps and were able to tell him which car, which door and which side we'd left it on. But the train was running seven minutes behind schedule, so they wouldn't be able to do any checking until the train stopped for the night in Ikebukuro. He said it would just loop around and around for the next five hours. He said we could wait until the same train came back through the station, in forty or forty-five minutes. Or, we could wait until the next day then call the number on the card he gave us and see where in the train system, if anywhere, the bag had turned up. With that, he looked down, started shuffling paperwork and was done with us.

We went back on the platform to where we'd gotten off before and watched as lime green train after train pulled up, each stopping at exactly the same spot, each papered with the same combination of iced tea ads in the same frames around the priority seats, all with empty overhead racks. 

It was an outdoor track on a pleasant evening, and the ridiculousness of the situation overshadowed the annoyance of it. Right around the 42-minute mark, almost exactly an hour since we'd abandoned the bag, a train pulled up with the backpack sitting where we left it, untouched.  Jim grabbed it, and we hopped into the train on the other side of the platform and went back home.

I really didn't want to go to Costco, anyway.

Hey, no ditching!

Everyone's saying the same thing about this subway manners poster - it's not the kids who cut in line, it's the old ladies. It's true, if anyone will elbow past you to get on a bus or train, it will be someone who looks like she might blow away in the gust of wind from the oncoming subway, but turns out tone anchored to the platform and to have elbows made of steel. And she's not afraid to use them.

When this happens, I always think, reflexively, "Ah well, go ahead, you'll be dead a long time before me. You've probably been through a lot. Grab a seat." Is that horrible? I get pretty weird looks when I admit this. I don't mean it to be. It's a sympathetic thought.
That said, getting elbowed is still annoying.

Is that an umbrella in your waistband?

Why yes, yes it is.
----
Despite specific reminder announcements on the train, lots of people leave their umbrellas behind. I see one orphan on the floor by the door now, and I took an empty seat next to one hooked over a handrail this morning.

Quite a few guys use this foolproof, if slightly unelegant, method: the belt hook.

I use a variant when I'm carrying too many things, hooking the umbrella onto my bag. I often forget it's there when I do this, though, sending it clattering to the floor as I get off the train. Talk about not elegant. I'm tempted to try to pull off the belt-hook manoeuvre, but even though another youngish guy in a nice suit was doing it on the train tonight as well as our rumpled friend above, it still reeks a little too much of absent-minded old man.

Deer in a bubble

I went to an art opening this weekend at SCAI the Bathhouse. I used to go to quite a few in New York as a press-pass-carrying party crasher. This was the first time in Tokyo. Quite similar - white walls, vehement opinions and clear plastic cups of white wine. The venue was different, though. The gallery is a beautiful old sento, or, you guessed it, bathhouse. The outside is intact and the inside is completely renovated as a gallery, though high original windows are retained.
I liked Kohei Nawa's exhibit. The centerpiece is two deer coated in clear balls. I wonder if Lady GaGa or her bubble dress designer has seen it?
SCAI the Bathhouse is between Nippori and Nezu stations. It has a nice website with lots of pictures and info in English. This show is up until October 30. Check it out.