When a swine was just a pig

Ah, simpler times.

I blame Seth Rogen

I saw this coming attractions movie poster for Baby, Baby, Baby right after I read about the "Yanmama Boom" - the glamorization of young mothers - at Neojaponisme.

You are what you drink

"Today's vegetable juice makes tomorrow's you."

Tomorrow's me?

Yes. Today's vegetable juice makes tomorrow's you. Get it?

Err, let's just say I get it.

Write in your little diary at home.

It makes others cringe like you are writing with your nails on a portable blackboard.

Fighting swine with swine

I came home from work today with a sore throat and a low-grade fever. In place of chicken soup, we go to the Hong Kong restaurant across the street for tan tan men to squelch colds. You can get some version of this red spicy sesame noodle soup at all kinds of noodle shops and Chinese places but Kowloon is my favorite. Instead of chicken, it has a scoop of spiced ground pork on top, and instead of carrots and celery, bok choi and nira.
I don't have swine flu - or probably any kind of flu - but it struck me as funny to eat porky soup to kill a fever this week.

Robots and horror and science, oh my!

I've mentioned before that the Miraikan is a cool museum. The name "National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation" promises cool if you think your way through it, but the Japanese name, "Future Hall" gets straight to the robots and aliens and semiconductors and deep sea exploring vessels. Which is what they have.

There are two special exhibits up now. And in a departure from the norm, I'm telling you about them while there's still time to actually go. (Don't get used to it.) One is on the science of fear. I'd like a t-shirt of the English subtitle, "Ghost in the Brain!" The line when we first walked past was indeed scary, but it had died down by the time we circled back. The exhibit is a haunted house, sort of, that plays on timely fears, winding through a lab with a slumped over technician, empty rat cages, and a spooky sick ward. There's a sciency section with good English explanations about why scary things are scary and why it's difficult to suppress fears, and then a nifty surprise.

The other exhibit is a fairly naked promotion for the upcoming Terminator 4 movie. Lots of dramatically lit original machines and costumes from the movies and posters about the special effects techniques. There's a theater running a loop of trailers for all the T films. And then, the part I went for, a corner about the future of robot-human relationships. Unfortunately, this part has zero English. It does have a chipper yellow Wakamaru that can shake hands and play rock, scissors, paper. There is also an eerie robotic arm in a glass case; at one end, perfect human fingers curl and open. At the other, wires hang out, attached to nothing. A worn-down slab of peachy rubber silicon meant to show how realistic robot skin feels makes the opposite point. Finally, the lady above. She's an Actroid made by Sanrio affiliate Kokoro. Somehow, with all the things in Japan with cute names, she (like her variety of robot counterparts) is called Actroid-DER. The first thing she says is, "Did you think I was a real human!?" Maybe a wobbly, rubber one...

This museum is also where Asimo hangs out. Go to Miraikan on the Yurikamome line.

For all your carpentry/pandemic needs

There was a small crowd gathered around the flu prevention corner at DIY mecca Tokyu Hands in Shibuya on Friday, peppering the two patient staffers with questions. One nervous, heavily made up older woman already holding two boxes of masks was asking when the next shipment would arrive. (6:30 pm.) And the next after that? (Long inhale. Hard to say. Could be... a while.)
A few people were turning over the $30 boxed sets of full-body protection suit sets (gloves, goggles, jumpsuits, respirator liners).

I am a little bit confused about particle masks as protection against viruses. Sure, they would stop globs and splatters from going straight into the flu holes on your face, but could they really stop actual little viruses from worming in? They aren't on 3M's page of health protection goods, though they are mentioned, if fuzzily, on their PDF about what kind of gear the CDC recommends using if you have to intubate someone who's infected.
3M does list similar respirators under Pandemic Preparation - Swine Flu, explaining that they "can be used during laser surgery, electrocautery and other procedures using powered medical instruments to help reduce wearer exposure to airborne particles (plume, smoke) generated during these procedures." Uh huh. And they are "fluid resistant to help reduce potential exposure of the wearer to the spray, spatter and aerosol of blood and body fluids." On a good day, this will not apply to my morning commute.

I asked the Tokyu Hands guy how the particle masks stacked up behind the about pandemic influenza infographics were related to preventing the flu. "Well, basically," he said, "these are dust masks. If you want to really prevent the spread of disease, those medical masks would be better. " So, still, I don't know. But I do know where you can get a full body Tyvek suit, dry shampoo, and a chemical toilet so you can batten down the hatches during the coming plague.
Especially if it's a plague of wood shavings.

More fun with flu graphics

Mask and wash. (From the Yomiuri.) Gargling is the other key habit discussed often but not illustrated. (How come that never caught on as common-sense infection protection elsewhere? It seems to make sense.)


WHO's alert phases. We are at 5, one before "big cartoon splat across the planet." (From Asahi)


This one adds a duck. (From the Mainichi)

Smiles for all

Hey, cheer up. Enjoy this noisy commercial. Everything for the sake of your smile!

New type

Emptied storage facility of a "major mask manufacturer."

Japan is calling this thing "new type influenza" because it's a mix of bird and pig and people flu. I don't think the name has anything to do with religious or corporate sensibilities here. Now the first suspected case, a 17-year-old boy, is taking Relenza and resting in a hospital in Yokohama, and masked reporters are clustered out front, zooming in and out on the building's windows. Apparently the kid is alone in a 26-bed special flu ward. (Another suspected case was found to be regular old Hong Kong flu early this morning.)

It's hard to get a read on how much anyone might be concerned about it since probably 10-15% of people are wearing masks all the time anyway for colds and allergies. The entire country is about to have five days off for Golden Week. Offices will be closed and people will be sitting in traffic jams in individual cars, which seems good for reducing spread, but people will also be crowded on airplanes and at Disneyland, which would be less good. If there's even anything to spread.

USA Today says Japan issued an (incredibly Japanese) advisory asking those who are traveling to Mexico to "consider whether such trips are necessary."

They're telling people to stay home if they feel sick, call a hotline, and then, if necessary, report to a designated flu center. The centers have separate entrances and negative pressure rooms. These sound like effective precautions, if people follow them. There is the cultural barrier to overcome of people insisting on going into work no matter how sick they feel. Probably good that everyone has a few days off.