Tokyo earthquake 24 July 2008

Did the earth move for you?  I am once again bouncing up and down in my apartment with the building swaying for about 5 minutes with aftershocks of an earthquake rippling through Tokyo.  When I find out what the cause is, I will update.

Further to the above, see the comments below for explanation and details. Thanks guys!!

Kaiseki dinner for Mook Theory magazine

Last night probably rates as the strangest but one of the nicest dinners I have had in Tokyo. My friend R invited me to join in a magazine photo-shoot for Mook Theory magazine’s next issue.  They were doing a piece on gaijins eating at a kaiseki restaurant, and we all expected to be asked questions about ourselves.  We were told we had to wear our business clothes and look like successful businessmen.  

The restaurant was called “Hifumi” in Sendagi.  It’s a little old but beautiful place that used to be the home of a famous No singer.  The main dining room was his practice room.   We arrived and were greeted at the door by a very beautiful Japanese lady in kimono, with lovely incense burning and asked to go upstairs to the dining room. They spoke some English which was nice.   

In the dining room the photographer was setting up his equipment and we sat down and started with a beer - funny how we can start with a beer in a really top quality restaurant.  Anyway, the photography started and it felt completely weird to have someone with a big camera taking close ups of me drinking beer and eating food.   Even weirder was the fact that in this intimate, some might say tiny, dining room there were 4 magazine people just standing watching plus the restaurant staff coming and going.  So for the whole dinner it was like being a celebrity.  

The first course arrived and my brain stopped! The food was incredible!!  Course after course followed and each one just got better than the next.   One dish particularly impressed me and I could not help but say “Amazing” which reverberated around the room like an echo as each person dutifully congratulated me on saying “Amazing” and thanking me.  The beautiful hostess (waitress) was very happy that I thought the food was “Amazing” and repaid my kindness by asking if I was from America.  !!!!  ???  Do I sound American?  But of course in Japan every gaijin is American until proven innocent.

We were expecting an interview for the kind readers of the magazine, eg about what we did, what our names were, how long we had lived in Japan etc. But, there was about 5 minutes of questions at the start regarding Kaiseki cuisine and what we thought of this restaurant when we arrived.  That is it… So, for the magazine story we must be just the models - the iconic gaijin businessmen who go to Japanese restaurants.  The food was amazing and the nihonshu was very very nice.  I have to wait until the magazine is published on 25 July….

Iphone ringtone customisation

I cant wait for the iphone to be launched here in Japan on 11 July, despite my big National and Local Tax bills (about 20,000 bucks….).  The one really cool feature that I am looking forward to, apart from the AppStore, is the ability to create custom ringtones using Garage Band 08 on my Mac and use them on my Iphone… here’s how.   I have so many songs in MP3 format that I will really love having different ring tones for different callers.  My super sexy Docomo FOMA phone can theoretically do this, but of course the software is not compatible with Vista or English.  Software in Japan is decidedly poor quality, actually, in contrast to the super excellent hardware.  Anyway, I am hoping to just take my Docomo phone to a phone shop near home and change over to the Iphone before I fly out to Cairns, but I guess I will need to be patient… I am going to Nagoya before Cairns and maybe there will be slightly less demand immediately outside of Tokyo (as for the Wii, where shops sold out here in Tokyo but not in other cities like Hiroshima and Nagoya).   

Back to the drawing board

So, S and I had plans to meet tonight but she cancelled because she was supposedly not feeling so good. What that means is that she prefers to go out drinking all night with her friends and was too hung over to bother seeing me… I am really annoyed and I dont think I will go out with her anymore.  Or at least, I will downgrade to occasional outings maybe. Its one of my peccadillos maybe but if you make plans with someone important you dont cancel them because you went out drinking all night the night before - basically I expected her to remember our plans and to modify accordingly.  Its a sign of disrespect or that she does not really think I am that important.  I am conflicted inside, naturally, because I do really like her, but I think I am being played for a fool and dont want to get hurt again. 

Back to the drawing board.  

I think I am better off just having no plan to date anyone here in Japan because it is just too hard. I have said that so many times.  

The women are all so very beautiful but either:

a) alcholics

b) obsessive workaholics / dancers

c) afraid of foreigners

d) untouchable (literally and figuratively)

e) just looking for an ATM / Wallet boyfriend

f) too involved with their friends to really need or want a boyfriend

g) too difficult to get to know

h) many of the above.

Its a real shame it has ended / downgraded because I liked her. 

Packages

Recently I have been using my credit card and buying stuff online; its a new experience for me, other than for buying software for download.  It started when I got 2 Amazon.com gift vouchers for my birthday and I used them to order a few books.  I will get those in about 3 weeks time just before I fly out to Cairns for holiday.   But then I found the advertisement for the myvu goggles and I am amazed but will receive them on Tuesday!! Fast service!! (Of course, I paid for that fast service).  Last night I was surfing the net looking for leather travel bags - I cannot find one here in Tokyo that is less than 1000 bucks, and my friend Osamu had a nice one that he got in Europe.  Anyway, I found a website for Tuscany Leather and ordered a travel bag that should arrive before I go to Cairns.  Cool!!  If only I could find a girlfriend so easily.  

Another earthquake in Tokyo - 14 June 2008

My building has been swaying for more than 5 minutes… the longest I have ever experienced. (Much longer than the first one I experienced in Tokyo). Its a bit scarey….

There must have been an earthquake somewhere near Tokyo and these are aftershocks…. I later found out that the quake happened in Northern Japan and registered 7.2 on the Richter scale, killing 7 people.

The Shinkansen services were all stopped because of the earthquake and there was a report that a famous temple was damaged. 

 

Gadget heaven

Okay, I am an admitted gadget freak and I am soon going to be in even more gadget heaven:

a) the Iphone 3G is officially coming to Japan, like I said earlier, but with SoftBank not DOCOMO, which means I will have to change carriers blah blah blah, so what, I am definitely buying this little nugget of happiness preferably on the first day it is available here.  In fact, many of my Japanese friends (mostly women) have said they are interested in switching to the Iphone depending on pricing, which is contrary to the anti-Iphone propaganda.

b) I just bought “my vu” video glasses … I will receive them in about 5 days…. far out cool for the plane rides etc, and I can plug them straight into my Ipod Touch or new Iphone or Ipod Video and watch movies!! How frikking awesome.  

Sunday of sadness

Two things happened on Sunday to make me very sad and which affected me greatly.  The first was the mass murder in Akihabara by a 27 yo psycho who drove a rented 2 tonne truck into a very crowded street and then stabbed and killed 7 people, injuring 12 others.   He, like so many others, deserves our compassion for an obviously troubled mind, produced by an overly industrialised society that has many internal economic inequalities and an very unforgiving attitude towards perceived (if not real) failures.  However, my great sadness comes from the shear magnitude of evil perpetrated by him against truly innocent people who ranged in age from 19 to 74, most being young.  Akihabara on a Sunday is a fun place to go and I go there very frequently to ride my bike around and look at the strange clothes often worn by manga fans and just to buy video games or other electronic things I need, plus to eat really excellent food cheaply.   I am touched by this horrendous event not because “it could have been me” but simply because by being familiar with the location and the types of people affected the event has a greater reality for me than most other news reports.  

The second was the sudden and lonely death of a work colleague, a secretary at my law firm, who was found in her apartment Monday morning.  No explanation has been given yet for her death but it could have been accidental overdose of prescription medicine.  She was a very nice person and I cannot believe that she is gone.  My sad feelings for her loss are greater because it makes me imagine that she may have been a very unhappy person and not truly connected with anyone.  Such irrevocable loss is harder to bear due to my hope that it is avoidable but also my realisation that usually it is not.

Bored

Mango extreme!