On the Menu
Okay, this is cheap, I know, but I can't stop myself:
An American co-worker and I went to a fairly nice sushi place on the Ginza this weekend. Since we were clearly foreigners, the restaurant staff helpfully brought out the English version of their menu for us to peruse. They should have had it copy-edited first, for on the soup menu was the following item:
Crap miso soup
I ordered it anyways.
Traveller's Ancedote of the Week (Paris edition)
Parisian rudeness is a reality but is hardly the rule. As tourists we mostly encountered ordinary big city behavior found throughout the Western world: hurried, impersonal, but hardly hostile.
One day, however, as my wife tried to buy a Metro ticket, she realized the man in the booth was simply jerking her around for sport. This was confirmed when a woman in the ticket booth suddenly smacked him with a rolled up newspaper, shoved him out of the way, and sold my wife her ticket with no hassle and a slight shake of her head.
B. Johnson
Alexandria VA
- from a letter in this week's Travel section of the Los Angeles Times.
I don't know who that woman was, but I want to marry her.
Rick James & The Cue Cards
Los Angeles - Funk legend Rick James, best known for the 1981 hit Super Freak before his career disintegrated amid drug use and violence that sent him to prison, has died. He was 56.
James died in his sleep today at his residence near Universal City, said publicist Sujata Murthy. James lived alone and was found dead by his personal assistant, who notified police, she said.
Police and Murthy believe James died of natural causes. The exact cause was not immediately released.
- from Funk singer Rick James dies in The Age of Melbourne, Australia.
Okay, I'm not really a Rick James fan. On the other hand, this is a perfect excuse to link to the story of Rick James and the Cue Cards at Happyrobot.net.
Must-Download TV!
Thanks to the wonders of file-sharing--as well as an ADSL connection and a really big hard-drive--I've been catching up with some American TV programs over the last few months by downloading them. I'm essentially held to the tastes of others, which means essentially the tastes of technically proficient people (i.e.; geeks) who are capable of uploading TV shows to the 'net in the first place: lots of SF & Fantasy, lots of juvenile humor. In other words, a lot of Star Trek and South Park, not a lot of Masterpiece Theater.
Still, there's good stuff--or at least interesting stuff--to be found. My latest fascination--for which I blame Liz, since she ask me to look for it in the first place and got me hooked--is The Amazing Race, now in its 5th series.
Now, I've lived in Japan for the last few years, so I've (luckily) escaped the whole reality show fad. I've seen precisely one (1) episode of Survivor, during a trip Stateside, so my exposure--and interest--has been severely limited. I want to spend an hour a week watching a bunch of people make idiots of themselves running around an island while some smarmy host comments on the action? I don't think so.
Now, with The Amazing Race, I spend an hour a week watching a bunch of people make idiots of themselves running around exotic locations worldwide while the host comments and struggles with his American accent. What can I say? It's addictive.
This show is a Jerry Bruckheimer production and looks it: insanely fast cutting, constantly moving camera, pounding music, and colorful locations. LOVE the locations. And yeah, I've formed strong opinions about people I've never met who are running the race (I'm hoping a large boulder falls on the obnoxious pizza-parlor-owning brothers, for example).
Worse yet for me, is that I've found a source for the FIRST series of The Amazing Race, so now, three years after the rest of North America, I, too, am rooting for Mom & Emily and Kevin & Drew ("Village idiots? That's us."), booing the evil Team Guido ("We're playing the other teams just like violins."), and listen to host Phil Keoghan try to get his American accent right. I have an iBook, so I'm watching episodes of the show while commuting on the train--I'm in the middle of episode 7, as the five remaining teams run around Jaipur, India.
I doubt it will ever happen, but I could seriously see myself buying a DVD set of past series--especially if they include bonus material such as travel information and short documentaries about the locations they visit (the 20 seconds of edited-with-a-Cuisinart footage they do at the top of each show is just not enough) and deleted scenes.
Rites of Death
My Canadian friend Liz lives in Tokyo and writes a blog she calls The Liz Connection ("Ramblings about life in general and living in Tokyo") about her day-to-day life.
Last week, her Japanese father-in-law died, and she attended the funeral, and she writes about here:
I didn't drop anything (aka a Japanese funeral)
Machine Processed
I haven't really been following the Bobby Fischer story, despite the fact that it's unfolding in Japan, but I came across an item in the news yesterday that caught my attention. The article noted that Fischer was preparing an appeal with the Japanese immigration authorities over the decision to deport him to the US, saying he had three days to do so
That caught my eye because, well, I've done that myself.
It's a long story, and I'll probably tell it in the future, but the Reader's Digest version is that owing to my misreading of the date, I missed my visa renewal deadline by two days and was forced to undergo the appeals process. I was notified of an appointment to return to the Immigration Bureau with a metric buttload of supporting documents. What was noteworthy about the appeals process, which involved 3 separate hearings and 3 separate appeals of the decisions, was that it all took place in ONE DAY.
At each hearing I would meet with an immigration officer, who would:
- ask me a few questions
- tell me that my appeal had been denied
- tell me that I had up to three days to contest the decision
- ask me if I wanted to appeal the decision, which of course I would answer "yes".
- give me a form to fill out
- take the form and tell me that they would begin the appeal process immediately
- send me to a waiting room different from the one I'd just waited in before
After an hour-and-a-half or so, a different immigration officer would come out with my file, and the above process would begin again.
It was very Kafkaesque--conversation was limited and I never had the sense that I was having the slightest effect on the proceedings. But it was a very compressed Kafka: I started the day at 8 AM, and got out of there with my visa exemption pasted in my passport at 4:45.
And that was it: in one end of the machine and out the other, all in one day. The same group of foreigners would shuffle from room to room, and stayed essentially the same throughout the entire process.
My assumption was that my case--and that of my fellow foreigners who shuffled from waiting room to waiting room--was so cut-and-dried that the decision to let us stay was fixed before we all walked in the door that day, but the rules had to be obeyed to the letter--especially so those whose situations WEREN'T cut-and-dried couldn't complain about unfair treatment. I have the feeling it's also true for Bobby Fischer--except the process is being stretched out: I suspect the decision was made a long time ago, and he'll be back in the US soon.
More Paris Pictures
Slowpoke that I am, I finally have finished the latest batch of Paris pictures:
9 May 04 - A Walk to the Eiffel Tower, Part 1
At this rate, I may done just before my next trip there.
Man Oman I'd Like to Go
Hey Cal,
Just curious, how come Oman made your list? Or is that UAE (or both)? Anything interesting that I should know about? :)
- Liz, commenting on Where I've Been, Where I'd Like to Go
Hmm, good eye there, spotting the blotch of red at the bottom of the Arabian Peninsula. And for the record, it's Oman I marked, not the UAE.
Why Oman? Well, that takes a bit of explanation. Bear with me.
The Background
A few years ago I had a part-time gig working as an "essay counselor" at an MBA prep school in Kanda. Essentially, I was a copy editor for application essays written by Japanese applicants hoping to get into Wharton, HBS, or one of the top North American business schools.*
The level of checking I did ranged from simple proofing ("too, not to") to more radical surgery ("I don't think that the admissions committee really wants to know the entire decisionmaking process for the project. Why not focus on the distinctive stuff?"), but mostly involved structure, verb agreements, and idioms appropriate for native speakers ("Don't say I experienced five years of high-level business planning, but I have five years of experience in high-level business planning")
The application essay is a standard part of the B-school, and if you apply to several schools simultaneously (always wise to hedge your bets), then you have to crank out a lot of different essays, of varying lengths and subject matters, such as
- What was your greatest business achievement?
- What was your biggest failure, and what did it teach you?
- Why did you choose [INSERT NAME OF SCHOOL]?
- Discuss an ethical dilemma you faced and how you dealt with it.
- What are your professional goals and how will an MBA from [INSERT NAME OF SCHOOL] help you achieve them?
- Discuss your most memorable non-business experience.
- If you could have dinner with any two people, living or dead, who would you choose and why?
).
As a result, I and my fellow essay counselors saw the same people's work quite often, either from sitting down with the client as we worked, or (if they were unable or unwilling to trek down to Kanda) having the drafts e-mailed or faxed in.
The Client
One of my regular clients one year
had to fax in his drafts, since, it turned out, he was in
Oman, working as a project manager on a big LNG terminal construction project. Naturally, he wrote a lot about working on the project itself, but for the broader, personality-driven questions that some B-schools asked for, he wrote about the experience of living in--and in his off-hours, exploring--Oman. Since I all I really knew about the place could be summed up in two words--"Middle-Eastern" and Oil"--it was an eye-opener. The towns, the mountains, the scuba-diving--it all sounded fascinating.
One day, I showed up at the school, and found my appointment waiting for me at my cubicle--a deeply tanned Japanese man. Yes, it was the Man from Oman, who'd returned to Tokyo a day or so before, and was here to go over his latest draft in person. After we disposed of the business at hand, we talked about his experiences in Oman, and it piqued my interest enough to want to go myself.
Lagniappe
What sealed the deal was some months later when one of my favorite newspaper columnists,
Jon Carroll of the
San Francisco Chronicle, wrote a few columns about HIS visit to Oman (
Man Oh Man, Have You Been to Oman?,
Bellying Up in the Desert", and
The Last Column About Oman
So Oman is definitely on my Must Go list.
*Mostly. A few also were applying to European B-schools like INSEAD or London Business School, or to non-business graduate programs--one guy I helped was a philosophy major applying to NYU Film School, of all things.
It's HOT
I knew it was going to be a bad day when I checked the weather early this morning. According to the readings at Hino (about 15 km west of here), at 7 o'clock in the morning it was already 76° F (24° C)--and 85% humidity. Oy
Another European Rock N' Roll Expat
American listeners to National Public Radio and its daily interview program Fresh Air with Terry Gross might be familiar with the name Ed Ward. He's the guy who does their Rock History commentaries (Fresh Air's most recent show features his story of a 1953 recording of a Ray Charles studio rehearsal).
Well, Ed lives in Berlin (which you'd know from listening to the tag they read at the end of each of his commentaries), but did you know that he has a blog about it? Find out about the life of a long-term expatriate freelance writer living in Europe from BerlinBites.
Searching for the Nutcase
I've read the rumors, and had occasionally wondered about the odder-looking foreigners I've seen on the street or on the train. Now it looks like the rumors were true:
New York Times:
Search for Former Chess Champion Ends at Tokyo Airport
TOKYO, July 16 — After more than two decades of living in near obscurity, the former world chess champion Bobby Fischer has been apprehended by Japanese immigration authorities for allegedly trying to leave the country without a valid passport.
A United States Embassy official in Tokyo confirmed that Mr. Fischer was detained at Narita airport today. Japanese news reports said Mr. Fischer could be deported to the United States, where he faces charges for violating an American economic sanctions order against the former Yugoslavia by playing an exhibition match there in 1992.
Where I've Been, Where I'd Like to Go
Courtesy of Liz at DaTigz, a world map showing where I've been and where I'd like to go.
This is where I've been. Yes, it's very empty:
And where I'd like to go:
Clearly, I've got my work cut out for me.
create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide
Out of the House
A couple of weeks ago, I splurged and bought myself a Apple iBook, complete with AirPort WiFi card. I bought it mostly to use on my hour-and-a-half train ride to work, but I also figure that with WiFi access I could spend some time outside of the house--especially if were air-conditioned--to catch up on e-mails and blogs and photo editing (I shot 2351 photos during my vacation, and it's high time I posted some of them).
The problem with my theory of mobile computing--besides having the time, of course--is that I've had trouble finding a place with WiFi access. Today, mostly in desperation for some Proof of Concept, I travelled to the other side of Tokyo to a Starbuck's in Tsukiji, solely because someone I know told me that he'd gotten a WiFi signal (much to his surprise, since he relies on a plug-in PHS modem) while there. Even a list of hot spots I had wasn't helpful, so here I am at the Starbuck's in Tsukiji.
Okay, probably not a productive use of my time, but damnit I wanted to see if this thing works. And hooray, it does.
Now I have to find someplace closer to my house.
European Vacation Photos, Part 1
I've (finally) started posting pictures from my European vacation last month--it was a short holiday, two weeks only, with one full week in Paris and the remainder in London. I took approximately 2,345 photos (give or take duplicate shots), and I'm wading through them when I have time
You can find the links for the first three Photo Albums below. Pardon the roughness, but I'm still getting the hang of this. More--much more--later.
