Day 5: Friday, Aug 27, 2004: Wacky Japanese Fish, part II

As I type, on Sunday morning, is is cool and foggy-seeming.  If I go
out onto the balcony, it becomes clear that the mist/rain is just
looking like fog.  I've seen shadows only three times during my stay
here.  Some of that is due to working indoors for most of the days.
But most is due to all the low & thick cloud cover.  I understand that
Mt. Fuji is visible from some parts of Tokyo.  At this rate, I will
never be able to see Fuji-san.

I guess that makes all the less temptation to go sight-seeing.  I
really do have a big pile of software work to catch up.  Oh well.

Sorry I didn't include the URL for photos in my last message:
http://www.snookles.com/scott/images/japan-04-08/

----

Back to Friday.

I have a magic trick in the data center.  It's a pretty lame one, but
I'm not the one who came up with the name "magic trick".  It comes
from a game that I've created that I call, "Am I in America?"
(Perhaps this is related to a game some friends of mine play when they
are in Berkeley, California: "Homeless or university faculty?")

There are a few things that are off-limits.  Language & people are
off-limits.  That would be too easy.  Looking for other things adds
spice to the game.  I've come up with three things in the data center,
aside from the "wow, it's really crowded in here" work conditions and
the whole "everyone is wearing ties and blue slippers" thing.

1. The hallway corridor, outside the big machine rooms, is wrong.
   Rather, the floor is wrong.  There is a two meter wide layer of
   plywood on the floor to protect the floor when moving heavy
   equipment through the corridor.  Between the floor and plywood is a
   sheet of clear plastic.  It's the plastic that's wrong.

   Specifically, it's the plastic at the doorways.  Not nearly enough
   tape is being used to hold down the edge of the plastic where
   people might be walking, like by a door.  In most places, there are
   only 2 or 3 small pieces.  Good heavens, someone could *trip* and
   hurt themselves!

   The Japanese have heard about the "MacDonald's drive-thru coffee
   spilled in the lap" lawsuit.  I've tried to explain that such
   lawsuits are pretty rare, but most companies (and many people) are
   quite frightened by the possibility of such lawsuits.  In America,
   that plastic would be held down by tape running across the entire
   width of the door.  Perhaps multiple, reinforcing pieces.  Perhaps
   it would also be taped down the entire length of the corridor, just
   to be safe.

2. The break room/smoke room.  There is no fan to help pull the
   cigarette smoke out of the break room.  (The green tea, strawberry
   milk, and strange fruit juices in the break room vending machines
   are also off-limits for the game.)  But that's a small detail
   compared to the window.

   The break room windows looks out over a construction site
   (industrial, I think, instead of the apartment buildings being
   built on the other side of the data center).  Tsurumi-san wonders
   if I'm pointing at the enormous ferris wheel that's 2-3 miles
   away.  (It may be the current world record holder.  It makes the
   elevated expressway bridges look quite short.)  No, actually, I'm
   pointing to the open window.  Granted, we're only on the third
   floor, but an American window in an office building would probably
   not be allowed to open at all, much less open so far that you could
   throw yourself out.

3. This took me several days to notice.  Again, it has to do with the
   plywood protecting the corridor.  The realization was that the wood
   was too nice.  Weird idea.  But then I found a couple sections of
   plywood that were separate from everything else, and they have
   confirmed my idea.

   The "too nice" idea originally came from the plywood's appearance.
   Simply put, it has almost *no* visible knots.  You might have to
   look at a couple sections to find a single obvious knot, and then
   it will only be about the size of your fingernail.  And then, come
   to think of it, the plywood is *very* smooth.

   It turns out that the plywood has a veneer on both sides.  So,
   someone intentionally spent extra money on plywood to protect the
   floor when moving 1,000+ pound equipment.  Call me crazy, but I
   don't think Americans would spend the extra money on plywood veneer
   without a *very* good reason.

   The Japanese reasons that I can think of are:

   a. Less risk of splinters, since everyone is wearing slippers.   
   b. Aesthetics

Friday is a short day at the data center.  We leave at 4:15pm.
Tsurumi-san thinks it's a good idea to go with me to help me find the
Gemini KK office.  True, I've never been there, but I can call for a
guide from the Shibuya subway station to the office.  With both of us
going, it feels like we're skipping school.  After all, we *are*
headed for the "fun" part of Tokyo.

In one of the subway stations, I see a promo poster for "Seabiscuit".
(Japanese literal translation: "Seabiscuit") Tsurumi-san asks if it
was a good movie.  I say yes but the book was better.  He says that's
always true.  I said yes, but in my case it was better because it was
educational: I knew almost nothing about horse racing before reading
the book.  (Strange for someone who has cousins who breed race horses,
but that's another story.)

The book helps to explain why Seabiscuit was so popular.  Or, at
least, it tries to explain.  America during The Depression was a
different place.  And Seabiscuit was short (compared to other
thoroughbreds) and had a very weird-looking gallop.  Seabiscuit was so
popular that people would come to the train stations to try to see his
nose poking out of his car as the train came through town.  Seabiscuit
was as famous then as Michael Jordan is today.  Very difficult to
understand today.

Then, something clicks in Tsurumi-san's brain: Tama-chan!  Japan's
latest animal celebrity.  Tama-chan is a bearded arctic seal that was
found a couple of years ago in Tokyo harbor.  Tama-chan would swim up
one river, and crowds of people would flock to that side of Tokyo to
try to see him.  Then he'd swim down to the harbor and choose another
river.  And huge crowds would follow him along the banks of the new
river.

Joe Norton, a Gemini KK software guy living here (originally from
Bloomington, Illinois), is amazed that Tama-chan can get a permanent
residence visa but he cannot.  Many news stories mention this,
including:

	http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0514/p07s01-woap.html
	http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2840083.stm

Tama-chan also has a postal address and, apparently, a mailbox.  And
he gets fan mail.  It isn't clear if Santa's elves, during the
off-season, are helping him.

I wasn't watching all very carefully how we got to the restaurant.  If
I had to guess, we took the Ginza line (gold) from Shibuya (G01) to
Ginza Station (G09), then then transferred to Hibiya Line (grey) to
Hatchobori (H11).  I was busy talking about fishing in Minnesota and
was not paying much attention.

In the scramble to buy clothes for the trip and to pack and everything
else, I didn't have any time to think about gifts to bring from home.
I am still quite new to international travel.  And I'm not used to
buying gifts to bring home for Louise (what a romantic guy, right?),
much less bringing gifts to where I'm going.  Louise helped out: she
found a photo souvenir book of the Twin Cities from the late 80's,
right after the Twins won the 1987 World Series.  It's quite nice, if
a bit dated (and the 20 years of fewer skyscrapers makes the downtowns
look even smaller when compared to Tokyo).  But it doesn't have any
maps.

After getting through security at MSP, I had a lot of time to kill.
I'd never been on a 12 hour flight before.  Walking sounded good, so I
wandered for an hour.  I picked up a Minnesota travel guide at one of
the Info Desks.  It had a map of the state as well as a little outline
of where Minnesota is in relation to the rest of the lower 48 states.
Perfect, even if almost all of the rest is ads for lakeside resorts &
stuff like that.

Silly me, but even so full of advertisements ... that promo guide has
been wonderful.  Even the ads have a lot of photos of various parts of
the state.  Not many of them are wintertime, and if they are, they're
photos of skiing or snomobiling.  But there's at least one photo of
ice fishing.  The guy (and his snowshoes) is alone out on the ice
without an icehouse.  Not very realistic, but it helps to explain
that, yes, ice fishing is indeed popular.  And one of the photos has a
guy holding a trophy muskie, which helps explains how big they can
get.

That guide has been working magic here.  Several of the guys are now
quite interested in visiting Minnesota, if only in the summer time.
Tsurumi-san says that he wants to move to Minnesota.  Kamakura-san
gets shivers just thinking about temperatures at 0C (32F), much less
the very occasional nights when it dips to -30C (-34F).  But he thinks
that it looks like a nice place to visit in the summer and fall.

Tsurumi-san's wife hates the cold as much as Kamakura-san, so perhaps
he'll settle for a summer lake cabin.  He has suggested that I buy a
mansion near the data center: they are selling for about 32 million
yen for 71 square meters.  (I see the word "mansion" used here quite a
bit, but it is used for apartments.)  So, that'd be roughly $300,000
for a 770 square foot apartment.  As in Sweden, you typically purchase
an apartment rather than rent. ... So, instead of being snow birds in
Arizona, Louise and I could winter over in our mansion in Tokyo.

I didn't take many photos of the restaurant.  Sorry, too busy being
social.  Or eating.  Or drinking.  The interior was a warm but light
yellow wood almost everywhere.  Seating was at tables and at the sushi
bar, looking very Scandinavian.  Except for the paper lamps.  It was
on the second floor on the corner of a building, so the restaurant was
L-shaped.  The sushi bar (with multiple sushi chefs) ran along much of
the inside of the L.

We sat at one of the ends of the L, a table for 10.  Four of us
arrived first, the other five arriving later.  The photos were taken
early.  The second has Tsurumi-san taking the photo (so he's missing,
sorry) The other rogues are (left to right): me, Kasahara-san,
Kamakura-san, and Fukasawa-san.  The later arrivals were: Suzuki-san,
Meiseki-san, Kinoshita-san, and Joe-san.

The other restaurant photo is of the first round of food.  The sashimi
plate (raw fish) is on the left.  On the right fried fish.  It's an
unusual shape, but that's because it's the jaw of a yellowfin tuna.
Quite oily and therefore highly prized.  It is remarkably tasty, if a
bit difficult to navigate around the jawbone with chopsticks.  But I'm
pretty good with the sticks, so it isn't too difficult.  Everyone
tells me that fingers are ok.  "All rules are off here!" they
reassure.  The hot towels have stayed at the table, so if you need to
use it, feel free.

The bottom of that photo shows part of the bowl (2nd from left) of
salty pickled (?) squid, a favorite bar food.  As soon as the bowl
arrived, it was passed to me.  (I suspect this is a test.)  I have
shown my bona fides by using the sticks well, and I immediately dive
into the squid.  I really like squid.  The salt and whatever
juice/liquid with it is quite good, so I agree with them that it would
taste really good with sake.  We have beer on the table at the time,
so they assure me they'll order more when the sake arrives.

If the squid was indeed a test, then I passed.  Later in the meal,
stranger and stranger things arrive.  But, alas, they'll have to wait
for another time.  It is now noon on Sunday, and I really do have a
lot of work to do.  So, sayonara for now.  I promise more wacky fish
tomorrow.

----

Back to Sunday.

Scott in Japan: Special Edition

            Extra!  Extra!  Read all about it!

            MacGyver to the Rescue: Wire Wrap in Tokyo!
                Or,
            Scott Wishes He Had Long Hair!

So, I'm wandering around the neighborhood, looking for a lunch spot.
Something with hot food (aside from soup), since it has since gone
from mist/rain to honest rain.

Umbrellas are the practical thing to do in this city.  Outdoors they
cause problems, but indoors, and especially in the subway, it is much
more practical to fold them up.  Almost every place has an umbrella
stand near the door.  Any coat hangers you see are almost certainly
for suit coats, not for wet raingear.

Umbrellas aren't just for pedestrians.  People on bikes use them,
too.  Then again, just about any tool seems to be used on bikes.
Baskets.  Cigarettes.  Ketai (mobile phones)!  The thing that makes
one-handed bicycle drivers so interesting is that they're on the
sidewalks.  Even in the business districts, often fairly croweded with
people walking along and ducking in & out of shops.  Hugging the far
right of the sidewalk is usually the best defense.

My windbreaker is doing an alright job of keeping me dry during my
late morning stroll, but the rest of me is pretty wet.  I am the only
person wearing a rainjacket in 45 minutes of wandering around.  Then
again, I'm also the only obvious Westerner and the only guy with a
beard.  Is sopping wet hair going to make me any more different?

The curry shop that I'd walked past several days ago is closed.  Most
of the other tiny "food adventure" places are also closed today.  The
few that are open don't have obvious menus with any photos.  With
Tsurumi-san as my guide, that's no problem.  I'm not feeling quite
adventurous enough to wander into a restaurant without a clue what is
offered there.  Pointing at a photo is one thing.  Walking down a row
of other customers and pointing at their bowls and plates is another.

So, I return to Ketai, the Taiwanese place where we ate lunch on
Thursday.  (Drat, I forgot to take a photo of the interior.  Oh well.)
The round tables are low, with short woven wicker stools to sit on.
They have 4 laminated sheets of menu, with one or maybe two items on
each.  However, at the top edge of the wall, going half-way around the
entire restaurant, is their menu on vertical narrow strips of paper.
Only the number of the dish and the price is readable to my poor eyes.
Oh well, I won't be having one if their 104 dishes today.  I point at
one of the lunch specials.

While drying my glasses, disaster strikes: one of the bows breaks.
The screw didn't fall out: the bow actually broke in half, right
before the bow curves down to reach behind the ear.  Occasinally I'd
have to bend it there to get the glasses to sit correctly on my nose.
And the eyeglasses are old.  Too old.  But you'd think they'd be able
to last another week.  Fat chance.  Murphy's Law strikes again.

(At least the food was good.  Very, very good.  One dish was sweet and
 sour shrimp, with the sauce like it ought to be.  It put every
 American version I've ever had to great, great shame.)

Emergency repairs.  On a weekend in a hotel room 10 thousand miles
from home.  Joy.  Well, it could be worse.

All the take-away food that I've had here includes a toothpick in the
chopstick sleeve.  I rummage around for an old wrapper to find the
toothpick.  I find a white wire twist tie that I'd brought for one of
my Ethernet cables.  And I twist the two together for the repair.

Positive side: The glasses no longer bob up and down when I walk.

Negative side: I'm not certain what looks sillier: the wire wrap job
that I've done now or a huge blob of tape from the hotel front desk.

Well, if I had any problems looking like a geeky engineer, I have one
less problem now.  Hopefully I'll be able to visit an optician for a
new bow before going to work tomorrow.  Assuming that I can figure out
how to do my remaining laundry first.  Uff da.