tonari no shibafu

Operating within acceptable parameters

The end of my first week back at work after the vacation. I struggled with jet lag until yesterday, or, really, until about three this afternoon. Mostly over it, but I'm still in that fragile state where I don't feel particularly tired while active but fall asleep as soon as I hit the couch. A word I like way more than sofa, by the way. The Japanese loan-word chosen was sofa, so not only do I hear the word far more often than if my druthers had the force of law, but I also have to say the word. But because it's a thing with me, I say "couch" first, and only in response to bewildered looks say the other.

In spite of the jet lag, a condition to which I am apparently inordinately susceptible, I've still retained a bit of the sightseer's fervor, and that's allowed me to be adequately productive this week. I go in to the weekend with things to do yet progress made. It's a good feeling. My most productive periods have all entailed gaming myself psychologically by manipulating the schedule, and I've been just proactive enough to think I deserve this sake. I inherited from my Dad a sense that a weekend with errands running past noon on Saturday is a failure. Most of my weekends are, by this definition, less than successful, but doing things here and there during the week creates a euphoria based on seemingly boundless weekend potential, a lifespan unenvied by mayflies, the euphoria is confined to Friday nigths.

Just brought in the laundry.

Icing on the cake.

On my way home from the gym

They were setting up for the second day of a festival near boro-ichi. I guess classic cars are some part of the celebration.

Setagaya, Tokyo

Pictures of Japanese Highway Interchanges

Awesome photos.

via Pink Tentacle

A not atypical Sunday

Woke up today around 8, which constitutes sleeping in for me. Checked email and worked through my newsreader while listening to the NPR 24-hour program stream. Then around 10:00 on to listening to Wait Wait. That brings us current. Now Misa and I are trying to decide what to have for breakfast brunch.

I have some studying to do for the kanken and also have to meet up with my boy Bunshi who's in town from Sapporo. He's staying in Gotanda, but I' not sure where we'll meet up yet. Usually we hang out at The Cow, but I'll have to check what they have on tap before we decide to go there. I might try to find a place in Sangenchaya. It is a really hip place with lots of eateries and drinkeries and is only a stone's throw both from the Yamanote and from Misa's place.

11:00-11:30 Filed some online reports for work.

Lunch and miscellaneous screwing around and trying to troubleshoot intermittent signal dropping on Misa's airport. That's (seemingly) fixed.

2:00-5:00 Kanji study with a small break around 3:30 to try out SKYPE

5:00-6:00 Watching Sumo

Sumo is on tv from about 12:00, but the high-ranked wrestlers don't come on until around 4:00, at which time they also start the English language broadcast on the sub-channel. This is the first tournament since the summer in which yokozuna Asashoryu is competing. He was given a two tournament suspension, but also had surgery to repair an injury during that time. He's been kinda the bad boy of Sumo for the last 5 years in spite of being one of the most dominant sumotori ever. I'm not a big fan of his style of sumo, but his ability is beyond dispute.

...

Just back from seeing Bunshi. It's amazing to me that we could've been such good friends for going on 7 years, as I feel like I'm just starting to understand a reasonable percentage of his Japanese. 運が良かったみたい。

Gonna watch the latest episode of Psych and hen hit the rack.

After failing in indignation...

...in response to my treatment at the hands of the crack freshman writing teaching corps -- at my, like many, large universities, teaching freshman writing is an easy way to make a buck for grad students -- I had the best teacher ever. She created an environment where everyone felt safe and I think that most of the students came away with something great. Even during a shortened summer session.

Who knew that she would go on to win the Pulitzer?

Not in Japan any longer

Jamie, formerly of I'm Still In Japan, has moved to China.

Notice

Read this. Often.

via Josh Spear

What do you do...

...after taking a multi-year hiatus from grad school to live in a foreign country? 

If your name is Erik Jorn, the answer is  tripartite: a) go to medical school in Denmark, b) put your motorcycle on a ferry to Russia and ride through 16+ countries to get there, c) blog about it.

Rock on Erik!

What me worry?

Gotta say that because of my blog I've gotten back in touch with Smitty, Smitty, and Double-O, made some e-friends, and have discovered some very entertaining writers.  Not to mention the fact that I've wiled (sp?) away countless hours reading the likes of Bill Simmons and searching for anything and everything under the sun.  I've only been connected -- in the internet sense, not the Sopranos one -- for 3 short years, but can't now imagine not having access at home.  Still, as time marches on, and this is in no small part due to my realization that folks who really know the way our current technologies work can wreak havoc on the unsuspecting, I have become increasingly concerned about privacy issues and our collective lemming-esque rush to make our lives public...and googlable.

I've been puzzled by sites like YouTube and others where the bandwidth usage would suggest huge cash outlays with little obvious revenue.  How are sites like that and others, for example the social networking sites that seem to be popping up everywhere, making any money? 

Perhaps the answer is that they aren't.  Perhaps there is a bubble growing based on future revenues. 

Cool pics

I've been watching this guy's site for a couple of months now, and I like some of his pictures so much I figured I'd drive a little more traffic his way.  The site's in Japanese. 

Jamie again

Another essay I enjoyed over at I'm Still in Japan.  There are parts of this that I like better than others, but I felt -- partially due to time constraints and my abominable typing -- that I should just post this whole section.  So it's a bit long but...

I awoke somewhere around three or four in the morning to the whispering sound of rain. It was demure and polite, barely making a sound as it tiptoed across the ground and over my sleeping bag, and I liked the thought of drifting back to sleep on this misty river bank.

I changed my mind a few minutes later when the rain turned from Romantic to Biblical, fat drops falling like bullets and flashes of lightning detonating on the horizon. My poor loyal sleeping bag was hastily stuffed away, dejected and sopping, and I made an idiot dash across the rugby field, jumping through waterfalls and praying there wasn’t a thunderbolt up there with my name on it. I sprinted into the first shelter I could find, a little concrete tunnel shot straight through a hill for pedestrians, cyclists and sopping morons who think tents are for sissies.

It wasn’t exactly the most auspicious way to start my trip, but I had plenty of momentum in me. I changed into a dry set of clothes, confident that I was the only one stupid enough to be outside at four in the morning in a lightning storm. Like most spring storms it had the demeanor of a two year old, screaming hysterically for half an hour then fading into whimpers and forgetting about what the big deal was. So by five we were back where we started, in a transparent drizzle that instead of getting you wet was merely decorative.

The night before Takasaki had seemed atmospheric, otherworldly, and I had enjoyed the shock of wandering a city with no people in it. But in the dull drizzly morning the city looked about as romantic as my sleeping bag, wet, gray and getting moldy. I tromped into a convenience store for a cup of coffee and spooked the clerk stocking the shelves, gaping at this lanky white man who had materialized at five in the morning in a rain storm. I walked around the remnants of Takasaki castle, which was now a public park. The remaining fragments of the castle were weird little non-sequiters, carefully buffed and labeled. A single corner of the outer wall, the central gate, opening onto a playground, a two story public library sitting quietly where a towering keep had once ruled the landscape. An old man was taking his dog for an early morning walk, the mutt eagerly sniffing out traces of his medieval ancestors, then peeing all over their scents.

…

If you liked that, go read the rest

Random stuff

Christina Aguilera, vamping...

What happens after a decade of double digit economic growth?
High culture...
China's 50 most beautiful people
via Danwei

A list of the best vegetarian restaurants (and dishes) in Boston
via boston.com

Tips for new faculty from OSU
via Photoethnography

A cool water bottle sized/shaped bicycle repair kit.
via Boing Boing

You can be a girl for $900

A blog of a guy whose eaten nearly 14,000 bowls of ramen in shops across the country.

Terri Gross interviews CCH Pounder of The Shield, one of my favorite shows.

One of my new favorite photo blogs

Where to get the best sandwiches in Boston

Wow

Can't believe I just found I'm Still in Japan.  Here is a post on the sex trade here that now has me hooked.

Consider giving

This guy wants to switch from Windows (IBM Thinkpad) to Mac, and has put out a call to the web for donations.  I think it is sooo cool to see this kinda thing happen.  Thousands of people are viewing the dude's site, and only a fraction are sending him money, but he raised about $500 in two days thanks to some good press from Gizmodo.  The only other time I have seen something similar is when the readers of the busblog bought Tony an IPod, and that was people rewarding a writer that puts their work up for free.

Whether you give or not, check out his website and show him a little traffic love.

In case anyone is wondering, I will not be giving.  If I could think of a good reason for people to give me money I would...

Whoa

Just registered my training blog at Technorati Japan and found that between today, and when I registered this blog.  Nearly 1 million new blogs have been registered.

Big city, small town

After a night of debauchery with Ramsbottom-Isherwood, I was feeling under the weather and was late for work.  By work I mean at Muriwui.  I started teaching conversational English there yesterday to supplement my income enough that I'll have some pocket cash when I head home next month.  I'm getting about $80 a week to chat with folks in the mother tongue and hope to save all of it for pizza, beer and sundries in 'ole Taxachusetts.

Anyway, even after multiple trips to the head I was feeling like death warmed over and battling through on willpower alone.  My second student was the ever-vivacious Reiko who I also taught yesterday.  She had looked familiar to me, but I assumed it was because I had seen her at the cafe before.  Turns out that she plays hoops with the Setagaya Phoenix and I had met her last summer.  She just didn't recognize me with the new 'do.

After that little bit of serendipity, another crazy thing happened.  I met The Shoe.  He and his wife were in Muriwui and he came up and introduced himself after my last lesson.  We had exchanged a couple o emails way back when about, oddly enough, playing hoops, but that had been our only contact outside of the comments sections of our blogs.

I have now met two bloggers in person that I knew only from the fabulous internet.

Local Mass News Blogs

If you live on Mass Ave in the dry stretch between the Lexington packy and the Cambridge one, then you might want to check out Live from Arlington.

Then again for the up an coming young professionals that have been gentrifying Watertown (Pamela, Gren, Ben and Bhaird I'm talkin' to you) 'lo these many years, you can check out H2Otown.

via Rox Populi

Can't yet quit my day job

My blog is worth $5,080.86.
How much is your blog worth?

Missing Photos

I got an email from Typepad the other day informing me that some of my data had been lost.  I don't think that anything crucial is gone, just a couple of pics.  I may reload them, but not for a while.

What's going on

I have been working overtime trying to 1) get a little ahead in my seminars, 2) keep my filing system active and functional, 3) work on my kambun/manuscript reading skills, and 4) study for the proficiency exam.  Blogging will likely be light until next weekend.

Comment management

I just realized that I haven't mentioned here that I have started managing the comments.  I'm taking my computer with me almost every day, but am still at the mercy of free and open hotspots so there will likely often be a lag between your posting and the comments actually showing up.  It's too bad that I don't really spend anytime in areas like Roppongi because according to Majed there are free hotspots all over. 

I remember seeing a sign for one when I went (for what reason I don't know) to Roppongi Hills.  Since I have to be in Ebisu by 1 pm, maybe I'll go past it this morning to Hiro or to Daikanyama and try to find a wired cafe.

Food for Thought

I read this today, which, though I disagree with a lot of the points, has given me some interesting things to ponder about my weblog. Although there are many ways to characterize people with weblogs, one division is the anonymous/public one. Still mulling over some of the things that I read there, and I am going to make some changes, though likely minor ones.

I found this guy's opinions here