tonari no shibafu

Frontline comparative health care

Frontline has a show that you can watch online comparing the health care systems of six countries including the US and Japan. Worth a look.

I just noticed this at the end of Big Bang Theory.

Am I alone?

Or is anyone else watching The Big Bang Theory. Generally I consider 30-minute sitcoms the lowest form of television. Recent exceptions being the short-lived Knights of Prosperity and the first few seasons of Scrubs.

I have found, obvious character tweaking during the writers' strike aside, BBT to be consistently entertaining, if a little generic in its nerdy references.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention 30 Rock. Mea culpa.

Do you know how disconcerting doing a spit take...

...sitting by yourself in front of a computer with the only other sounds being hammer guns from the latest in a clowncar-esque progression of neighborhood house renovation and the otherworldly caw of crows big enough to eat your face is?

"Well it's business drunk. It's like rich drunk; either way it's legal to drive." -- Jack Donaghy

Cajun style

More Wire

Ed Burns on Fresh Air
Burns and Simon on Talk of the Nation
Simon and Pelecanos on Fresh Air
David Simon on Fresh Air

Ed Burns, David Simon, et. al.

The Time Magazine article. Read it.

Star Trek TOS

Streamed on the web for free.

via Get Rich Slowly

The burden of knowing too much

So I'm watching Prison Break today, and the latest implausible plan from Mssr. Scofield hinges on him calling an electrical generator manufacturer. He gets someone on the outside to read him the manufacturer's number off of the generator. It's an 800 number. Scofield then calls from the inside of the Mexican prison. Unfortunately, 800 numbers don't work outside of the US.

It's those kinds of details that all too often ruin tv for me.

I you haven't been reading Why We Write

You should.

excerpts from Michael Oates Palmer's entry will give you a clue

I write because when I was six years old, my grandfather would take me to his favorite hang-out, the Stop Inn, a dive bar on the corner of a row house street in Northeast Philadelphia. He’d let me sit on a stool and drink a Roy Rogers, while he and his cronies told stories for hours. Then we’d stop at 7-Eleven on the way home, and he’d buy me comic books.

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Because in college, I learned that music journalists got to go backstage. Because I loved rock and roll, but was a lousy guitarist, and realized at around 21 that all of the rock critics I worshipped were having a tough time paying their health insurance.

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Because when the writing’s going well, there’s a high. Because when it’s going poorly, you call another friend up, and then you can talk for fifteen minutes about how it’s going poorly, and then you talk about food.

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Because it was one of only three things I was ever good at, I couldn’t figure out how to earn a living make mix tapes, and the third thing is illegal.

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Because no matter how many times you see them, Duck Soup is still funny, The Manchurian Candidate is still jolting, Rosemary’s Baby is still scary, and, when you’ve had a lousy day, Donald O’Connor’s “Make ‘Em Laugh” bit in Singin’ in the Rain can still put you in a good mood. Every time.

Because it’s therapy, and because it’s church. Because it’s community, and because it’s solitary confinement. Because it’s blood.

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And because, like the song goes, we did it for the stories we could tell.

I may as well join everyone else...

... and display my unbridled admiration for The Wire with a post about this (or any other) season. Or I could do it in geekier fashion with this t-shirt.

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.

I Love The Simpsons

How little they think of us

Kozak, my fellow worshipper at the altar of Sorkin, sent me a link to the Charlie Wilson's War trailer. This was my reply:

Looks good.

Couple of things I noticed right off:

1) All Along the Watchtower (Hendrix version)

2) American Pie

These are two songs that appear (one or the other if not both) in just about every Vietnam movie that has ever been written.

What's the significance of them being used in a trailer about a scandal from the 80s? What are they trying to say? Seems that the whole trailer <snip> seemed a little Oliver Stone-esque.

My tag line would be 'Bartlett. What's he hiding from us now.'

S

I'm all over it, but now I'm going in with baggage...

Anybody here seen Richie?

Out for Justice is on Terebi Tokyo right now.

Classic.

Happy Golden Week everybody.

Just watched a couple of episodes of Knights of Prosperity

Thanks, Keith.

I'm glad that somebody's got our backs.

Duh

It has always seemed to me that the majority of stuff on tv here falls somewhere along the range that runs from contrived to completely fabricated, so I can't see anyone being surprised when a network admits to falsifying their data. One of my favorite shows, which I would venture to say is representative, is based on the premise that some famous person (a different one every week) rides a train line (a different one every week), gets off at arbitrary stops, and goes into places that he/she finds while walking around. The week's host (as well as the shopkeeper/person in the midst of some odd hobby) then have to go through the obligatory step of pretending to act surprised. I have a few friends that run restaurants/cafes here and every time one of these shows has come to do a piece, they are told about it weeks in advance. For some reason, though, the 'look what I found' format seems set in stone, and people just take it for granted.

Anyway, because so much of Japanese tv is either premised on deception -- similar to those shows that are called reality television in the states -- or thinly veiled infomercials for something or other, I could never believe that, for example, natto would help me lose weight.

Coincidence

So within two weeks I saw references on two separate NBC shows (Scrubs and Studio 60) to Corinne Bailey Rae, who I've never heard of. Cursory searching yielded no obvious link between NBC and EMI (Bailey Rae's label). Anyone know anything about this? Am I being paranoid?

Last weekend was a 3-day one here in glorious Tokyo and so we had the benefit of the reduced pace that comes with it.  On Saturday, Misa and I went to Setagaya ramen (せたが屋　らーめん）in Nozawa.  Just about every week, we watch a show called dochi no ryori sho, on which every week they have two people cooking, and the assembled stars vote on which dish they think will be more tasty.  As a wrinkle, the stars that voted for the meal that gets the most votes get to eat it, and the others get nothing.  Anyway, we've been meaning to go to this place since we first saw it, and I'm glad we did.  They have the tastiest soup (made from scallops I think) that I have ever had in ramen. 

I wasn't going to comment about this, but I see that one of the blogs that I read occasionally, just posted about it also.

Small world city.

An interesting lecture entitled TV's New Economics by David Poltrack and Jorge Schement about the future of television distribution.  Admittedly, it is a bit statistics-laden and dry at the beginning, but still worth a listen.

I should warn you, I was listening to The Cure a lot when I wrote this....

When I went to my boy Doug's wedding in 2001, my old karate teacher from Amherst was in Japan  as part of a delegation celebrating his teacher's having brought karate to the States.

When I went to the States this past March, I missed the final game of March Madness by like one or two days.

Now, come to find out that the World Championship of Basketball.  THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP OF BASKETBALL.  The game that I have been playing for more than three decades.  The game raised to the level of art by Cousy, Maravich, Erving, Johnson, Bird, and Jordan.  Is going to be in Japan starting Aug 19th, four days before my trip to the States, and the finals are held the night I return.  To make matters worse, according to the schedule, all of the games before we take off are at least a 3-4 hour train ride away, and the finals are up in (da)Saitama, 5 hours after we land.  So it's possible for me to go to the finals, if I ship my baggage from the airport to my apt. and go directly to the game after a 14+ hour flight.

What would Tyler Durden do?  While I know that I am, in fact, not my f'ing khakis....still....

What would you do ?

Maybe I can talk The Shoe into going...

NYC prep

Though I grew up only a few hours by car or train from New York City, I can count on one hand the number of times that I've been there.  Being a suburban Massachusetts kid through and through I was never one for the big city vibe, and my experience with the New York kids in my high school was less than inviting.  I had quite an attitude about the fact that many of the people from New York -- not to mention the wannabe kids from Southern Connecticut -- always referred to NYC as 'The City', as if no other cities exist, and it always struck me as dismissive.  It wasn't until after living in Tokyo for a while that I gained an appreciation for what large, cosmopolitan cities have to offer.

So, because I am meant to act as de facto tour guide for some folks that have never been to the US, I thought that I should try to broaden my knowledge of New York a bit.  For me, the obvious medium was video.  I decided to try to get my hands on some movies about New York to try to refamiliarize myself with it, and (hopefully) find some places not listed in the guidebooks that would be interesting to visit.

Of course I could have spent a few months of my free time just watching movies by Woody Allen, Spike Lee and Neil Simon, but I wanted to get a slightly more diverse overview than that.  And, truth be told, a) I have seen all of the Woody Allen movies too many times, and b) I always found Spike Lee's white characters too unidimensional and any interracial relationships (Jungle Fever) too superficially portrayed for me to enjoy his films thoroughly (With the exceptions of She's Gotta Have It and Mo' Better Blues).  Neil Simon is always good, but for me it begins and ends with The Goodbye Girl (ok, ok, and Murder by Death...and The Lonely Guy), for which, at this point, I can do dialogue.

Anyway, the movies that I have chosen are:

The Graduate (though once I found out that Anne Bancroft is only 6 years older than Dustin Hoffman, the illusion was shattered)
Stay
Basketball Diaries
Once Upon a Time in America
Midnight Cowboy
Donnie Brasco
Little Manhattan
Metropolis (The Whit Stillman one)
Wall Street
Annie Hall (gotta have at least one Woody Allen movie)
A movie on NYC Hackers

Of course The Godfather, King of New York, and some others are high on my list of movies either about or set in New York, but again, I've seen them all too many times to really be worth sitting through again at this point.

Also, we're going to watch some episodes of Queer Eye and maybe a few of Sex and the City.  I also have a pretty good library of Seinfeld and may try to hit some of the places from the show.

Ahh, I just remembered the Last Dragon.  There must be some cool locations in that as well.

One of the things that I worry about, however, is my motives for this all.  If it is just to go to some out of the ordinary places then so be it, but I have an inkling that a good part of it all is to have an interesting anecdote or two.  "You know, I decided to go there because I saw it in X movie/show....best decision I ever made."  It takes me back to the way that my childhood friends and I used to compete about music.  Whenever we found someone we liked we would work very hard to find some obscure recording "Live at El Mocambo" or something like that to wow each other with.  Silly really, but I often still find myself thinking about people's reactions to what I am still in the planning stages of doing.  Not my favorite part of my personality.

Anyway, I'm sure that 'the blogging instinct' is another face to that coin anyway, so there's no real need to feel particularly self-conscious about any of the travel stuff.

Ok, it's late.  Must sleep.

お帰りなさい。

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

...the drug of a nation...

Ok, so I wish I didn't care what happened with Izzie and Denny.  And I still fall for all the camera tricks and music that is reminiscent of the revelation scenes in John Hughes movies.  But damn that Grey's Anatomy is addictive.  * Here is a link to the show's website, but it has sound and an annoying amount of flash effects, so caveat clickor.

Was there any chance that I wouldn't watch what must be the best role Shatner ever played?  Nope, no chance.  And the Parker Posey.  and the James Spader.  even if it wasn't the only show that addresses a serious social issue every week.  still be one of the most enjoyable hours of tv goin'.

So, I'm a little behind the study plan today.

Worth every damn moment.

Sumo video on the web

Turns out that the site banzuke.com has video of sumo matches online. 

Enjoy.

Tv in Japan

Bits of tv from Japan served up YouTube-stylee.

via Quaisi

Straight outta Kronos (Qo'noS)

WGBH Lecture Podcasts

WGBH, the public television station in Boston is offering a weekly podcast of lectures.
This week's lecture is by Maureen Dowd.

Technorati Tags: podcast, PBS

Ookla, Ariel...Ride!

I'm trolling through the bittorrent sites looking for a new fix since all of the tv shows back home are having their season finales. And lo, and behold I come upon the first five episodes of Thundarr the Barbarian. I am sooo all over this.