FuguTabetai.com

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire / Jarvis Cocker!?

So this is a strange one. On the weekend I do a lot of work from home, programming, some stuff for fun (some programming on side-projects, translating manga so I don't forget how to like, read Japanese) and so on. I like to play bad movies when I'm doing this. So, I finally got around to checking out Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire this weekend.

Now, in all honesty, I do not like Harry Potter. I haven't read any of the books, but I did watch the first movie. I didn't like it. The main problem I had with it was that it didn't seem like Harry Potter himself did anything at all to merit being thought of as such a wonderful, great magician. As far as I could tell, Harry got by entirely because of gifts from his family and friends. He didn't seem to have any amazing courage or great ideas in the face of danger, and just seemed to go along with things as they developed.

The third movie seemed to be more of the same. I can't think of a single instance where he did anything of his own merit. He got into this 3-wizards competition because someone put his name in there. He won the dragon challenge because he was told to use his skill of flying, and in the end just kind of bobbled around and got through by luck. He didn't seem to have a plan at all. He found out how to open that egg because someone told him, and found out how to turn into a mer-man because of someone else as well. The only good points he showed is that he was willing to put his friends ahead of himself, but since he's just a shy guy anyway, that isn't really too surprising.

Even worse, it doesn't look like there are good role models in this movie either. I'm really surprised at how stereotyped and traditional the women are portrayed as in the movie. Also, how come it seems like none of these students know what is happening? If this school has been around for so long, and has a winter dance ever year, and that wizard competition thing, shouldn't they have known about it?

Anyway, I didn't really pay much attention to the movie until the dance. Because then I could swear that I heard Pulp, famous for Common People, a most excellent song, singing. Well, not really Pulp, but Jarvis Cocker for sure. After looking around, I found out that indeed, it was him! He got together with a pretty high-powered group, called The Weird Sisters, to sing three songs for the soundtrack. I've got to try to hunt those down.

So, basically, I still don't like Harry Potter, but I was really surprised to see Jarvis Cocker in the soundtrack. Pretty funny!

Video as an art medium

On Saturday I went to the Mori Art Museum with a friend and saw the Bill Viola exhibition. This was the first exhibition I went to that was entirely done in Video. I have to admit, I wasn't impressed.

I think video is a tough medium, because when it comes down to it, I do not think there is a shared consensus on how to interpret video as a medium for art. Culturally we have had a lot of experience with video as entertainment, and I think one would be hard pressed to argue for popular media as art, and especially as advertising. But museum art is a different creature.

You have to spend time to watch the entire loop. If the loops are long, this can really be tough, because you are doing a lot of standing around. Also, it seems like an imposition to walk in or out on the people that are already there viewing. So I think that just as a medium, it is tough in a museum setting. More than that though, I just had a really hard time interpreting what the artist means to say when I don't feel like I'm equipped with the social metaphors to understand his art. I mean, I could film some people's hands for an hour and slow it down.

Anyway, I still really like the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi Hills and am looking forward to their next exhibition. I am glad that I've seen some video art, but as of now, it isn't one of my favorite mediums.

Of course, as I write this I'm watching "Scrubs", which is a form of video art. The deeper message is mostly "funny" with a dash of "serious topics", kind of like life.

Whale cutlets in the Cafeteria?!?

Today for lunch in the office cafeteria one of the set lunches was a fried cutlet thing. Usually (almost always) this is a pork fried cutlet option that comes with rice, some miso soup, a small salad, and some tofu. I assumed that is what it was today, but when I looked at the card, it said that it was whale cutlets. Whale? I was surprised. I'm pretty sure that, for the most part, whale hunting is outlawed. I know that of all the countries that do engage in whaling, Japan is one of the more prolific countries, but I was still quite surprised to see whale show up on a standard cafeteria lunch menu.

I just assumed that you could get whale in Japan, but that it was more of a specialty item, not something that shows up in cafeterias. It would be like a standard US cafeteria serving foie gras or something. Sure, you can get foie gras at specialty places, but you wouldn't expect it to show up somewhere completely regular.

Of course, I had to try it. Sadly, it was disappointing. I would have much preferred pork cutlets, and somehow the idea of eating whale just didn't sit well with me.

It did make a nice addition to a week in which I had already eaten something strange. Over the weekend, there was the 19th Annual Oyamadai Festival, a standard Japanese street fair kind of thing, with little stalls on the street side and so on. One of the places was for the local horse sashimi place. They had grilled horse on a stick for 100 yen, so I tried a piece. It actually tasted pretty good, but again I had a hard time with the concept of eating horse, so I don't really think it is something I will eat again. I'm certainly not ready to try raw horse, even though one of my French co-workers says it is just delicious. If I ever feel the need though, I do have a place within a three minute walk of my house that serves it.

Oh Japan, you are such a convenient country! You think of everything!

Shake, Rattle, and Roll

I woke up this morning at 6:39am thanks to a small earthquake. At least, I think it was small. It registered a 4 on the Japanese scale in Setagaya-ku, but I don't really know how that translates. In some of the earthquake materials I've read, a 4 is enough to possibly unstack your dishes and move things around on your shelves. My dishes made it through ok.

I like how within a minute or two of an earthquake, NHK will interrupt broadcasting and switch to "earthquake mode", where they read off affected areas and other information as comes in. Earthquake mode broadcasting only lasted about ten minutes, so you know it wasn't really a bad one.

Gallery Hopping in Tokyo

On Saturday I met up with my friend Fumie Hiratai and we went gallery hopping with another friend of hers. Fumie is a very good guide to the art scene in Tokyo. We met when she was working at NII, but she is an artist and was able to give up her job at NII to focus on art full time. She's been working on large paintings that end up in hotel lobbies and large corporations lately, I think.

We met up in Ginza, a very nice area of Tokyo that reminds me a lot of SoHo in more ways than one. Ginza is rife with art galleries, but similar to New York, the real avant-garde artists are pushed farther out as the rents go up, and like to retailate by moving to more and more inaccessible parts of the city. Fumie wanted to go to some more modern and independent galleries, so the first place we headed was the Inoue building in Kayabacho.

The Inoue building is very interesting. It is an older building situated on the Kamejima river. (The link to the map is courtesy of the Masataka Hayakawa Gallery, which I do not think that we entered. The building has these interesting "井" grillwork signatures on the exterior. The majority of the building is devoted to galleries, with at least three or four of them, and a very interesting bookstore that just opened the week we went there. The proprieter was a very congenial fellow that we spoke with at length.

We went to the Taguchi Fine Art Gallery for the Kim Taek-sang exhibition Hue of Time. In general, I liked the concept, but I didn't really think that it was great art, or anything that I would want to spend large amounts of money on to put up in my house. I do think I could do a fairly decent impression though if I took some time to find some nice ceramic tiles and some paints that I liked. It is an idea anyway.

After the Inoue gallery, we took a long walk over to a very interesting building over near the Sumida river. It was a converted factory space, butted up against an in-use factory of some kind. Floors 2 and 3 were devoted to some strange engineering offices. Floors 5, 6, and 7 are art spaces. There are a bunch of interesting galleries there, such as the Zenshi Gallery, the Shugo Arts Gallery, and the Tomio Koyama Gallery. For the most part, I wasn't inpired by the art that we saw, although I did in general like Ikemura Leiko's Pacific exhibition.

There was one piece that really struck me though. It was a work in the Tomio Koyama Gallery (which I found to be the most interesting) by Tom Sachs entitled Promental shit backwash psychosis (I think this is it - but the inscription that I remember does not show up.) The shocking, and thought-provoking, part of the piece was the inscription over the Burberry pattern and Hello Kitty (look Andy, I know how to use Wikipedia too!) image. I do not recall exactly, but it went something along the lines of

Chill out Japan, or you'll get nuked again.

It gave me pause and it is very interesting to think about the Hello Kitty brand (and concept!) shone against the light of the incredible popularity of Burberry and other brand goods here in Tokyo. In what ways have brand goods become an end-goal in themselves for some segment of the hyper-consumer population of Japan?

I did a lot of walking on Saturday, but it was very interesting to hit these smaller art galleries. I look forward to doing it again sometime.

Movies on FuguTabetai.com

I'm starting a section for movies that I watch. I can't really say that I am a movie buff, but I do enjoy movies. What I used to enjoy most about movies was going to see a movie with my movie buff friend Carl Sable at the Magic Johnson Theater in Harlem, New York. That place is great because you can get food with your movie, and the crowds are usually lots of fun.

Anyway, now that I am living in Tokyo, I do not see movies in movie theaters; it is quite expensive here, about twice the price as movies in New York. I do watch movies at home though. I particularly like to start a movie and work with my laptop, answering email or doing some programming when I come home for the evening. Documentaries are nice to watch in this way, since there isn't much action and you often can follow the movie quite well just by listening to the dialogue. Foreign subtitled movies are not possible to watch in this manner.

In this section I'll post comments on random movies that I watch (or don't, as the case often is) while I'm in Tokyo.

Adventures in Cooking: Omurice

I haven't had the time to cook since I got to Japan. While I was at IKEA the other day buying a new sofa, I also picked up a Skänka wok for about 2,500 yen. I thought it would be a good time to test it out.

I'm big fan of Omurice. (Omelette rice - basically fried rice wrapped up in an ommlette.) I thought I would give cooking some Omurice a go. Based on this recipie for Omurice I started on some Omurice of my own. I also added a paprika and some bacon to the mix, and for the sauce in addition to ketchup I used some Tonkatsu Sauce which is just amazingly great.

I didn't do such a good job on the Omelette part, but the rest of it was just great. I ended up with six "omlettes" but that's only because I had six eggs. I'm also left with a lot of fried rice, so I'm set for the next week. As long as I don't get tired of it...

Who killed the Electric car?

So I watched this interesting documentary today. I like the idea of Electric Cars. I think they suit the needs of maybe 80% of the commuters in America today. I'm really surprised that they were shut down so fiercly by the automotive and oil industry.

Anyway, it is an interesting documentary, and well worth the rental.

It has been a long time since I've had some time to relax, so I also went to Jiyugaoka to do some shopping (my little sister's birthday is coming up) and I spent some time at Starbucks reading "Keritai Senaka". Since I quit drinking coffee I just haven't been sitting down to read, which is a shame. I'm going to try to put in some time reading that book. When I'm done with it, I think I'll try to take on one of Murakami Haruki's earlier works in Japanese. It is, if nothing else, good practice and a humbling experience.

My new Fågelbo Couch

I bought an IKEA sofa-bed. It is large and dominates my living room, but I love it because I can lay down on it, and it can transform into a bed as well. I was really impressed that the delivery company also assembled the thing. Many thanks also to my friend Andy for being at my place to receive shipment. And oversee living toom redecoration.

Now my apartment is pretty packed. I've got to think about how to change things around so it is less crowded, but I'm really happy with this sofa. It has a built-in storage compartment also.

Sumo Wrestling In Tokyo

On Thursday, Andy and I went to the Sumo Tournament in Tokyo at the Kokugikaikan. We had box seats for two, and got there pretty early. While we watched the early matches of unranked (and lower-level ranked) Sumo wrestlers, there weren't too many other spectators around. We did get a great boxed lunch though, that came with five commemerative tea cups with Sumo wrestler names on them. Also, hot tea brought to our box.

It is absolutely crazy, but it turns out that Sharon Stone also was there when we were. I think I saw her; the blond down in the very expensive seats, I imagine.

I really enjoyed watching the Sumo matches. The last two matches of the day were Kotooshuu, a Bulgarian Sumo Wrestler who is quite popular, and Asashoryu, a Yokozuna wrestler who I've also heard of before. Asashoryu did the Bow Dance at the end of the day, since he won his match. I was a little sad that he won his match, because I was totally looking forward to throwing my zabuton. Usually if there is a big upset that people are unhappy with, they will throw their zabuton up in the air. We didn't get that chance though.

The Sumo experience was really great. We ended up spending just about all day there, which was a bit tough because of the seating arrangements, but I'm glad that we saw the younger Sumo wrestlers also. I think I also now have a better grasp of Sumo. I'll try to catch it on TV if it is on some time. The people sitting next to us were quite nice too, and Andy also got a great picture of himself with some Sumo wrestlers.

Just for completeness sake, you might want to surf over to GoneLiving.com and check out Andy's entry on our Sumo Funtime Adventure.

Tokyo Disney Sea

My friend Mayumi invited me to Tokyo Disney Sea a few weeks back. Monday the 18th is a national holiday in Japan (the respect the day of the elders holiday) so for the long weekend she was planning to go with a friend of hers to Disney Sea. I had never been to any of the Disney lands in Japan, or amusement parks for that matter, so I thought it would be fun to go. I invited a friend of mine, Taka, to round out the group.

read more (1130 words)

Somebody doesn't like my bike...

So this morning when I went to grab my bike to go home from Jiyugaoka (why I was headed home early this morning is another story entirely) my front tire was entirely flat. This is actually the second time this has happened, and it was strange because the tire itself was not punctured, the air had just been let out of the tire. So it looks like someone doesn't like my bike. Or, more accurately, someone doesn't like where I park my bike, and is going to great passive-aggressive lengths to let me know. They could try something more direct, like a note, but I guess it is more fun to keep my guessing. I'm pretty sure now that this isn't some spontaneous leak in the tire though, since when I filled the tire up with air again it was as good as new.

On the ride back home, the front tire was making some really interesting squeeking sounds. I rode past two police officers, just sitting on their little scooters and waiting for something to happen, and thought "I bet a white guy riding by on a bike with a flat front tire will get their attention."

Sure enough, a few seconds later the two officers pulled me over (I think I could have given their scooters a run for their money if my front tire had air in it though! I can't imaging police officers in America on those little 50cc motorbikes.) and checked on the bike registration. Since I registered the bike with the police when I purchased it, everything was fine, but it was a little scary. I forgot the first rule of being a foreigner in Japan when it comes to police: don't speak Japanese. Anyway, the two guys were nice, and just concerned that I would crash my bike because of the tire. Since I only lived about two minutes away though, I didn't think it was a big worry. They let me go on, and one of them thought it was very important to tell me that someone was "teasing" me by letting the air out, since he didn't find any damage on the tire.

Is that a common itazura in Japan? I guess maybe on the level of keying someone's car?

Anyway, I put air in the tire this afternoon, and my bike is as good as new. It is still about two feet too short for me though. That is getting to be annoying. I would not want to ride in a triathalon on it, that's for sure!

Kuhonbutsu Taiko pulling festival

On Saturday afternoon, I went to my local temple, Kuhonbutsu, and they had an interesting festival going on. They hooked up a large Taiko drum to a huge set of ropes, and pulled it through town. Kids from all over the place helped pull the drum (although it was mostly the large man in front doing all of the pulling!) and nice music was being played in the truck at the front of the procession. It was really interesting!

Awa-Odori in Kouenji

I'm finally getting around to posting about the Awa-Odori festival that I went to a while back. I'll post-date it so the date is correct though.

The Awa-Odori is a kind of dancing festival that is from a part of Japan called Awa. I don't know where that is. This particular Awa-Odori (Odori means dancing) festival took place in Kouenji, in Tokyo. I went with some friends from work, and really had a great time.

I've posted some pictures up to Flickr, so take a look!

David Huang and Alana Evans' Wedding

On Friday, August 18th, 2006 David Huang and Alana Evans were married in beautiful Del Mar, California. The wedding was held at the Powerhouse, a beachside community center with an excellent view on the beach. David and Alana first met back in high school, either at a track meet that Michelle and I were running in, or after track practice. They were introduced by their friend Aftab, a fellow runner on the track team, who also married them. The ceremony was very sweet, they each exchanged their own vows, and rings of Stainless Steel that David Huang made himself.

Salk Institute in San Diego

On August 17th, 2006, Ron deVilla, Michelle VanNoy, and I went to the Salk Institute for a tour. The Salk Institute was designed by Louis Kahn in consultation with Dr. Salk, who developed a vaccine for Polio. It is a really beautiful and flexible building for lab spaces.

Omak Stampede Indian Encampment

On Saturday I went to Brewster to pick up my mother's parents, and then we drove to Spokane for cousin Hanny's birthday party. It was nice seeing Hanny and her kids (Jordan has really grown!) and meeting their dog Jake, who was just a blast to play with. Jordan spent some time playing Galactic Civilizations II, a great turn-based strategy game that everyone should buy. We drove back to Brewster in the evening, barely avoiding some deer on the three hour trip, and then on Sunday I went to Omak to visit the Indian Encampment at the Stampede.

The Indian Encampment is a neat thing where there are some tradiational teepee encampments, and there is Native American dancing judged over different groups. It was really interesting. There is great drumming and singing to go along with the dancing. I stayed for a few hours and watched that, and have some pictures and videos here to share.

Stampede weekend is a lot of fun overall, the little town of Omak is full of people that weekend, there is a big carnival, and lots of things to do and see. There is a lot of (sometimes kitschy) shopping, and food stalls. I had fry bread for the first time, and while I thought it was good, I didn't think it was good enough to be the scourge on the nation that is has been made out to be.

The World Famous Omak Stampede and Suicide Race

After SIGIR ended, I flew to Spokane, WA, where I rented a car and drove out to visit my grandparents in Omak, Washington. The Omak Stampede is a rodeo that is held every second weekend in August. In 1935, the Omak Stampede Publicity Chairman (Claire Pentz) was searching for an exciting event to add to the then young rodeo. About that time the Grand Coulee Dam was being built, and it flooded out an area where the nearby Colville Indians had run a traditional wild and dangerous race as a rite-of-passage. After discussion with the local Tribal leaders and Rodeo board, the Suicide Race was born.

The race has changed little since the first running in 1935, outside of some safety measures that have been taken. The riders now have to wear life jackets, and the horses undergo a thorough physical and testing to make sure that they will not balk at running down the steep bluff and swimming across Okanogan river. The race itself is a no holds barred race down a 225 foot very steep sandy bluff to the river, then swim across the river and race 500 feet into the finish line at the Stampede Arena. Riders have to be at least 16 years old, and are almost always young Indian men. The horses are also well vetted to insure that they will be able to complete the race. Sometimes horses show up without riders, and sometimes horse and rider don't make it to the finish line, but generally injuries are uncommon (but not rare.)

The Suicide Race is the final event in the Omak Stampede Rodeo. It was just pure luck, but I arrived in Omak on the start of the Stampede. Since I had never been to the Stampede before, and I won't likely have another chance soon, I thought it would be a good idea to experience it this time around. I got tickets for Friday night - it was surprisingly cheap! Only $20 for good seats near the "chutes" (I was told they are good seats anyway.) The chutes are where the riders and horses come out. There was lots of riders on bucking broncos and later on bulls. The Suicide Race capped off the evening.

I'm not really sure how the riders are scored, but it was pretty fun watching. I've got a set of pictures about the Omak Stampede on Flickr that you can check out.

I've also got a few short videos up on youtube.com from the stampede.

2006-08-10 New Directions in Multilingual Information Access

• David A. Evans' invited talk: From R&D to Practice - Challenges to Multilingual Information Access in the Real World
• Combining Evidence from Homologous Datasets
• Translation Disambiguation in Web-based Translation Extraction for English-Chinese CLIR
• Real World Understanding for Multilingual Statistical Tables
• Multilingual Summarization at DUC and MSE
• Identification of Document Language in Hard Contexts
• Integrated Content Presentation for Multilingual and Multimedia Information Access
• Studying the Use of Interactive Multilingual Information Retrieval
• The Remarkable Search Topic-Finding Task to Show Success Stories of Cross-Language Information Retrieval
• The Future of Multilingual Summarization: Beyond Sentence Extraction
• New Directions in CLEF
• The Way Ahead of Multilingual Information Access Evaluation at NTCIR
• A Data Curation Approach to Support In-depth Multilingual Evaluation Studies
• Designing Multilingual Information Access to Tate Online<
• Implementing MLIA in an existing DL system
• What is the Future of Multi-lingual Information Access?
• Discussion

I really liked the invited talk, I took fairly detailed notes, so please give it a read. It is a real change from what you usually see in the research world: focus on the practical real world, and in ways a bit pessimistic.read more (4718 words)

2006-08-09 SIGIR Notes

Wednesday's keynote:

Information Access in the Extended Boeing Enterprise
Radha Radhakrishnan

Overview of Boeing's information technology and information distribution structure.

read more (1146 words)