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Monjya-yaki and the Lion King's Simba

Getting monjya-yaki with some friends

Monjya-yaki

Simba!

It was only the second time I've ever had Monjya-yaki, but was quite nice. We had a lot of fun. The most unusual aspect of the night is that one of the people at the party is an actor in "The Lion King" - he plays Simba. Just by chance when my friend was in New York, he sat down next to this guy who was also in New York at the time, and they became friends. So we had a good time talking about plays and musicals and the like.

R. and I actually had tickets to see the Lion King, but due to a comedy of booking errors, ended up giving the tickets away to other friends. So we're going to have to try again to see it in Tokyo. It will be a lot more fun thinking that an acquaintance of ours might be in the show!

Fukuroda Falls

Fukuroda Falls

Fukuroda Falls

Fukuroda Falls

Fukuroda Falls shrine

Tokyo Night Driving

All picture in the set.

Last weekend R. and I took a day trip out to see Fukuroda Falls. It is about three hours by car to the North of Tokyo. We took the car out (for the first time in months) and I drove. It was supposed to be about three hours, but I think the way there took about three and half hours. I'm not a big fan of driving in Tokyo, but I have to admit that the highways in Tokyo are pretty interesting. Some of the central highways through the city are elevated to about the third or fifth story of the surrounding buildings. If I wasn't in such a panic while driving I would like to enjoy the scenery a bit more.

Anyway, once out of Tokyo, we headed through the country-side of Ibaraki prefecture. By country-side R. means that you are on smaller roads and only pass through a town or population center every twenty minutes. Or that there are only five or six cars within site at all times. Compare that to our trip through Eastern Washington state when we went two or three hours at a time without seeing cars or signs of civilization.

We had a nice trip, and got up to the waterfall. Like all things in Japan there is a fee to enter the waterfall attraction. A very reasonable fee, like $3. It was a nice waterfall, and pretty large. I haven't seen many large waterfalls, and this is apparently the third largest in Japan. So now I'm a bit curious about the other two larger ones. It is a pretty nice waterfall and the surrounding area is a bit nice too. There is a nice bridge and lots of hiking paths in the area, but our plan was to get lunch and then head home, because that will take a few hours. We really just hung out near the waterfall, but if we had more time we could have done some hiking. It would have been nice if we had the time to stay overnight and maybe try the hot springs there. It is apparently the only one in Ibaraki. I like the idea of taking a day trip though, and just getting out and doing a bit of driving - it is nice to take that car out if we are going to pay for parking it in this crazy city.

Lunch was a special type of hot pot native to the area. And pretty good. Then we headed home. Of course, on the way home there was an accident or two, and the roads into Tokyo were very busy. I think it took five hours to get home. Still, a nice day trip and fun. The most important thing is that there was this crazy road sign showing the traffic status on the major Tokyo highways. It isn't that bad, but still at speed that thing is tough to take in.

The Computer Connection by Alfred Bester

I do miss Half Price Books in Dallas, but just about every time I go back to the States I manage to find a nice used book store.

I enjoyed The Computer Connection, but the created language that Bester used to add flavor to his world seemed a bit dated to me, or perhaps just annoyed me. But still, it was a nice fun read, and went very quickly. The book itself didn't feel dated, even though it really should just because of the gap between how quickly computers and electronics progressed since the book was written.

Next up I'm going to try Tiger, Tiger.

What I had for dinner

Pasta with white sauce

Chicken Fried Rice

Tonight, for some reason, I really wanted fried rice. So I tried to make a chicken fried rice of some kind. It was pretty random; just bought a few things I liked and threw them together in some way. The main non-chicken things in the chicken fried rice were mushrooms, red peppers, onions, and mirin + soy sauce. Also the egg. Turned out pretty good, and I bet I will get one or two more meals out of that too.

I'm not really a cook, but I love eating. I've enjoyed cooking recently, but cutting things up is so annoying. I want a machine that cuts things up for me. Or a better knife. It would be nice if I knew what I was doing, but I keep watching Top Chef and then thinking that I can make delicious food also.

A week of biking to and from work

For quite a while I've been thinking of following DS's lead, and get a bike. He's a big proponent of commuting by bike in Tokyo, and has some good arguments. The main one is that bikes are often faster than the trains. The trains here are great, but there is still some overhead in using them. Usually you have to get to the station, which can take 3-20 minutes depending on where you live. Once you get to the station you probably have an average of five minutes waiting, then your transit time, and walk time from the endpoint station to work. For me, my total door to door commute one way on the train is usually around 45 minutes. On a good day, that only consists of 12 minutes on the train! After about a two years of this commute though, I know that it usually is around 45 minutes.

I tried a few times in the past few weeks to ride in to work on R.'s bike. She has a really cute Peugeot folding bike, like the ones at that link. It took a while before I could try it out because the back tire was flat. I eventually bought new tubes and a new tire, and one afternoon swapped out the tube and tire. The next week I managed to bike into work. It took 50 minutes, but it was possible. I don't think I would like to continue to ride R.'s bike though - it is a nice bike, but a bit of a rough ride for two hours a day.

The more I thought about it, the more I started to like the idea. Even if it takes the same amount of time as the train, I've been having trouble finding time to exercise, and I think even just getting some exercise each day would really make it worthwhile. So I talked with DS (who has been trying to get me to join the bike-to-work cadre for two years) and with R., and eventually decided to get a bike.

So at the start of this week, I bought a bike. I had been planning to get an inexpensive "cross bike" from Giant, since DS is such a fan, but when I went to the local shop, I ended up getting a slightly more expensive but higher spec'd Raleigh Radford-7 which was on sale (a $200 discount, bringing it just down into my budget.) I had some vague memory of Raleigh, and looked it up later. Raleigh is a company with a long history of bicycle manufacture, perhaps one of the oldest in the world. So that is kind of cool. This is the first serious bike I've ever bought - I bought a $300 or so compact bike when I first moved here. Looking back, that thing was kind of expensive. And I ended up throwing it out because R. didn't want it after the move to the new place, and I didn't have a good reason to keep it around (it was a small bike that wasn't too comfortable to ride.)

So what is the outcome? I've ridden to work each day this week. The switch to the Raleigh RF-7 is an amazing step up from R.'s little Peugeot. It is a lot easier to get up to speed and stay there. I have been riding on some of the normal roads in Tokyo, which worried me a bit at first. Of course, I always ride with a helmet while DS does not. That seems a bit crazy to me. I look like a total dork, but at least it is a little bit more protection in a worst case scenario. The ride to work is basically along the Yamanote road, the main circle loop that follows the Yamanote train line. This is a two lane road with lights, no bike lane, and often the slow lane has cars parked in it. It has pretty heavy traffic. At first it was a bit scary to ride on, but after only a few days, I've gotten used to it. The average speed on the road is posted from 40 to 50 km/hr, but I average about 20-25 km/hr on the road, and I think cars don't do too much better than 30 when you take the lights and traffic into account. Sometimes they do much worse.

So on the new bike, my trip into work is about 30 minutes either way. That really surprised me. I expected it to take about the same as the train, but I'm beating the train. I get into work pretty sweaty, and we don't have a shower at work unfortunately, so I just towel off, cool down, and then later change into my work clothes. After a week of biking to work my legs are sore. I was surprised at how sore my feet were after I got home. I work up quite a sweat, and my GPS unit says that one way is about 1000 calories. I'm not sure that I believe that, but still it has got to be more exercise than sitting in the air conditioned train every day.

Bonus: each trip on the bike saves me about $8. So I should be able to pay back the bike before a year has passed. Great! Assuming I can keep motivated to bike in. I think that will work though - I'm really enjoying the exercise, I'm getting a much better understanding of Tokyo, I think it will allow me to explore the city more. According to DS, the more time you spend on a bike, the more you feel you need to buy new, more expensive bikes, but I'll try to stay away from that. I know that at least, I do not want to get a fixed gear bike. Those things look like a nightmare to ride.

Summer Comic Market 78 in Tokyo

Comic Market Catalog

Waiting in the parking lot for the Comic Market to open

A crowded Tokyo Big Site

Comic Cure Sports Drink

Captain Jack Sparrow

Saint Oniisan: Jesus and Buddha

Some Giant Robot

Ginrei from Giant Robo

Usavitch Rabbits

Xbox Man

On Saturday, I decided to take a trip out to Tokyo Big Sight to stop by the 78th Summer Comic Market. I've never been to one of the comic markets before, and have always been interested. They are a large forum for the amateur (although quality can be extremely high) clubs to sell their work. Usually they write comics (同人誌, fan comics) that use characters from popular series, or sometimes their own creations entirely.

Since I've never been to one of these things before, I just kind of winged it. I left the house at about 8:10am, and arrived at Tokyo Big Site at about 8:30am. We live pretty close. The first thing I didn't expect were the crowds. There were lots of people. The first thing I noticed were the staff out there to direct the crowds. I followed the signs for "general admission" (一般参加) and eventually got herded into a large parking lot. A very large parking lot. With other people. Lots of other people. While we were lining up I stopped and bought one of the Comic Market Catalogs. It is about the size of a phone book. It cost 2000 yen. Apparently there are also CD-ROM versions of that thing, which would probably be even more useful for people preparing a strategy for the comic market. We were herded into the parking lot and then told to hurry up and wait. That was at about 8:45am or so.

Checking the Catalog, I learned that the comic market opens up at 10:00am. Crap. I didn't bring a long sleeve shirt or sunblock. I didn't bring much of anything. All I brought was a book (Haruki Murakami's Kafka by the Sea, which I've been reading for two years now) and a camera. I am terrible at sitting on the ground. The line didn't start moving until about 10:30am. I didn't get in to the venue until about 11:00am. I think this was a bit harder to handle than Fuji Rock, because I just was not prepared for it, and also the attendees didn't seem to be as well groomed as your standard Fuji Rock attendee (just joking. Kind of.)

Once inside, Tokyo Big Site was crowded. Very crowded. I kind of went with the flow of the crowd and ended up in East Hall 1-2-3, which isn't where I wanted to go. I had studied the catalog a bit before going in, and that hall had a lot of stuff that I'm not into (mostly groups focusing on Full Metal Alchemist, Naruto, and women's comics.) I wanted to go to East Hall 4-5-6, which had some stuff from Ultra Jump. I was hoping to find some Tenjo Tenge and Dogs: Bullets and Carnage stuff, which are two manga series that I enjoy. I just had a hard time fighting the crowds, and figured I would come back a bit later. On the way, I picked up a sports drink. I was interested in getting "Comic Cure" - a kind of special drink for the Comic Market I guess - but passed on it. A normal Aquarius was 50 yen cheaper.

First, I wanted to check out the Cosplay portion of the Comic Market, which it is pretty well-known for. What is Cosplay? It is generally people dressing up as characters from manga or anime series, and people taking pictures of them. Since I didn't really know what I was looking for, I thought it would be most fun to go and check out the costumes and take some pictures. So I headed over to the cosplay area.

The cosplay area was out in the garden of Tokyo Big Site, outside. Apparently when it is rainy sometimes they cancel it altogether. The weather was nice, but started to get a bit hot. There was an incredible number of cosplayers and probably more photographers with varying degrees of pro-sumer DSL cameras. Some of the people had really incredible gear. I took a bunch of pictures, and some of my favorites are listed below:

• Captain Jack Sparrow
• Jesus and Buddha from Saint Oniisan.
• Some Giant Robot
• Ginrei from Giant Robo
• Usavitch Rabbits
• Xbox Man

You can see the full set here on Flickr, which includes a few women in skimpy outfits.

After the cosplay, I wanted to get something to eat and head back to the East 4-5-6 hall. All the restaurants were packed. So I just grabbed something quick, and tried to go to the East Exhibition hall. The place was jam packed. The hallway to get there looked like it wasn't moving at all. Since it was about 1:30pm, and I needed to get home to prepare for the fireworks in the evening (which I had somehow been roped into providing pizza for) I just decided to call it quits and head home. Without ever seeing any of the main Comic Market that I originally intended!!

So, based on my first foray into the Comic Market, what do I think I need to do to improve the experience?

1. Find someone who knows what they are doing. Since I don't really have any Japanese friends that are into manga, this might be hard to do. I would like to make more friends though, so maybe I can look into the communities for this and do a more organized outing.
2. If I can't get a guide, the next best thing to do would be to prepare beforehand. Decide what groups I would like to see, and find out where they are. That means buying a catalog in advance, and doing a lot more preparation work learning about the different circles and what they do.
3. Prepare for longer lines better. Bring a small portable stool to sit on. Sunblock. A fan. Some snacks.
4. Buy a bigger zoom lens. I was starting to feel inadequate next to all these people with large DSLR setups!
5. Or, forget about it and just play it by ear again.

Overall it was a pretty fun day. Took a lot more time than I expected, and was more tiring than I expected, but I think I will give the Winter Comic Market a try too. Probably do a bit more up-front prep work and might just go later to avoid the long lines, but it isn't that far from home and was pretty interesting.

Royce Chocolate Potato Chips

Royce Chocolate Potato Chips

For the past few months, we've had a mysterious box in our refrigerator. It was labeled "Royce Potato Chip Chocolate", which mystified me. It looked like it was chocolate. But it said something in there about potato chips. I had a hard time consolidating those two concepts. I was almost convinced that they were chocolates in the shape of potato chips, except the picture on the cover was pretty clear that the contents were chocolate covered potato chips.

Finally, the other day, I wanted a snack, my wife wasn't around, and I noticed the things were two months past their consume-by date. So at worst, I could just say that I threw them out (and I might possibly have to spend some time with food poisoning - but when chocolate is involved, that isn't really a convincing threat.)

Surprisingly, they were great. The potato chips do have salt on them. And chocolate. The chips are a salty, chocolately snack that is a bit strange, but very good. They are filling, and it took three days to finish off the bag, but they are gone now. We received them from a friend, and now when I want to find out where I can get some more, it turns out that Royce is a chocolate company from Hokkaidou. Hokkaidou is a bit far (by Japanese standards) and they might not have a shop in Tokyo. But I bet I can find them again if I try.

Turns out these things have been around for a while; see also this blog post on dessert comes first.

More books: Paolo Bacigalupi

While at Fuji Rock, I read two ebooks, both by a new author (to me), Paolo Bacigalupi. I thought they were great. First up: Pump Six and Other Stories (link is to the Baen Webscriptions.net ebook version, which is an amazing $6.) This is a collection of short stories and a great place to start. Not all of the stories are in the same universe, but a few of them are, and they give a very good introduction to the world used in the full-length novel. I really enjoyed most of the stories - although in all honestly some of them are a bit disturbing. The majority deal with a post-peak-oil world where energy is not abundant and people have reverted to a more local economy built on human and (genetically engineered) animal power.

It is a haunting and not-unrealistic vision of the future. Living in Japan, and occasionally going back to America, I keep wondering how long it will be until jet fuel starts to cost so much that I just can't afford the trip back to the US. So far it hasn't happened, but I'm not sure that we will be flying around the world ten years from now. I wouldn't mind a nice relaxing cruise to the US on a well-stocked cruise ship, but I just don't see that happening with current standards for US and Japanese vacation allowance.

Anyway, I really enjoyed Pump Six and other stories. Pick it up!

Next up is The Windup Girl, a longer visit to one of the worlds introduced in Pump Six. The main action takes place in Thailand, and follows the lives of people trying to live in the energy-deficient world that has a surplus of engineered plagues targeting non-GMO foods. The whole thing seems like a completely realized extension of where we are headed with Monsanto's engineered seeds that are not fertile. Also, they'll sue you if you somehow get their seeds into your field by (say, like the wind) accident. Crazy. A really great piece of Science Fiction, and wholeheartedly recommended.

2010 Summer Music Festivals

Usually R. and I are Summer Sonic attendees. This year though, we got three day tickets to Fuji Rock, a three day festival up in the mountains in Naeba, Japan. So I took Friday and Monday off work, and Thursday night we packed up. Early Friday morning (about 4am) we loaded up the Mini Cooper and headed out. It is about a four hour drive, and we rolled into Naeba at about 9.

To do a good stay at Fuji Rock, you really need to prepare. Things that are essential:

• Rain gear. In our case, relatively nice ($100 or so) ponchos. It very likely will rain. You need to be prepared.
• Rain boots. Even if it does not rain, there will be mud. Lots of mud. Ankle deep mud. So either wear shoes and socks that you don't want to use ever again, or get some good mud-proof boots.
• Portable chairs. I recommend folding Coleman camping chairs, but you can also get by with smaller portable stools. Generally the deal is that you leave in the morning at about 10am, then go somewhere and set up a small camp. There are not benches or seat or bleachers, so you need to be able to spend a long time in one place. Either standing or sitting, but a portable chair will help either way.
• Sun protection. Sunblock or long sleeves.
• Bug spray. You are in the mountains.
• Possibly a tarp of some sort.
• Books? Something to pass the time.

Why would you want a tarp? Generally people set out a tarp like thing (normally in the US we would use a picnic blanket or something) take off their shoes, and use the tarp as a home base. No shoes though. They also will leave their stuff at the home base and maybe go out to other stages. You definitely should not leave anything valuable there, but I've left my folding coleman chair at the home base without any problems. So semi-valuable (< $40?) is probably ok. And you spend the entire day going from stage to stage (factor in about 20 minutes to get between the close stages, longer for the further ones) and stopping at the stands to get food.

Overall I find Fuji Rock to be a really tough time. I'm always deathly afraid of sunburns, so I wear long sleeves which means that I pretty much am too hot all the time. I also do very badly at sitting on the ground or in sub-optimal furniture, so end up with sore feet or a sore back, or whatever. I do like reading though.

So what did I see? The bands I checked out are on the left - all merchandised links to either Amazon or Amazon Japan - and the stand outs for me were:

• Vampire Weekend. I've seen these guys a few times now. They remind me of my days in New York. I really want to see some of my favorite bands from those days come back to Japan (We Are Scientists, and Bishop Allen primarily) but have a really good sound and catchy pop tunes. They were one of the few bands that I dropped my stuff and went up to the stage for. Lots of fun.
• I hadn't heard Atoms For Peace (or maybe they go by Thom Yorke's solo name? They are Thom Yorke and Flea primarily) before, but they were really good.
• !!!. My friend, D.S. was the interpreter for them, and it sounds like it was a tough job. They put on a really fun show though.
• MGMT. White stage was super crowded at that time and they limited entrance. It must have taken us like an hour to get there, but we did get there before MGMT went on. We also left a bit early because it would have sucked to try to walk back with the entire crowd. I suspect White Stage was so crowded because the act on Green Stage at the time was just awful (Chris Cunningham?) It looks like he is primarily a video artist, but when we were walking by his set I was really surprised that he would be closing on Green Stage. Dissonant, noisy, disturbing. I don't think that is appropriate for a Green Stage closing act. I might be wrong though.
• The Cribs. A favorite of R.'s, and I like them now as well.
• Mutemath was good. Fit very well with what I was reading at the time (Paolo Bacigalupi.)
• Scissor Sisters. A bit rainy when they were on, but lots and lots of fun.
• There were a bunch of acts that I didn't know but saw and liked. On that list: Them Crooked Vultures, Jamie Cullum, Kula Shaker, John Butler Trio.

I had a lot of fun, but I need to remember that every time I go to Fuji Rock it is exhausting. Tiring. If we weren't staying in the Naeba Prince Hotel (sharing a room with people that R. found on Mixi?) it would have been awful. I would never camp out there. There are other hotels you can stay at, but they often involve 40 minute or hour long bus rides from the Fuji Rock site. If the weather is good, and you can relax on the Green Stage hillside with a good book and nice chair, it is really fun though.

The Naeba Prince Hotel also has a nice public bath for 300 yen that you can relax into after a long day at the festival. It also sidesteps problems with 1. No door on the bathtub area in hotel room (wtf? Normally there is a door there so you can change before hopping in the tub.) and 2. with 4-5 people in a room, it can be a long process to figure out how to use the bathroom resources. The big (culturally very normal in Japan) sex-segregated public baths nicely sidestep that issue. Also, the Naeba Prince has a breakfast buffet. Nice.