Tokyo and Covid-19

Hi there,

So, I've been in Japan now for 11 years, and I'm working on my 12th. There's been a lot of different events and happenings. I've gotten new crowns and had two root canals done. I've caught the flu at least twice that I remember, been seriously sick with some disease the doctors couldn't figure out, and I've had a surgery to remove a torn slice of my meniscus.

I've worked for...5 companies, I think. I worked one year at a public school, seven years at a private preschool, and now three years at an English conversation school.

I've gotten married, although we still don't have kids and at this point in our lives we probably never will.

I've moved house five times as well, with a general trend towards larger places, although Michi and I have managed to keep the price range around the same each time, give or take $100.

I've slept through more earthquakes than I can even say, and I survived the big one in 2011. There have been dozens of typhoons, a few blizzards, and all sorts of other disasters and tough situations.

I'm thinking back on all this now because I want to let everyone know that things are fine here in Japan. As I write this, there are approximately 400 or 500 people who've been infected in Tokyo. Worldwide, numbers are something like 800,000. I know those numbers look big, but please remember that every year about 650,000 people die from the flu, and over 6 million people get infected by the flu.

In the US alone, about 600,000 people die from heart attacks each year, with another 600,000 dying from different kinds of cancers.

I know New York, Chicago, San Francisco and other cities in the US have been "hit hard" by this disease, but please keep things in perspective. Things will not turn out like in The Walking Dead!

Back to Tokyo. Many businesses have been shut down, some companies are instituting some form of staggered scheduling to avoid crowds on the trains, and even more companies are starting policies of remote work. As in everywhere else in the world, people are hoarding. This is not some uniquely American trait as many media sources would have you believe. Chinese people hoard, Japanese people hoard, and yes, American people hoard, too.

It is tricky to find certain groceries, but not impossible, and the most dangerous thing, in my opinion, is that I will assault one of my co-workers because all they can talk about is how scared they are, how they think Jesus is coming back and these are the end times, and complaining about Trump and Putin, their bosses, and a thousand other things they cannot control or influence in anyway.

Is it a bit scary? Yes, sure. Facing unknown problems always is. Panic solves nothing.

2020

Hey all,

So as usual, I've got the semi-annual blog post here. Michi and I closed out 2019 by moving to a new apartment in Tokyo in December. The reasons behind the move are a little complicated and personal, but let's just say that it was not well-planned or premeditated.

We spent the end of December and New Years in Langkawi, Malaysia, which, as several of our tour guides pointed out, is just a few hour swim away from Thailand. If you happened to go swimming with your passport, you could legitimately visit both countries.

Let's get some statistics out of the way. There are about 60,000 full-time residents of Langkawi, and it is comprised of about 99 islands, with a total area of around 500 km². The Kilim Geoforest, an area on the Northeast side of the island, was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006. Langkawi is a little more than 400km from the capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, and takes about 1 hour to reach by plane.

We stayed one night in Kuala Lumpur on arriving from Tokyo, and another night there on returning from Langkawi. This simplified the logistics and the number of flights we'd have to take back to back in a single go.

Our first real day on Langkawi was December 30th. The day before, we had flown in from Kuala Lumpur, checked into the airbnb, and booked a mangrove tour through the Kilim Geoforest for the 30th. This took most of the morning and afternoon.

We relaxed pool-side after our busy adventure, and promptly booked a zip line / obstacle course challenge activity through Skytrex. I didn't want to risk dropping my phone or camera, so I don't have any pictures of this, but please check out the video by someone else below.






It took most of the morning and early afternoon, and it was really fun! We enjoyed the challenges, and even made a small game out of seeing how quickly we could complete some of them. My favorite was hanging hands free giggling on the zip lines, checking out the jungle around us.

For dinner on December 31, we went to the next door hotel's restaurant, called the Bayu, and had their pirate themed dinner. It was really good: lots of BBQ-ed meats and fish, some fresh fruits and vegetables, plus a complimentary bottle of wine, which I ended up drinking most of myself, and Michi is a real light-weight. They were handing out vouchers for different events, and we happened to win one for a "steamboat" dinner.

On the 1st, we went snorkeling on a "nearby" island of Payar. I say this in quotes because it takes about 30-40 minutes to drive from our hotel to the ferry harbor, than another hour or so on the ferry. This is the same meaning of "nearby" when I tell my students that Michigan is "near" Chicago and Toronto, even though it takes 4-5 hours to get to either place from central Michigan. Anyway, the snorkeling was really fun. We could see a lot of different kinds of coral fish, a few very small black-tipped reef sharks, sea urchins, and of course some different kinds of coral. Again, I don't have a water case or a water proof phone anymore, so I don't have any photos of this. The one thing that really surprised me and Michi was the territoriality of a certain species of reef fish. There are these white/beige/grey/yellow (please don't ask about the name, I already checked and I have no idea what it is) fish, that are about 6-8 inches long. They usually hang out in the sandy gaps between coral pods, and boy do they hate it if you come into their space. If you stay still, they start darting towards your legs, and if you don't react, they go nuclear and start nipping you. It doesn't really hurt so bad, and they don't even break the skin, but it is really shocking, especially the first time. You're not even paying attention to them, you're more distracted by the more beautiful sights, and you're filled with the wonder of it all, and suddenly you get a hard pinch on your calf or thigh that takes you out of dream land.


January 2nd was our "vacation day," which Michi likes to say with a Spanish accent. We checked out of the airbnb, and spent several hours just lounging around the pool, relaxing and reading books. I finished The Brothers Karamazov this way, as well as The Power of Habit. Around 3PM, we headed over to the steamboat location, which we learned is as below.

We were anticipating a boat ride with dinner, which is why the staff got so flummoxed when I kept asking: when does it finish, what is the end time; and they would reply that when we're done eating we just leave. Anyway, it was quite tasty, and we got it for free, so I can't complain.

And that's basically our trip. The worst thing I can complain about is that the airbnb, although pretty to look at and quite comfortable, was not well built. It had large gaps around the drains, doors, and windows, so basically anything could and did get in. I killed 4 cockroaches and at least 4 mosquitoes while we were there, and I got three mosquito bites, despite having mosquito repellent plugged in. The food was great, the staff were really helpful and kind everywhere we went, and Michi and I got to experience a lot of exciting areas and events.

Saitama Bay

For those comedy fans out there, you might recognize the title as a reference to Bill Hicks's seminal album "Arizona Bay." The album features a lot of material about Bill's distaste and loathing of the city and culture of LA. In the opening bit, he fantasizes about "the Big One" that will drop most of southwestern California into the ocean, leaving a cool and serene expanse of water he calls Arizona Bay.

Yesterday, I had the distinct displeasure of doing some shopping around Tokyo, and I'm left with similar feelings about Tokyo. I started out at Takadanobaba (and no, that is not some Baba Yaga joke, that's the name of the station). I picked up a new pair of hiking pants, as I tore a huge hole in my previous pair when I took a tumble last year. That experience was fine.

Next, I stopped at Shin-Okubo, which is home to a huge immigrant population. You'll find lots of people from Korea, southeast Asia, and especially the Middle East. The later makes the area a great source for getting spices in bulk at reasonable prices. For whatever reasons, more than your typical quota of clueless assholes decided to go there as well. Maybe some of them were from some no-name Podunk town and this was their first experience in a big city, I don't know. I do know that they decided to gawk at the regular stores, stand and wait in utterly ridiculous spots, and in general clog the flow of foot traffic.

After getting my coriander and black pepper at great prices, I headed over to Shinjuku. Now, for the last two years, I've been commuting to Shinjuku once or twice a week for work, and I always dread those days. Like Ginza, where I also work once a week, there is a good chance that you will not hear any Japanese spoken on the street in Shinjuku. Instead, you will hear Chinese. Now, whatever your opinion might be of the Chinese government, Chinese food, or Chinese people, who are as diverse and varied as any other group that usually gets maligned in various media (eg, the French, Americans, Russians, Australians, etc), I think we can all agree that Chinese tourists are not the greatest people in the whole world. What is salient for me is that they tend to travel in packs, blocking traffic flow, and they tend to buy lots of useless shit, which happens not to be available in China or is much more expensive there, but which also serves to block traffic flow.

Shinjuku is a really popular shopping district, and when combined with Japanese people from the countryside gawking, tourists who don't know where the fuck they are or where they are going, and the generally sedate pace of shoppers and geriatrics, you get the congestion we all know and despise.

Another particular pet peeve ("I don't have pet peeves. I have major fucking psychotic hatreds." ~ George Carlin ) of mine is walking while texting or using a smart phone. Now, look. I've been lost before, many times. I've definitely found it useful to have Google Maps out with directions so that I can glance at it. This is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about texting, Tweeting, checking out food shots and ass shots on Instagram, etc. As if being in contact with anyone constantly is worth the chance of getting hit by a train or run over by a bus. As if that one message sent at exactly the right moment (which of course is while you're walking) will make or break your social life. You see these people everywhere in Tokyo.

The greater Tokyo area has a population of about 40 million people, with an area of about 13,500 km². No matter how you cut it, that is a lot of people, and even if 99.9% of people are great, law-abiding, and polite citizens, that leaves 40,000 assholes. You're guaranteed to run into about 3 in every square kilometer. 

With all of that in mind, I'd like to add my cosmic vote to the Saitama Bay Project. If a large earthquake occurs in this area, let it take this overcrowded city down to the depths. If we continue to use greenhouse gases and ocean levels rise, let the water embrace this city.

Shirakawa-go New Years Trip

Hey all,

For New Years 2018-2019, Michi and I made a small trip to Shirakawa-go, which is a village in Gifu Prefecture, Japan. From Tokyo, you're looking at a two-hour plus ride by bullet train, followed by about an hour and a half or two-hour bus ride. The reason you might want to travel to this out of the way area is because of the buildings. Shirakawa-go is home to dozens of traditionally constructed Japanese buildings, although the construction techniques and designs are somewhat unique to that area.

If you can ignore the lovely lady in the foreground, in the background you'll see a steeply peaked roof made of mats of woven grass. The walls are simple slats of wood, and the windows are made of rice paper. Yes, even in a place that gets several meters of snow each winter and regularly reaches temperatures of -10 C (that's 14 F for you non-metric folks), they have designed their houses to allow for maximum air flow.

Anyway. The buildings were fun to see, and you can pay a small fee to walk around inside them, where they also have tea and videos explaining the construction techniques. We spent the night at the wonderful Toyota Eco-Institute, which is a kind of research center that also provides accommodation for scientists who wish to study the Shirakawa-go buildings, although they also allow normal people to stay there. Dinner and breakfast were well-prepared and lovely, and the hotel offers a lot of different activities you can easily sign up for. Michi and I decided to take a snow shoe tour through the woods surrounding the hotel, and it was delightful. At one point the guide asked everyone to gather around a "special" tree so he could explain something about it, whereupon he shook the tree, dumping snow on everyone's heads. It was quite funny. Later, he invited those crazy enough to jump off the trail and into the snow, which was about 4 feet deep.

We also visited a couple of restaurants and locations in Takayama. Now, since the early 2000s it seems like Kobe beef has been a known item among foodies in the US. This is a kind of beef that is very tender, and has high levels of marbleization, due to the cows being forced not to move around, being given massages, and yes sometimes being force-fed beer. In recent years, another kind of beef has been gaining in prominence in Japan: Hida beef, which is beef from cows raised in the certain areas around Takayama in Gifu. So, whenever you visit here make sure you try some Hida beef and you will not be disappointed.

Although it was just a month ago that we made the trip, it really drove home how much I miss snow. The Kanto area of Japan has a little in common with Amsterdam, in terms of weather patterns. One is the overall mildness of the winters here, and the lack of snow.

I highly recommend checking out Shirakawa-go. Thanks for reading!

A Recipe for Chocolate Mousse, Written in the style of Janny Wurts

Hey all,

I hope this post does not come off too negative, but recently I've returned to The Wars of Light and Shadow, an epic fantasy series by Janny Wurts that I started to read in the late 90s. It is still not finished two decades later, but it looks like there is only one book left and it might be published in the next year or so, so I decided to give it a re-read, as I remember rather enjoying at least the first four books.

Well, I soon found myself disgusted, annoyed, and flabbergasted that I had made it through the first book back in 1997. Janny Wurts writes unnatural, stilted flowery prose that is painful to read. Nearly every noun must be modified with a 3-7 syllable adjective, and God forbid that a sentence, adjective, or verb should remain plain and without adornment by an adverb.

Add to this the fact that every character reacts to every action of every other character, and the reasons for each reaction are patiently explained to the reader (as if the reader is an anthropologist from Mars, unfamiliar with human psychology) in the same overly descriptive prose that the actions are.

As something of a reverse tribute, below please find a delicious chocolate mousse recipe written in her style.

Consumed by obdurate desire for forbidden chocolate, procure the following:
4 large eggs, of cups one half of sugar, one quarter cup of butter lacking of the essence of salt, one quarter cup plain water, 3 tablespoons of coffee liqueur, 4 teaspoons of chili oil, 7 ounces of exquisitely tempting bittersweet chocolate, and lastly 1 cup of cream which has been whipped by hands unfeeling to its natural status.

Spurning the humdrum use of whisk, instead expose an electrical beater, and, impelled by stark yearning, combine egg yolks, water, coffee liqueur, butter, and chili oil, and in a designated bowl inter them and thrash them until frothy. Conjointly, smelt the chocolate and commingle with egg amalgamation.

Rapaciousness not yet slaked, savage the pearly egg whites in a sundered bowl until stiff and glossed. Senses piqued to the proclivities of the recipe's requirements, tenderly fold egg whites and chocolate admixture. Oblige this to congeal in a device whose manifest purpose is thus: chilling. Do this for three hours, then consume.

I hope that gives you some idea of what reading an 800 page book by her would be like.

Cheers,

It's Not Over 'Till Paul McCartney Sings

Hey all,

What ludicrously busy month October was! To start it off, Michi and I went on a four day hiking trip to Kamikochi in Nagano Prefecture. We had hiked Mt. Yarigadake there several years before, and I had gone back to try to hike Mt. Hotaka last year but was rained out. This year, we were planning on hiking the "Daikiretto" route, a kilometer long scramble along a knife-edge ridge with lots of ups and downs. A hiking guide book of this route said something to the effect of "If you see a big pile of cigarette butts, you've either just come through something nasty or you're about to."

The trip started out really well. We made good time to our first lodge, and got a good nights rest. The weather and views the second day were great, and we made it to our second lodge just before it started raining. That's where things went pear-shaped. The forecast said it would rain through the next morning, and then turn to snow, and we had planned to hike this death route where a single misstep could lead to hundred meter plunges. SO, we decided to hike down a different route, spend the night at a different lodge, then return to Tokyo on Friday, October 12th as planned. The route, which I argued for and which Michi argued against, was a nightmare. Even from the light rain the night before, it was slippery and quite steep, with lots of mud to slide in and a lot of rocks with slick faces to slip off and jagged edges to cut yourself on. It was supposed to be a three hour hike to the next lodge, but it took us about six hours.

When we finally arrived, it turned out that the lodge had closed for the winter season literally the day before. We didn't know, as we hadn't planned on staying there originally anyway. By this point, the rain was beginning to come down, the temperature was dropping and the sunlight was fading. We could have stayed at the emergency winter shelter, but decided to press on to the next lodging, another several hours away.





To cut the story short, we made it to a really nice hotel around 7PM, having started hiking that day at 7AM. Michi's headlamp had run out of batteries the day before, so we had been hiking in the rain through unlit forest and mountain trails for about three hours with only my headlamp to guide us when we spotted the lights from the hotel. We were soaked, and we didn't have a reservation. Luckily, the hotel staff let us stay, and it was actually cheaper than staying at the mountain lodges. We pulled off our soaked clothes, took hot showers and went down to soak in the luxurious hot springs before passing out.


After spending Friday recovering in Tokyo, on Saturday we went to a wonderful performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute. The tickets were pretty expensive, but we both really enjoyed the sets, costumes, and of course the music and singing.

The next week was somewhat uneventful.

The following weekend, we went to Meiji-mura, an open air museum housing many buildings from the Meiji-era located near Nagoya. The motivation for making this rather long day trip was multi-factored. I had been interested in seeing one of the few Frank Lloyd Wright buildings in Japan, the old Imperial Hotel, for several years but had never gotten around to making the trip. It was demolished in the 1960s, and the lobby was rebuilt in its current location a few years later. Then Michi's company announced that they were holding a "walking day" to promote their employees' health, and one of the locations was Meiji-mura. So off we went to Nagoya.


I must say, it was amazing. The Imperial hotel itself is pretty well cared for, and exploring it only made me feel a little sad that more of the hotel had not been preserved. It is a real treasure of design.



There were several other buildings that were interesting as well, although the Imperial Hotel was the main dish. For example, they had the house where Natsume Soseki wrote several of his famous novels, for instance, "I am a Cat" and others.




Just last weekend, I visited the in-laws's place, which they had recent had renovated. Before, it was a typical old style Japanese apartment with design and layout from the 1970's. They completely redid the interior partitioning, and redesigned the kitchen, bedrooms and living rooms to more modern sensibilities. It looks great now.

And finally, we get to the end of October. Michi and I attended Paul McCartney's concert here in Japan on Halloween. It was a great performance, and he belted out Beatles classics, his own pieces from the 70s and 80s and even a few tunes from his latest album, which weren't half bad. Like the Rolling Stones, he still gives his all in his performances and he can still rock it when it counts.

The next few months will be busy as well, but probably not quite as packed as October.

Nasu Dake Trip, July 2018

Hi all,

Things have been busy as usual in the land of the rising sun. Michi came down with first pneumonia, then empyema, and that knocked any trips out of the question. Then there's the fact that we only share one day off together now, making trips a little tricky to coordinate.

But last weekend she took a Friday off and we went to Mt. Nasu, a three-peaked mountain in Tochigi Prefecture.



It takes about an hour to reach Nasushiobara Station by bullet train, plus another hour or so by bus to reach the entrance for climbing. You could hike all the way to the top, but we elected to take the rope way until just below the summit.

At the rope way exit, you are greeted with a mix of rock, gravel, and grass.

He who would cross the bridge of death must answer me these questions three, 'ere the other side he see...

Between Mt. Chaus and Mt. Asahi, two of the three peaks comprising Mt. Nasu, you can find some striking rock formations.

Our main course at the hotel: some grade A5 beef steak.

A rock that according to legend, kills everything that touches it.

The view of the path leading to the killer rock. All those red dots are knitted caps for small statues related to Buddhist religion.

It was a very relaxing trip, and most of it went really smoothly.