The Delay

No, that's not just a clever way of informing you that this post is a week or so late.

It's also a way of getting the subject squarely on trains. You see, trains are cool. I mean, I'm not some kind of train maniac, but in Japan, the people they do love their trains. I had a teacher in junior high who brought a video to class of his huge train-set-thing, occupying his entire garage. He'd love it here. You see, you can't imagine a Tokyo without trains. Well, you could, but it would be a city which would be dead within the hour, basically. And it's almost as hard to imagine a train that doesn't run on time. Yes, this is very much not Sweden.

So I therefore present you with the following:


For those of you into this sort of thing, you'll have no problem reading those sqiggles, but for the rest of you, this is a "Proof of delay" I got just about a week ago, coming home from... somewhere. There had been thunder and lightning all afternoon, and this had caused random havoc on the system. My train was almost twenty minutes delayed. In Tokyo! This will not stand. Any guesses to why they hand out little notes saying "Proof of delay" are welcome. Most creative, furthest-from-the-truth explanation gets a free t-shirt.

Ah, but the train madness does not end there. Instead, it reaches all the way into Shinjuku's Takashimaya department store, where they sell many things. It's what department stores do, or so I've been told. I'm not really big on Takashima, however. It's the Tokyu Hands in the same 14-story building that has wrapped me round its little finger. There, you can by stuff like this:

It's an alarm clock. Which has a little train right there in the middle. One which runs on the Yamanote-line, going round this city of ours in a great big cirlce (and thus excellent to sleep on, trust me on this). But the fun doesn't end there! It's got all the station names printed on the face, including the exact time it takes to travel between them. Thankfully, it takes just about an hour to complete the entire lap, so there was no need to invent a new system of telling time in order to fit it on the clock. And yeah, finally, it plays six different tunes from some of the stations, so you can wake up to that tune you'll hear in half an hour when you have to change trains in Shibuya.

I want that clock so badly I can taste it. And it tastes good.

More pictures!


Feel free to guess which one depicts an ice cream parlor in Shibuya named after the country of my birth, and which one depicts a completely random guy riding around on quite the bike, wearing nothing beneath the waist except a white pair of boxer shorts. As a friend of mine would say, "Only in Japan, kids".

Other than the above mentioned madness, I have spent the past two weeks doing many things, some of the including actual work. Imagine the horror. It's not bad actually, we're still very much in the start-up phase of our projects, but today I've spent a five-digit number of yen on litterature of various kinds to help me on the way. If I study it round the clock, maybe I'll catch up to Tomo. Maybe not.

I've also...
1) been to Hokkaido (the restaurant, not the island. At least not recently), followed by karaoke. 2) played table tennis, ending by skill-shootin' our only ball up on a beam making up part of the ceiling, where it promptly laid still, in an effort that defied some of the laws of physics and pretty much all logic.
3) actually not been to baseball since the last time.
4) in the spirit of my forefathers come up with a project that I shall see if I can get approved. Most likely it won't work, but I'm really enjoying trying my hand at it, and for now, that's all that matters.
5) seen a program on TV about Doga. "Dog yoga", to the lay person.
6) learned that they've changed the man on the 1000-yen bill from Natsume Soseki to Noguchi Hideo mainly on account of the latter having more hair, thus making the note harder to forge.
7) gotten the first bill for my mobile phone. It's not happy reading.
8) gotten my ATM-card. About bloody time.
9) not joined a gym. I might well do so though. Stop laughing, I can hear you all the way from this side of the Intertron.

That should do it. In closing, I present you the following:

My girlfriend went to a wedding, and got this machine that "makes beer out of beer", as a wise man once put it. It was not I. It's called Let's Beer Great, and is of great nostalgic value to anybody having been in Gifu in the summer of 2K1. As, I am sure, is this.