The Four Cards

I got up at six thirty on my Sunday morning to sit on a hardwood floor for an hour and a half. What did you do?

But there are more important things than that. Such as, oh, I don't know, having mexican food with friends you haven't met in far too long. Haruka, Yukari, Naoto (and Tomo too, but you know, if I step hard enough on the floor in the morning, I end up in your place, so you're kind of in a different category), thanks for... everything, basically. I had a grand time, and I hope you did too.

For those of you who thought I'd gone nuts and started writing about sensible things, prepare to be stunned! All is well. I shall instead spend the majority of this post contemplating what information you can get from a person by the contents of his or her wallet.

No, I don't mean how much cash they carry around. I'm talking about cards. Going home today, I started developing this theory. People carry around loads of cards and crap these days, but in my simple mind, you can basically tell everything you need to know from seeing which four cards the person uses the most. This is all because of the structure of my wallet; I always place a card I've just used in the bottom of one of the pockets, making it easily reachable, strange as it may seem. So I can tell which cards I use the most just by checking the pile. Here's the top four.

1) Suica Commuters card. Not only can you buy hot dogs at furniture stores with it, but you can also ride trains. It's just that fantastic, which is probably why I can't seem to shut up about it. So what does this tell you about me as a person? That I like cards that go bleep when you touch them to sensors, and that I try to run away as often as possible by getting on various trains.

Sadly, the Suica is not valid on the Hello Kitty Bus.


2) Jexer Gym Members Card. Yes, it's completely unlike me in every way, but if there's nobody around to play tennis with and they have little tvs attatched to the bikes and treadmills and what have you, then even I can stand feeling like a hamster. I only wish they'd put generators in the things; I could power all of Tokyo for like... no time at all. Really.

What does this tell me about me? That if there's a tv involved, you can pretty much make me do anything.

3) 7-eleven cleaners card. This is a pretty straightforward one. It tells you that I'm a) lazy enough not to do all my own laundry (can't be bothered to iron my shirts in this fine establishment), and b) poor enough that I have to do get it done at 7-eleven.

4) Tower Records point card. This is actually a lie. Right now, it's my Xanadu Hair Salon member's card (possibly the most manly name ever!), but that's not really representative of the way things are. What the Tower Records point card tells you about me is that I'm desperate enough to seem cool that I'll lie about the order that the cards occupy in my wallet, or stupid enough not to change my theory to "It's cards 1,2,3, and 5 that are important". Or both, what do I know?

This is quite different from the list, had it been produced when I was in Sweden. It would then have been: 1) Visa debit card. No credit for me, thanks. 2) Driver's licence. Not that I got pulled over all that often. 3) Student ID. To get into buildings built for, well, students. 4) That's it. The rest of them were just there 'cause I couldn't be bothered to clean them out.

So yeah, what four cards do you use the most? I hope they include the member's card of a motorcycle gang of ill repute (they get the best cards) and possibly something involving ice cream. Feel free to make your own analysis, by the way.

---

In closing, I offer this, which has absolutely no connection to any card whatsoever. It's just that it looks like what I imagine that every building looked like in the 1980's Soviet Union, only that it's located in 21st centure Takadanobaba. And no, I did not just make that name up. Seriously.

The O.C.(D)

No, this is not about some 21st century ripoff of classic after-school tv in the form of Beverly Hills 90210.

For those who are not so well-versed in the labyrinth of modern-day medicine, an explanation of it can be found here. In my own case, this illness does not manifest itself in me having to open and close the door 14 times before heading out, nor do I have to unscrew all the lightbulbs in my apartment before I can go to sleep. No, instead, I have to go to this town called Gifu. Pretty much every moment I get the chance. There are some rituals involved in this process, such as the climbing of a mountain, and the buying of designer denim at a store known only as Jeans RUS. Yes, that's a ripoff of a big-ass toystore, gone awry. This does not detract from the quality of the denim available for purchase at (quite often not at all-) reasonable prices.

I've been back at least once a year since I first went there in the summer of 2001. Of course, my love-affair with the place has less to do with town itself than it does with the people I know there. It's the same with everything, I guess. I wouldn't have survived the seven-month Expo without the insane Nordic people; I'd have had a miserable time in Saitama had it not been for Tomo, Kalaya, and the fine people of Winning Shot putting up with my idiocy all the time; my 31-day tour of Japan would have bit the big one without the company of Da Pete; and don't even get me started on growing up without Hasse, Escha, Hampa, and the rest. So yeah, that's why I go back to Gifu every chance I get. The jeans, the mountain, and the excellent weather? Perks, no more, no less.

Which brings us right to my Saturday morning. Waking up at 05:30 should be outlawed (if it's not already), and if you're gonna go climb something taller some really tall things, it should be outlawed once more, just for the spite of it. But such was the plan. See, if you go later in the day, it tends to get a little... warm, as the following picture from the inside of a Pajero Mini shows.

Ok, so it kind of exaggerates things a degree or two, but still. You get the idea. Yasu and I started climbing the mountain exactly one hour after waking up, and before we got to the top, we'd lost about a trillion or so pounds in pure sweat. The initial conclusion? We're getting old. Although it probably has something to do with us kicking the crap out of our best time up that beast of a pile of rubble. Incidentally, Shiho, the third member of our would-be team of mountaineers, overslept. Both the mountian-climbing thing, as well as the next engagement. This matters little, and is merely noted as something of an anecdote. Much like the rest of this, one might imagine.

Getting back down was also something of an undertaking, but eventually, we made it to the BBQ-by-the-river. Well, we had to wade across the river to get to the ultimate BBQ spot. Ever. There's a saying that crossing the stream to get water is something you might not wanna spend a whole lot of your life doing, but we figured screw it. And then there was this tiny old man who did his best Jesus-impression. Ok, so he didn't turn water into wine, or walk on said water. He did, however, walk on beer.

Basically, after incurring the wrath of every possibly deity with the above reference, rain and thunder came along, bringing their childhood friend lightning along to have a good time. Still, some BBQ-ians refused to give up the ghost. Needless to say, Yasu, Shiho, Asuka, Yumi, Kaki, Kouhei, and I headed for the cars with every ounce of human speed available at the time.

There was also quite a lot of drinking of beer at night, complete with all the fixin's, including... Well, suffice to say that every party hits a point when somebody thinks it's a good idea to hide on the top shelf of the Oshi-ire (think: "big closet"). Usually, that person is not me, but it was bound to happen sometime.

--

Incidentally, this morning, there was a small power outtage. 1.4 million homes in the Tokyo area affected. 440 traffic lights went dark during rush hour. A gazillion trains stopped on their tracks, as it were. I expect Bruce Willis was involved in some manner, possible fighting some Germans named Hans or Simon. Whatever. I knew I should have played the lottery last night.

The Homecoming

There were these five middle-aged ladies tonight, sitting across from me on the train home from where I don't usually go home from. Suddenly, there are fireworks going off behind me, which sends all five sensible (I'm assuming) housewives (I can tell) into a complete frenzy. You'd think they'd been born in a fireworks-factory, but taken away from there at an early age, never to have seen actual fireworks, but still somehow never lost hope that they really were this beautiful.

This is what happened to me tonight, just replace "fireworks" with "Swedish furniture giant", and "taken away from" with "taken into". I went, ladies and gentlemen, to IKEA.

To most of you, that will mean very little. "So what, the guy went to a furniture store. Next he's gonna tell us about the time he went to Saitama to see the Urawa Reds football team play Bayern Munich". And you'd be right, since that's what I did last Monday, and I do intend to tell you about it in a while, if I can manage. But I digress.

For an Älmhultian [Wikipedia: "Älmhultian" - noun, refering to person or artifact originating from IKEA-ville, which up until the mid-21st century went by the name "Älmhult"] who's spent some two years in Japan, it's as close to a religious experience as you can get in this secularised world of ours. Instant recognition overpowers all the senses as you walk through the door, and until you leave, you just can't help but going around smiling like a retarded person. Not that I know anything about the smile-ratios of retarded people, but I hope they smile a lot. Never is looking at stuff you've grown up around more enjoyable than when said stuff is airlifted 7000 miles to end up in a huge building out in Minami-Funabashi.

I had hotdogs. They were almost as cheap as they are in Sweden; something of a miracle all its own. And they tasted fine, oh, so fine. I paid for them in the traditional... Wait, no. Here's where you start to see the changes. See, I paid for them with my commuters card, the Suica. For those of you in Sweden, the obvious analogy would be referencing the "Cash-card" of a few years back, with the only difference being that people use Suica to actually pay for stuff. There were other, more subtle differences too, but in a last-ditch attempt to keep the one reader who made it this far interested in what I have to say, I shall let them slide this time, and instead present you with:


Due to circumstances partly within and partly without my control I spent a rather fine 25 minutes (!) at a train station out in Chiba. At first, I was annoyed, but then, I noticed there was sky around, and my duty to look at it.

Continuing with the photo theme, I present you with a big building in a big part of a big city. It is a place where they keep many stores, among others the one which provided me with a Yamanote-line clock the other day. Currently, all time in my room is told along the lines of which station that little train is arriving. Right now, it's approaching "Nippori minutes to Takadanobaba". It's a fine system.

By the way, I really did go to that football game, but it wasn't really much to write home about, as it were. Urawa managed to win against a Bayern Munich whom I'm sure were giving it their all. Just that the 15 players in the team all had a bad day at once, including Olli Kahn, about whom a fine piece of music has been composed (sadly, permalink is unavailable at this time, head there fast for the full experience!). Said Olli let an own goal slip between the posts, but it was deemed inadmissable on account of a defender breaking the rules in scoring the own goal. You'd think that you couldn't really avoid an own goal by making one more error, but such are the rules. And they say people can't wrap their heads around cricket.

In the week or so since the last post, I've also been to Saitama to say hello to Japanese people I know, Swedish people I know, and sing songs I very much don't know in karaoke. It was a grand old time. It's also been a little busy since my girlfriend got herself a gorgeous new apartment only four stops away from Shinjuku, in Kouenji. For those of you following the long-distance Japanese class, that translates as "Temple of the expensive yen". Seriously.

Which leads me nicely to my final point. As has been known for some time, money can by happiness. I just never knew they sold it at IKEA, and only charged 290 yen for it. (For those not so well-versed in Swedish, please use your imagination)