The Commute

I know it's not Sunday. Even in Hawaii.

You may feel the need to vent this frustration on someone. Or something. I suggest the morning commute. Ok, so maybe it's not solely responsible for me being three days late with the post, but it plays a large part.

For you see, as with most things, the Japanese like to go big with their commuting. Lots of trains, lots of stations, and above all, lots of people using lots of trains to go to lots of stations. In theory, this is all very well and good. I mean, if you've got all these trains and all these stations, it would be a shame if nobody used them, right? But this beautiful theory has a fatal flaw. All of the lots of people want to go use not lots of trains to go to lots of stations; they all want to use the same train to go to the same station. At the same time. More importantly, at the same time as you.

For the commutationally impaired masses living outside Tokyo, but for some reason still earn their daily croissandwhich in said metropolis, this is (probably) a problem. Me, I commute in the other direction, so I get to sit (sit, I tell you!) and smirk at "the other people" feeling justly superior in my choice of domicile. However. Upon changing jobs, it has become necessary to sometimes go in the opposite direction some mornings, crossing through downtown Tokyo and come out the other side, if you will. This is painful. How painful? Allow me to demonstrate:

The train.

Now I forgive you for thinking "Hey, that doesn't look too bad. It's just a lot of people on a platform, waiting for the next train." Have a closer look. At the doors. They are in a state of semi-openness, not because of my superhuman photographic timing skillz (although superhuman they may be!), but because there is not a single square inch of free space inside the train, and some people just can't live with waiting for the next one, so they squeeze in anyway, prompting the men in white gloves (not the ones with white coats, but close) to with all their might forcibly push the extruding salary man flabbyness (or, in my case, just general flabbyness, I guess?) into the train. And then they try to close the doors, the above is an example where someone is still in the way.

The funny thing? This behavior is what keeps the universe from imploding. For you see, if that final salary man had not tried to mutilate your groin with his shapely attaché case, he would have had to wait for the next train. And setting aside all the micro- and macroeconomic consequences that would have, it would mean one more person trying to get on the the next train. Which is gonna be pretty f-ing full as it stands. So we're all saving the world in three easy steps.

It's a good thing the powers that be have spotted this problem and are now doing everything in their power to alleviate the sitation. The first logical step, introduction of a new SuperHero!

Hey kids, it's Mr. Business!

The final thing that causes my life to be slightly less than 100% perfect? Going shopping on the other side of tracks as everybody's coming home at night. This means you have to face the human tide, equipped only with an (admittedly gorgeous) SAAB-bike. While going shopping back home used to be a physical challenge due to various hills, inclines or whatever you call them, doing it here is a mental one; try to get back before going insane from internalizing the anger at all these people going in the opposite direction, keeping you from your goal. Really, what is the problem with some people?

And now, a Tiny Sniper Special Event! I sure didn't think we'd ever reach this stage, but here we are. History in the making. Standing on the shoulder of giants, or whatever. The 10th Beverage of the Week!

And no, I'm not telling how you can get ten beverages of the week to take seven months.


Beverage of the Week #10
Name: Kinokuniya Omo
Catchphrase: "No way did we just put tap water in here!"
Price/volume: 120 yen for 350ml
Place/time of purchase: Aoyama 1-chome station/12:50
Particular Point of Interest: Kinokuniya is mainly a bookshop. Very good selection, I especially recommend their 6th floor.
Taste: It's water. Sold at a ridiculous price to people who really should know better. Tastes like, well uhm, water. Reminds me of my history teacher telling me we drink the same water that the dinosaurs pee-peed.

Overall score (package/taste): 4/B-

The Concept

It's not every week that you buy a new umbrella.

There have been two main events with which I wish to regale you this week. T-shirt shopping and breakfast with the prime minister of Sweden. In that order, though sadly otherwise without any relation to each other.

The first, and thus most important(?) - T-shirts! Finally, we are in that time of year when people realize that all their short-sleeve garments are soo 2007, and go out and buy new ones. Now I'm not one to care about other people, but it does mean that various stores try to profit from this. Now I'm not one to care about profit (or, indeed, "various stores"), but it does mean that they bring out new t-shirts for me to drool over. And then hand wash 30C, no tumble dry.

Now that I've (hopefully) got you thinking t-shirts, I've probably got you thinking Harajuku, fashion capital (well, one of them, anyway) of Tokyo. Either that, or you're thinking 990-yen cheap-ass white-tees from Uniqlo. If you are, however, combining these concepts, you are the winner of our little quiz.

Behold, the future of t-shirt shopping!

Or, indeed, the future of shopping, in general. See, a little less than a year ago, Uniqlo introduced this "concept store" (which is marketing-ese for "it's a really cool idea that's gonna cost a f-ton of money and will never ever make any noticeable ROI, but we see it as a tax-deductible brand-capital investment") where - and here's the kicker - all the clothes are t-shirts! Wait, that's not it... Where all the clothes are stuffed in plastic cylinders! Except for the jeans, that would just be silly.

Yes, when purchasing a t-shirt here, it's like you've traveled back to a vaguely 60's inspired retro-futuristic vision of "how people will consume goods in the 00's". Pretty cool stuff, then! I loves me some of that retro-futurism, big time!

Behold, the close-up of the future of t-shirt shopping!

It is at this point that I'd like to make a segue into the breakfast meeting, but regardless of how "with it" I am (enough with the retro-futurism, already! And that doesn't even make sense!), I did not head off to meet prime minister Reinfeldt wearing a t-shirt from the Uniqlo store in Harajuku. I did it in a plain white one from a Uniqlo, bought for song in Nagoya back in 2005. Good stuff. I also wore a shirt (and suit, underwear, etc; I even brought an umbrella!), but that's beside the point. The point(s), then:

1) I got to cross off another prime minister from the Grand List. Not like I spent hours one-on-one with him discussing how to tackle global warming (or how I opened the door in the face of his predecessor, and almost went to jail, as previously reported), or anything, but I still feel it counts as an achievement. Did I mention I wore a suit?

2) I learned that had he not gone into politics, he could so have ridden the Seinfeld wave in the 90's and gone into stand-up. He was genuinely funny at one point, and that was something I didn't expect.


Beverage of the Week #9
Name: Ribbon Citron
Catchphrase: "Ribbon City, population: Flavor"
Price/volume: 120 yen for 300ml
Place/time of purchase: Ebisu station/16:11
Particular Point of Interest: I wonder if that little red kid on the bottle has a name.
Taste: Like every other "cider" (lemonade?) in Japan. With a faint, but noticeable twist of lemon.

Overall score (package/taste): 7/D

The Rain

I always thought that finding the work/life balance just meant working as little as possible to maintain the fun parts of life. Until I got this gig.

If you do a Google search (and who doesn't, really?) for why we talk about the weather you get around six million hits. Ok, sure, if you're all smart and use quotation marks to weed out undesirables, you get 577. But that's still a lot! So I thought I'd add one more (?).

See, it's been raining this past week. This is... not the way it's supposed to be at times other than that lovely rain month that is June/July. And while I am generally a fan of rain, it's a sort of passive fandom. I suppose it's like being audited for tax evasion, I wholeheartedly agree that it should be done, just not to me (and no, I've never missed the filing date for my Form K4, thank you).

The good things about rain even when it's really cold and happening as you are outside are:

1) You get to play the power version of SalaryMan Bingo. For those of you joining us for the home game, this is a powered up version of SalaryMan Bingo. I guess the name kinda gives that away. Anyway, SMB - the kidz love to reuse their old acronyms - basically involves getting on a train at non-peak-rush hour, and guessing at which stop the two SalaryMan (looks like a superhero name, but yes, that's still the correct plural) sitting across from you discussing how easy it is to find the warp zone in the old SMB are going to depart the train. A seasoned Marunouchi-line traveller always bets on Kasumigaseki. But yes, the power version is basically the same, only this time, you get to take into account the extraordinarily mundane umbrellas they carry, to match their very likely far too expensive suits.

(incidentally, I had a Hillbilly moment this week when I told a colleague I had to get my suit dry cleaned for an event next week. So what if I only have one!)

2) You get to pass Chiyoda sushi, and have what the internet of five years ago would have called a Lost in Translation moment. Maybe it was the rain. Maybe it was my pronunciation. Maybe the clerk was hearing-impaired. Either way, when you have chosen your take-out sushi for the night, she asks "Chopsticks and soy sauce?" requiring input on if you have said articles at home, or would like some of theirs to bring with you. Being the proud owner of a pair of "Man Chopsticks" (I kid you not), and also being generally cheap, I ask for "only soy sauce, please". Having made a choice of three fine dishes I expected to be granted the standard three small packets. And I was. And then I was granted 20 more. I have no idea why, but I imagine it was because it was raining.

Another example of West Shinjuku trying to be like London. Wait, what was this post about again?

3) I can't really think of anything else, but in order to make a list, you really need three things, so here we are.

That's pretty much it, I guess. Short and sweet, just the way I like it. Be sure to tune in next week when I will have had my suit dry cleaned and had breakfast with the prime minister. 'Tis the truth, I tell you!



Beverage of the Week #8
Name: Kirin Nuda
Catchphrase: "No added sugar, no fruit juice" (then what the h*** is in there, really?)
Price/volume: 150 yen for 350ml
Place/time of purchase: Circle K /21:31
Particular Point of Interest: Looks invitingly like cheap sparkling wine, with a name to match.
Taste: You'd think a drink named something which is almost "nude" would be too good to be true. In reality, it's just not too good.

Overall score (package/taste): 6/F

The Job

Too good to be true.

To most people, working seven days in a row seems a bit much. Not cripplingly so, just a bit more than you'd really like, the same as when the guy comes in and tells you that you can get a free refill of Kimuchi with your Bibinba. No, I did not make either of those up. But yes, I'm on something of a Korean kick at the moment, at least a culinary one.

The reason for this "working week" is, as you are no doubt aware (surely!), that I have a new job. At my old job. Which is kinda cool. Or actually really cool, but I'm not sure I'm able to judge that after only having worked there for four days so I'll just drop it. For now. You have been warned. Instead, I give you this:

The Sakura goodness.

This, as they say, is Sakura. You may know it from how it seems to make every foreigner in Japan take random pictures of trees every spring. But you see now, in the words of Murray Walker, "they think it's all over, and it is." Because today is the second day of summer. Logically enough, the first day of summer arrived yesterday, what with yesterday being the first day that I spent outside that didn't necessitate wearing a sweater. Or a wool overcoat, for that matter. If it's almost twenty degrees at the start of April, you can imagine what it's gonna be like here by... mid-April?

This next picture is just here 'cause it looks freakishly similar in composition to the one above, but instead of trees, it prominently features various electrical cables. How very post-industrial of me! In the future, there will be no room for trees, due to all the wiring. And such.

A not uncommon sight. In the FUTURE.

---

Now, though, I'd like to talk to you about advertising. Sadly, it is not that this blog has been purchased by what is basically a giant grocer, but rather since I'm now at least partially into that most definitely evil field of work, I feel it is important to update the people around me on how they do things here. For today's presentation, I shall use two examples, one image, and zero added sugar.

First. When I went to the movies a while back with my good friend Tomo (As I've stated elsewhere on the internet, "there's a delicious pun in there somewhere, but not good enough to learn Japanese for"), I bought a drink. A soft drink, quite naturally, as I prefer to keep the hard liquor out of the theater. Now this soft drink, which shall remain unnamed (except to say that it was Coke - not New Coke, not Classic Coke, not C2, just plain Coke) came in a very handy cup, in order for me to be able to imbibe it when I saw fit, and not having to bring the entire Coke-machine into the place with me. However! The cup came with a lid. The lid came with a tiny-@$$ CD squeezed in there, complete with flash-ads for the cinema I was currently visiting, as well as ladies underwear. A fine combination. It is, and I quote "turning the lid into the perfect marketing tool." Another possible slogan might be: "LidRock® - It's no wonder we still haven't cured cancer."

Second. LidRock is all well and good, but you have to first realize there's a tiny CD there, then actually be dumb enough to bring the thing home with you and play it in your CD-ROM-drive (whatever happened to those things, anyway?) of choice. A far simpler solution would be be to have your prospective target register his/her commuter card (Suica) in advance, and then, when he or she sees an ad poster on a train that features something he or she would like to know more about, he or she can just hold up his/her commuter card (Suica) to the poster, which reads the card, consults the database for the registered email address associated with said card, and sends you an email about the product. Or you could just, you know, access the website. It's probably not that hard.

Suica registration is a beautiful thing.

And that was supposed to be it. But as I wrote that, the little ticker-thing I have at the bottom of the screen informed me that a US man just got 2.6M$ for the domain name pizza.com. It all feels very late-nineties, somehow.

Tune in next week as I will have worked all week! Again!


Beverage of the Week #7
Name: Pocket Juicer Stand Kiwi Smooie
Catchphrase: "As if you still don't have enough crap in your pockets"
Price/volume: 120 yen for 300ml
Place/time of purchase: Heiwa Park /15:00
Particular Point of Interest: The second in a series of two exclusive PJS-tests
Taste: If you really want that much kiwi, you should probably consider buying one. And possibly moving to New Zealand.

Overall score (not an average): 7/D