As of this posting, this has not happened yet, but when it does happen please update your rss feeds and/or bookmarks accordingly.

Here is what’s happening. WordPress.com (not wordpress.org), offers free blogging options, like google’s blogger, and provides a certain level of hosting, etc. This comes with limitations though. Uploading is only permitted for photos, and circuitously videos, and only 3GB of space is provided to these ends. You can buy more space or the option to upload other things separately. This is not a problem for me since I have my own image hosting through a flickr pro account, which much more appropriately suits my needs. Additionally, however, you are constrained in terms of how much you can modify or customize your blog, and of course your domain name is restricted to BLANK.wordpress.com. Because of this, I decided to get my own hosting and migrate the blog there. This was helped by the fact that I came across hosting over at DreamHost for the first year at the price I’d normally pay just to register the domain name. At the end of the day all this means to the reader is that the url for this blog will shortly change to StreetCursive.com, and will be normally accessible from there.

I will try to see if I can get wordpress.com to forward from this site to my new domain, but if I had to guess I’d say they’re going to charge for that, probably by the year, so whatever happens once the transition is made I advise the reader to change their link to StreetCursive.com, which will work no matter what.

That is all.

Edit: Right now, this domain is old, please go to StreetCursive.com for all your once and future blog posts. I haven’t set up any forwarding yet, but hopefully I won’t have to since this notice will be here indefinitely.

As I mentioned in a previous post I made a few day trips out of Osaka on the unusual 5-day weekend. The first of these trips was to Nara. My coworkers, in an effort to be almost unbearably gracious, constantly offer to take me places. I appreciate it deeply, but it’s a bit much, and I still haven’t gotten the hang of how to turn people down for stuff. I can’t just say no I’d rather travel alone, I gotta make up excuses and such; the problem is I don’t have excuses prepared beforehand, and the way the conversation works, or least how it works when talking to a foreigner with broken Japanese, is that if my immediate response is not some reason I can’t do it, then I indeed plan on doing it. So far things have worked out ish with me managing to turn down many very kind and considerate offers for entertainment without, hopefully, hurting too many feelings. Nevertheless I looked forward to making a little trip to Nara with coworkers, feel the place out a little and get a sense for it before I return after my duties at DA are done.

So on another hot Kansai morning I took the subway down to Nanba station where the Nara line reaches Osaka and met up with three of my coworkers, including my buddy T***-san and his child, Yuuki. The day that followed I’d describe as pretty *blank*. It was pretty fun, pretty hot, and overall pretty mild in terms of event, excitement, or adventure.

The express train to Nara’s only a few bucks and takes about half an hour from Nanba Osaka. You arrive in the midst of Naramachi (Nara being Nara and machi meaning town), which is essentially just the shopping focal point of the city, beefed up beyond the usual for a town that size by the tremendous influx of visitors. Indeed there was no shortage of tourists, especially Japanese, likely given the fame of the location, proximity to Osaka, Kyoto, and Nagoya, and the long weekend. Nara koen (park), where the hundreds of temples are located, is quite vaste though and there are ample tea houses and restaurants skirting it so despite the crush of visitors that you pass by, it doesn’t really effect the experience of visiting the big, popular temples like Todai-ji or getting a bit to eat. Getting out from the station we walked up uphill along the park, past the various Nara museums, I imagine containing mostly artifacts drawn from the temples and exhibits explaining the history of Japan’s (first?) capitol. We picked up some Bento boxes for lunch on the way that one of my companions had called ahead and had prepared. The day was hot, something you think I’d get used to or least pay attention enough to that I would, two weeks later, have gotten every inch of exposed skin burned to high heaven. I joke that I”m a New England lobster. But in either case it was hot, and of course the Japanese don’t wear (and therefore don’t frequently sell) sunglasses, so my retina’s remain thoroughly bleached. So we worked our way up in the shade by the park, walking past the other visitors (which were numerous, but as I mentioned nicely dispersed) and the Shika, or deer in Japanese, or Shkashkashkashka as Yuuki-chan loves repeating ad nauseum in his excitement after, full of trepidation, “sneaking” up to the lazy, braindead beasts and poking them in the butt to make them jump up and whirl about. There were tons of deer, all over the place. They’re not quite the deer I’ve seen in various parts of the states, quite different actually, but they’re no less stupid and do little more than walk around chasing tourists that hold out food for them (which is quite fun actually) and then processing said food all day. If you can’t tell I don’t have much love for deer, they just eat constantly and proliferate, it’s like the lowest common denominator of the mammal kingdom.

T***-san coming back with some drinks from across the way

Yuuki playing with Shika

Anyway, we worked our way up by the park towards Todai-ji, our primary site for the day, and probably the most famous of Nara’s landmarks. It contains a famed massive Buddha with two Bodhisattva’s flanking it. Before then we stopped in the park to eat lunch, which was made more exciting by a couple deer making their way over and accosting us. I found the best trick is to just back into the deer to push them away, allowing you to easily protect whatever you’re eating in your hands, and to continue the process. It was quite pleasant though, despite all the people. Again the place is massive. Himeji (a post to come), with but one real attraction is quite a different experience on touristy days.

A note on Yuuki-chan, the kid is very bold and excited, and fairly clever. I’ve interacted with him a couple times since, and he’s really endeared himself to me. He’s five, and in meeting people is generally quite shy at first, but opens up fully very quickly. He also cries about random things, which his father makes fun of him for endlessly. Still, he’s a pretty fun kid, with a tremendous amount of energy.

A gate to Todai-ji

So we completed our walk over to Todai-ji and took in the main site for the day, Daibutsu-den. It is a massive, gorgeous, entirely wooden structure (the largest wooden structure in the world actually). I don’t really have much to say about it other than what you’d read in a travel guide. It’s impressive in its scale (which is apparently only 2/3 of the original, rebuilt after, surprise, burning down in the 1700s, although I believe the buddha is original from the 8th century), but as a major attraction doesn’t really inspire anything than some awe on the concept of this massive structure and grounds set against the beautiful mountain backdrop (and in Japan, there is always a mountain backdrop, I can’t get away from it). To make the visit appropriately complete I had to of course indulge in some good old Japanese superstition. There’s a hole in the base of one of the pilons that is supposedly the same size as the Daibutsu’s nostril, so everyone tries to climb through the thing for good luck. It’s a fun little trick, and when adults do it, with great difficult, it solicits clapping and cheers (although short, T***-san is pretty buff and therefore wide, an unusual thing in Japan, so a real round of applause followed his unbelievable journey through the nostril).

Just like lighting candles in churches

Well, buddha

The hole

A final note on Daibutsu-den, the Japanese government has done an extremely simple and clever thing I’d love to see reproduced in the states and other countries. At major attractions around the country, including Daibutsu-den, they have big metal stamps with a well-designed mold that depicts some representative image of the site. This is coupled with an ad campaign to get kids around the country to put these site stamps (not like postal stamps, the kind you pound into ink and then mark paper with) in books and collect them. The effort, I imagine, is to get kids to take an interest in exploring the nation and its cultural heritage. They spin it in the advertisements like a mystery adventure to discover the sites and collect the stamps, quite clever as I remember how big sticker collecting was as a kid, despite how stupid that is. Kids like to collect things, especially things that fall neatly into a given medium, like stickers, and they can feel are personal treasures. The stamps colorfully and dramatically reflect being to these sites, which are famous, ancient, and awe-inspiring, so I think it does a good job of getting kids excited about trips to see things. Even if the kids don’t learn much traditional history at the sites, I think experiencing the holdovers from historical times at a young age will give children a sense of the past, of previous existences, and hopefully an interest in what the past has produced.

After that visit, we worked our way back to naramachi to promenade a little through both the quiet and busy streets, taking in the little niceties the city of nara has constructed and the bustling retail industry before heading home. It was a fine day, and taught me something important about Nara: it’s massive. Seeing a significant chunk of Nara’s sites is nothing to scoff at, and one should go there with the right mentality and reasonable expectation in order to best enjoy their experience.

Naramachi

In the following days I took a couple more day trips, first to Kyoto and then Himeji. Associated posts will follow.

As a rule of thumb, I always suggest purchasing two travel guides to get two perspectives, it’s not as hard as you might think to cross-reference them. Basically you pick one for whatever purpose (that’ll make sense shortly) and then double check with the other one in tough decision making circumstances.

First of all, it depends on who you are and why you’re going when determining what travel guide to purchase. If you are looking to travel in luxury and comfort, with the associated price tag, I suggest you purchase one of the travel guides I won’t discuss here, such as Fodor’s or Frommer’s, that is well established in evaluating luxurious accommodations with fairly little thought given to price. I would also purchase Lonely Planet to get a more accurate opinion of sites and locations than Fodor’s or Frommer’s is likely to give you.

For everyone else, Fodor’s and Frommer’s and, frankly, every other guide that I’ve seen out there except for Let’s Go, Lonely Planet, and Time Out, are worthlessly biased, poorly researched, and largely irrelevant to an enjoyable experience.

If you are traveling with a family of four for a couple weeks, get Lonely Planet, that’s all you need. Lonely planet by the way is not the best guide out there, personally I think Let’s Go and the Time Out City guides by far eclipse it, but if you are traveling with a family you are probably mostly interested in hitting the major sites and getting the most out of them, I think Lonely Planet is good for that, and will give you the most solid and affordable experience.

If you are traveling for most other reasons, whether it is alone for short or extended times, with friends, or any other reason I can think of (even business), get Let’s Go (LG) Japan and Lonely Planet Japan (LP). here is what you do with them:

Let’s go is by far superior for all practicalities: accommodations, transportation, shopping, entertainment, dining, long-term accommodations, jobs, and all other practical information. It’s opinions are honest and realistic, largely unidealized (you’ll find that misrepresentation can be a slight problem with Lonely Planet). Furthermore, it is excellent for an actual budget-conscious traveler, focusing on actually cheap locations and good deals at higher price ranges. All that said, its descriptions of sites can be randomly lacking, especially in major tourist cities like Tokyo and Kyoto, so it should be accompanied by another book. Furthermore, if budget is not an issue at all, LP provides more useful accommodation and nourishment information for those wishing for some style or expense, it’s a better middle ground.

Lonely Planet, as I mentioned, offsets LG nicely in that it provides much better maps and site descriptions, along with better orienting information in the maps (as useless as that is, see earlier post), although LG often provides crucial written landmarks that prove exceedingly useful (such as the KFC that led me like a savior to Kimi Ryokan upon my arrival).

LG and LP provide a great combination, and both will see fair use.

If you have any more questions about the guides or disagreements (or agreements) with what I’ve said, hit me up in the comments and I’ll try to respond.

South Osaka

So it’s been a little while since I’ve had a chance to update this thing. I’d apologize but I think it’s understandable that I get busy between trying to travel a bit and settling into a new living situation and job and all that. All I can say is please do check in from time to time, I’ll periodically get to putting things up.

So, back to spewing unsubstantiated generalizations. In this post I’ll try to cover what it’s been like in Osaka, the city I’m currently living in, and the time I’ve spent here since I last left you.

I arrived in Osaka beat and pretty much stayed in that state for the following week. I’m crazy lucky in that the apartment my company arranged for me is just a few blocks from work, but work hours are pretty long, with it being fairly common for people to stay late into the night, which made it hard to take care of the everyday things like buying kitchenware, groceries, and incidentals. I work for a Japanese subsidiary of an American company so rules are a bit more relaxed than neighboring offices, where everyone goes to lunch promptly at noon (it’s pretty absurd actually, I go to lunch with a couple coworkers around 11:45 and wherever we go is empty, but by 12:05 there’s always a line out the door), but this doesn’t seem to translate into the American habits I’m used to. People work for a very long time, but break it up with goofing off a good bit as well. I’m more used to screwing around here and there, but being in an environment where people work much more efficiently and not nearly as long. I’ve never worked for this particular company or in sales and marketing at all back in the States, so I can’t make a direct comparison. Still I’ve never seen anything like people working all day, heading out to a dinner that I’d call debauchery, and then going back to work. On that note, Japanese people drink. I know I said it before, but christ can they drink. I went out to such a dinner with coworkers the first week and just keeping up put back 4 pints over dinner and two more over dessert. Now that doesn’t qualify as much of a binge, but the point is that half of them went back to work. The ability of these guys (and girls) to put back abusive levels of alcohol and then sober up in time to write tomorrow’s monthly report is impressive to say the least, I don’t know where the notion that Japanese cannot hold their alcohol came from, because it is definitely false. In either case people in my office are very lively and fun, across all age groups, so it’s been a real pleasure in there, even with the substantial language barrier.

The Main Drag in Shin-Osaka

Anyway, I spent my first couple weeks in Osaka mostly working pretty hard and trying to get my shit together, but I managed to grab some time in the city as well. There’s not much in the way of sights in Osaka, but that’s not why you come here; the city is young, alive, vibrant. It is very much a lived in and liveable city, which hopefully I’ll convey to be standing in some contrast to Kyoto, just down the road. Shin-Osaka itself, where I’m at, is a nice quiet area with three major components and little else: Shin-Osaka station, the main JR hub here with Shinkansen access in addition to city subway and standard local/express trains, office buildings that house a number of companies not wishing to pay Umeda’s rent (northern Osaka, just across the river from Shin-Osaka, which means new Osaka btw), and massive apartment buildings packed tightly and spreading far like no projects I’ve ever seen in the states. I live just a few minutes away from my office here on the border between the professional and residential worlds, which is nice enough and quite convenient. There’s plenty of cheap but decent restaurants that cater to the massive lunch crowds from the office buildings and the people returning home from work, and its certainly not bustling but its busy enough most hours of the day. It’s a fine place to live, but of course there’s no reason to visit. Shin-Osaka station itself is quite nice however; even though apparently it’s small by Japanese standards (and seeing the train stations in Kyoto, Tokyo, and even Himeji have proven that much), its got a lot of decent places to pick up all sorts of food on the go, addressing both mixed-distance commuter crowds and long-haul shinkansen and regional train riders. To me, it has a nice feel of a busy central hub. I suppose that seems like a curious point of view, but I quite like mixing pots like that, where you see every sort of person on every sort of journey; business people heading to work or on a business trip, individuals and families visiting relatives or going on daytrips, people going shopping or for a night on the town, etc. etc. There’s surprisingly few places that you see so many sorts of people, since you really have to be at neither the destination nor the source and the intermediary location has to serve a wide variety of both. In a lot of ways Osaka, and Shin-Osaka station, embody what I like most about travel; while there are many specific sites out there that are well worth just going and seeing, that provide an experience in merely viewing them, travel can be a lot more fun just living it up in a different place, exploring and enjoying what you find.

Osaka has a lot to offer in that realm; like Tokyo, New York, or London, it’s a center of modern life and there is plenty to do. It doesn’t have the size of the afore-mentioned, and Osaka-jin are sort of the Japanese equivalent to stereotyped southerners in that they’re friendlier and more open than Tokyoites but considered more provincial. Still, it’s an extremely cosmopolitan environment, and there’s a lot to talk about. First of all, Osaka’s primary locations of interest are oriented along a north-south axis, following the Midosuji line which am conveniently on. The subway is designed like a grid system, or perhaps more like ribcage, with Midosuji going along the primary axis and a bunch of east-west lines crossing the city horizontally and, farther out, splaying to cover the more remote environs after leaving the city proper. Along that north-south axis there are two primary points of interest, unsurprisingly called the north (kita) and south (minami) of Osaka. The north is a big business center, with financial centers and corporate offices packed around the Umeda train station. Some good department stores around there and plenty to of nice restaurants and bars, all supported by the most industrious portion of the city. Got some decent shopping and fine eating done there and took care of some errands at the central post office of Osaka and the citibank there. It’s a fun area with a little more class and a lot less noise than South Osaka. Also, that’s where I first tried Okonomiyake, one of just a couple Osaka-unique foods. Okonomiyake is cabbage (surprise surprise) (that was sarcasm btw I just realized that I may not have told viewers at home that cabbage is pretty much the only cheap vegetable in Japan and is the go-to for pretty much everything) mixed up with the meat or fish of your choosing (traditionally just more vegetables when in Osaka, but restaurants have obviously diversified the cuisine) and a little mayo mixed with some egg and sort of stir-fried on a flat surface, kind of fire-and-ice style if you know the place, into a pancake form. Then it’s topped while it’s still hot with a sauce that’s kind of like BBQ sauce and varies from sweet to quite spicy and mayonnaise if you want it (I get it without). The hot pancake boils off the water in the sauces fast so they gain a sort of frosting-type consistency. These things are massive and crazy delicious. They’re pretty easy to make too, so I’ll probably give them a try when I get back home. Interestingly, although Okonomiyake has been adopted by most of Kansai it’s really the accepted cuisine of only Osaka and, surprisingly, Horoshima. If you really know zero about Japanese geography, Hiroshima is down in Kyushu way far west/south of Osaka, so its odd that this particular delectable has been adopted in the two very disparate places.

Working south but still in Kita Osaka we reach Nakanoshima, which literally translates to the Island in the middle. This is an island that splits apart the major river that flow through Osaka, and is home to a number of turn-of-century buildings, a real anomoly in a city and a country that was bombed to oblivion in the 40s (Osaka, like Toyoma, was almost entirely levelled) as well as a pretty good collection of Oriental ceramics and nakanoshima park. To cover those each, the architecture is interesting and, combined with the incredible view of modern Osaka on both sides of the river, similar to the views you get of Paris from Notre Dame, is worth seeing for itself. The Museum of Oriental ceramics has some nice pieces in the small collection that’s on display, but fundamentally I don’t really see the point in isolating ceramics from the rest of a culture and period’s creations, unless someone is a student of that form of art itself. Finally the park is a lot of fun. It’s a small city park, a world away from the temple gardens one inevitably visits in Japan (which I’ll talk about in a post or two hopefully, it’s a very different but certainly no less enjoyable experience). I saw it on a weekend so there were children running about having a good time, people enjoying a walk through the rose garden, and lots of Osaka-city sponsored events going on. Besides the impressive rose collection there’s not much to the park in the way of vegetation or wildlife, but the real appeal is the pleasant atmosphere of people taking a break and enjoying a great view of the city across the rivers.

A View from Nakanoshima Park

From the Rose Garden

This brings us to South Osaka, the environment that modern Japan is so famous for and that I’ve never seen the likes of anywhere. Perhaps elsewhere in asia it exists, but certainly not in the Western world. The Minami Osaka of interest is the area from about a quarter mile north of Shinsaibashi station down to about a quarter mile south of Nankai Namba station, and about a half kilometer in width. All told its an area of about a square mile, and this entire area is occupied by I described a couple posts ago as buildings packed together each with 5 stores/bars/restaurants/clubs/lounges/karoke facilities/strip clubs/host or girls clubs/etc. stacked up, and this place is packed every time I go there, day or night, with shoppers and revelers both. I’m sure I’ll see more of this sort of thing in Tokyo, but this is the place that makes believe you really can spend any sum of money you want in Japan and you can get things you wouldn’t even imagine. Cars, clothes, and every sort of entertainment were on display in this cattle-car-packed little streets. Beyond the sheer density of shopping and entertainment locations, I want to stress the varied nature of it all. There could be an expensive members-only club with tinted glass balconies overlooking the street right above a cheesy pachinko parlor, or a high-end karaoke club with a slab marble and bronze facade and lobby right next to a dango stand. Contained within those hundred or so blocks there was a wider range of wares sold than I think even exists to any significant extent in the US, and that whole range in one place. Needless to say, the place is very fun and exciting, and accessible to people at all income levels.

Dotombori in the day

The covered street in part of Dotombori

In terms of specific experiences there, I didn’t do much at night but explore and see what there was to see; ate some street food, went to a couple bars, include an Irish one just to catch some expats, which I did and had a fine time with seeing a sort of… miscellanious band with washboard kazoos and all that was actually either surprisingly good or I was sufficiently intoxicated to think so, and a club I picked based on the number of colors streaming out the slat windows where everyone that had more than one and less than ten drinks in them thought that a white person with more than two words of Japanese was the most incredible thing since bread came to Japan. I also got to get lost on my way back because I forgot which of Nishi and Higashi was east and which was west. In the daytime I haven’t had a chance to spend much time there either, but did get some shopping done in the Doguya-suji district, which is the area where they sell the goods for restaurants (of which Osaka and in fact every place I’ve seen in Japan has seemingly excessive amounts, will discuss below). That place was a lot of fun to shop in because where else will you get the cloths they hang in external doorways, a bento box of any size or make you’d like, an industrial deep-fat fryer, or the head of a buck. Plus, because the place caters to restaurant owners (although there were plenty of domestic shoppers), everything was unbelievably cheap for what it was i.e. about a tenth of what it would cost in crate-and-barrel. Besides that I hope to spend more time shopping in the Shinsaibashi area (the northern half of the whole affair, the south is Dotombori, and they’re split by Dotombori-gawa (river) which has an uncanny feel to it with all the lights and buildings packed alongs its deep dark banks).

A store in Doguya-suji

The best thing to shop for in Japan, by the way, is clothes. Tokyoites seemed to dress more sharply and Osakans more bohemian, but people in both cities have proven extremely fashionable. Siteseeing out in Nara, Kyoto, and even local sites people do keep it more casual, but when in the city people dress… unbelievably. To qualify, everyone is wearing an outfit, it’s not like T-Shirt and Jeans or collared-shirt and jeans or a two- or three-piece suit with a hat or some generic crap like that, there is just no across the board standard, everyone has a unique outfit involving several articles of clothes and accessories none of which you could place the origins of. Looking at the clothing stores, you can understand how this is all accomplished; there are a ton of boutiques, even out in Shin-Osaka where I’m at, that sell a huge variety of clothes, usually only one or two of each article, and this goes for guys as well as girls. Every store is like a consignment store except the stuff is new. I don’t know what prices are like yet, but I do know that Japanese people must have massive closets. All told, this makes it rough to travel here, because I could only bring so many clothes and I can only bring so many back, and I’ve got work clothes and casuals to handle, so the bottom line is if you’re travelling in Japan the best you can do I think is have a few unique and good-looking outfits that have at least a few articles in common and try and get by with that. And it doesn’t matter if you don’t roll that way back home, you will stand out here in a very not great way if you roll into town in something sub-par, believe me I’ve done it numerous times; that’s why of all things I end up having to think about fucking clothing. As a final note, I should say that vast majority of the outifts are not merely unique, they are also look really good; people in Japan below the age of 50 seem to have excellent taste when it comes to clothes and style, since none of this follows a specific fashion, at least not one I can discern, but what most people come up with generally looks fantastic.

I know it’s odd that I’ve spoken at such length about clothes of all things, but it’s quite unusual, and having to live here it’s a major concern and no small source of frustration. When you’re in your native element, you don’t have to give a damn, but when you’re already a foreigner in an extremely homogenous society, you have to do your best to go by local customs; that’s not something you do for personal need or emotional desire or any crap like that, it’s what you have to do to be treated with a measure of respect. To elaborate on that crucial point, I’d like to talk a bit about the expats I’ve met her in Japan and the culture of expats they’ve opened me up to. There is a network of, primarily American, expatriates here in Japan. The network I’ve been given some exposure to is mostly comprised of business owners and language teachers, I don’t think many businessmen are part of Kansai Scene‘s readership, and perhaps soon you’ll understand why. Expats here, and not just the ones I’ve met personally, but the ones that related publications cater to, are extremely cynical and snarky and often bitter. For a while I couldn’t figure why. Some I understand, they’re stuck here after being language teachers for a couple years; they can’t get out of the country with a barren resume and a recession worldwide. But others, that own thriving businesses or have every intention of staying, carry the same traits. Here’s what I think it is, and again this is a gross generalization and detailed observation based on very little information, but hell why not right? I think many people come her with the wrong idea in mind. I think they expect that they will be lovingly and respectfully accepted as foreigners, admired for living a foreign life in Japan where they yield to no Japanese customs and carry on their foreign tendencies. The Japanese are a notably gracious people, and extremely nice and kind (in fact, I’ve yet to meet a mean person. Can you imagine that? I’ve met people that are less than exceedingly helpful, but no one has yet been mean in any way or brushed me off, besides the looks I get from time to time when I’m particularly grungy or unshaven), but that is a bit much. Do people go to western Europe, to France and Italy, with the idea that they will adopt no French or Italian customs? Do they go with no desire to do French and Italian things, but merely to be in a French or Italian place and wonder at the alieness of the place? No, that’d be silly, but I think a lot of people do that here. I think that a lot of foreigners come to Japan with the notion that this is some alien place with strange and curious people that are almost another species entirely, but that’s just not the case. A foreigner is given a lot of leeway, and often undue credit, but to be loved and respected a foreigner must adopt the customs and live the lifestyle of Japanese. You have to take the differences in stride, not view them as novelties to be smiled at at first and later to be despised. I see Japanese people’s attitudes change when I show deftness with chopsticks, or order truly very Japanese things, or bow at appropriate times, or make a point of not handing money directly, or give a small gift when I return from a day trip. All of these things go a long way. I told one of the expats I met, whose been here for three years, that I had been invited to a barbeque at one of my coworker’s houses, just me and his family, and he was blown away. Maybe I’m just lucky, but so far the Japanese people that I had been warned would be cold and distant to strangers have been very open, with people starting up conversations with me as soon I show some sign of knowing the language or some mild acumen with customs. The very first night I stayed in Japan, at Kimi Ryokan in Tokyo, the behavior change of the host when I placed the credit card, with both hands, facing him neatly in the tray rather than handing it to him, was dramatic. Ever since I’ve continued to notice that shift in people, almost like a switch, that directly follows me doing something unexpectedly Japanese. I don’t know I could be way off, but the cynicism of the expat community is in pretty stark contrast to the warmth of the Japanese people I’ve met and interacted with.

On a final note, I’d like to make mention of how the life Japanese businesspeople seems from the outside. Places like Dotombori and Shinsaibashi are no anomolies; they are well frequented and lesser versions of them exist all over the place. Urbanites in Osaka and Tokyo at least go out and have fun, they eat and drink and enjoy a great deal of entertainment. This stands in incredible contrast to the strain of blandness of everyday life, in that people work very long hours with very little upward mobility or goals to drive them. People work very hard just to get by, and then blow their money to get some life out of life. It’s tough to work your way up the ladder, and pay across the board does not seem that great (even though things seem cheap to me, I get the sense that everything is expensive to people domestically, even with the strong yen and weak dollar tempering that disparity, I’d never of this before in Japan, but I think that Japan is not so much expensive as the purchasing power parity of Japanese is pretty low compared to the states). On the whole, I think people work hard to keep their jobs and bring home some cash, but as much as they may want to be driven as Americans famously are, there doesn’t seem to be the level of opportunity here that there is in the states. On that note, I have no idea how all these restaurants survive in Japan. Every place I go there are tons of restaurants, and half the places I frequent are damn near empty, and yet somehow they all stay in business? I really don’t get how a sushi bar with a handfull of customers a night can get by, but there may be something I haven’t seen yet. I did notice an older man in a sushi bar with me the other day who just kept getting more to eat and drink, maybe throwing down fifty or a hundred bucks that night on this tiny little tucked away neighborhood sushi joint, perhaps the survival of these restaurants is tied not to the quantity of customers but their ability to eat and drink.

So that pretty much covers Osaka. There are a couple sites beyond all that, Osaka Castle which has a pretty enough park and is a pretty structure but it is clearly a concrete model not the real deal, and nothing compared to Himeji (a post soon to come), and Sumiyoshi Taisha, a buddhist temple complex that is only a couple centuries old in its current structure but is identical to what it was about 1400 years ago, as periodically the wooden structures are rebuilt and repainted. Sumiyoshi Taisha is nice enough, it is not the quiet temples of Kyoto (soon to come) but it has its own local feel, being the central outlet for Osakan superstition.

The concrete reconstruction of Osaka-jo, pretty on the outside but oh-so-false

Some people praying with a priestess at Sumiyoshi Taisha

I should also mention that I will soon have vids up on the flickr pages too. I get tired of stopping and getting out of my enjoyment of a place to take photos, so sometimes I just throw the video on and have it follow me for a bit.

In a lot of ways, Japan is very similar to the US in the 1950′s, or at least my conception of it. There are of course significant differences (sexism for one; Japan is, without question, a more sexist society than the US [the corporate structure is not as accepting of women and there is still a segregation of many activities, not by rule but more de facto, although perhaps this is changing] but nevertheless it is not anywhere near as sexist as 1950′s United States, if Mad Men is at all accurate heh), but some important similarities that may come from the influx of American culture during the immediate post-war period. Perhaps this has had a lasting effect on perceptions of life goals, self worth, and gender roles. Hard to say without real research; even if I see aspects of that society here now, 50 years have passed and, as I mentioned, there are great and unsurprising differences that have risen since. Nevertheless, while the fundamental culture may be very different, the Japanese mentality and lifestyle has a great deal of similarities with American equivalents, and I don’t mean to paint the opposite picture. My observations may be focused on the contrasts, but the reader should be cognizant of the countless similarities among which the anomalies stand out. Japan is not just an unusual place, it is also very familiar to an American traveler with an open mind. It is friendlier, cleaner, safer, and more considerate (with a few negative extremes to compensate, heh), but on the whole very much the same. You still go to the grocery store and buy your groceries, you still turn off the lights and go to sleep, you still go to home depot (or its equivalent, Conan) to buy whathaveyou, or restaurants for a nice meal, or restaurants for a quick meal, or shopping centers for clothes, gifts, etc. Despite all the differences, life is pretty much the same.

Just be sure to bring handkerchiefs; paper towels and tissues are painfully scarce.

oh also, a quick question, are my constant tangents (my parenthetical comments and such), too much? I mean obviously they are grammatically heinous and poor form, mimicking more my style of speech than any proper flow, but lacking the intonation of speech is it sufficiently understandable? Or are do the constant distractions make it unreadable? It takes long enough to bang these things out, I don’t really plan them and don’t really edit for proper style & grammar i.e. avoiding run-ons, separating and organizing thoughts, etc. so… hey.

After the misadventures of my arrival on Saturday, I spent the night at Kimi Ryokan, and as I mentioned in the previous post got to take a bit of a morning stroll around Ikebukuro. Sunday evening however, the company was putting me up in a hotel near the office, in the beautiful New Pier Takeshiba district.

(a note on the pics I post, you can access all of the relevant pics by clicking on the images, they are linked to the associated flickr sets, organized by location)

View from the hotel at New Pier Takeshiba

View of the area. Not very residential.

This left me back in the predicament of relocating my substantial baggage. A reasonable person would probably have taken a cab to the hotel on the opposite side of Tokyo. Instead being me, I decided to haul my bags back to Ikebukuro station, on the JR ring-line around Tokyo (the Yamanote line, it’s more expensive than a normal subway line and doesn’t go to the heart of the city, but is a great ring route that gives you access to a lot of Tokyo without having to change trains, as opposed to the normal linear subway lines. Ended up being perfect as it goes from Ikebukuro to Hamamatsu-cho station, which is only about a half mile from the hotel), and over to the hotel. I had managed fooled myself into thinking that the awful experience of hauling my luggage the previous night was somehow unique and would be entirely different Sunday morning. This was wrong.

An aside, nothing gets stares in Tokyo like a white guy in grungy jeans and a T, drenched in sweat, carrying luggage for a family of four on the fucking subway.

In either case I made it and found myself showered, shaved, and settled into the comfy western-style hotel room by mid-afternoon, so I figured I should make good use of my free time and see some of Tokyo. Unsurprisingly I was dying for a meal, so I checked out a travel guide to find a good area to scrounge around for something. If I haven’t said it already, Tokyo is a massive city. Massive in a sense that I couldn’t previously comprehend. NYC is highly populated, LA is quite large, and London is both, but none of these have struck me like Tokyo. You just keep walking and there is just more city and more people. I haven’t even been able to find a full map of the city with any reasonable level of detail, it is just too expansive. I’ll see if I feel the same when I return there, but even in Osaka I have found the sheer scale of the urban environment impressive. So of course there are countless places in the city that would be ideal for exploring a bit and grabbing something cheap to eat, but I picked one: Akasaka.

Akasaka on a sleepy Sunday afternoon

I found Akasaka in an interesting, or perhaps uninteresting, state. For the entire stretch from Akasake-mitsuke station to Roppongi-itchome station (about 3/4 mile), the place was packed with stores on top of stores, a theme I’ve rediscovered several times since elsewhere, punctuated by the occasional skyscraper representing some major company or institution. Nevertheless, relative to the retail density it was barren. I took this to be a quality of Sunday, since a lot of places were closed. Exploring for a while I settled on some nondescript place to eat, one of many that subscribe to a simple low-service system: you pick your meal from a vending-machine type of device that spits out a receipt, which you hand to the service staff who then cook up whatever your receipt prescribes. It’s one of a number of alternatives to traditional waitservice I’ve found here, and the places are usually pretty cheap (5-8USD a meal). Like most places I’ve eaten so far, the food typically has a lot of either rice or noodle, fish or fried ham (katsu), and cabbage. Meats or other vegetables can be present but are usually pretty sparse. There is rarely fruit. Going to a grocery store earlier this week I discovered why: fruits and vegetables are crazy expensive here, perhaps twice the price of those in the US. I suspect it is because of a locally-based agriculture system, given some of the tell-tale signs I’ve seen before in other countries with this phenomenon; fruit and vegetable selections tend to be both highly limited and widely variable, with each day bringing a different set of 4-6 different vegetables along with perhaps one or two that are insanely expensive and therefore likely from overseas. Chicken and pork aren’t particularly pricey, but they are terrible. The ham is OK but very fatty, and the chicken is not the big white breasts you grill in the states, it’s a bit stringy and grossly emaciated. You can get better stuff at gourmet grocery stores of course (for that matter, as far as I’ve seen you can get almost anything somewhere), which have everything from Italian deli meats to bon bons, but that obviously comes at a price.

So I walked around Akasaka for a bit and took in the neighborhood, changed a bare minimum of money at an ATM (Japan is very much a cash society, so its pretty hard to get around with credit card alone), and then took it on the road for a bit. I figured if I headed east I would eventually find myself deeper in the heart of the city, so I’d be sure to see something or other. Turns out I was partially right and very much wrong.

This would be a good point to comment on city structure. In most American cities there is a characteristic feel to the architecture, whether you realize it or not, that is rooted in the growth period of the city. The gilded age for San Francisco, or the 20′s and 50′s/60′s for Chicago and New York, mark periods where the cities experienced cultural and economic expansion. Tokyo and Osaka are not like this, they are very much modern cities. Each of the few neighborhoods I’ve seen in both cities has had its own character, moreso than the locales of manhattan, but is always brutally urban and modern in basic principle. Osaka was apparently bombed to oblivion in WWII, which may account for the lack of older architecture, but both Osaka and Tokyo are almost timeless in their modern look; their growth can’t easily be placed in any decade of American architecture, even since the second world war. Rather, there is a pure modernistic tone, driven I think by the very minimalistic design of buildings that acts as a sort of… unifying force that enforces some measure of cohesion between varied structures. Maybe in time I’ll be able to discriminate periods of growth, but for now all I can say is that if you walk and walk and walk you will find more and more city until long after you’re tired to death. Taking the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka, passing through Nagoya and Kyoto, I of course saw both rural expanses and suburban environments much like Brookline or Cambridge/Somerville or the East Bay. Still, it takes a good time, perhaps twenty minutes on the bullet train, to escape truly urban environments of apartment buildings, stores and offices. Tokyo and Osaka both are very much modern, urban environments.

One might think that this would make them well-organized and easy to navigate with ample signage and clear primary routes. That would be terribly, terribly wrong. In both cities streets of every breadth and level of foot traffic meander and double back with no particular aim; there are rarely signs of any use, and people that live in the area frequently don’t even know what the names of the major streets are, or really any street but the one they live on; with the winding streets and tall buildings obscuring any landmarks, holding onto mental compass points doesn’t last long; the size of streets is little indication of their utility or their ability to get you where you wish to go, since major roads are really arteries for vehicles and have absolutely nothing to do with actually getting about your current locale; finally, whatever you are looking for is probably tucked away in a 4-8 story building with 4-8 other things each of which has its own little sign next to twenty neighboring building in the identical situation. All of this combines to mean that most visitors to these cities will spend a good deal of time very very lost. Furthermore, being lost in these environments is not particularly fun, because while wherever you are there are plenty of buildings, there are only so many locations where shopping and entertainment are concentrated, so you will quickly find that you are, in fact, nowhere.

So needless to say, that’s where I found myself as I worked my way east. I should mention that, resolved to carry myself proper when finally unencumbered by luggage, I was wearing jeans and a blazer in the summer heat, making my navigation of this urban jungle a sticky affair. Despite this it was plenty fun and elucidating. I wandered around for about an hour before coming across anything other than deserted office buildings, shuttered lunch places, and some swanky-in-intent apartment buildings. The thing I came across was a temple.

I don’t know the name or the significance, and I could never find it again, but it was a fairly large grounds with a good number of people milling in and out. Basically there’s a mall/park, of which I’m about 75% the way up in the above picture (coming from the far end), that leads up to the main building of the temple. You don’t actually enter the temple (I’m sure some can but no one was), and the ‘entrance’ shown above is not actually an entrance, it is a pool of water which you toss a coin into and pray. This involves, if I remember correctly (which I’m sure I don’t), a bow and then two claps of the hands. It was interesting to see how different people clapped; some slow and patient, some rapid and punchy, some quick and firm, but with a pause in between, etc. Along the two sides of the mall, under the tree groves (to the right and left of the image above), there was a sort of antiques fair, or perhaps more accurately a yard sale. Various people selling obscure wares, from 50s comicbooks and assorted sculptures to chotchky’s and kid’s toys. Sorry no pics, not sure why.

So having found something I figured I should quit while I was ahead and asked a security guard (there are always security guards somewhere nearby, I don’t care where you are, especially during the day [effective?]. This is despite there being only 1.3 robberies/100,000 population annually) where the nearest train station was. He gave the answer everyone gives me when I ask directions: just down the road, really close. This of course meant it was 10 minutes away for someone that knew how to get there down a succession of what would be described as ambiguous roads if roads could be ambiguous, and half an hour away for a traveler asking 3 people for directions.

In either case I found the place and made my way back to New Pier Takeshiba for some dinner and sleep. The Takeshiba area has a sort of down-town, contemporary feel to it; sort of like a financial district (although it is not the business heart of Tokyo by any stretch), with large, spaced-apart skyscrapers with big gleaming glass and marble lobbies and Starbucks’ in the corners. During the week it’s packed with business people, but curiously enough on the weekend it earns it’s ‘new pier’ title by providing passage for hundreds of people to mini-cruise ships that ferry them to islands out in the bay for a day of surfing and beaching.

So we finally get to the title of this post, wherein I was handed a sum of cashmoney that perhaps someone in a less… legal line of work is more used to. The next morning I woke up, threw on a suit, and checked out to head over to the office building just next door where I met my contacts in person, received whatever orientation I required (which was interesting enough, because out of the couple dozen people I met that day, only 2 could put together fluent English), and introduced myself at the quarterly meeting. The meeting would have been fun I imagine, given the frequency of laughter at most of the speakers’ jokes, had I understood enough Japanese to actually get it. That’s a recurring theme too, places that seem like they’d be a lot of fun if I could speak the goddamn language better. In either case, the only real fact of interest before I popped on the train to Osaka and settled into my new place (by which you’ll find in my next post I mean spent two full dawn-dusk+ days working and what I would describe as carousing and my coworkers would describe as mid-work dinner before actually getting a chance to settle in), was my method of payment. As I mentioned Japan is a cash-based society, and most corporate employees in Japan get handed envelopes every pay period containing their appropriate salary amounts, in cash. Just imagine if every other Friday, in any other country in the world, a huge number of coworkers would make their commutes home with hundreds or thousands of dollars in cash on them. There would be mass muggings every week, robberies every night, it’d be chaos. Instead Japan has such a low crime rate that people feel comfortable walking around with these large sums in easy to spend, totally untraceable cash. Thus, I got handed a 2 grand advance on my salary, which I was expected to put in my pocket and convey, carrying loads of very steal-able and tourist-looking luggage, from Tokyo to Osaka.

I should make a quick note on safety in Japan. It’s amazing, and amazing feeling. I never realized how I was always on my toes, always cognizant of potential crime, until I came to a place where I don’t even have to think about things like making sure my door is locked, or keeping track of my luggage, or even dropping something important and not realizing (most of the time when people find something on the ground, rather than turn it in somewhere they simple place it on the closest, most exposed but raised object nearby such that when the owner retraces his or her steps, he’ll come across it). It’s quite relaxing actually, to a surprising extent.

A final note on photographs. First, I’ve gotta apologize there’s a lot I don’t take pictures of, mostly because as easy as it is for me to access my camera (that’s not the issue), it is a pain to pull out the camera and snap a shot. Mentally, unless I’m there to take pictures, its hard to get myself to stop whatever I’m thinking about or looking at and instead pull out the camera. It’s an important thing to do, I know, but I find it somehow… restricting, if nothing else than in my head, since I don’t feel as free to be involved in where I’m at and focused on what I’m doing when I have to step back and make a record. Hopefully I’ll get used to it. Second, to some the subject of my photographs might be kind of odd. I don’t really take pictures of people (and right now I don’t have any people to take pictures of anyway heh), probably for the reason just described, and I tend to take a lot of pictures of what might seem random. Basically I like to take shots of what I’m experiencing or where I’m at, try to convey what its like. A picture of a landmark might be beautiful, and I take plenty of them, but it doesn’t necessarily capture what its like to be there. So I take a lot of photos of ordinary things; places I live, streets I walk on, stores I frequent, and sites I see (from a sort of pedestrian perspective). When I feel artistic then I try (poorly) to compose the images to convey the sense of being there, but for the most part I just try and snap the most descriptive pics possible, and hope you get the idea. In either case, that’s the story on that.

So that’s my notes on the first few days in Japan, we’ll see how much of my observations hold true. I’ll catch up soon with my first week in Osaka.

Written Sunday, September 6th,

So I’ve arrived in Japan, and I suppose it is about time that I fill you in on what exactly I’m doing. Right now I’m in Tokyo, but soon I’ll be heading to Osaka to work for D****** corp., which henceforth I’ll call DA, for 6 weeks. Then I’m going to work for DA for another 6 weeks in Tokyo. Then I’m free to do as I will.

So as of now, I’ve only recently arrived in Tokyo, and am preparing to head out on Monday. I’ve been in the country for less than 48 hours, but being the judgmental person I am I’m going to go ahead and take a crack at a few observations and some general, utterly baseless conclusions.

The trip to Tokyo is long, as you might imagine. Even with a direct flight from the States you’re not going to be looking at anything less than a 12 hour flight, and if you’re as fortunate as me you’ll end up having a connection on top of that. Still, I found it very doable. 20 hours of travel after waking up at 4AM was not tremendously enjoyable, but it wasn’t unbearably unpleasant either. Watch some movies, do some crosswords, and listen to some music and you’ll be fine. If you can, sleep when it’s night in Japan; if you can’t, stay awake the whole time, tough it out.

So I traveled 20 hours to Tokyo, on 4 hours of sleep, and therefore looked like a very poorly disguised terrorist. Immigration was appropriately concerned. Nevertheless they let me in anyway after taking a few extra fingerprints and asking me if I was really sure that I was not planning to blow something up. I guess they liked my smile.

I was initially planning to crash in Narita for the night before heading into Tokyo and finding a real hotel, but I couldn’t find appropriate accommodations at the airport. This meant I had to pull out one of my travel books and scrounge up a place to rest my head. I picked some cheap, nice looking places outside central Tokyo and made a few calls (which of course was a pain as the instructions on what combinations of numbers to use i.e. country code, city code, 0′s etc. were entirely in Kanji). I managed to track down a place that had a room left for the night, kimi ryokan over in Ikebukuro. This worked out nicely as there was a JR Narita Express train just about to leave for Ikebukuro. After a few more ordeals I came to the place, visually a hole in the wall with a small, low, recessed entrance. The place was quite nice; seemed to be somewhere between a standard ryokan and a hostel. Fairly large tatami rooms, a bath and some showers, and a common area with a kitchen and wifi (I got lucky with a first floor room that picked up the wifi). The front door is closed from 1AM to 7AM, so it wouldn’t be great for a normal visit to Tokyo, but it is perfect for a rest and stopover. The reception was nice but I think tired with foreigners, they appear to have been having a recent influx. If you are polite and observe standard customs though, they become extremely friendly and polite. Just showing that you are aware of common courtesies like taking off your shoes at the door, not letting your feet touch the outdoor flooring, not handing money directly to the receptionist, and handing things over with an appropriate bow, seems to instantly generate reciprocation.

(Edit 9/9: for the record, Let’s Go’s travel guide is far more useful than Lonely Planet. The LG just simply has more of the elusive information that one might need, the stuff that normally you would have to ask someone living in Japan about e.g. long-term stay options, work options, travel insurance and health considerations, even more on where to get solid maps and what transportation options are the best deal. It’s not as descriptive in the site explanations as Lonely Planet, but on the whole it’s much more useful)

Crashing at the hotel in the evening, I found myself waking early in the morning, which I can only assume is rooted in jetlag. The one advantage of getting up early on a Sunday was getting the opportunity to explore Ikebukuro at first light, a chance to see some of the host girls heading home, delivery boys bringing goods to convenience stores, a few stragglers from the night before making their way back, and a few families dandied up for Sunday trips. The weather, by the way, is phenomenal, a very even 70-75 from the evening to the morning, very pleasant to be outside with just the lightest breeze.

An observation on foreigners in Tokyo. They are certainly there, I saw them from time to time, but there aren’t that many. Even in Tokyo I was the only non-Japanese in a train car of maybe 50, and I didn’t see anyone white on the rest of the train either. Once I realized it was a bit surreal, to be foreign in an extremely homogeneous environment.

(edit 9/9: In Osaka for a couple days now, working in Shin-Osaka, and there are zero white people. I’m sure you’ll get tourists near the appropriate attractions, especially in Kyoto, but of the hundreds of people I’ve seen in the last 3 days, not one was white. Zero. It’s something of a novelty, and so far being white has been extremely useful in getting me some leeway for my extremely poor Japanese)

I also noticed how stunningly clean Tokyo is. Everyone always says that but until you see it it is hard to realize the scale. I think the reason is twofold. One, there appears to be a huge investment in the service industry in public and private sectors at all levels. For example, at each stop people were assigned, one every 30m or so, to guide and aid passengers. Second, the evolved customs lend themselves to prohibiting the generation of filth. For example, it is rude, at least among the older generation, to eat or drink in public, to chew gum, or to blow your nose in public. There is a general sense of waste-not that I imagine greatly reduces litter. I think the combination of these effects results in a general public cleanliness. Thing is, this may have a large number of significant, positive, indirect consequences on life in Tokyo. All of this is conjecture now, I’ve only been on the ground a short while, but taking the train through Tokyo (which is always a telling experience in cities, above ground metros) I found that a huge number of properties would, by US standards, be considered tenements or shitholes due to their size, design, and homogeneity. They don’t strike the viewer as rundown or dirty in the way we imagine tenements, but structurally they don’t differ much from projects in the States. Perhaps the cleanliness of the city somehow makes such living situations bearable, or even enjoyable. I’ll try to keep it mind as I further observe.

(edit 9/9: on the service point: the business hotel I stayed in Sunday night was practically brimming with waitstaff, and the several sidewalk construction sites I passed all had 3-6 people whose sole job it was to direct people onto the designated, labeled path circumscribing the construction, however small the site. Nothing in Japan thusfar has been weirder than have 5 people shepherd me and only me the 15 feet down a flat, cordoned-off path)

(edit 9/9: on the eating in public: yes this observation is now verified. Even though when I asked someone they said that it’s fine to eat in public and people do it, it is quite obvious at any office building, train station, walking or shopping street, or any other pedestrian area that only perhaps one in every couple hundred or so people is eating or drinking. I asked a coworker and he said it used to be rude but now it’s acceptable)

On another note, Tokyo appears to be a city of alcoholics (don’t take that as judgment, it’s kind of endearing to me). Men and women of every age can be spotted truly stumbling around streets or just barely managing to hang on to an accompanying party. There seems to be a generally very jovial atmosphere as well. Service at restaurants, supermarkets, and stores ranges from bright smiles and pleasant greetings to outright shouted exuberations and jokes at the slightest call of attention. Coming to Japan, I feared that I would find a quiet, reserved society. Instead, I’ve stumbled into one of the most pervasively friendly environments I’ve ever seen, on par with Turkey and Portugal. It’s not just in service situations either; although I’ve seen few cases of people interacting in any meaningful way with strangers, people with friends or acquaintances are more frequently more lively than you’re likely to see any sober person in the US. Again, these are gross generalizations based on a small set of experiences, but what fun is life without baseless judgement?

(edit 9/9: even at company meetings and in the office, people joke around more than in the professional environment’s I’ve experienced in the States. This may be specific to my company, but it does tie in with the overall atmosphere I’ve seen. The one exception to the light mood is when people are smoking (a frequent occurrence in japan). Smoking seems to be more of a quiet, individual activity here. The times I see people smoking, and almost exclusively men, are when they step aside from the dinner table for a smoke, even just a foot or two away, when they go outside the office building to smoke in silence, despite being surrounded by others performing a similar ritual, or when they are enjoying dinner alone at a restaurant. The times I’ve seen men smoking together, such as over a meal, the atmosphere has been quieter. This may all be coincidence though, I’m drawing from a small sample size as with all of these observations)

Finally, I have been pleasantly surprised by pricing in Tokyo. I was fearful that everything would be exorbitant, or at least significantly more expensive than even the more expensive US cities like NYC, Boston, and San Francisco. What I’ve found is that if you look carefully you’ll find prices equal to most well-populated US cities. A sushi dinner for only $9, a room in what is the Japanese equivalent of a very nice B&B for $50/night, a solid meal from a supermarket for only 5 bucks; these aren’t the best deals on the planet, but it is hardly the soul crushing expense I was fearing as a traveler.

Oh, and one very last note. Tokyoites dress VERY well. The bohemian equivalent to the States dresses much the same, with jeans and flannel shirts or graphic tees or what have you, but the standard fair is black pants and belted collared shirts, with suits common, age regardless. Women wear a lot of heels and a lot of dresses, not just on Saturday nights but Sunday afternoon, and not just in Ginza but in Ikebukuro and Ueno. It’s kind of a pain in the ass, because when you need to haul over a hundred pounds of luggage 12 blocks and onto the metro you don’t really want to dress nicely, but if its possible to feel more out of place than being a white person, its a white person in beat-up jeans and a T-shirt. Sometimes you just have to swallow your pride and wear the grunge, but this is most certainly not the northeast. This is not like Western Europe was ten years ago either, when people of all ages wore suits and dresses, it is somewhat different. People aren’t dressing in a manner that is formal in intent, rather people are dressing fashionably and nicely, which involves proper clothes that tend to be cut young, far from the French or Italian neighborhood tailor and cobbler who cut a young man his first proper suit and wingtips before confirmation day. As I said, the standard can be annoying, but I think it is also freeing in that, much like in New York, you can look nice whenever you want, and in fact should do your best to look proper, without being considered showy.

(edit 9/9: In Tokyo when I dressed appropriately I did not get a single wayward stare [in Osaka I get some anyway], but when I wore dingy jeans and a T I got the full-on from a good 50% of people in my general vicinity. Dressing acceptably in Tokyo at least is a must. Osaka may be looser on weekends perhaps, we’ll see)

Oh and last but not least, if you come to Japan, bring a handkerchief. Paper towels and tissue paper aren’t big here.

If you know me then you know that I have a tendency to obsess over decisions. However small the choice and insignificant the outcome, I can never just flip a coin; a decision must be well considered, each of the possibilities weighed and the all of the available data examined. This is truest of my consumer purchases, and especially so with technology. The reality is that with digital cameras, laptops, media players, etc. you don’t have the opportunity to try out each of the options for a sufficient period of time (or at all in most cases) to make a fully informed decision. Instead the consumer is relegated to mining blogs, wikipedia entries, amazon comments, and third-party sites in the field of interest, hoping to find exactly the comparison he needs (or thinks he needs). At the end of the day you have to buy something, but I can never just say ‘fuck it’ and pick one, I must be satisfied that I’ve made the right choice.

So as much of a pain as that is for me and mine, this obsessive consumerist quality I’ve developed has the potential to be beneficial to others as I do so much damn market research I might as well be a tech consultant (which is essentially unemployment anyway, so maybe I’ve found myself a new title).

That’s where this gets good for you, dear reader. In anticipation of my trip (which kicks off this Friday, actually), I’ve decided to buy a new camera. My previous photographic device was a Canon A570 bought 2 years ago, which I’ve been extremely happy with. The A570 was anomalous in that it had a sensor and lens nearly on par with the higher end Canon P&S, the G7 (500USD), as well as full manual functionality and a 5x zoom. So for 130USD you get the image quality of a $300 camera. You pay for it in the less appealing construction (it’s not particularly slim or pretty), but I was happy with the decision. Nevertheless, the A570 cannot compare with the current generation of P&S’s, with larger sensors, better in-camera processing, high pixel densities, and slimmer forms.

So I found myself (or put myself) in the market for a high-end digital Point&Shoot (as much as I’d love a Nikon D-series, the point of the camera is catalog my experiences, a reality made far more difficult by a bulky DSLR).

what matters starts here:

Long story short as of right now there are only 2 high-end digital P&S’s worth considering: the Canon G10 and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3. The G10 continues canon’s G-series successes that, since the G7, have secured absolute control of the market. The LX3 is a competative new-comer in that the LX2, while a fine camera, could not stand up to its G-series contemporaries. The LX3 impressed a lot of people when it hit the market due to its low pixel count on the largest sensor among P&S’s, which goes a long way in addressing the issue of low-light shooting that all cameras in the market face.

Here’s how the two compare (only the relative differences between the two):

Canon G10

• Easily accessed and employed manual controls (shutter speed, aperture, white balance, manual focus, iso, flash, etc.).
• Well-designed interface displaying relevant information quickly, again enabling the effective use of manual or Av/Tv functionality.
• Solid in-camera post-processing i.e. good White Balance, contrasting, etc.
• 6x zoom (compared to the LX3′s mere 2.5x)
• 14.7 MP, which means that in bright daylight shots you’ll achieve a tremendous amount of detail i.e. you can blow up pictures fairly large or crop them down 20-50% and still have no problem. As a point of reference with 10 resolved MP (i.e. sufficient lighting and sensor area) the average human eye cannot resolve the pixels in an 8″x10″ print. This high MP count also means that you will have major graininess issues at higher isos.
• Only macro’s at 28mm, and some fisheye creeps in there so macro shots are as tricky as they usually are with P&S’s
• Large for a P&S, requires a case or bag of some sort unless you have very large pockets.

LX3:

• Small form, fits into a jacket pocket easily
• Great Leica 20mm macro
• Slightly larger sensor (1/6.3″ as opposed to the G10′s 1/7″), which all around provides better imaging
• 10MP, which means that in bright daylight shots at 100% crop you wont have perfect resolution (with no crop you are absolutely fine), but also means that in low-light conditions, or rather at higher isos, you will get better resolution because the larger pixel area will allow the pixels to pick up enough light to accurately reproduce it, as opposed to the light-noise that causes graininess at higher isos and high pixel counts.
• Only 2.5x zoom
• Crappy in-camera processing. You are essentially forced to shoot in RAW (i.e. straight up image out of the sensor). The RAW conversion software is good and post-processing on computer should be under 60seconds for most photos, but it means you can’t just shoot away and enjoy the pics.

The Bottom line: No P&S can handle low-ligh conditions well. The sensors are simply too small to accomplish it effectively. That said, the LX3 goes a long way by making 400/800 iso shots actually useful, whereas the G10 is strictly limited to within 400 iso (otherwise you’ve got crippling grain). The zoom isn’t as great on the LX3, but in my experience I’m moving back more than forward, and the better macro more than makes up for that. Finally, the small form factor is extremely useful and gets to the heart of P&S’s. On the G10′s side, with the well-designed body and menu of the G10 you will actually use the manual controls with frequency, making your shots average better, especially nighttime shots where relying on the processor to pick your iso will lead to granier, worse-balanced shots than you can  probably achieve with just a bit of work. On the LX3 or any other menu-based, scroll-wheel lacking digital P&S you will not use the manual functionality. You won’t, I promise. When you are travelling around if a shot will take more the 30s you won’t take it, not when the auto functionality is there. Also, with the effective Digic III processor, the G10′s auto function is actually useful making those shots where you just pull out the camera and snap away much prettier at the end of the day, especially for well-lit scenes. The low-light shots aren’t as hot as the Lx3, and you won’t be able to make as many of them work, but in my opinion the active use of manual shooting will make up for, enabling the user to take shots at lower iso’s and close the gap. To me, as appealing as the smaller form of LX3 is, I feel that I will take better shots more consistently with the G10, especially with the ability to take well-processed jpegs right out the camera, a must when you’re using a P&S for what it is best used for.

So I bought the G10, and I have to say it is everything I had hoped for. When the S90 comes out in a couple months though I may pick that up and sell the G10, depending on the how the reviews look. Hope you find my insight useful, please let me know in the comments or via PM if I can provide further information.

]]> http://streetcursive.wordpress.com/2009/08/30/fun-with-cameras/feed/ 3 rynlee http://streetcursive.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/19/ http://streetcursive.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/19/#comments Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:55:33 +0000 rynlee http://streetcursive.wordpress.com/?p=19 ]]>

As per the Miscellany label, this post is at best tangentially related to the theme of this blog. Still, I’m taking it under good advice that I have every right to post and that my readers may very well have the desire to read opinions on topics other than my travel experiences. Posts like this will hopefully crop up from time to time and spice things up, perhaps generate some discussion.

In truth, I’m just trying to show my support for the internet-based rejuvination of the music industry. The following link is to Amazon’s sale on mp3 downloads; there’s a ton of great albums for 3-5USD. That to me is a fair price for the quality music and won’t put any more dent in your pocket than a cup of coffee and a scone.

http://www.amazon.com/500-599-Music/b/ref=amb_link_83646211_2?ie=UTF8&node=318772011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=ilm&pf_rd_r=0MF4BX81F4M9B0SWJEXR&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=469617551&pf_rd_i=163856011 (yes, I know)

Here’s my take on things. The internet is a reality; it provides a means by which exchange of data is 1) international, 2) widely accessible (i.e. both cheap and easy), and 3) anonymous. In the early stages of nearly-universal middle-class public access to the internet in the western world, these qualities manifested themselves in the widespread illegal distribution of music via the internet (remember napster?). Looking at these three fundamental aspects of the internet, this type of trafficking was inevitable. The largest players in the music distribution industry should have realized this and adapted. Instead, they sought to fight it in courts, which have always proven incapable of effectively generating policy on internet interactions (note the debate these days over enforcement of defamation laws on the internet).

It is of course easy to say that they should have adapted, but how? Well this takes us on a trip to what I imagine is economics 101. At the time, CDs were running $20 a pop. People that wanted a cheaper alternative headed to used CD stores, but somewhere along the line a large number of CDs would sell at 20USD. Napster provided a free method of obtaining this music. Now, doing something legally as opposed to illegally is worth something to people (I don’t know a study that shows this, I’m going off my own intuition, but if no such study has been performed I’d be astonished). Had record companies dropped their prices, say to 5 or 10 dollars a CD, I suspect that sales would not have plummetted as they did. When given the option of paying many hundreds of dollars to legally obtain the GBs of music they own or getting it for free illegally but virtually anonymously, how many people would really pay the money? At 5 dollars a CD, that equation changes. People may have said it’s not worth it to risk viruses and litigation with napster when its only a couple subway rides to buy a CD. Illegal music exchange on the internet could perhaps have been squelched in its infancy, essentially the record companies could have thrown their weight around with price reductions to drive napster out of business, in a way. Instead, they took the purely ‘stick’ route with no carrot, illegal music exchange continued to flourish, and now a decade later people have gotten used to getting their music free. Now, record companies are forced to sell CDs at $5 because people are so accustomed to paying nothing. Even the $5 is a tough sell. Amazon and iTunes may both be making money off of mp3 sales, but the market is a lot smaller in dollar value (total music sales in the US have dropped from 14.6bblUSD to 10.4bblUSD in the last 8 years, and this figure is expected to continue to decline see wikipedia citations) while I suspect that people are listening to more music.

This was just one option of I’m sure several other economic routes of taking advantage of the internet for music distribution. As an example, I’d like to take the television industry. I know countless sites where one can watch TV shows and movies illegally, often low-quality south-asia or eastern europe based sites, plus pretty much any show or movie you want is out there as a torrent file. Still, the television industry has stayed this tide of illicit media viewing by offering advertising-based viewing of their shows online, legally. NBC and ABC started it off with buggy players a few years ago that offered one’s favorite shows, and Hulu has taken over, making $12mil profit at 17% margins in its first year, a figure one would expect to increase as the successful proof-of-concept increases the advertising price (notice there are fewer ad council ads and more bud light lime ads) and the number of available shows (note ABC just put LOST up on hulu). The reality is that people would be happy to watch a few advertisements to be able to see their shows any time they want. I recently heard an npr segment about how the quality of TV is rapidly improving, with the most successful shows becoming popular after their debuts and with little advertising (e.g. gossip girl). The speakers ascribed this phenomenon to the free access to shows online, which means that people not onboard on the first episode can hear about the shows from others and catch up online if they find they like it. (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111992549). Finally, an internet model for TV conceptually works; many different shows can be watched by different users at the same time, people are no longer beholden to a specific time slot to catch a show and advertising revenue is no longer limited to people able to view at a given time. This is all not to say no stick was used, plenty of sites that I’ve frequented have been hit by C&Ds and shut down over the years, and the recent attacks on The Pirate Bay by the movie industry represent the most dramatic of these offensive tactics.

The bottom line is, the TV industry seems to be making successful headway in using the internet to provide reduced-price and increased-availability content to the consumer while profiting from it. The music industry failed in this regard, taking a purely aggressive legal route, similar to the movie industry. We’ll see how the market for media evolves in the decades to come.