Anotherblog

Japan II

Japan II
Today’s mission of silliness worked only in the broadest sense: I convinced Craig and Griffon that it would be a good idea that, whenever we disembarked from a train, we should shout out to everyone on the train:

“Tsukiatte Kudasatte Arigatou Gozimasu!”

which means, very roughly, “Thankyou very much for sharing this experience with me”. So, we all learned the phrase off by heart, which meant that the other two learned it a great deal better and faster than I did, because I’m crap at languages (but I try harder). Anyway, we got invited to drinks and eats after work, and so we drunk a great deal of beer and ate a lot of food and got onto the train feeling quite tipsy and convivial. And, wouldn’t you know it, about three stops after we hopped on, all the other people from my company who are also visiting, hopped into our very same carriage. What a co-incidence! Really. It really was a bit spooky-ooky, since they weren’t having meetings in even remotely the same place as us.

Anyway, I was getting pretty hyped, because we’d all memorised this phrase and we’d shout it out as we exited the train, and the other members of our company would look strangely at us or laugh. Either was fine.

So, of course, as we got to our stop, I shouted out the phrase as loudly as I could, and the other two had completely forgotten because they were so drunk (or so they claimed) and we hopped off and everyone else laughed. Excellent. Anyway, Craig has promised to shout it out tomorrow evening (we’re taking separate trains in the morning). This time, I’ll let *him* lead.

Other than that, Tokyo is still fun and good. I’ve had lots of work meetings and am rather tired and drunk, so I’m not feeling quite as descriptive as yesterday, but I’m still being delighted and happy at all the marvellous things happening around me here. I like cities. This is a really big city.

Japan

Japan
Japan is fun, so far. I’ve been to a shopping area where all the fake goths/punks hang out. The Japanese version of goth/punk doesn’t seem to carry any of the angst/anarchy connotations of the “originals”, but is more just another funky way of dressing up. Yeah! So far, Tokyo reminds me a little of Paris, because it is similarly overcrowded, has a similarly brilliant metro system (I haven’t waited more that two minutes for a train) and has lots and lots of narrow streets that would be alleyways in Sydney, except that they are full of people and shops.

Surprisingly, there are a lot of places where there are hardly any people or cars, and you can walk right down the middle of the street in the middle of the day, which most people do. The cars that come through do so slowly, as if they were driving through a shopping mall. Even in the really busy places - like, right near the hotel - there are hardly any cars around. Most people walk and catch the train (the train stations are the places to *really* find a lot of people!), everyone from the long-sock wearing school girls (the long socks, which are a lot like leg warmers, are still in fashion, though not as prevalent as ten years ago, or so Craig tells me) to the aforementioned goths & punks, to the businessmen, to the old women wearing traditional robes, to the trendy brown spiky haired cool kids, to your skinny glasses-wearing computer professionals. I’ve spent a bit of time on trains so far. They’re quite fast, and the drivers have this quaint thing where, before they take off, they point forward and shout something. They seem to take a great deal of pride in their jobs. The passengers read (and manga are fairly common reading, though not as common as I’d thought) sleep and play with their mobile phones or PDAs.

What else? The trip was fine. We got bumped up to business class, and I saw the film “Identity”, which was OK. The business class seats were excellent, but I still didn’t get enough sleep, and after the long bus trip to the hotel, had a sore neck from sleeping awkwardly, and gritty eyes from not sleeping enough. Still, Craig’s enthusiasm was contageous, and we spent the day wandering the streets until I crashed out at 5 and slept until 9, at which point Griffon and me (there are three of us together at the moment; Louis and Josh arrive on Tuesday night) went out to dinner and ordered a bunch of stuff, having no idea what we were ordering ’cause neither of us spoke the language and we’d chosen a restaurant for atmosphere rather than english-speaking prowess. Still, the random food we ordered was good, and the drinks we ordered turned out to be large quantities of sake, so by the time we headed off to the great-big game arcades, we were a wee bit sloshed. The game arcades were fun. Oddly, the dance-dance-revolution stuff is not there at all - there was that drumming one and a guitar one (though not at the front), and another one: kettle drums! At 11:00pm last night, I was playing the kettle drums along with “Y.M.C.A”. Fun! Then upstairs there were heaps of gambling games - Pichenko, they’re called, and they involve dropping coins down a vertical thingy with lots of obstacles, and trying to get them to land in certain holes. There was also this enormous group-soccer game, where about twenty terminals provided a single-player view of a great big soccer game, and there was a big display TV showing the whole game. Wacky. What’s even stranger is that it’s also a collectable card game, so far as I can tell. You can buy the cards, and then lay them out on the little soccer fields in front of each player. Presumably they have chips in them that allow the game to work out what they’ve chosen.

In Australia, we’d say “why not just play a real game of soccer?”, but in Japan it’s quite different - the amount of space available makes strange economies. I saw a garage for a perfectly normal house, as I walked along, that had a big mechanical lifter, so that you could lift one car straight up and put another one underneath it.

Some more random impressions… on the train, looking out and seeing a park filled with black tyres, made in the shapes of dinosaurs… clerks in a supermarket packing shelves and shouting “onagishimasu” every ten seconds… a series of buses filled with people and loudspeakers, making an incredible racket as they shouted out something, going down the street… the $100,000 trees in a garden, imported fully grown, and apparently tended from a seedling to be the “perfect tree”… a cafeteria where each of the bowls has a sensor on the bottom, so you pay at the end by putting your tray of empties over a scanner… the incredible number of smokers, just as bad as Greece… a service-station attendant running out onto the road to block traffic, so that the person they just served can exit the service-station… the golf driving ranges, where the land is so precious that the tee-off areas are two stories high… in many senses, the cliches are true, except that I haven’t seen the slightest sign of rudeness that forms some of the nastier stereotypes. I keep finding myself reflecting the occasional sense of “Only in Japan” into “Only in America” or even “Only in Australia”, and realising that even the more bizarre customs have equally bizarre sisters in other countries. As Craig would say, it’s all good. Professional.

Going shopping with Craig is a lousy idea. He is nothing but encouraging, throwing out comments like “Just think - you’ll arrive back in Australia and you’ll be kicking yourself that you didn’t get this…”.
It is comments like this that mean I have a set of anime DVDs - Kiki’s Delivery Service, Laputa: Castle In The Sky, My Neighbour Totoro, and Princess Mononoke. I managed to resist buying a pair of remote-controlled tanks, but only because they wouldn’t demonstrate how they work, and for the price they were asking, there was no way I’d buy them without knowing that they really can fire on each other, and rotate their turrets. If such is the case (as I expect to find out next Saturday) I may crumble.

I’ve gotta get in contact with Rob S. at some point on this trip, so that we can meet up and do something, but it’s getting a bit late tonight. I think I’ll get a phone card and try tomorrow - or, actually, now that the internet connection is working (after a good hour and a half of hassle, finally figured out that the hotel hadn’t activated the modem line, despite giving me the cable modem) I can always email. He has a phone that receives email. So cool.

I’m trying to speak as much Japanese as I can, but it’s a great deal different to use in practice than on the tapes, so it’s slow, embarassing progress. I’ve said “Good morning” instead of “Thankyou” at least once, and it wasn’t the morning when I said it, either. Oh well. People are much too polite to laugh. It’s my kinda place. If only there wasn’t so much smoking…

Japan

Japan
It is, of course, a great big last-minute rush. I’m going to Japan tomorrow for a week - just in time for earthquake/typhoon season, it would seem - and there’s a lot to prepare for the trip, a lot of grinning advice from my more jaded co-workers, a lot of new stuff to assimilate. I probably should have spent a bit more time learning Kanji as well as spoken Japanese, but it’s far too late now and realistically, I would never have had the time. I only have the time for Japanese lessons in the first place because my drive to work takes just on half-an-hour.

Toys
So, the big question is: can I resist the lure of the incredible gadgets that will be available there? I kinda doubt it. At the very least, I’ll probably be getting a couple of Gameboy Advance games; if I fully give way to the nerd side, I’ll be emerging with an AIBO. Urgle. I’ve been debating whether I ought to take my electric guitar: it’s probably not wise, but I’ve been practicing so much lately, I just know I’ll miss it if it doesn’t come along. But if I do take it, I’ll cop shit from the others. It may be a moot point: if I don’t get a hard guitar case before tomorrow evening, the guitar ain’t coming.

Chris & Tanya & John G
We caught up with some of my old Adelaide friends last night, and a good time it was too. John G. has changed career from computer programmer to musician, and he’s doing quite successfully in the world of film composition, doing music for short films that are doing a hell of a lot better than anything I’ve ever attempted. In fact, I couldn’t afford him, which is a pity, because if I’d only started making films a couple of years earlier and pushed it a bit harder, I’d be ready to use his talents in a flash. Still, Ev (who did the music to “Once Upon A Time” is not exactly a consolation prize, more of a trump card…
We had dinner at an Italian Restaurant, which was nice, and Chris & Tanya waxed lyrical about their restful work lives in which both of them do four-day weeks - bastards - and then we went back home and played many, many games of pool in which Chris & John trounced Anna and me. I have to get back into the practice, methinks.

Weekend

Weekend
Another weekend of work, unfortunately. Fortunately, I got a lot done, and it was reasonably fun. And air-conditioned. But it took up pretty much the whole weekend, thus stopping me from writing any Lotus.

Yesterday
La-di-da, still can’t talk about stuff. But! I finally finished off my solo Spit song, “Gone” in the evening, and I’m quite pleased with it. I’ve learned so much guitar stuff in the last two months that the stuff I’d already recorded sounded weirdly quaint - I hadn’t any real idea of the chords I was playing, and I remember some of the bizarre fingering that I was using to play what I now recognise as F Major.
Anyway, I added a guitar solo (not a very advanced one, obviously) to the song, and tidied it up and now it’s ready to send out to Ev and Dave. It’s a bit of a waste to send just one song though, so I’m thinking of editing a couple more tracks together and adding them to the CD that I send out.
Then there’s the CD to send to Marco. I’ve really got to set a bounty on getting that together.

Japanese
Slowly, slowly learning. I’m a bit stuck on Lesson 11, which I’ve gone over more than the usual number of times and still am not able to answer the questions in the time that they give. It’s a bit harder than the previous lesson, though, so I’m not too worried - I was discouraged for about ten minutes after listening to the lesson the first time, thinking “I’ll never be able to speak this language”, and “There certainly does seem to be a lot to it, why exactly am I wasting my time on this?”, and then it was over and I was back in the “one word at a time” thing and “Because It’s Fun”.

Russia
Anna’s work phone number, which she’s diverted to home while the shop is unopened, is also the number misprinted somewhere for “Fairview Travel”, a travel agent who seem to persist in printing the wrong number because we’ve been getting calls for them to the order of a couple per week for the last, oh, two years or more. We have resisted the humorous and malicious answers that we could come up with - the poor people are just trying to book travel, and are probably already on the verge of being hassled - and just answer that it is the wrong number and we don’t know the correct one. Actually, Anna knows the correct number but won’t tell them (which is as far towards maliciousness that she will go) and I don’t know it.
Anyway, got a call for Fairview Travel from St. Petersburg last night, and had a wonderful time communicating that this was not in fact the travel agent. Nice person, limited English skills, though not quite as bad as my Russian. Anyway, they seemed delighted that they had come upon a normal Sydney household and wanted to know what the weather was like, how living in Sydney was, and so on. I can relate to this, having once called a random number in Denmark to establish the correct pronunciation of “Lego”.

Dr Who

Dr Who
Arrr! My favorite. And, let’s face it - the only Doctor who was also a pirate (I say without any proof whatsoever, vaguely recalling Tom Baker as an evil swashbuckler at one point).

You are the Fourth Doctor: A walking Bohemian conundrum with a brooding personal magnetism and a first-rate intellect concealed somewhere beneath your charmingly goofy exterior. You are perhaps the most terribly clever of all the Doctors, though your occasional bouts of childishness get you in trouble. You never go looking for a fight, but when someone messes with you… good heavens, are they ever sorry they did.

Which Incarnation of the Doctor Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Not work

Not work
Here another journal entry that’s not about work. I’m not saying whether it’s good or bad… nope, not me. Not gonna mention whether I’ve been having lots of fun at work lately… or not. No-sir-ee-bob.

Lotus
Well, Anna arrived home last night after a fulfilling trip to the ski fields and made me incredibly envious with all her talks of the snow and what it was like, and comparing wounds and just saying how much fun it all was. And she bought me chocolates! Yay! And I can eat chocolates at the moment! Double yay! And we did all that catching up stuff and went over to Anna’s parents place to have dinner. So I didn’t get anything done on Lotus, again. But! I may or may not have done some fun things that may have been (or may not) related to the above journal entry. Hmmmmmdihum. I’m sure not talking about *that*, though.

Sure is fun to do a bit of directing again, though. Though it is possible that I did no such thing.

Lorenzo’s Journal
Somehow I *did* manage to do 1600 words of Lorenzo’s Journal done today, though… running total is now about 24000 words. It’s so *easy* when the events have already been constructed and I can just turn the quality dial down to “low” and power on through…

Updates

Updates
Obviously I don’t *need* to update my weblog every day, but it’s much easier to stay in the habit of doing something once a day, than of once a week. Hence you, the reader, cop a lot of rubbish, as is the way of daily weblogs around the world.

Lotus
After that startling bit of updatitude yesterday, didn’t touch Lotus last night. Instead, I went to guitar practice then went to sleep. My back is feeling quite a lot better now, just as predicted - Anna arrives home this evening, and I shall attempt to extract a massage at some point, but I don’t really need it any more. I suspect Anna will be more in need of massages, after her camping and walking and skiing.

Work
Dum-dee-dum… can’t talk about work… dum-dee-dum.

Japanese

Japanese
I’m up to lesson 10 of the Japanese course, and am now getting to the slightly disturbing bit where I am forced to ask a woman if she will have a drink with me. I’m normally fairly shy - no, really - and I am perfectly happy with my current girlfriend, so I have to just pretend that this is some work thing. I must admit though, my technique seems fairly slick. “Would you like a drink with me now?” I say. “No thankyou,” she says, with what I detect is a little irritation. “How about later?” I say. This kind of persistance is normally alien to me, but it really seems to work since she readily agrees. What are the odds that she’ll actually show?
Actually, I really don’t need these slick moves, as I’ve already been through this in the Greek lessons. We’ll end up arguing about what time to meet, just you wait and see.

Lotus
Miracle of miracles, I did a wee bit on Lotus last night, though my back subsequently shut down and I went off to have a bit of a lie down. Dad gave me some good advice, though. He’s been having back problems too and recommends sit-ups to strengthen the back muscles so that it doesn’t happen again. And a lot of stretching. This oughta be good for a laugh.
Anyway, Lotus: The Procrastination is currently in an awkward bit of dialogue that I just need to power through in a lame kinda way so that I can keep going. I’m often surprised at the quality of stuff when I power through it instead of putting a lot of thought in - it frequently reads more naturally, partly because the writing speed is much closer to the reading speed, I’m sure. This gives me some hope.

Back
Following Dad’s advice and much more use of the heat pack has, remarkably, worked a treat. I’m feeling a lot better today. I should be just about better by the time Anna gets back, and will therefore no longer need a massage.

Book of Ratings

Book of Ratings
Excuse me, but I just have to point out that the Book Of Ratings is pure genius. I may have mentioned this before, and I will probably mention it again, but there you have it. Pure genius.

That’s all I had to say.

Lotus
Oh yes! Actually, I did have something more to say. I didn’t do any significant writing on Lotus over the weekend despite having Chris to watch over me. Chris made the foolish mistake of disappearing to watch “Brazil”, and that was it really, distractable Andrew.

Onion
On the other hand, Chris and I did do something terribly newsworthy on Saturday night that we didn’t quite get around to swearing a solomn oath never to talk about. It. Anyway. We wished to eat dhal (again) but by the time we’d watched all those star warts films, it was pretty late. We had no onions. So, we decided to go on a random walk, rolling a dice to see which direction we would turn next, until we came across either an open Indian restaurant that would sell us dhal, or a shop that would sell us onions.
So, we set off. As random walks go, it was pretty random, but it was surprisingly effective. After almost an hour of going in circles around Marrickville, realising that pretty much all the restaurants had shut, we came up with a secondary pact. If we came across anyone who was carrying dhal or onions, we would attempt to persuade them to sell them to us. Likewise, if we happened to walk past the home of anyone either of us knew, we would roll to see if we should knock and ask for onions.
Also, if four hours should pass without onions, we would roll to see whether we should give up.
Also, if we happened to pass a gypsy fortune teller who warned us not to continue our foolishness, we should obey her instructions (after, of course, verifying her gypsy credentials). Oh, and if we came across a gypsy fortune teller who *didn’t* volunteer that information, we could roll to see if we should ask.
Anyway, we continued walking, passing a 7-11 store that I thought might sell onions (but didn’t) and was pretty much my last chance of any kind, travelling mostly along alleyways and back streets - but then, out of the darkness, we suddenly came across an open shop that sold all kinds of things, including onions. It was about fifteen minutes walk from home, in a really out-of-the-way place. I was amazed.

We went home and had dhal. It was good.

Pirates

Arrr! Pirates!
Yes, it was every bit as good as I was hoping. The dialogue, sparkling; the action, exciting and occasionally inventive; the romance, well, acceptable. Mr Depp has pushed to new heights of character building. And, of course: Undead. Pirate. Monkey.

Undead
Having not quite had my fill of the undead (motto: Brains!) I went to see the Queensland horror film “Undead” on Sunday. It was pretty good, though wildly uneven and occasionally confused. Fine effort, lads.

Bad back
My back hurts a lot. Still. Dizziness has stopped, at least. I bought a “HeatWheat” pack, which you microwave and then attach to your back, and I’ve been taking lots of really hot showers and baths, and eating panadols, and I think it’s pretty much time to see the physiotherapist. I’m kinda vaguely hoping that it will either go away, or that I’ll be able to last until Wednesday when Anna gets back and then cop a whole bunch of massage. A man can dream.

Star Warts
I rewatched Star Wars: Episode I and Episode II with Chris F. on Saturday with the aim of discovering the true history of the events portrayed in the films. We came to a couple of conclusions:

Episode I
1. The blockade of Naboo is ridiculous unless there was, in fact, a space elevator. By the time the film got made, they probably weren’t aware of, or couldn’t understand, any references to the space elevator in the remaining fragments of history and legend that had been passed down. We can fairly safely establish that the Trade Federation were blockading the space elevator at the top end - probably for extortion money, or, from what what we know of the Trade Federation, to extract outstanding debts.

2. The human population of Naboo was probably quite small compared with the Gungun population - almost all the human activity is based around a single city (probably representing, or at the base of, the space elevator). The population there probably existed to trade with the Gunguns, who were likely amphibious or entirely aquatic in nature. (Note that they are portrayed as living in lakes, rather than the more obvious-to-us oceans - it’s likely the film-makers live on a desert planet - hence, the recurrance of desert images - or certainly a planet with no oceans.)

3. A number of Jedi were probably sent from the Republic to ensure things didn’t get out of hand - it’s likely that several of them were killed when the Trade Federation decided to make their move and invade, so the others (notibly Qui-Jon - no mention of Obi-Wan is made in what is known of the history of Naboo) aided Senator Palpatine in his return to Coruscant in an attempt to pursuade the Republic to take action.

4. The enigmatic J’ja Bnx, ambassador of the Gunguns (and likely trained as a spy/assassin) certainly accompanied Palpatine, and was subsequently instrumental in drawing the Gunguns into the Naboo war against the Trade Federation. Palpatine’s hand was evident here, of course, but one should not underestimate J’Ja Bnx. The film’s choice to portray the character as an incompetent buffoon is from the conventional mythology, based on his generalship in the disasterous Battle of the Theed Plains - but a deeper reading of the histories shows that he was more unlucky than incompetent, and from his prior achievements, he was certainly a formidable character and leader in his own right.

5. Qui-Jon’s ship was damaged either in the escape or subsequent to it, as he stopped at Tatooine. Anakin Skywalker (who was certainly older than portrayed in the movie - probably 20 or so), a charismatic and gifted pod-racer, was pursuaded to repair Qui-Jon’s ship in return for an apprenticeship in the Jedi. They continued together to Coruscant, by which time Palpatine had constructed a huge popular support for the Naboo cause. The Republic, by this point, was already divided by weak leadership from Valorum. Popular support for the more martial Palpatine swelled, and despite Valorum sending a (small) punative force against the Trade Federation, Palpatine gained control.

6. Qui-Jon and a commando force of Jedi (including Anakin and Obi-Wan) were sent against the Trade Federation to secure the space elevator, as the Trade Federation had threatened to destroy it. The Jedi were able to coordinate with General Amidala (who lead the human resistance to the Trade Federation on Naboo), J’ja Bnx (who had returned to lead the Gungun army) and the small space-bound force, to thoroughly rout the Trade Federation. Qui-Jon was killed in fierce battle securing the space elevator power generators, in controversial circumstances - Obi-Wan claimed Maul, another Jedi, had been responsible for the death, and that he had killed Maul in retribution.

7. J’ja Bnx’s infamous attack on the Droid army outside Threed had followed several months of successful guerilla fighting (the Trade Federation were ill-equipped to fight underwater). The Gungun government were encouraged by these successes, and pushed Bnx into making a last-minute land-grab as the Trade Federation retreated. The invading force ran into a large portion of the droid army, and Bnx’s force was destroyed. The droid army were subsequently successfully blockaded from power sources, and, rather than submit to capture, self-destructed.

8. Skywalker and Amidala, both popular heroes of the successful battle, became a very high-profile couple. Amidala was made President of Human Naboo (that is, the human regions) by popular acclaim. J’ja Bnx was pilloried and exiled by the Gungun, though was later reformed and became the Senator for Gungun Naboo.