December 29th, 2003 (5:15am, Tokyo Standard Time)

I should make an amendment to my comment on the first class train: they did serve us some reasonable food that's in my opinion better than most airline stuff - though a small difference - so one more reason 1st class is good.

To be honest, though - if nothing else changes, the difference between a 1st class and a 2nd class rail pass is worth the difference, especially since apparently 2nd class has this tendency of being sold out more frequently. Besides there would be small amount of money saved with the food and showers and the likes.

Comments about stuff that I forgot to write previously:

1) I went to a rest room in Hamburg - usually going to the rest room isn't much of a big deal, of course - but this occasion simply touched my heart: When I went, there was a entrance thing that resembles subway ticket checking machines, and a guy standing there. Conversation was like this:

He : Want to use? 0.40 euros.
I : ...
He : What? expensive?
I : [hesitantly] well, yeah, kinda...
He : Uh huh, yeah. Now pay up.

Isn't such a blatent act of robbery just heart warming, especially at christmas time? Anyway I paid my 40 cents and went in (I should add this was probably the most expensive occation of urinating I have ever done). The Stalls were perfect geometric figures of stainless steel - like a thick cylinder that came out of the walls at an angel, and from the top of the cylinder, a cone was taken off, into which a patron does what he needs to do: It is a very small contraption that for some reason simply screamed "German (Or, at least, European) Design."

2) A LOT of people smoke in Spain. I think it might rival Japan if not exceeding the level thereof. No restaurants I have went into had any non-smoking areas, which also kind of sucked. I am amazed that they can keep up with this kind of outrageous smoking habits when cigarettes are so expensive; I can only imagine what the place would look like if the cigarettes were as cheap as Japan: the cities would forever be encased in smoke and all airplanes would have to land via GPS because the lack of visibility.

Last night I slept in a Hostel. The name was Pension Fernando, I think. For 15 euros, the place was actually much better than I had anticipated. Of course, it did not even approach the level of a four star hotel: having to share the room with three other person is definitely a setback for that star rating, and a shared bathroom / shower per floor probably does not help either, but with everything considered, the place was actually cleaner than several hotels I have stayed in before (cough Holiday Inn), which, like I said, was most definitely a pleasant surprise.

Barcelona is an excellent city, except that this time the weather did not want to cooperate and we got some rain as the afternoon came. Besides the rain, I have to say I am very much sold to Gaudi's incredible imagination, but more on this later.

To start off the day I went off to the mountain monestaries: where all those benedict monks do their albums of chanting, I think. The place houses a black sculpture of Virgin Mary, considered the patroness of the catalunyians, and is hidden in some rock formations so unusual that they are often hidden behind clouds - even nature does not want the place to be seen.

People kissed the statue when we filed across it. I guess it is very much similar to how catholics not worrying about getting cooties from sharing a cup for the blessed wine - but I did not have the guts of actually doing it. Just off the small chamber there was a room with a truly huge shell that I think used to contain holy water. When I say big, I really mean it: the shell was something like 80cm across; definitely the granddaddy of all shells out there.

From this excursion I went to La Sagrada Familia, Passeig de Gracia, and Parc Guell, all of which are excellent examples of Gaudi's mind at work. Disneyland does not come anywhere close of making a person get the feeling of being in a land of fantasy compared to Parc Guell, however hard they try. If the place was only not so full of tourists as it were, I can imagine that it would take my soul and set it adrift in some stream of ethreal fantasy and I'd be forever lost.

On one hand, the rain dulled the atmosphere a bit - all the pictures would not have nearly the same level of contrast as I would like, but it simply added to the feeling of outerworldliness that I highly appreciated.

Right now I am on the train to Milan; tomorrow morning it will arrive at 9:10 or so, and I hope I can have enough time to reserve a seat for the 10:00 express to Florence. Here is to hope.

December 28th, 2003 (3:58am, Tokyo Standard Time)

It is nearing 8pm in Spain, and I am sitting on a train that took off an hour ago from Madrid and is heading to Barcelona, arriving in about four more hours. This has placed me in a terrible predicament: The first two nights I spent away from Denmark has passed quite eventlessly (I might add efficiently, as travelling and sleeping was done simultaneously) on an overnight train. However, arriving at Barcelona at midnight or so would interrupt what was turning out to be a pretty good plan for fast paced european "travel."

Besides that, today was spent in Madrid. For a total of 10 hours in Madrid, however, at least four was exclusively dedicated to the train station. The Eurail pass timetable did not get a valid timetable for the Madrid -> Barcelona section at the time of publication, and due to this little hiccup my entire schedule was to be in a quantum superposition until I got to Madrid and get a clue as to what kind of trains run between the two cities.

It took about three hours to sort out the rest of my itenerary, which is still not 100% clear as I cannot book my italian and german segments of them in Spain, but I am reasonably confident that I can catch all of them. They go something like this: (all in European Time)

Dec 27 Sat
Madrid -> Barcelona
19:00 - 23:35

Dec 28 Sun
Barcelona -> Milan
20:38 - 9:00

Dec 29 Mon
Milan -> Firenze (Florence?)
10:00 - 12:46
Firenze -> Munich
21:37 - 6:33

Dec 30 Tue
Munich -> Hamburg
8:44 - 15:07
Hamburg -> Copenhagen
15:28 -> 20:26

Not a perfect plan, as it leaves me like 8 hours or so in Italy when I really wanted to spend two days, but I do get to visit Florence. I will have to skip Venice and Rome, both of which was very very tempting - but Florence is the city of lovers, and of course it would just not be right to skip it when one is travelling alone. (Yes that is a terribly flawed logic, but so is this whole Europe-in-a-week thing.)

So in the end I was able to reserve the Madrid -> Barcelona and Barcelona -> Milan segments; I was lucky and got the last seat (well, bed) on the latter, but the former all sold out and I choked up 55 euros for a first class ticket (from where I write this). The latter night train was again 63 euros; I am guessing that's the standard fare for these trains (Trenhotel, as these several lines are called?).

One excellent thing about Spain was that even on the train this morning I noticed the sunrise: this was the first time I have seen the sun ever since I have been to this continent. As much as the sun availed itself and retired behind the clouds cyclically throughout the day, it was still the best weather I have gotten so far and I am grateful for it.

Madrid may also be one of those few large cities that does not lie near a large body of water / river / etc. This was made up by the numerous fountains and man-made lakes (erm, ponds) in the various parks, but maybe it's just another form of compensation.

I have to say, though - I from now on will have to conclude that whoever said the French spoke no english has never been to Spain. Whilst as in Paris if you tried hard enough people will usually come out alright, in Spain it was completely hopeless. My two years of highschool spanish, most of it forgotten, has gotten the biggest stretch in my entire life. As much as my level of spanish is about 70% worse than my japanese on my first trip to Japan, It helped out so much that I am actually beginning to think that the two years invested was actually worth it. (Before this, my only two consolation for the class was that a. there were a pair of very cute twins that attended that class, probably one of the only pairs of cute twins I will be meeting in this lifetime, and b. I remember vividly one of the guys in the class was elaborating how if he could perform fellacio on himself he would be a very happy man and would never do anything besides that - this was in 10th grade, and I have been in the US for a mere year; I think I am eternally scarred.) I am also developing a terrible fear of the english situation when I finally get to Italy; but well, we well see what happens as things progress.

The train from Paris arrives at a different station from the train departing to Barcelona, the latter is Atocha station. From it it's possible to go to Parque del Retiro and Palacio Real on foot. However, Parque del Retiro has these wonderful little inclinations that goes along the way, not a welcomed thing when one is carrying a heavy backpack. In Parque del Retiro there are the standard fare sculptures of various important people that died a long time ago, as well as many kissing couples, hordes of rollerskaters, about a dozen boats rowing on the man made lake, various accordian players, and at least one guy playing the bagpipe. There is of course the Fallen Angel sculpture - a very well done sculpture dedicated to the devil (first ever, as it is believed to be). The most awsome thing I think was that they had mimes. I have never seen mimes in real life - possibly because that as far as I can tell from Loony Toons and Animaniacs that mimes do not have a high reputation in the US; but the spanish mimes were more like performance artists - two of them painted white were enclosed in black trashbags, and one painted black was asking the audience to paint on them - as the painting continued, the person inside the bags began to move, eventually making this breaking out thing. It took a very long time for the girl to gather people to start painting, so it is possible that they are simply breaking out artistically because they were bordering suffocation, but definitely very artful, and most certainly an esoteric form of art. I vas very tempted to do some painting myself - but as I won't have a place for showering in the next few days, I decided that getting blue paint on me was not the brightest of ideas. It will be added to the lifetime to-do list though: item 452: paint on some mimes. (yes, I made up the number)

Parque del Retiro to Palacio Real there are a few well established routes. One of the routes pass through Pueria del Sol, which is like nothing else I really seen before - many roads merge into this area, but unlike these circular things in european cities that has like a gate or something superficial in the middle, Pueria del Sol has two fountains, and the rest is filled with people. I think it is because it's saturday and that Madrid is a very big party town, but by the time I was leaving (around 6pm) the area was gathering enough people to rival Shinjuku for the crowdedness. Each of the streets leading away from this centre of nexus are filled too, even at such an early lines hundreds of meters long has already formed.

I have noticed that a surprisingly large amount of people I see in Spain have piercings or tatoos. It could be the area I was at, or coincidentally the time at which I was there (Saturday night in a party district), but that should be a lot of people that are not allowed into japanese pools...

I also met a girl in an internet cafe, who spoke english and amazingly, some japanese. Her pronounciation is not perfect, but just the prospect of finding a story-book caucasion girl (she's only 17 too) who converses with you in japanese in a internet cafe somewhere in a basement in Madrid was simply beyond expectations.

After all that I got to the station and hopped onto this train; first class do have its benefits: they serve you food and drinks. Nothing fancy - it's more like airline economy cabin fare, and definitly not worth the 45 euro price difference, but it's still kind of cool - we also have video programming that's playing Bruce Almighty; hearing Jim Carey in Spanish is also kinda amusing. Well, I am trying very hard to justify this price difference, so the standards for amusement is being adjusted a little right now.

That's that for today; three more hours until arrival and I will have to see what will happen next in this week of complete unpredictability.

December 27th, 2003 (3:42pm, Tokyo Standard Time)

It is a cold European morning at a quarter to 8. Technically, of course, I have no idea if it's a cold morning or a hot morning, as I am still riding the night train that is taking me from Paris to Madrid, which will arrive in about an hour and half. What I CAN speak for is the terrible cold that permeates the compartments. It's interesting actually - the train between Berlin and Paris was awfully hot, yet this one cold: is this some conspiracy to make sure travellers won't get a good night's sleep unless they choke up the money for first class?

Not that I would have had any money to choke up if I wanted to; for a second class ticket, this train is already 63 euros, compared to 19 the first time around (the reserved ticket from Hamburg to Berlin was a mere 2.60 euros). This is WITH a rail-pass! Considering that a airline ticket from the same two points sometimes can cost around 30 euros, I was hoping that this train REALLY had something to offer.

I do have to grant that the beds are much more cozy than the berlin->paris counterparts, but it has amazingly little luggage space. one of the compartments I walked past four girls had all their luggage piled in the middle of the room, which left no place for legs and they all had to sit croocked, making way for this iceberg of luggages that was invading all the living space. Our compartment was better but not by much, while we shoved everything into a nook or crannie, it leaves absolutely no place where I can organize my backpack, which is always a lengthy and time consuming thing.

The last thing I wanted to say about Germany is that from the meal I have ate, the food is very salty. It was some otherwise very good soup / wild boar (I really question the wildness, but I digress), but I had to purchase a bottle of Evian in order to dilute the soup to a drinkable level. The Evian came in a glass bottle and was quite expensive; as in France it seem to be packaged similarly, I find it questionable if the US plastic packaged cheap water with the same brand is actually product of france, or some "from concentrate" version thereof. Back to the salt, though - is that possibly the reason so much beer is consumed in Germany? Unless presented with evidence otherwise, I would have to consider it a viable theory.

fast forward a day.

I was only in Paris for a whole 10 hours, definitely way off in the three standard deviation tip of the staying length of a major tourist center, if we exclude all the airline layovers. During this time I went through Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower (did I spell this right?) and a slew of other things I did not quite catch the names of. I also got my money cheated at the train station to the tune of 25 dollars. I guess, though, it was indeed I gave him the money - and do prefer this to, say, a violent mugging, but it did not give me a first impression of Paris.

People mostly spoke english well enough, however.

Everywhere around Paris one can notice intricate details on just about everything. bridge decores, window sills, and most other places are all full of sculpted this or that, all of which must have costed a lot of time and money cumulated through the ages. This idea of decorating every concievable surface is no better visible at Notre Dame. The place is actually a tad smaller on the outside than I have imagined, while the inside a lot larger than I thought. The most impressive, though, is nontheless the fact that every surface had sulptures of angels or gargoyles or saints or intricate patterns. There was also a whole lot of stained glass, all of which only appeared colourful from the inside.

There was a sermon (concert?) going on while I passed through, and hence it was not actually the pure solemn silence I had hoped for - but giving a sermon in the most famous cathedral in the world must give the attendees some feeling of awe that would be contradicted by the torrent of tourists that flew behind them, snapping pictures and making loud walking sounds. I am sure it would turn out to be an ironic feeling, but as I am one of the tourists, I can only conjecture.

After that I went to the... gate thing (sorry I can't remember the name), which was under repair, and I walked to the Eiffel tower on foot. The Eiffel tower is actually not as tall as Tokyo Tower, I think - but you would not feel that is so just by looking at it. The presentation is everything: you walk 30 meters and are suddenly greeted by this huge plain with nothing tall in sight except this gigantuan tower that stood in the middle of it all, dark and imposing and full of complitated metal bracings like you see in old bridges and such. Below the tower hordes of people sold keychairns and silly souvenirs that I did not get - my backpack is heavy enough as it is.

The last thing about Paris is that there are more foreigners, at least Asian looking foreigners, than anywhere I have seen in Europe so far. I have heard frequently vietnamese, and then chinese and japanese came at about the same frequency. The guide book did say that Paris received more immigrants than any other european city, and the evidence is apparent.

December 26th, 2003 (4:19pm, Tokyo Standard Time)

The actual time is 8.19 in the morning. I am an hour from arriving at Paris Nord station, after having already rode this train (NachtZug) for nine hours.

Yesterday I left Vejle very early in the morning, before 7am, and headed to Hamburg, but also left some time to go around Berlin before hopping onto this train headed for France. I am sure a schedule like this will leave many scoffing "but this is insane! you will spend most of your time in trains and hardly see any places!" Which on many level are true. But the truth is I am only in Europe for a whole 7 days, and I wasn't really going to be able to see any places anyway. So to justify this dilemma, I figured that is should probably be considered more of a scouting trip - to familiarize myself with as many places as possible as a preparation for more extensive future excursions.

One thing I noticed about northern Germany and Denmark is the amount of wind generators they employ. They are not as thickly planted as the californian counterparts, but throughout the journey the sight of a few scattered wind turbines towering in a field, shadowing the gentle rolling of the plains and the few evergreen trees and the occasional country-side houses. They always turn sufficiently slow so that it is easy to track with one's eyes the movement of the blades - but I suppose they are large enough that the linear velocity on the blade tips (as well as the centrifugal forces experienced there) are larger than one would think.

Hamburg didn't leave any particular impressions except that it had many a bridges and many a churches. There must have been a huge church every 500 meters or so directly outside of the Hbf station. I was impressed with the station, though - it was completely as one would imagine an european train station should look like, with arching black roof, and many parallel tracks all of which could be seen clearly from a balcony that runs above and perpendicular to them. If we were to toss out all the advertisements of 4-bladed razors and the LCD monitors and replaced the trains with something a little more old-looking, I bet it would not have been possible to tell the difference between the station from now or 50 years ago. Heck, I am sure 50 years into the future, the only thing will change is that trains will look stranger and there will be 6-blade razors on advertisement.

In Japan, they are currently running an exhibition whereby two bodies, autopsied and cut apart showing most muscular and skelectal structure, is preserved and shown. I did not find it particularly appetizing and did not go to look at it. Apparently, however, there was something similar on show in Hamburg as well, this time with a person (maybe two people - it's really hard to tell with the mutilated corpse) riding a horse, all similarly cut and preserved. It was exhibited in the erotic arts museum, no less: I suppose anyone going to the erotic arts museum looking for something erotic, say, to help with the night's performances, will be in for a unpleasant surprise. Unless, of course, people actually find that kind of thing erotic... in any case, I did not go and cannot at all elaborate on the particular piece of art, except that the artist may like what he is doing a bit too much.

I did, however, walk to Reeperbahn area just to see what's all the fuss about. It was reputed to be an area where sex-shops, peep-shows, and strip clubs flourished. Despite being christmas, most places were open except the live-shows. But the place is quite deserted anyway - I am sure even if the ladies decided that it was worth the trouble to work on christmas, it would not have yielded spectacular results for their pocketbook.

Returning from Reeperbahn, I headed for Berlin.

Going from Reeperbahn to the train station, I noticed that the subway had nobody checking the tickets or even a ticket gate. In Berlin I have noticed the same - does all of the German municipal transportation run on the honour system? Seems a bit hard to believe.

As far as sex-shops and such are concerened, there were quite a few of those around the Berlin Zoo stop as well. Small in scale compared to Hamburg, but no less prominent.

In Berlin I walked to the Brandenburger Tor - the symbol of germany, as well as the big parliment building Reichstag and the Holocaust memorial that's still under construction. I also wanted to check out Hitler's former bunkers, but it seem to have been replaced by some baloon service - it was dark and I really had no idea.

The train will arrive soon, and I will stop here.

December 25th, 2003 (1:58am, Tokyo Standard Time)

It's something like 6pm in Denmark, but it has gotten dark almost three hours earlier. That's the first thing i noticed about this place, that the days are awfully short. The plane touched down at 7:30 or so, being about half hour late or so, but even after about 8am the sky is still very much dark. The sun never showed its face even though after it has officially risen after 8:30 or so - heavy overcast and it was mostly drizzly.

Having a population of some 5 million total, Denmark is not a very crowded place. Compared to the sardine can that is Tokyo, it's quite a change. The train exited the city very quickly, and after this exit that occurs in about a blink of an eye, the most frequent scenery that greets from outside is rolling plains, meticulously plowed but doesn't actually seem to grow anything except lush green grass (indeed, in the middle of winter no less). Now and then a few farm animals can be seen strolling on these plains, not seeming to mind the cold and the drizzle; a light fog blots out anything that's too far, and despite the hurried pace of the train, a feeling of peace permeates through all of one's senses.

The un-crowded-ness applies double to my destination Vejle. A city (town?) with a population of 50 to 60 thousand people, it is by no means large (I keep wondering if at any moment Shinjuku station is holding more people than this). Worse yet, because of it is the day before christmas, NOTHING is open. Even McDonalds, my final hope of being able to find food in case of dire hunger emergency, is closed. Some bicycle shops are closed through Janurary 2nd, by no means a short break - a shame too as I really wanted to check out some bikes in the country that cycling is a favored... thing.

Bicycles seems kind of expensive though, for somewhere that cycling is so popular: Granted, the exchange rate of USD to Danish Crone (spelling?) is terrible recently, but one still needs to spend like 200 dollars on a run-of-the-mill bicycle, and almost all of the ones I see in a bicycle shop are above the 800-900 dollar range. Maybe it's the high taxes, or maybe it's some ploy to get people from tossing their bikes in alleys after the EOL of the vehicle; just some random speculations.

Merry Christmas.

December 24th, 2003 (5:06am, Tokyo Standard Time)

I write this at EWR, i.e. New Jeresey International Airport - waiting for a Scandinavian Airlines plane, whose flight number I forgot, to take me to Copenhagan, Denmark. Local time is about 3pm or thereabouts. The view from big windows into New Jeresey is almost never associated with "clear, pristine skies," and today is no exception: if I lift my eyes from this screen and look toward those huge windows that lay panoramic in front of me, I see some run ways where planes occasional dash across accompanied by a low, but distinctively powerful rumble; one of those sounds that you hardly hear but can inescapably feel. Past the runway are some busy highways, which I will not name because my elaborations of the highway system around EWR is about as clear as an insect stuck to a spider web attempting to elaborate the web of the ensnarer. Past those, some shipping docks with huge cranes that looks suspcicously like large sized giraffes made of lego; and beyond that, a yellowish haze blures away the distanthills with the tainted blue sky above. Overall not an inviting picture, if i had to describe the whole thing in one word, "polluted" would top my list of choices.

Copenhagan will be the origin and terminal city of my hurried trip around Europe. I have not produced a proper count of exactly how much time I have under the excuse that I do not have a precise train schedule, while in reality I am very depressed that I will not have more than three or four days to spend really travelling. Europe, while not a particularly big piece of land in itself, has more cities than I can begin counting, and a proper visit would entail so much more than what I am doing right now that it is simply impossible for somebody who actually tries to hold a job. I wonder if I will ever get a chance to backpack across Europe for three monthes with nothing but a weather worn pack - I think by the time I gather sufficient resources for it (including money and vacations), I would be so feeble and weak that I might as well wheelchair the place instead: That could be a new hip thing for retirees: wheelchairing across europe...

Despite my bigotry when talking about not being scared on my first trip to a foreign land, I must confess that fear, or at least some indescribable anxiety about the unknown, creeps up on me. I suppose this will be really the first trip I make to somewhere completely new: I do realize that I have made excursions before, like going away to college, starting work in California, moving to Japan, or even the original immigration to the US: but in every one of those cases, the move was dictated by some former agreement between myself and somebody else - be it people or an institution - or in the other words in each of those instances my migration was expected by me as well as somebody else, whereby in this case I am kind of "intruding" into Europe, and seeing how that works out. Heck, not even a single hotel booking; talk about a stranger in a foreign land.

Now, that's not completely true, making Denmark my entry and exit point is more than simple whim. My cousin who is a year younger than me studies in Vijle, a small city not found on most guide books, and she is expecting me there. This, however, does not ameliorate the unfamiliarity that I am certain to face when I leave denmark onto other legs of my explorations.

It is too late to pull back though; I mean, not that I would if I could at this point, as so much has been invested in this trip (granted, a very under prepared trip: I have yet to read a single page from my thousand-somethig page guide book). Regardless I will have to go through with it; I am sure that just like a roller coaster ride, while it seems scary before you get through with it, unless something significantly terrible happens during its process, the experience itself would be memorable and enjoyable.

I certainly hope I am right.

As I am writing this in the airport, i doubt this will be posted anytime soon; so most of these, when read, are thought that has probably given way to memories by the time they are really shared. Always looking at things in retrospect does become boring, though, and hopefully this would provide a log of some transient thought process that would provide something, be it insight or entertainment, to whoever finds value in it.

December 19th, 2003 (5:14pm)

Sunday I take a trip back to the US. It will last two weeks; hopefully with some kind of stopover in Europe - my first trip there.

Yesterday I went to the Kumagaya city hall to get my alien registration card, and made a stopover at H.I.S. to get a eurail pass - it is 47200 yen here; compared to USD of 414 currently, it's not terribly more expensive (about 15 dollars extra, methinks). However it takes like two days to actually get it.

Currently, my biggest fear is France - I speak zero words in french, and will simply fall over and die (probably due to inability to find lodging / food) if the horror stories of "nobody ever speaks any english in france" are true. We will see though - Paris is a huge hub for trains, and I doubt I can go many places without stop in Paris at least once.

There are not so much else that are particularly interesting - last weekend's get-together has been so far away that I don't remember a lot of details, except I want to point out that the international exchanging was mostly between a group dominated by ethnics of chinese.

It never ceases to amaze just how far-reaching the chinese are in this world. Amongst the few of us there were (chinese) people from like three or four of the seven continents.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years - a bit early, unfortunately.

December 17th, 2003 (5:56pm)

Holding the previously mentioned red carrot (which was becoming warm by my body heat) and the purple scallop, a few more places were visited - most of them probably would have kicked me out had they know what I had it my hands.

* Buddist Temple near Tsukiji.
A wedding was taking place, or was about to take place there. This particular temple was supposedly also very good place for rich / famous people to hold their funerals, some of which are even televised. Inside was really really quiet, had this sublime smell of incense, and there were some older people sitting on benches at the far end of the hall, either meditating or falling asleep. Some priests shuffled around busily in the center part of the space, which was already lined up with seating for the wedding, doing their preparation work. It is an interesting feeling of relief once you pass through the thick doors and to the outside - you suddenly feel that a powerful force has been lifted from your shoulders. I guess the atmosphere of absolute silence is a heavy one.

* Kabuki Theatre in East Ginza.
Though we loitered in front of the theatre, the high price certainly prevented any kabuki-viewing from taking place. A seats costs something like 15,000 yen! I am interesting in learning japanese culture and all, but not actually that much - especially since I didn't bring so much money at the time anyway.

* Asakusa
(nothing new here; I've been to this place like a four times now)

* Asakusa -> Odaiba boat tour
Nothing new here either, except I want to point out that one of the boats have glass roof portions between the bottom and top floors - if you are unlucky then when you look up you will be greeted with a quite unpleasant crouch-view. If you happen to wear short skirts, it might be something to keep in mind as well.

* Odaiba Ocean Side Park
STILL holding my carrot and shell, a tour was made through the North Korean disguised fishing vessel.

THis is the vessel that a while ago was caught by japanese ocean patrol while disguised as a fishing boat - and upon some unpleasantries sunk (scuttled?). Japan, deciding it was worth the trouble, fished it out from the bottom of the ocean, and put it in Odaiba as a tour attraction.

Looking at its rusted hulls, I am not quite sure what to think of the whole thing. The ship was not a very big one, and it had very interesting features, like a back that opens up (like those that's used for unloading amphibious (or at least somewhat water tolerant) vehicles). The boat didn't look like it would stay afloat with the back door open though - but I am no boat engineer.

There were also bullet holes, maybe between 10-14mm caliber (AP?) on both sides of the vessel. I guess the japan ocean patrol had this boat surrounded at the time?

Odaiba also had a sony shop that was showing off the new PSX (the playstation 2 based home entertainment center). It was slick but I don't think it was 1000 dollars slick, which was about the sticker price. I was very impressed by a new VAIO they had - it's about as thick as a 10cents mead notebook, and about as light. There was also a camera-game thing for the PS2. It used some kind of image recognition for the player to interact with things on the screen. Very impressive on a technical scale (the game sucked) because image recognition and processing is usually an extremely processor intensive and difficult proposition.

December 16th, 2003 (4:47pm)

Tsukiji is as I remembered it. Though, at 8am, it was a lot more crowded; people were squeezing past eachother, trying to navigate the already narrow streets that are further filled with merchandise on both sides. Workers, usually on these motorized fish truck things (that has a distinct cylindical engine / steering portion and driving past the crowd in speeds many times what I consider to be acceptable. Smell of the ocean is distinct.

One goes to Tsukiji to see what kind of seafood one can buy to put on the dinner table - and also to get cheap but tasty sushi, since sushi can't get much fresher than at a restaurant having walk-by access to the largest fish market in the world. I did both, of course.

Now, a misconception that I had to correct is that Tsukiji is only about fish - it's not. There are various grilled egg shops and random-stuff shops and vegetable shops. Of course - there are the usual bonito-shavings shop, ones aroma can be smelled from afar; the seafood shops, with live just-about-everything; the fish shops, fishes of all kinds neatly laid out, possibly caught not many hours before; finally some "unedible seafood" shops, whereby the more exotic (at least to a gaijin) food - roe, milt, uni, amongst others - are found.

Not only that, it's not only the fishes that are exotic: I found myself a store selling red carrots. Having become accustomed to orange carrots for the most of my life, it was quite surprising to see vegetable that looked exactly like a carrot but has the colour of the flesh of Sicilian blood-oranges. I wondered if it was of a different species. I had to get one, and it set me back 200 yen. But how often does one avail himself to the prospect of munching on a carrot that may be mistaken with a badly packed raw bratwurst?

I also bought a shell (like a scallop that looks suspiciously like the trademark of Shell Gasoline) which was of the purest colour of purple. The shell was alive at the time of purchase - something like 9am. I did carry it around in a plastic bag for the remainder of the day, during which time it promptly died, and (as expected) became extremely pugnant. Ahh... all these things one do to have amusing knicknacks.

As the strolling continued - now with a carrot and a purple scallop in my hands - pauses were given at various places to allow the study of fine species (and internal organs) of fish to take place. I also found a store that sold live octopus. It was a miserable ball of wrinkly skin, and it is difficult to distinguish the tenticles from one another - but the suction cups are of a different colour and can be visible interweaving through the surface of the creature.

Sushi in Tsukiji was as usual very good. I could not stop myself and went through way too many orders of oo-toro, which was great for the mouth but terribly painful for the wallet. They also had crab-miso (crab roe, kind of, except for some reason it's dark green in colour) which was good and extremely cheap. I rarely see this item outside of Tsukiji, though. Granted, I do not looks very hard for it and rarely goes to eat sushi. (Another misconception that many people seem to have about japan - that sushi is a frequently consumed meal - even though that's almost completely opposite of the truth.)

Dec 15th, 2003 (5:15pm)

This weekend was interesting. I went to Tokyo for a very, very long time. The trip started at something like 5AM; and I got home at about midnight.

The main purpose of the trip was to attend International Exchange Club at night; something that is apparently often advertised on Metropolis' classified section. A guy named Yukio organizes it; but unfortunately I found out very little about him.

Reasons for going to Tokyo so early, though, was to do things that would make the trip meaningful in case the internatiol club was below expectations... One place that I have wanted to visit is Tsukiji during its operational hours. Tsukiji opens *very* early, unfortunately, and consequentially the earliness was all too a necessity.

Unfortunately, spending such a long time away from home this weekend means that I must rush home to practice piano before my class this evening. It is my observation (which is shared by others, I think) that when one is not taking any piano classes, the urge to take it is great and at the mean time there are many practices and improvements are marked; once the class starts, however, some kind of enigmatic laziness creeps in, and I almost never meets my expected pace. improvements are present too, but I question its speed in relationship to the case when not taking the class at all.

December 12th, 2003 (3:47pm)

A simple math question I've been dreaming up but always too lazy to solve: in simple numeric format, how many days out of the year would the date not be confusing, if one does not know if month or date is written first? For example 1/5 would be confusing while 28/2 would be ok. (For some reason it crossed my mind just when I started, so I figure the thought must really want to be shared or put into record or something)

On the other hand, there is very little things new enough to actually be of interest. This weekend I am going to finally go and watch a kabuki show - but I am really doing that because I have nothing better to do in Tokyo.

I posted a free ad on Metropolis looking for language exchange partner(s) a while back, and from one of the responses I will go and attend a function Saturday evening; with no disrespect to anybody (especially Yukio, who has been extremely kind in organizing this whole thing), seeing kabuki is so that the money spent on train ticket isn't completely wasted in case the function afterwards wasn't as successful as I imagined.

(5:17pm) DISrespect; as in "mean no disrepect." I really need to proofread.

December 11th, 2003 (5:18pm)

Two things worth noting:

1) experience related to tuesday

Tuesday is swimming day - I go to the pool and stay there for two hours. Let us not disclose the actual percentage of time that is spent swimming, because it is does no good for my self esteem.

Anyway - tuesday marks about two weeks that I havn't shaved. So I looks quite shaggy; combined with a half-bald head and a face that maybe a whole dozen people on this planet would find pleasing (if that many), I look down right like a gangster in tight shorts.

About an hour into my two hour of splashing, a woman came into the pool - I think she's in her thirties, but her stamina was not of human origins. She swam, for an entire hour, back and forth in the olympic sized pool with no rests in between.

She was done about the same time I was, so I started a conversation: mainly to ask how long she's been swimming and how much effort it took to become so deft in the waters - to evaluate my chances of being able to swim, at some indefinite point in the future, better than a rock.

I hadn't even started the question - and only got out some petty chats about not being tired, etc (that was going to lead up to my question) before she ran away. Heck she left so fast that she was tinted red looking from the back.

After soaking in a chlorine filled pool is very similar to chemically peeling skin - and putting your skin further to sharp blades of steel immediately after is pure masochism. However, after careful consideration, I think my poorly attended beard had to go, like right then.

Moral of the story? I guess one is that a person should not attempt to be outgoing when they look like a serial killer; and the other is that periodic shaving is, sadly, a necessity.

2) thoughts

After conversing with several female acquaintences, I have came to the realization that the common social phenomenon of women becoming housewives is in a large part due to the still very much present problem of companies not giving the female employees equal opportunities as the male counterparts.

One might say that I am stating the obvious, and at the mean time, the men working terribly long and arduous hours are not actually in better condition, but I feel that just because a social phenomenon is frequent, it should nontheless be verbalized if it is an unhealthy phenomenon. Maybe I was imagining them, but I saw looks of despondency in women's eyes when such a subject is touched. It is not a comfortable feeling having this look cast upon oneself.

3) ok, I lied, 3 things today
Bonus day was yesterday. I got jack squat, as I have expected and as the contract stated. However grievance still kind of creeps up, looking at everybody around you frolick gaily with their bonus reciepts.

December 10th, 2003 (5:41pm)

Monday we had a "body condition test" program. I think it's held once every two years, because I don't remember anything like that from last year. Technically, it is still going on (will go on for week or two, I think).

It's actually kind of like the dental / health check, except Konami sports club is the company that comes in, and the items to do is different - tests for one-leg closed eye balance, how far forward you can bend, how many situps in 30 seconds, etc.

There were others, like hand strength, blood pressure, bodyfat%, and full body response time. Also a bicycle session that supposedly measures VO2 max.

So it went like this:

1) questionaire; how much I weight, height, etc.

2) blood pressure with a tiny little portable unit. It said I was 124/70, which seemed about what machines in the mall has been giving me, so I assume it's right.

3) bodyfat% test with a hand-held unit. I am at 19.9% (!!) That's like 14.3kg of pure fat I am hauling around? I hope they are not right, but they might actually be - scary.

4) hand grip power. I did 58kg (also higher than I usually get, which is around 50). No idea if it's good or bad. 58kg is pretty heavy though - I suppose if somebody weighting 58kg was standing on my hands, I'd be hurting, so I am at least glad that I can hurt people during a handshake. Too bad japanese don't handshake all that much for me to practice this new found talent.

5) shoes off for the closed-eye balance thing. They record the longest time you can stand on one leg with your eyes closed. This was harder said than done - I got 24 sec on my right leg and 62 on my left. A girl had an exceptionally long run: she stood for what must have been 6-7 minutes. (multiple) groups that was taking the same test came and left, and she was still just standing there with this grin of self-satisfaction.

6) body response - you stand on a pad and when a red light flashes you jump. I got a pathetic 0.370 seconds for this. I think if I was sitting, and they had sensor in the shape of a gas-peddal, and the light was green, I would have done much better. Or at least that particular neural pathway is very well conditioned at this point.

7) bicycle: this is supposed to measure the VO2max - but there are no breathing tubes - only a clip goes on a earlobe which detects heartrate (why can't watch units do this? instead of having a huge band around the chest). I assume they are calculating VO2max from max-heartrate, which is not particularly accurate - At any rate they did a 9 minute session whereby the bicycle provided 50, 80, and 125W of resistance each for 3 minutes - I think my heart rate was at _forgot_, 116, and 134 for the three respectively. Somehow they calculated 54ml/kg/min for me out of that data, which I am glad for, but probably quite a bit higher than what I actually have.

8) forward bending - how far your hands can reach past the bottom of your feet. 21cm for me. If my jazz dancing teacher was here she'd probably go off the scale...

9) situps. 30 second timer, as many as one can pull off. I did 20.

And I think that was it.

In either case, similar to the "healthiness of your teeth" sheet, I got a summary for this one too. I've been noticing in japan they have this propensity of calculating "your such and such is equivalent to a person of ___ years age." They did this with teeth, and this case was the same. I turned out to stuck in the body of a 27-year old - a whole 3 years older than I actually am. I am overcame by dolour.

Three out of six of my scores were above average; two below average; one average (balance).

The two below average is the number of situps (30 would be above average, btw), and my response time - which I think, honestly, should have been tested by a different setup.

At any rate - I don't really think it was anywhere near accurate: hand strength along does not determine the other muscles on the body (I have weak shoulders, for example), so this was of course no actually meant to be a precise athletic evaluation - and instead something that will tempt me into the sportsclub. To that end, I'd have to say that this ploy is working. I do plan to pay regular visits to the sports club, paying 550 yen every time on my way in.

December 9th, 2003 (4:36pm)

This past sunday was the nation-wide japanese proficiency exam, which I did not participate.

Not that I would have gotten anywhere if I DID take it. I rank my japanese at somewhere around a level 2.5 right now. between level 3 and level 2 the increase in the number of kanji characters one need to know increases something like 230% over previous levels; while increases from level 4 to 3 and level 2 to 1 are both like 100%. I want to do level 1 though - I have exactly a year to cram 900 hours of japanese study under my belt.

I found out actually by going to the kumagaya volunteer japanese class and realized that it was the most empty I have ever seen it. It turned out that a good percentage of people who goes regularly went to take the test on that day. I also found out that kumagaya city hall has a foreign cultural exchange department. The office organizes all of these volunteer japanese classes and such.

Yesterday a colleague from the Chinese (mainland) branch office came. He will stay here for a year or so. It is a shame to say that though he has never been to japan, his japanese surpases mine even at this point. I need to go and study. I guess testosterone is always an excellent chemical for motivation.

(My apologies for the possibly most absolutely boring thing I have EVER written in my life. Reading this myself makes me feel like I am chewing sand. God bless you if anybody read this far to see this apology)

December 8th, 2003 (7:06pm)

Now. Fugu was good.

Ok, maybe first of all: I am alive.

Anyway - Fugu was good but I don't think it was so good that it was worth dying for. That said though, it was in fact really really good. The sashimi was so so (it's probably to date the most chewy sashimi I have ever had), and the fried version was just alright, but the nabe (pot / wok?) was very delicious.

I didn't try the fugu-fin hot-sake; abstaining from alcohol and all.

It's hard to describe fugu meat. usually fish has the melts-in-your-mouth quality, or at least the fall-apart-therein quality, but fugu is hard in a very good way, not quite duplicated in any other food I have had; that except maybe snake, but I havn't had it for a while so I can not be too sure.

Shiro-ko was also excellent (I am thinking shiro-ko is fugu-testes, if anybody knows better please prove me wrong). It fell apart very easily - in fact on the "easy to break" scale it was equivalent to about a raw egg yolk. But it stays intact after you break it. The texture is that of very tender tofu, with, of course, the distinctive fish-testes flavor - which was not offensive in any way and in fact quite good (from an absolutely pure gustatory point of view), after overcoming the mental block of "I am eating fish testes."

Besides that, I am not quite sure what to comment about it besides that it was certainly worth a try, if nothing else the shaky feeling you get when you realize that your lips are tingling / numbing (first signs of an oncoming doom if the chef left enough of it in there). The part to put ones mind to rest is this, though: all fugu chefs are required to go through certification in the last stage of which they have to eat their own preparations - along with years of training (3 is the number I hear, but probably often more). So just the fact that the chef is currently alive is a very good indication that his skills passed the necessary tests. I can hardly think of any other coursework that has an exam that is nearly so... strict.

That said, of course it's possible that you'd get a chef who wasn't certified - but then you can get hit by a bus on the road too, no sense in worrying about it.

I am, of course, saying this because I have survived - I was actually not nearly this bold during the dinner nights before...