Report from Greater Tokyo

In no particular order...

• Attended a party with 40 other guests.
• Ate and drank till I popped.
• Went to a hot spring in the mountains, got naked in the snow with total strangers and sat in 50 C water till I got wrinkly.
• Made a snowman.
• Got snowed in.

Well, maybe not the last one. It's still only about a foot deep. But I have completely the wrong footwear (and headgear) for this kind of weather. It's just as well that I'm going back south tonight, before things get really bad.

Fifty thousand and counting. I haven't been following the death toll count, because after a while it becomes a meaningless abstraction (lots), and feels a little ghoulish. Those aren't numbers after all, they are people's lives, and each represents a shattered family.

And among other things, the USA sends a carrier group to help. Just idle curiosity. I'm glad that carrier has been sent and all, but exactly how useful are aircraft carrier groups in this kind of disaster relief? Properly optimized with the right aircraft / helicopters, they could probably do an excellent job. But with their standard combat load out, how useful are they? Better than nothing, to be sure.

It just seems that when all you have is a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail.

So there I was, buck naked with a group of five Japanese guys, on a mountain, outdoors in the snow. Not something I ever expected to do, to be sure. It was a hot spring - a natural one too. you can always spot the natural hot springs by the smell of sulphur.

These onsens have a number of rules. Don't go in drunk, don't go straight in (pour some hot water over yourself first), don't go in more than 3-4 times a day. They also have separate mens' and womens' areas. There was also a family room in one section, but I have no idea who goes in there. Probably you're only allowed in there with children.

yesterday I...

Went for a job interview at NHK (Japan's answer to the BBC) as a childrens' TV show presenter. Not something I ever imagined myself doing. They said to come wearing something sporty. So I wore a tracksuit. Everyone else came wearing street clothes. I felt somewhat out of place.

This was followed by a fancy dinner at a seafood restaurant on the 50^th floor of a skyscraper, complete with some very nice views of some buildings that most people only ever get to see in SimCity.

Followed, of course, by a trip to my friend's tango dance school, where he had accidentally left some shoes behind. Needless to say, I was still in my tracksuit, and most people there were either in artsy clothes of full ball gowns (and their male equivalent). I felt somewhat out of place.

I've been persuaded to go to some masque party this evening, run by the Russian club. I expect, once more, I will feel somewhat out of place.

This shrine is a single stop on the train from my home, or alternatively, a long bicycle ride away. It's claim to fame is that this is where certain war criminals (or war heroes, depending on who you ask) are buried. Prime Minister Koizumi regularly brings in foreign criticism for his visits to the shrine.

I went there yesterday. The shrine itself is just another shrine, and, apart from being a little bigger than most, is not particularly noteworthy. Next to the shrine, in the same compound, is a war museum. The first exhibit room contains some patriotic poetry and quotes from old soldiers. the interesting thing to note here is that, stripped of the nation-specific references, for example replacing "land of Yamato" with "Green and Pleasant land", you wouldn't think anything was wrong at all. Nationalism is nationalism everywhere.

The rest of it was mostly accurate, but with some surprising changes from history as we know it. Apparently, the 1904 Russo-Japanese war was what inspired most of the colonized world to shake off the burden of empire. This will no doubt surprise everyone educated with a Western view of history. Also, Japan's entry into WW2 was motivated not by dreams of empire, but by an urgent need to secure strategic resources for its economy to carry on functioning smoothly. This is of course completely unrelated to the recent troubles in Iraq, which of course has nothing whatsoever to do with strategic natural resources.

...Only people who practice old-fashioned virtues such as honesty, persistence, determination, and integrity will be considered. Comfort with "cold calling"...

Since when have comfort with cold calling and integrity been found in the same person?

...as drunk as drunk could be...

No but seriously, Celtic songs aside, I saw something bizarre. I got lost going there and coming back from this morning's job interview, but I left extra early, so I still arrived early despite that. On the way back, I rode past some government ministry. Not sure which one, but judging from the guards at the entrance, probably the Silly Walks Ministry. The guards' march consisted of...

1. From a standing start,
2. Raise one leg to 90 degrees, bend knee so leg is hanging down,
3. momentarily pause, then point toes straight down,
4. Hold position for a count of two,
5. Straighten leg, hold it at 60 degrees from vertical for a count of two,
6. Step forward, bring other leg forward, and return to a standing position.

I didn't wait around long enough to see what flourish they do when the have to turn around.

Just finished moving house. Total travel time - 3 1/2 hours. And none too soon. I seem to have developed an allergy to the smoke produced by the factory a few hundred metres from the old place, and the wind was blowing in exactly the wrong direction this morning.

The most interesting aspect of the new place is the electronic superloo. Took me a while to figure out that the flush is the only bit that remains at the traditional mechanical level of technology. I spend a good few minutes searching for the flush on the control panel.

Well, that's another chapter over in my life. I just finished working my last day at that school. It also happened to be a co-worker's birthday. The bit that makes teaching worthwhile is when the students demonstrate just how much they appreciate you, which sadly only seems to happen when you leave a job.

Some of these gifts are of course orchestrated by homeroom teachers, such as the thank you cards an entire class made for me. The attention to detail made on these is still impressive though, and it is good to see that even the least gifted students still manage to do something nice. The part where you really realize how big a difference you make in their lives though, is when the students take it into their heads to do something special without any prompting. I'd like to thank all those students who were so kind to me.

Now that I know I have php, I'm experimenting with php commenting systems, so anyone (please?) who wants to comment on this blog can do so without having to either go through an external site (such as Haloscan) or send an email (safe, but some people have valid fears).

So I just finished an interesting meet up with MC (whose real name will remain a secret), and Cthulhu from BD, who, oddly enough, kept on calling us. We went and got thoroughly lost in Shinjuku station. Understandable enough given that it is the world's largest and busiest train station, but it probably didn't help that not only did the station staff give wrong answers to our questions, but we were also asking about how to get to the wrong place. Oopsy.

All is quiet on the jobs front. A few interviews here and there, but nothing I want to make generally public until I have definite information.

Looks like the chatroom I made is a roaring success. I've had a record number of hits, dwarfing anything ever done before by an order of magnitude. To celebrate, I've added a bunch of new smilies to the interface. I plan to do other stuff to it as I learn php.