Report from Greater Tokyo

Today I met a friend for lunch. While I was on the train, the ride got kind of bumpy and the train slowed down a lot. It turns out that the bumpy ride was because of an earthquake. For a minute it made me feel homesick for Britain and the trains there. It was a biggie too, 7.2 on the Richter scale. The curious thing though, was that the train didn't actually stop, which is standard practice in Japan when earthquakes strike. I don't know why.

Anyhow, we had lunch at an all-you-can-eat buffet lunch at a Persian restaurant. The restaurant is called Alladin, in Roppongi, next to the fabulously expensive Roppongi hills residential area. The food wasn't bad, but I'm not quite sure what the spaghetti was doing there, and the meat selection was a bit sparse for a buffet menu. However, the coffee was excellent. Lunch was followed by a trip to [ask no questions tell no lies], and then we came back to Roppongi Hills to browse through the shopping centre and see a movie.

War of the Worlds (uchuu sensou) is your standard schlocky SF movie. it isn't bad, but it is surely destined to fill the late-night slot on TV in a year or three.

Docomo is the leading mobile phone company in Japan, a position which is in no way at all (nope nope nope!) related to being a wholly owned subsidiary of NTT, the national monopoly landline phone company.

After visiting the Vodafone shop, I naturally hit the competition to see what they have to offer. I was quite specific, and asked for a phone that has a built in digital camera (they all do nowadays here) that will let me take decent quality (at least 1.3 megapixels, which again is nearly all of them), and let me put them on to my computer (eeto, let me get back to you on that one).

Now, the kind sales staff told me that to connect the phone to my PC, I would need to install a special piece of software that is free to download. No problem there. But then they said they can't guarantee that it will work with English versions of XP. So I asked if it would possible to get a refund if it didn't work, seeing as this feature would be my primary reason for switching providers. This being Japan, the answer was no.

So, in summary, they cannot guarantee the product will perform, and they offer no refunds if it doesn't perform.

It gets better from there. Just to try and see if it works, I would have to enter into a minimum 3 month contract, which would also involve buying a phone and paying a startup fee. the minimum startup cost works out at around 20,000 yen, which is a hundred quid give or take. just to see if it might work as specified. I told the sales staff (very politely, this being Japan), that I would have to be a special kind of crazy to sign a contract on those terms.

And it gets even better after that. To sign a contract, I would have to provide them with not only my bank details and permission for a direct debit (uhuh, ain't happening no way no how), but also a credit card (I officially have none), and a copy of my passport (I bet they don't ask their Japanese customers for that one, and only immigration officials have any legal right to ask for that one anyway), and also a copy of my alien registration card (how's that for a racist policy - they don't even have the legal right to ask to see that).

Even if I ignore their racist application procedures, the trial fee for something that only maybe works is too much. but how come they don't know whether their software works with English Windows? Are they really so stupid? All it would take is one competent technician half a day to establish whether it works, and another half day to write up a simple walk-through guide to setting it up. Since they haven't done this, it seems like they are willfully driving away customers. Or is that their intention?

Some of you may recall that back in March (iirc), I got myself a new mobile phone. The prime reason I got that one was the ability to take photos with it. Recently, I tried using it in earnest, and discovered one big flaw.

While it indeed has the ability to take pictures, it is utterly incapable of sending anything larger than a thumbnail image. Essentially, once you've taken the picture, all you can do with it is shrink it, look at it on the phone's viewscreen, or delete it. Which kind of makes it useless as a camera, yes?

I went into their shop to complain. At first they said my operating system was incompatible, before they even asked what it was too! They backed down on that once I told them it is XP. Then they claimed I had bought the handset at a different shop and should go to that shop. So I stepped outside for some fresh air, walked back in again and repeated the process. Then the explained that the 3rd party cable I was using to connect to my computer was faulty, and backed down again as soon as I told them i was using the cable they provided in the same box the handset came in. It's the ridiculous attempts to dodge responsibility I find offensive more than the poor service really. the poor service could be explained away as a language barrier issue somewhere, but making up random excuses like this is just plain bad service, no matter how polite they are about it.

Of course, this isn't the only stupid thing Vodafone has done. Back those few years ago when they bought J-Phone, they rebranded everything, even going so far as sending each of the the customers they bought a sheet a stickers to mask over the J-Phone branding on their existing phones. Apart from the sheer expense involved in re-branding, it wasn't a very smart move in marketing terms. Japan is a nationalistic society, for better or worse, and in such a society, brand names that appeal to national identity, such as J-Phone, will do better. It will come as no surprise to learn that J-Phone/Vodafone's market share has gone down since the purchase.

Naturally, this decline could have been averted had Vodafone decided to market its international face and make international calls competitive, or even possible as default, but in this they are as conservative as any other Japanese mobile phone company, and enabling international calls requires not only hefty call charges, but a separate application, that cannot be made at the same time you get a phone.

Why can't M$ make a web browser that supports the alpha channel of .png files? MSIE does not support this alpha transparency, which means that my VR system can't implement the higher quality graphics available with that format. And yes, there is a hack that uses the graphics filter features of MSIE to emulate support, but that hack wasn't ever written with throwing around over 90 images every time you press a button, and the memory leaks build up rapidly and makes the script slow to a crawl. So I've had to resort to doing some browser detection, and replacing the high quality .png files with .gif files when MSIE is detected.

If you're still using MSIE, go and get yourself a decent browser.

Many years ago, I wrote a FAQ for putting Japanese on English Windows. It seems that the Japanese embassy in London is no longer linking to it. The last time they did say seems to be June 2002. Of course, that hasn't stopped the world and his granny making links to it, occasionally translating it into French or even Hungarian, and even occasionally claiming it as their own original work. It isn't easy being a geek.

Many years ago, Sis suggested that I'd look good with spiky hair. It has finally happened, and I can't say I'm unimpressed with the results. She was right - I look OK with spiky hair.

Also in the news, I just uploaded a VR world of the cave I went exploring last week. Here it is.

KONKURIITO ROODO	(Concrete roads)
doko made mo	(Everywhere)
mori o kiri	(Cutting forests)
tani o ume	(Filling valleys)
UESUTO toukyou	(Western Tokyo)
MAUNTO TAMA	(Mount Tama)
furusato wa	(My home town)
KONKURIITO ROODO	(is a concrete road)

So since I can't afford to go abroad this year, I decided to do the next best thing, and tag along with the Baroness on one of her crazy jaunts through the Japanese countryside. Aside from the Baroness and myself, there was the incredibly beautiful M-chan whom I met last week at a TV studio, and two German tourists. One of them shared my name, which caused quite a few silly jokes.

As a result of that name sharing, I started out as the Ambassador, which moved on to taishi-san, and later ambasa-chan. I even got asked where the embassy I work at is. Fun times.

The first major stop was Tabayama village, where we had a barbecue in the mountains by a river. The river sand had a large amount of gold in it, from a nearby gold mine that apparently fell into disuse when a losing samurai lord had all the miners and their consorts killed to prevent it from falling into the hands of his enemies. It has never been re-discovered, but the flecks of gold in the river are testimony to the presence of the lost mine.

The Baroness and M-chan went swimming in the mountain river as we were having the barbecue. I tried, but the water was just too cold to swim in. This naturally got me labelled as a yowamushi. I don't care. When the ambient air temperature you've gotten used to is around thirty, and the water is around ten, you don't go in unless you're slightly crazy. Which does of course utterly fail to explain why I didn't go in. Maybe I'll find an excuse one day.

The yowamushi label wasn't helped at all by the 'sliding' we went to next. This involved walking up the side of a mountain, with fun drops either side of the path, then sliding down a path of roller wheels on a foam mat. The climb was scary, the slide back down less so. I wouldn't mind going down again, but the walk up is a little un-nerving for me. This got followed by a trip to an onsen. Also in the mountains. 'nuff said about the onsens already.

Finally, we went to a farmer's cottage, also in the mountains. There we had a truly delicious meal or two, plus a night's rest. More details later. maybe. But the food was good. And the water was essentially free spring water.

Next day we all went to a cave. This cave is more or less on the border between Tokyo and Yamanashi prefectures, and is owned and run by a 90 year old woman, who is in incredibly good health for her age. Must be the mountain water.

A good time was had by all.

King Fahd of Saudi Arabia died today. His brother and de facto ruler, Abdullah, will take over. he is apparently a good friend of the Bush family, so that special relationship looks set to continue.

Which Megatokyo Character Are You?
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Now go read Mega Tokyo, one of my favourite web comics.