Category Archives: Random

For the Trains Not the People

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I can imagine a world where trains run without people and the people running the trains are happy about that.

Our trip home today confirmed one of my long time theses about life in Japan: Japan Rail understands trains but it doesn’t understand people.

The problems actually began before we even left for the trip. She Who Must Be Obeyed managed to get all the tickets for the trip except, oddly, for the first leg of the return trip. Apparently Japan Rail East and Japan Rail West, although part of the same group of companies no longer cooperate enough that it’s no longer possible to buy tickets for one on the website of the other. (This hasn’t been a problem in the past.)

Keep in mind we were traveling in the U-Turn Rush on what is arguably the busiest travel day of the year as most company workers go back to work tomorrow. You would think a little cooperation would be be in order. But JR doesn’t think that way.

Instead we had to buy tickets at the station and the machine wouldn’t take SWMBO’s 1,000 yen notes and we had to use an actual person.

The trips on the local trains were fine but when we got to the bullet train the first thing we noticed was the usual omiyage (souvenir) stands were gone. This was a surprise because one of the last things Japanese do on their way home is buy gifts for friends and for the office. Also, as was mentioned yesterday, most kids are flush with cash and looking to spend. Instead, we had to go to a convenience store and get some gifts.

The biggest surprise, to me anyway, was on the train.

As soon as we departed the station a voice from the speakers informed us that there would be no food or drinks sold on the train. This means there’d be no drink cart roaming the aisles. This was a surprise because I’ve been on trains packed so full of people it almost counted as an orgy and been ordered out of the way by the cart lady as she tried to make her rounds. Getting out of her way required a level of intimacy with nearby passengers that probably violated several Japanese laws and makes me legally betrothed to several men, women and children.

This time, though, the aisles were empty but no cart came.

Luckily, in one of our stations the main omiyage and food courts were open and we were able to grab supper. They, of course, are actually interested in making money. Apparently JR is still in a hangover from its government owned days and isn’t that interested in profit.

 

2015–Long Term Review

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2015 started with me feeling stressed—at least that’s what I wrote in my log. However, it says a lot that I don’t remember why I was stressed.

I think it’s because I had just stopped going to karate classes and was, at least at the time, feeling confused about if I was doing the right thing for the right reasons. A year later, I’m sure I did. I haven’t missed karate class at all and haven’t felt compelled to find a replacement class. I miss the people, sometimes, but not enough to go back.

I seem to have eventually calmed down and settled into a new Sunday pace. I also didn’t have my usual October stress, which was a very pleasant surprise. There have been other stresses (I have teen and tween daughters) and we have some family decisions to make and some things to organize, but those haven’t been overwhelming. (Knock on wood.)

There’s also been a change in my work conditions.

Reviewing the log, I can’t say I accomplished a lot in 2015.

I got some stuff done. I finished the first draft of novel number three and then did very little with it except scribble a few ideas for changes. I started typing the text of novel number two from the handwritten “assembled” draft but got sidetracked.

I had a lot of ideas for other websites and for monetizing the ones I have, but this has also been a year with a profound lack of follow-through. There’s a strong streak of fear disguised as perfectionism involved with that. That fear also frequently translates as “Ooh, let’s try this, too!” distraction and old fashioned time wasting. There’s also a strong streak of being uncomfortable reaching out to others for help in doing things. This leads me to not only reinvent the wheel, but to try to carve them from stone.

Sitting in piles are unfinished–and in a couple cases unsubmitted articles–and a finished novel I’ve trunked for a while after a lukewarm reception. There’s also the pieces of a business I never started except on paper.

I mostly kept the log going and kept up the daily entries on this blog. It is interesting to see how the log slowly developed a format: Date and weather; summary of the morning; summary of the day, with weather and lunch; summary of the evening including a sketch of some key theme from the day. Quite frankly, it became more of a diary than I’d intended, but I did make entries at different times of the day rather than all at once in the evening.

I’ll keep writing the log, although I’ve got a new journal that’s going to change the format a bit.

The blog as it approaches its two year anniversary has yet to settle into a format. That failure stems from a mix of laziness and indecision. I’d still like to make it more hobby based, but also include random personal entries. The theme for 2016 will be “pens, paper, life”.

2016 will be a big year for a lot of personal reasons. My goal is to make the entries in the log more interesting and make the year more productive. (More on that tomorrow.)

Decadent Minimalist One Aluminum Wallet—Long Term Review

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A little over a year ago my old leather wallet died and I backed a Kickstarter for a new-fangled wallet.

The wallet seemed to be designed to carry cards and not money which was no problem because 1) my old wallet was used to carry cards and not money and 2) I was spending all my money to get the wallet and would have no money to put in it. (That’s totally like Gift of the Magi or my rewrite: I Gift of the Magi Myself.)

The wallet is from Decadent Minimalist and is designated as the Decadent Minimalist One. It is CNC machined aluminum and weighs barely more than couple credit cards. It is shaped like a U and the cards slide in and out over small bumps inside ends of the U. It holds the cards securely and even when I’ve tried to shake them out I’ve been unable to.

I bought the 12 card version—perhaps by accident, long story—and have found that to be an excellent choice. I carry my train pass, a couple credit cards, my bank card, my health card, my residence card, and a few store cards with little trouble. Even with 11 cards, I can still insert a few folded yen notes. At the Decadent Minimalist website you can buy, when they are available, money clips that insert like cards and hold money outside the case. If I’d bought the 8 card version, I’d have probably bought one of those, but they make the 12 card version much too thick. Right now it’s only slightly thicker than my old leather wallet and holds more stuff.

The DM1 with 3,000 yen sticking out. The card, for Pen Addicts, is my Kingdom Note point card.

The DM1 with yen sticking out. The card, for Pen Addicts, is my Kingdom Note point card. You can see the scratches.

The wallet from the end.

The wallet from the end.

The cards are extracted by pushing them all out slightly and then quickly sifting through them to find the one I want. This takes a little practice, but I found that once I mastered the technique, it was no worse than sorting through the crap I used to carry in my old wallet. The cards I use the most are at the ends of the stack.

The black anodizing has held up incredibly well. In fact, after several months of use I can’t find a chip or deep scratch on it. The wallet also doesn’t seem to have sprung and lost its grip on the cards. They fit as securely as they did on the first day of use.

The only complaints I have are that cards can get scratched up, even inside, as they get rubbed around. I also have to be aware of which cards are on the outside in order to protect credit card numbers and security codes. Decadent Minimalist does offer inserts that offer some privacy from wandering eyes, and others that protect against RFID scanning, but those take more space from usable cards and I was aware of these risks when I bought the wallet.

The other complaint, at least from those around me, is that I’ve developed a habit of sliding all the cards out slightly and then snapping them back into place. This creates a satisfying pop, but attracts attention as it sounds like the people that walk around snapping sticks together to warn of fire.

Maybe that means I not only have a nice wallet, but am preventing fires.

That Which You Will Do and Probably Not

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Right now I’m in gooder intentions.

The day before a trip to the in-laws involves a number of phases: good intentions, denial, acceptance, gooder intentions, greater denial. All these phases involve packing.

I’ve traveled enough that I have the clothes part of packing down to a science: lay out what you think you’ll need, then put half of it back where it came from. This is especially true when we are traveling by train and are only staying a few days. Once we get to the in-laws, we break out the house clothes we’ve left there and become part of the furniture. More than a couple changes of clothes are not necessary.

And even the “couple” part might be extreme. I usually have what I’m wearing plus one change of clothes. There is an instinct in the women in She Who Must Be Obeyed’s family to treat dirty laundry like my mother treats bugs: they are all bad until made good. And the sooner they are made good the better. This means that bugs are killed quickly and laundry is done frequently. It is possible, depending on how quickly things dry, to wear the same outfit every day and have it be freshly cleaned and folded each time.

The other part of packing involves good intentions about what I’m actually going to accomplish while I’m there. For various complicated reasons, I often end up being left by myself whilst the others run off on various errands. My goal is to always fill this time with something productive: writing, editing, Japanese study, reading, meditation, etc.

With that in mind, I take a few things to do and, because I’m in denial, add a few other things to do because the pile of things to do looks small. Then acceptance hits and I take a few things out and feel a sense of accomplishment and grown-upedness (a technical term).  But then gooder intentions hits followed quickly by greater denial and I put stuff back in my travel bag.,

Once I’m at the in-laws, for the first day or so I actually take the stuff out and look at them. What usually happens after that is I carry the stuff around and do very little with it.

However, part of the greater denial phase is the overwhelming sense that this time things will be different.

I’m sure they will be, so I’m taking a few extra things to do.

Sitting Back and Supervising

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Truth be told, there’s a thin line between teaching your kids to fend for themselves and sitting around being lazy. I’m not sure if today crossed that line, but it may have.

In my defense, because our oldest was/is on the naughty list, I had little trouble assigning her the job of hanging the laundry out to dry. There was a bit of huffing and puffing but I helped her out by taking everything out of the washing machine and putting it in a basket on the table. Her job was to take it out of the countless mesh bags She Who Must Be Obeyed likes to use–giving us the very rare “individually wrapped” laundry–put it on drying racks or hangers and put it all outside so the sun could do the rest of the work.

After that, I shaved and took a shower (which for me, when I’m on vacation is a major accomplishment) and settled down to do some sorting and winter cleaning and print our new year’s cards and play some games. (Yeah, I know, one of these things is not like the other, but so what?)

Because I’d had the better part of an apple after I got up, I didn’t actually decide to eat breakfast until around noon. That’s when the first dilemma hit: should I cook for the girls, or leave them to fend for themselves? Was that the responsible thing to do, especially as our oldest is also responsible for doing dishes until she’s 20 (give or take a few years), or was I shirking my responsibilities as a father to make sure they were 1) fed and 2) fed properly.

That dilemma lasted a few seconds as I’m of the school that if our oldest doesn’t wash her school eating utensils then she can just take them the school dirty the next day. It’s not my lunch, it’s hers. I, therefore, went ahead and made myself breakfast for lunch.

After that, I kept reminding the girls that they had to make their own lunch and received the usual noncommittal grunts of “yes, there is a voice speaking to me” but no one actually moved until much later.

Eventually they managed to make lunch, and even tracked down and heated some items from the freezer. After that, our oldest washed and put away the dishes. I was impressed and proud.

I feel that’s what I’m supposed to do to help teach the girls some responsibility and I did feel a sense of accomplishment when they were working and I wasn’t. Of course, I also enjoyed being able to do nothing, so perhaps my motives weren’t as pure as they could have been.

I’ll have to ponder that more when they do dishes and hang the laundry tomorrow.

Shopping at the Last Minute Ain’t for Chickens

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In Japan, putting off your Christmas shopping until the last minute isn’t that big of a deal unless you want something popular or you want chicken. Then things get kind of complicated.

Our youngest chose a game for her 3DS and, since I was already most of the way to Tokyo, I decided to head to one of my favorite stores and see if they had the game. They didn’t and neither did another store so we had to order it on-line. The problem was the deliver was guaranteed “from the 25th to the 29th” because, apparently, the store selling the game learned customer service from a phone company and/or large cable company.

The item is currently “on its way” but won’t arrive for Christmas morning. Instead our youngest will get an IOU.

Our oldest is on the naughty list. Long story.

While I was out doing our last minute Christmas shopping (which technically, is our actual Christmas shopping) I stopped by KFC to get fried fish. (Yes, really.)

The small restaurant had been cut in half with a few seats available for customers and the rest taken up by a table full of cooked chicken. One Christmas tradition a lot of Japanese families have is they order some sort of chicken for Christmas lunch or dinner. KFC provides the pieces for entire banquet, but they have to be ordered well in advance and the slots to get them tend to fill up fast. (That’s a long story involving calendars and red markers.)

Apparently I walked into pick up time, although no one actually picked up an order when I was there which made what happened next especially annoying.

While I was in line, the few remaining seats filled up with the bags and jackets of the people behind me in line. I was left standing and glaring at a woman who’d clearly finished a long time before but was engrossed in her smart phone and her selfishness.

I, of course, responded with a calm, quite and Christmassy “F@#k you. And f@#k you. And f@#k you.” before being directed to a seat that was little more than a stool on the far side of the line of people who just taken all the seats.

I calmed down and enjoyed my lunch and resisted the urge to leave my trash for someone else to clean up. Instead, I disposed of everything properly.

I do, however, kind of wish I tried to buy a chicken.  (More on that in another post.)

Cleaning Out the Year at the End of it

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One of my favorite Japanese traditions is that people do their spring cleaning in winter rather than in the spring. It has something to do with cleaning out the crap of the old year and leaving the space clean for the new year. Some of them even burn their old calendars in ritual bonfires. (More on that later.)

The tradition is called susuharai ( 煤払い)–literally “brushing off the soot”–and is done in temples and homes. This year, I’ve decided to brush the soot off the variety room by getting rid of old projects, hobbies and habits.

One of my hardest to break habits is a tendency to keep old projects long after I’ve lost interest in the project. I do well on a project until I reach a distraction (exam time; work; family trips, etc.) and then never get back to the project with the same energy and interest.

Because of this, I have
–several partly finished books (“partly finished” being a very loose term of a few to many pages)
–an abandoned notebook where I’d intended to copy down famous poems I liked because, well, I’m sure there was a reason at the time;
–several half filled notebooks full of brainstormed ideas with notes that no longer make any sense;
–several notebooks full of daily “10 Ideas”;
–a handmade notebook where I’d started to record the most interesting of the 10 ideas;
–random scraps of paper that must have had significance a couple years ago when I decided to save them.
–Several folders full of random scraps and notes.

This clutter tends to occupy both physical and mental space. Lately it’s been creeping out onto my desk and the piles there are getting taller and more precariously balanced.

To go through things, I’ve flipped the piles upside down and started with the oldest layers where the dinosaur bones are. I then ask a few questions:

What the hell is this?
Did I finish it?
Can I digitize it?
If I digitize it, am i really going to do something with it?
No, really, what am I going to do with it and when?

In most cases it’s the last two questions, especially “when?”, that get things sent to the trash bin. I have a smaller pile of things to digitize (the most interesting of the 10 Ideas) and then I’m trashing the old notebooks and notes.

I actually like the idea of getting rid of the old year in a bonfire. A lot of stuff might end up there.

But that would be another project that gets put in a pile (the “to be burned” pile) and put off until another day.

Instead, I’ll just shred and throw away. The Japanese burn their trash so it’s already going to a bonfire. It’s not as much fun as watching it burn in person, but at least the clutter’s off my desk and out of my head.

When Things Don’t Work the Way They Work

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The thing I like about Apple products is that they update quickly without much effort on the part of the user. You get a pop-up that says “Dude, there’s like this update available but if you don’t want it now that’s cool, because you can just like download it and keep in like your collection until you’re like ready to get to know it.” (Something like that.)

Granted, the updates aren’t always good ideas–which the download dude always denies by saying that, like, maybe I’m not cool enough for the update, you know; just saying–but at least everything that can update does.

I bring this up because today, against my better judgement (as if I had anything resembling “judgment” no less “better”), I decided to update my laptop and my netbook to Windows 10. I wanted to do this before I attempted to update my desktop computer to see how much effort and/or swearing will be involved and if the update is actually worth the effort.

I clicked all the icons that said “Get Windows 10” and then watched while a bunch of white dots spun around and around and around but not much else happened. I tried starting the process over but simply got more dots. After staring at the dots for a while I suddenly found myself feeling happy and calm and realized the spinning dots were probably an attempt to hypnotize me into thinking that Windows 10 had been installed and was awesome. I managed to look away and thus saved myself.

Eventually, after three restarts, five windows trying to do the same kind of nothing at the same time and several well chosen swear words, I got Windows 10 installed on my oldest laptop. I haven’t had a chance to use it much, but I like the looks of it thus far.

The problem is the netbook. It has a tendency to hang up during updates and, also technically, it doesn’t have the upgrade icon. I am therefore attempting to update something that might not be ready for the update.

This will not stop me from trying. (I got the netbook for almost free–all it cost me was a curry lunch–so I’m not too worried about messing it up.) It’s already had issues and I’m on my second restart.

I think I’ll practice some Japanese swear words, just in case.

A Long Time to Decide to go to the Theater Far Far Away

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Note: Star Wars: The Force Awakens spoilers Not Included

Tonight theaters across Japan premiered Star Wars: The Force Awakens at 6:30 p.m. Tickets have been on sale for weeks but I, of course, waited until a couple hours before the show to decide if I was going or not.

The catch was if I would take the family or not. This presented a couple problems: The girls haven’t seen the original movies and didn’t seem keen on seeing the new one. My plan for them to watch all the movies in the  “Machete Order” (A New Hope; The Empire Strikes Back; Attack of the Clones; Revenge of the Sith; Return of the Jedi; or by episode number: 4-5-2-3-6; never watch episode 1) was treated as if I’d just assigned them two books worth of algebra homework.

Then, at two hours before the movie, I logged on to the local theater website and saw that the premiere showing was still open. At that point, She Who Must Be Obeyed said that although she’d be interested in going, she hadn’t seen all the movies either even though I’m pretty sure that was in our marriage vows: love, honor, cherish, memorize Star Wars lines. After several minutes of discussions about discussions, I decided to go ahead and go, family or no, but promised to report on if it was worth taking the girls to see on Sunday.

(The whole time I was doing this I was remembering a friend’s warning that seeing the new Star Wars series would be like a second marriage: the triumph of hope over experience.)

There was then a few minutes of wrestling with the website–which timed me out at one point and then sold the seat I wanted out from under me. I managed to reserve a ticket and then tried to figure out how to get the tickets once I got to the theater. By the time all that was finished, it was time to go.

I got out the door without my reading glasses but that turned out to not be a big deal. The ticket machine was painless as all I had to do was push two touch-screen buttons and hold my phone up to a reader so the machine could read the QR code I’d been sent in an email. The machine printed a ticket and a receipt and all I had to do was not lose the ticket.

I admit to having a teenaged thrill about going to see a new Star Wars movie and couldn’t resist getting the large popcorn, which turned out to be a proper large and not a Japanese large which means I’ve had my carbs for the rest of this year and part of the next. I was surprised that the theater didn’t sell out and disappointed only one fan had a light saber. (He seemed surprised too and turned it off right away.) There was a good mix of people my age and younger. No one was in costume.

Then the lights went out and there were no previews. Instead we got the Lucas Film Logo and “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….” And then there was that pause and then that punch of music with the Star Wars logo and I was kid again for a little while.

 

The Short Unhappy Life of Doomed Things

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I used to own a sweater that was doomed. Now I own a pencil that was doomed. The sweater was a white cotton sweater that actually fit me but which suffered from three different spills, including two with coffee, one of which came right after the first spill had been cleaned and involved me colliding in a doorway with a person carrying the coffee.

Doomed things are not cursed things. Cursed things bring disaster to the owner. Doomed things merely end up getting damaged themselves and being tossed out quickly. Their lives are so miserable you don’t even worry about the sunk costs. The third disaster ruined the sweater and I threw it away (eventually); except for some personal embarrassment, I was unharmed.

I now own a doomed pencil. Actually, I own what’s left of it. Several months ago, taking advantage of sales points on a point card, I acquired a Rotring 600 mechanical pencil. I thought it was a bit slim but it was comfortable enough that I started using it as my regular work pencil.

Within the first month of using it, it fell out of my pocket and the lead tube bent to an impressive 30 degrees. I managed to straighten it out and make the pencil usable again, but it still wasn’t quite straight.

Then, a month after that, the eraser cap flew off when I was using it, sending me scrambling on the floor in the middle of class to find it as if it were a lost nickel or a contact lens. That part was the most annoying as it didn’t really seem attached to the pen and I ended up squeezing it with pliers to make it stay on the pencil.

Finally, about a month after that issue had been resolved, it fell off the podium and the lead tube bent again. This time when I tried to straighten it, it just snapped off leaving me with a pencil that is slightly usable but only if I only click the lead out a little.

There used to be a tube sticking out the end here.

There used to be a tube sticking out the end here.

You can kind of see, if you look closely, the oval shape and the marks from the pliers.

You can kind of see, if you look closely, the cap’s new oval shape and marks from the pliers. I’m amazed I still have it.

Even if it hadn’t been doomed, I was underwhelmed with the Rotring 600. It looks great but is too slender to use for more than taking roll. It also strikes me as a desk pencil and not an every day carry pencil, especially if the cap keeps falling off for no reason. I suspect that if I’d only used it at my desk in my office I might still be using it.

But since it was doomed, it probably would have managed to break itself there too.