thduggie’s blog

I’m in Japan again, and it’s another short trip, where the total travel time isn’t much less than the time spent in the country.  I neither slept much on the planes (Zürich-Bangkok-Tokyo) nor last night in the hotel, but I was surprisingly awake this morning when I got up for church.  I went to Tokyo Union Church this time, instead of out to Chiba, because I hoped to meet Mindy and her fabulous engagement ring - I mean, her fabulous Ryotaro. 

I got there with some time to spare, even though a film crew stopped pedestrian traffic for a while just in front of the toy store, where I encountered the Rubix 360°, which is like a cross between the Rubix cube and those annoying put-the-ball-in-the-hole coordination games.  From the film crew I learned that (a) the crowded street scenes are shot with a telephoto lens, with the crowds removed where the actors are, and using the background crowds down the street for the crowd effect, and that (b) one need not be a good actor to make it on TV. 

After church I stayed on for the young adults group, where I wasn’t the only newcomer.  I don’t know how I would have dealt with a newcomers group for a small group study - I found it somewhat awkward to answer personal questions in front of total strangers - but it seemed to work alright for most participants.  At least one person wasn’t a Christian, which surprised me a little.  Maybe Asians are more likely to actively explore another faith than Westerners. 

I went shopping afterwards.  Harajuku was crowded, and a store opening with the attendant lines at the entrance didn’t help.  Although my Harajuku source was out of black toe socks, the girl there pointed me to their Ikebukuro branch, which I found without too much difficulty.  They had the right socks, and that’s where the galactic references begin.  I suppose it’s appropriate that in the Sunshine city complex I came across the band ChoShinSung (Supernova) greeting fans, and snuck in a photo before some frantic guy came to tell me it wasn’t allowed. 

From there I went across the street to a supermarket to purchase a number of Japanese food items.  I’d been asked to buy green tea, which brought me to the second floor, where to my surprise I found a couple cans of Ginga Kogen beer, which translates into Milky Way Plateau beer.  It’s the only Japanese wheat beer I can think of and probably my favorite Japanese beer.  I support good quality, so I bought a few.  (I drink responsibly, so I don’t expect to see stars…) 

In closing, a few pictures of Tokyo, and one from the Munich airport from my last Asian trip. 

Here’s hoping the pilot isn’t what the plane ID says. 

I thought the ad was clever - and subtly frightening. 

Note how the rules (where they make quantifiable sense) are contravened by the mannequin’s garb. 

Standing in line to shop for clothes. 

Harajuku cracks down on crime - and smorking. 

The girl in red got in line about five times, to the amusement of the bystanders. 

Oh, look, another person who must have stood in line today. 

I don’t know of many other places with as clear a view of the Tokyo tower.  I can also see a part of the Rainbow Bridge (not on the picture). 

Australia:

Only Brisbane this time.  Arrival at about 11pm.  The taxi driver who took me to my hotel said his business was down about 30% due to people travelling less.  One thing’s for sure: the economic crisis provides a universal topic of conversation.  The Grand Chancellor is overrated and overpriced.  Never have I written as many critical comments on the comment card.  Good thing I only stayed there two nights and then moved to Mark’s house.

I spent two days with our distributors getting to know new people, showing them our system, and visiting customers with it.  They had organized two presentations at the main universities in Brisbane - a good start and an efficient use of time.

The weekend at Mark’s consisted of a fabulous outing to the Noosa headlands, a church service at the Sherwood Uniting Church where his mother preached, and noontime in the city and South Bank with Mark’s sister.  Brisbane was hot, but not as hot as I had feared, and I feel like with a little more time there would have been plenty more to do.

Flat Stanley digs Noosa.

New Zealand:

We flew into Auckland on Sunday evening and spent the night near the airport.  Monday we drove down to Rotorua and set up our booth.  The drive and its vistas made me want to see more of the country, but a visit every other year is about as much as is reasonable given the market size.  If only we could sell microscopes to sheep!  One of the little towns we passed, Tirau, seemed to be the corrugated sheet capital of the country, with most signs and several domestic fixtures made of corrugated iron.

Rotorua announces itself by gentle wafts of sulphurous (IUPAC: sulfurous) odors.  Your eggs could go off in this town and you’d put it down to the local air.  The upside is a plethora of spas and baths, of which I tried the Polynesian Spa, a bit expensive indeed but ever so enjoyable late at night after a day at the booth and a big dinner.  Of course, it’s not Japanese style, so now my bathing suit reeks of sulfur.

The conference once again distinguished itself by its aura of familiarity.  This is indeed a small, tight, and friendly microscopy community, a group of people excited about microscopy and happy to hang out with fellow microscopists, wherever they may be from.  As usual, I have a photo of dancing microscopists.

Dancing Microscopists in Rotorua.

On Thursday we had the afternoon off and headed down to Wai-o-tapu, where the local geological instabilities reminded me of just how fragile our earthly existence is and what a mercy it is to be sustained day by day.

The mud pots.

The Champagne Pool.

Wai-o-tapu has a mind of its own.

More from the Champagne Pool.

The next day it was up early and off to the Rotorua airport.  This is an airport where the planes taxi up the runway, u-turn at the end, and then take off along the same runway.  My plane was a 19-seat Beechcraft 1900D, and I was seated in the second row and therefore got to watch the pilots all the way.  Here’s a picture of us landing.

Landing at Auckland Airport with a Beech 1900D.

See how the plane’s longitudinal axis is not at all parallel to the runway?

I haven’t yet transferred many pictures from Japan to my computer - most are still on my camera - but here’s one that also is the quiz of this post: What is in the below bag?

Mystery Accessory.

More later - going home now.  It’s about time.

Too tired for the bardic task, 
But let me try to fake it
(Though I’m too wiped for other labors
That are a sight less tasking
Such as the common bath I favors
To strip down and to bask ing).
Drawn to the bed behind me waiting
I’ll make a stab at compensating:
My business cards sit on my dask,
Which makes me feel quite naked.

I’m on my way again, and the gate call for Tokyo has just appeared on the monitors.  Janet’s left behind with a mountain of clean-up and moving-in work - as if catching up a week off school wasn’t enough.  At least Japan’s supposed to be warmer than Basel.

It’s my experience that it’s best to inform before information comes from other sources and generates worry.  Therefore, yes, I was in Sendai at the time of this 5.0 earthquake, and it woke me up, but, as the saying goes, I was shaken, not stirred. 

In case the information on the USGS site expires, here’s the skinny:

Magnitude 5.0 - NEAR THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN

2008 October 29 15:48:40 UTC

Today I took the Shinkansen
Up north to Yamagata.
Was early on the platform, then
Stood waiting, drinking water. 

I saw another train pull in.
It was the final station, 
And all alit amid the din
Of public address nation. 

Before the passengers embark,
The train crew boards the wagon -
For five minutes a holy ark,
A fire-breathing dragon. 

But lo! two women try to board
Before the cleaning’s o’er!  
Lo! they are swiftly spit, my Lord,
Right out the other door! 

So hey! McCain! and yo! Barack! 
You’ve got no need to worry. 
Send all these train crews to Iraq:
They’ll clean up in a hurry. 

Time flies, and through the ages
Wise men wondered where it went.
Though wise, these many sages
Found not where - nor what it meant. 

They would, if they had flown
In unison have shown

Time flies into all those Pratt & Whitneys
While you try to find a way to sit, knees
Jammed into a seat
Oh, let me repeat

Time gets burned up in those Pratt & Whitneys
While they serve you something fat with chick peas,
Make you watch that silly film with Britney’s
Road trip ‘cross the states -
My, how that creates

A roar in my ear and a buzz in my brain -
Attempts to find sleep are now fully in vain. 
In stupor I languish, to torpor succumb -
I know it, too, will pass…

So why did philosophers not figure out
What I have discovered without any doubt:
That time flies to end up quite undignified,
Sucked up by a jet to be Pratt-Whitney-fried.
I’ve got an idea that isn’t too dumb:
Wise men fly business class. 

The House of Weddings. 

The bride in her pre-wedding photography cell.

The chapel - note the projection screen to the right and the associated camera top left.  The pulpit to the left is for the Korea Wedding emcees. 

Smokin’ hot newlyweds.

Say kimcheese! 

Bucolic rooftop décor. 

The couple we don’t know. 

The groom’s parents throw nuts for prosperity (that’s my guess); the lady in the blue skirt directs the family in the correct practice of Korean tradition.

Piggyback bride. 

Traditional Korean village.

Traditional Korean house (of the former upper class). 

The partner look is alive and well. 

Sarang church main sanctuary.  I couldn’t figure out how they kept the plants alive underground. 

Church program stacks before the fourth service at Sarang. 

Sunset from my hotel room. 

Final meeting after the show. 

The flight from Gimpo (Seoul) to Haneda (Tokyo) was uneventful and made pleasant by the relative smallness of the two airports.  ANA had an entertainment system, but I wasn’t even able to watch an entire 91-minute movie. 

Little did I know that my hotel had a movie channel that plays an odd selection of movies in English.  I have since seen parts of “You’ve Got Mail,” “Revenge,” “Ghostbusters,” “Speed,” and “Conan the Barbarian.”  Yes, I have yet to see anything outside the 80s or 90s. 

For those who’ve never been to Japan, you probably don’t entirely appreciate how unusual it is to have even an English channel in a business hotel.  But then, my hotel is unusual: they offer free soda in the lobby, they bring the breakfast to the room at a time I pick the previous evening, and they have a bevy of hair products stocked in the loo.  They also have a “day use” rate, which makes me wonder and then immediately suppress my curiosity, because as far as I’m concerned I’m just happy with the bigger bed.  Finally, the hotel is called “City Hotel NUTS,” which, given the Japanese tendency to say “shee you later” instead of “see you later” earns it the distinction of funniest hotel name in my limited experience.  (NUTS stands for New Urban Time and Space, but I’m not sure that makes things better.) 

On Friday, I did laundry in the next coin laundry because the cleaner won’t take underwear.  I then went to the JAIMA show and marveled at the things companies come up with when trying to market their stuff: mostly young women in short skirts, but also stuff like croissants in a can.  Maybe if we hand out free pizza at our next show…

In the evening, I lay in my bed and suddenly felt this shaking.  It took me a while to realize that it was an earthquake.  It subsided, then shook again, the building gently shuddering.  Mizuho would tell me on Sunday that a guy who claimed to be a prophet said that a big one would hit on September 13, so I asked if he had also indicated the time of day because I was flying out in the morning.  (Apparently he did get the Hanshin earthquake and the Niigata earthquake right, though who knows.) 

On Saturday, I took a train into Kanagawa and met up with Olivier and his family.  He had brought back cheese from their recent visit to Switzerland, and invited two other Swiss guys married to Japanese wives, along with their kids.  It turned out that I had already met one of them during my stay in Japan in 2001/2002 because we’d both been in touch with the SJCC for scholarships.  We joked that I’d really missed the boat - all the guys in Japan snag a Japanese wife, except for me!  (It’s easy to joke when you know what lies in store.)  It was a good time of chatting and exchanging experiences, and after the two families left Olivier and I took his son Léon for a walk.  He was in good spirits all the time and particularly indefatigable on the swingset.  Etsuko says he’s the liveliest of his age group, and she’s glad that the next one’s a girl! 

That night my internet was slow and Janet and I only exchanged brief messages.  I didn’t think to do what I did the next morning: unplug the LAN cable routerside and plug it in again.  If only real life was that simple: when a conversation goes sour, you’d stop it, walk ten steps away from the person, turn around, walk back, and it’d all start again with “Hey!  How are ya?” 

Today I was still in the shower when breakfast came.  I felt a bit bad for them having to wait, but when I saw that they were early, not me late, and that they tried to open the door, I stopped feeling bad.  I almost missed the train for watching “Speed,” but managed to turn the thing off.  It was Uchida-san again, preaching on in his series on 1 Corinthians, this time on verses 1-5 of the fifth chapter.  I wish I could understand him, because I’m sure he is saying interesting stuff about this difficult passage I’d have a hard time explaining without some serious study.  A good number of friends were there; I got to catch up with Mizuho, whose English is loads better after just one year in California - if anyone knows of a job opening for a Japanese linguist with English skills, let me know and I’ll pass it on!  Tim, one of the missionaries on the team, and I went to the supermarket for cheap Japanese food and ate it outside on the smokers’ bench.  It’s muggy and hot right now, and the bench was in the shade, so we kept on chatting about Japan and cultural differences in general and the dynamics of family size and adding people to a family.  I remember the first time I met Tim I felt I didn’t know what to talk to him about - I didn’t sense any common ground - and now it flows so naturally it’s a joy.  His time’s up in December, so I may see him again, but it’ll be sad to say goodbye. 

Back in Tokyo, I went to Harajuku again to get more socks, and got to marvel yet again at the propensity of the Japanese to use and purchase umbrellas at the first drop.  It had started rumbling, and lightning flashed in the distance; a few drops were indeed falling from the sky, but just moving made them evaporate off my clothing almost as quickly as they wetted it. 

I’m not tired yet, but my eyes want to be closed.  I did go to the pool and swam 50 laps of breaststroke - the fifty laps started out as 24, then 40, then became 50.  I knew it wasn’t a 25-meter pool, so after I was done (and pretty exhausted, although my eyes hurt more than my muscles) I walked the length of the pool in 16 steps.  I’d secretly hoped it was a 20-meter pool, which would have meant I’d swum a kilometer, but now my hopes were down to 800 meters.  Still, not bad. 

I walked back to my towels and suddenly realized I had not worn the bath cap they’d given me.  I’m so not used to it that even carrying it along in my hand hadn’t reminded me to wear it.  To make up for it, and to at least get it wet, I pulled it on my head and swam two slow backstroke laps, then headed to the jacuzzi.  I’d been alone for all my laps, but just as I finished, an Asian guy walked in, spent a few seconds in the jacuzzi, and then liberated it just in time for me. 

After the jacuzzi I dried off, wrung out my swimsuit, and got in the ofuro, the Japanese hot tub.  There were two other Asians in that room, and by their language I figured they were Chinese.  After a short hyperventilation-inducing dip in the cold tub I entered the sauna, where I sat along with two of the Chinese.  One left after the hourglass ran out, but the other turned it around and held up his hand with his thumb and pinky sticking out.  “Six minutes,” he said.  (He said that in English, obviously - I would not have understood it otherwise.)  I held up my hand the same way, and he gave a short, surprised laugh, then proceeded to show me how to count with one hand in Chinese:
one: index raised
two: index and middle finger raised
three: index, middle finger, and ringfinger raised
four: all fingers raised except the thumb
five: all fingers raised
six: thumb and pinky raised
seven: thumb touching index and middle finger, the others folded into the palm of the hand
eight: thumb and index raised
nine: fist with a hooked index raised
ten: fist
These can also be combined to form two-digit numbers, but apparently it’s only used for small numbers.  Nobody motions 99 that way. 

This same guy kept knocking the hourglass whenever he suspected it was stuck, not realizing that the knocking was what made it look stuck: knocking would even the sand out, which would then run out starting in the middle and creating a crater in the middle without hardly moving the outside edges.  This would make it look like the sand wasn’t moving, which led him to knock and generate an apparent jump in the sand drainage. 

There was a notice on the sauna door asking guests not to throw water on the heating system, because it was an electrical heating system.  I suppose somebody once shorted out the sauna, ideally also shorting out the lights in the sauna and the ofuro - I can only imagine the mayhem.  “Holy heater, Batman - I can’t see a thing. and it smells like seared meat and cracked skulls in here!” 

After I got back out I noticed that the hotel supplied a swing dryer for the swimsuits.  The instructions noted that the machine might move a little, and asked to therefore not put it near the wall.  I stuck my trunks in and flipped the lever, and the machine started dancing the mad fandango - I had to hold it down to stabilize it and get a chance at flipping the lever off again.  So I rearranged my trunks with Swiss precision, the waistband encircling the legs and the pockets facing inward, closed the lid and flipped the lever again, and this time it quickly achieved a balanced high-speed rotation and started to drip water out the bottom.  I’m pretty thankful I don’t have to pack wet trunks tomorrow. 

I confessed the bath cap transgression to those in charge, who only laughed.  I guess they don’t take hygiene quite as seriously as they say, or at least not when no Japanese bathers are around who might be bothered at the sight of an uncovered swimmer.  I also asked about the length of the pool, and was told it was 15 by 8 meters.  So I’d swum even less, only 750 meters, and not only that, but my steps are only 93 centimeters instead of a manly meter. 

I consoled myself with the thought that I couldn’t have swum a kilometer anyway, because who’s gonna stop two-thirds of the way across the pool…