Kuroneko Yamato no Takkyubin – The OG Japanese delivery service
I, Enki
Dude. This is my greatest accomplishment in years. I inadvertently stumbled onto two Neal Stephenson short stories YOU NEVER EVEN KNEW EXISTED.
Spew is on the WIRED site, but I guess I just never found it until now.
I am posting the entirety of the Great Simoleon Caper in the extended entry of this post for posterity, because I can’t find it on a server I trust to keep it up forever.
Nitsuj Adihsoy
Well, that’s the first time I’ve spelled my name backwards for a long, long time. The last time was in 5th or 6th grade when my best friend Ben Stebbing insisted we call each other by our own names backwards. He moved to England the next year and the last time I Googled him I determined he was either dead or in a Liverpool mental hospital. (Ben, if you are alive and have access to the net, speak up my friend.)
What spurred this memory today? It ties into the best news I’ve heard all week:
In my past life I was known as J.U.S.T.I.N.,
the Jaded and Unbelievably Socratic Tibetan Ironmonger of Nubia
And all this time I thought Tibetans had a natural resistance to hemlock…
It only gets better: C.B.U.D.D.H.A.,
the Civilized , Brazenly Underrated Dogcatcher Drudge Hindi from Araby
Hat tip to J-Walk Blog
Where’s me brolly?
Well, it looks like Typhoon #2 (Japanese don’t follow the western convention for typhoon naming – on one hand, I suppose it’s kinda nice not having to admit that your cities got “battered by Alice” or “ravaged by Gertrude”) – is coming straight for my island tonight. Last time a typhoon came by I had to drive over the bridge between here and Kobe, and it was like the movie Twister in that I just had to crack my window to see just how strong the wind was blowing. In an instant, every loose toll receipt, shopping bag, hamburger wrapper, etc., whipped out the window as if we were at 30,000 feet and if I’d had the foresight to attach GPS trackers to everything, I probably could have mapped out the eye of the storm (I guess that makes my Silvia “Dorothy” in this analogy but I won’t go there.).
The weather today is what I like to call, “fungus-inducing.” Basically, this is the kind of humidity that causes jungle foot, crotch rot, and the downfall of western civilization. You actually feel dryer in the shower on days like this. I might as well spend the night in there since big storms usually destroy my satellite reception and the last one screwed with my FTTH connection as well.
It totally cracked me up when my Aussie pal told me what a brolly is. And a sultana (as in, “Sultana Bran”). Thanks to William Gibson, I know what a standover is. Damn, I really need to visit Australia sometime soon. After I buy a D70, I think.
Maguro no Magure
To me, this picture is more ironic than funny, but let’s try you first: This is a reheatable foil pouch containing a single seving of Tuna Curry.
There. Get it? I’m a loser who spends time taking pictures of every strange package in the supermarket on weekends instead of being productive. Funny, right? Yeah, go fuck a duck, pal.
(Inside my head, the taunting voice recedes.)
Well actually, this photo is a memento of sorts. You see, Nam and I are trying to eat more fish, which I am morally against since I am a strict vegetarian when it comes to most fish… Well, it’s not that bad. We eat fish at least 2-3 times a week. But we wanted more variety, so I suggested trying to make curry with fish instead of meat, since I had eaten good fish curry in Bangkok before. It was a yellow curry with a nice non-oily fish (my favorite type). Not as good as a meat curry, but probably healthier. Well, Nam ended up making this masterpiece which scared the hell out of me when I saw it, but tasted pretty good. She made a red curry with SALMON. When I first saw those pink chunks in our curry bowl, I thought “sacrilege!” and “thoughtcrime!” But it turned out tasting pretty good (Kinda gross for brekky, though.). Nam said we should try making it next time with tuna or some other “meaty” fish.
Lo and behold! Some company already thought of it. A miracle. But not miraculous enough for me to buy it at 490 yen per package. We’ll make our own fish curry, thank you very much.
The Italian Job
The Italian joint inside the hotel had an all-you-can-eat deal for 1600 yen. On the expensive side for lunch, but there was a good looking spread as viewed from the cash register where we Please Waited for a Hostess to Seat Us.
Now, I should have been dismayed at the fact that the first three entrees in the buffet line were markedly un-Italian (chow mein, fried rice, egg rolls), but I have been in Japan too long for shit like that to faze me. I piled up heaps of “Me Chinese” food next to pasta, salads, and sea bass cause I had built up an appetite making fun of posters in the elevator ride up (no pics, unfortunately).
The food looked pretty good and my stomach was rumbling as I raced to our table with my spread. Taro and I ate pretty much in silence, because we were still slightly hungover and we were stuffing ourselves. It was a full five minutes until we both remarked on how flavorless the food was. We had been fooled by the presentation of the buffet, nice decor, and efficient staff, and unwittingly stuffed ourselves with the Japanese equivalent of Shitty Buffet Food. The photo shows a plate of mini cheesecakes that I arranged nicely on a plate. This unfortunately did not disguise the fact that they tasted like sawdusty cream cheese lumps.
I would stretch the rant longer, but I am working on self-control recently, and really, is there any better revenge than letting the Shitty Italian Restaurant in the Mitsui Garden Hotel (Nara Branch) underspice its pathetic, bland way into obscurity with much help from its obviously inept, untalented, and most definitely un-Italian chefs & planning staff? Oh yeah, I guess I could always SLANDER IT ON THE INTERNET.
Props out to Al Gore for inventing this shit.
Sidestepper
Taken at BUTTU BAR, Osaka, in hallway to restrooms. Damn, do I have a toilet fixation or what?
Calamari
An excellent article on Architeuthis in the New Yorker:
“There was this big thing hanging off the front of the net,” Robison recalled. “The suckers were still grasping.” Robison’s discovery offered the most accurate recording yet of a giant squid’s depth in the water column. “Until then, most people thought they were only near the bottom,” he said. Robison later dissected the tentacle and performed chemical analyses; the consistency of the tissue, and its high level of protein, led him to speculate that the giant squid was “a relatively strong swimmer.” Robison told me that he had taken a bite of its raw, rubbery flesh. “How could I not?” he said, adding, “It was bitter.”