Golden Week

Golden Week is what they call spring break in Japan. Why it’s golden is something I can’t quite recall, but it may have something to do with the millions and millions of people on vacation at the same time and highway rest stops overflowing with urine.
Yesterday I went to pick up my girlfriend at Kansai International Airport. Driving from Nara to Osaka usually takes 30 minutes or so, but it took around an hour this time. Halfway there, I got a call from her saying that the flight was cancelled and she would instead fly in the next day (today, in around 21 hours). Since I was already halfway there, I decided to go and have a day out in the city. Specifically, the Namba area. More specifically, the area around the new Namba Parks shopping area and the equally new WINS building where you can bet on horse races. They ran big races today to coincide with the national holidays. Perhaps you can already guess where I am going with this.
It took me an hour and 15 minutes to park my car. I paid 50 bucks for the priviledge of parking there. 50 bucks for seven hours, and this was a cheaper place than most, since it’s located farther away.
But other than that, I had a good day. I’m lucky I didn’t have to drive home, because the Hanshin expressway was backed up with going-home traffic from Ashiya all the way to Tsukimiyama (approx. 28 kilometers) at 2:30 in the afternoon. Anybody that got caught in that mess is most probably still there.
I think about weird stuff late at night, right now my mind is all over the place. I wonder if my brother Adam is sleeping in between horses tonight, or on top of several cubic meters of seafood flavor instant ramen.
I may update again soon, but if not – hey, I’m on vacation. And my girl is coming home. Golden week, indeed.

Bach Processing

Today is the last day of work during this “baching it” period for the Cosmic Buddha. Goddamn, how time flies. It seems only yesterday that I started off eating strange chili concoctions out of the pan and declaring atomic jihad on the world. Fast forward through two blurry weeks of the flurried singledom that defines my bachelorism process to this morning, where you find me eating kimchi & eggs w/leftover pork out of the same pan.
kimchi_and_eggs.jpg
Sometimes using my pan as a plate and the spatula as silverware makes me yearn for the good ol’ dormitory days at Tenri U… Then I remember finding rotting fish carcasses half-flushed down the crapper by the Chinese students, constant hazing by karate club senpai that left one Korean-blooded boy brain damaged for life, heinous Japanese lessons from moronic gaijin teachers (forever mentally entrenched in a time when they were revered as gods A.K.A. the “impale yourself on white penis” period of Japan), and all the other bullshit that defined daily life then. I’m much better off now getting paid to deal with similar shit. But as far as life in Japan goes, shit is a constant that must be dealt with or duly ignored. You know what they say, “Same shit, different flies.” Wow I went from food conveyance to waste excretion in one paragraph – truly a healthy movement, no?
Anyway, anyway – My girlfriend is coming back on the 2nd. I must clean the house enough not to get yelled at. I recently discovered that we have been out of laundry detergent from before she left. I will no doubt forget to buy some on my way home tonight, and will be forced to use dishsoap or baking soda or another “field expedient”. Also, I am at a loss as to why indoor plants are so GODDAMN WIMPY. What’s two weeks of drought to, say, a cactus or dandelion in the wild fer chrissakes? These limpwrist plants up and died on me, man! And they died rather grisly deaths, I fear – their twisted, brown, hardened skeletons are a karmic vote for my next life as an abandoned ficus. It ain’t my fault, I say; nobody told me they weren’t self-watering! Just great. Now I gotta find similar ones at the nursery and transfer them to our planters. (I wonder if this will darken any future experiences I have switching a healthy goldfish for a bloater for my kids. Maybe I’ll just tell them about death right off the bat, despite any crying over dearly-departed Nemo, nightmares about an ominous beyond, and sleepless nights of hand-holding solace… Nah, scratch that. I’ll replace Nemo with sea monkeys and teach them about evolution instead.)
Note: Thanks to my truly adoring fan Jen (even if she is one of my friends having a great time impersonating a truly adoring fan at my expense, although I will kick your ass soundly if this is the case) for the link that enabled the photo editing.

Your ass ain’t worth it

I spoke with a friend about this the other night and we did some rough (read: beer-inspired) calculations to estimate how much money every Japanese taxpayer paid for the release of the Japanese hostages in Iraq this month: about 2,000 yen. I do not vouch for the accuracy of this figure, but I want to make it clear that I do not agree with the decision to pay for their release, no matter what the cost. They chose to go where their country told them not to, and tear-jerking death threat footage aside, the burden of consequence should not fall on our shoulders. 2000 yen per taxpayer for the whole country is way too much to pay for 5 people’s ransom, for that matter, so is a single yen. I bet you I’m not the only one who feels this way, either.
The anti-government views of the hostages are obvious, and there are rumours about their possible collusion with enemy forces – that the whole incident including abduction, videotaping, etc., was a set up. Obviously, I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this, either. The situation is being looked into, and hopefully the truth will eventually come out. I won’t pass early judgement, but if it turns out that those taken hostage were, indeed, working with the enemy, I think they should be punished, harshly.
That a portion of my tax money is now most likely being used to prolong the insurgency in Iraq is almost more than I can bear. I would like to think it affects the average Jiro the same way, if he would only stop to think about it.

I blame it all on Portishead

I placed a down payment on a theremin yesterday. I have no idea what it will end up looking like, but this is for the best, I feel. For this particular instrument (which I have never played before BTW), not knowing how it will turn out creates a certain excitement I could never attain by simply ordering online or through a music catalog. This was only made possible by hiring an otaku to do the job. Kasama-san is a nice guy, a most skilled bassist, Taro’s business partner (they sell antique condensers, specialized mic shields, and other maniac music shit), and one of the most functional denki-otakus I have ever met.
When I found a loose circuit board connection to input RCA connector jacks inside my 500 watt amp, I used what tricks I could to keep it working temporarily. Unwilling to be without decent sound in my car for even a short time, I never even considered having it fixed at a professional shop since they generally take forever just to tell you (approximately) how badly you will get raped for repairs. I looked around for a decent replacement instead, but couldn’t find a good deal before the connection got a lot worse and basically made my amp unuseable. So I turned to Kasama-san, who I knew at the time as a tinkerer of guitar amps, and he replaced the part I needed on the board for a pittance – so I tipped him well. The skills he possesses are very special in our modern world of cheap throwaway electronics. Like some of the engineers at work, he can read the circuits on a PCB like a roadmap, and tell you where you can find shortcuts, bypasses, and hidden paths, among other things. This is a very valuable skill.
Anyways. Theremin of unknown specification and design will be mine in a couple of weeks, and I take great comfort in knowing that the creator has spent countless hours worrying about each subcomponent, optimizing it as a whole system, and tweaking it to perfection with the cold twisted love of electronica.