Yokohama Ramen Museum

It's open again!
It's open again!
The Shin Yokohama Ramen Museum is finally open again!

If you're only in Tokyo for a few days, go to the ramen museum in Shin Yokohama.

It's not far from the glorious Yokohama station, itself a short ride from Tokyo. A few blocks from Shin Yokohama station is one of the weirdest, most interesting places in Kanto.
It closed down years ago, but as soon as I heard it had re-opened I grabbed my family and we trained it out there.


I'm not sure I'd call it a museum...maybe a theme restaurant / museum?
The ground floor houses a modest museum displaying the history of ramen in Japan and it's trappings. But it's that which lies below for which you should go.





The basement stairs are actually a time machine, taking you back to the year 1958 when ramen saw a boom period across Japan. There you'll find an amazing replica of an old, Japanese neighborhood consisting of a town square surrounded by dense little urban paths and filled with numerous ramen shops.







The Japanese fast-food equivalent of the American hamburger is a bowl of steaming ramen. While it's not the  healthiest meal, it's a good-sight better than tacos or burgers, and it's about as fast.

Now ramen shops are pervasive, ranging from sublime to awful, and like any fast food you learn to keep expectations low in touristy areas like theme parks and rest stops. You go do Disneyland for the rides, not the spaghetti, right? Not so here, where the museum showcases the best ramen Japan has to offer from Hokkaido to Okinawa; alot like EPCOT's World Showcase.


The shops rotate periodically, but the shop we found most interesting when we went in September was actually from Hollywood, CA. called Ikemen (a play on words, ikemen meaning handsome, and men meaning noodles).

The ramen is dipping style, where you take some noodles and dip them into the sauces. And in addition to great food, they have a great sense of humor, with menu items such as "Johnny Dip Ramen" and "Jurassic Pork."

Admission is about 300 yen for adults, 100 yen for kids.

It's the details that really complete an illusion and the detail the really sold me that I'd stepped back in time was a "public TV," mounted high on a post in the square so everyone could watch it (because hey, this is the 50's; who can afford their own TV???)

The secret to getting the most out of your visit, unless you plan on multiple visits, is to order the "mini" bowls of ramen at the various shops. These are half-sized servings. This way you don't fill up quite so quickly. We were able to sample three different shops this way and still have room for soft-serve ice cream at a nostalgic old "snack" bar (something between a coffee shop and a tavern).

We happened to get here in time to watch a TV station record a superhero scene in the square. TOO FUNNY!

The name of this shop translates out to "Fire Nation." As a fan of The Last Airbender, I entered cautiously.

...a WHAT booth??? How did the older generations ever survive without  iPhones?

Just enjoying a steam at the local sento bath-house.

Enjoying a frozen jelly, in the classic dagashiya style.

I took my dad here when he visited.
I took my wife here on one of our first dates.
I took every visitor here.
And everyone balked at the suggestion.
And everyone loved it.
And it was closed down before my son was old enough to experience it, which was a real bummer. But now I have been able to share this wonderful place with him, and he can't wait to go back.

And of course what night ramen would be complete without a few laps on an old slot car racetrack? Weird? Unrelated? Sure, but it was so much fun I'm not complaining.

For more information, follow this link to their English site or type Yokohama Ramen Museum into Google.

Raper or Rapist

I was listening to Steely Dan's King of the World and noticed how we used to say "raper," but somehow it's changed to "rapist" ...as though it's some kind of skilled vocation...like a cellist or a geologist. I think it's too elegant; we should go back to raper. Seriously, we don't say "murderist" or "muggist." OK, I'll allow words like "arsonist" and "bigamist" because a certain amount of skill and artistry can be attributed to them. But sexual predators don't subscribe to "rapism" and their crimes wouldn't be classed as "rapeological." I question the personal life of whoever's idea this alternative form was. Or am I being a trivialist?

Smaller, Cuter, Better: Cupcakes

 It's almost unbearably cliche. Tiny, "demitasse" cupcakes in the Omotesando subway Echika.

Following the big cupcake boom back in the States, TABLES has taken the recently re-booted cupcake, miniaturized it, and is offering it in more flavors than you'll find for macaroons...and they're adorable! Just look at some of these:

Fig, orange, green tea, red velvet, pink berry, black vanilla, white chocolate...

one of my favorites was the gingerbread:

We stumbled across it changing trains in Omotesando, near Shibuya last month. The cakes were just the right size to make for a little pick-me-up treat. We actually ended up getting several. Luckily, there is a good coffee bar facing TABLES so we could have a good cuppa with the cup cakes. I took this picture from where we were sitting:

It's the kind of thing I'd have walked right past if I hadn't drifted into the kitchenware store behind it. Even after I saw it, I almost gave it a miss because at first glance it looked like any other confectioner. But now it's one of our Omotesando stops. If you're in Osaka, they're there, too.

Every flavor we've tried is top-notch. They're priced right. Easy to carry home.

...and they're just gorgeous to look at.

Here's a menu, but the items are always changing:

This is one of my killer holiday gifts this year. Everyone I've given them to loves them. 

Yes, I've got that American competitive gift-giving thing. 

My gift has to be the coolest thing you get.

Tru Calling Drinking Game

A year ago my wife got the Tru Calling box set and while we wait for season 3 of Sherlock we're watching it. Not a bad series; my wife likes it more than me. I'm happy to watch to watch Eliza Dushku do just about anything. My main problem with the show is the predictability of each episode. But always ready to turn negative into a positive, here's my Tru Calling drinking game:

• Tru runs
• drink
• Tru makes up a lame lie 
• drink
• The killer is someone other than who we thought
• chug
• The lab guy notes she’s  in at a strange time
• drink
• She tries to manipulate someone over the phone
• shot
• Tru fails to stop someone
• drink
• Tru is surprised but we are not
• drink

Epic Fail: ABC Edition

Funny story from my class:

My primary schoolers were playing this game where I scatter ABC cards around the room and the kids take turns calling out letters, which the others dash to pounce on. Lots of fun and really perfect for wiggly, energetic kids.

Well there's this one kid, he's overweight, lazy, arrogant and completely full of himself; utterly un-Japanese but not surprisingly he takes to American English like a fish to water...I love him! 

He decides to choose one card and camp out by it, with his hand hovering above it. He figures one card is enough to demonstrate his brilliance, and eventually that card has to be called. And the other kids are having a laff about it, too.

But when that card got called he was busy arguing his perceived brilliance with the group, and another kid snatched it right out from under his paw. His reaction?


He could be a senator back in the States!

Halloween in Japan 2013 Progress Report #1: Food

One of my favorite things about Japan is how it assimilates foreign culture without imitating it. Take, for example, my favorite holiday - Halloween. We first started seeing the earliest glimmerings of it's presence here 20 years ago. Now it's becoming firmly positioned in the Japanese pop-holiday pantheon. But in the same way England and North America have their own ways of expressing it, so does Japan and it's about as similar the the American Halloween as is Mexico's Dia De Los Muertos.

This year, we're seeing two new sweets in the stores. This one is an apple pie that looks like a jack-o-lantern. Light, flaky crust and cinnamon-sweet apple filling.

...and this is a steamed pumpkin cake.

It has the consistency of sponge cake, but with a Japanese Kabocha "pumpkin," a variety of Asian squash. Very tasty.

I'm looking forward to what other confections Japan comes up with in the Halloweens to come.

Orbi: a New Multi-Media Theme Park

OK, I wouldn't call it a theme "park." It's really more of a theme theater, but that sounds odd; and Orbi in Yokohama is hard to describe.

It's equal parts movie theater, museum exhibition, and theme park.

BBC and SEGA have teamed up to create a space full of innovative, high definition video displays that showcase the magnificence of the natural world, the animals in particular.

What you have is a large, indoor area with a main cinema and nine surrounding exhibits. The main cinema is a semi-circular, curved panoramic screen where you watch a 30 minute montage of environments. It's visually stunning. Anyone should enjoy the outstanding nature shots, and small kids will be captivated by the animals. This time it was the four seasons of the arctic. The show was supposed to include aromas and while the entire theater had an odd, musky smell to it I couldn't make out any distinctive odors in the course of it. As far as I could make tell, it was just a high-def panoramic documentary which isn't to say it wasn't excellent. But they're promising perhaps more than they can deliver.

Why go?
This exhibition draws on the BBC's vast wealth of wildlife media and with SEGA's multi-media excellence, they present it so well that it transcends conventional natural history museums to stand as fine art. Honestly, the way the animals and environments were presented was nothing short of art. While the photos themselves were gorgeous, the presentations were themselves beautiful.

This is well-balanced for all ages. Toddlers and infants will be just as engaged as teens and adults, which is quite an achievement. It's a great place to take visitors. It was clear to see that this is also a first-rate date spot; I saw a good deal of hand-holding and shoulder-rubbing in the crowds.

It should be as interesting to environmental enthusiasts as to people who don't know a newt from a skink.

The ambiance is outstanding. We all agreed, when we get super-rich we want this to be our living room.

My favorite "room" was a presentation of jellyfish at various depths. I may despise jellies more than anything else in the sea, but some of these were dazzling! And anything less than HD just wouldn't work for these. I went through it several times. They tried to give the illusion of featured jellies suspended in mid-air by projecting them onto vapor cascades (you know, like in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride), but it didn't really work. But it didn't detract from the overall exhibition. Ultimately, it tries to impress on you how far down the lowest point in the ocean is, but it was the jellyfish that we all remembered.

We all loved the "cold room" where you can experience -20C degree blasts of arctic-cold winds. You don't hesitate to pack into a tight huddle with complete strangers as your survival instinct kicks in.

The weakest exhibit may have been the Animalpedia where you stand before a towering video wall and use hand gestures to select among silhouettes of animals and get pop-up displays of basic information about them. But the information was fairly bland; nothing we don't see on the internet all the time. And the controls were frustratingly difficult. So what it's essentially the novelty of a giant screen and an iterative system that while cool-looking will simply frustrate anyone who has grown up using mouses and touch screens.

There's a room that features the colors of nature and surrounds you with brilliant wildlife photos that match the color of whatever you place under a camera in the center of the room. If you love wildlife photography, you'll probably spend a good deal of time in this one.

Next to that there's a dark and winding corridor that features insects. I skipped through pretty hastily, expecting more of a haunted-house with simulated bee and spider attacks. In fact, it's just sights, sounds, and an occasional air jet. Mostly harmless.I may have been a little jumpy because we'd just come from the Komodo Dragon room where, after watching a short documentary on why Komodo Dragons should scare the hell outta us, they put us in total darkness and simulate a throng of Dragons stalking all about us, with synchronized audio, air jets in our seats, and a rumbling base.. Fun and interesting, great for a tepid date, but not for easily frightened children.

Another exhibition sought to put us in the midst of a wildebeest heard and give us a real understanding of what 1,300,000 of them really looked like. I'm grateful they didn't try and simulate smells on this one.

Finally a flying video takes you on a breathtaking 40,000 km landscape tour. If you're in the center of the theater, it's very realistic. If not, you'll have to try and ignore alot of concave distortion.

Why not go to Orbi? The reasons are few and slim:

I felt 2,600 yen / person (half price for minors) was a bit steep. But my wife contends that we spent over three hours in there and as theme parks go, the price was reasonable.

While the staff are eager to speak English and the most critical words are co-presented in English, the entire presentation is limited to Japanese. But it's largely visual and you need not understand a word of Japanese to understand most of it. English language brochures are also available. But this is Japan and English just isn't as globally important as it used to be.

And although they do regulate the crowds inside keep the numbers within limits, we still had to wait 20-45 minutes for most of the attractions. But the lines were close enough to the "base camp" that the little ones could run and play until their group's turn had come. The Base Camp isn't quite a playground, but it is a good space for little ones to run around and burn off steam.

Know this:
Small kids should absolutely avoid room C, the Komodo dragon room. It's not just scary, but the documetary is shocking and gory. It should be rated PG.
Wear good walking shoes because you're going to be doing alot of standing.
Drinks aren't allowed, and not provided, so be sure to smuggle in a bottle of water and maybe some snacks.
Also be aware that once you exit, there's no re-entry.
There's also a large gift shop at the end that carries quite a large array of natural history merch, mostof it direct from England. Alot of this stuff I've never seen in Japan, so this can be a great opportunity to buy novel gifts.

Verdict
A fun, informative afternoon for any kind of group or person. You won't be sorry. And after you're done, you'll be in Minatomirai which is one of the most awesome urban destinations in Japan, and a short walk from Chinatown, Yokohama station, and Kanae.

On a rainy Sunday afternoon, we had to wait about 45 min to get tickets, and another hour after that to get in.

"Base Camp" is a lounge area with animals and environments protected onto shapes. It makes for a striking rest area.

Various animals are projected onto this giant cushion, including this lizard, a polar bear, an killer whale and a caterpillar.

This logo is everywhere

A good idea of the space and the crowds within.

And a brochure is worth another thousand words:

TV Mini-Series Review: Tin Man

In 2007 the US cable Sci-Fi Channel produced a mini-series called Tin Man, a re-imagined continuation of Frank L. Baum's Wizard of Oz. As awful as that sounds, it actually worked. There's a young woman escorted by a bitter sheriff, a brain-damaged inventor and an emotionally scarred psychic beast. It's weird, and it's full of surprises.

Why:

Truly imaginative re-imagining of The Wizard of Oz in a steam-punk vein that never falls into witless aping of the classic story elements, but rather dances around them with clever winks and nods back. Also, some decent satirical moments.

While the characters had alot of potential to be irritating, they turned out to be interesting, engaging, and full of surprises (which is surprising, for American TV). The writers never take the easy or obvious route, and that earns major points with me.

The actors played with certain restraint and even the baddies were sympathetic.

The design and costumes are wonderful. This was one of my favorite parts. It’s hard to do fantasy design without looking like every other fantasy production. They clearly put a healthy chunk of budget into it. Artistically it gives us alot to look at and left me with a real feel for the “O.Z.”

Why not:

The production is a bit cheesy. While I can appreciate their limited SFX budget, almost every CG scene just screamed After Effects...like something any teenager might put together for a YouTube video; the modern equivalent of wires and rubber masks. That makes the precious suspension of disbelief very difficult as we are continually reminded that this is a media production, and not real.

While the production vaguely skews juvenile, it may play a bit too complex for elementary schoolers to enjoy. And though there isn’t any blood or significant killing, it does get rather violent especially with numerous scenes of torture and suffering that you might not want kids under 13 watching.

It has a few scenes that could be overly-scary for younger children, including some unsettling monsters.

In all an above-average mini-series. I’m glad got to see it.

Time: 1:26 / episode (3 episode miniseries)

Perceived time: 1:00 / episode

Replay-ability: twice, maybe a third watching

Estimated Durability: 0 (it feels slightly dated already)

Audience: Anyone loves fantasy from about fourth grade and up

Truly Great TV Shows

Following my less-than-100% rating for Downton Abbey, saying that it falls short of true greatness, my friend Reed asked me which shows I /would/ consider as great. Here are ten:

• All in the Family
• Battlestar Galactica (new)
• Breaking Bad
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Doctor Who (new)
• Futurama
• Game of Thrones
• Hillstreet Blues
• M*A*S*H
• Sherlock

Disagree? Please feel free to debate me on these; I welcome it!

And to illuminate what I mean by "greatness," here are some shows that I'm crazy about; which I could watch endlessly, but I'd stop short of canonizing as great.

• Firefly
• Big Bang Theory
• X Files
• Star Trek OS & V
• The Beverly Hillbillies
• Venture Bros
• Bob's Burgers
• American Horror Story
• Tinker Taylor Solder Spy
• Twin Peaks (if it weren't for that weak middle, I'd have put it on the first list).
• Lonsome Dove
• 24 (season one)
• Dexter
• Desperate Housewives
• Dark Angel
• Lost
• Soap
• Twilight Zone
• Wild Wild West
• Odd Couple
• Little House on the Prairie
• Moonlighting
• Heroes (season 1)
• The Prisoner
• Malcolm in the Middle

To be truly great, I want a show that delivers greatness in all areas, script, acting, production, sound, editing...within the limits of it's means...the kind of results you only get if >everyone< involved is either at the top of thier field or the peak of enthusiasm. Passion and prowess, approaching perfection. I also want to walk away with something; I want to have learned something or had a veritable experience, the kind of thing you don't get from a show where people are merely doing a great "job."

And for what it's worth, I haven't yet seen:

• The Sopranos
• Mad Men
• Six Feet Under
• Boardwalk Empire
• West Wing
• The Wire
• The Shield
• House

...so I can't comment on those.

Review: Saturday Night Live: Third Season DVD

Running Time: approximately 1 hour, ten minutes per weekly episode
Perceived Running Time: 40 minutes (depending on the episode)

Replay-ability: high
Estimated Durability: 4 generations+
Audience: Wide. Fifth grade and up (some mildly dirty jokes).

Why:
This is one of the best and most entertaining time-windows into the late 70's you'll ever find. It features some of the funniest, most talented performers, at their height, hungry, raw and energetic. This is about the time when they'd polished off the rougher edges, but before the show became tiresome formulaic. Watching each episode in it's entirety is important as each one had an overall rhythm and flow like a good music album or symphony. My 6th grader has found a cornucopia of inspiration from this trove of forgotten excellence in performance and modern vaudeville. I predict that the material herein will remain fresh and highly entertaining long-after my generation is dead and gone. The Charles Grodin episode alone was hysterical from beginning to end, in a weirdly post-modern way. My son's watched that single week several times over.

Without the commercials, the episodes fly by. They can also be enjoyed in chapters if you need a some quick entertainment.

This is also a great time capsule of Americana, reflecting the mind and matters of the late 70's. If you want to get a cultural feel for that time, or share it with someone else, this is better than any history book. While it does mock timely events and make timely references, it does not rely on them to the point of alienating subsequent generations; about as much as classic Loony Tunes or Monty Python.

In addition to the comedy, it also features some very candid performances by famous musicians, also in their early prime.

Why not:
The jokes do get a little dirty here and there; it is a late-night product of the swinger culture of NYC. It would be considered racy even by today's broadcast standards. It periodically makes references to people and events that are long-forgotten, even by those of us who were active in those days. The most intolerant youth might call it dated, and the pacing is of course slower than modern comedy. The skits that do rely too heavily on the forgotten are easily skipped.

Further, the quality is not strictly consistent. Some "weeks" are funnier/better than others. Some skits soar while some bomb. But even the weakest weeks are quite entertaining. But this is the result of it's organic nature. As it grew in consistency in the 80's, it lost genius.

If you like That 70's Show, you're going to LOVE this. It's the real deal.

Kudos:
Raw, hungry, fresh, energetic talent.

Demerits:
Occasional out-dated references.
A blu-ray edition would be appreciated with more special features, bookmarks and the ability to play only the musical segments.

Notes:
You might be given to buy one of the "Best Of" volumes, but you'd be cheating yourself. Again, each week had a flow. At the risk of comparing SNL with immortal classics, it would be like attending a Best Of Shakespeare. It would be like only watching the highlights of a sporting event. Too much of the overall experience is lost. Several youth I know never "got" the classic SNL until they sat down and watched complete episodes.

Verdict: Don't bore younger people with your old-people stories of how great the 70's used to be. Show them some of this and then just answer their questions.

The Ongoing Adventures of my Tongue: Taco Rice

Japanese Mexican food.

It's called taco rice (タコライス takoraisu).


As weird as that might sound, it truly rocks! But if you ever visited Japan's distant island of Okinawa, especially in the armed forces, or spent more than a week anywhere in Japan, you're probably familiar with it and don't see it as weird at all.

The One-Minute Lunch

For such a tiny, remote island Okinawa offers some remarkably unusual, yet delicious food.

Approachable

That's the word I'm looking for. Alot of "unusual" food around the world, good or bad, can be very unfriendly to the less-adventurous diner. Okinawan food, maybe for it's simplicity, doesn't look all that different from Chinese. If the spartan marines are eating it, it can't be all that esoteric. But the MC of Okinawan food is the humble taco rice.

Legend has it that it was first whipped up in the '60's by a local chef trying to please the palates of US servicemen by making tacos, but substituting local rice for the tortilla shells - the only component which was difficult to obtain out there (if you think about it, everything else is pretty basic).

It's essentially taco-seasoned ground beef, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and whatever else served on a bed of steamed rice. It's as good as it sounds, and a notably healthy alternative.

It's so easy to make that you just read the recipe. But for the sake of bullet points, I'll elaborate with helpful Japanese shopping links:

• Brown the ground beef, drain the fat, return it to the skillet, and cook for a few more minutes with water and taco seasoning
  (chili pepper, onion, garlic, pepper, cayenne, and maybe cumin and paprika).
  You can do your own seasonings, or just use a package of taco seasoning like I do.
  
  
• Serve the beef over steamed rice.


• Here, I like the traditional Japanese "sushi rice" (uruchimai). Maybe that's just because it's what I'm accustomed to but I think the starchy, stickiness of this rice works best with the spicy beef and cheese; supporting it without overpowering it. Sometimes I mix in a little brown rice for substance and healthiness. But just about any rice will do, I guess.
• Here, I like shred the cheese directly on the hot taco meat (oh, grow up!) so it will melt better. Now we're almost talking NACHO rice, which mine usually ends up resembling if I have enough cheese...so much for the health benefits.
• Chop up some lettuce or cabbage, tomatoes (cherry tomatoes, if  you have them on hand)...add some guacamole, onions, olives...whatever turns you on.
• Taco sauce or salsa on top. If you're in Japan, the best salsa by far is the Daniel's Fire Roasted line imported from the US. If you're in the States, you may know of  better brands, but I doubt it.  Daniel's Fire Roasted Salsas are so good, I've stopped making my own. The black bean and corn is my family's favorite. I used to get them at Sony Plaza when I was lucky enough to find them in stock until I found them online. Now I order them by the case and go through about a jar a week.
  You can order them from Rakuten through this link (complete links at the bottom):

★6,000円以上ご購入で送料無料！4月30日9時59分まで★《ダニエルズファイヤーロースト》サルサ... 価格：698円（税込、送料別）



• After That? Serve with beer and a kick-ass action movie. Might I suggest From Paris with Love?

• OR if sounds like too much work, heat up a  package of ready-made taco rice meat.

You can even speed up the process further by smashing a couple of plain onigiri/rice balls on a plate, adding the ready-made beef, and microwaving it (remove beef from foil bag first, genius).

Taco rice is equally popular with kids, at least in Japan. Try it with your kids and see what they think. Lemme know.

Either way, I'd like to hype Daniel's a little more. It's a small company, so I want to make sure they get all the business they deserve lest they stop selling in Japan and I lose my favorite condiment.
Try them all; they're all great.

トマトソースにハーブと乾燥燻製唐辛子をブレンド。濃厚だけれどマイルドな味。【monoria】〈Da... 価格：698円（税込、送料別）

★6,000円以上ご購入で送料無料！4月30日9時59分まで★《ダニエルズファイヤーロースト》サルサ... 価格：698円（税込、送料別）

★6,000円以上ご購入で送料無料！4月30日9時59分まで★《ダニエルズファイヤーロースト》サルサ... 価格：698円（税込、送料別）

ハラペーニョの辛みが病みつきになる、米国で多くの賞を受賞した自慢のサルサ。【monoria】〈Da... 価格：698円（税込、送料別）

フレッシュハラペーニョの刺激的な辛さがたまらない、辛いのが好きな方におすすめ。【monoria】... 価格：698円（税込、送料別）

Very Bad Neighbors

Man, talk about bad-to-worse.

We live and work in a walk-up above what use to be a ramen shop. It was a nice shop and we got along well with the family that ran the shop. About as bad as it got was in the mornings when we'd open the windows and catch a waft of the greasy, boiling pork stock. But it wasn't so strong. About like having a neighbor cooking.

Then they closed shop and moved out.

We went a year or so with a dark, cold, empty space under us. That made winters colder and I worried about it attracting crime or the landlord bulldozing the entire building.

Finally someone moved in; a couple of Nepali guys with the intention of opening an Indian curry restaurant. Initially that seemed great. More foreigners and Indian food a stair-way away.

What I didn't count on were foreigners and Indian food.

The Japanese put courtesy as a top priority at all times. They always start by asking themselves, "will this bother or inconvenience anyone?" Foreigners who learn to play like this do well locally. But most foreigners have no interest in this protocol.

Now we have people downstairs who might as well be Americans,  they're so inconsiderate.

• They play loud Indian music all night. 
• They block our entrance with delivery trucks.
• They throw trash in our garden and make a general mess of the area.
• They do noisy construction without regards to the acceptable construction hours.
• Unorthodox use of their plumbing has a sickening septic smell backing up through our kitchen sink regularly.
• They have completely filled up our "half" of the landing downstairs with garbage and junk to where we can't even get our bikes in and out. When we ask them to give us a little space, they just move things around.

The landlord could care less.

But the worst of it is the smell. It's really putting me off my love of curry. Our house is inundated with the reek of curry spices and garlic 24 hours a day. Even with the windows closed, it seeps up through the floors. Some days you can even SEE it as a yellow haze in the air. Our eyes burn and we have to run air filters all the time. There's nowhere to hang out our laundry that it won't come out smelling like curry.

I don't think they're mean. They're just inconsiderate. And I don't think I'm being bigoted by suggesting that it's cultural because my own American culture isn't in real practice one bit more considerate, as much as we Americans might like to think otherwise. We like to think we're so considerate, but growing up in Texas I met very few people who demonstrated such values. I must be turning Japanese.

Fear and Loathing in Tokyo Disneyland

It was without a doubt the weirdest time we've ever had at Tokyo Disneyland, and we go about twice a year. 

We went on a Friday, and we thought the school kids had one more week to go before spring break. Oh, how wrong we were. No grow-up ride had less than a three hour wait, and even the dinky ones had waits of 45 min and up. It's a Small World had a 50 min wait, if you can believe that. 

We started with high hopes and headed straight for Big Thunder Mountain (as I'm slowly overcoming my fear of roller coasters, that's a recent victory). The wait was three-and-a-half hours. It took thirty minutes just to get a ferry to Tom Sawyer Island. The canoes looked possible, but the wait for that was 45 min.

We wandered around for four hours and finally, crestfallen and defeated we decided to call it quits and go home, taking in Pirates of the Caribbean on the way out. The wait for that was down to 40 min, oh boy. The line snaked through parts we'd never even seen before. Once on, all the disappointment was forgotten and we were having the fun we'd come for...until they started making announcements that there were problems and that they'd be running the boats at half-speed. By the time we got to the part with Jack popping out of the barrel, the boats came to a dead stop. Lights on and sounds off. They announced that there was a warning light blinking and that we should please remain seated for our own safety. 

We remained safely seated for the next half hour.

It got kinda creepy with all the animatronics scuttling around, silently, endlessly. We started cutting up to kill time. Even the Japanese girls behind us started goofing on the endless announcement.

Finally staff in waders started coming around and pushing our boats back to evacuation points. It was too cool, getting to step off the ride and go backstage. They were amazingly professional and competent. Exiting backstage through a Spanish castle, everything looked like an industrial theater. Up some steel stairs and into the backyard. It looked a lot like a movie studio, with the sound-stage-esque buildings and trailers. We were wondering if they'd offer some compensation like a free ticket for another time. They gave everyone a pass for a ride of their choice. Without deliberation, we headed straight to Big Thunder Mountain where the wait was up to four hours...except for us! And what I didn't dare tell them was that we had so much fun evacuating that it was like being offered desert after having cake & ice cream. 

What started out as the worst ever trip to Disneyland turned out to be one of the best.

Here's a video of us stuck on the Pirates ride:

http://youtu.be/VsyU-kwDH40

I'm Really Losing Weight Now

This week I finally hit double-digits.
99 kgs.
I'm really losing weight!

I've lost about 10 kg in 13 months. That's 22 lbs, or one and a half stone. No liposuction or hellish diets.

At the start of 2012, my doctor told me I was dangerously overweight (by Japanese standards) and my blood pressure was almost high enough to require medication. He said I needed to lose weight at once.

I joined a health club at my wife's urging and worked out about twice a week. Weights, exercise bike, stretching and swimming. I eventually stopped swimming because it was too boring. I like to study, read or listen to music & podcasts while I exercise to pass the time, and you can't do that swimming.

For the first six months or so, I didn't see much progress. I'd drop about a half kilo every six weeks or so. It seemed pretty hopeless for the longest time. A voice in my head kept telling me to give it up as a waste of time. It seems like it took about six months of concerted exercise and diet to convince my body that I was serious about losing weight. Once my body got the message, it started dropping about a kilo a month.

Additional factors:

• I upped my aerobic exercise from 30 minutes twice a week on the exercise bike to one hour, three+ times a week on the elliptical machine, and with more weight training.
• I reduced evening meals to near-snack-sized portions; mostly soups and salads.
• I eat smaller portions overall.
• I cut out evening deserts.
• I phased alcohol from two drinks a night to roughly two drinks a week.
• I stopped smoking.
• I drink several liters of water every day.
• I cut out sodas.

Alot of these, like soda, desert and alcohol, I never would have considered relinquishing before. But reducing was easy. The more I reduced them, the more I reduced them. It wasn't hard, and I still indulge here and there. It's not like alcoholism, where you mustn't ever partake. I may even have a cigarette one of these days. I'm not being a nazi about it (sorry, is that offensive to Nazis?).

At first, I was making an effort to achieve progress. Now my progress is driving the effort.

Since the beginning, I'd been planning to celebrate this milestone with a big feast. But now I don't want to. I just want to keep going until I hit my target weight of 85.

The Fountain...of boredom

Film: The Fountain

Audience: me (46) and son (12)

One more off my to-watch list. Note to past self: don't bother.

I love weird. I love beautiful. I love sci-fi. I love fascinating stories and compelling characters. Darren Aronofski's The Fountain had too little of each. It's two-and-a-half interwoven stories. In one, Spanish conquistadors search for the biblical Tree of Life a la Garden of Eden. In another, a biologist is on the cusp of a breakthrough that could change humanity and save the life of his dying girlfriend. In the -and-a-half, the biologist is taking his girlfriend-tree up to a dying star in a magic space bubble. I was encouraged to watch it primarily for the visuals, and to a lesser extent the sci-fi and the drama.

The visual aspect:

As stunning as the visuals are at first, they don't stay fresh for long. You've seen the poster of a guy and a tree in a bubble floating into a nebula. That made for quite an image for a few minutes, but they just keep cutting back to it without giving us a clue what's going on. And that whole segment is so awash in some of the worst cliche, new-age pamphlet images that started getting on my nerves almost immediately. Lots of images of a bald guy in kung-fu pajamas meditating in the lotus position among the stars and bathed in a cosmic/spiritual light...gag. This third of the movie looks like every hokey new-age pamphlet you've ever dropped in a garbage can ten steps after some stinky hippy shoved it in your hand.

The sci-fi aspect:

What if you could live forever? Who knows? They pretty much asked the question, then moved on without looking back. A biologist finds a tree who's sap heals all ailments and could give eternal life, and possibly save his girlfriend who's dying of a brain tumor, which brings us to the final point...

The drama aspect:

...the biologist's lab boss comes in and tells him the cure works, seconds after his girlfriend dies in his arms. 

There's porn, where it's just people "doin' it" on screen for the sole purpose of giving you sexual arousal  without any aesthetic value. Recently the very useful term was coined, "torture porn" which provides some with sadistic arousal. After watching Fountain, I'm moved to further extend the construction to "tragedy porn" in which you're given to watch people being sad in the same fashion. Sad, sad, sad...the end. She's sick, and he's all emotional, but she's strong and "not afraid" (she keeps hitting us over the head with this fact). Then she's dead, and we get to watch everyone be sad for what seems an eternity--what if you could be sad forever? In lieu of  a story, they real-quick run through the textbook Kübler-Ross stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression & acceptance). Watching this with my son, we had one of those great comic moments of spontaneous synchronicity where I started the sentence and he finished it with me, "It would be really sad...if only we cared." That's it. There's no reason to care about them. We spend the first thirty minutes trying to sort out what the heck is going on as the film is intentionally weird and confusing, and the characters are more ciphers than souls which makes it hard to emotionally relate to or invest in them.

But I was a good viewer. I never fast-forwarded or skipped ahead. I had faith that there'd be some kind of payoff if I endured till the end. The payoff? A guy turns in to a bush. That's it. It was kinda cool, I guess. hardly worth two hours, though. Like the whole movie, pseudo-profound.

It imitates depth, and for a teenager, it might actually pass as deep. But it's really just that guy who's a pretentious freshman philosophy major trying to impress all the bimbos at the party with how deep he is.

Dark, dull, dour, slow and sophomoric. When it was finished I suggested my son put in a DVD of something less boring. He quipped, "that could be just about anything."

My advice, don't hesitate to fast-forward. You won't miss anything you can't see on x30 speed.