World Wide Mike

Have a look at today’s XKCD, in which our hero has an amazing dream filled with action, drama, and incredible experiences. By the time he has a chance to relay its happenings, it’s faded to only a tiny portion.

This has been happening to me almost every morning lately. I have an epic dream that I forget within seconds of waking up. All that’s left are a few short incoherent scenes. One of my aunts once told me, a sure way to forget one’s dream is to look out the window when you wake up. This is pretty tough for me, considering two of our bedroom walls are pretty much all glass.

Just saw Weezer‘s Pork and Beans video on YouTube:

Pure gold. If you’re unsure who all those strange people are, read about the video here.

On Friday morning we set out for Nikko. The weather was nice, so we hiked around the area first, along the river spotting smooth rocks formed from lava, then 2km uphill to a waterfall. We stayed in a Japanese-style room in a bed and breakfast, enjoying their onsen in the evening.

The next day was a bit rainy while we wandered from temple to shrine. The grandiose temples set amidst tall green trees, the air crisp and clear, inspired feelings of awe and serenity. That is, until later on in the morning, when the crowds and noise swelled enough to burst the bubble.

The train route led through the countryside where rice is grown. I snapped a few pictures through the train window on the way back.

See all the pictures here.

In this post we cover more BMWs, more protests, more earthquakes, more paperwork and more traveling!

Beijing Olympics Protest

Shux and I finally made our way to check out Alexander Calder’s BMW Art Car on Tuesday. As we walked through Tokyo Station toward Yaesu and the BMW Group Studio, we heard some sort of noise in the distance. Soon we saw a parade walking down the street.

At its head was a black van with loudspeakers (a common sight in Japan; these trawl the city spewing some sort of propaganda regularly, often on Sunday mornings in residential areas). This time an angry Japanese man was manning the mic, each of his chants repeated by those marching. The group consisted mainly of men in some sort of uniform, pseudo-police or military or something. They carried flags, one large rising sun, a Tibetan flag, an upside-down Chinese flag with a turd drawn on it and other banners with slogans. We figured out pretty quickly they were supporting Tibet and wanted the Beijing Olympics boycotted by Japan.

The whole protest was rather small. The police presence was not. Cops walked along either side of the march, every few meters. Cops on motorcycles were there blocking off traffic, cop vans helping out, and so on. But that wasn’t all. A few minutes after we first started watching, there seemed to be a disagreement brewing between some of the protesters and an officer or two. Before we knew it, there were more cops there than protesters. Or at least that’s how it seemed. Fortified buses that transport riot police were there, cops with those big shields showed up… things looked just a little tense for a moment.

Soon we found ourselves in front of the BMW Group Studio, our destination, so we let the protesters march on.

The First BMW Art Car

On display at BMW’s location next to Tokyo Station was Alexander Calder’s 1975 BMW 3.0 CSL (there was also a new BMW M3 Coupe). Here we were allowed to take some photos.

One of the attendants was pretty informative, talking about the car a little and about the other 5 on display at the Mori Art Gallery. She also showed us the 16th BMW Art Car by Olafur Eliasson in a magazine. Given that you can’t even tell that it’s a car, I give this a thumbs down. I totally don’t get it.

New Visa

I have found work and this partly meant I need to change my visa. My previous visa allowed me to work but only for my previous employer. I submitted all the paperwork a little over 3 weeks ago, and Wednesday was the day to go pick it up.

I decided to get an early start and arrived at the immigration office by 8:15am. The building wasn’t open yet, so there was a queue of about 50 people in front of the door. Another 50 or so were just hanging around here and there. At 8:30 the doors opened and everyone stormed in. What’s the point of the queue? I guess all the newbies (like me) line up! The scene was amusing, like a flood of little children rushing in the opening gates of Disneyland.

(When I came to submit my papers in April it was raining. As I was walking up to the entrance, a bus pulled up and some women went sprinting from the bus. One of them had a wicked wipe-out on the slick floor inside! It was amusing.)

After waiting in a couple more queues and watching live coverage of the Chinese President’s visit to Tokyo for an hour, I became the proud owner of a brand new 3-year Engineering work visa. Sweet! This also means I will start work on Monday. That’s good news!

Driver’s License

I thought I’d take advantage of my day out and about settling paperwork to get a Japanese driver’s license. The process for those holding a Canadian issued license is pretty straightforward: get your license translated at JAF (the local version of the AMA or CAA), then take that to the driver’s license center and hang out there a while.

Everything went smooth until I got to the driver’s license center and discovered the window I needed to go to was closed from 11:00-13:00. I got a number, then got my lunch and a solid siesta, at which point it was time to produce all the documents they needed. Turns out I was short a letter from the registry stating when my license was first issued.

I was a bit miffed at this; nowhere had I read that I needed such a document… but I guess that’s my own fault. The fact that all these places I visited were a 30+ minute commute away from each other, and I live an hour away made it seem like a waste.

Anyway, that night I asked my parents to drop by the registry and get these letters, which they scanned and emailed me right away. Today, with printed letters in hand I headed back, and after 90 minutes was holding my new Japanese driver’s license. I can drive a car or ride a motorcycle up to 400cc.

Earthquake!

We had a bunch of earthquakes last night right around 2am (there were more later in the night). The biggest struck at 1:54am, it was around magnitude 3 where we live. Shux woke up to lots of rattling outside, the bed shaking, noise… she gives me a shove and I wake up.

“There’s an earthquake!” she says. I remember noticing it myself, the bed was definitely not still. But I must have been tired ’cause I just said something like “uh-huh” and went back to sleep. I only remember that snippet. Meanwhile, Shux is laying in bed terrified, until all of a sudden everything stops and there’s this eerie silence. She found it difficult to fall back asleep.

It’s kind of strange, I wonder why I just fell right back asleep? It’s not like I’ve experienced earthquakes all my life or anything. And I guess this one was about the strongest that I have experienced (though I can’t confirm that as I wasn’t really awake!). Poor Shux, lay there in terror waiting for sleep to come, getting no rest for the coming day.

This Weekend: Nikko

We’ll have a good chance to relax this weekend though, as we’re heading to Nikko. We’re leaving Friday morning and staying until Saturday night. Nikko is famous for its temples and shrines and cool weather, but there’s also a lake and mountains, so we’ll have some nature to experience. At any rate, it will be nice and relaxing — hopefully the earthquakes will let Shux sleep

Yesterday Shux and I headed to the to check out the BMW Art Car exhibit. In line for tickets we discovered there’s also a Turner Prize exhibit, as well as an open-air observation deck on top of the building, so we decided to see it all.

Tokyo City View & Sky Deck

The observation deck on the 52nd floor of Mori Tower offers great views of almost all around (some parts are blocked by a restaurant). The weather wasn’t bad, but overcast with rain threatening, so some pictures look a little gloomy. In fact, the open-air Sky Deck was closed for the day due to inclement weather — it was re-opened though once we got upstairs.

The view was pretty impressive. On one hand everything seemed so close, but on the other you begin to understand how large and sprawling Tokyo is. Past Haneda Airport is a large building seemingly sitting alone on the water. I didn’t know what it was, but I managed to get a picture of it (with the terrible 16x digital zoom on my camera).

I tried asking what it was, but one person didn’t know and the other spoke Japanese which I couldn’t understand. I looked it up on Google Maps where I learned it’s called 風の塔 (Kaze no tō). It’s the mid-point of the 9.6km tunnel portion of the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line.

The towers blow fresh air into the tunnel. They are built on an artificial island which is also home to a rest stop with restaurants, shops & amusement facilities. I need to go check it out sometime!

See more pictures of Tokyo from the top of Mori Tower.

Transparent Speed: BMW Art Cars

I had heard about the BMW Art Cars some time ago. I only remembered that some old 70s BMWs were painted by some famous artists, Andy Warhol among them. Anyway, I was looking forward to looking at these unique cars.

There seems to be a total of 15 of these cars, however only 5 were on display:

• 1976 BMW 3.0 CSL by Frank Stella
• 1977 BMW 320i by Roy Lichtenstein
• 1991 BMW Z1 by A. R. Penck
• 1995 BMW 850CSI by David Hockney
• 1999 BMW V12 LMR by Jenny Holzer

A little disappointed that not all 15 were there to view. There’s still Alexander Calder’s 1975 BMW 3.0 CSL, the car that started it all, on display at the BMW Group Studio in Marunouchi. We’ll be taking it in today.

History in the Making: A Retrospective of the Turner Prize

I’m not much into art, but once in a while I can appreciate it. Some of the stuff on display was rather interesting. I guess the Turner Prize tends to evoke lots of controversy over the art nominated. For example, Damien Hirst‘s cow and calf, each split in half and put in separate boxes so one can view the inners of each beast (shown in the Turner Prize poster). Also refreshing was that the items on display weren’t only paintings and sculptures, but also photography, video and performance (of which video was displayed).

Today is Monday but it’s Children’s Day in Japan, part of Golden Week, so no work today. Instead, we slept in and we’ll be exploring more today and tomorrow!

The Flames lost today, it was Game 7 of their first round playoff series against the Sharks. Jeremy Roenick scored two goals and two assists for a total of 4 points.

While it’s too bad the Flames lost, I must say I applaud Roenick’s achievement. After all, “[i]t’s not even so much me, it’s Roenick. He’s good.”

Yes, it has been. Last you heard from me the sakura had just bloomed and the city was turning pink and the family was on their way to visit. Today we’ll just gloss over the highlights and I’ll point you to some pictures I recently uploaded.

The day before our visitors arrived, Shux and I went for a walk to admire the cherry blossoms. We ended up at the Yasukuni Shrine. Pictures here.

Once the family was here, we did a bunch of sightseeing: the Meiji Shrine, sakura at Kitanomaru Park, Asakusa, Ueno, Yokohama, Hakone and more. Lots of shopping, too! Pictures here.

One of the places we missed was Odaiba. Neither Shux nor I had been there before, and we didn’t realize how interesting it’d be for visitors. We checked it out a few days after our guests left; pictures here.

Finally, tomorrow is Shux’s birthday. In honor of this wonderful event in our calendar, I arranged for a surprise weekend at Tokyo Disneyland. I booked a hotel room for Friday night and told Shux we’d go out for dinner. We met at her office when she was done with work, and headed to “a good seafood restaurant I read about.” After walking a few minutes to our hotel “looking for the restaurant,” Shux finally caught on when I started checking in at the front desk.

The next morning we were up early to make the most of Tokyo Disneyland. We hit up Space Mountain first thing, and also enjoyed a bunch of other rides and lots of popcorn (which we waited a long time for) and other junk food. Tokyo Disneyland is smaller than the one in Anaheim, but it was pretty fun nonetheless. Many rides were identical, like Pirates of the Caribbean or the Haunted Mansion. The latter was entirely in Japanese though, which probably contributed to our lack of fear. It was too cold for Splash Mountain. Pictures here.

Perhaps in the future I will write more details about the past few weeks… but somehow that’s doubtful

In the Yankees clubhouse, Derek Jeter and Bobby Abreu are making a wager on who will get married first. Hideki Matsui comes up and says he wants in.

Then Godzilla sneaks off to New York to get married. Nobody knew. What a very very sneaky guy!

Spring is here and it’s no more obvious than the sakura making an appearance around the city. Today I snapped the first photos of my first sakura experience.

These line the street connecting our place to the closest train station, planted inside the secure concrete fence of the Jietai base:

Also on my excursion today (to pick up new curtains for our apartment) I came by what must be one of the few Krispy Kreme establishments in Japan. Here’s what the Shinjuku location looks like:

You can tell it’s popular by the queue, which continues at the top of the stairs near the right edge of the picture. Whenever I walk by there, I think “maybe today the queue will be short enough for me to justify waiting for some donuts”, but this hasn’t come true yet. Maybe someday.

My mother-, brother- and sister-in-law are coming to visit on Monday. Just in time for the sakura season. We wanted to go to Kyoto next weekend but accommodations are very tough to come by. I think we may be doing a series of day-trips instead.

At any rate, stay tuned for more pictures in the coming days

This past weekend, Shux and I headed to the Good Honest Grub in Ebisu for brunch. We couldn’t find the restaurant we set out for, so Shux stepped into a Tully’s for directions. One of the workers asked what the place is called, then went into a back room, looked it up, printed the map from the website, came outside with us to point us in the directions we should head. Very nice!

Unfortunately, we still didn’t manage to find it*… but we came across a different place, Fummy’s Grill, and ate there. I had one of the best eggs benedict, ever. They were delicious. And they came with the best potato wedges, too, they were perfect. Mmm…

* Shux tells me that apparently the Ebisu location has been closed …for about 3 years!

After brunch we checked out an English used bookstore, and picked up a couple of Japanese food cookbooks. While we’re living here, might as well try cooking some local fare, when the ingredients are fresh and readily available at any grocery store!

So on the way back we stopped to pick up some things for dinner. We’re standing in an aisle, trying to figure out which dashi powder to buy — the one in the package looks white, the one in the book looks yellowish, what about this pasty looking stuff? After a while we just picked two of them, figuring at least one should be what we’re looking for.

We got all our ingredients except for chestnuts. As the lady at the cash register is ringing our items through, Shux opens the cookbook and points to a picture saying “Chestnut?” The lady looks and looks, shakes her head… calls one of her co-workers, he comes to take a look… another customer leans over, the lady from the neighboring cash register also looks, and all of a sudden we have a small crowd looking at this chestnut picture. “Chestnut-to?”

We didn’t find any chestnuts at that store, despite the many helpful sets of eyes. We got home, searched the net for more details on what these ingredients really were, then hit another grocery store to try our luck. No fresh chestnuts there either, but there were some in the snack aisle, ready to eat. These would do just fine…