On Saturday, Judy and I took a trip up to Omiya in Saitama to have dinner with some friends. We arrived early with a couple of hours to spare, so we decided, despite the freezing wind, to take a little stroll around and revisit some of our old haunts. Naturally, the place we headed first was our old apartment.

I’ve written previously about the many tribulations we experienced while living there, but it was still nice seeing the place again. The shitty “brick pattern” plastic siding concealing the original rotting-wood-and-damp-paper structure beneath, the mailbox where I received approximately five pieces of mail over the course of an entire year, the window through which a burglar came in and robbed me of all of my valuables, and so on. Oh, and my old bicycle, which has since become an extremely dusty trash bin.

Yes, that’s right: I abandoned my bicycle when we moved to Tokyo two years ago. I am a very bad person.

But please allow me to explain. There are basically three ways to get rid of an old bicycle in Japan: 1) arrange for it to be taken away and properly disposed of for a fee, 2) leave it outside of a train station or other busy area to either be stolen or taken away by the city, or 3) abandon it in a nondescript location to either be stolen or eventually become part of the landscape of urban decay. I hadn’t intended to do the latter; in fact, I had originally planned to take it with us when we moved, but there ended up not being enough room for it in the mover’s small truck, and so the two guys from my company who lived nearby and were helping us move (one of whom had actually given me the bicycle, third-hand), told me to just leave it behind. And so, with a lack of time and more favorable immediate options, I did.

And to this day, there it sits; a gradually deteriorating eyesore, its former road-weaving glory long forgotten as it gathers layer upon layer of dust while now acting as nothing more than a convenient receptacle for passers-by to deposit their garbage.

I wonder how long it’ll be before someone decides to have it hauled away. . . .

Saw this last night in the drug store down the street from my apartment:

It might be a little difficult to discern, but here’s the deal: On the top shelf, individual refill packages of Dove body wash are priced at ¥298 each; on the bottom shelf, special two-package sets are available at a price of ¥598 each — ¥2 more than the cost of purchasing two individual packages(!).

Apparently, in Japan, there are instances where buying in bulk is actually more expensive than buying items individually.

Shop in Japan and watch your savings grow!

In Japan, the knowledge of how to perform a bow in the proper form is absolutely essential for the inevitable and no doubt countless occasions in which Japanese people will be upset with you for a perceived slight ensuing from something you had previously thought to be completely innocuous, such as putting your hands in your pockets or asking what time it is without sufficiently polite inflection.

For that reason, the masters of cultural omniscience who brought us The Japanese Tradition: Sushi also created an insightful instructional video about dogeza, the act of bowing in supplication to ask forgiveness for wrongdoing (likewise handy for facilitating the release of gas from the bowels). Click below to view The Japanese Tradition: Dogeza.

[WMV, 4.92MB]

This piece isn’t to the same level of brilliance of the sushi one, but it’s funny enough. In lieu of subtitles, the video has an additional English audio track, however it’s not of very good quality and it fades in an out and at one point disappears completely. Regardless, I’d say it’s worth a watch for a chuckle and for the opportunity to obtain valuable insight that anyone with relations with Japan will undoubtedly have a need to utilize someday when forced to beg for forgiveness for blowing his or her nose one decibel too loudly.

I had an amusing experience this morning that enlightened me as to a rather humorous way to wreak a little havoc in a train station during rush hour. As I entered the station, I noticed some commotion as I approached the escalator leading up to the platform. As I came nearer, a woman coming down the adjacent stairway brushed past me and I felt something tug at my jacket. I turned and looked at the woman, who, in turn, turned around to look at me with a mix of confusion and anger, and it became clear that we were both somehow entwined with some sort of thread (which I had immediately assumed had come from her coat). She tried to pull away with even stronger force, at which point I realized that I wasn’t actually bound to her, but rather she was bound to something else further away and I had merely walked in between.

Stepping over the thread, I made my way up the escalator, passing at least a dozen other people franticly trying to untangle themselves at the base of it and another half a dozen doing the same at the top. And there, rolling about on the top step of the escalator, was the culprit: a spool of plain blue sewing thread. This innocent little item had, likely by accident, forced a large number of people who otherwise pass by one another every day without so much as acknowledging each other’s existence to suddenly find themselves entangled together, all fighting to break free in a frenzied moment of panic and confusion. The looks on their faces were priceless (as likely was the one on mine).

So there you have it: one spool of high quality thread + loads of people moving about quickly in a confined space = a nice recipe for introducing some subtle chaos to the daily commute. Of course, I certainly don’t advocate anyone carrying out this prank themselves (especially not in the U.S. — you’d probably be charged with terrorism, if caught), but it was a humorous diversion from the dull morning routine, nonetheless.

One night last week I took a different route from my office back to Shibuya station in order to pick a couple of things up from Bic Camera. (And yes, to anyone who might be curious: they’re completely sold out of Nintendo DS’s.)

As I crossed the street and approached the station to head home, I heard the sound of some very funky grooves in the vicinity and followed my tone-deaf ears to an area off to the side of the station building. There I came upon a trio composed of the following members: a drummer, a bassist and — rather surprisingly — a tap dancer. The bassist was playing a succession of different grooves, to which the drummer was providing a funky beat, to which the tap dancer was providing tap the accompaniment — all combining to create one of the coolest things I’ve ever witnessed.

Now, I normally wouldn’t associate tap dancing with “coolness” or anything even remotely funky, but the tap dancer tapping away that night was nothing less than amazing. Watching the trio perform made me wish longingly that I had been born with any discernible sense of rhythm, instead of the whatever-the-hell awkward whiteboy anti-rhythm that I’ve been cursed with, leaving me completely incapable of any sort of musical output or the ability to get down in a non-spastic manner.

After standing around watching for about ten minutes or so, I took out my camera and took a bit of video of the performance. Unfortunately, my memory card was nearly full with photos from Hawaii, so I only got about 20 seconds of it. Even more disappointing, the tap dancer was by that point clearly extremely exhausted (in fact, he stopped dancing and doubled over to catch his breath about five seconds after I stopped filming), so what I did manage to film barely manages to capture the awesomeness of his talent.

Anyhow, anyone interested in seeing the short video clip can find it here. [AVI, 5.34MB]

Well, Judy and I are back from Hawaii. The wedding and the honeymoon were more incredible than could ever have been imagined and the time absolutely flew by. It was so great being able to see our families and friends again; I only wish that we could have had more time to spend with everyone and catch up.

I’m planning to write a bit about the wedding and the trip as a whole, plus I have a ton of photos to post, but right now I think my mind is still processing all that took place. That, and I’ve been incredibly busy since we got back — not as busy as before we left, but pretty darn close.

My apologies for the three-week absence without so much as a “Hi, I’m in Hawaii and it’s warm and sunny so neener-neener-neener!!” I had originally planned to set up daily random photo posts as I have when I’ve been away in the past, but I didn’t even have the time to do that. I’ve got a few ideas for new posts in mind that I’ll put up as time permits, but for now, here’s a small sneak peak of some of the photos to come:

Gosh, how cheesy can you get, right?