My favourite web app at the moment is the fantastic Navitime. It’s a map, it plans routes - either by Japan’s notoriously pricey expressways or regular roads, and with an estimated taxi fare and carbon emission total (if you’re a hippy: exhaust fumes rock) - train routes, and all sorts of good stuff.
And it’s just got a spiffy new look.
I swear, if I couldn’t already I’d learn Japanese just to use this bad boy.
What a couple of weeks. Aside from being landed with a job at work recently which is not unlike trying to juggle chainsaws while wearing handcuffs, university has kicked in for realz. Not for me, the Sunday night spent curled up with a good book, a pipe and a glass of sherry. Oh no. I was designing a subtring search algorithm (which probably has more holes than the average The A-Team episode plot) and all but pogoing off the walls.
Last weekend was better. My darling adoptive mother and big sister took a trip up from Kitakyushu, so we had one night out in Shinjuku and a day in Yokohama.
J-nee likes to think she can outdrink me. She cannot, but she staggers in such a cute way I pretended to be more drunk than I really was to make her feel better.
Oh, and before we hit Yokohama’s Chinatown for late lunch, we visited the Meguro Parasitological Museum.
Try to think about parasites without a feeling of fear, and take the time to learn about their wonderful world of the Parasites.
There was a photo there, now seared into the area that I used to keep my happy place in, of a man whose scrotum had swollen to the size and length of his leg.
Wonderful.
Here, have a look at the Japan Memorial Day Association if you don’t believe me.
Since Japan is into frankly ridiculous methods of personality categorisation, I looked it up. Apparently, those born on the day of the Tyre Gauge are:
Quiet. Calculating. Never the life of the party, but you can always depend on one in a pinch. Prone to occasionally violent mood swings. Their lucky number is eighteen, and their lucky colour is maroon.
Huh.
Update: Apart from the Tyre Gauge Day thing, I made it all up.
A friend of a friend is doing training for her new job.
we started our ‘business manner seminar’ today and we learnt the 3 different types of bowing, 5 different types of keigo, and the 100 million ways you can present your business card.
laughing and learning at the same time is quite tricky…!
But as we all know, Japanese business is a highly ritualized affair, where the slightest gaffe in handing over your business card can sully the future working relationship and blah. Blah. BLAH.
I tried to come up with some more amusing methods of handing over your business card. (more…)
Well, not actually. But I had my first traffic stop on my way to work today, and it was actually a relatively painless experience. Dialogue may not be 100% accurate.
Baby blue (from car): Oi, you on the bike!
Rog sighs inwardly and pushes bike over to meet him, while BB steps out of the patrol car to reveal himself in full jumpsuited glory.
BB: You know that scooters have to do a two step turn when turning right?
R: Yes, but this isn’t a crossroads. Plus, that’s a no entrance sign, so there’s nowhere to stop.
BB: But you can’t turn right like that. Even when no-one is coming. It’s dangerous. (more…)
Go to this site here. Do it now. Now.
Got it open?
Good.
You see that jerkily-animated doodle of a green chicken up there? God only knows how much he cost. He was designed by a guy who used to work at au, and who presumably dashed the whole thing off perched atop the lavatory before shuffling over to his Mac, trous about ankles, to invoice the client for some unholy sum.
To make matters worse, though, Marketing presumably had a meeting powered by muffins, joss-sticks and whalesong to come up with a name.
His name is John-Pierre Cock Cocco.
It’s from the site’s TLD. See? jp… Jean-Pierre.
I can’t feel my legs.
Ha. Was flicking through Memoirs of a Gaijin when I found a reference to a comment I left on YongFook a while ago about an idea for a game. (more…)
Large — and by implication conservative — Japanese companies can exhibit a resistance to change that makes some of the major religions look flighty by comparison. That young Turk Toshi may have a good plan, but without rolling up his sleeves and putting in a bit of nemawashi (根回し), it’s doomed. (more…)
I’m trying to be good and save dosh at the moment, but every so often I have a relapse and splurge on books. A couple of days ago I had just a moment of weakness in Junkudo, but at the last moment common sense kicked in and I whittled my shopping basket contents down from about 10 (inc. big glossy photo collections) to 3. I think I did pretty well.
Anyway, I just thought I’d share my 3 favourite places to buy books in English in Tokyo. (more…)
Last weekend, Paul, Laila, his mates Kaye and Dan, Yoko, Tomoe and I joined Yu-sama for her birthday in Ikebukuro. (more…)
