Starbucks in Kichijoji

Kichijoji is changing.

Which bit?

Especially that famous street, the one that’s in the guidebooks.

The one that runs from the station to Inokashira Park?

That’s the one. You know how the street used to have a nice atmosphere, lots of young people, lined with restaurants and coffee shops?

Used to?

Used to. Restaurants mostly gone now, Starbucks is hanging on. But it’s mainly lurching towards clothing stores. Shops selling shoes. And junky accessories.

Pity. The restaurants gave the street an ambience, even on wet nights. Bit too many young people for my taste but that did make the place lively. And now?

Now even primary school children are wandering up and down shopping for fashion goods.

Places change. No food to speak of at Starbucks so I guess we'll have to eat elsewhere.
...

As good as gold

Sorry but this is going to take a while. There are over a fifty boxes and each box has ten to twenty envelopes.

How many houses did he rob?

Around a couple of hundred. Of course some people may not have reported a break-in.

Wow. Couple of hundred. Busy man. And now you've got him he's unemployed?

He was a bad man. Anyway, let's get started, see if any of yours are here. Mostly coins, was it?

Coins and ingots.

Bit of a problem with the classifications. We have medals which might be coins, we have pendants which might also be coins. What else?

Ingots. like this. Here's a sample.

I recall seeing some of those but I think we called them pendants or bars.

How long do you think this will take? I have an appointment at five.

Better cancel it. Probably take three hours plus an hour for writing the report.

Robber caught Part 2

And how did you catch him?

His boot print.

But that, by itself …

We asked around. Shops selling Hanes boots. We made up identikit pictures and asked who had bought boots like that and circulated the pictures at stations up and down the Central Line.

And you got a result?

There was, as you put it, a result. At one or two stations JR staff thought they recognized the face. So we put officers on watch there and one day, at one station we saw someone.

You grabbed him?

Oh, no, we followed him, we watched him, we put his room under surveillance.

You got a warrant?

We did the paperwork. And late one night…

You went in?

We knocked. He was asleep. He tried to run away.

He was dangerous?

No. But we knew straightaway we’d got him. His house was full of stuff.

Stuff?

Cash piled high. Gold, silver, diamonds, platinum. All neatly organized into groups. He was all set to go back to Korea. Come in tomorrow and we’ll try to identify your stuff.

The Good Shepherd

The name’s wrong. The Biblical meaning is one who takes care of his flock. But Edward Wilson didn’t take particularly good care.

I actually think he did. He took care of his son so much that the son followed his father’s footsteps. He did his job so that in his own way, he was taking care of his country.

Well many of the reviews came down hard on it. Tedious, overlong, lack of feeling.

I know. 56% on Rotten Tomatoes. But the reviewers who liked it, they really, really liked it.

You’re just saying that because you’ve watched it, how many times?

Five times. This is my fifth. I get a lot out of it each time.

Like?

Like spies are colorless guys. Spymasters are even colder fish. And yet they are still human beings. Spying is a dull business. And the spyosphere is a treacherous pool. And yet somebody’s got to do it.

That’s a lot of times to watch a movie just to learn something everybody already knows.

But there are the stark lines. Like when James Allen says ‘Bad habit.’ And Edward Wilson asks, “What, seeking approval or eating chocolate?’ And Wilson answers, ‘Both.’

Great lines? Those?

It’s in the delivery. And their roles. Allen is a chief. He may be a mole. And Wilson is suspicious Allen could be a mole. Ordinary exchanges become stark and charged.

Cat nap

How was your day?

Well, it began pretty badly. I was woken at 5 AM to the sound of a bang in the kitchen.

Burgled again?

Cat burglar. A real cat. He’d knocked over the trash can in the kitchen. Koge, the local ginger cat, he pulled open the screen door with his paw, Ive seen him do this before, and found some mussels I’d thrown out.

You threw out mussels?

A month past their use by date. Anyway, he’d wolfed the lot and took off when I woke up.

You chased him out?

Didn’t have the heart. He's a stray. He wandered out the door and sat outside licking his chops for a bit.

Thought he was just the cat’s whiskers?

Cat’s pajamas, given the hour. Anyway, as the Norwegians say, it’s better to feed one cat than many mice.

Rainy day back up

What’s a good indoor activity on a rainy day?

Straightening up the books in the shelves?

Done that.

Polished the door handles?

All clean.

Backing up computer files? I know you haven’t installed an app that does it automatically yet.

I know it’d be much faster, but it’s not a question of speeding up the mechanics of the process. It’s a question of naming folders and files so I can find stuff.

Why bother when Google can find anything on your computer?

Still got to give the folders and files useful labels so the google-hound can sniff ‘em out.

Not necessarily. Google can find files if you give it strings of text within the files.

Scary. Not only that but I like to file stuff according to categories that I make up.

You’re a control freak, you know that?

It may make life a bit more complicated, but it all makes sense to me. I have close on a hundred My Documents folders. From Articles in the As, Blogs in the Bs, Cooking in the Cs, and so on down to Websites in the W’s.

Zs?

Don’t have any Z’s. A few in the subfolders. And there are thousands of those. In my Blog folder alone I have close to five hundred subfolders named and dated.

But doesn’t all this folder-naming and I imagine, file-naming, take up a lot of time?

No way round it I guess. Good decisions take time. And anyway, we get a lot of rainy days here.

Marketing pencils

I read about this pencil maker, a count, who threw 144 pencils out a window to show they were stronger and better than other pencils.

Were they?

Apparently not one broke. Amazing, huh. Anyway, I wanted one of these pencils for myself. I can’t afford luxury goods but I thought I could stretch to a good quality pencil. I found one in Yuzawaya. Only 80 yen.

That much? You get a whole dozen Chinese 2Bs for only a hundred yen at the one coin store. Does yours write well?

You bet. Look. I proved that the German pencil writes much better than the Chinese pencil. I ran a scientific test. I wrote a word using a 2B Chinese pencil and the same word using a 2B Faber-Castell. Controlled all the variables. Temperature, lighting, humidity, speed of writing. Even wrote the words at the same time.

Yourself?

Of course. What’s the point of using two different people? I used the Chinese pencil in my left hand and the German pencil in my right hand.

A somewhat skewed test, wouldn’t you say? So how does it handle? What will the German instrument do that a Chinese one won’t?

All right. Not a lot in it. But you get this feeling of power, that you are using something that costs ten times the price of anyone else’s pencil.

Make-up classes

We'll have to do extra classes to make up for the two weeks measles closed us down. Here's the schedule.

This is a bit weird. Why do we have to teach one more week after the final exams?

There are some problems.

No students will turn up after exams.

Well, the contractors are taking out asbestos out of the annex over the summer, the building will be closed, and some students are going on overseas programs...

So in effect, the final week is only a paper week?

A paper week?

Teachers come to school but teach no students. Just to keep the books straight?

I can't come out in the faculty meeting and say that.

What will you say?

We'll call it an exam review week. And to stifle faculty protests at the meeting, just say it's to fit in with the new ministry directive. Nobody says boo to anything from the ministry.

Filing photographs

Boxes. Boxes and boxes.

Of?

You know. Stuff. Papers. Photos.

Throw them out.

Can’t really. Not all of it. Some might be useful Like photos. Pass them onto the family.

You could scan them into the computer. Take up less space. Less dusty too.

I will. I intend to. It’s a job I’ve got earmarked after I retire. Meantime it’s as much as I can manage just to download photos I take with my digital camera.

You really need to do that?

Well, some are good. I do admit there's an awful lot of junk. Specially since with a digicam you end up taking so many. But even an amateur like me can end up with some halfway decent shots after cropping and adjusting the light and contrast.

Mmm.

The problem is filing them.

I file mine by subject, place, date and version. Like this one. Ferrari taxi race, Kichijoji, 070513b. Then group them into folders with common themes.

Time consuming?

Sure, but it beats having your computer turn into a shoebox of unsorted photos.

Hanging back from the cutting edge

The Reverend John Traherne said in The Admirable Crichton, “I’ve always been a second eleven sort of a chap.” Didn’t think much of that at the time or for a good while after but these days I can see merit in it.

Merit?

Like in IT. Things move so fast it often doesn’t pay to be at the cutting edge. Products are experiments, they break down, they’re not supported, they’re discontinued when they prove unpopular.

Know what you mean. If you wait you get a tested product at a cheaper price. 3G mobile networks, wireless technology, who is actually using them yet?

Oh they’ll get there, but I just grumble about being the guinea pig who pays for company R&D.

So you reckon hasten slowly?

More than that. Haste makes waste.

Wood and IT

I went into a computer store today and there’s this poster of a guy sitting in an empty room ordering a fiber-optic connection.

So?

So, there’s something incongruous about this wood floor, with a view of trees out the window. So analog. Somehow I associate the digital world, high tech with, with…

Metal?

And plastic.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. No reason why electrical goods can’t have wooden cases. There are firms that have started this.

Scandinavian!

Well, as it happens, one or two are. Swedish. Those Scandinavians have a knack of starting the design process from people. And there’s an Italian maker of wooden laptops.

And engineers in other countries design from the machine end?

They sometimes get things backwards. What was it someone said about engineers? They wash their hands before going to the toilet.

Oil pulling

What’s that for?

The oil? Sesame seed oil. Cold pressed.

You’re going to drink it?

No, no. Not drink it. Swirl it around inside my mouth for 15 to 20 minutes. Called oil pulling.

You’re mad. You’re definitely off your rocker.

A Russian doctor, called Karach, reckons it will cure all sorts of conditions by pulling toxins out of the body. Through the teeth. Through blood vessels in the mouth. A tablespoon every morning. Must be cold pressed.

Cold pressed, eh?

Before breakfast. You swirl it around inside your mouth, suck it between your teeth, spit it out, don’t swallow. Full of germs so wash the basin after. And rinse your mouth out with Listerine.

Well the early morning mouth wash is probably a good thing. But, look, if the toxins can leak from the blood into the mouth, don’t you think that toxins from the mouth could leak back into the blood?

Well, it’s probably harmless. I mean the oil pulling proponents aren’t hard-selling any wonder product.

Maybe. But isn’t just possible that that website promoting oil pulling might just be looking for traffic so they can sell advertising on their site? By google clicks? How can you be sure the makers of Listerine aren’t promoting oil pulling?

Toyota Prius

I nearly had an accident three times on the way home.

No!

And all three vehicles were the same kind of car.

Some kind of speed car?

Not at all. Eco-friendly Toyota Priuses. One driver darted out of a side road without looking, the second one changed lanes suddenly without signalling. Both of them nearly knocked me off my bike.

And the third?

The third came down the street as I was walking up the road to buy milk, no lights, using its silent electric motor and nearly bowled me. I know they are worthy cars designed to reduce pollution but why are the kind of driver they attract so bad?

According to your rather limited anecdotal sample. But you think there is a correlation between ecological awareness and bad driving?

There's a problem for freakonomics.

School closes Part Two

I went into school this morning and Shimizu san and the office staff were wearing masks.
Well it is a contagious disease.
But they’ve all had it when they were kids.

Anyway, they shouted at me in unison, "Get out of here! Go home!"
But you don’t have a home. You’re just camping here.
I told them, I'm between houses. And I asked "How long for?" and Shimizu san said sort of muffled like, behind the mask, "It's not measles, it's more serious, it's tinnitus and we have to close the school until September.
So what are you going to do?
I know it’s a bit of an imposition to stay here trying to do some work in your place. So I wonder if maybe I should leave the country for a bit.
Any ideas?
Somewhere with good Internet connections. Libraries, universities. Few distractions. I was thinking is Phuket a tinnitus-free area?

Japanese travel agency

One air ticket from Tokyo to Kumamoto. Domestic flight. It should have been simplicity itself.

And it wasn’t?

Step one: agent goes to one computer and looks up flights. Writes down a selection of flight numbers and departure times on a piece of paper and brings them back to the desk and shows me. I pick an evening flight the 19:05.

The last flight of the day?

Right. So then she goes away again to another computer and types in my name, flight number, age and passport number, and it prints out an itinerary and she shows me.

Not the ticket?

I say OK to the itinerary. Now she goes to a third computer and types in my name, flight number, age and passport number again.

That’s for the ticket?

No, that’s to check for seat availability. So now she comes back a fourth time, all this walking I’m surprised she’s not whistling ‘I love to go a-wandering’ and says there are seats available.

Now you’ve got a ticket?

Wait! She then fills in a form which is an application for the ticket. She takes it out to a back room and several minutes later comes back and says she will telephone when the ticket has arrived.

And how long is that?

Two days. That’s my experience of a hi-tech Japanese travel agency. E-ticketing has not landed here yet.

School closed

There was a call for you. No classes tomorrow. School's closed tomorrow.

No!

Measles outbreak.

Pull the other leg.

True. 17th to the 30th.

Well, that'll give me a chance to got to the clinic and see what these spots are.
...

Leo's back

Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.

He's back. And back on his birthday. His first birthday.

This is a kitty-came-back story to beat them all. You say he was just sitting outside the front door?

Crouching down, scared. Tiny meow.

He's OK?

Fine, apart from some seeds stuck in his fur.

Leo, where have you been for two days?

Who knows?

I wonder if the upstairs people were keeping him in there? You remember we heard a faint meow yesterday, from above, when we calling his name? Am I being too suspicious?

I know there are people who do pick up cats and take them in a for few days. And the lady up there is certainly cat friendly. But he could just as well have been lying low in bushes for the forty-eight hours. He's never going to tell us.

Anyway, happy birthday, Leo. Card, candle and cake.
...

Classic complete cover type

The vet says you’ve got about a week to find him. After that the cat will forget its owner’s voice.

So if he’s in hiding he won’t come out?

Exactly.

Well take a look at this. This website categorizes indoor cats, meaning those that have no outdoor skills, into three personality types. The first type is the classic complete cover, the second the amiable walkabout type and the third is the feral wanderer type.

Leo’s not feral.

He’s the classic complete cover type.

The what?

Classic complete cover. Fears outdoors, doesn’t take to strangfers,

He’s gone into hiding. Maybe no more than a few houses away. But being outside makes him a hider. Lurks under cars, burrows into stuff stacked in dark sheds, won’t come out.

And how do you deal with that?

Flyers, walk around calling his name in the quiet of the night, maybe even go so far as to set traps. Look, in some of these cases people have searched for weeks, months even, and the cat has turned up. So the vet’s view may not be totally right.

But in this case we have extra factors: lots of dogs, traffic, birds sounding a very early dawn chorus, not to mention those fearsome crows which might push him further away. And then he’ll be even less likely to emerge.

Which is why we have to go out right now, in the dead of night, calling out 'Leo, Leo,' and rustling his nosh bag.

Self fulfilling prophecy

Whoops. Something did happen.

Yeah. Leo's been gone a whole day now. The place feels so empty without him.

Get some rest. We'll continue searching at first light.

He wouldn't have run off in the night if you hadn't have left the window open. He's never been outside in his life before.

I know. I'm sorry. But as I told you, I didn't know it was open. And if Leo had some outside experience he might be able to navigate his way back.

I can't let him outside where I live.

Anyway these things happen. It's a combination of factors. A chain reaction. No point getting into a blame cycle. Wrong place wrong time. All we can do is go round looking again in the morning and put up more posters on the lamp posts.

Famous last words

I don't do this often.

Do what?

Put up a dummy posting.

Then why do it?

This may seem strange. Maybe certifiably obsessive. But it's so I can get today's blog dated as today. I haven't figured out a way to postdate entries. Then I get up early tomorrow and write the real content. Which will appear to me in a dream.

What if something happens between now and then? What if you don't have an apocalyptic dream? What if you get too depressed for some reason and can't write anything?

I'm sure nothing will happen.

Nina Wang and Hong Kong fashion

Tell me, why is fashion, like having a good bag and shoes, important?

It’s the first place people in Hong Kong look. They check what kind of bag you are carrying. They look at your shoes. It’s a statement about who you are.

And yet you say a lot fashion shopping is impulse buying?

You’d be surprised. I have 200 T shirts.

And most you have never worn?

Not most, but yes, many. I figure, one day I may buy something I can coordinate them with. It’s an investment.

An investment, eh? But isn’t it also important to talk well?

It’s important. But a good first impression will make people listen to what you say.

Even if what is said isn’t very scintillating, no doubt. Did Nina Wang care about her bags, her shoes?

Nina was different. She was frugal. Hong Kong people respected Nina, despite her fashion sense which mainly amounted to pigtails and leather mini-skirts.

But you respected her for being rich?

Oh yes. Like everyone.

So fashion is a demonstration of wealth in Hong Kong?

Nina didn’t need to demonstrate. She was beyond rich.

Stick to your knitting

The birthrate has fallen. So in our night school program we are taking in less able students every year. These falling standards will pull down the ranking of our school in the next couple of years.

Maybe we should quit the program. Cancel it. Kill it.

Then we lose income from 170 students every year.

Hmm. Can’t afford that. Got to pay for that new building somehow. OK, how about taking in an extra 170 day students into the day programs to compensate?

Can’t. Not enough facilities. Ministry of Education won’t allow it.

Okay, how about renting out rooms at night to clubs? Show movies in the theater? That would bring some income.

Risky losing focus on your core business. Like that steel company branching out into mushroom farming and failing big. We know students. We can teach business. We could
offer the same courses at night at cut rates to foreigners, Chinese, Korean students and the like. Degree on the cheap, and it might raise the existing

night school standards. And we’d be
sticking to our knitting.

Robber caught

Detective Ishibashi of Koganei Central here. Do you remember?

Do indeed. You covered the breakin.

Have some news for you. We caught the fellow.

That is good news.

And we have recovered some things he stole. There’s quite a bit of stuff from the 80 or so houses he went through.

Any chance of getting something back?

That’s what I’m calling about. We hope to return what is identifiable and maybe divide up the money.

Do you need me to come over?

Well, this will take some time. Perhaps a couple of months. There’s a lot of paperwork.

Drawings of mechanical things

Why do you prefer drawing buildings and boats and bicycles and man-made things?

I draw natural things too.

But your trees end up looking like buildings.

I know. I’m just a learner. It’s easier for me to start with blocky, mechanical objects.

I’m beginning to suspect you have a mechanistic philosophy of the world.

You’re reading too much into things. I suspect I just reduce the natural world to straight lines so I can at least start learning to draw. Anway, what’s wrong with drawing straight lines? I know at least one artist, no names mentioned, who couldn’t draw a straight line to save her life.

An inconvenient truth

It was the first movie I've watched at home after dinner and not fallen asleep.

That says something. What kept you awake?

Three scary numbers. 10, 40, 1 billion.

Ten?

Ten years is all we have.

Before?

Before the sea levels reach 40 feet above what they are now.

Forty feet? Why?

Ice cap and Greenland meltdown.

That will rewrite the maps.

Darn right. Maldives going under is minor. Think no Holland, no Bangladesh, no coastal areas of major world cities, all bubbling underwater.

And the one billion?

One billion displaced and bedraggled people knocking on doors to migrate.

Scary.

How much is a painting worth?

Eleanor wants to buy the Romeo and Juliet painting. How much do you think I should charge for it?
You want to sell it?
I don’t want to but she keeps asking. Twice this week.
How many copies do you have?
Only one.
Then don’t sell it until you have painted another version of it. Then keep the one you like most and sell the second-best one. Leonardo never sold the Mona Lisa, carried it around with him til he died. Who knows, the second Mona Lisa may yet be languishing in some Euro-attic.
Mmm. OK. But still I don’t know what to charge.
How much time did you spend on it?
Wash, second wash, last detail, check, oh six, eight hours over three or four days.
OK, well look. A plumber spends eight hours on a job. At fifty dollars an hour that equals four hundred dollars. Plus materials. Oh, and tax. Suggest four hundred, but give it to a friend for three-fifty.
But an artist is not the same as a plumber.
True. But both are artisans. Difference is that when you need a plumber you need one. When your pipes are not leaking you may have discretionary funds for art, but when you have a water crisis you are likely to put art purchases on hold.

Winning friends and influencing people

Basil! We need to talk.
I get nervous when I hear that. A tiger bounding out of the bushes.
Well how about ‘Got a moment?’
And that has all the subtlety of a snake slithering up alongside. Ssss!
Well, can you suggest something?
Dale Carnegie.
Old!
1936. But still good. Rules for winning friends and influencing people. Number 1: remember people’s names.
I did that. I called you by name.
Aha, but you loaded it onto the front of your opening, like it was a missile with my name on it. Basil! I think Carnegie meant you drop the name into the conversation quietly, with less of an aura of accusation. Another thing he suggested was smiling.
Like this?
Your mouth is pulled back but the muscles round your eyes aren’t doing anything so the effect has the menace of a saber-tooth. Number 3: Listening…
I listen!
Sure, listen, then pounce! Look, you can use people’s names and smile and listen til the cows come home but it has to be done right. Do it wrong, and the whole communication gets brittle. Edgy as a horror flick.

Politeness training

Here's a hypothetical. It's 7:10 PM, the concert starts at 8:00 sharp, it takes 30 minutes to drive there, parking will be a problem, your partner is at the computer fielding emails. What do you say?
I'd say 'I'm leaving now, with or without you.'
I think I'd be a bit more positive, maybe explain it, hedge it with, 'Think we'd better be off, if we want to be on time.'
People can get absorbed in emails, I'd sort of apologize a bit, and say something like, 'Sorry to intrude but if we want to be on time I think we'd better make tracks.'
How about you?
Me? Im always a bit of a pink wimp in these cases. I usually say something vague like, 'How long does it take to find a parking downtown?'
Ha. Wimp all right. You won't survive long in New York.
OK. Brown and Levinson would give the prize to the self-confessed pink wimp for being the most polite and allowing for a dialogue to develop. The other approaches could be counterproductive and lead to a sullen drive into the city.
Could I ask, has Pyongyang's Dear Leader had time to read Brown and Levinson in between playing with his WMDs?

Hardware beats software

Why can't I pick up Chinese as fast as my kids? We all came here, same time, a year back, and they rattle away while I can hardly finish a sentence.

Hardwiring in the brain. Children have this universal grammar, as Chomsky called it, inside their head, others like Pinker call it a language instinct. Whatever it is, children have a natural ability to process any language input and produce whatever language they are exposed to.

But I've heard of adults picking up foreign languages.

Sure. You get a good book, or a teacher, you set yourself goals, you put in the time, you'll get there.

But I don't want to just get there, getting by. I want more...

To speak like a kid?

Well, fluently like a kid but sound like an adult.

Well, you see, with your book and your classes, you're using software. Kids have hardware. That wiring all dissolves about age thirteen. But on a level playing field, their hardware beats your software.

How did this hardware, or instinct, or grammar, or whatever you call it, arise?

Some say our brains grew as a response to survival pressures, and with that humans started talking. And to each other. Others believe it came into being as a negiotiating tool for forming social groups.

I'd go for the Darwinian survival explanation. Those that are slow to pick up on 'Watch out for the tiger' must have been eaten.

Could have been a bit of both. Persuasive skills could have helped some swap a bit of animal fur for a comfier cave. Having influence in the group, and being listened to, could have turned us into an ever more talkative species.