Three years later

Nothing much has changed besides everything.

The returnee's experience

Rummaging the reasons to stay, the reasons to leave would be the wrong approach. Motives prior to the decision matter less than the decision to leave, the implementation of the decision and the emotional consequences after being back there. I had a too short one hour conversation with D. in France with whom it transpired I share similar experience in terms of stay duration in Japan, generation and professional history. D. lived here for 20 years, then went back. I consciously refrain here to write "went back home", because "home" is a notion I am lost with. D. right away sees his coming back as a positive experience, while longing for a few practical as well as fleeting things from Japan. I just wrote a few keywords from his conversation, hoping to have the opportunity to further the discussion at a later time. Of the clear motives to go back is a feeling toward the coming loss of elder family members, and the self-questioning lace with projecting remorse of being far away when one's parents pass away.
D., who is fluent in Japanese and was attracted to Japan for cultural reasons, cites a growing feeling while being there of intellectual regression, Japan being a king of Dysneyland the size of a country, or at least the size of it's urban extension. D. repeatedly used in succession of things are "petit, petit" here, from the perspective of feeling oneself as being a "citoyen du monde", a citizen of the world. He mentioned how tough it was to reconnect with the debating, clash of opinions about anything under the sunlight that is definitely foreign here in Japan.He left before the Internet wave, before that ease of remote access to the realities of other places, instantly, as distilled by the media. Walking the streets of Tokyo with earplugged geared to a slice of France Culture on podcast is a quantum leap in expanding the distance between the intellectual mind and space. I have read nothing about the subject of the psychological consequences for expats to have instant access to this new streams of outwardness and the mental jumps back and forth they allow. How podcast from one's country of origin allows for creative a soothing, comforting virtual world to compensate for one's physical and cultural daily environment. D. is longing for a few things about that Japan like the "practicality of things", also referred to by J. in the UK, but we did not ponder on that issue this time. (to be continued ...).

Revenir

The question of leaving Japan has never been a tangible issue with me. Going back where afterall? To that place once called home? 20+ years have made the word home obsolite. The pangs of nostalgia, remote or in-situ when going back to Paris are symptoms of a longing for something I can't clearly figure out, which rooted not in the reality of the place, but tainted by iddle thought and much readings. I have never read so much about Paris since I left. The reasons to be here, to stay there, to move elsewhere or back over there may be categorized if the purpose would be to investigate in a social science kind of approach the subject of expatriation. I would love to do this. In the meantime, a reader of my French blog came to me the other day, referrin to his moving back to France after 20 years spent in Japan. I am to interview him on Monday and hardly can't wait for that lucky opportunity to hear about first hands experience of "le retour".

Ghosts

Here is a ghost town. Once you've left the Shibuya, Shinjuku and other locations that are supposedly representative of Tokyo, you navigate in residential districts, very often aligning detached houses packed in irregular rows. Be it in wealthy or shabby districts, they all share the same factors: deep silence, and very few if no people walking around. The silence is sometimes eerie, so much that you can hear you own heart beat. I had this strange experience myself a few weeks ago walking along some back streets close from Kichijoji. There are plenty of ghosts in this city, and as a matter of fact, all over Japan. I have never met one, but the atmosphere in back alleys, with anonymous shrines and a cemetery attached - a common sight in all Tokyo - is perfect to have a taste of the fantastic lingering around.

Garden house of Fumiko Hayashi

How fresh and powerful is the face of author Fumiko Hayashi I picked on a poster at the entrance of her beautiful garden house built in 1941, now a public space. How fresh is this face captured some 70 years ago. The garden is pure beauty. I skipped the room where artifacts of the author are gathered and stayed instead in the garden for a good 30 minutes, totally alone. Once you cross the the large avenues at Ochiai station, there starts the typical provincial face of Tokyo, with Shinjuku towers at close distance. Pictures of the promenade are to be found here.

Streets of Tokyo

I was recently suggested to blog again in English. Blogs are islands that appeal to different creeds of seafarers. They open up different tracks of opportunity. This puts Conversation in Tokyo back into the treadmill, back into the streets.

Streets

What has changed so far? Walking around the streets has been an ever consuming activity, what with a new interest for urban architecture. The conscious activity of walking, seeing around perspectives, looking for the declivities in the back alleys that save the unpleasant avenues from boredom has unexpected reaches. I have been thinking lately about the reasons why Japan, and Tokyo, which are not the same entities, generate such longing, especially for those people now away that share the experience of having lived here, even for a short, touristic stay. Longing is not unique to any specific place. Yet, I have a feeling, without supporting the entrenched discourse of Japan being special, that there is something, for the urban Westerner first, that stirs in a very specific way this longing. Longing for Tokyo is not longing for Japan. This, I am sure of while not being able currently to elaborate on the reasons why. Being a part of it, Tokyo, and Japan sometimes when we get out of the city, does not help to ponder on those issues.

There is the human made landscape and the human landscape. I am not knowledgeable nor fond of the second. Once you leave the big centers through back streets - granted back streets were left - you enter a dimension of Tokyo that applies to a vast extend of the city. There is lots of silence, and so very few people to meet. The other day, in the plushy small alleys of Takanawa and Shirogane-dai, I met again with the same quality of silence one can find in the West part of the city where Tokyo looks more than ever like the countryside, west of Tachikawa. Where are the people? Very often at home, at least the wives. What are they doing? Not playing the piano or the violin at least. Not so much tending for the small garden. The silence is a mystery, a heavy mystery.

Not blogging for sometime?

E. tells me I have not been blogging for some time. The reality is that I have been blogging fiercely in French here, not English, except a little on a blog about Awamori. What seemed impossible at a time, writing in ones own language, has a turned a de facto, and a mere copy translating pasting is not enticing enough to feed the English beast. This one entry is from the original French though, adapted that is. This picture may look old but was taken just last month. I see the sepia trick as an elegant formula to counter the almost disagreeable never altering quality of digital picture. The picture was taken in the sushi-bar Tochigiya on top of the Ochanomizu hill. The sushi-bar itself is 40 years old according to the chef who enjoyed modeling on the picture. Sepia smoothen the harshness of digital picture.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Tokyo

War zone in a Tokyo futon

A strange and haunting experience it was listening last night in the comfort and peace of the futon in Tokyo a long audio reportage about American private citizens working in Irak. Despite the ridiculous censorship that hides behind a buzz filfthy words like fuck, son of a bitch or bullshit, this was first class journalism. Ha, the evocative power of audio. The link to the show was referred to in Herro Flom Japan Podcast blog.

Akikawa

(Click here to see the panoramic picture)

Tokyo green. Take the Chuo-sen, the central JR line, and go West. One hour and a few more minutes away, it is still Tokyo, that is administratively, but Tokyo in the countryside. The Akikawa river is dotted by a few vegetables fields and rice paddies. Not far from there, growing vegetables is an intensive activity. For family reasons, we often get there and spend week-ends to resource in greensight. Just about a month ago, the landscape was a desultory yellowish thing with dried out bushes and shabby trees. This is all over. Thanks to Spring and welcome to Summer.


K.'s junior school is still located here in the middle of the fields, just like 30 years ago. On Sundays, boys, as in many Japanese schools, gather to play baseball. Baseball seems to be more of a voice than a muscle activity. The kids encourage each other in not much enthusiastic ritualistic way. It is the coach's voice scolding and shaming that is stands a head and shoulder above the chorus. My sports coach disgust knows no limit. (Click here to walk around in the picture.)



At this time of the year, irrigation channels are gushing with water swarming the paddies. It adorns our usual walk path with refreshing googling notes. Rice shots are brought from elsewhere and plucked in the mud one by one, by hand. Akikawa rice has no brand image and the paddies are small. The growers may be eating it all.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Tokyo

Green Moss

No time to wander places these last days. Just grabbed the picture of this green moss on a tree at Yasukuni shrine while crossing the place at high speed for an errand this afternoon. Green moss fits the mood for the following story heard yesterday.

It is the story of a physician at a daycare center of a famous Tokyo university hospital. 90% of the mothers who have their children looked after there are employees of the hospital. As this daycare center is privately run, it is custom to ask the mother to financially contribute for the purchase of equipment. Part of the money received is also used to buy gifts to the physician. No monetary gifts but goods gifts. This too is custom, despite the fact that in hospitals, posters remind the patrons that gifts are not authorized. Not authorized or not, social custom bribery is deeply entrenched in Japan. The ethics of gifts and favors barter goes against custom. Still. mothers of that daycare center loathe at the custom but none would dare and call it quit. Recently, the physician whose unique competence is to be attached to that daycare center is said to have requested that the next gift be in the form of goods vouchers. Those vouchers - an industry in Japan - are easy to sell for hard cash.

There are two times of the year where traditional gifts giving take place. This formalized bribery happen on view of all. I know that some who consider harsh to call this bribery. Indeed, not all gifts are the result of compliance to tradition and a strategy to gain the good grace of people hierarchically superior. But yet, this exchange of gift is the tip of an iceberg of favors and forced upon customary exchange of goods for good grace. That physician is the superior of many mothers who cannot even think about going against that matter of fact bribery.

While writing or you reading these lines, one has to be aware that bribery is by no means specific to Japan. And by no means perceived as bribery for many locals I bet.

This story I did not read in the papers but heard indirectly from a mother involved in that nasty ring of human relations. But this one I read in the papers. That infant mortality rate in japan is 30% higher than in other advanced, rich countries. The most shocking comment was to read that the reasons for this discrepancy are unknown. Appalling to dare claim that this is unknown. Why can't it be investigated?

Green moss is especially striking these days, thanks to the damp and the milky quality of the light that is not fit during the rainy season for photography. Moss is both beautiful and repulsive at the same time. The fluffy gentle to the touch vegetal knitwear is somewhat like rot without the smell. Rot in social customs. Without the smell.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Tokyo

Things to come in translation

Google Translator: The Universal Language:
The Google Babelfish


This would be the most advanced implementation of the Google Translator. It would be a smart device you plug-in to your ear, and it would have speech recognition and Auto-translation built in. You can now visit a foreign country and understand people who talk to you in languages you never learned.


Few years ago, I would have considered the prospect described in that interesting brainstorming article plain bullshit. No longer. In the span of a few days, I was contacted by some unknown US entrepreneur asking if I was available to help with a short translation. I forgot I had once advertised free test translation on my business web site. But reminded of that fact, I offered to do it just like that, for free. The content was a mail exchange between the client and a Japanese partner. As the US side of the conversation was missing, reading the Japanese part only was a small challenge, not for the vocabulary, but for trying and understand the context. But it did not take much time to come up with something possibly meaningful. I am not expecting that entrepreneur to come back with further work, paid this time. It was free lunch that I offered and he ate for free, which is fine. However, in his thank you message, he told me with apparent relieve that he had been so far relying on Internet machine translation to conduct business with Japan, and the conversation this time sounded a totally different and new story.

You can bet it. But in a of a few years, I believe machine translation will make that kind of mail based exchange feasible with enough accuracy to not rely anymore on human translation. I am not suggesting that it will be perfect and applicable in any case. But it will be rather correct and fairly usable in many case.

In the same trend, I just received a contact from a Japanese company offering phone and video conference based interpretation services. They are looking for people available to work from home at any time time. It seems they are offering among other services the renting of cellphone with interpretation to allow travelers abroad to get in touch with an interpret whenever needed. I would indeed be curious to see how it works in the real world. And with still some idle time spent in front of the computer, why not just let's do it? At least before the Google Babelfish gets into the picture for real.

Madly blogging in French

The steam for this blog has somewhat shifted to new horizons. That is, blogging in French over there.
Blogging madly in ones mother language, until it cools down.

Festive promiscuity

It was fiesta day in and around the Kanda Myôjin temple in Tokyo. The omikoshi, movable shrines, were touring the adjacent streets bringing good luck all around. The crowd was thick, a sea of heads as seen from the camera lens. Omikoshi are mostly paraded by males with a few girls toughing around. A parade of sweat and crude bragging that comes as a stark contrast with everyday life. There are tiny omikoshi for children, but I saw this one exclusive women only omikoshi.

Male groping of female passengers in packed subways being now heralded as a social major concern, subways and trains operators are cloning each others in offering women only carriages at traffic dense time or late at night. This packed women only omikoshi is certainly unrelated with this issue.

Technorati Tags: Tokyo

Tokyo Panoramic

Yesterday's brief but strong storm in Tokyo has cleaned up the sky this morning. The air texture is Autumn. An anomaly in May that will be quickly rectified. Panoramic pictures these days are so easy to create, thanks to software, that it is hard to resist.

Click to open in another window, click to enlarge and scroll horizontally to look for the numbers.

1. The Kudanshita crossing. When the black trucks of the extreme right thugs gather here at a short distance of the controversial Yasukuni shrine, the free Japanese media don't even mention the fact. Part of the folklore.

2. This is the new Aozora bank head-office now building. Tokyo is mushrooming. Most of the skyscrapers in the distance facing the sea waterfront were not here 9 years ago when we got to start living in the center part of Tokyo. An non-economist question to ask is how those blood-in-the-red banks can still pour money into building yet new head-offices.

3. Hotel Grand Palace, the starting point of my currently suggested walks in Tokyo, on an iPod near you, or more in details scattered all over the place here.

4. The tiny Tokyo Tower, to be dwarfed by a bigger one in a few years.

5. This bit of copper layered roof is the Budô-kan, a circular hall for music and sports events.

6. The Kitanomaru park, which is part of all the green seen on this side of the picture, which is the huge imperial palace district.

7. The colossal but here tiny top of the Yasukuni shrine portal.

8. This building delivered about 2 years ago near the Indian embassy is one of the most expensive condominium in Japan. It sold out immediately. We walked along it one day and were definitely not impressed.

9. The French lycée.

10. A tower at the Hosei university of Law.

11. Mount Fuji with snow that is clearly melting. Seeing Fuji-san in May from this distance with the sky usually milky whitish and filled with smog is a rare opportunity. It actually looks much bigger with human eyes.

12. The Tokyo government towers in Shinjuku district.

13. The building on top of Iidabashi station. Historically, Iidabashi was the starting point of a major railway track that ran away as far as Kôfu city in Yamanashi prefecture, famous for grapes and fruits. When we moved in, the extreme right of the picture was the second generation remnants of the tracks.

14. Tokyo may be located on the sea front, but mountains are very close by and hard to get unnoticed.

15. This one tower, courtesy of tax payers, is brand new and even still not open. It will be a Tokyo wards council something where civil servants will gather for unending discussions and no actions plans I assume.

N. Korea Nuke Mega-threat

The usual question of an outsider to an insider like me is to ask "how's life in Japan?". The standard answer of the long time resident feeling that his duty is to deliver a list of pro and con often starts with the pro factor that is safety in everyday life, despite all recent tragic events one can scoop up from the news. But now, that micro safety is threatened by a potential event that is bigger than the micro area where daily life takes place, daily life never happening within large spaces. The threat is that of North Korea launching a missile rocket loaded with a nuclear bomb. In other words, and putting aside the technical capacity and tangibility of it all, the idea, crazy or not, that Tokyo could be the target of the mad and not so far neighbor nation is part of the plausible discourse one can deliver about Japan these days. Yes, daily safety is a fact, despite train accidents. But from now on, the threat of a major earthquake is no longer alone in the list of possible mega-threats, and despite the differences in causes, odds occurrence and consequences. What if North Korea nukes Tokyo?

The zzzzzzzz-list and other tricks

I don't know why, but the case of the Notable (see previous post) strikes a chord of irritation that is similar with A-bloggers (or was it A-Lister the correct name?), whereas this category seems at first sight totally unrelated with a smart speech impaired notable. A-bloggers have a knack at sharp, in your face, sententious affirmations, a strong capacity at embroidering around meaninglessness with apparently consistent speech that hardly resists simple analysis, as long as the listener stops being mesmerized. That is the most difficult part though: escaping mesmerization triggered by A-Listers blowing hot air. Some adopt the zzzzzzzz-list trick. An ultimate trick I tried to escape was to read the list of notables roles in a soon to come fast to forget conference, skipping people names. I picked these I especially found delicious: digital thinker, Japanese über-blogger (über alles?), expert on happiness, leading thinker on cognition, top European design thinker, sustainability architect, air and space visionary. Phew! Kampai! And put a sock in it too.

Notable says kampai

It is invariably a notable person who is the last to be called in front on the microphone and make a final speech before asking the attendance of that get-together in Tokyo to raise their glasses and say kampai! The notable, of a notable age, is allowed to blunder and does it with a faked ingenuity. This one is a big brass of a big local IT company. He hardly can't hide his lack of understanding of the venue he has been invited to sponsor. He blunders so much that the elderly man standing besides me dares and utter something like "will he put a sock in it?" with a grin on my direction as if we had known each other. I love these fleeting moments of connivence. You can feel people starting itching with these never ending sentences oozing of meaninglessness. The interpreter is a pro. She knows how to interpret meaninglessness. When the notable is over and does not hides he has lost the direction of his speech or mind, and that it is time to raise glasses, a mute sense of general relief can be felt. Like yawning, it spreads and ricochets from one attendee to another at light speed. The notable is an invariable ingredient to such Japanese hoopla. And the speech incompetence is endemic. But respect is due where matchmaking power is, and the organizers at the end of the hoopla deeply bow to the honorable notable who bows and smile like a child while leaving the place, that big white and red ribbon flower still sticked on the lapel. I am sure he is getting money he is absolutely in no need just to play his notable role.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Tokyo

China in Tokyo

I am not actively looking for the weird association of the ancient and the (no so much) modern, but the combination keeps coming in full view these days. Today in Tokyo, in the area of Shiba-Koen, that is, Shiba park, I took a few minutes before a work errand walking inside the Zojoji temple where I had not set foot for years despite brief glimpses from a taxi window many times.

A good in my eyes temple is Buddhist, red and a little bit decrepit. This one, or at least part of it, fairly fits the bill.

A good in my eyes temple is a reminder these days of a film I remember having seen a few times as a child on French TV. A film, possibly American, for kids. where the only thing I can remember is two children, a brother and a sister in pajamas on bed, and the bed for some reasons I forgot ends up in the middle of the open space in front of a Chinese temple, with the kids startled at what is happening. I also remember a monkey like character with a particular habit of spitting balls out of its mouth or ears like a magician.

Among the conventional and usual conversation starters one goes through here is the question about what triggered ones coming in Japan and learning the language. Among the set of possible answers I keep in my mental wallet is a cover page of Air France in-flight magazine about Japan with a doll like Japanese girl picture. Japan is a female that lured me in.

But before Japan clarified in the mind, it was part of an imaginary mic-mac called Asia, where bits of China, Vietnam, and Japan where messily but happily living together. Karate practiced a few years on the trail of the Bruce Lee craze was an early sign of longing to elsewhere. Elsewhere can happen when crossing the street. My elsewhere was Asia with a heavy slant at China.

But when thinking more deeply about all this, it appears that Japan started with China which was all the same, bundled in the same bag of fantastic and mystery. And this film seen on TV is probably the most early visual representation of elsewhere, a film I would love to find a reference about today. China was elsewhere. It turned to be Japan when subjectivity meddled in the picture. For China, that is, the China of red temples with a court where a bed carrying two startled kids clad in pajamas sort of landed is the true real and inaccessible dreamland.


"One never thinks of China, but it is there all the time on the tips of your fingers and it makes your nose itchy; and long afterwards, when you have forgotten almost what a firecracker smells like, you wake up one day with gold leaf choking you and the broken pieces punk waft back their pungent odor and the bright red wrappers give you the nostalgia for a people and a soil you have never known, but which is in your blood, mysteriously there in your blood, like the sense of time and space, a fugitive, constant value to which you turn more and more as you get old, which you try to seize with your mind, but ineffectually, because in everything Chinese there is wisdom and mystery and you can never grasp it with two hands or with your mind but you must let it rub off, let it stick to your fingers, let it slowly infiltrate your veins"." "Tropic of Cancer" (Henry Miller)

Google is a black hole.

Macworld: News: Google ponders Blogger, Gmail integration:
Google is also considering the creation of an enterprise Blogger version, as well as letting users limit access to their blogs by creating private groups... .

Blogging - including from mobile phone - to an enterprise blog with email integrated. Add a few basic functions like a shared calendar, and you get a groupware. A few companies here in Tokyo I know of (arrogant in your face pithy style) are potentially already future dead cows because of this perspective. Google is a black hole.

Sorry for the trouble

Japan Today - News - Iraqi militants say they have Japanese man - Japan's Leading International News Network:
"I'm extremely sorry my older brother's actions have caused trouble to the government and people of Japan.

These are the words of the brother of a Japanese national currently believed to be held by some Iraqis group. These words are not unusual. On the contrary. The parents of a Japanese captive who was beheaded in Iraq apologized for the fuss while virtuous citizens expressed opinions that the poor foolish lad traveling in Japan almost got what he deserved. The interesting thing is that this apologetic brother is referred to as being 34 years old. I have no clue on where is this man socially positioned. In the land of conformity and formalism, it may be that those words are uttered as a ritual where looking for a meaning, a trace that this brother really believes that the people of Japan, as a massive single headed monster, exists. I would rather bet that a belief there is indeed that some 100 millions Japanese are discomforted, that is, disturbed in their communal routines by the deed of a single individual far away from the island-village.

In some related manner I cannot pinpoint clearly despite living here for 20 years, the relationship there is between this above, and that here: the media are reporting that there are a growing number of cases of train conductors harassment, including physical brutality instances, following the appalling train accident of two weeks ago. The train conductors, as a creed, a caste, are the pariahs at whom some daring individuals - some seemingly encouraged by a shot of booze - express indignation and furor. There is something profoundly disturbing in this show of crass stupidity, of social hooliganism based on perceived right and virtue to slap the culprits.

Technorati Tags: Japan

Beautiful houses of Hiroo

A short stroll at noon in the beautiful, rich and spacious Hiroo district. Western estate mansions and beautiful traditional architecture mixed. The picture doesn't tell that this one is Sienna yellow. 10 meters away, another traditional dwelling was being repaired. It must cost more to mend a beautiful Japanese house than build a new one in Western style. But who cares in Hiroo?

Technorati Tags: Japan, Tokyo

More Japanese Food, Look and Texture

I forgot in that previous post about food to refer to Japanese pastries at large, besides the Summer refreshing red beans jelly called Mizu-yôkan.

On this picture are examples of pastries and a rice cracker Sembeï just bought from a shop close by. The Japanese pastries I know are all a variation around sweeten beans purées and cooked beaten glutinous rice. Of course, for a European palate, the lack of cream, butter, crust or spongy cake, the lack of fruits, vanilla, citrus extracts, decorative jelly, the lack of chocolate, coffee, hazelnuts, and liquors make Japanese pastries a different world. A world where variety of looks is more important than that of taste. Texture too matters although on a subtle level of variation. This is a soft world compared to the rice cracker on the left that is dry, hard, crispy and salty. Good pastries are not too sweet. Good Sembeï are not too salty. The Sembeï reads Ganko-yaki. Ganko stands for stubborn. I love the taste of it and the name as well.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Food

Early Blogger: Remembrances of Blog Past

I have started filling the gap and add blog posts starting from the day I was born. That blog and computer were not available is irrelevant.

Busy farming

Back to Akita in retrospective. The Yokoso Japan campaign to promote international tourism in Japan is a dead civil servant cow. What was clear during those three days spent in the huge farming lands of Akita and the further Northern prefecture of Aomori was that lots of people were indeed busy farming. We did not witness the fishers in action but with all the boats around, it was clear also that fishers were as busy fishing as farmers farming. Regional Japan is catering to the megalopolis centers of Tokyo and Osaka. They feed the rest of Japan where Japanese concentrate. Tourism is a foreign attraction because the locals have certainly no time to spend on that. No time that would clearly transform into additional revenues. With all the rice lands and mountains around, ecotourism comes as a trivia, but who would pay to have a guided visit among rice paddies and learn something about the daily staple grain? Probably nobody. On top of that, the locals would not see the point. Yokoso Japan is a dead cow.

Technorati Tags: Japan

Let's deblog from the Digeratis' blogs

This is written without acrimony.

Very recently, I totally quit, reading, hot air blowers blogs sending to each other via blog posts cross-congratulations and flatteries that generate and maintain an eco-system of digeratis who decide what is worth thinking, having, buying, blogging and everything in ing you can think about.

This is written without acrimony.
The previous before last to go down the gutter from Bloglines was gapingvoid who was just starting to me at least to feel human (genuine) when dealing with shmates. Scoble who monitors himself - self-big-brother - went down before being referred to in the Economist, before turning into a TV personality. Seth Godin's blog - a free, convenient way to read summaries of his next books without buying them - is the last casualty. This post was the drop that .... blah, blah, blah.

This is written without acrimony.
Except for this final one knows-all-expert-of-what-is-in-if-you-don't-buy-it-you-are-out, all the digeratis tend to share the same long, real long, oh! so long list of cloned blogroll links to each other - virtuous circle, cloned blogroll as one central device of the digerati ecosystem windblower mechanics. All tend to tour and meet at the same digeratis world tour talk show conventions on Blog-this-blog-that version +2. The world tour being yet another piece of the hot air blowing mechanism for digerati eco-system to self-sustain.

This is written without acrimony.
Reading a digerati parody is not enough a cure, although worth it as pre-treatment. The real hard way to try and get rid of all that noise is to deblog from the digeratis and consciously listen to oneself reacting to the sudden void, absence, silence of some sort. If you can live without that noise, why don't you leave it. Unless your strategy is to be part of the ecosystem of hot air blowers circus.

This is written without acrimony.

Blogging back to Blogger was also in my case a salutary action. I forgot about that wonderful button at the top right corner of most Bloggers' blogs reading Next Blog, and randomly linking to one of the millions blogs around. Clicking on Next Blog is a cure of modesty.

This is written without acrimony.

Another cure of modesty is literature. Digeratis advertise books that are typically in the vein of arrogance, in your face, assertive style were doubt, skepticism are off limit. They read book written by people that claim to know. This too doesn't much stand against reading, and especially the reading of fiction.

This is written without acrimony.

In the April issue of the French monthly Le Monde Diplomatique, an article covers the new essay of the novelist Milan Kundera about the art of writing novels. The intro reads like this: "(the author suggests that) the world is veiled is veiled to us by a "curtain" of ready-made interpretations, fallacious images, edifying and untrue representations. And the function of the novel, since the beginning of time, is to tear it, to reveal these few glares of truth which only the authentic novelists can make us reach. The digeratis - with or without a glaring agenda - are weaving a veil of hot air engrossed with ready-made interpretations.

This is written without acrimony.

Although an interpretation by itself, this attitude of mine at trying successfully so far to quit reading the hot air digeratis bloggers' blogs comes as a relief.

This was written without acrimony. For all that it matter. Now, click on that Next Blog button on the top right corner right away.

Ryujiro Takami's Shame

Asia Times Online :: Japan News and Japanese Business and Economy:
Human-rights activists produced tape recordings of one train driver, Masaki Hattori, 44, that revealed he was sobbing while repeatedly saying "I am wrong and I am a fool" during three days of harsh questioning by JR West managers in his "re-education" program, for falling behind his schedule. The proud driver, with 20 years' experience and no accidents in his record, felt humiliated and later committed suicide.

Ryujiro Takami - the 23 years old driver of the train that crashed and killed more than 100 passengers two week ago - wanted to avoid shame. The risk of loosing money as a reprimand to being behind schedule is a detail in a scenario where shame is at the core of something that deep down must be very Japanese, although not unique in Japan for sure. Feudalistic human relationships are at work in train accidents as well here.

Technorati Tags: Japan

Blogging about Google Black-Out

And adding to this previous post:


The dependance on Google is addictive, so much that when Google cannot be accessed, as it is the case now, one starts looking for news, clues, and signs outside the window, in the street, for hints of terrorist attacks. Tokyo is still sleepy and does not rely on Google.


And relying on Google News to get the news is not reliable as well. Interestingly, blogging about Google back-out is permitted.

Gmail too is out of reach. Now, this may be the last successful post on Blogger before the gates close. Google is down, I repeat, Google is down. And Google stock as well.

Google addiction - addendum

The dependance on Google is addictive, so much that when Google cannot be accessed, as it is the case now, one starts looking for news, clues, and signs outside the window, in the street, for hints of terrorist attacks. Tokyo is still sleepy and does not rely on Google.

And relying on Google News to get the news is not reliable as well. Interestingly, blogging about Google back-out is permitted.

New Walk in Tokyo

I added a fifth walk PodText guide to the collection of minimalist directions to enjoy walking around in Tokyo. The new one is a night walk that starts again from the Hotel Grand Palace and leads up to Ochanomizu then back. It's a one hour legs stretcher and mind relaxation stint going through a variety of micro areas that are very quiet at night but very busy during week days.

You can see an html version of the document here, or download a PodText version here for your iPod with Notes function integrated.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Tokyo

Notes from a trip in Akita

- The flight from Tokyo to Akita is 50 minutes. By train, the journey takes 6 hours, or so were we told - by superfast train running super slow and winding around and under mountains after mountains. 50 minutes versus 6 hours.

- At Akita airport, the 250 passengers freshly arrived from Tokyo generate a traffic jam at the airport exit. Beyond that, the regional autobahn spink and spank will be mostly empty.

- I now understand why driving is an objective in itself for three days of vacation along the coast of Akita prefecture. We came back with hours of video taken from inside the car. The major activity was sitting in the car. The second was eating - including looking out for places where to eat (read more about it down there). The third marginal activity was walking. My favorite activity for the third one.

- What are the conditions for turning a country or a region into a touristic destination? Akita has lots of various landscapes that rank from the ugly to the glorious, as everywhere else. The ugly is human made, messy without any plan, or tidied up and sterilized under concrete thanks to general construction corporations that get tax money from the locals who vote for the politicians that deliver the convenience of life: mostly empty clean as a ball room autobahn, huge supermarkets on national roads, and parcel delivery trucks that climb mountains. It also means shaved mountains plastered with cement, faked unrelated mini to micro theme parks in the middle of cut off forests (we bumped into a Santa Claus theme park among other nauseating places).

- A theme park is something plopped in the middle of nowhere, the middle of nowhere being a place where there is nothing. Therefore, a theme park project is to put something where there is nothing and have the passersby running in cars stop and spend money.

- There is a marvelously scenic single track railway running along the coast from Akita to the northern Aomori prefecture. The Gono Line is the name. The scenery is fabulous, with rice paddies at a pebble throw distance of the sea. Farmers here would grow rice on the beach if they could. Rice is money, rice is life. We saw the train leisurely winding around. It was largely empty.

- The stations of that scenic railway are an example of micro theme parks. The scenery is not enough. The scenery is seen as a piece of nothingness. Therefore, the bright nothingness buster developers decide to turn the stations along the track into attractive places. The typical attractive piece of equipment is a steel and plastic elevated walking passage that crosses above the track. It is usually an eyesore, purple or pink piece of useless costly equipment that belongs to the world of Teletubbies. The number of Teletubbies like public equipment is huge here as in anywhere else in Japan. Public equipment bad taste is appalling.

- Akita is rice and vegetables inside, and fish offshore. But the funny thing is that fishes are virtually nowhere to see. We were told that all the catches go to feed the big Tokyo area. The local don't get the best fishes. It looks like they care more about meat. At a local festival, the only fishes on the food stands were trouts grilled on spike. At JPY 500 a tiny trout, it's a killer fish. But the taste is so good.

- Yes, what are the conditions for a region to turn into a touristic spot? At around noon, we got hungry. But where to eat? During about 30 kilometers along that nice and scenic drive along the sea, we spotted not a single place where to eat, except one inside yet an ugly unrelated mini them park. The restaurant was crowded. We drove away.

- The tourist with his mind full of Mediterranean images of lazy villages basking under the sun with locals sipping drinks and munching food in homey tiny restaurants simply does not fit the place. We left the scenic road to get as close as possible to the many agglomerations of dwellings that are not even villages, not even towns but just houses that happen to be close by enough to create, indeed, an agglomeration. Despite the blue sky and blue sea, we could see not a single restaurant in 30 km. After all, the residents eat at home. Why would they need restaurants? Why would they need market places? Why would they need open spaces to mingle and interact? We hardly could see humans by the way. And no vending machines. Not a single one. When you see no vending machine in Japan, you know you have reached the threshold of nowhereness.

- After 30 km back to the main scenic road, we bumped into it. A place where to eat with tempting promise of fish pots and other local delicacies. Or so we thought. In a huge kitchen, a single lady was cooking. When we told her that the lunch ticket vending machine was not accepting the new 1,000 yen notes, she mumbled that she was doing the service alone - in a kitchen large enough for a staff of ten - and she could not tell when we could eat. In hours maybe. Never maybe. We left the place and the few patrons visibly waiting already for a long time.

- At long last we found it, THE place. With fish menu, and a huge choice at that. And the staff was not a single lady. I order kaisen-don, a mix of fresh fish morsels on top of rice. What came looked nice but tasted of nothing. Except for the squid pobably fished locally, everything else was still half frozen, half frozen fishes with a lovely panoramic landscape open to the sea. I left half of that sherbet like lunch, still wondering what are the conditions for a region to turn into a touristic destination.

- I think one single simple way to make money in Akita is to open a food stand anywhere along a scenic road. Cars are not legions, but food is so scarce that you will invariably sell out the stock of hot dogs in hours.

- The Akita dialect is beautiful and delicious to the ears. After a short uneasiness, the nice people where we stayed seeing that my standard - that is - Tokyo Japanese was OK, they started to talk all the way through in Akita dialect, with which I had a lot of pleasure to try and make sense of. Strangely enough, Akita dialect intonation sounds somewhat like Korean language.

- On the opposite side of the sea is North Korea. The soiled beach where we looked the sun settling down in the Sea of Japan was full of refused brought from many places, including Korea. here are rumors that people disappeared from this sea side, just like around Niigata in the South.

- Kosa is yellow sand brought from China. Sand from the mainland deserts. It sticks everywhere.

- Despite the homogeneity stance, regionalism is strong, with dialects and food that differ from Akita to the neighboring Aomori. At 50 minutes away from Tokyo, we were definitely far away.

Technorati Tags: Japan

Twenty tastes and flavors I love in Japan

Love generates more feedback than hate or daily sarcasm. I have been reminded of that obvious fact since posting Twenty Things I love about Japan last year. This single post alone has generated more feedbacks and links than anyone crap entry in this blog. It must have stirred something deep in the people that commented or got inspired out of my empty musing. I swore not to engage into the food listing, but a trip to Akita - so much flat land despite the mountains, so much rice all over the place! - made change my mind. After all, feeling satisfied with the food - and drinks - is one way to affirm love -despite everything else - in a way that still puzzle many locals: how can you appreciate this, you being not Japanese? Well you know, taste has no frontier. Good and bad tastes. So here is about the good ones, en vrac, with no order, just out of the mind : Twenty Tastes and Flavors I love in Japan.

1- Unagi is eel, and kabayaki eel is the fish cooked at long length while drenched with thick soy sauce based sauce. But better than that is the less common shirayaki eel, the same fish grilled without the sauce. Shira comes from shiroi and means white, while yaki comes from the verb yaku and means grill. John Lenon is said to have had unagi in the small Tatsumi-ya eel restaurant in Kagurazaka - Tokyo. There, as in any good unagi restaurant, the dish is brought to the table at least 45 minutes after ordering.

2- A taste associated with the Summer to come is that of young ginger sprouts dipped in miso paste. It's a hot crunchy snack delicious with whatever drink available.

3- Tonkatsu, that is, pork plastered in a mix of bread crumbs and eggs fried in deep oil. But let's go beyond the generic and try oroshi tonkatsu. Oroshi refers to the big white radish daikon grated into a foamy whitish refreshing light dip with a dash of that thick tonkatsu sauce. The less of that sauce, the better. The contrast between the freshly grated cold daikon and the hot cooked meat is a treat.

4- Kimpira-gobo are strips of gobo or burdock root and carrots lightly fried in oil and seasoned with the classic mix of mirin - cooking sake - soya sauce and sugar, with a pinch of sesame seeds. A dash of sesame oil at the end makes all the difference. It's all in the cook dexterity and a typical case of recipe that is better tasted at home than with the usually too salty thing sold in supermarket. Lotus roots in kimpira style are also a vegetarian treat. A pinch of Korean flaked red paper does marvel.

5- Yuzu is a Japanese citrus fruit and an incredible delicate flavor. The zest powdered is an aromatic ingredient for many dishes. It now comes in juice in convenience stores and one can even find Yuzu flavored yogurt.

6. I am a late discoverer of Okinawa rice alcohol Awamori. The usual drinking bout starts with beer. The selfish arrogant gaijin that I am skips the beer and goes straight to the serious thing. Lately, the serious thing is Awamori. Mixed with hot - not too hot water. A treat with most of the food cited so far.

7. Oshiruko is a sweet soup of red beans. I would personally skip the glutinous rice bowls called omochi that float in this dessert, and relish on the hot broth.

8. Mizuyokan is another application of red beans and yet another glorious flavor that means Summer. It is a sweet fresh red bean jelly. As with anything else, what distinguishes the good and the bad in sweets is sugar. Sugar is cheaper than the core ingredients. That's why industrial and cheap versions of mizuyoka, or the harder to munch on yokan, are sweet and taste of nothing but sugar.

9. Osembei are rice crackers and come in so many variations that it is useless to go into the details. The real thing must be not too salty, pretty much hard - a good munching exercise - and thick enough, but these are of course totally biased preferences. Most osembei sold in supermarkets are a fraud.

10. Tsukemono are pickled vegetables and come in gazillions of variations. The tsukemono of Kyoto are famous. In Akita, we discovered a variety of the common yellowish radish tsukemono that is smoked on the surface. Tsukemono with rice almost can make for a course, although the intake of salt is heavy. But tsukemono with rice is Paradise.

11. Amazake is a non-alcoholic rice based hot drink that feels like an alcoholic drink. It's a standard treat for a cold December 31st at a temple, but good the whole year.

12. Furikake is a mix of fish flakes, seeds, seaweeds and whatever tasty bits available to flavor white rice. A favorite of kids any gourmet grown-up shall avidly look for. The varieties are infinitum.

13. Kazunoko is herring roe, yellowish, crispy, a standard for New Year and at sushi bar. Kazunoko bit pickled in wasabi makes for an incredible treat with white rice again.

14. Soba are buckwheat noodles. I can't tell more. Good soba, that also means good sauce that comes with it is Japanese taste by excellence. The good ones in restaurants are not always expensive. Cold soba with the standard fish broth and soy sauce is a treat. The same soba with sesame sauce is one station before terminal bliss.

15. Udon is thick whitish noodle. Some like it hot. I avoid udon, unless cold and from Shikoku - the so called sanuki-udon. Period. No discussion allowed. Zest of Yuzu (see above) in udon sauce is ....

16. Genmai drink is a recipe from Okinawa, a slightly thick drink made out basically of whole rice cooked and flavored with some sweetener and a discreet dash of ginger. I have no clue about the deep tradition of this but as a smooth snack like drink in the morning, this is a must.

17. Genmai or whole rice is also an ingredient of genmai-cha, green tea with roasted rice. This again is as Japanese a taste as one can experience.

18. Green shiso is a standard leaf at sushi bar, but also makes for an extra delicate tempura morsel.

19. Satsuma-age is fish cake, but fish cake does not tell anything. It's basically a mix of pounded white fish meat and flour to make it into a compact paste that will solidify through frying. This said, hand made Satsuma-age eaten in Kyushu island some 10 years ago is still a glorious memory of delicacy, when knowing that the usual standard thing is bland and just good to fill the stomach.

20. In the background of Japanese tastes stand basic ingredients that give the tone to many dishes. Soya sauce, dried seeweeds and dried bonito fish flakes are the bass section of the taste orchestra. Failing to appreciate any of these makes life difficult and boring here for taste buds. Of these, dried bonito is the strangest basic ingredient of all. A piece of dried bonito is hard like wood and much looks like it. Freshly flaked dried bonito flavor is inimitably Japanese, miles away from fish bouillon. It comes with delicacy on par with a totally different favorite that may belong to nowhere else: soba cha, which is that soba or buckweat seeds roasted and infused in hot water. But that's already number 21.

Technorati Tags: Japan

Akita pot

We had this hearty soup somewhere in Akita prefecture. The broth is made out of chicken bones and light miso paste enough to highlight the vegetables delicate flavor. Mushrooms, carrots and leeks are backed by the delicious seri or Japanese parsley that gives a distinctive regional flavor. Balls of mashed cooked yamaimo (yam) are delicious and an opportunity to discover this glutinous root in a more palatable fashion than the more usual sticky white foamy paste often laden on top of raw tuna sashimi.

This soup we left not even a single drop is probably a variation of the Kiritampo-nabe. Kiritampo is mashed boiled rice sticked on thick skewer and roasted. The kiritampo "pot" is the same kind of soup with bits of kiritampo instead of yam bowls. It's a family dish, so that the taste must slightly vary according the cook hand and what's available at the vegetables' stand.

Technorati Tags: Japan

Disposable landmarks

Romanticizing the manhole is one attractive way to put blinkers and observe the distinctive Japanese beauty. Blinkers are a requisite to enjoy the place, here, Tokyo, where I am. Tokyo governor Ishihara flying over the megapolis is said to have uttered about feeling like throwing overboard at the overall uglisness. One has to be blind when reaching Kyoto city and looking out of the train around the station. The mess is ugly, the urban untidiness is appalling. Harmony is not at the menu du jour in the Japanese perspectives. It's by knowingly wearing blinkers that things start to be interesting. But the knowledge must stay in the mind of the onlooker, the knowledge that all this beauty is a selective view of the world. At least, manholes are sturdy pieces of things. Not this one.

Historical landmarks signposts are popping up here and there in Tokyo. This one on the picture is located in Sarugaku district near Ochanomizu. The blurb is in Japanese with a summary in English. It gives colors to an otherwise pretty much indistinctive place, unless you have learned the requisites to enjoy non-entity districts
. War and urban development have laminated whatever distinctive flavor that characterized Sarugaku district. A usual story. Sarugaku district is a favorite non-entity place of mine. I could guide you around the perimeter for hours.




A close-view of this sign post shows the artifacts that matter to the locals, what gives the cachet, the terroir visual cues: stone wall at a base, curled roof on the top ...



... and mythical fishes snarling at the edges.

These are all made of plastic.

Technorati Tags: Tokyo

Static mode stroll

A piece of street in Sarugaku district at a stone throw of the book shops district of Kanda-Jimbocho in Tokyo. The requisite to take a still picture is to stop. The requisite to take interest and find it in the banality of an anonymous street is to stop too. Standing is still too risky though. It allows to move again too fast. The companion to flânerie mode walking pace is seating still. So let's seat down. That's were the first problem starts. Tokyo has no benches along the streets. Like dust bins, those are to be found mostly in parks. But I sat down, on a tiny piece of staircase along a green curtain of shrubs that separates the street from a junior high school. I had a bottle of tea and chocolate from a convenience store nearby. Strategy to defuse the natural conspicious look of passersby, although few they were. Stillness in the street is suspect. For the self, stillness is a conscious, focused exercise. Only birdwatchers are pre-qualified to observe the streets.

On the opposite side of the street, the grayish two-stories building is a rice shop, and probably a rare survivor of WWII bombardments. The yellow shop on the right is Kandahar, a mountain trekking goods and apparels shop that does not turn into a surfboard outlet in Summer. A rare case of single activity dedicated shop in this area. Exhausting a place could mean going through all the nomenclature of each shop and restaurants making business here that are visible on that panoramic picture. Standing still and watching allows to discover in the daily surrounding that it is still full of unknown spots.

Technorati Tags: Tokyo

Exhausting the place

Almost finished in a rush the other day this small piece of gem by Georges Perec: Tentative d'épuisement d'un lieu Parisien, referred to in this Economist's article as a micro-chronicle of a day in a Paris square. The square is the Place Saint-Sulpice in Paris (web cam here). The time is 1975. The purpose for the author mostly seating in cafés is to record down by writing every little thing, every non-event that his eyes and ears perceive. A flâneur dream! The result is incredibly powerful, all the more if you know the place. And the recipe enticing to be imitated in other places. Of course, Tentative d'épuisement d'un lieu Tokyoîte is itching madly.

World Asthma Day

May 3 will be World Asthma Day. I looked for a sticker to put on a favorite blog - mine for instance - but could find none. So I just copy/pasted. There's even a sweepstake to get one out of 111 iPod Shuffle (with peak flow meter mouthpiece adapter?) on the brilliantly named Asthmamusic.com - chest expanding tunes. And on the main page Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA, ha! Gina. Gina!), the stock photo people are cool and running on the beach.

Human area networking

Adventures in the Skin Trade:

An interesting article in TechnologyReview.com about electrical fields of human skin to transmit data. It happens at NTT in Japan. I want one. I want by medical record to be accessible by authorized users from my body - excluded are the PR dept., the recruiting agent, etc. Yes, despite the Big Brothers, I want something that spins around this technology. The ironic thing in that piece of article is the reference to the key individual in that NTT lab:

Enter Mitsuru Shinagawa, a Distinguished Technical Member of NTT's Smart Devices Laboratory. Several years ago, Shinagawa had been working with the latest electro-optical sensors for a project on integrated circuit probes when he decided to apply the gizmos to the old intra-body problem. Replacing the electrical sensors of a Media Lab-style system with faster lasers and electro-optic sensors showed dramatic results.

Then exit. From now on, Mr. Shinagawa's voice is transmitted all through the article by a hierarchically superior Hideki Sakamoto, senior manager for NTT's R&D Strategy Department. Shinagawa may have lacked bandwidth, or simply power to transmit his data.

Commitment and money: not Micropursuaded at all

To all those bloggers who blog, kampai. To all those bloggers who did give a try but quit, moved elsewhere or who knows what and why, kampai to have tried at least. When an A-blogger derailing on the suggestion that paying to TypePad is a show of commitment to blogging more than using Blogger or this free WordPress, I am not micropursuaded at all, but have the strong feeling to have peeped for free indeed into the purposes of that A-Blogger. The "fond de commerce", as one says in French. The readers' comments are worth reading, more than the original post.

Podcrastination

Just installed Loudblog - an audio podcast delivery solution - on my host. Still empty though. Need to find reasons, subjects, software and understanding on how to create and deliver audio podcasts. Lots of little things to unravel first.

One other tiny detail to clear up is finding back my voice and breath. Procrastination - self-served slap in the face - has won again. +20 years of asthma, mismanaged first, then progressively integrated in the cockpit, still have a long way to go baby. In the many books and articles about asthma I have read over the long run, many of the recent ones stress the importance of monitoring early signs of impeding explosion. Implosion is more to the point though.

I have not done an in-depth search of recent literature, but whole chapters, no, a whole book alone should be dedicated on managing procrastination in the case of perceived impeding danger. The tradition of gaman is still there and strong in Japan. Gaman stands for endurance - a traditional virtue - but also translate as self-control, or the pathetic self-denial.

I am safe of gaman, but procrastination in the case of imminent potential danger of acute, self-uncontrollable asthma (or any over ailment) attack is related to shame. I can feel it. I believe the back side of the gaman coin is shame as well. Gaman is a cover-up.

As for impeding implosion, the point is so simple that it deserves not one line, but pages. I will keep it short and in the nude, unshamed, or rather beyond that: the shame rooted procrastination is about the uneasiness at getting to the ICU with slight only symptoms to show, and the fear of the look of physicians and nurses silently blaming the patient to come up here with minor signs only. One has to be lucky enough to find a chess specialist with a real understanding of asthma (I have met incompetent chest specialists many times) who knows that symptoms tend to fluctuate from high to low, and may have receded in the low level by the time the patient pops into the room. It will be back, with a vengeance or not, but back for sure. Asthma control education is about procrastination control and is not a small thing. Does Japan as a cultural factor play something here? A specialist would know how Japan fare in asthma and other fatal attack prone ailments. As for procrastination management, I have yet to get my diploma after 20 years.

Mauvais goût job

I can't resist with this one although it is not Japan. This is a series of pictures in an animation banner on Yahoo France advertising 140,000 job offers. She is leisurely typing the keyboard to find the job she is visibly not desperate or pressed by circumstances to pick. Just like the 23.1% of people under 25% without a job in March. The banner adorned the news article.

Ups and downs in Tokyo-Paris

Otoko-zaka (Man Slope) in Tokyo on one side, and a path I suspect to lead down the Seine somewhere around the Ile Saint-Louis in Paris. That one was taken by Henri Zerdoun. The promotion of Henri is in a low ebb. In Paris, in France that is, May Day marks the beginning of the count down toward Summer vacations. Put it simply, there is no serious project that can be started now as within 2 months time, that is less than 40 business days. The vacation mood beginning even before, 30 days is a better count. With the Golden Week starting in Japan today, it is of or on slow motion until May 9th. but then things will begin to move until around mid-december with a short break in Summer when dealing with the big companies. For individual artists with an order book blank and white as the snow, it is a bleak prospect. The basic problem is of pure economics though. Finding a market, a niche one. There must be one but the communication grease to make it spin is currently lacking.

Family disgreement

There are recurrent points of family disagreement. A matter of perception, education, value. Whatever. School and learning at large are major subjects of clash - and it's just the beginning. We wage a war of ritualistic phrases. Whenever our son ends his Saturday short but regular guitar lesson, his mother will invariably ask him whether he "passed" his exercises, as if each lessons were an examination. They sure are the opportunity to test progress in songs learned last time and practiced at home. But guitar lessons at this low level of intensity have nothing to do with getting ready for Juilliard academy exam. I systematically retaliate to the question by my own question, that is asking whether it was fun, focusing on the pleasure. We are entrenched in cultural feud positions. A banal story.

Health risks of privacy

Economist.com | IT in the health-care industry:
The no-computer virus

I blindly thought IT backwardness in advanced health systems countries was a Japanese feature. This Economist article above is enlightening and frightening at the same time. My asthma doctor in Tokyo whom I have been consulting for some 10 years was working at a local large hospital 10 minutes away. We are lucky to live in Chiyoda-ku where hospitals are aplenty. I have my share of life-threatening or simple pathetic experiences in the hands of local doctors but this one is fine because qualified in his speciality, and on top of that, pro-active. When he moved to his own clinic 1 hour away from here, I followed him. He punches down records of meetings in medical filling PC application to keep paper at bay. I can see him each time sparing time both to listen to me and painstakenly input facts and issues. The pain is related with the tool's awful interface and eats energy out of what should be more poured onto questioning. But we know each other well and from a patient point of view, I am as competent in asthma as himself. The file on ailments is of course a closed world we no links to the past and the future.

The new privacy law in Japan will be life-threatening in medical cases as it will put further brake in any project of national wide patient electronic file.

Who should blog at a company?

Who should blog at a company?:
It's easiest for blogging CEOs, especially those like JupiterMedia CEO Alan Meckler, who owns a big slug of his company. He's been blogging for a year and a half and gets several thousand page views a day. He says: "I’m the largest stock holder in my company. If I weren’t, I’d be more concerned about what the board would think... A lot of people, to do what I’m doing, would have to get check offs from the legal department, and to cover their ass."

Could not be more frank.

Bookshelf testing

Books are accumulating on the desk, not time to read. Tell me what you read, I'll tell what you pretend to be.

Okinawa: our heart yearns to go South

Travel letters and postcards of Sigmund Freud have been released lately in France under the title (tentative translation from the French): Our heart yearns to go South. South was the Mediterranean countries but it could be anywhere in the Southern direction of the current Northern point where one is located. Okinawa is Japan's Southern dream. Even Kyushu does not qualify. Not South enough. Still too closely attached with the main island with its hypertrophic urban ego, unique navel, Tokyo.

Okinawa is the only region in Japan where population grows. The net result of immigration version emigration is positive.
The dream of leaving the main island and go live in Okinawa is a social sign if not a mass phenomenon. I am surprised that despite our pride we have in the house - at least on my side - to not watch TV, we are under the spell of Okinawa, and our heart secretly wants to go South too, despite all the documentaries we missed on the subject, documentaries probably lashed in sirupy ending music that the NHK and other channels have the knack to create and clone at nauseam. But instead of staying on that fleeting fuzzy mood, I decided this time to buy a book on that matter. The choice was easy despite the dozens of books on leaving for Okinawa. I set aside all the books with flashy and too blue to be true jackets. This one on the picture, neutral picture, and the clever title - One way ticket to Okinawa - fit the bill.

I am half into it. The author has interviewed various people from the continent that one day decided to try and call Okinawa home.One portrait that stands above the others so far is that of Masako Suzuki who is the About.com Japan Okinawa web site guide. She talks about opportunities that only non-local may perceive. The fact that her being an Okinawa virtual - and physical - guide despite living there for a mere 4 years is indeed an example of grabbing opportunities. I am intrigued by the music life she describes as intensive and of way much better quality in Okinawa than in pricey Tokyo. I liked very much what she said in the book, and even more now after seeing her face. Okinawa as a land of untapped opportunities. Sounds even more enticing than never ending vacation. How heart definitely yearns to go South.

The Japanese inside you

A new ice cream filled with green tea is appealing to "The Japanese inside you". Referring to Japaneseness in ad catch-phrases is a common feature, just like the ubiquitous natural use of the communal we in comments of all kinds that are not intentionally patriotic. It happens elsewhere than in Japan as well, but it has the knack to irritate the gaijin minority.

Beer pinup

We had dinner at the nomiya, the drink - and food - parlor. At 6:10 pm, there is no issue bringing junior to such place as the shop is virtually empty. It will start receiving customers from 6:30 pm, salarymen quickly escaped from the office. Unsurprisingly, the average age of the first customers is 65 at first sight. But the food was extra and the awamori mixed with hot water delicious. Junior was scotched to the TV permanently on display delivering scary stories about recent accidents in Japan. Junior did not see the poster of the beer promoting girl hanging above his head.

This pin up ....

cost ....



420 Yens.

And to end this blogging day....

And to end this blogging day.... someone, something at school must have triggered again that fear about his school capacity, that is, the lack of it. "Find a school for him on the Net" was the order for this evening, in lieu of good-night. Yes, mam! I will.

Tomorrow, I bring him to the Chess lesson, second time. I hope I can write this for a few other times to go from now on. They are teaching chess and other games at the French cultural institute in Tokyo twice a month, and it is he who asked me to bring him. No kids popped up so he got a private lesson with a Chess champion. One hour of seemingly non-stop concentration. This too is a victory. I did not stay around on purpose and left the place rather than behave like the average sticky Japanese mother. One hour of seemingly non-stop concentration. I am still amazed at that.

Why can't they leave the children grow and stop comparing? We are leaving on permanent fear here, fear of the next big one earthquake, fear of train accidents, fear of some crooked guy getting inside the school with murder in mind, fear of loosing ones job, fear of finding a new one, fear of tsunami, fear, fear, fear. I know. I was raised like that. Fear like contentment requires a practical, systematic approach to be tamed. There is no cure but there are arrangements. That's what they should teach the kids at school. Not English from kindergarden, but fear, shame and other life balance threatening management.

Thanks, fun and despise

Yes, it's just a matter of taste but I much prefer reading the story of a single tailor's business boosted by blogging rather than what Les Blogs was in a single word (fun), a few thanks to some A-Bloggers (rule number one: to affirm yours being an A-Blogger, find any opportunities to lace your posts with thanks message to them), a link to Some good Technorati links (good Technorati links being links that wax that communal prick dans le sens du poil) and conclude with a dart of despise - a bras d'honneur - to the "Dinosaurs (who) don't like meteors". Although we would certainly appreciate to be mentioned in the Dinosaurs' articles. The most puzzling thing in all this is the despise. Childish, puzzling hate of the truth holder. Evangelists do not hate I thought.

The poetry of IM status

There is poetry in instant messaging personalized status. Shorter than the Haïku, shorter than the Tanka is the IM status. A colleague of mine (Liz, I am blogging about you!) is developing it, unknowingly I assume, into an art form. Ephemeral art because it vanishes the next day and I don't keep logs of those. Edited IM status is the cream of the cream of self-awareness for the world to see. It could be the ultimate un-wordly blog post. And keeping it short while telling what is essential for now-being-a-point-in-time-devoid-of-past-and-future is an art. I wonder if anyone tried and write a novel exclusively made out of IM status. On my Buddy list, i can see "Foggy Tuesday" while another one exclusively refers to himself in terms of current location: XXX in SJ. Another friend status is MaruYamaCho@Shibuya. A secret code for those who know, for sure.

Les Blogs Parody

There's no way to be original down there. Just when I alone found it funny to parody here and there the typical A-List Blogger (the ones that lists up all the transit airports names while going from location A to conference location B), I found this delicious parody of all the Net intelligensia personalities that are mostly well-known to be famous, or famous to be well-known, as you like it. There is truth in Parody. The Parisian hoopla Les Blogs is in that sense the usual gathering of the same roosters of mileage accumulators that hop from this to that conference place all over the planet, as a matter of life, spreading definitive confetti like maxims about how the world is, or will be, period.

Les Blogs first result will be to extend the long blogrolls these A-List Bloggers all share and mimic with a new slew of European A-List Bloggers' names. I took extra care and time to introspect my own uneasiness toward this nth edition of a blog related event. Aren't you a little bit jealous my lad, a cynical voice would suggest (my seeree!) in the background? No, definitely no. I was in the same boat about 10 years ago, on a smaller scale at those conferences about multimedia, over Australia, France or Germany. We were all doing the same as today: trying and grab, or strenghened a share of power. Because it is all about power, i believe, although I won't delve on this matter here this time.And we all had the definitive maxims to condemn the world of miserables that did not know, or - worse than that - did not think like us - and ME as a matter of fact.

To have a taste at the results, just look over the selection of in-your-face Leader Maximo styled big phrases collected by Frederik Wackà at the otherwise excellent CorporateBlogging.info. Great maxims do not need context to have meaning. That's maybe what is lacking from this shower of hot air starting from here. Context, but meaning as well, although it might be politically incorrect to suggest so.

At this time, you can bet some A-Bloggers are shooting the sky from the plane windows, and those on Lufthansa with Internet connexion already uploading the pretty but dull pictures here of their close encounters with clouds.

Technorati Tags: Les Blogs, LesBlogs

Vertigo

When we moved to this 25 floor tower in Tokyo, I spent the first six months fascinated by the planes, tiny things, we could see approaching Haneda airport in the very far distance. Those six months were also an experience in controlling vertigo. Dizzy spell was a constant mind and physical condition. Could not nonchalantly approach the windows, in an apartment mostly fenced by windows, without fear. How far could we see? Really far. The planes would be visible from the East toward Chiba, gliding for a good five minutes until hidden at the very last stage of landing by tall buildings in the airport direction. Some 10 years later, Tokyo sky is crowded and getting more crowded daily by skyscrapers and towers of a minimum of 25 floors. We almost cannot see planes anymore, thanks to a wall of buildings in the horizon. The next one is starting to be built right in front of the living room windows and will be a specter kind of slim tower guaranteed to last less than 40 years. Buying an appartment in Japan is not a long term investment. It's probably a bad investment for the individual with money to spend. Fortunately, we don't have that. Buying an apartment here is like buying a disposable camera. Only, it costs more and last longer. But it does not last.

Yesterday early evening, when the light still clear despite the time being around 6:30 pm, telling how Spring is advanced, we had that Zeppelin like balloon appearing right in front of us, floating for long minutes, generating shrieks of thrill, and a long forgotten spell of dizziness I thought to be tamed. Unfortunately, it was not the Tokyo Zeppelin and no sign that the Metropolitan Government had come to realize that my concept of inhabiting the Tokyo sky with a flotilla of Zeppelin was indeed the way to go. A Tokyo sky busy with gliding Zeppelin would be too formidable a sight to bear for dizziness looming in the background.

Back to Bolognese sauce and more earthy things

I can testify - your Honor - that this Bolognese sauce recipe in the Italian food section of About.com is entirely delicious. You don't have to be religiously following the scriptures. I skipped celery and used bacon as a substitute of pancetta which is rare in Tokyo and costs way too much. Adding dried porcini as suggested is terrific. One hour and a half is the minimum to get a nice texture, but more heating time is not bad. I have tried this one more than a couple of times. The result is a treat. It tastes like Italy, even, or, all the more here in Tokyo.

Thank you the Moon!

I am back from the Moon where I attended the first Mooners meet Bloggers organized by NASA on the crater Aristarchus. I met many friends there. The same that I meet in the same kind of gatherings. Always. I also met a lot of Mooners. They were all very nice - especially the girls - although we could not understand each other. Moonish to Earthish Google translator is still in Alpha version. The food was ugly, but this word being not part of my always positive vocabulary, I will just say that the food was an interesting encounter - with the third kind. I will have to test it again (the later the better - this hopefully should not show on this post as it is a part of my self-discourse). I discovered too late back on Earth that some geek developed an automatic Mind to Blog plugin. Too bad. I'll have to stop thinking from now on. But the taste of the food, man! yuck... . I much prefer the food at Starblogs. At least, it has no taste.

What the hell is that? Yes, good question. I now understand that thanking the planet from where you come back is de rigueur. So when back from the Moon, do as the Earthians do. Read the previous post to understand what I am hinting at. A late Spring cold virus will be made culprit of all this disjunction.

Now back to Tokyo where I have been so far and rain is coming tomorrow. I will blog about the drops. One post for each.

Blog conference on the Moon

Tomorrow I will be going to the moon to attend the first Mooners meet Bloggers organized by NASA on the crater Aristarchus. Many friends will be there. I'm looking forward to it after going mainly to conferences outside the galaxy these days.

Sorry, I can't help this plagiarism of a post found on the blog of a well-known-to-be-famous personality going to that Les Blogs French event. No, no. Not an ounce of jealousy on my side. Just puzzlement at such post one can find as if cloned in much the same tone and manners on blogs of other well-known-to-be-famous personalities going to the same event. No jealousy man, but puzzlement at the molded tone, the same picture slide shows of people met here or there that all look so much the same in their posing attitude. Well, there's always been a community of tone, manners, colors, hair style, clothes and attitude in front of the cameras or the painters at any time in any place. It is puzzling to observe and at the same time being aware of the spectacle, the conventionality of looks and tones.

French blogger

We know what the sudden media polarization means. An article about blogging in France in Wired magazine well scheduled to a blog event in the French capital is enough to make believe, especially for those inside the boat, that includes mezigue by the way, that it matters to the whole world population. That's a lot of people. The death and rebirth of a catholic pope too is faking into believing that the church are full to the tilt on European Sundays. Which they aren't. But anyway, stop ranting. Blogging will be powerful when enough examples can be lined up of a conflict or catastrophe being inhibited or prevented by blogs, of an injustice being straighten up, of lives being saved that can be linked to blogging at the origin of the happy end. It may have happened already though.

Podtext and creativity of iPod ownership

The Japanese community site where I posted an announcement about my trial Podtext and a request for opinions has reached 10,000 members. I am offended by the lack of feedback and interest, but offense is manageable by choosing not to feel offended. Like a network security device, blocking the feeling of being offended first requires to know the trigger's signature. That's the low level of shame management, the high level being applying human intelligence at a preemptive level. They don't teach you this at school. They should.

I flipped through that BBS messages to quickly understand things I should have been aware of, if I were an iPod owner. That the ownership of the ware is a condition of existence. I own an iPod, therefore I am. I am part of the trend, the buzz, I am alive. The questions and talk in the forum are mostly purchase advises or technical glitches related. I slyly thought that the ware' s creative side if any is about the choice of tunes one pours into it. I was wrong: creativity is ownership. Of course, the ultimate offense is to question the validity of any relationship between creativity and the ownership of a piece of hardware whose essential purpose is reproduction. But a voice inside tells me to put a sock in it and avoid retaliation by the well right thinking majority. Which I do here. Sock + mouth + put-in.

The intentional or not but brilliant thing is to instill in the user's mind the feeling that ownership itself is creative. I assume it is the key strategy and therefore an intentional one. Ownership is a dynamic, self-led, self-decided, socially approved sign of being active. That ownership allows this and that is the argument used by the owner when he is under sly insinuation by someone else that this ownership is first a sign of frolicking with the herd by being nothing but a cow oneself. Have you noticed the list of arguments an owner of an iPod or anything else can elaborate to justify the purchase ( a censored word), that is, the ownership of it, when triggered to do it by a drop of irony like: after all, it's a walkman. I can hear the laser guns switched on.

On the footer side of this, Podtext is a minimalist format using a minimalist function available on the latest iPod. It's like drawing on a subway ticket, not the magnetic ones of Japan, but the still draw-able Paris metro tickets. Now, I'd love to have an iPod just to try a Podtext in action. To be downloaded here (no virus). Thanks in advance (order) for any thought and feedback.

Fame

What the blog evangelists are looking for in the end is to be featured in a major magazine looking like a stock picture or ad they, we, love to hate. Next step is shaking hand with Bill Gates in front of cameras.

Let me think for 5 minutes

This is the current picture on my desktop. The slightly funny thing is that I rarely see my desktop these days as it is cluttered with other applications windows. But this picture is not only part of my desktop, but also part of my visual fantasy in the mind. So much that looking at it from time to time is like filling up the tank with fuel, enough to start running again without that picture in full view, but permanently tucked in some corner of the infinite screen of the mind.

I have asked people to kindly take time and read the long promotional blurb about my friend and photographer Henri Zerdoun. It is a long blurb, yes, I reckon your Honor. Then, when the reading is over, I am asking the dear readers to spend - if what they see please them of course - to spend indeed thinking 5 minutes about what they could do to thank the photographer for the emotion he conveys that was perceived on their side. You know: Merci l'Artiste!. Thinking about a single issue for 5 minutes, without interruption, without digression, focused on the purpose. This is a long, long time to spend.

I have been spending more than that, with ups and down over months now. The tiny, lame almost, idea of adding a link to the blurb page on my email signature also came out of yet a new 5 minutes focusing on What to Do. I received a nice comment from an addressee tonight thanking me for the introduction to an unknown photographer. A tiny success, but a success all the same.

A larger success would be to see some action out of this. Of course, I am not blaming anyone about not rushing to buy a print from him, just like that. Although those things do happen. This is not the case with this gentle email addressee who took the time to thank me back for the link, although my original mail was about a total different story.

But when calling people to spend five minutes on this, I am reminded on how many times one - including myself - can utter in a life time such thing as "let me see what I can do", and in effect store this polite expression of willingness in a corner of the mind attic, a corner forgotten in very much less than five minutes after the utterance. That happens to everyone again and again, even when that utterance is sincere.

Let me see what I can do, laissez-moi voir ce que je peux faire, or in Japanese ちょっと考えさせてください.

Then, just dump it, do nothing about it, plop into the trash bin of the mind. Yet an infinite receptacle.

5 minutes of thinking before action. A big deal.

Podguides is for real but...

You see the picture above. Podguides, Podtext, Podnotes, whatever you call these snippets of text to view on iPod, are for real. For real, but crushed under the audio and video Podcast craze. I posted the news of my first Podguide trial on a famous local closed BBS, right into a thriving chat room about iPod. It has yielded not a wink so far. A butterfly wing flap not generating - let alone a typhoon - but not even a bacteria fart.



I understand it though. Snippet of texts are not cool enough for sure. And the current lack of easy mapping service - in English that is - is a major pain in the tiny screen. But as the usage of screen based activities on mobile phones in Japan shows, screen real estate is not an issue as long as what is delivered is useful or entertaining. But mobile phone data retrieving is billed per packet, even if eat packets as you wish monthly flat rates are available. And I am not aware anyway of walkers navigation aid on mobile in English. If I am missing something here, please someone, enlighten me.

Teaching scorn

China again. A Japanese friend living over there tells us about the blackout in local media of the state orchestrated or out-of-hand anti-Japanese demonstrations. School is an issue also as scorning Japan is seemingly part of the curriculum. I don't know how this translates into tangible acts. Derisive expressions in history books, disgusted lips of the teacher each time Japan is referred to? Between love and hate lays the various degrees of detached curiosity. Impossible to teach. A group of hardline Japanese politicians is supposed to visit Yasukuni shrine today - home of masturbatory nationalism - and pay tribute to the dead. The shrine neighborhood we can see from the window here may turn noisy today. The sky is already vibrating with one or more circling helicopters.

Okinawa call center business

Just got a buzz from someone over there in Okinawa that the current China tension is fueling the local call center business. Okinawa - cheap salaries - is a mecca for call centers. They - the locals - speak with an accent (who does not?), but it is still Japanese all the way through. Okinawa is the third world of continental Japan. Does the proximity of the sea makes working in the modern sweat house that is a call center more palatable? No clue.

Footer sponsoring

Recently, I added a new signature to my emailer signature selection. It simply adds this line to the usual me-me-me blurb:

I sponsor art photographer Henri Zerdoun.

http://www.lioneldersot.com/blog/?page_id=220

Free email messages like Yahoo! come with an ad footer the sender has no control over. At least here, power is in the end of the sender. The issue is not efficiency. I should do spamming for this sponsorship message added format to reach a significant number of people. The wording may be lame, but not the intention. Still better than having this post finish with an ad about a fizzing beverage I would not gulp down even for free.

Tokyo Text Podguides

Obviously, this Tokyo Text Podguides project is funny, reminiscing of the multimedia années folles circa 1995 when content was king. There is no satisfactory tool I know about that currently allows to simply write and maintain a set of linked text files to be read in Notes mode on an iPod. There is iStory Creator I used to produce the first sample of Walkin' in Tokyo Podguide. The official use of this software is the development of text based stories with multiple choices at the end of pages. A more simple approach would be to call it a tool to write iPod notes. But the current version is buggy and useless for post edition. I tried using Golive, which is like using Word to write down text only snippets of text. There may be an extended usage of a common software I am not aware of that would allow to manage a podguide document with a simple text editor. The lack of tools reflects the lack of interest for the currently minimalist Notes function. It will change.

Multimedia +10 years

At the client's office the other day, the boss shows an interactive digital products catalogue on the web site, and proudly demonstrates the page flipping trick with a movement of the mouse. That is, the page flip is animated and harmoniously mimics the real flipping of real pages. All this on the web. The boss is proud. The client is awed. +10 years ago, the same trick generated the same proud - on the creator's side - and the same awe - on the user side. Only the media, offline, CD-ROM, was different.

Xi'an noodles

We went to our current favorite Chinese restaurant. The place was full. No broken glass panel. No anti-chinese retaliation. Hot in the belly, peace in the mind. The taste is turning addictive. The red color of the spicy soup with noodles is beautiful. Japanese are voting with the mouth against propaganda. Xi'an taste rules!

Unsatisfactory Japan China feud explanations

Nothing to read so far that enlightens about the wave of protest targeting Japan. At the bossa nova class yesterday evening, I talked with the guitar shop owner about the weather, the guitar market slump and China. Maybe his feeling reflects that of a majority. I don' know. When it comes to revisionist history school book, his reaction was: "They should clean their act as well!". Japanese people relish on Chinese food daily while canceling Golden Week trips to a country they fundamentally do not despise - you don't go to a place where you despise the people living there, learn Chinese language on the NHK, as well as Korean, and - I was late to discover that - Arabic language. Imagine Arabic course on French TV for a while. It can't. If it exist, please wake me up!

Anyway, there is a whole range of intermediary feelings between love and hate, but the strongest one that works for the benefit of inhibiting animosity is curiosity. And as far as curiosity is concerned, the eclecticism of book publication in this country is an instance that for curiosity, there is aplenty. Biased curiosity, shallow curiosity thanks to trash TV culture, opportunistic curiosity, but curiosity all the same.

The guitar shop owner do not visit Yasukuni shrine, a 20 minutes walk, has never set a foot in the glorification of Japanese army acts museum of that shrine, and does not see the point of a PM who will be going as usual in August there, paying tribute to the souls of the dead, when the beaches are crowded, the sun torching, the extreme right thugs black trucks blaring, and the average citizen not giving a fuck about all this folklore.

There is a mystery that is undecipherable to me. It is the mystery of what is at play, what is so powerful, what are the forces, the dynamic around that Kudanshita crossing we can see from our house, a crossing where the black blaring trucks circle a few times a year, where the National Showa Museum - a softer version of historical blindness displayed for the masses - titillates the wounds of WWII in order to not let them dry, a crossing crossed in the week-ends when the weather is nice by crowd of picnic or concert goers who do not give any prayer to the shrine that is way much empty than the park on the opposite side of the road. Those forces at play are totally undecipherable and participate to a logic I simply don't get. There must be some equivalent forces playing in China or Korea right now.

The usual remark about Korean stinking of garlic is uttered by the same people relishing on kimchi and longing for a trip to next door Seoul to fill up the belly with grilled meat. I wonder what a Japanese, or French, stinks like to the nostrils of a Chinese of Korean national. Nationalism is an infantile disease, Einstein dixit. And it comes with the flavors. So pass along more kimchi, more delicious hot peppered Seian red soup with soya bean curd, and a plateful of couscous on top of that. And sushi for dessert.

Privacy law hits PTA

The new privacy law in Japan is having interesting impacts at school. The PTA used to distribute a list of members with contact coordinates for practical purpose. The school too had a list of contact with parents. Now, these entities are not allowed to distribute and even create lists without members approval. In the case of PTA, this turns to be almost funny and a boon to the many parents (read, mostly mothers) that secretly prayed every night PTA were an extinct species. Now is the opportunity for parents not to participate just by denying the PTA request to obtain coordinates. That the escape open up by the new law will be used in this selfish way is yet to seen, but the suggestion that it can be exploited to cut the too often boring and unproductive tie with the PTA is already buzzing in the air. The current lack of a parents' contact list at school and at the care center after school is less of a joke as it means that no communication is possible between school and parents, especially in case of urgency.

The impact of the privacy law on the usually law level of generalized trust (expectation of goodwill and benign intent) in Japan is a subject that should not be left to sociology researchers only.

500 yens for lunch

On this picture is my lunch for today. Miso soup, rice, chicken, grilled salmon, a small salad, some pickles and seaweed, a mouthful of tofu, and a can of tea. All this for 500 yens, that is about US$5. We live in a business area with corporate big buildings all around and very few apartments. During business day, the local restaurants - plenty they are - cannot cope with all the working people that comprise more than 75% of the daytime population. So much that there is a thriving business for lunch boxes to sell from vans on the street. I was crossing a small bridge in the backyard toward home when I noticed that old man clad in white in front of a minivan with mountains of lunch boxes aroundd, calling the passersby to buy any at 500 yens. His catch phrase was only to say in a small voice that those were good: oishii desu yo. I already noticed him yesterday as well. It was 11:20 am and I was hungry. When I paid and he told me to take a can of tea that was included in the price and could not help but tell me how cheap it was. he thanked me for that.

I ate it after the picture. Not a great fare and soya sauce would have made it better - which by the way was available but I forgot to take some. But for 500 yens, one cannot expect first class ingredients. But still, last time in Paris, we could hardly eat for double that price. Incredible.

The Microthing

The more you blog, the more it shows you have nothing else to do. Gapingvoid now overbooked with successful tailor promotion (deluxe schmates) has been silence for +48 hours. Conversation in Tokyo (this place) is busy with many things, but not silenced yet. Something that matters with gapingvoid is not the slab-of-meat like delicate drawings, but the microthing experience of promoting a one man business turned two-heads hydra now in full swing.

So there is that urge to read there about how it fares, how much things have changed when comparing before the Blog and now, how full the order log is (booked for months? years? lives?), etc. In one word, how does the Microthing delivers? Micromarketing, microbranding, microcredit, etc. All these micro referring to alternative approaches of trying and slip around the corners of the conventional blah blah blah heavy, stony, stiffed usual patterns and get ones business develop with Blog as the center of gravity, the main engine or trigger. That's why gapingvoid matters, and that's why the current silence is enervating.

Vibes

Positive vibes: people now start saying thank you to the artist Henri Zerdoun for his work, for being who he is. Saying thank you is better than nothing. Call this a progress. But for the people saying thank you to the artist (merci l'artiste!), here are a few ideas to re-read, including new ones about what to do next.

Negative vibes: maybe, maybe not. I quit looking daily at Adwords (start paying for clicks in 15 minutes, was the catch phrase, right?) yield but just had a look today that leaves me wondering what. At mid-month in March, 25 clicks, this month only 7 so far, and definitely way less impression. Easter impact?

First meeting

よくあること。２日間の通訳の仕事をしてきました。自己宣伝のホーム・ページを立ち上げてから、一年もたっていますが、ウェブ効果、つまりホーム・ページを見つけて、コンタクトをとって、通訳のサービス提供までに至るのは初めてでした。今年に入ってから、問合せは上々に増えています。問合せても成り立たないのはほとんどですが、問合せ自体の数が増えているのは、それは来日する計画をたてる段階で、オンラインで通訳を探そうとしている人々が増えている証拠だと思っています。今年に入ってから、オーストラリア、ロシアからの問合せが来ました。今回契約まで至ったのはフランス人でした。「未知に対しての警戒度」から国民柄のことを考えると、日本はフランスと以外に良く似ているところがあります。それは、例えばアメリカと比べて、「未知に対する警戒度」はどちらも高いです。もちろん個人差がありますが、どちらかというと、日本もフランスもコネと紹介の世界です。というのは、コネと紹介が壁となるわけです。おそらく、例外的なフランス人のお客様でした。中間人間を飛ばして、サービスを実際に提供する側と直接に問い合わせて、商売するは一般的ではありません。つまり、紹介もなく、電話で会話をせずに、すべてメールで成り立った契約でした。一昨日の朝、お客様が泊まっていた渋谷のホテルへ行って、ホテルのロビーで「物理的な」初対面でした。３０分後に日本のパートナーの事務所で商談を始めました。朝のブレークの時に、日本側の一人の方は、お客様と私の間の親しい交流をみて、その海外の人と私の間の関係がどれ位長いかと尋ねました。「今朝会ったばかりです」と答えました。日本の方は大きく驚きました。ネットワーキングの基本は知らない物、事、人への上手な対応術から成っています。学校では教えないことはたくさんありますが、その中には、「他人からの圧力への対応」があります。例えば恥をかけられた時の対応術は自然に覚えるよりも、勉強すべきことです。または深い関係をもつ「未知」への対応術も同じです。メールから始まった、通訳のサービス提供実現ですが、教われなかったことや、小さい時にうまく対応が出来なかったことを、大人になってやり直すきっかけともなることは嬉しいです。

First meeting

When getting along with a client happens - and it does happen often - we start getting along fast, that is real fast. A situation Japanese people are always and invariably taken aback with. It happened yesterday as well.

"How long have you known Ms XXX?"

Me - "30 minutes".

"What!?"

Me - "Yes, she was looking for an interpret and found my web site a few weeks ago. I agreed to deliver the service she was looking for. We corresponded via email only. We never talked to each other until 30 minutes ago at the meeting point. "

Before it turns so obvious the mention of it will sound trite, let me awe again at the fact that yes, work opportunities can happen over the web just like that. Not plenty of them yet, but more than zero, which is a huge progress compared with last year. And the basic ingredient of all this is .... Trust.

Miller on the opposite side of here

Beautiful pictures of Big Sur at the Henry Miller Library web site top page. Big Sure, that is on the same Pacific ocean as here, but the opposite side.

While Chinese demonstrate

Yesterday at Yasukuni shrine. Final day of cherry blossom festival. The mountains of refuse neatly stacked in plastic bags are impressive. Tourists from the countryside, mostly elderly people, are herded in busloads, and the buses are so many that they are allowed to park inside the large and majestic shrine avenue where no automobile usually runs in. Festival means in the case of Yasukuni huge food and drinks stalls selling low grade popular junk at high grade price. The whole business is infiltrated by yakuzas. It is at such time of the year that one can notice how average Japanese - used to be all Japanese - benevolently agree to get screwed by thugs and pay stupidly priced food or games of pre-digital era where one is guaranteed to loose money, without the slightest sign of discontent. That is, the same people that can make a fuss, especially over the phone, to request a letter of apologize for whatever insignificant bruise they may have experienced in a service transaction. A little closer to the shrine, young nostalgic clad in imperial army shabby clothes sing tunes of the good old time. One of these warriors, visibly a man, is wearing a skirt and sports a painted face with flashy colored fond de teint. It's carnival time.

There are way much less people in front of the shrine main building but the business is going briskly with a shower of coins falling into the gods coffers managed by ethically inspired humans. At the far end of the shrine where a small but nice Japanese garden calls for introspection, the air is filled with noise of a show now running in the nearby sumo ring. Yet it is no sumo but wrestling, an even faker, carnivalesque throng gathering event.

We slowly left from a side gate, passing along the war museums oozing with bad taste and the money powerful people have been pouring in here for ages. In the meantime Chinese demonstrators (a state paid side-business?) demonstrate against Japan. Today, the rain tamed enough to have practiced abstinence for the festival started to fall and wash the scum together with the flower petals. But the rain was too feeble to perform a deep Spring cleaning yet. From the distance, the cherry trees lining along the Kitanomaru park still show their afro like curdled wig foliage made of washed out purple, thanks to the grey sky.

Breakfast jolt

It caught us at breakfast. Others must have been scarred in the elevator, the subway or who knows where. It was yet another earthquake. We are waiting for the big one that could strike even before the end of this sentence. Man is an illogical god and luck worshipping animal. Let's go South to Okinawa! No earthquake (typhoons are peanuts compared with seismic tremors). No pollen allergies, or at least so goes the story in ever sophisticated protected mask clad Tokyo. A mobile phone dongle to talk and listen while wearing the mask is the next business chance. Until the big one strikes.

Zeppelin caught over Tokyo

Zeppelin caught over Tokyo! I repeat, Zeppelin caught over Tokyo! Over.

Red Apple

How do you call these red apples coated with sugar one finds in popular festivals in France, most probably in other European countries, and surely here in Japan as well? I have no clue, in French nor even in English. These visually enticing red fruits a Snow White would die for are made to be left mostly untouched. The coating of hard, pure redden sugar quickly turns overwhelming before the child ever reaches the apple inside. We brought it home and performed a life premiere surgery act by cutting it in quarters and check whether there is any apple inside. There is. A nice and not so common Kogyoku apple, a sour variety that is perfect for cakes.

Dear L., what you missed

Dear L., a quick post to tell you what you missed:

Starter: broccoli and fresh broad bean with olive oil and shredded parmesan; asari clams in cocotte with white wine, oignons, carrots and herbs; baby squids marinated.

Main: large Spring tomatoes stuffed with ground pork flavored with chorizo and pine nuts cooked in oven with olive oil and garlic; roast whole chickens, spinach and porcini risotto; green salad with mustard sauce.

Dessert: chocolate cake, clafouti.

Drinks: Campari grapefruit coktail, Spanish sparkling wine, Cote de Provence rosé, Bourgogne Pinot noir, Amaretto, tea.

See you next time.

The call of Okinawa

Funny this Okinawa thing. The extreme Southern Japanese islands are not the weather paradise the brochures and magazines oozing of blue suggest. Typhoons starting in Summer, an off-season that is pretty much cool, contrasting with torching sun and drought. But the call of the South is powerful. Start mentioning Okinawa as we did this afternoon, and people sigh. Okinawa is Japan's vision of paradise. Paradis perdu. So we talked about the disillusion to live in Tokyo, work for paying mostly the rent, raise the children and hoping they find a secured job in corporations we do not believe in, and spend their lives doings what their parents already find so boring. We wondered aloud why we were not intrepid enough to call it quit, go South, open a French restaurant for me, work as a taxi driver for another, and be content with it. We decided at least to all go together to the sea one day in May, an hour away from Tokyo.

Sakura

We went to the Cherry Blossoms festival at the Indian embassy. I had thought so far that this annual event was India National Day. My ignorance is limitless. It is nice that an embassy runs an open house day to celebrate a host country seasonal event. The food was a little pricey as usual but the mood and the colors most elating. Women in Saris mixed with other in kimono or jeans. Saris are beautiful. Friends encouraged us to visit India. We were already playing with the idea while munching samosas. Now with flyers from a tourist agency in the pockets, the call of exoticism is hard to repress.

Near sky, the last Tokyo frontier

Saturday morning in Tokyo. Milky sky and blinding light are on. A sure sign that Winter is over and Spring on the verge to be dethroned. For best light texture, wait until deep Autumn to bring your camera in Japan. I tried and take a picture of the Zeppelin. No way. The flying whale is tantalizing, because it flies in a space that is mostly virgin. That is, the near sky. Helicopters do so but they are noisy, tiny, too busy to stay in one place unless an event happens. They are totally lacking elegance.

The urban near sky of Tokyo is getting more and more pierced by skyscrapers. But buildings are static and vertically oriented. The Zeppelin is mobile and fluctuates on horizontal layers. I stick to it, my big urban reviving plan. What Tokyo needs is a Zeppelin urban fleet. Zeppelin-buses. TV channels will work against it because people will start looking outside the windows, until they get used to the balloons ballet.

The current model caters for 14 people, pilot included. Who are the VIP that board it? I want to be a VIP too, a privileged that gets a free ticket because he has way enough money to buy it. Only rich people get the extras they can get for a fee and still pay the rent. Ha, ha. I want to fly the near sky.

Buzzing Henri Zerdoun

What can we do about Henri? An Expanding Action Plan

Dear Friends,

This post is some sort of synthesis of the various previous posts scattered all over this place about art photographer Henri Zerdoun of Paris.

What can we do about Henri? What can we, you and I do? Some of you readers may already be somewhat familiar with Henri Zerdoun's work. Some may not. Anyway read on.

Henri Zerdoun is a friend of mine. So everything that follows stems out of friendship. I take no personal monetary benefits from his well-being.

Henri Zerdoun is a French artist residing in Paris. Meaning as in the majority of cases, that he tends to shy at self-promotion (OK, you can be in New York and shy as well). As the French government has tightened the screw on financial help to the throng of artists of many genres working or survivying in France, the pinch is hurting. I know it is worse in Japan (that's where I am) or elsewhere but I won't start a discussion on that matter.

What is important here is to understand that this is absolutely not an appeal for compassion, but an appeal for action, as long as you have any interest in art photography and resources - resources being not limited to money, but also ideas or connexions. Please read on for more details on that matter as well.

In March 1943, American writer Henry Miller (yet another Henri) sent a Letter to All and Sundry asking for resources and offering to swap his beloved but not much artistically valuable paintings for money or materials. If he had swapped the original manuscripts of his books, it would have turned in the long run as a better deal for people that took action. According to the story, his letter actually did generate a lot of reactions but he was also helped by the fact that it got published in some local newspaper or magazine as well.

This 2005 version of a Letter to All and Sundry is published on the web. And the purpose is closely similar with Henri Miller's act of some 50 years ago. But similiraties stop here. Henri Zerdoun is promoting his core achievements and projects around photography, not a side-business.

In the Summer of 2004, we started an intense exchange over mail and instant messaging about his web site. He had just lost contact with the person that acted as his web creator. In the torrid heat of Tokyo, and under the gloom of joblessness myself (if you don't know what it is, you are qualified to smile...), I offered to take over and beef up his site content. I am no specialist at that and it shows. Anyway, have a look at the photo galleries from the upper right button and come back here again.


Welcome back. Maybe you liked what you saw. I am especially fond of the poetic atmosphere of his Paris pictures. They always make me feel like boarding the next plane to Paris to go and walk around the places. His pictures are timeless.

So here the deal. You may be a rich or poor collector, a gallery owner, the friend of a gallery owner, etc.

These pictures - and more are for sale and available for exhibitions.

Purchasing a picture

Pictures can be printed on order. No Photoshop, no digital gizmo, but a famous Parisian hand-printer who will do the job. A single picture is never printed more than ten times. Yours will come with a certificate and a number. A single print is 30 x 40 cm and comes at about US$1,800. These are collectors items, and some already proudly owned by galleries and collectors (including myself... and I paid for it). A hand-print will also make for an original, gorgeous and valuable gift to one of your best customer or business partner and perfectly fit on the wall of your office. You should contact him direct or go through me if you prefer. I take no benefit from any transaction except my own and selfish pleasure.

Exhibiting pictures

Henri Zerdoun has an extensive experience of exhibiting his work in Europe, so much that organizing an exhibition is also a good way to show your artistic interest. You may know gallery owners or be yourself such lucky person. Again, contact him or me either way. Imagination is the limit. And there is no limit to imagination. Show how resourceful you can be.

Purchasing books and reviews

divers/LionelCouverture004 divers/solitude_001 divers/souvenircouv divers/LionelCouverture003

Henri has led, co-authored or participated in the publication of books and magazines. Some are still on sale (here, or there). Some are dearly missing collectors items such as the delicious Des Livres et Vous, referenced as definitely unavailable in a French online bookstore. In the age of digital reproducibility, there is nothing such as definitive. You can look to contact the publisher and ask to purchase a copy. When hundred people will do so, publishers may wake up from their comfortable slumber. As for the reviews, you can contact the editor to purchase a copy.

Waking up the publishers, or the one that resides in you...

divers/livres You may also be a publisher and consider a localized version of a book in your language. Des Livres et Vous is in my personal opinion a strong, timeless and universal candidate.

Write about Henri's work

You are a journalist, an editor, a writer, a blogger? Good. Then consider writing about Henri' work, not out of compassion but out of love for his work. Write in paper media, online, on blogs. Write better than I do (easy...). Then have your writing circulate with the links in it.

Commission work from Henri

I once had Henri get commissioned for a series of pictures published in the Japanese version of the Figaro magazine. His pictures have been published by such well-known publications like Magazine LIRE in France and UNESCO's COURRIER INTERNATIONAL. If Henri style(s) fit your editorial project, start a conversation with him, now. Commission work for new books, new exhibitions, but also debates and conferences. Henri Zerdoun is also a storyteller.

Forward this page URL

Take five minutes of your time and think about who you could refer this page link to. Someone you know that loves photography, someone you know who is a publisher, someone you know who is a picture book lover, someone you know who is a gallery owner, someone you know who could commission a photo-reportage or photo-essay, someone you know... . You know someone, don't you? Take five minutes of your time, now, and start thinking. Then act. The URL of this page is this:

http://www.lioneldersot.com/blog/?page_id=220

Henri Zerdoun web site features many examples of this work, books and projects. It is located at http://henri.zerdoun.free.fr

From Guide to podSites

This time, Guide simply did not launch anymore. The antique hypertext generator and reader application for the Macintosh had been dormant and passed along Mac after Mac since around 1988 except for a blanked period (read on). It still ran in native System 9. Guide was the detonator of that never-ending awe toward hyperlinking. Clicking on a link would open up a linked document. It blew me away. Now it's daily fare. Old computer screens do not turn yellow so you can't assess the age unless you show the About this software window and point a the copyright year. I did this several times in the Golden Multimedia Years circa 1994 in front of unimpressed Japanese university students. I reckon you have to be in a benevolent state of mind to be blown away by a bland text only screen sporting at best prehistoric dot mapped icons, and see a new window pop-up from nowhere as a result of mouse clicking. I never bought Guide. I got a copy of it, that is of course an illegal copy, and never much used it more than as a tool to fancy about linked content scattered all other the place. As a fancy generator, it did wonders. Once I lost the copy and chased usenet to finally get in touch with an original development team member who were so nice as to send me a copy of the software. Now Guide was gloriously running - although partially - with no use or purpose. Like those books sitting idle on the bookshelf you can get rid of, thanks to the memory. I even wrote about this chasing adventure over the wires to find back Guide in a defunct Japanese magazine about CD-ROM - yet another proto-historic media. The sense of great expectations is back again indeed, and the reminiscence of early hypertexting stirred anew with such low-tech, sure to turn high, gimmicks like this podSites thing. The fancying machine is spinning full speed...

Blogging at the Kaisha Blog

The excellent and focused (that is, very different from this one) blog CorporateBlogging Blog refers about a company where all employees get an internal blog space (with the email ID, the badge, the restaurant tickets, the business cards, the who knows what else), and most use it. Blogging for sharing information.... Hmmmm. I sent it to collaborators other there, waiting for .... the backlash? The worse backlash in Japan being polite silence. At least we could give it a try, non?

Collaboration, trust, mutual benefit...

Great expectations, with the pitfalls lurking in the background, but great expectations all the same. A taste of e-bubble? Maybe, but we've been warned and lost money on it. Yet, effervescence is what Life is all about.

What are the keywords involved? (it's all messy, but anyway)

Collaboration: not all through the web, but collaboration all the same. Openness is the key here. Yes, nobody is perfect, nobody is safe of the sin of wanting some, wanting more. But the longing for collaborative kind of activities (no faked team week-end for jumping over bridges) is so strong these days.

Trust: the glue of everything down there. Comes with "coming out" a little bit with non-anonymous blogs, comes with daring and try at unpolishing a little bit the personae in face to face conversation. A little bit my friend! It's not a call to get nacked.

Mutual benefit: the outcome

Satisfaction: that is, contentment devoid of sneers, balance, self-assurance, vitamin to resist adversity

Discovery: flat world means that new opportunities are popping up, more and from unknown (unthought about) territories. Time being the limit, a tailor in Saville Row, with the little help of a blog and some buzz may quickly be booked for years to come. Without ever starting thinking in terms of expansion, knowing that one's basic revenue is pretty guaranteed (unless illness, unless, accident, unless the unknown) to sustain existence for a while is a sure source of satisfaction, basic satisfaction that offers a deep sense of equilibrium. Only those having experienced joblessness knows about uncertainties and the cancer of it. Carla Fiona and Jack Welsh are for once incompetent and therefore not invited to the show - despite all the joblessness they generated.

More keywords needed.

Fish!

In the crowded aisles of the brand new Miuraya supermarket in Iidabashi station building, housewives beaming with extasy tell to each other: They have fish! They have fish!". The opening of new supermarket in one such busy center of gravity of the capital is a big local event. Urbanization torn apart this area in Chiyoda ward, the less populated of the 23 Tokyo ward. A local hairdresser born here where I used to go told me how the back streets where full with all the usual shops you would expect in a tiny village like neighborhood: the fishmonger, fruits and vegetable stores, the futon shop, etc. Mostly all have disappeared, replaced by office buildings and ever taller apartments towers. It has been maybe 15 years or more since the last fish stall closed. So the new Miuraya with fresh fish cut on the spot is an omen of revival. In the renewed short and small restaurant arcade, an official fortune teller corner just set up was busy with clients, certainly no locals.

A few meters away, on the bridge over the Japan Rail track where cherry trees are in full bloom, a fat canister like shaped dog was heavily walking with a blue LED flashing collar around the neck.

Domino Madeleine

Funny how links make things tumble one onto the other like domino pieces to revive from the attic past cups of tea. This reference in Scot Rosenberg's Links & Comment blog about new games journalism for instance. About 10 years ago, deeply involved not in game but in so called now passé multimedia content, the issue at stake was indeed to try and develop a writing style about new CD-ROM that would transcend the boring "cool" versus "sucks" non-debate and talk about the immersion into new narrative trials. 10 and some more years later, a collection of several hundreds CD-ROMs is lying dormant on a bookshelf here in Tokyo, mostly no longer viewable on the current computer systems.

Happy Birthday to Me

Thanks, thanks, merci, gracie, danke, muchas gracias, really .....

Satisfaction

OK. It's childish, arrogant, self-complacent - disgustingly .... human (yuck!) . But contrary to the Beatles, I can get satisfaction (yeah, yeah) when words come that a client was indeed satisfied with the delivery. It does not necessarily happen (only in advertisement is satisfaction promised), but it does often. Never can get enough satisfaction.... when I'm 64..... hints, hints.

Personae

We talked with the client about childhood, preferred foods and places, the power of imagination when relating oneself to a place, yellow and white peaches eaten with the skin; we commented on the flavor of sake, the delicacy of the sushi, the similitude between The Lord of the Ring, the books, and the films. Despite the grown-up built up personae, it is very often easy to drill down passed the cover-up attitude and reach for a glimpse of the true self. Why does this mostly never happen with Japanese personae is a never-ending mystery to me with no satisfactory hint at any answer. Why can't I see in them the child inside? Is it an issue of blindness?

Welcome Spot

At NEC head office in Tokyo. A slew of hotspots to choose. Only one - NEC_WelcomeSpot, accepts my guessed user ID: guest. But despite the lack of rejection and the bandwidth available loud and clear, nothing functions. No mail, no web. All the other hotspots are password protected. In the deserted show display corner, it's all about Internet connectivity. But not a single computer on display actually offers a live Internet connection. A non-live Internet connection is a no-connection. On NEC website adorned by the pathetic stock pictures of ugly, idiotic, poseur businessmen and businesswomen, it reads "Empowered by Innovation". Empowering visitors at the corporate entrance would be a powerful way to tell and mean welcome.

Zeppelin spotting

The Yokoso-Japan campaign Zeppelin was turning around our heads this morning in Tokyo, like an obsession, playing hide and seek between the buildings. I didn't know it was a real Zeppelin, until searching the net. The airship was wrapped on a barge last year in Italy and delivered via the sea over Japan. The original plan was to have it cross Russia and fly on its own the whole way. But terrorists threats and fretting kept the target away from the sky. Terrorist threats as a justification to sea ship an airship or stop visitors at the Aichi World Expo entrance to bring inside pet bottles bought outside - pet bottles = shrunk airships.

That this airship is touted as a major trump card in the come-to-Japan promotional campaign shows the level of banality of the people trying and get more foreigners coming here. The Zeppelin could boost indeed figures into the air, granted there is something unique about it. In the golden filthy years circa 1990, a similar airship flying the colors of Fuji Film (do I remember well?) was obsessively cruising around Roppongi. What's needed to make this destination unique, is a unique reason to come. A flotilla of 20 Zeppelins in the Tokyo sky would make the place totally weird and a must-see-with-your-own-eyes. I am not totally fancying a Star Wars like urban vision where the sky has totally turned into a 3-D autobahn network, but something like a Venice in the sky where the vaporetto cruise aerial canals.

More Zeppelins in the sky as a good reason to quit focusing on this screen, leave the mobile in the pocket, raise heads and stop walking for a while to watch above in awe. Yes, 20 Zeppelins won't be enough. Add a few dozens and start a Zeppelin bus transit system. A direct flight from here to nearby cities. Slow pace for a high fee. And have Zeppelins cruise at night all lighten up, making children and grown-ups alike play Zeppelin spotting before going to bed and dream.

(oliveoil)(/oliveoil)

I thought writing emails - business one mostly - was a simple matter of fact. Recently, I got words that some people have found my style terse and unfriendly. The receivers are more qualified to judge than the sender. In other words, they are right. If trying to be brief and to the point in the ping pong exchange results in such misunderstanding, something must be done. Triple checking, quadruple waxing, quintuple dousing .... in olive oil for instance. Some tag like this:

<oliveoil>Best regards!</oliveoil>

or even richer:

<extravirginoliveoilcoldpressed>Very warm regards</extravirginoliveoilcoldpressed>

Lewis Chess

The intriguing Sittuyin Burmese chess set has vanished from my favorite game shop in Tokyo. But on a lower shelve, standing still is a tantalizing Isle of Lewis chess set differing from the original in the sense that the pieces are of metal and almost more formidable than the real ones. I am starting to get known enough in the small shop that one attendant watching me salivating in awe at the set offered to unlock the glass case. An invitation accepted with the usual: "just for the feel of it". At some US$400, this is even more luxury than the vanished Burmese army. The feel - I did dare but weigh a few seconds two pieces - is awesome, whole. The design is majestic, mysterious. Something is pathetic in the King's eyes. Strabismus pathos? Still can't find any pointer to that same set.

No doubt

Living with doubt is tiring. Let me therefore publicly spill out the beans, dump, throw away one single doubt that is no longer valid. A no longer valid doubt is nothing but a certitude, certitude in this case that by blogging out of anonymity is a sure way to be detected. Let's scrap the childish hide-and-seek game - seeking (r.e. hoping for) an audience, but at the same time half-hiding like a small child with hands on the face but fingers spread enough to see the outside world, and witness the terror of being discovered as the writer of this and that post - post varying in degrees of interest, and according to the readers' benevolence, between "ha, funny!" kind of things to plain gibberish. Just like life when not played on a screen near you (when does James Bond go to the loo?).

Lately, that ultimately pretentious and narcissistic activity among bloggers - rampant like onanism in the overall human population - that consists of querying ones name in Google is no longer met by shame, but only by the annoyance that the very old (+10 years) things pertaining to the same me are ranked way too much close to the Gold medal top, and located in places where I have no control at all to modify or zap the content. In the end, it is as usual all about control.

Advanced booking: Happy Birthday to Me

Better early than too late.



Advanced booking (on this April's Fool Day) for my birthday (on the 6th, merci).

A blogger in the corporate house

: "Microsoft, for instance, is taking blogs seriously enough to have hired its own celebrity blogger, Robert Scoble, even at the risk that he might be scathing about the company's products."

Interesting stuff about the king consumer in the Economist. Was Robert Scoble a celebrity before he was hired by Microsoft? I ticked at reading that. But the word "celebrity" is here. I wrote about it before: next is the TV show. And as for the risk of scathing, I would not bet a yen in it. There is already a thin margin of benevolence in the shrewed Microsoft untold policy toward the diva blogger, tacitly accepting to turn a blind eye to some light ranting about tiny edges of the Seattle castle RS does not feel right with. Criticising as a proof of corporate allegiance if not love, but a darn promising marketing approach. In the same article, a Pamela Talbot, expert in consumer-product marketing and chief executive of the American side of Edelman, a giant public-relations firm is reported as saying: The less control a company has over its marketing message, the greater its credibility. New jobs in perspective: specialist in faking corporate control loosening. I do not care about this one. But I would consider a full time official corporate blogger position, if the paycheck is correct, but not in weapon industries. The message would be clear: not totally impartial: I want you to buy the products of the company hiring me; not totally an asshole: my company products are the best in the world, most of the time. The problem with RS is the ambiguity, probably unwilling on his side, and the deep down ingrained skepticism that you can't be genuine and use Windows, unless you are faking somewhere. Propaganda is propaganda is propaganda. Like roses. Time will sure change this set of mind.

A villa in Italy

(The mirrored post with picture is here)

From the excellent Dynamics of Power - Conscious Management and Release of Affect - Tool # 4: Letting go through Imagery: ... think about a place that you have been before that allows you to fully detach or let go...

The place is Italy, in the countryside not far from Milan. A banal picture, not well framed, taken from a hammock. What does not show is the heat, the dreadful Summer of 2003 European heat. What does not prick the ears are the insects buzzing madly. The buckwheat large crackers, thin dry leaves of rock like textured, unsalted fabulous snack in the kitchen. Crackers that taste of a mineralized version of Japanese soba. The round corn bread near by. What is missing are the children eternally playing in the blue pool 20 meters away after the fence. A blue pool so blue under the scorching sun that the tour agency brochures look faker than they already are. Under the shade of the house, when the heat starts receding a bit, there will be some red wine and big, fatty, intimidating capers in vinegar. Delicious capers. A banal picture is someone's else lid opening up to a world of contentment, maybe reformatted to keep only the good juice out of it, concentrate of happiness, but contentment all the same. A focus on contentment to alleviate the affects.

Aichi World Expo theater of ridicule

They have the knack at rousing the urge to slap their faces, which rarely happens as a matter of fact. They are the gray guys, usually clad in black though, that have sweat to exhaustion in unendingly boring but tensed meetings to have the Aichi World Expo launched, the launching being not the start of the adventure, but the end. Of course, it's a matter of derision when a prime minister gets into the picture to persuade the organizers that not allowing the average visitors to bring in their own food and drinks is maybe above the limit of arrogance against the masses. Japan is never as ugly when it shows how a perfect communist country it would have made if the Soviets landed earlier in Tokyo than the Yankees. When the Economist announces in this week's edition that the Customers are king, the world expo organizers are showing that from up to end of the ladders, they are mean and see in the human cattle herded in to the place located in the middle of nowhere near Nagoya nothing but cattle indeed, posing a terrorist threat with potential arsenic laced rice balls and nuclear charged plastic bottles. The cattle won and the ridicule of a world expo demonstrated again. But the cattle would have made a better win by not going there first. Boycott is the best revenge. The gray guys will survive the blow though, as usual. I am thinking of the stressed underpaid boys and girls cattle herders I imagine standing a the entrance gates with an army of security guards checking the visitors' bags content and snatching out the prohibited foods and drinks with much confusion and apologizes to the stunned and suddenly stripped out of pleasurable anticipation cattle. After all, one is free to go to the expo and enjoy it. But enjoyment was certainly no part of the original blue print.

When I am retired, I will quit being an asshole

It starts with a pointer here, then expands to food for the mind in Evelyn Rodriguez blog here as well. Maybe a little too much Californian new aging for a born and raised skeptical at heart French like me - wish I could write half like this though - but the matter of being real is discussed for real with blogging as a vector. The reference in Evelyn Rodriguez' post about former GE king Jack Welsh seeking for some realness is funny and sad at the same time. It reminded me of a previous job place where the CEO very well exactly told me after activating the dump him button of the trap under my seat that when he'll retire, he'll pour his genuine mind at shareholders meetings and tell all those managers how that corporation can be mean toward staff.
When I am retired, I will quit being an asshole.

At least I will try and have a ghost-writer deliver a redemptive book (with sequels if enough dumbo buy it) to say that in the end, being 100% satisfied with oneself as a notorious successful SOB is not emotionally manageable (99% is OK). A few months ago at an entrepreneurship meeting where hordes of corporate stiff and change haters gathered to listen and nod to ex-stiff guys now having fun in Silicon Valley investing in less-stiff-than-they-were venture capitalists, one of that ex-Japan now California permanent resident pointed at a book waxing the success of Miss Carla Fiona, of ex-HP fame, just before she was dumped with shame (some) and dollars (a lot) by a hostile board. How much collateral was generated by the thousands of single individuals discarded from GE or HP bandwagons under the brilliant legislatures of those people? Single individuals who - despite the positive de rigueur attitude toward being thrown away (it's a new challenge man! I love challenges - so much that I feel to kill a few ones sometimes...) ended up in divorce, illness or whatever negative condition that does not fit in a Harvard Business Review article? There is no rule that says Blogging is not for assholes. But at least, it inspires some bloggers to delve into that core matter of realness and spill the beans, despite obvious awkwardness, or rather, uneasiness toward expressing ones own longing for some real conversations.

Dump the privacy

Maybe Mizuho bank inadvertently found the ultimate in customer data storage by simply dumping the data out. The news as usual is fuzzy enough that no clue leeks on the location of the landfill site or wherever the magnetic tapes and a few files disappeared. The new law on privacy getting into run mode in two days, corporate Japan is scrambling to try and make sense of it, and clean its act, the gateway at least. But this privacy mania is faked, because focusing only on digitized information of individuals. What about the analogue information, the spoken out for all to hear data - names and addresses at least - spelled on TV or radio whenever a catastrophe occurs and the victims get a 5 seconds fame thanks to the lurid curiosity spoon fed by the all too virtuous media to all the villagers' eyes and ears pricked in front of the TV screens and radio receivers? Privacy? If it were an issue, then how many hospitals should be refurbished with walls, not curtains, to damp the conversations between patients and physicians for all to hear?

Google is doing Gogh

Desecration of a cultural icon started before merchandizing I assume. One day you cut your ear out of madness. Once you cease to exist, your paintings start selling like hots cakes wrapped in gold. Your work previously despised is now delivered in puzzles, badges, stickers and other cool artifacts. Then one day, you end up for 15 hours of fame repackaged as Google extra cool. Hmm, feeling uneasy about that is a sure way to show oneself as an old fart. After all, the corpse is in dust and the bleeding ear does not hurt any longer. Just relax! You are too serious. Serious? My ass! Maybe time to re-read the letters of Van Gogh for a change.

Blog mirroring

Now that the rss feed does not deliver with WordPress comes the need to have rss delivered, at least for the dear and partly unknown Readers that did subscribe over Bloglines. Instead of moving back to Blogger, I decided to double the hurdle and mirror for a while the content of the new blogestate with the free rent spaces on Blogger. The trouble is that pictures now posted from inside the blogestate won't show over Blogger. The blogger wants to be read just like the Podcaster wants to be heard. Vanity, vanity....

No feed

Visibly no feed functioning. What's a blog without feed? A meteorite drifting in space, undetected by any human observatory. WordPress discussion on no-feed issue reads like a treatise on nuclear physics in classical Chinese. Dreaming of a feed patch.

Kyoto can wait

(The mirrored version of this Post with the link to a picture on Blogger is to be found here).

Kikuna hill is visible from the Shinkansen right before the train reaches Shin-Yokohama station, a mere 20 minutes from central Tokyo. I walked back along the suspended track, passing sad and sorry houses after houses, a brand new one waiting for inhabitants, facing the track at less that 1 meter. Imagine a superfast train zooming just besides the window you hopefully can't open, while having dinner at home. But the interesting part is on the opposite side. Because the road from Shin-Yokohama to Kikuna station winds around Kikuna hill, meaning that at each every 5 meters, a side lane is lashing a wink and invites the walker to make digressions after digressions. The busy walker that must go back home is tormented by so much things claiming to stop immediately and watch with delight. Spring here is in full spring. With each and every small houses putting on display the most original, unruly, individualistic gardens, what with the shrubs and flower trees that decided on their own to dwell in the middle of all this, the variety of greens is prodigious. Many crooked lanes give glimpses of multifarious houses with inviting garden and bambous in the distance where the slopes of the hill start. Even the Lecorbusier like modern dwellings climbing the hill are worth of attention. Despite the epidemic bulldozers ever munching deeper into the hill, there are still well preserved anonymous trails and small roads leading to mysterious nowhere spots. I can't stand it anymore, and at one of these side-road with a shrine half hidden at the top of it, I veer right and climb a lane with houses of wood, stones, concretes, blocks of black stones in a rich dweller garden with cactuses and red flowers in wet pheronom state dying for bees to come and do their job. In dirt and pebbles small lanes, I fancy what an adventure it is for someone living here and having a new fridge delivered. The whole neighborhood must stop watching TV and look out of the window, as the news that matter - village events - is now happening right here. On the top of the lane, two lions meet me at the entrance of a quite nice shrine the picture here does not give the slightest idea. Thanks to a weak rain and cloudy gray uniform sky (yes, it's redundant in this blog, but rain makes the Japanese like landscape delicious, more than sunshine), the place is heavy with subdued pastel colors, thick heavy trees, gray stone walls. It's Kyoto at 20 minutes from Tokyo station. I go back too early and cross an old lady heavily climbing the slope and glimpsing in puzzlement at that unknown gaijin tacking pictures. I imagine the place should be logically crowded in week-ends with walkers relishing in ... getting lost. You can bet - of course - that in week-ends more than today, the area is totally standing still as if deserted. The Kikuna community web site doesn't give any single suggestion of walking around the place. Semi-urban walk courses is in limbo. But Kyoto can definitely wait, just like heaven. In Japan, where the pittoresque is tiny and compensates for the usually marred or ugly panoramic, Little Kyotos are still plenty to find in the neighborhoods of nothingness.

If you are in for an organized, for a fee, walk in or around Tokyo in daily unexceptional, that is, delicious for the
flâneur
at heart neighborhoods, drop a note. We may find a deal. Have a look at Walking in Tokyo project as a starter, and walk posts in this side lane.

Veni Vedi

In the huge and crowded reception room of a hotel in Tokyo, the DJ asked attendants to cut mobile phones, while allowing anyone to take pictures at their heart's content. A forest of arms with mobile phones thrust raised on parade when the lateral door opened. Just like a rock star, a president came in and was met by applause, no shrieks of groupies though. The well behaved groupies in jackets were probably the ones creating a human wall so thick and high that we could barely have glimpses of Mr. Chirac in Tokyo. The speech, urbi et orbi, was the usual all encompassing waxing with a few paternalistic reminders like the one about voting for the European constitution. The love of Japan, its millenary culture, the pleasure to be here and now (ici et maintenant) was stressed more than once. After a Marseillaise - warriors' chant - largely unsung, it was champagne and petit-fours.

According to a report about the immoderate passion of a French president for Japan, an inner-circle person is reported as saying : "Japan and the mastery of its culture have allowed him to acquire a great strength to make abstraction of the the French political system and its mean atmosphere". The advantage of presidents over laymen is to glide on a surface of calm, luxe and volupty, without ever having to balance their ideals with the local realities, realities that are not single but multifarious. He did said the name of current Japanese PM Koizumi with expert pronunciation, not a big deal but a great deal indeed.

Actroid

Actroid robot welcome visitors at the Aichi World Expo. In this short explanation sheet, the word "natural" is used three times, and "smile" once. If only she - oops! - it could flip meat patties, hamburgers chains would buy thousands of these cute (?) androids, matching service level at long last with that of food, and reducing the number of no-future jobs in the rising sun land. The politically correct attitude is of course to greet these robots with de rigueur enthusiasm dashed with a lash of cool cynicism syrup wink on top of the bland white cream (such a long circumvolution so well summarized with a smiley).

Tokyo secession

(The mirrored version of this Post with the link to a picture on Blogger is to be found here).

These two gentlemen politician are declaring the Secession of Tokyo. That's what the tag on the poster says. The one on the right with the unintended glorious sunshine ray is Tokyo governor Mr. Ishihara. I am clueless on the meaning of all this, if meaning there is.

Self-pitch on Sunday

OK, it's lame. Self-pitch on Sunday (keeps the doctor away?). If only the beast inside would recede today, the coming week shall be OK. A Man on the Moon, but no serious, implacable, definitive, eradicative, absolute, supreme asthma treatment. Must be ready for tomorrow - first a meeting with client in the morning, then the big (huh?) thing. French president is coming to town and gives a party at a plushy hotel in Tokyo for all the French locals (and their sweethearts, local or not). I would never have thought to "register", but someone thought it swell to meet Mister Jacques, himself, en personne... . He said in an interview for a big national daily (one of the four ... ) that he had not come to Japan for 5 years (came here some 50 times (!) the story goes). And this was starting to be unbearable. I have been in Japan for some 20 years, and .... well, stop the crap here, now! Put a sock in it!

Wayward? Where was I? Ha, yes! Ah oui! Who can attend an early afternoon party in Monday? Expats and dilettantes (and those on the dole). But I am digressing. Self-pitch, it was. So what can I do for you when I don't consult (ME does not stand for Medical Entertainment but Market Entry) at Japan Inc Communications? For an answer, have a look here and don't be stingy with the cost of taking care of communication. Business failure will cost you more.

Now, back to our regular programs. A good writer and a good blog, in French (désolé, bon ....) by a woman deep in joblessness and divorce here: zerotonine au chômage. She writes darn well. French daily Le Monde is hosting blogs for anyone. That's an interesting move from a media, not unique but interesting all the same. If jobless workers (a contradictory expression) in France start writing a blog, that would make for 1 million new blogs in the blogosphere. Add the German jobless and you end up with ..... Appalling.

Selling a cloud

Nuage

This guitar is for sale in Japan. JPY 10,000. Only. With a hardcase. Cheaper than the cheapest Chinese made equivalent. This one is French on top of that. So why the bargain? It's a beautiful gypsy jazz guitar - grande bouche model - custom made, glossy, solid wood. The trick is this. The workmanship is flawed, so the guitar does not play well beyond fret # 10 (it's a 12 fret joint by the way) and there's nothing you can do about it, except pay way too much money for repair. I had it checked last year by the only (maybe) gypsy jazz guitar repairman in Japan. A nice chap and very knowledgeable at that. This guitar will make for a distinctive objet to hang on a restaurant's wall or some interior that fits. It's a take it or leave it no discussion deal. Shipping cost if any is on the buyer's side. End of today's pitch.

On steroid

Tsunami warning? Sort of. Take a late day in March like today's late March day; add sunshine, a temperature catching up from bursts of lower than average to back to average values, strong blows of air crisp and dry after a spell of strangely humid kisses of wind; air real dry like in down-to-the-bottom Winter - we could see mount Fuji ominous silhouette at dusk yesterday, massive proof of dryness - mix all these ingredients with some remnants of flue like virus; serve cold like a dish that deserves instead to be eaten hot (sauerkraut?); malaise guaranteed; add a spoonful of shivers; cut down smell to close to nil (test that claim with Chanel No.5 bottle under the nostrils : mostly no smell, better than no smell though; Chanel No.5 smells so rich!, so Ritz! Farting in silk linen doused under Chanel No.5, luxe and bliss). Now keep calm - if you dare - and start grabbing for the steroid pills. It's coming, after these messages from our sponsors: The Return of Asthma - Part III, playing on an X-Ray chest screen near you, soon.

We played Dvonn

We played Dvonn. That is, I showed him how to play. First time, following a devilish blitz run of Speed where I lost which is good vitamin for him. With games and books about games spread around, small games easy to travel with tucked in the shoulder bags, games boutiques visited at each stay in Paris or close by here in Tokyo, the strategy to offer a pervasive alternative with a Papa that plays - or at least manipulates games almost daily, that strategy of awakening started about three years ago is firmly taking ground. The dynamic of Dvonn, where severed vital links may throw all of a sudden out of the sand beach like board a bunch of holed bakelite circles, this dynamic is esthetically satisfying. We played once but I forced upon him a positive appraisal, stating how nice this game is, how bright he is to play it when the average Dvonn player must be way past adolescence. The ploy worked. It still works at his age. He declared how much he loved that game. I would like to shake hands with that woman physician who expressed doubt at the flawed autism diagnostic of some 5 years ago. She was right. One of these days, we will try Trax.

Perfecting the mobile office

Perfecting the mobile office is costly. After testing a Bluetooth headset over AIM and Skype in various conditions - the last being a standard coffee shop chain outlet in Tokyo with hissing percolator in the background - the conclusion is that I would gladly swap the little device to the shop and get my money back. It sucks, and I am polite at that. Standard Bluetooth headsets do not come with noise cancellation feature. In quiet surrounding, it is barely acceptable. Most of the time, ones voice gets fed back from the receiver's side with a short delay, requiring additional concentration to manage a conversation. Business market Bluetooth headsets come with noise cancellation as a standard and are said to perform much better. But for the single user wishing to move around in urban fashion and call places using Skype, noise cancellation AND dual headset is more important than tangled wires. But a serious dual headset with noise cancellation seems to come at nowhere less than $130 at least. Hmm, need more work and more revenue for sure.

Le nouveau Dumas arrive

Alors voilà. Il y a un nouveau Dumas annoncé aux portes de l'été, et c'est une raison suffisante pour bloguer en français. Un nouveau Dumas, vu de Tokyo. La belle affaire! Un nouveau Dumas, c'est comme l'annonce du Beaujolais nouveau avec la certitude que le breuvage sera au moins bon, sinon mieux. Le père Dumas, pas celui de cette sinistre mise en scène de la montée au Panthéon, empaquetée, merchandisée, vite oubliée. Pas celui de l'accaparement de la dépouille par une association des amis d'Alexandre Dumas élitiste. Non, le Dumas du livre de poche dans la bibliothèque, parfois glissé dans le sac à dos.

Dumas donne soif de Dumas. A l'annonce de la prochaine parution, je me suis avalé le prologue en ligne des Compagnons de Juhé avec toujours le même effet immédiat: un coup de chaud salutaire. Dumas, ça requinque. Il y a aussi le Dumas des lectures de vacances, celles qui donnent envie de boire et manger italien quand Dumas raconte et affabule sur ses souvenirs de voyage en Italie. Depuis la lecture - et moultes relectures - du Speronare, la pastèque n'a plus le même goût. Même à Tokyo sous les feux de l'été et du ronron agaçant des moteurs de climatisation, le rouge de la pastèque est napolitain. Alors on se précipite sur Amazon.fr pour réserver, mais l'ouvrage n'est pas annoncé, sauf - coquille ou farce? - une réedition d'un autre ouvrage pour l'année 2017. Un auteur qui de l'avenir. Tant mieux.

Shaming the bloggers

More than half of French high-schoolers are involved in blogging, with some 6000 new teenagers blogs popping up on the blogosphere each day. They are living dangerously. A few of them got the ax and ended up thrown out of school for having posted abusive comments and pictures about schoolmates and teachers. Abusing, mostly verbally, those two populations is a daily activity in the playground, or around the coffee machine - the smaller version of a playground in corporations.

According to press reports, it seems that the culprits more than often do not see what is the issue with spitting at their mates or teachers. They do not show remorse at embarrassing others via a blog, and being exposed at school disciplinary councils, they stubbornly stick for their stoic selves and get the axe rather than asking for forgiveness. Some parental associations are voicing that the sentences are too harsh and the educational minister I loosing an opportunity to teach something positive about separation of public and private sphere. Not all teenagers' blogs are spitting fire at all and sundry and the press does not delve, as usual, into those blogs that function as creativity, and at times collaborative outlets. If some do, I apologize and would appreciate any pointer.

In the current situation, everybody is shaming everyone, and it is the most powerful of them than give the false impression to win. Teenagers shame peers and teachers, and the shamed authorities retaliate by shaming the shamers, loosing indeed an opportunity to regain respectable authority by reacting in a more creative manner. For the original shamers - having been raised in a cultural environment where cyniscim is served daily in any aspect of life - need guidance. Bruised and angry as they are when exposed and therefore put to shame, they are telling a truth which is that they indeed don't see what is the issue of spitting venom on a blog, and that this comes with consequences they are not aware. But who could teach the shamed shamers? Other bloggers?

Slipping on French Soap

A friend in Paris remarked over Skype today that my French was somewhat strange, mixed up with flashes of foreign onomatopoeia. I must reckon that today's feared meeting went much better than anticipated (as usual, a voice in the background says), but it pressured down the capacity to talk at length. These days, opportunities to speak French are rare. Office, when I am there, is mostly English with bouts of Japanese. Reading is 70% English. Thinking? Well, I don't know. A linguistic mess probably. When French husbands get together here, the Japanese wives quickly get bored with the flood of unchecked talking that goes on and on for hours. It always generates the same reproaches and boring look in the ladies' eyes. As if they were keeping silent in same circumstances. Greasing up French ability is just a matter of having roast chicken, a Rosé de Provence (the dreadful heat of 2003 has turned that year into an incredible vintage) and friends to talk with. As far as I know - specificities set apart - torrent of speech is no more particular to French than to Japanese.

Place des Vosges

Serendipity. In the middle of an almost sleepless night in Tokyo, I get an IM from Henri who happens to live at the edge of Place des Vosges, a rant IM about the throng of Spring worshippers in tee-shirts or less because all of a sudden it is up 20 degrees in Paris and time to litter the grass in the plazza garden with greasy papers (papiers gras). Apparently, NatC took this Japanese inspired blossom picture in the same place probably in the morning. The light feels morning light. It's delicious.

Guest Wifi access

Seth Godin is ranting, and gets ranted back. This is timely. I just decided to shell out US$ 16 each month to NTT Communications HotSpot. Yes 16 dollars, when an hour wifi connection at the airport in Milan was 6.5 Euro last month! Eating out now starts cheaper in Tokyo than in Paris, and Internet connections too. Only the rest is expensive. The rest, that is is a long list of expensive leftovers. HotSpot, yet-another-expense-entry, was prompted by waiting in NTT East headquarter hall several times while unable to connect to any of the long entry list of spots around. No one spot available for visitors. Same at NEC (Empowered by Innovation ... the catch phrase says) where a welcome spot requires a membership to BigGlobe, NEC's ISP. Asking for an Internet access while on a visit in a corporation is often like requesting the keys of the CEO's vault. No way.

Sittuyin

Playing exotic chess in the head. In a book about chess variants, the Burmese chess game Sittuyin caught my mind last year. Now that the non-electronic game shop Okuno Karuta in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, carries a rare single set of it, my mind is feverish. Rather than shelling the US$200 to buy it, I simply picked a copy of a cheap confidentially edited booklet in Japanese describing the game and the context of it in Myanmar. It seems that Sittuyin there is also close to extinction. Maybe the price tag is justified after all and it may be the unique Sittuyin set currently on sale in Japan. In the booklet, the author stresses how difficult it was to him to locate a set while on several trips in Myanmar. The literature available on the game is paltry and the two or so local books published quite a long time ago virtually unavailable. What the author doesn't know is that Sittuyin is playable online here. Not visually pleasing and mysterious as the black and red figurines and the wood board of the real game though. But living somewhat on the net.

Shamer

"Our capacity to feel hurt is, even further, a measure of our capacity to care." I extract this from Dynamics of Power - Fighting Shame and Building Self-Esteem. I dig it up from a place which is the altar for books, in this apartment where managing an ever growing number of those is a daunting task. In this altar, a few selected volumes that generally matter more than others are entitled to stay for an undetermined number of weeks or months. That altar? It's the toilet my friend. The last place where to find a LAN socket in the wall. Mobile phone signal does seep in through though. Shame is looming back with a vengeance. Ups and downs are steep, that is, the sentiment to be close to loosing control is hard not to reckon. A free jet coster drive. I am glad to know that it is a measure of our capacity to care, because man, this is hurting. I remember H. in one of our IM nurturing conversation last year stating how he has spent his life trying and keep at bay from the shamers. Keeping at bay from the shamers. What a program when this is about work, job, money in the pocket at the end of the month. How many people in the subway in the morning wish they could keep at bay the shamers, meaning that the first practical action would be not going to the office? Anyway, in another life I will be a professional care provider. But "caring and pain" are interwoven, the same excellent book says. Bring the anti-acid. It's burning in the tummy, in this Life already.

Failed

OK. Things are running fast. Follow-up to the previous post, it failed, flatly, on the face. Nose bleeding. In the mind at least. Conflicts of interest made the other side refrain to meet. Conflict of interest. Hmm, rolling this seven times in the mouth before spitting it out. Goodwill among competitors? No way it seems. I am learning business like they don't teach you at an MBA.

Not meet Thy enemy?

The correctness of business practices is hindering the trail lately in several stances where caution has been suggested to me. In one case, the business correspondent advised me to pose as a journalist (some years ago, I didn't pose, I was) in order to safely meet an entity "playing in the same field as your client". I got a similar advice cum warning within the gap of a few days about a potential to have a client meet with an entity whose network linkage reaches to a direct competitor, Thy Enemy. Posing as a journalist would bare me creating any business connection in the future. I requested to be introduced in plain light. Waiting for the feedback. The second not advisable situation is too green to fathom about the results. But I have my doubt on all this, all this that has nothing to do with mystery shopping - just got an invitation for a stint of that - and nothing to do with business intelligence a la James Bond, but everything to do with who will be the smartest to deliver best. If companies A, B and C are sharing more or less the same knowledge and understanding of the market, why is it that B is faring better? It's about the capacity to implement, that is, to move on. In the mad house of some years ago, the top would shun at any opportunity to get a foot inside the local competitors club, where the competitors' tops are said to be mingling while still being competitors. Coca Cola recipe may be a corporate secret, but besides that, there is an ocean of best practice and hints at what works and what don't in beverage industry, scattered everywhere. More than often, you just have to bend, scoop it, and cross with some expert opinion before delivering to the client. The client's capacity to make something out of it is the key. So an opportunity appears to meet, even indirectly, Thy Enemy, knowing that both sides are aware of the fact that we are playing in the same field. When such opportunity appears, is the obvious reaction to procrastinate at the prospect of doing so? I think it's the wrong natural reflex.

Not yet Inspired

Listen, Donald Helfgott and Mona Westhaver. I don't get it. I don't understand your business. I have been a user of Inspiration - visual outliner king - for years. I paid an arm and a leg to have version 5, then 6 shipped to Japan years ago. Now, I have been craving for version 7 that has been released for a while, but no way. Your local reseller is a dead cow, and you know it better in details than I. But Maybe you were not smart enough to raise that local distributor. Anyway. You don't deliver online. You stick to the nice package, juicy paper manuals, sturdy boxes and the likes. Most of these previous artifacts have long ago reached my trash box for lack of place and the plain fact that manuals being provided as pdf files, the paper version is irrelevant for those who don't care. I am one of those. And don't start telling things like: but our users are delighted with the package, and some do not have the bandwidth for downloading. Crap. Stop the robotized communication PR communication, the "we passed your comments to our international department that will contact you back". They never did by the way, for lack of arguments. I won't order the upgrade package, simply because that would mean doubling the price because of appallingly high shipping fees. No way, no way. Absolutely no way. The most basic market aberration here is that I want to buy your product using a method of delivery that is now endemic - online purchase and download - but a method you keep shunning away at. In the meantime I bought Tao. It does the job quite nicely - more subtly than Inspiration - although lacking the visual module. I'll give you my 2 yens tip here. Start delivering online for the same current price - you'll save a bundle - and sell the CDs, paper manuals and the likes as extras for those who can't live without. Isn't this a brilliant idea? Thanks. Now go ahead, expand your opportunities, or loose more of your current market.

But I don't know him!

My friend photographer Henri Zerdoun just sent me a scanned magazine article clip praising the issue of a largely unknown intellectual cum poetical cultural review where some of his pictures are displayed. Me in Tokyo suggested immediately to him in Paris that I put this article in his web site, but first check with the publisher if that scheme is OK. He ringed right away and IM backed that the editor of that review - an honorable and still influent gentleman of 85 - first said that he did not know me. Which is true. But as part of the prop of my friend's web site I happen to edit and enrich, talking about me being 10,000 km away certainly added to the confusion. Anyway, he doesn't know me, I do not know him, we don't know each other. So what? How this not knowing matter of fact does impair action? Much looks like daily Japan in many ways.

Walking in Tokyo project revisited (2)

Walking in Tokyo is about wanting and being a part of it (sing New York Liza, sing!) for the time of a walk. It's about slurping noodles standing at a makeshift table on a side street of Tsukiji market. It's about going straight to the water basin at the entrance of the shrine - pretending you are part of it and in the know - to wash hands before closing in to the shrine altar, and why not, seriously make a prayer, or seriously mimicking it. It's about consciously watching the details while trying and not look too much like a tourist - and believe me, that is the most difficult part of it. Walking in Tokyo is about squeezing oneself on a too small chair and relish without showing it on a grilled fish with a bowl of rice, miso soup and pickles in a cramped cantina like restaurant where salarymen gulp down the same lunch in less than 10 minutes. Walking in Tokyo is about consciously gulping down that lunch in the same 10 minutes, and thanking God, or whoever you want, and maybe thanking yourself first, and patting in your mind your own shoulder t show self-appreciation to be alive and do like the locals do. If you were able to talk with the locals, more than one would show the natural limit of their genuine appreciation of your own appreciation at the local bizarre customs by pointing at your incapacity to really understand local things deep under the skin (but baby, I've got you under my skin!). As chances are you don't speak Japanese, it won't happen to you, but then as if it happened to you, you just fuck them off with a smile, because there is no qualification of any kind required to feel content with a grilled fish with a bowl of rice, miso soup and pickles in a cramped cantina like restaurant where salarymen gulp down lunch in less than 10 minutes. The Walking in Tokyo experience is about the tension of self-awareness of oneself being here now, in a now and a place where you won't be coming again in most probability. That is, not coming again the same you as you were at that time. With that state of mind the list of things to do when discovering the day-to-day routines of the others is staggering. With that state of mind, there is no routine, nowhere. That is why Walking in Tokyo is replicable anywhere. Leave the guide books in the hotel room or for the plane when going back home. Instead, blogging about it if you are inclined to do so is a way to sustain the necessary tension of focusing on the miracle of one being here, now. You can also listen to this first
Podcast
in the meantime.

Walking in Tokyo : Project Revisited

Walking in Tokyo, the blog, was launched at a time of professional despair - read joblessness - where an idea a day could not keep the gloom away. But ideas there were, and flowing at that, despite the harsh, critical and devastating scorn of close people fingering in disgust at ones late-student-like-dreamer-should-be-ashamed-of-oneself cuckoo. I believe this not to be unique and the repelling reaction of normal people despising your flights of imagination not a Japan specific trait. But it hurts all the same and blogging came almost as a relieve and released the hampered rush inside to write all about it. To write all about it, even cuckoos ideas like this one: Walking in Tokyo. Now that other professional activities are keeping Walking in Tokyo in semi-limbo state - it does not mean that the project is dead. On the blog screen at least - somewhat expanded or hinted at in my walking blog - Walking in Tokyo is alive and well in the realm of imagination. No, it's not only alive, it's thriving. Walking in Tokyo is the way I would like to visit other towns of this planet - a guiding experience where the focus is not on the historical, worn-out touristic spots, but on the daily life enhanced by the view and appreciation of a guide willing to show you his or her own version of what makes - at times - that daily neighborhood a darn good place to be today, now, right now. Walking in Tokyo is the anti official, chartered, licensed, authorized guide scheme; the one that for instance the Japanese authorities are trying and nurture by making the national exam to turn into a professional guide less difficult than getting a doctorate ( pass rate allegedly less than 10%!), or warning than non-official guides could be fined some US$ 3,000 for illegal activities. There are hints that even legal guides don't make a living out of it anyway. Walking in Tokyo project is in another league, a different realm. The lame Yokoso campaign to lure in more foreign tourists here, lame and doomed, despite TV spots (TV spots for Japanese!) showing - oh! so much smiling people like in stock pictures for business ads - will yield nothing, because it is shunning at the very grease needed to make such endeavor kind of work: people. Walking in Tokyo - an expandable concept to other towns, other spots, is exactly about that: people network. More on this soon.

Local tourism in needs of foreign input

Another chunk of public money will be dumped into surveying foreign teachers in Japan - mainly in their 20s, the report says - to get from this qualified segment views on what's in and out in this country. As if information on tourism was lacking. In Japanese language at least, the quantity of guide books and magazines dealing with national touristic spots is staggering. So much that the knowledge about what is worth seeing on the islands around is roaming all over the place. You just have to catch it. On top of that, it seems that the grey jackets want young people visiting Japan. If cashing in is the purpose, targeting a little bit older than the young makes more sense. But sense may not be part of the agenda of civil servant. My project in limbo Walking in Tokyo
- a network of local (really local!) guides ready to show their real daily Japan - for some money - to foreigners, makes better sense (at least to me, ha, ha!). Of course, it's about human network, that is what the authorities - by forwarding the issue of how to turn this local touristic destination - Japan - into an international tourist destination - absolutely do not want to deal with. The above mentioned foreigners do represent a bunch of human being, if not a network, but they share a common feature which is that most of them won't be staying in Japan that much time. Does that make them disqualified? Even if biased and politically incorrect, my opinion is that yes, indeed, they do not qualify. Pool the locals, that is pool the Japanese first.

Slabs of fatty girls meat

A tourism promotional poster in Mie prefecture ended in the garbage after complains that the literary catch copy extracted from a famous writer's work bruised female image. "If Matsuzaka beef is a maiden who has been raised with great effort, then Iga beef here is a mature woman rich in fat". The sentence appeared in an essay about 30 years ago. Sensibility has changed over time goes the story. But today's sensibility - not the one carried up by the media - has been nurtured in the past where it is basking. Today's sensibility doesn't belong to today. Today is a constant effort to go ahead while trawling the past in the back as a more or less heavy piece of luggage according to each one single sensibility. This other promotional page mixing slabs of fatty girls soaking in hot water before consumption, parsed with paragraphs on yet another variety of overpriced meat, belongs to contemporary sensibility just like in the past. Food and sex. Nothing new. Pass the mustard.

Quiet day in Yasukuni

On an uneventful Sunday late afternoon in Yasukuni shrine, I have a welcome plastic cup of hot amazake in the shabby food and drink shop in the middle or the large alley that leads to the main shrine building. A group of prewar - or more precisely - war Japan nostalgic people are having a party chanting tunes of those good old days when Japan had balls and no alliance with the US. They make an eclectic lot of men, and one woman, from age between less than 30 years to 70, maybe. One is clad in old army fashion and is taken in picture, martially posing with a real sword he holds like a rifle. A real sword in the middle of Tokyo! But Yasukuni is not Japan, nor Tokyo either. Yasukuni is ultra-Japan. Here, people freely smoke cigarettes despite the smoking ban in Chiyoda ward. They all giggle, sing, congratulate each other in friendly manner. An old guy is clad in a navy commander fashion. One young cuckoo imitates empty handed the gesture of a soldier running against the enemy with a bayonet plugged on an invisible rifle. At the time of second world war, he probably was not even a spermatozoid yet. I wonder who is the current enemy. The woman sports a black blouson with the war time Japanese flag showing a red shining sun in the back and a message calling the grandchildren of Yamato to raise and be proud. When times come to call it quit, they all stand in ranks at a safe distance from the Shrine, start a song in lieu of the national anthem, military salute then profusely bow, before starting unending rounds of thanks around and let's meet each other again. At the same time, on the opposite side around the parking, a drove of thugs, mostly oversized terrifying men in Armani black, pass by to board an eclectic collection of benz and ominous small buses with black windows. Yasukuni shrine does not proclaim to campaign against the mafia and must also benefit from these powerful visitors. After much showing off of power, they leave the place. Later, when the shrine shops are closed and the parking mostly empty, a policeman on a frail bicycle wearing a mask as any pollen allergy sufferer around does a tour of the parking, well after the parties are over. I go back home humming " What a beautiful world", like Louis Armstrong.

JJDD

JJDD stands for Japanese Justice Decision Denial, and is seemingly endemic at the high levels of society. I love this one stance surrounding the court decision condemning the tentative of Fuji TV to dwarf LiveDoor stake in Nippon Broadcasting: "We, Fuji TV, believe that Nippon Broadcasting is right,'' said Masao Sakai, a senior executive managing director at the television company. ``It's not a final decision.'' In a similar fashion a year ago, a court ruling that Japanese PM visit to the Yasukuni shrine is violating constitution was met by a Koizumi saying: "It's strange. I don't know why it violated the constitution." Asked if he would return to the shrine, he replied: "I will." In effect, justice decisions have no law power.

Lionel Dersot

Crossing fingers

Yes, it's service sales pitch. A company in Australia contacted me for a one day interpreter stint to tae place several kilometers away from Tokyo.I stated my fees as requested, explaining that the distance - a 4 hour trip away - would mean for me to get there the previous night and stay in a hotel prior to delivering service. That makes some money for that company to spend on communication issue. And my previous experiences show that reluctancy to pay for interpretation is pretty much endemic. Of course, this must depend both on the client's business domain and the experience of hiring an interpret. In the excellent book The Market Research Toolbox, the author goes as far as to develop a mathematical formula to try and quantify the cost of not doing marketing research, and provide financial justification for market researcher to persuade their bosses that it is better to do it than not. I don't have the formula handy, but the issue is the same with communication. The cost of miscommunication, that is, the cost of messing up with communication, the hurdles that result from the mishap, are way much more costly than hiring an interpret. I am crossing fingers that the potential customer in Australia understands it. Generally they don't, that is, the first time.

Lionel Dersot

Fukinoto

We had Fukinoto tempura at dinner. Fukinoto is eaten as green buds before turning into those whitish flowers you can see on the picture. Fukinoto, with Taranome, is an omen of Spring coming. A tangy, slightly bitter taste so refreshing despite the landscape in the West end of Tokyo where we are tonight, still in bleak winter washed out yellow hue. I had a usual stroll along the Akikawa river, most dispiriting walk among a messy jungle of dried out shrubs and tormented bared trees. I was told to wait another two weeks from now to see buds and some dash of green starting to pop up around. Tokyo wants Spring to come back, quick.

LiveDoor geeks

Two liveDoor gentlemen came at a customers' meeting the other day. Sloppy neckties, shabby suits, dyed hairs. One was manager, the other a vice-president, that is, on the English side of the business card. On the Japanese side of the card, an additional piece of information stated that he was - not only a vice-president - but a charted accountant. Just to state that even at less than 30 years old, that geek who visually does not much differ from your average geek in Shibuya has done his home work. Another big difference with Fuji Television network boss is that those geeks know how to start a computer and use it. You can bet the old fart on the other side leaves that hurdle to his PA. It's old versus young fart war in Japan.

Lionel Dersot

A new dormant blog

I have new dormant blog here. A dormant blog is a blog to create some stickiness and bring contacts to my more important business web site. It's the poor man trick to raise ones ranking in Goggle query results. It is dormant because in no need to be fed. Refreshing entry time stamps will be the major task to perform with that one.

In a presentation of a client the other day, a list of leads generation per media had online advertisement come first. But the leads to transformation listing was much, much more interesting. Referral was the strongest media at generating sales, followed in the third place by word queries. Advertising was quite down under the list. On a tiny scale, there are signs recently that blogging ones ware over the wires make sense. Although trickling in in homeopathic doses, there are clients coming out of nowhere, but generally through Google advertisement, requesting interpret services, or at least inquiring for conditions.

And what about the signature at the end of entries lately? Yet another trick to rank higher in the listings.

Lionel Dersot

En direct

Simple minded techies like mysel