Sunday, September 30, 2007

The Chinese Characters for Coffee

I made a discovery this weekend. I realized that knowing the kanji (i.e. Chinese written characters) for the word coffee can change your afternoon.
In downtown Tokyo, there are plenty of Starbucks, Cafe Veloce, Tully's and other such cafes. They mostly all look the same, (like someone's sitting room) all serve one kind of "blend" coffee and a slew of latte, cappuccino, and sweet drinks with very little actual coffee in them. They also contain lots and lots of people on a Saturday afternoon. It seems these are good places for people to study or read for hours on end. Okay, no real surprise there. But what about for people who want to sit down and drink a cup of coffee?
After looking into 3 or 4 of the type of shops I just described, I noticed a sign with the kanji for coffee. I suddenly realized that I had been looking in the wrong place if I wanted a cup of coffee. For coffee, you need to go to a "coffee shop" not a "cafe".
Usually, the word coffee will be written in english, or a simplified script for foreign words (called katakana). Those shops have basically become private, bring-your-own-book libraries. For coffee, you look for the word written in kanji. A few words, like tobacco and coffee, were somehow matched with kanji characters at some point.
The kanji for tobacco (煙草) actually makes plenty of sense. The two characters actually mean, "smoke" and "grass", which is close enough to what tobacco (or wacky tabacky) is, so someone did a good job of picking out those characters.
The two kanji used for Coffee on the other hand (珈琲) were an odd selection! The first character means "an ornamental hairpin" and the second one means "a string of many pearls". WHAT!?
According to my personal Chinese adviser, these characters were chosen because their pronunciation is close to "coffee" (actually, closer to "cafe") and because they are rarely used for anything else. In fact, those characters are only seen when used together and to mean coffee.
Well, to be able to recognize those two characters suddenly opened up a whole new world. Within 3 minutes we were seated in a shop that looked slightly like a lounge with velor chairs, wooden tables, and chandelier lighting. There was a bar on one side where they made different blends of coffee with a siphon (basically a flame under a glass contraption). We were given menus to order from at our seat by a girl wearing a classy black and white uniform. I ordered a Brazilian coffee with a piece of pound cake for about $6.00. When the coffee was served to our table, it was served in beautiful ceramic cups with gold etching on them and around the edge of the saucers, NOT in a coffee mug I might have at home or a 12 oz paper cup. The sugar was served in a small glass pot on our table and a little metal cup of cream, NOT disposable sugar packets or plastic creamers you would expect to get from a fast food drive through.
And thus, we enjoyed our afternoon coffee break before hitting the busy streets of Tokyo once again to finish our errands. Now I have realized this little difference between "coffee with kanji" and part-time baristas, so hopefully I will never have to exhaust myself looking for a cup of coffee again. That little experience opened my eyes in more ways than one.

Friday, September 28, 2007

Spoken word

When I was in high school, I listened to a lot of punk music from the 80s and 90s (fairly new stuff at that time). One of the artists was a band called the Dead Kennedys. They had a political edge (obviously) and their lead singer, a man known as Jello Biafra, even ran for Governor of California.
In any case, some of these artists had a message in their music, and others just wanted to promote their right to party. Jello Biafra seemed to have a message, but to really get a clear idea of what he was all about, I bought one of his "spoken word" albums.
Wikipedia describes "spoken word" as follows:
Spoken word is a form of literary art or artistic performance in which lyrics, poetry, or stories are spoken rather than sung. Spoken-word is often done with a musical background, but emphasis is kept on the speaker.

That, however, is not an accurate description of what Jello and some of his other contemporaries were doing. The only music involved was the fact that they were musicians. Otherwise, they had political or social commentary to share, and basically sat down with their fans (I suppose) and had a chat more or less.
The music albums the Dead Kennedys released did have a political message in the music - with such songs as "Holiday in Cambodia" - but they also had skits of sorts. These days, hip-hop and rap musicians have skits on their albums, usually them chatting up a girl. The Dead Kennedys had a skit of Margret Thatcher chatting up Reagan about starting a war. Reagan gradually got more and more excited and the two were panting about the idea by the end.

Anyway, I realize that this was my form of news back then. These days I read the news with skepticism and interest in the way things really work. I think that the commentary that was contained in the music helped to shape that. Teenagers today are probably looking for a message they can relate to today. I don't think they just listen to whatever lyrics are out there and believe blindly. When we're young, we have beliefs, and we look for ways to expand them.

I still listen to spoken word, by the way. I haven't heard Jello speak in a while, but a former singer for the band Black Flag has been boosting his career in music and movies with spoken word albums as well. Henry Rollins used to put out books of poetry when I was a teenager, which seemed bold for a punk rocker then. Today his spoken word performances are part social commentary, part political activism, and a lot of goofing around. These guys are comedians who are too angry to leave it at laughter and want to drive the point home, basically.

However, I often recall the words of one of my high school teachers. He was a man of small-stature, skinny, balding and wore glasses. He was a well-liked teacher, however, because he seemed to be able to relate to the students and kept his classes interesting. He told us that we would be surprised at what he was like when he was younger; he wasn't so different from many of us. He said he was a punk rocker on top of it all. However, as he got older he was surprised to find himself listening to a type of music he NEVER thought he'd enjoy: classical. His reasoning was simple and it resonated with me at the time. "There gets to be a time when you get tired of hearing music that is trying to tell you something, to shout stuff in your ears. I just wanted to listen to music in its purest form, and I suppose I found that in Mozart."

I guess sometimes the best spoken word is that which uses few words to get the point across.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Turkish delight

Monday was the Autumn Equinox and the Japanese have determined that to be a holiday. Basically, they will use any excuse they can to make a Monday a holiday and get a three-day weekend on account of the fact that they tend to avoid long holidays, instead taking multiple short-holidays. I could pontificate on the reasons for that, possibly, in another post.
Nonetheless, J and I took it easy on Monday and in the evening decided to go into town and try out a Turkish restaurant I had discovered a few months ago. At that time I had been listening to the Turkish pop musician Tarkan quite a bit and that got the idea of looking for Turkish cuisine into my head.
We had a great meal, starting off with a plate of goat cheese and vegetables, and then an esme meze, which is a slightly spicy dip we ate with ekmek (turkish bread). We also had a tomato soup with some cheese melted in it and a garbanzo bean soup and a salad. The main dish was the ever-famous doner kabab lamb meat, with which we ordered some plain rice, or sade pilav. All the food was delicious.

Now the next thing on my list is to try and find a Swedish restaurant in Tokyo. Hopefully I can find one other than the Ikea food stands to get some köttbullar!

Monday, September 24, 2007

More than I bargained for..

When shopping for souvenirs in Chicago to give to friends, we bought a few garments, like t-shirts, etc. The staff at the shop were polite enough, however they neglected to remove the security ink tag attached to one of the items. I didn't discover this until we had already returned to Japan, and thus it would be impossible to bring the item back to the shop to have them remove the tag.
Upon first considering what to do, we thought maybe, just maybe, one of the shops in Tokyo would be able to remove the tag for us without getting ink all over the item and ruining it. However, I figured that would also be a bit of a time-waster when, lo and behold, we have the internet at home; a source of information for just about any subject.
And as luck would have it, a simple search for 'ink tag removal' came up with some good results. I quickly found out that these tags are removed using a powerful magnet to lift ball bearings housed in a plastic cap. If the tag is jarred without first lifting these ball bearings, it will crack the glass tubes filled with various colored inks below, connected by a metal post in the center.
Nonetheless, the web-search results also showed how to remove these ink tags easily enough with a few home tools. I followed the instructions, and - presto! It didn't take but 3 minutes.
Here are some pictures for all ye to take a gander at :)

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

37.6 degrees Celsius

I don't know how the well-known movie critic duo Siskel & Ebert got their start exactly, but a good guess would be that they caught a cold over the weekend. At least for me, resorting to bed-rest and wearing down my cold last weekend with a barrage of movies seemed to work well. I watched both the dystopian story of a world without children in Children of Men and then Mel Gibson's Apocolypto.

Both movies were rather breath-taking depictions of a world in which none of us would want to find ourselves. The dire situation presented in Children of Men, where the human race faced extinction by an unexplained loss of the ability to reproduce for nearly 20 years, surely makes one think. The movie seemed a bit gloomy to me at first glance, but once I accepted the plot proposition, the movie seemed to take on a tone of hope in a situation where hope was all but buried under the rubble of a war-torn England ravaged by short-sighted self-interest.

Apocolypto went far beyond my expectations of Mel Gibson after I sat through Passion of Christ a few years ago. Although I wasn't a fan of Passion (all the controversy aside, I just thought it lacked any real passion to save it from being, simply, boring), this glimpse at Mayan era Mexico was absolutely enthralling. From the very beginning to the bitter end, the movie grabbed the viewer as if in a lasso and dragged us along for the ride. The concept was not new, but the setting and characters were almost awe-inspiring. Even though the film was done in a foreign language, it did not rely on dialog to move it forward. In fact, it relied more on the legs of its characters, who were running (or chasing, depending on the perspective) literally for days. Historical inaccuracies aside, it was a great movie.

And, the result... my cold is mostly gone. Granted, this is probably less because of the movies and more due to the homeopathic medicines given to me by J along with a bit of tender-loving care, but the movies certainly helped pass the time.

by the way, just for the nerds who didn't get past the title: °C = (°F − 32) /1.8

Friday, September 14, 2007

41 States to go!

This is a blurb copied from the Pew Research Center:
9 - States with Electronics Recycling Programs

Five state legislatures -- Minnesota, Connecticut, Oregon and Texas -- took steps this year to curb the threat of toxic waste created by the proliferation of discarded computer gear and other digital junk, joining four others -- California, Maine, Maryland and Washington -- that pioneered electronic recycling programs from 2003 to 2006. Leading the pack, Minnesota enacted the nation's strongest "e-cycling" law. It requires manufacturers of electronic goods to recycle 60% of the volume of their products sold in the state. Less stringent recycling laws passed and were signed into law in Connecticut, Oregon and Texas this year and North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley (D) also is expected to approve an e-waste law passed by his state's Legislature.

http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynumber/?NumberID=367

http://tinyurl.com/28saom

Talk Radio

With podcasts available to download onto a portable player, (i.e. my iPod) I have come to love talk radio. I can easily imagine a world before television where radio programming was literally the talk of the town. In fact, the advent/popularity of podcasting (which is basically a revolution of radio programming in a way the VCR revolutionized the way we watch television by making it available to us when we have the time to enjoy it) has probably reinvigorated radio programming. Hard for me to say, though, since I didn't even have "local" radio available to me in Japan - by which I mean, I can now listen to Chicago Public Radio on the subway in Tokyo.
While I enjoy listening to various news programs, my two favorites are not news related so much as they are thematic storylines. At the top of my list is This American Life (from Chicago NPR), followed by RadioLab (out of New York). These are expertly produced and edited and always provide intelligent entertainment; each show lasting for approximately one hour and updated weekly.
I remember years ago when I noticed my mom listening to audiobooks (or the "traditional" term, books-on-tape) while she went for evening walks. It was around that time or soon after that the iPod reached its popularity, and it seemed a well-timed turn of events since more books were becoming available in audio format. Now audiobooks are no longer in the same family as Large Print Books catering to people with poor eyesite, but are for those of us on the move, mainly urban dwellers commuting to work or looking for something to engage us while at the gym.
So even though talk radio, per se, often causes people to conjure up images of a stuffy commentator taking calls from the general citizenry, I think it's far time that this view is updated to reflect what is really available out there. And for those that don't have an iPod or mp3 player, check out local radio listings online.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Environmental issues in your backyard

After my recent trip to Chicago, I was reading up a bit more on the new Chicago Spire that is to be constructed in the near future in the vicinity of Navy Pier. There are actually two plots of land there, apparently; the other being old DuSable Park. Unfortunately quite a lot of land contamination was discovered at the park site, so - from my understanding - it seems that they switched the locations for the Spire and the park. Apparently a thick layer of concrete will protect from the radioactive substance that contaminates the soil, although I'm not so sure I'd want to buy a condominium built there nor let my kids play at the park next door.
In any case, this is a rather uninformed opinion, although I'm keen to look into it a bit more in my free time. Nonetheless, this did lead me to find an interesting collection of Chicago environmental issues from the Reader, which you can find here: http://www.chicagoreader.com/greenchicago/

Another site I frequent recently had a feature on various people's opinion on just what the heck we should actually do about global warming: HERE

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Origami - Masu Box

Prepare a square piece of paper.
Then click the link and follow the instructions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masu_%28Japanese%29

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Back from America

After being away for about a month, I'm now back in Japan. During that time, my company moved much closer to my apartment so we are downtown, near restaurants, banks and shops - instead of factories and a prison. The new location is closer for me (30 min door-to-door) but further for others. One co-worker opted to find a new job rather than make the 50 minute commute. Another coworker laughs that his commute is 10 minutes longer now, up to 1 hour 55 minutes now!

Last month was also my first overseas business trip with this company. I went to Thailand and worked for 20 days. While there, I started playing tennis with my coworkers on the weekends. I really came to enjoy tennis and even managed to play once in America a few weeks later. Now I'm hoping to find a place where I can get court time in Tokyo about once a week, if that's possible without breaking the bank.

Anyway, that's the little update for now.

p.s. despite the shorter commute, the above post was still written using my cellphone.

p.p.s. details on "bigger" news to come later.