Old man Hirao's house of dental horror

This lovely house is just south of my home station Hankyu Rokko in Kobe.

The writing on the door says Hirao Dentistry.

Because this is the kind of place you'd want your tooth pulled.

Rife Rist

I'm subscribed to the design/lifestyle/randomfemininewhimsy blog 'Making it Lovely'. Yes, it's pink and girly and I don't much care for the posts about doll houses, but I'm comfy enough in my manhood to ignore the fey bits and appreciate the cool things such as the author's once-a-month progressive photos of her now 9-months old son in the same get-up and chair.

A recent post mentions a less gloomy take on the Bucket List called a Life List or in 'Making it Lovely' parlance A Lovely Life List. We'll forgo the overwhelming loveliness of it all and go with Life List or Rife Rist in Engrish.  Unlike a Bucket List, it's less fatalistic, more fun, and more of a reminder of things that would be cool to keep one eye on and get around to doing as time and mood permit than an unneeded reminder that we're going to kick the bucket one day. I thought it would be fun to start by sharing my Rife Rist, adding more in later posts. Would love to see your Rist in the comments (yes, you, the only person who reads this).

Here's mine for a start:

Live in Europe for a few years (top choices are Denmark, Germany, and France but open to suggestions)
Climb Mt. Fuji again
Spend more than a day in Paris (ten years ago I spent a day in the city in between trains)
Drink an amazing year of Cheval Blanc (contrary to its name, it's a red wine)
Fly in a hot air balloon
Have a part in a movie
Date a redhead
Grow a garden
Have dinner at French Laundry
Throw a full-on wine dinner party for close friends
Write a novel
Write a non-fiction book about multi-ethnic society
Make and drink maccha green tea every day
Have big muscles (let me be honest... have muscles)
Learn French
Have a few nice pieces of clothes and keep them for a long time
Learn to tango
Only eat what I cooked myself for a month
Own a dog (or a cool cat but not a bitchy? one that doesn't know its place)
Do a ramen tour of Japan
Learn to play the piano or guitar
Run a bar (called Bar Poon with my buddy Taka)

I think this is good for now.

Tofu Tofu Tofu (include own fake Chinese inflection)

Destitution is the mother of vegetarianism. Ok, I'm not destitute but my ass is pretty poor lately. So... I've been eating a lot of tofu (which I sometimes say with a grating and grossly un-PC Chinese inflection when I need a little extra encouragement to eat fermented bean curd for the fifth day in a row).

Japan, not surprisingly, is tofu paradise. Here are some types and ways of eating tofu in Japan.
Kinugoshi - Soft tofu often eaten with a splash of soy sauce, grated ginger, and scallions
Momen - Firmer tofu great for stir frys or fake steak dishes. Similar but not as rubbery or as hard as the tofu wannabe hippies eat in the US.
Yudofu - Translates as hot water tofu and is boiled tofu dipped in a vinegar soy sauce called ponzu.
Tamago - Egg tofu. Breaks strict vegetarian rules but adds springier texture and egg-licious flavor. Who doesn't need a little egg added to their soy bean?
Gomadofu - Sesame tofu. Rich in flavor with a creamy texture. Its flavor can come on strong for some folks but worth acquiring a taste for if you're getting bored of standard tofu. A much better way to add excitement to your tofu diet than insulting the Chinese and their lovely language.

I'm no culinary genius but here is a fun way I've used tofu in my cooking:
Sliced in ramen noodles as a chashu (roasted pork) replacement. Chashu is another fun word to say in fake Chinese. Extra tip. Make Top Ramen or instant noodle of choice bearable by adding a soft-boiled egg sliced in half and a butt load of chopped green onions as toppings.

The red stuff is Korean spicy fermented cabbage called kimchi. If you look carefully you can see noodle peaking out from the bowl at 4 o'clock.

Learning Japanese (1) Do not avoid Kanji

Series on my personal and opinionated views about learning Japanese. Especially focused toward English speakers, who have the bad habit of thinking English is like the universal language on Star Trek. Yes, English is the most widely understood language in the world, but you made the choice to live outside of your home country. Stop acting like a 19th century British Empire colonial and start learning the local language.


Do not avoid Kanji

You can learn to communicate well without a comprehensive understanding of kanji but you will never become truly fluent. Also, in many jobs Japanese will hesitate to hire someone who can't read the memos or proactively participate in meetings because of a lack of reading and writing skills. You don't have to be perfect but learn enough to get around and to write via aid of a computer or a mobile device.

The English alphabet is not a good equivalent to the difficulties of learning this daunting writing system, but before you dismiss kanji as arcane, difficult and unnecessary, first spend 30 minutes teaching non-English speakers the rules of English spelling and phonetics. Or think about this phonetic joke. Read this word ghoti. Most will read it as something like 'gotty' but if you get creative with the English rules of phonetics it could be read as 'fish'. Now, multiply this silly occurrence by many thousands of words and you have the hurdles non-native English speakers face learning English writing and reading.

Kanji is not an letter system, it's a character system. This means each character holds a lot of information. Explaining the beauty and elegance of kanji is sort of like explaining the beauty and elegance of Shakespeare to a beginning English speaker. Near impossible, but nonetheless there. If you don't like Shakespeare's writing replace it with another writer you think is great. If you don't like reading, go fuck yourself.

There are several good systems for learning kanji but I'll leave those up to you to find. Overall, I think learning kanji is a matter of balance- textbook study and repetition but also reading books you enjoy and making the effort to handwrite letters or memos whenever you can.

矛盾: Spear+Shield=Contradiction

For those who don't know the Japanese language, its use of Chinese characters or kanji can seem archaic and impractical. And for those studying the Japanese language, the thousands of kanji (and their multiple readings) can simply be maddening. However, there is meaning to this madness.

First, let's look at the English word contradiction.

Contradiction is from the Latin contra (against) dicere (speak), meaning "to speak against". Latin in its logic and...

BORING

Now let's look at the Japanese word for contradiction, mujun.  It is made of two kanji, 矛 (mu) spear and 盾 (jun) shield. What does a spear and a shield have to do with contradiction? It comes from China, so let's give credit where credit is due. In ancient China a merchant selling weapons said "I sell a spear that can pierce anything." And in another place the same merchant said "I sell a shield that is unpierceable." A customer who had heard both pitches asked, "then what would happen if that spear were to strike this shield?" The merchant had no answer and thus we have a...

CONTRADICTION

Now, that's interesting. Also interesting and entertaining is the Japanese show Hoko x Tate Taiketsu or Spear versus Shield Showdown. Wait. Isn't spear mu and shield jun in Japanese? Yes, but mu and jun are the Chinese-style reading. Hoko and tate are the Japanese-style readings. WTF? I never said Japanese and kanji were easy, just meaningful.

The show asks which would win if spears that can pierce anything against shields that can't be pierced are pitted against each other, and pits various products and skills against each other. For example, in the latest episode  a man who has been growing some of the world's best melons for 41 years and can even tell how many days old a melon is just by looking at it, was challenged by the world's best maker of display sample food to see whether he could tell the difference between his real melons and the fake one. The grower stared at each melon, picked out the melon that was his and cut it with a special melon cutter. Finally down to two melons, the grower was able to pick out his melon from the sample. Yes, I'm really talking about fruit.

But if you really want to go there, a past episode pitted one of Japan's top plastic surgeons against the latest NuBra to see if he could spot the woman wearing the NuBra. For five minutes, the doctor stared at the breasts of five bikini clad women. Each time he eliminated a NuBra-less woman she took off her top and showed him her breasts. No, the audience wasn't privy to the view. Anyway, the doctor got down to the last two pairs of breasts, couldn't pick out the woman not wearing the NuBra and lost.

The show is usually not so crass and often showcases interesting technologies and their creators. One showdown was between a Japanese company that makes super strong fans, versus a Belgian or Dutch (I can't remember) man who makes the world's most wind resistant umbrellas. The umbrella had to withstand fan wind and simulated rain for 3 minutes without breaking. The umbrella flexed out of shape but in the end was still operational. The sporting Belgian told his Japanese opponent that he would like to use his fans to test future products and gave him the umbrella as a gift. The Japanese guy wasn't the happiest man, but took it in stride.

The video in Japanese but the production value is high, so it should give you an idea about the show's appeal. This episode featured a revenge showdown between a drill that can make a hole in any metal and a metal that can't be pierced by any drill in a modern day version of the spear versus the shield. The drill lost in the first match. Watch to see which wins the rematch.

Note: YouTube took down the rematch video. This video is from Japanese video site Dailymotion. It's not the rematch video but it should still give you a good idea of what happens when badass drill encounters super badass metal.


ほこ×たて 矛盾 110124 最強ドリルvs最強金属３ 投稿者 plutoatom

"You have been warned..."

From my experience Malaysia Airlines is a lovely carrier. They have a good safety record, the planes are comfortable, and the flight attendants are not only pretty, they're nice. However, when I flew them to go from Japan to Switzerland in the summer of 2000 the first thing I was greeted by when I sat in my seat was a friendly admonition printed on the back of the seat before me. This was over ten years ago and I wish I could find the actual text but if memory serves me correct the following was written in an appropriately bloody shade:

You have been warned. Drug trafficking carries the mandatory death penalty in Malaysia.

It made me wish I could roll down the window and throw out my Tylenol tablets.

I bring this up because recently a Japanese woman was sentenced to hang by a Malaysian court for carrying 3.5 kilograms of meth amphetamines in a travel bag. I understand every country has a sovereign right to determine its own laws but shouldn't possession be regarded as 'having drugs' rather than automatically as 'trafficking drugs'? This mad law leaves people vulnerable to being set up and then sentenced to death by a kangaroo legal system that has little transparency or due process. I'll give Malaysia this much credit- the woman can appeal (and plans to do so) and if this fails the sultan (the head of the state in which she was tried) can pardon her. Still, I wouldn't carry someone else's bag (like she did) and I'd keep both eyes and locks on my bags when traveling through countries with a law like this. After all, can we trust a country that still has hereditary sultans as heads of states? Haven't they seen Aladdin over there? Yes, I know, Jafar was the Grand Vizier, not the sultan. Still, same difference. What's to be done for the woman if the sultan of that state has a Jafar-like character whispering into his ear.

Jokes aside, I hope this woman's appeal succeeds or that the sultan is a nice guy and pardons her so she can come home. Meanwhile, I don't care how pretty the flight attendants are, I'm not flying Malaysia Airlines anytime soon.

The 'i' Word

No, not the tiresome bevy of Apple 'i' words. This one.


invent |inˈvent|

verb [ with obj. ]

create or design (something that has not existed before); be the originator of: he invented an improved form of the steam engine.

• make up (an idea, name, story, etc.), esp. so as to deceive: I did not have to invent any tales about my past.

ORIGIN late 15th cent. (in the sense ‘find out, discover’): from Latin invent- ‘contrived, discovered,’ from the verb invenire, from in- ‘into’ + venire ‘come.’

Anyone else tired of the recent, increasingly frequent overuse of the word invent, as in Steve Jobs invented the iPod? If you go by the example above that Apple invented an improved form of the digital music player then yes, Steve Jobs or Jony Ive or the guy who was put in charge of the iPod project invented the iPod. But come on, didn't invent used to mean someone created something that didn't exist before and does something that we couldn't do before. There were already (crappy) digital players on the market before the iPod. Invention should be used for truly new creations, such as Edison and the lightbulb, Daguerre and the photograph, or even better, Reard & Heim and the bikini. By the way, Jacques Heim was, as expected for the inventor of the bikini, a fashion designer but Louis Reard was a car engineer whose mom owned a lingerie store. Kind of neat (go Wikipedia!).

But here is why I love being a guy. Heim first named their world's "smallest bathing suit" the atome because the reaction guys would have when they saw gals wearing these things would be like an atomic explosion. Reard, liking the idea but being a bit more clever, renamed it the bikini after the nuclear tests on Bikini Atoll. Over sixty years later men still have little atomic explosions in their swim shorts when they see the ladies in bikinis. Steve Jobs (God rest his soul) arguably "invented" the iPod, but the bikini? Now, that's a real invention.

However, who ever invented the mankini should be mauled by sharks while swimming in his invention (I'm against capital punishment but fine with it when incidentally carried out by hungry animals). 

Generation 1st

I was tweeting with friends about the beauty of Apple's first generation designs. Although we agreed that the iPhone 4/4S design is the sweetest iPhone design, we also appreciated the first gen gorilla-back iPhone. Much better than the plastic back 3G, 3GS that followed. The first iPod is a work of art, and I'd like to add to that the one and only iPod mini (I still miss my stolen silver one), the first iPod nano, the first iPad, and the one and only G4 Cube. Yes, there are exceptions. The second gen sunflower or E.T. head iMac is arguably better designed than the Bondi Blue iMac. Though those original iMacs make for better fish tanks or objets d'art (bustin' out the Francais, yo!).

Eh hem, sorry about that.

Anyway, the original iMac (love it or hate it) remains iconic today, so my point still stands. Everyone's clamoring for an all new iPhone 5 design but how much do you want to bet that it's going to look like a miniaturized version of the iPad 2? There's a point where cost and features trump form and there's only so much minimalism that even Apple can do before the aesthetics suffer.

Sensitivity

Like anyone I'm touchy about certain things and not so much about others. I tend to be easy to annoy and take snark at face value, and thus tend to be the easy target of those who enjoy annoying little jokes at others' expense. I know those people don't mean any real harm and are simply enjoying the same thing a dog does when she demands that you play fetch with her but brings the ball back all the way to just out of your reach. Yes, I'm talking about you Chew-chan, Doggie-God rest your soul. What's extra annoying about those people and canines is that the joke is often on them. That they don't realize this or refuse to care just serves to annoy even more.

And I'm also sensitive to more weighty things such as willful stupidity, racism, and people who don't read (sorry for repeating myself). But two things I'm not overly sensitive to that many people seem to get worked up about are privacy and spoilers. First, privacy. To be more accurate, I'm not that sensitive about privacy for privacy's sake. I don't care that Apple might know what music or podcasts I enjoy and if knowing helps them to provide more, better music cheaper then I'm all good with that. I understand that privacy violations can lead to financial, medical, and employment discrimination, and those things need to be curbed but I'm always baffled when 'netizens' get upset because Facebook knows you had rhubarb pie for dessert last night. Now if Zuckerberg uses that knowledge to poison all the Sara Lee pies in the frozen food section of your local grocery store then... Don't get me wrong, I don't like people staring at my junk while I shower, even though I once disclosed the size of my member on a podcast I previously hosted that shall go unnamed. Maybe this privacy thing is growing on me.

Spoilers. If the movie or TV show or book is so crappy that being told the end takes away all artistic or entertainment value it had then you need to find something better to watch or read. Yes, it's not nice to reveal that it was Mrs. Peacock, not Professor Plum, who killed Colonel Mustard in the Conservatory with the Candlestick, but do people have to freak out when you simply say "there's a twist at the end"? This is often followed by "shut up", with me responding "I'm just saying it's not who you think it is, that's all." Finished with "la la la la." Grow up, you only focused on the destination, unable to enjoy the journey imbecile. Yes, dammit, I'm sensitive about people who are sensitive about spoilers. Humpf. What about it?

Outdoing native English

Japanese Engrish gets criticized and for the most part rightly so. But sometimes they get it right. Here are some examples.

Guess what these phrases are in Japanese:
1) Thong
2) Comb over
3) Porn videos

And the answers are:
1) T-back: Looks like the letter 'T' on an ass. Who would've thunk it. The Japanese, of course.
2) Bar code: This one beats comb over by a mile. Of course it only makes sense on dark haired, half bald men, but that's not the fault of the Japanese.
3) AV: Means audio visual in real English, but who cares? In the real world it means adult video. Otherwise known as porn. Heck, yeah!

Here's another that's nice and to the point: セックスフレンド (sekkusufurendo) sexfriend

"The Japan Syndrome"

In an article titled The Japan Syndrome Time Magazine talks about Japan's 20-year stagnation and the possibility of the West falling into the same hole. Food for thought. Let me eat and think. Post to follow later.

Do you have an official evening tipple of your life?

I was thinking about how people treat the things they like. Some people find a beer, say Coors or Asahi Super Dry, that they love and it becomes the official evening tipple of their lives. Others, such as me, might love Bud* but need variety. When it comes to food and drink that are my favorites I'm quite philandering. Sure, I have some comfort food and drinks such as the previously mentioned natto (delightful), but more often than not I like to keep my favorites as benchmarks or as a long ago left homeland that I may rarely return to but still hold dear. I'm especially this way with wine. There are some bottles that have left a deep impression on me and I'd love to revisit them anytime, but usually I buy a different bottle of wine every time I hit the bottle-o (Aussie colloquialism). Interestingly, I have a stronger loyalty to types of something, rather than to specific somethings. The nerdy grape Cabernet Franc gets me going every time, as does Belgian beer and Italian food.

What's interesting is that people who usually stick to one thing, often stick to one shitty thing. I can understand drinking one flavor of juice if it was, let's say that delicious (and deliciously expensive) pomegranate juice from Pom, but what's up with people who drink Cool Aid everyday? Back to beer. People who drink the same brand of beer everyday religiously often enjoy Piss Water Light. Why not a Duvel? I get it that the good stuff is pricey but if you're only going to drink one type of beer at least make it an Yebisu.

Maybe it's about what the idea 'favorite' means to people. To many it's equal with comfort rather than delight. After all (unless you're a dog or baby), you can only be delighted by the same thing so many times. The promiscuous of us are looking to be delighted. Perhaps we care less about something being our favorite (familiar and well-worn) than about something being fresh, exciting, and adventurous. It doesn't always have to be new, but it does have to intrigue. Perhaps that explains my love of Laphroaig, the self-styled "most richly flavored of all Scotch whiskies" and mildly bitchy, slightly quirky-looking hot women.

*Bud=Budweiser Budvar from Budweis, Czech Republic

A few of my favorite things...

Natto on warm rice and pug noses on doggies
Bright city neon and sweet girlfriend kisses
Well aged scotch whiskey with hand carved ice
These are a few of my favorite things

*Natto is stringy, stinky, sticky fermented soybeans. Delightful.