New Japan Journal Posting on JonAndMaryWorld

Hi Guys. It was good to talk with you today (Thursday your time). Wish I could be there today (Friday your time) for a delicious squid lunch with extra sauce. This "today" business is pretty confusing when you're across the date line!

I just had lunch with some friends at a hotel run by the U.S. military. One of the guys is retired Navy, so could get us in. There was a delicious salad bar and Mongolian Barbeque for $10.50. They even charged in U.S. currency. And there was salt and pepper on the table, a rarity in Tokyo. And they gave each person a menu, instead of only one for the whole table to share, which is how it tends to be done here. It was nice to have these American touches. I ate way too much, in the typical American fashion.

I've posted a couple items on JonAndMaryWorld. Tony, if you tell me how to set up the email notifications on my site, I'm happy to do that for anyone who wants it.

Give my greetings to the gang at NCBRT and at Chelsea's. Have a great weekend! - Mary

http://jonandmaryworld.blogspot.com/

More Photos from the Art Fair on March 7th

Hi Guys. I started a separate blog with all my old journal entries on it. And I've added a bunch of photos from the art fair, if you're interested. Here's the address:

http://jonandmaryworld.blogspot.com/

It's not nearly as polished as Tony's blog. Maybe I should hire him as my web-master...

MAYBE I'll get around to a new journal entry today. Tomorrow morning we're taking off for a long weekend in Kyoto, so getting ready for that is first on my list for today.

The highs are supposed to be around 68 today, so it'll be good to finally see some warm weather.

I have lunch plans today with some of my girl group. Unfortunately most of them are into healthy eating, so we're going once again to a "macro-biotic" restaurant. The food's not bad, but it's not Chelsea's. Sometimes, I just want something that's deep-fried. With extra sauce, of course!

Squid Friday - Be There (Scare Tactic)

Perkins Road Overpass Work in Progress - Blue Moon Distributors Expect Downturn in Demand for Q2.

Dave Remmetter, who owns Chelsea’s Café underneath the overpass, said he plans to maintain normal hours even though the construction will block a doorway to the restaurant and force him to close parking areas under the overpass.

“If people come to the area, I think we’ll be OK,” Remmetter said. “If people avoid the area altogether then all the businesses are going to be in the same boat.”

Remmetter considered opening the popular eatery later in the day but ultimately decided to keep it open for lunch.

“We’re going to let the market dictate,” he said. “If no one comes in for lunch then we’re not going to open.”

Poetry Contest - In honor of Tony's 40th birthday

Mary's Submission:

Let's get together and croon
For Tony a birthday tune
Squid is a winner
For his birthday dinner
As long as it comes with Blue Moon

Happy Birthday Tony!

(Beat that, gang!)

Japan Journal – 11-Mar-2009 - Plum Blossom Festival, Art Fair, Etc.

Two weekends ago we decided to head out of town on Saturday and go to the nearby town of Mito to the Plum Blossom Festival. Mito is about an hour out of Tokyo if you take the express train. A regular train costs less, but takes twice as long. We figured it was worth the money to get there faster. Still, the tickets cost about $100 each, round-trip…far from cheap. Using some very good advice I got early on in Tokyo, I typed up and printed out the necessary information for the train tickets (where we were going, round-trip, non-smoking, etc.) so that we would have that in hand at the ticket office. It turned out that the person who helped us at the ticket office spoke some English, so with the help of my printout we were able to purchase tickets and get on the train without problems.

From what we hear, the really big show in Japan is cherry blossom season, which is in late March or early April. But the plum blossoms bloom earlier, and Mito has a big garden called Kairakuen, with lots of plum trees. The weather was cool and clear, and rain was expected on Sunday, so Saturday was the day to go.

By the time we got to Mito, it was going on lunchtime and we were hungry. There were food stalls lining the paths near the entrance of the park, so we decided to sample some Japanese “festival food”. First we tried a type of stuffed, griddled bread. The guy at the booth spoke enough English to tell us the different fillings. We opted for the sweet potatoes. The bread was interesting, and just enough to whet our appetites. So Jon picked out some fried noodles from one of the vendors, and I picked out some little small cupcake-type things, where octopus and spring onions were put in a batter and baked. We rounded it out with a couple skewers of yakitori. All the food was reasonably good without being anything remarkable.

Food vendor at the Plum Blossom Festival

We then wandered around the park, looking at the sights and people-watching. We were the only westerners I saw there the entire day. Unfortunately, the plum blossoms were not quite at their peak yet; the trees were in bloom, but many of the buds hadn’t yet opened.

Family photo time under the plum blossoms

One interesting sight at the park was a temple that had a display of dolls. March 3rd is “Girl’s Day” in Japan, and the Doll Festival (Hina Matsuri) is the main way it’s celebrated. Apparently people with young daughters display these dolls in their houses, but there are also big public displays like at the temple. The dolls on the top tier represent the emperor and empress, and the lower dolls represent their court attendants. The display was beautiful, and I was glad we got to see it.

Dolls on display for Girl’s Day

During the week, our one night out was to a nearby yakitori restaurant. This is where the various types of food are all skewered and grilled, though the grilling isn’t done at your table like in a robatayaki restaurant. We both ordered one of the set menus. The waiter then gradually brought us grilled skewers of chicken, beef, pork, scallops, shrimp, squid, eggplant, and quail eggs, along with a salad. It was all good, but the beef was fantastic, while the eggs were okay without impressing me much.

This past weekend we had a full schedule planned for Sunday, so decided to take it easy on Saturday. We did go on a small outing to a used foreign book store, and surprisingly ran into Joanna, one of the American women from my little lunch group. This was quite a coincidence, since I know about ten people in this city of 12 million. After the bookstore we went to an Indian foreign food supermarket near Roppongi Hills in search of basmatic rice (they were out). As we walked past Roppongi Hills on the way home, we passed a “Free Tibet”demonstration. It was all very colorful and enthusiastic, but peaceful and well-organized, with several policemen handling traffic. For lunch we found a small Thai restaurant, Bangkok, just a couple blocks away from our house, buried on a side-street. The food was good, and I’m certain we’ll visit there again.

On Sunday morning we went to an art fair at a convention center called Tokyo Big Sight on a man-made island in Tokyo Bay called Odaiba. To get there, we had our first experience on one of the Tokyo monorail lines. It felt weird being on one of these trains with no driver. The art fair was called Geisai #12. Apparently for a small fee up-and-coming artists can display their wares in this fair at the convention center once a year. The vast majority of artists seemed to be college-age. There was a wide variety of art, including some people doing performance art. For example, two young guys were sitting on the floor of their “booth”, eating a pile of bananas (“yes, but is it art???”). We spent a couple hours looking at the different works and found it all pretty interesting. We grabbed a bite at one of the cafeterias at the convention center, then headed home.

Art fair sample

We didn’t have much time at home before we headed out again. We had tickets to see Zingaro, a French equestrian performing group. It was a visually interesting show, and they performed some pretty amazing moves, like riders standing on horses that were going at full gallop. But we were a bit disappointed in the whole thing. It was very highly hyped and quite expensive, and we didn’t feel like we got enough bang for our buck. Oh well, live and learn.

We try to have fun when we can, but unfortunately spend quite a bit of time on the daily business of living. Jon continues to work a lot of hours, and comes home tired each night. Last night he had a teleconference that started late in order to include participants from various places around the globe, so he didn’t make it home until almost 9:00. And he’s been spending quite a bit of time on weekends too trying to catch up with reading and email.

I finally got our Japanese banking situation squared away, and felt really proud the first time I concluded the final step in our current work process for getting money:

1. Jon’s paycheck gets automatically deposited into our U.S. bank account.
2. I contact the bank in the U.S. to do a wire transfer of U.S. dollars into our Japanese “multi-money account”.
3. I go on-line and change dollars into yen, moving them from the multi-money account into our “yen savings account”.
4. I go to the ATM and withdraw yen so from the savings account.

We aren’t used to handling as much cash in the States as we do here. In the U.S. we charged almost everything. But here, many smaller shops and restaurants don’t take credit cards. And I guess checks just aren’t done here in Japan. We’ve used our U.S. credit card successfully at a lot of places here, but yesterday they said my card was “rejected” when I tried to buy some train tickets for our upcoming visit to Kyoto. When I got home and called the credit card company, they said everything was fine with the card, and that a $1 charge came through from the train station. So now I need to go back to the train station and try again, though this time I’ll take the cash with me, just in case I have problems with the credit card again.

Other painful chores I’ve been working on this week include doing the U.S. taxes, and continuing with the address changes. My mom forwarded a bunch of mail to me, and I was a bit dismayed to see how many businesses we still needed to change our address with. I’ve been establishing on-line accounts wherever I can, so that I could change addresses there, and hopefully make it easier in the future. But it all is incredibly time-consuming, and really no fun whatsoever.

I’m currently working on a load of laundry. With the washer/dryer we have in the apartment, it takes at least 4 hours to do one small load of clothes. So far, I haven’t had the heart to try to do two loads on the same day. It’s a cool-looking machine, a single machine that does both washing and drying, something I’ve never heard of before. You can even set it up to do the whole thing in one big cycle. When it’s all done, the machine plays a little melody…much more fancy than the loud buzz that my washer and dryer in the States used to indicate that they were done.

The new Vonage phone system seems to be working well with one exception: the telephone solicitors know where to find us, and we get calls from them in the middle of the night. We’re on the “Do Not Call” list, but apparently there are lots of loopholes, so we still get plenty of calls. We’ve taken to closing the office door before we go to bed at night, so that we aren’t wakened up for campaign phone calls.

Speaking of which, the time difference between us and Baton Rouge is now 14 hours instead of 15, since daylight savings time began last Sunday. They don’t shift the time here like they do in the U.S. So keep that in mind if you’d like to call us.

New Feature: Picasa Web Album

I'm trying out Google's Picasa Web Album (on the lower left hand side of the Squid Friday Blog). It's a slideshow for Squid Friday pictures that uses a flash-based viewer. Our uploaded pictures to the Squid Friday Blog are stored in our own separate Google Picasa accounts. By the way, we each have a 1GB storage limit for our uploaded pictures. That should do us for a while. :-)

Let me know if you like the slideshow. It doesn't seem to impose very much overhead.

LSU goes Google

I was wondering why I wasn't receiving my normal amount of ITS-related spam from my LSU PAWS account. It turns out that LSU had already been redirecting all of my PAWS e-mail to my newly hosted LSU GMail account. So that explains why I haven't been receiving any new e-mail!

It feels really weird to be checking an LSU e-mail account on GMail. I suppose that LSU figured that if GMail was good enough for the Obama administration, then it's good enough for LSU. :-)

It's so big!!!

The bread pudding, that is. :-)

Today at Squid Friday, Molly brought us what has to be the largest piece of bread pudding that we have ever seen at Chelsea's. Mary, eat your heart out! (Ha-Ha) Notice the size of the bread pudding in comparison to the size of our hands.

New Guest Requirements

We've had a request today from a Squid Friday member to admit someone as an official Guest to the prestigious Squid Friday Blog.

I wanted to get your feedback about admission requirements (and privileges) for Guests to our online Journal. There was a previous post discussing this. One of the possible requirements includes attendance at a previous Squid Friday event. It was also suggested that official Guests would have permission to comment on our blog (but not create new posts). Does this sound good? Do you have any other ideas for admission requirements/privileges for Squid Friday Guests on our blog? Is there someone you would like to nominate as an official Guest?

New Feeds for Squid Friday

I've just learned that there are separate feeds for Posts and Comments. Blogger designed it this way for us:

(1) All Posts (RSS):
http://squidfriday.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

(2) All Comments (ATOM):
http://squidfriday.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

I've also included the links above as part of the web site (on the lower left-hand side).

ok..i'm ready to go now

do we really have to wait until lunch time? Because I really am ready to go now.

Apple Innovates More Better than Ever

Here is a press review of the latest Apple product.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA&feature=channel

Google immediately implemented wheel-emulation APIs in the Android SDK, and Microsoft reminded everyone that it had patented all letters of the alphabet and any circular motion that resulted in their display.

Microsoft then released a Beta HW/SW copy of the Zune RubIt2020, but cautioned there were actually no working parts inside the hardware nor code in the software. Steve Ballmer said, "Performance in the first few refreshes will probably not be optimal. Our engineers suggest that, for performance reasons, you may want to attach a PC to the RubIt and paint a circle on the keyboard."

Novell announced it would have a network client and server software available for it by Saturday, and a spokesman stated, "we are working on a marketing campaign for our solution, branded as the 'IntraNetWheelThingy - 1Net~1Wheel~1World'. There will be a product launch party in Zion City and billboards on every major interstate in Montana. We think the tie-in between Montana and the wildy popular Hannah Montana television series will allow us to synergistically monetize the 10-year-old girl segment of the market."

President Brock O'Bama commented, "Change. Positive change. Bold positive change. New era bold positive change. Spare Change? "

Justin Moore, messaging architect for The Friday Squid Group, said, "I just don't care any more. My head is spinning, and I wish Apple would get back to its core. They should have stopped innovating when they released the perfect server. I would never exchange my Apple Sorbet server. Once in a blue moon, when I'm needing the sauce, I'd exchange it for bread [pudding], but other than that . . . ."

Phamous Phishie Philosophers

Chelsea's Cafe: Serving Baby Squid for Over 40 Years!

Another Logo...

Here's a clipart logo. What a cool bowtie, right? Try to ignore the condom on it's head. Hah! Made you look!

Squid Logo?

Here's a squid photo Jon took at the Tsukiji Fish Market here in Tokyo. Maybe it's not very logo-like. In fact these guys look downright menacing!

Japan Journal

Japan Journal - February 27, 2009
Mori Arts Center, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo City View + Week’s Activities

At the moment it’s snowing, which is a big surprise. It’s been cold and drizzly the last couple days, but I didn’t think it would get cold enough for snow, yet here it is. I’ve taken some photos out the window, but I don’t think those will look like much. If we get some accumulation on the ground, I’ll definitely go out and snap some photos of Tokyo in the snow.

Last weekend was unfortunately dominated by Jon doing a lot of reading for work. He had a 100-page technical document to sludge through, and hadn’t had time to do it at the office. By late Saturday afternoon he needed a break, so finally we went out to do some sightseeing.

We went to Roppongi Hills, which is a nearby development that includes a high rise with the Grand Hyatt, some residences, upscale shopping and many restaurants. But we were interested in the exhibits at the Mori Arts Center and Mori Art Museum, which are housed in the same building. We were able to get a combination ticket that also included a pass to Tokyo City View, an observation deck on the 52nd floor.

Mary with the spider statue at Roppongi Hills

We started with the solo exhibit of Kwang-Young Chun, a Korean artist, at the Mori Arts Center. We found his work absolutely stunning. We went through the exhibit twice, and even then I was reluctant to leave. Rather than describing it, here are a couple links that will give you an idea of his work.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/06/arts/chun.php

http://flickr.com/photos/curlyjazz/tags/kwangyoungchun/show/

The Mori Art Museum was showing an exhibit of modern art from India by various artists. There was a wide variety of artwork there. Particularly unique was a large video screen that you could stand in front of, and see your shadow projected on to it. Then the shadows of various objects started slowly falling from the top of the screen, and you could make your shadow interact with them. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and can’t imagine how they did it. Here’s a link that shows a few samples of work from the show, but unfortunately has no photos from the interactive video display:

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/5002/chalo-india-a-new-era-of-indian-art-at-mori-art-museum-tokyo.html

By the time we finished at the museum, it was already dark. We headed to the Tokyo City View, and spent some time photographing Tokyo at night.

View from Tokyo City View at Roppongi Hills. The big orange tower is Tokyo Tower. Our apartment building is at the far left with blue lights outlining the roof, and red words below that.

Then we headed to a Thai restaurant that had been recommended to us, Jasmine. Jon had told me that he had a hard time getting oriented whenever he came out of Roppongi Hills, and this was no exception. We spent the next half hour walking around the cold dark streets trying to figure out where we were. We did some walking in circles I’m afraid, but finally saw a landmark that we recognized, and were able to get back on track. Unfortunately, being lost in Tokyo seems to be a common thing, even for the locals. Most streets aren’t named, so you can imagine how that impacts your ability to get around. One nice thing about getting lost this time is that we happened upon the venue for The Blue Man Group, who’s performing in Tokyo. It’s not too far from our apartment, so we’ve decided that we’ll buy tickets for that in the near future, since we’ve never seen them and have heard good things about them.

A window into a restaurant kitchen (something we saw while wandering around lost).

Aside from that outing, we’ve mainly been concentrating on getting settled in and taking care of business. We finally got the sofa controversy worked out. The apartment owners agreed to disassemble the small single bed in the 3rd bedroom, which we use as an office. The mattress is now stored under the big bed in the master bedroom. They were able to store the frame of the bed for us. That gave us room in the office to put the big uncomfortable sofa that came with the apartment. Then THAT gave us room in the living room for the comfortable sofa from the furniture leasing company. So that’s finally all taken care of, and the furniture is in place. I need to spend a little more time putting stuff away, but then we’ll be officially moved in.

Another detail I got resolved this week is that I was finally able to set up our Vonage device for VoIP (internet) calling. I kept getting error messages at first, but was finally able to get it fixed with some help from the front desk here. We pay a monthly fee and get unlimited international phone calls to various countries, including Japan. The device is installed between our internet connection, our computer, and a phone. The cool thing is that it’s set up with our old home phone number (225-768-1666) from Baton Rouge, though the other extensions are still using the phone number that came with the apartment. What that means is that you can call us at the old number, just like you were calling us in Baton Rouge, and my understanding is that your charges will be no different. And any calls we make are paid for with the monthly fee. In fact, I’m even able to call a Baton Rouge phone number without dialing long distance, just the seven digits. The sound with the system is good, and so far I’m very impressed by the setup. And we can take it with us to Singapore too. So if anyone wants to give it a try, feel free. But please keep in mind that it’s 15 hours later here.

Another mystery that I’ve been trying to solve is the case of the missing ATM cards. We opened a Citibank account soon after we arrived here, and were getting concerned that we never received our ATM cards. We had gotten the Citibank credit card that we applied for without problems. The front desk signed for its delivery by the post office, then handed it to us as we walked in one day. I assumed the same thing would happen with the ATM cards. Finally I asked about it at the front desk, and they said, “Did you check your mail box?” Boy, did I feel dumb! Due to information overload, I totally forgot that we have a mailbox on the 3rd floor. For the most part, mail is delivered there; sometimes the post office will bring a piece up to the reception desk if it needs a signature, but sometimes they just put a notification in your mailbox that you need to arrange to sign for the letter. As it turns out, our notification (all in Japanese) had been sitting in our mailbox for about 10 days. The post office had held the letter waiting for a response from us, then finally sent it back to the bank. So I’ve called the bank and they’re re-sending it. Hopefully we’ll get it this time. We’re ready for the convenience of withdrawing money from the ATM, rather than having to exchange US dollars at the bank.

A final piece of business that we worked on today is the sale of the house in Baton Rouge. The buyers did their inspections and the negotiations have been finalized. Today I sent in the final paperwork. So it seems that everything is set for the closing in mid-March. I’ll miss that house, but I’m glad that we’ve been able to sell it so easily. It looks like all our work to get it spruced up paid off.

In spite of all these details to attend to, I have found some time to meet some people. I’m slowly getting to know a group of women here, and have been invited out to several lunches and coffees. Most of those I’ve met so far have been from the UK or the US, but there is at least one Japanese woman who hangs out with the group too. I’m thrilled that they’ve been including me, and it’s so helpful to get advice from these ladies who have lived in Tokyo for a while and can show me the ropes. I’ve also met some expat “house husbands” here, mainly American men who are the trailing spouses for their wives’ jobs.

Tonight we’ll have an opportunity to meet our neighbors. Our apartment building is hosting “Indonesian Night” in the lobby. There will be a catered Indonesian meal for the residents and the staff. It’ll be interesting to get to know some of the other tenants, since we rarely see anybody else besides the staff. Even though this is a big building, the serviced apartments only occupy a few floors, so I don’t have a good feel for how many people live here.

Next International Squid Day

Now that we're in the month of March, what do all of you think about scheduling our next International Squid Day?

Anyone suggest a particular day?