Yet another "traffic post"

One thing that annoys me here in Japan every now and then is the total lack of respect for traffic rules. The most obvious is of course the lack of respect from cars regarding bikes or people walking. I like to cross at a zebra crossing without having to stop for cars. Cars are supposed to stop for people that are on the zebra crossing, but very rarely do, meaning that few people try to risk it. Cars also stop and park right in front of a crossing or even on it!!

Cyclists are unfortunately not much better. They bike on the pavement all the time, and get annoyed if people don't move out of the way. I absolutely refuse to move out of the way for a cyclist riding on the pavement.

As if this wasn't enough, walking people also disregard the traffic rules. In Japan there are not many cycle paths, but on those rare occasions there are, you can be sure that people are walking on them. And of course they get annoyed when you signal to them to get out of the way. I try to make a thing of heading straight for them and then brake just in front of them, and look down on the ground, shake my head and say to myself - "I wonder what that says". Of course it says bike path, or rather じてんしゃ.

Golden Week + Discounted High Way Fees = Traffic Jams

We are now in the middle of Golden Week, one of the major holidays in Japan. It is actually number one or number two, fighting with New Year's for the prime spot.

So what do Japanese people during Golden Week? Of course many things, but one thing that almost every Japanese citizen do is travelling. Usually to the place "where they came from", which is usually where their parents live or even where their parents used to live. This means that roads, trains and flights are rather full. Now, if you are flying this is not really that big of a problem since planes can't be more than full (no standing options as far as I know), but as for train, these are usually a little more than crowded meaning a good chance or risk depending upon how you see it of having to stand for as long as the train ride is. Still both the train and the flight usually takes you to your destination in time especially here in Japan. Going by road is a whole different story though.

Roads are crammed with lorries, buses, motorcycles and passenger cars. On top of this the Japanese government in an effort to kick-start the Japanese economy decided to lower the high way fees quite drastically to in principle 1,000 yen. It could have been ten times that before. Well, it is not difficult to understand that even more vehicles will be on the road during Golden Week, resulting in even bigger and longer traffic jams. Just ask me, a ride from Nagano to Tokyo yesterday took seven hours instead of 3h40min. Add to this that the delay led to us arriving at Ikebukuro station at around midnight. In this country of no-public-transportation-during-night it meant that we couldn't get home.

Now, we were/are lucky that a friend doesn't live too far from Ikebukuro station, and that we could stay with him, but having spent seven hours on a bus, having woken up at 05h30 to go hiking after having spent the previous night drinking a fair amount of alcohol together with two 60-year-old Japanese gentlemen, I think you, dear reader, understand that one does indeed want to go home and sleep in one's own bed/futon.

Other than that, Nagano was good. Lots of long walks and nice food.

Today's big news

Today's big news is the arrest of SMAP member Tsuyoshi Kusanagi. According to the early news releases he was getting really pished and ended up getting undressed in a park shouting and screaming. Neighbours called the police, who arrived at the scene finding Kusanagi naked. Upon telling him to put on some clothes, Kusanagi is reported to have said: "What's wrong with being naked" 裸でいたら何が悪い or 裸になって何が悪い depending on news source？

The media has this as its main news on the telly tonight. Even NHK opened up with the news, for a good 5 minutes, including a professor emeritus from Keio Uni Hospital, who explained brain black out due to alcohol, like it was part of a unique and decisive piece of evidence in a big murder case.

First, who cares? Second, hasn't everybody gotten a wee drunk sometime? Third, a wee bit of nakedness never killed anyone (apart from the Americans that is). Fourth, if I was ever asked a question in my field of expertise, I would surely refuse if it would be used in a piece on a drunk, naked boyband singer.

Bloody hell, what is the world coming to if a man or a woman for that matter can't get pished and end up naked?

I am unfortunately not much of an activist, but if this is true it is just disgusting. Interac is a company known for dispatching English teachers to junior high and high schools in Japan.

“Fired from Interac after death of infant daughter”

I promised myself that I would update this blog a little more often that I have in the past. This is not very difficult since last time I wrote was the first time in six months. Not that I have much to say.

I can say though, and this is totally random, that my Firefox add-on spell checker marks "blog" as misspelled!! This in addition to "Firefox"!!

Let's just say that it has been awhile, and even though I have been here all the time I just haven't gotten around to write anything. To be honest I don't know whether that will improve from now on. My dear readers, few as the may be, will just have to bear with me.

This will one of those micro blog posts that seem to be so in fashion, twitter or what ever it is called.

Moving again

So I or we are moving again, even though my partner has not moved as many times as I have, she too has had her fair share, I mean she has now lived with me for a while.

I didn't manage to stay longer than 1 year 11 month at the present place before it was time to once again move. Apparently the longest I have every been in one place is one year and eleven months. Let's see if I can break that with this flat, even though I doubt it. However wish me luck!

The place that we are moving to is rather fancy, at least by my standards, which perhaps is worth to mention, are rather low. Unfortunately they have removed the actual blueprint of the flat so I can't show you that, but it is the biggest flat I have ever lived in so....I am indeed moving up.

Time to be a little political and perhaps even add an opinion or two of my own, which doesn't happen too often.

As many of you already know, Japanese prime minister Fukuda resigned the other day. A surprise to many, and of course to me too (I do not claim to have any inside info of any importance). To be honest, I feel a little sorry for the man. Let's just say that things haven't really gone his way. He inherited the pension scandal, where some people's records of their pension were lost by the authorities. The Democratic Party has been on his back all the time, more or less saying no to things they really ought to support according to their political manifest.

So why did I like the man? Well, he was good with China and to some extent also with South Korea. He didn't go to Yasukuni Shrine. And he tried to lead the G8 group, and accomplish something with it. There are of course many opinions concerning him and most probably a few (or perhaps many) more negative ones, but mine is fairly positive, not being a supporter of the LDP in any way.

So who will replace him? Well, there won't be a new election from the looks of it, even though the Democratic party has called for one. There seem to be at the moment four candidates. The strongest is of course, Taro Aso, the secretary general of LDP (the ruling party) and then we have Nobutero Ishihara (son of Tokyo mayor Ishihara), Kaoru Yosano, the economy minister and Yuriko Koike, the former defense minister.

Aso is an arrogant bastard, who will only make the relationship with the neighbouring countries worse and spend too much money on meaningless things. Japan has today according to Wikipedia the second largest national dept (196 %)!! (I usually say 160 %) Ishihara, I don't know much about him but (and this he can't really be blaimed for) his father is an even bigger bastard than Aso. Yosano and Koike, I know very little about. Koike sat only two months as defense minister before resigning, but she is a reformist and as such she should be applauded.

So I guess my vote goes to either Koike or Yosano. But then again I don't get to vote so that won't count for much.

Hot, hot, hot.
It is really hot here now.
And no, I don't want to hear that it is hotter in other places because I would like to get some understanding and sympathy, mostly sympathy, for the hot weather here in Tokyo, the heat island. Tall buildings, loads of people and plenty of asphalt and concrete. On top of that, not many green areas, a couple of parks but that is it. Even though Tokyo, as many other cities, is a city by the sea, I have yet to see the ocean. That is not completely true, as I have seen the ocean, but it is indeed difficult to both see and feel the ocean here in Tokyo.

Anyhow, I am about to flee the country......at least for a couple of weeks. Hopefully that with cool things down a bit. But then again, coming back in the end of August.....the very same weather that I left will still be around, so it will only be a temporary improvement. The heat is here to stay at last until mid September and probably longer than that.

PUH!

I guess it is unavoidable not to say anything about the terrible thing that happened in Akihabara even though some days have passed now. Many of you might already have read about it as it made the news in many countries.

A man from a province south of Tokyo rented a small lorry and drove to Tokyo, a trip that should have taken him at least over an hour and probably closer to two. Arriving in Akihabara he proceeded to to run people over that were walking in the street, a street that was closed off for traffic for the day. After having hit at least three or maybe four people he went out and started to knife people with something that has been subscribed as a survival knife. Panic broke out and needless to say people started to shout and flee. He managed to knife 17 victims and of them 7 died before the police managed to disarm and cuff him. The first report said that the man had stated that he was tired of life, and that any victim would have done. Later there were reports of the man having posted messages on the internet that something would happen in Akihabara.

So is Japan is safe country? Has it become more dangerous in the last years?
I still feel rather safe here. I don't feel afraid walking home in the dark late after work or a drinking session. One way to know, a way I often use, is whether or not regular murders (is there something like a regular murder) is still big news. And, yes, I would say murders are still big news here. Apart from that, very few people own firearms, and the ownership of smaller firearms, such as revolvers or pistol, or more or less unheard of. Very few things make me as afraid as knowing that anyone around me might be carrying a gun. So, yes, I feel safe here.

So I finally got my driving license. Or rather, I finally exchanged my driving license. Since I have the fortune of having a driving license of a country with which Japan has a bilateral agreement I don't need to retake any tests but only exchange it. Now it sounds easy and in theory I reckon it is too. I shouldn't complain, as I said I didn't need to retake any test.

So what does one need? Well you need your original license and you need an official translation of the license from your embassy. With there two things together with your alien registration card, a photograph, your current passport and preferably any old passport(s) too. Why do you need the old passport(s). Well, in theory you need to be able to prove that you have been in the country of issuance for at least three months after getting the license. This can actually be rather difficult to prove especially if you live in a country where the citizens' passports are not stamped when leaving or returning to the home country. Now, I didn't have a hard time, probably most thanks to the fact that I got my driving license 15 years ago, but it might be trickier of your driving license is newer.

So I go the the driving license centre. Enter an anonymous looking building and inside it looks like something from the Soviet-era. It is grey and lots of different counters with only a few chairs, or rather black fake leather sofas.

I first go the counter which says foreign driving licenses in Japanese. After a short wait, the man behind the counter accepts all my documentation and tells me to wait, which I do for 45 min. He then calls me back and hands me some papers and tells me to go to a different counter to pay. I go to the specified counter, pay 4500 yen, and gets directed to some atm-looking machines where I choose a code after having shown a man that I paid my 4500 yen. He in turn directs me to a different counter to have my eyes checked out. This part I was actually worried about. On my original driving license it doesn't say that I need glasses while driving, however that was 15 years ago and I don't think my eye sight is as good as it was then. Fortunately however I pass the eye check and is just about to leave when the man calls me back and asks me about my arm and as you all know loyal readers I had a wee operation three weeks ago. So he directs me to yet another place for a health check-up or rather a consultation, but before that I have to get a stamp for what I don't know what but still, yet another counter.

After that I arrive at that health consulting room. An elderly woman asks what happened and then asks my why I didn't tick the box if I have ever experienced paralysis, convulsions or spasms. Well I said, all those actions are involuntary actions and I have complete control of my movements except for some temporary loss of muscle strength in two fingers. I see that "operation persuasion" is in need and I spend 15 min trying to get her to let me go without any terms stated on my driving license. At last she seems ok and lets me go.

I go back to the original counter, for something that I have forgotten now, and then quickly on to get photographed. This is quick and now all I have to do is get my driving license....for which I of course have to wait at yet another counter, this time on a different floor. I wait 30 min, get my license and now all I have to do is to go to a machine to..........I have no idea, but it seems that I need to activate it or perhaps it did something completely different, I still haven't gotten the foggiest.

So after a little more than 3 hours I am a lucky holder of a Japanese driving license. Now, as I said in the beginning, I got away easy.

I might as well continue posting about things that I come across on the internet. Next up is something that perhaps only people in Japan or people that have lived in Japan will understand, still I thought it was pretty funny.


Now, the two biggest regions in Japan are Kanto, which includes Tokyo and Yokohama, and Kansai, which includes Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe. The regions are bigger than the cities mentioned above but they are still the major cities. The relationship between the regions is a love-hate kind. Or at least people from the Kansai area loves to hate Kanto. Kansai people and especially Osaka people claim that Tokyo people are stiff and boring people, which Tokyo sometimes say that Osaka people are loud, rude and scary.お互い様やな。

Anyway, enjoy the clip.

Here is it, the music video that has cause so much debate in France and also in other parts of Europe. I have still to hear anything about it here in Japan. The debate is not surprisingly about all the violence in the video. Some organisations are against while others try to understand what the band, Justice, or the director, Romain-Gavras, are trying to say. Anyway here is the song, Stress.

justice stress (official video)
Uploaded by 75_prod

I can't help but thinking about the debate surrounding Prodigy and the song "Smack my Bitch Up" and how fast the debate ended on that one. Does any anyone even think of the foul meaning of the actual words, or are we just taken back by the fact that it turns out to be a woman that we are following throughout the video, which I think is rather cool.

So what is my stance on the whole thing. Well, I am not sure. First of all I don't live in France so I have no experience of the sometimes chaotic situations, with alienated youth seeing no future and riots with the police. Sitting here about 10,000 kilometres away from Paris I reckon I have a hard time seeing how the video would actually influence people from doing the same in real life. However I am certain that others might think differently.

So I've been away for a couple of days. I reckon no one really noticed but then again I guess it is time for me to realise that the world doesn't revolve around me, no matter how much I would like to think so.

I've been to the hospital for three days, which is a second best personal record for me. Last time was for appendicitises a week in hospital, this time for cubital tunnel syndrome. No, it is not a mental syndrome and instead of me trying to explain it, look here.

I feel a bit handicapped, especially since the splint locks the elbow so I can't bend it meaning that I cant move my hand closer to my body leading to some strange situations such as not being able to hand over exact change or scratching the upper right arm. On top of this, I am left handed meaning that I can't write anything. My signature when leaving the hospital was rather two circles than a signature. Apparently I will have the splint for at least two more weeks. Right now it feels like I can't stand it for another 20 minutes with all the itching.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation released their new report on broadband penetration, speed and price per Mbs, together with a composite score in different countries. In the top as you can see it is two Asian countries followed by the Nordic countries together with France. Why France is there I have no idea, but perhaps it thanks to their early implementation of Minitel.

However, even though Japan is number two and the country with the highest average speed this is not an accurate picture of the actual picture (according to me that is). While it is true that here in Japan many households have a very high theoretical speed, I have 100/30Mbs. However, since most servers are in either Europe or the US the internet* as a whole is not necessarily faster here. I will give you some examples. Game servers are fairly limited here in Japan and even including China, Korea and Taiwan the amount is not even comparable with Europe and North America, meaning that I can't always play a game or mod whenever I want. Servers in the US has an average ping of 150ms and servers in Europe has around 300ms. I had as a comparison pings of 30-80 while living in Europe being able to play more or less any game and mod at any time.

Downloading things from the internet is also often slower here since once again................the servers or users are mostly in Europe or in the States. For instance downloading through torrents usually don't exceed speeds of 200 KB/s. In Europe it wasn't uncommon for my to have speeds around 800-900 KB/s using a 8/1 Mbs connection. This was a couple of years ago.

Ergo, I would still prefer to live in Europe if internet was the only factor.

ps.
make sure you know the difference between bytes (B) and bits (b).

* the word internet here means all aspect of the internet; surfing, mail, downloading, games ect

IKEA Japan was in the news today in a paper in Sweden. Apparently a man in Chiba had little accident when trying to assemble a chest. According to a METI's recent press release a screw broke and a piece of it hit him in the eye. Apparently the man had tried a slotted screwdriver (flathead) on a phillips (whether they really mean a phillips, or pozi, I don't know). Now, I could be wrong but the things I have bought from IKEA has a manual containing a rather big picture of a screw head with a cross on it. For me this means that one should use a crosshead driver and preferably nothing else.

So a little info on screwdrivers, link
Read it and think of the man in Chiba.

So it is time to educate mankind, and what better subject than the Japanese language. Some people say that the Japanese language is the world's most difficult language and when it comes to the written Japanese this might be correct. However the spoken language is very simple, you only need two words, or rather two sounds.

You see how easy it is. The best part of it is that it is also true, at least to 63 %.
Now you try!

Update on "the change of layout". As you can see it looks the same. After a lot of contemplating I decided to revert it back to the original layout, mostly because I liked the colours. But I still had the problem of the width, or rather the lack of width. So what to do? Well, some advanced edge programming skills can sometimes come in handy. So I altered the margins. To alter the margins however, is a delicate operation where there is no room for mistakes. I usually use the analogue of a surgeon and surgery.


Ok, so I know that was just a load of rubbish, I had a look at a manual and changed the pixel value in three places. Still, being fairly illiterate when it comes to computers I feel rather good with myself.

So I changed the layout. Change; something to like, something to hate or just something to get used to. I usually hate when newspapers change the layout or the size too for that matter. I can't find things and I want it to return to what it looked like before. Then again one doesn't want to be a conservatist (is this really a word?), someone that can't stand change and wants things to remain like they have always been. I guess I am a one of those who are annoyed for a couple of minutes and then forgets the reason why and is finally content with the change. To take an example, web browsers. I, like many others, used MS Internet Explorer, and had for a fair amount of years. In my defence I can say that I used Netscape and only defiantly change to explorer*. A friend of mine showed me firefox and its at that time unique tab-system. Anyhow, firefox, no not for me I thought, but after giving it a try I changed web browser and have never used explorer again, apart from those rare times when a programmer have missed out on the wonders of non-MS web browsers and decided just to support explorer.

So, where were we, right, change of layout. Yes, I had to change the layout since, my previous layout was too narrow to show the full size of youtube. Now I use something called "streched...". Unfortunately it also meant changing the colour of my blog, too bad, I liked the ochre colour that I had before...............but then again, we can't be against change can we!

* Yes, I try to stay away from anything MS, at least if I can. Open source all the way!