Again with the views from the balcony. A short while back, Sachi and I heard some drumming ruckus coming from outside. I checked it out, and there was some sort of group marching down the road away from us. By the time I got my camera ready, they were just turning out of sight, but with the magic of the zoom lens and many megapixels, I saw at least this much, far more than the naked eye could resolve:

From what we could read of their signs, they seem to be a group of protesters. At least some of them came from the Northern Area Labor Group–that’s the big red flag with the sunburst. The yellow banners read, “Citizens unite in protest of the Patriot Missiles.” (Japanese-language only, see the last story on this page.) It would seem that the U.S. is outfitting Japan with a series of such anti-missile missile systems in response to missile tests by North Korea. All the same, a lot of Japanese are not all that enthused about them. Many have been installed in the Tokyo area–two installations as of a year ago, and about a dozen or so in all planned over the next few years. Apparently they’re located in local military bases spotting the Tokyo plain, many in the middle of outlying cities, close to large populations.

It’s been an interesting few days out the window. Yesterday was the Sumida River fireworks, and today there was a spectacular lightning storm and sunset.

Yesterday’s fireworks show was, actually, a big disappointment. It came on what was arguably the haziest day of the year so far; we could barely see Akihabara from Ikebukuro, and that cut down on the show considerably. Add the smoke from the previous fireworks, and it got hard to see anything. In fact, the haze just got worse and worse as the evening went on; by the end of the show, we could see the fireworks streaking up, only to disappear, and, if we were lucky, the faintest of outlines of a starburst would show through. Most of the bursts, however, were simply invisible.

Here are a few shots from earlier in the show:

Tonight, there was a much more spectacular light show, and I almost missed it. However, I heard some sounds out on the balcony, and knew that winds had started tossing about a few things we’d left out there. As I went out to batten down the hatches, as it were, I saw a tremendous thunder- and lightning-storm charging by to the north, darkening the sky before sunset.

It was still far too light to take time exposures to catch the lightning, so I tried another strategy: with my finger on the shutter, I waited for lightning bursts to come, hopefully catching some prolonged bursts that way. When that was not successful, I just held down the shutter and took continuous shots, dozens at a time–and that worked. The lightning was frequent enough that I got some good shots. The last one, the most spectacular, is available in an enlarged version when clicked:

And then, out of nowhere, there came an amazing red lighting. Clouds had cleared around the sun as it set, and even as lightning continued to scatter to the north, a brilliant red and orange wash broke out from the west. As we’re on the east side of the building, I could not see the sunset directly, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t see some fantastic light effects. Many of the images below–which don’t do the reality justice–are available in larger sizes. I swear, some of them look like images of Coruscant from the Star Wars movies.

The Sunshine 60 building looked almost ominous in the light:

Here is a panorama of Akihabara to Ochanomizu–first cut into two parts, then in full, but reduced in size artificially. Click on the lowest image to see the full-sized image, 1920 pixels wide. The buildings almost look like toy models here.

Sachi got me a very nice Ralph Lauren suit for my birthday, and topped it off with a nice cotton shirt and matching tie this morning.

Why, what were you thinking the title meant?

Seriously though, I look like I’m running for office or something….

Sachi and I are getting really, really tired of the bugs. Ever since we’ve moved in, they’ve been around. When we started spraying them, they receded for a bit but never disappeared. Now, they’re back with a vengeance.

I don’t know the specific type of bug they are (maybe someone out there can help), but they are small, noiseless, gnat-like bugs. While a friend claims they come out of the drains (we’ve never noticed them around the drains), my own theory is that they came in with the potted plants. When you disturb the dirt, you can see bugs of various sizes (but mostly the same shape) crawling around in there, and there are quite a few of them buzzing around the plants. They’re attracted to moisture, too–when we leave out a damp cloth on the kitchen counter, they tend to zero in on it. So I think they are drawn to the moist soil of the plants, lay their eggs there, and reproduce in that way.

While they tend to buzz around the windows and other light sources, they also have the massively annoying habit of flying right up to your face every minute or so. I just killed one that buzzed my glasses a moment ago, and as I write, Sachi is using our dustbuster (it has a sealed dust compartment) to snap up the ones buzzing in her part of the room. But what is amazing to us right now is just the sheer number. Although you never see more than a few at a a time, there seems to be an endless supply. I smush about a dozen every hour around my computer station, and a trip to the balcony window every hour can lead to your catching a dozen or so. I must have killed 30 or 40 yesterday, and Sachi and I zapped twice that many today, easily–and still they keep coming. It can’t be from the outside, we’re too high up for that.

We spray bug poison in the plant dirt, and will be resorting to a bug bomb on Monday, but if anyone knows of a solution we can use, we’ll be happy to hear it!

One thing I’ve noticed looking out our window here in Ikebukuro is that you ca see more than I cold see before in Inagi. Sure, you can see farther, but there is also more happening. As Sachi and I sat down for dinner tonight, we heard something, a sound that could have been anything, like a dog barking… but it was much too regular, far too rhythmic. So I opened the balcony door, looked out, and saw a small, local temple festival on the street less than a block from our place.

You know, nothing special. Just another local festival.

It’s a nice view, even if you get tired of the city lights, which I haven’t.

We slept right through it, but that must have been one heck of a typhoon. I had tied down the cover on the exercise machines, and I mean tight. Polyethylene twine, tied off in multiple knots, up and down the machine in four or five different places. I did not imagine that it was possible for it to come off; the wind itself tended to flatten the cover against the side of the machine.

But when we woke up just now, the cover was completely off, hanging on to the machines by just a string.

I hope those things don’t rust….

We’re really getting pummeled by this typhoon. Not disastrously, not right here, but sure as hell noticeably hit. The wind is something else out there, crashing and breaking over the north side of our building, spraying rain horizontally over our balcony windows. Sometimes we feel the walls shake and shudder under the pressure of the wind. The region is reportedly getting 400 ml of rain tonight, as the eye of the storm passes just west of our location, or it will over the next eight hours.

And this is just the edge of the storm.

They’re saying that this is the strongest storm to hit Japan in three years, and it’s heading pretty much straight for Tokyo. To give you an idea:

We’re the red “X” here in Tokyo. The red arrow shows the predicted path of the typhoon.

Yikes.

EDIT: I just got back in from tying down a few things on the balcony. My exercise machines are out there, and I had covered them–securely, I thought–with a tarp cover made for motorcycles, fits the elliptical trainer just about right. When I came out to look at it an hour later, I saw that the cover was half blown off, when I thought that would be impossible. So I went out again, with gales of wind billowing the cover tarp almost ridiculously, and tied the cover onto the machines with polyethylene twine. That stopped the billowing and should hold.

But standing out there was pretty impressive–sheets and sheets of rain moving horizontally at high speed in the wind.

I have to wonder what the heart of the storm is going to look like.

I’m getting better at cooking, I think. Or at least in presentation. As I am at home most of the day during my August vacation, and Sachi has to work most days, I am cooking most of the dinners. My repertoire is still limited, but I’m getting more of a feel for things. Tonight’s dinner, shown in the image below: stir-fry chicken with onions and green peppers, with garlic, onion, and pimenton spices, served on a bed of lettuce, shaved onions and carrots, with sliced spring onions (“negi”) on top. The side dish is fried potatoes: dice the potatoes and boil for 6-10 minutes, then fry in a pan with a little extra virgin olive oil and apply spices to taste. With beer and toasted bread rolls, delicious. And a relatively simple meal.

As we sat down to eat, we were treated to constant lightning flashes. Though a thunderstorm seemed to rage nearby, we heard little thunder; instead, there were repeated flashes every five or ten seconds, many bright, but none with an accompanying boom. Reminiscent of my mother commenting that when they heard thunderstorms when she was a kid, they said “God’s bowling tonight,” Sachi tonight commented, “God is taking a lot of pictures now.”

About a month and a half ago, I wrote an entry about the garbage handling in the new building we live in, and noted that the recycled garbage room’s door was strangely locked. Not only do you have to wave your room key over a sensor to get into the room, you have to wave a key over another sensor to get out of the room. This struck me as strange, but I accepted it as okay because before you could get into the room, you had to have a key anyway; I also figured that you could get out of the room via the garage entrance. I figured the double-lock system was to keep people from getting into the building from the garage area via the recycled garbage room.

Well, it turns out that this system is pretty dumb. First of all, the building’s security is kind of a joke. People are constantly entering the building without a key, simply by following in people who open the doors legitimately. When Sachi and I held a housewarming party last month, more than half the guests got past the “locked” front entrance. If someone wants to get in, all they have to do is stand outside pretending to fiddle with their cell phone; when they see someone approach the entrance (from the inside or out), they just pretend to finish text messaging or whatever and then walk to the front door as the other person is passing through. No one questions this. So really, there is no reason to have extra protection elsewhere. The whole “autolock” security thing is weak as tissue paper. Not that I am worried about security; there are cameras and stuff that help prevent crime, each apartment’s door is securely locked, and it’s not like crime is rampant in Japan, anyway.

But the garbage room double-lock is dumb for another reason as well: people can and do get locked into the garbage room. Last week, as I was taking out the trash, I heard a banging on the door to the recycled garbage room. I opened it up, and there was a poor cleaning lady. Somehow she had gotten in, probably as a tenant entered with their key–but when she was finished, she realized that she didn’t have her key! She said that she had been locked in there for fully twenty minutes! Apparently, I was the first person to come along. Sure enough, when I checked, the doors to the garage were locked from the inside, in addition to the door leading to the interior hallway. All the doors were locked from the inside, and there is no intercom in the room.

And I mean “Cool!” in two respects: first, that something great has happened; and second, in regards to the temperature of the apartment. The air conditioner repair guy came back this morning and fixed not just the machine he was supposed to, but also the one the moving company installed.

As mentioned before, the main machine leaked its freon and nitrogen gas reserves–as it turns out, a fitting had been left loose, and the gases had all escaped long before we moved in. He sealed the fitting and charged up the gases, and for the first time, the air conditioner actually works. And now that it does, I can note that it works really well. Sachi and I thought that the building makers had simply skimped and bought a really bad air conditioner. Had we thought to complain earlier, we could have avoided a lot of hot days in the living/dining/kitchen area.

While he was running some sort of vacuum test on the main unit, he took a look at Sachi’s air conditioner, the one that had been installed tilted to the right. He was not in any way responsible for that one, but just as a courtesy, he spent about twenty minutes working on it. It turns out that not only was the wall unit installed at an angle, but the tubing was done extremely poorly–the tubes inside the wrapped bundle leading outside were arranged such that the drainage tube had a notable upward slant, even though the whole bundle was level. Water was pooling inside the unit, and as a result, led to the entire inside of the machine being “sweaty.” Eventually it all dripped out onto the floor. So he unwrapped the bundle, reset the tubes.. and after five or six hours of running at full power, not a single drop has come out. Seems like that unit is fixed as well.

One of these days, the apartment will be perfect. We’ve still got the bath/laundry stink to deal with (likely due to evaporation in the pipes caused by the 24-hour bath-drying utility, which we can’t shut off), and those little flying insects are still massively infesting the apartment–likely breeding in the soil in Sachi’s potted plants. We have to re-pot the plants and then make sure that the bugs left flying around don’t get a chance to re-lay their eggs.

Sachi and I finally told the building’s office people that our main room’s air conditioner not working. Can’t say they don’t respond fast–before the day was out, they had a couple of guys come in and check out the unit.

While one of the guys was outside checking the troubled unit, I asked the other guy to come and take a look at our bedroom’s A/C unit, which has been steadily dripping water. That’s Sachi’s old unit, which the moving company (remember those great guys?) installed in the new place. As he walked in the room, he immediately saw the problem–the unit was tilted, ever so slightly, to the right, and away from the drainage tube, which is also tilted to as to bring the draining water, or some of it, back into the room. One of the guys tried to tilt it back the other way, but the thing keeps dripping; we’ll probably have to call the original installers back in to do the job properly.

Meanwhile, the two repair guys are looking at the main unit, the one in the living room, which comes with the apartment. That hasn’t worked since day one, and once spilled huge amounts of water out when we had our housewarming party. As it turns out, they guys found that there was no gas in the conditioning units. No freon, no N₂.

Now wonder it didn’t work. The guys said they were puzzled as to how the gas could have escaped. They claimed that all units are tested to see if they have the 1 kg or so of gases installed… but if a leak is so rare, then there was probably just an oversight to put the gases into the units, at least just in our place. One of 400 or so apartments in the building, you gotta figure at least a few will have problems like this.

I figure another month or two, and the shakedown might be over, and we might have a fully-functioning apartment.

Just one last note on the whole moving process that I have neglected to mention until now. It has to do with the variety of levels of service you can get. Sachi and I both used movers to move stuff from our old apartments and bring them to the new place. To get a bit of a discount, we used the same company to do both jobs–to varying results. Sachi’s movers were cheerful and helpful from start to finish. My movers, despite being from the same company, were far from that. The lead guy was, if anything, sullen. As if he resented having to do the move. Granted, I did kind of push them on cramming stuff into the truck, and I did have them move a ton of stuff downstairs to the Sodai-gomi area–but all that was part of the contracted service, and it happened near the end of the loading time, when the team’s attitude had already been long expressed.

But there were lots of small details which kind of caught my attention. One was when one of the movers damaged the new apartment. He was hauling in part of a bookcase when he hit a doorway with it–denting the door frame and chipping off an edge of the bookcase. Rather loudly, too. Knowing this could cost us from our deposit when we move out, we asked that the moving company’s insurance take care of it. Last we heard–quite some time ago–the moving guy claimed that the company didn’t carry such insurance and that if we pressed it, he (the moving guy who did the damage) would have to pay for it out of his own pocket.

This is unacceptable on at least a few different levels. First of all, any moving company worth its salt would have either insurance or some system that could handle such damage. It’s not like this is an unexpected occurrence, after all–this has to be the #1 or #2 problem in the service part of the process. If the movers cause damage, they should be prepared to take care of it, seamlessly and without fuss for the client. But worse than that is to have the mover himself tell the client that he’ll be punished financially if we press them on it. That’s unprofessional to the point of scoundrel behavior–like they’re going cheap on us and playing on our guilt. Either we pay for damage we didn’t cause, or make this poor slob who probably gets paid a pittance shell out more than he can afford for us.

But it wasn’t just how the company itself dealt with the issue, it’s also about how sloppily the work was done. Case in point: when they moved my washer-dryer to the new place, they had to disassemble it. The dryer sits upon a brace that is attached to the back of the washing machine; it is attached to the framework with four bolts and nuts. Without them, the dryer would only loosely sit atop the frame, and would quickly nudge itself off and fall to the floor if operated.

After the movers finished up in the old place and I was getting ready to shut it down, I noticed the four nuts and bolts sitting on the floor near where the washer and dryer had been; they had left them behind. I picked them up and gave them to the chief mover, who did not apologize for having made such an oversight.

When they moved the stuff into the new place, they did not put the washer and dryer back together again, because the drainage tube was on the wrong side. Another bad point about the company: movers should be aware of basic installation of such stuff, washer-dryers in particular. Instead, they left us with the washer in the nook designed for the machine, and the dryer sitting on the floor nearby. What’s worse, the chief mover completely forgot about the nuts and bolts–again. He left the job with them in his pocket. That left us unable to put it back together, even if we did manage to switch the drainage tube in the way the movers should have done themselves.

We called the company the next day, and they said they’d send the parts to us as soon as they could. We expected them to arrive the next day by express mail or takkyubin, seeing as how we could not do our laundry without them. Instead, we got them more than a week later. Even by regular mail, it couldn’t have taken more than two days, usually just one–meaning that these guys took about a week before they sent them to us, with the brief note below:

By this time, it was meaningless anyway. As I described in a post about a month ago, our problem was solved by the Internet guy. That is, the guy who came to set up our fiber-optic Internet connection for the phone company. On his way out, he noticed that our dryer, which still sat on the floor (which is probably why he noticed it) was a model that required a part to be replaced due to a recall. I then asked him if he knew about washing machines, and he said he did–and the telephone company guy then proceeded, in just a few minutes, to switch the direction of the drainage tube. I then asked him what we should do about the missing nuts and bolts–and he simply opened up his small tool case and produced exactly the nuts and bolts we needed. Like magic. As if every Internet installation guy of course carries a set of nuts and bolts to fasten a drying machine to a washing machine frame.

That’s what really put the movers to shame: when the phone company guy can do the mover’s expected work ten times better. Yes, I know the phone company guy was unrealistically helpful and prepared, but still, that’s exactly the kind of work the movers should have been prepared for–instead of not doing their expected work and losing the same essential parts twice in one evening and then taking a week to return them.

Yeah, I know… whine, whine, moan, moan. I’ll shut up now, and maybe try to get back to political issues and and social commentary.

Big chink in the apartment armor: our neighbors on both sides smoke. Furthermore, they like smoking on the veranda (one mentioned something about the building being no-smoking, so maybe they have no choice but to smoke outside). We noticed this a few times before from the neighbors on the south side, but the neighbors on the other side just came in today–and twice in one hour I got a huge dose of cigarette smoke in my living room.

The problem: we keep our balcony doors/windows open quite often to ventilate and to cool the place down. If someone smokes out there, their smoke is drawn directly into our place via the wind, and suddenly it’s as if a smoker has entered the room. Worse, closing the doors and windows won’t help–it’ll just trap the smoke inside, which means that we have to experience the whole cigarette or series of cigarettes.

I am semi-allergic to cigarette smoke. I don’t know if it’s an actual medical condition or just a psychosomatic quirk, but the results are the same: when I am in the presence of cigarette smoke, my throat gets sore, I get nauseous, I get headaches, and generally feel like crap. Keep it up and I am prone to catch colds.

Which means that if our neighbors smoke on their balconies and we can’t do anything about it, I am royally screwed here. I will have to have Sachi find out more; I tried talking to the smoking neighbor as politely as I could, and she was polite back, but she used vocabulary I could not figure out. We’ll also have to talk to the administrative office downstairs.

I sure as hell hope that we can figure something out….

No, that guy is not injured, nor is he a mugging victim. Just another reminder that we’re not living in the suburbs anymore. He’s just another salaryman who had too much to drink, and so took about an hour’s nap on the sidewalk in front of our building. Below you can see a passerby checking up on him.

I noticed him when I came home; the guy was still awake, but in the exact same position you see below. He was, in fact, checking his cell phone. Charming. I suppose it’s better than sleeping completely in the gutter–only his feet are over the curb.

How long could someone be like this in any major American city and still have his wallet, cellphone, and watch when he woke up? You can be pretty sure this guy woke up with everything still in his pockets, and then did the chidori-ashi (chicken-walk) all the way home.

Yet another discount barber place. Cut only for ¥1100, cut and shampoo for ¥1700. Choices, choices.

Speaking of choices… this line of more than a dozen vending machines lines the wall of a building on the way from the station to our place. Mostly drink machines, but there are two automated photo booths and one ice cream vending machine in that line-up.

And finally, some Engrish T-shirt finds:

On that second one, on the right, above the “67,” it says, “To remember it and not to repent.” Heathens. Below is the last, and hardest to read at this size:

Click for a larger version, or read this transcript:

This new apartment has a lot of new-fangled gadgetry in it, being a modern, all-electric dwelling. Even the toilet seat is electronic, with controls for a heated seat as well as bidet and washlet (though that feature is actually common in Japan). The living room floor is heated from below; the bath room has advanced ventilation to allow for drying clothes 24/7; there’s a color intercom with the building entrance, audio-only with the front door, and emergency call buttons in the bath and toilet rooms. The intercom also alerts you when a parcel has been delivered for you and is waiting in a locker downstairs. There’s even a garbage disposal in the sink, something I never heard of in Japan before. That along with fiber-optic to the wall, ethernet ports connecting the various rooms, and a 60-amp breaker to allow for all of that–though we did actually manage to trip a breaker circuit in the kitchen during the housewarming party (we ran two microwaves in the kitchen at once).

The finishing touch is the induction-heating (IH) stove. I had never even heard of that before, but I guess it must be catching on in Japan, as I am seeing a lot of pots and pans made for IH in stores now. Though, of course, that’s likely because (a) I’m looking for it now, and know what “IH” means, and (b) it might be a bigger seller in central areas like we’re in. All I know is that, despite initial worries as to how well it would work, I like it, a lot.

Until now, I had just used “gas konro,” or gas-fueled stoves, with grill burners–a very common item in Japan. The disadvantages are clear, however–mostly in that such stoves collect grease and gunk like there’s no tomorrow. Forget about keeping them all that clean. They also take up a chunk of counter space, which is at a huge premium in Japan–most kitchens have maybe a few square feet of countertop on which you can prepare meals.

The IH stove is a joy in comparison. First, it’s flat and glass-smooth; if you spill something, just wipe it off. Cleaning is a breeze. And when not in use, it serves just fine as extra counter space–you just have to overcome your natural aversion to putting any items you feel like on a stovetop. Once you do, you find that you have tons of counter space–a luxury in this country.

Operation is simple, though we had trouble figuring it out. You switch on the power, pop out the control panel, and push a button for the right “burner” you want to activate. The button pops out and acts as a dial to control the temperature of the stove. We haven’t figured out those other buttons yet.

In order for the stove to work, there needs to be a pot or pan made of an IH stove–in effect, conductive-metal bottom, made flat enough to trip the sensor. Without that, nothing happens–no heat.

My worry was that such a stove probably would offer only feeble heat–but I was dead wrong on that count. It actually heats a pot or pan a lot faster than a simple flame burner does. Lights on the stovetop show the temperature setting:

The readings are in Celsius; it goes from 140˚ up. I love the scale: 180, 190, 200… Tempura!

Another light shows which burners are hot–and they do get physically hot, and take time to cool off afterwards–another lamp indicates that cooling-off is still in progress, so don’t touch.

The down side: we had to toss a half dozen otherwise-good pots and pans… and I still haven’t found a good pot for cooking popcorn. I found a nice steel pot, but it’s the silver-in-and-out type which gets nasty black stains if you try cooking popcorn in it. I need an IH pot with a nice, teflon-coated interior.

And we should start using that toaster underneath–we’ve neglected it, using the toaster function in the microwaves instead. I bet it’ll work right nicely.

While Sachi was out shopping, I took an hour and twenty minutes to do a bit of a bike ride around the area. I went up through and around Otsuka, down to Koishikawa Park and then back. I took a lot of side streets and got a lot of exercising with the grades and sometimes hills along the way; a good workout in lieu of the exercise machines on our balcony.

Just as I started, I stopped by a local shop called Suzumura to photograph it. The yakitori place that Sachi and I used before, and tried to go to again last week, had been closed. But this being Ikebukuro, we had only to look around to see a few more restaurants worth trying. We were about to cross the street to try an Indian place, when Sachi spotted this one. It’s one of those tucked-away, hole-in-the-wall kind of places run by a mama-san and papa-san, one that’s been there for decades, only has a few seats, and usually some old people around the neighborhood, or oyaji, tend to frequent. We tried it out, and they had great yakitori there as well.

From there, I turned around and headed east. less than a kilometer out, I turned left and hooked around Otsuka Station. I just wanted to check out the area to see what I could see, but there wasn’t much there, at least at first glance. I had seen a barber shop around there that had haircuts for about ¥1400 (didn’t spot it today, though), and I do need a haircut soon. Any place with prices that low tends to be a men’s barber shop–we don’t want to be fussed over for two hundred bucks, we want a cheap haircut, in and out, lowest price possible. There’s a ¥2200 shop around the corner from where we live, and I saw a ¥1000 place on Meiji Blvd. (though that’s low enough to make even me wonder).

Near that area, I spotted a bento shop:

I was about to go on by, when I looked closer at the sign, and it brought back a memory.

In Japan, the “Italian” gesture the woman is almost making here has no meaning, and an almost identical gesture is used to indicate strength, apparently for women at least as much as for men. When I was working in a movie theater back in the S.F. Bay Area just after starting college, we had a projectionist named Kazuko, from Japan. Kazuko was a petite young woman, very quiet and soft-spoken, kind and polite. But it is her size which is relevant here. When a new movie came in (which was several times a week, as we were a rep house), the cans holding the prints were almost half as big as she was. Well, not quite, but it seemed that way. Kazuko would have to practically drag those things up to the projection booth.

One day, the manager (an American guy) noticed Kazuko struggling with a new movie, and suggested that she get one of the strong young men who worked there to help her. Wanting to express strength, Kazuko took up the pose you see the Bento Lady showing in the image above (though Kazuko’s gesture was much closer to the traditional western one)… and shocked the manager in so doing.

Anyway, I kept riding down to my objective for the day: a park which looked nice on the map. I found it, but also discovered something that was not on the map: an admission fee. There’s another nice-looking park nearby listed on the map which is shown to cost ¥300 for admission, but this one looked free. Not so. It cost ¥330. However, from the peek I got, it looked nice enough to visit–with Sachi, sometime soon.

On the way home, I noticed again a restaurant that had caught my eye before. I have to hand it to them, they went out on a limb to name this place, and I do like it:

Whether that’s a literary allusion, or it’s simply how the proprietor felt when opening the business, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll eat there someday and ask them.

As my knee was beginning to get the better of me, I pedaled on back home, and rested for a while with Sachi, who had returned from department-store shopping (which she knew I wouldn’t be enthusiastic about, as much as I gamely hang in when we go shopping together otherwise). We both sat out on the balcony and read books, snacked, and I got a bit of work done on my computer (the WiFi reaches out there just fine).

After that, we came back in and had dinner while watching Lost. Not a bad day, for a Lazy Sunday.

Well, that was quite an adventure. Sachi and I held a housewarming party last night, and it was pretty successful. Almost everyone who we expected to come made it to the party, for a total of 15 people at one point (including Sachi and me). Sachi and I overstocked on food and drinks, even not counting the good amount of goodies brought by guests; we still have quite the stockpile left in the fridge, despite the many courses served throughout the evening. We started with snacks–chips, pineapple & ham, pretzels, bread, and bagels. Sachi added salads and fried chicken, after which I broke out the salmon casserole. At one point, I microwaved some mozzarella on Nan bread. Then Sachi made her famous niku-negi tofu, with some cold noodles and rice on the side. Later, I cooked some filet steaks for anyone who was interested, and Sachi cooked some pasta. At the end, there was a bit of ice cream and other snacks. For the last few courses, people were beginning to wonder aloud about their waistlines; it was quite a bit of food over the evening.

The party was also successful in terms of how the evening was spent. We didn’t have any games or other novelties, but we didn’t need them. Oh, I showed some people how to use the Simsponize-Me web site (hat tip to Sean), as we used Simpsonized versions of Sachi and me on the web site giving directions to the party. But other than that, it was just good food and good company. Everyone enjoyed the view from the balcony (despite the limited visibility due to cloudy weather), and there was animated conversation from one end of the party to the other (it lasted about 6 or 7 hours). Put a lot of good people in the same room, that’s what you’ll get, I guess.

I think another reason why it went as well as it did was because of the location. The last time I held a party was in Inagi, and so everyone had to travel quite a distance to get there–not just by train, but by foot or taxi as well. A lot of people declined, understandably. This time, centrally located, most everyone made it, some even on foot, several by bicycle. Most of the people I work with, as it turns out, live in central Tokyo; for quite a long time, I was the main holdout.

After the party, Sachi and I discovered a problem with the apartment: the water from the air conditioner that was supplied with the apartment. We were aware that the machine had such a problem, but last night, after about 10 hours of continuous use, we discovered the extent. The thing had poured probably the equivalent of a cup of water to the floor and the TV and speaker below it. Fortunately, none of it was on to open circuitry, but still, it’s not good. Beyond that, it’s not acceptable as a device. The machine is woefully weak for cooling the big room, and if it pours water out when failing to meet its main purpose, that just won’t fly. Sachi and I will be talking to the building people about this.

Despite that small glitch (not in the party, either–just an apartment flaw), the evening was an unqualified success, and we had a great time (as we hope everyone who visited did as well). We were able to clean up in about an hour after the party, and just relaxed for an hour or two, drinking a bit more wine and enjoying the evening.

There is a particularly perilous hall down on the first floor of Sunshine City, just across the street from Seiyu. I say perilous because it threatens my waistline as well as my wallet. A line of pricey stores which sell very attractive foods.

Begin with the market-like shop called “Seijo Ishii Select.” It’s a small market with mostly imported or otherwise high-class foods, kind of like the Draeger’s supermarket back home in the S.F. Bay Area. I was surprised that they had relatively cheap cheddar cheese–just ¥300 for a medium-sized block–when other local shops like Daimaru Peacock charged twice as much for less. We also got a very nice cheesecake for just ¥300, very delicious–but they just told us that the product has now been discontinued. A shame and a relief. I tried some large (six-inch) pretzels for ¥500 yen; aside from being expensive, they were not very good at all. But there is loads of stuff I would have gorged on before I started losing weight, which I can only be sorely tempted by now.

Next is a string of bakeries, featuring mostly cakes, Japanese-style. These are usually ¥300 to ¥500 for a small wedge maybe three inches wide and four inches long. The shops’ names seem to be “Boutique Mont-Blanc,” “Grass Tiara” (no typo, it seems), and “Mariage.” Note that they are all “Patisseries,” as if they have some connection to France or something.

This string is topped off by a bakery–bread-themed, not cake-themed–called “Maison Kayser.” Again with the French. This place seems to have both a store front with a constant line of customers as well as a small cafe.

Across from Kayser is a wine shop and a meats shop. The wine shop seems decent though maybe 30-50% pricier than usual shops–though they do seem to have a much better selection in general, and good shop attendants as well.

Top off the line of shops with one more, on the corner across from Kayser:

It’s called “Rosenheim,” and seems to be a small branch of a shop that sells various meat products, in particular sausages and sliced meats. Like Seijo Ishii, they sell prosciutto and even Spanish Chorizo–but small amounts for very large prices. A 100-gram package with only half a dozen thin slices can set you back as much as a thousand yen (about $8). Still, Rosenheim sells a homemade “chorizo” sausage which, like 99% of “chorizo” sold in Japan, has no resemblance to Spanish chorizo–but Rosenheim’s version is still very good, with a very smooth, spicy flavor.

In short, the more I stay away from this row of shops, the better…

In the wake of Krispy Kreme’s insane success, Burger King has returned to Japan, and their second shop set up business in the basement of Sunshine City last month. A very good location–they are the first shop people see coming in through the underground passage starting at Tokyu Hands. Their success does not seem to come close to rivaling Krispy Kreme’s, but they had pretty long lines; the McDonald’s down the way had nobody in line, despite a steady supply of customers.

The location might explain some of it, but likely it’s the “new thing” effect that Krispy Kreme totally made off with that has helped out Burger King. The chain was previously here in Japan for several years, but lost out to McDonald’s in a price war.

In the meantime, McDonald’s, feeling the heat from places like Starbucks, has decided to start their own brand of McCafe at the end of August, offering low-cost alternatives to Starbucks. What, a McFrappuchino for ¥250?

I don’t know if it’ll be like that every night, but last night, I used my elliptical trainer out on the balcony, and it was great! In the past, I used it inside my apartment, and usually had to have the air conditioner going full blast to compensate–and still sweat up a storm. But last night, because I’m high up and there are winds on the balcony, it was like having super-air conditioning built in.

Furthermore, it somehow made the exercise easier. Usually, if I don’t use the machine for several weeks, it’s hard to get my heart rate up to the right range (according to the Karvonen Formula). It’s a strain, and usually, I can’t keep it up for more than ten minutes without needing a rest. But somehow, the cool evening wind made it easy as pie; I found myself having to slow down so as not to exceed the limit, and wanted to go on beyond the time I had allotted (dinner was waiting, after all). Sure enough, when I tried it again in the daytime (with the wind on the other side of the building, and not helping me), it was much harder work.

Because of the wind, I hardly sweat much at all (before coming in, that is). But what made it really sweet was the view–looking out at the Tokyo nighttime cityscape was great, and listening to my iPod during the workout just completed the experience.

True, it’d be murder on a really hot summer day, and might be hard in the winter (even if I switch to daytime exercising). But in the end, I think the whole balcony exercising deal has a lot to be said for it.