I have been pricing them because we want to get one for my school; we have a lecture series and we want wireless mics that’ll be amplified through a speaker–should be a simple setup, right? But the cheapest setup I can find in Japan is priced at about ¥130,000 ($1,450), which seems ridiculously, even hideously expensive for two mics and a speaker.

I look at Amazon.com in the U.S. and I find a solution for about $350.

I know I have posted here before about price differences, but differences on this kind of scale are highly unusual, for specialty products. So, maybe I’m doing something wrong, looking in the wrong places or something.

Does anyone know what that is, or are we just going to have to shell out huge amounts of money here?

Today, Sachi and I met with some blog friends. Sachi loves Shiba Inu (an affinity I have acquired from her), and reads a blog about a Shiba named Maruko. The author was kind enough to send us a calendar of her pooch, and we arranged for a short coffee. Below are some of the pictures of Maruko from the encounter.

And as a bonus, a nice animated gif of a classic Shiba ear-wag:

Sachi and I did our annual hatsumode (New Year’s shrine-going) yesterday. Nice weather, though a bit cold. I may have pointed out before, Hie Shrine, in the heart of Tokyo near Akasaka, is the only shrine I know with a set of escalators.

Once you get in, there’s the usual line of people waiting to get to the front to pray.

Once you get there, you throw a coin into the box at the front, yank the red and white ribbons (sometimes a rope) to rind the bell, clap your hands twice, then pray.

Here’s a sound file to get an idea of what things sound like in line:

This is the big money season for the shrines; they get most of their funds at this time. Some shrines are so crowded that people don’t get much of a chance to get to the front, so some people actually throw the money from a distance and then pray. These bigger shrines will actually lay sheets over a large area in front to catch the thrown money. But for most shrines, it’s a special box, which is there year-round, which catches the money–usually via slats, so no dishonest visitors can make a withdrawal instead of a deposit.

The idea behind the bells and the clapping is to attract the attention of the kami you wish to pray to.

Out with the old, in with the new: hand in your old good-luck arrows and charms at the stand (though I prefer the bonfire myself), then buy a new set for the new year. I was a bit irked that the person who sold us the charms this year gave me the wrong one–I wanted a sticker for my scooter, they gave me something else instead–didn’t notice till we got home. You can also buy omikuji, or fortunes: for a hundred yen (about a dollar), you shake a wooden cylinder with a number of sticks in it; one stick falls out a small hole in the bottom, indicating which fortune you get. You can then tie the fortune to a wall to see it come true.

And then there’s the food: all sorts of stalls, many of the usual sort–takoyaki, okonomiyaki, sweet crepes, and so on. The frankfurters–foot-long dogs on sticks–look good, but are universally tasteless, so you’re better off slathering it with the ketchup and hot mustard if you must get one. Hie Shrine has a good selection of stalls, though–this year they had great fried chicken, a good kebab stand, and tasty “baby castella,” little round pellet cakes cooked fresh on the spot.

To finish off, here are a few shots of one of the shrine maidens, doing her annual “I am the goddess of the discarded good luck arrows” dance or something.

Saw this on the subway yesterday:

Apparently McCalories Japan is doing an American-themed burger campaign for the first three months of 2010, starting with a “Texas” burger. What makes it Texan? From what I can tell, BBQ sauce. Unless the second tier of bacon and onions is somehow uniquely Texan, though of course the whole thing is just a gimmick.

Next up: New York, BLT on a burger with Monterey Jack cheese; California, same as the New York, but with a “wine” sauce; and Hawaiian, apparently being bacon, cheese, and lettuce below the patty, egg with gravy on top.

Yeah, I know.

This story is really depressing: a capsule hotel converted into an apartment building. I thought it was bad to stay overnight in a capsule hotel; imagine living in one. I suppose that it is an alternative for those who really, really need to live in Shinjuku, have few or no possessions, and are on an incredibly tight budget. The ¥59,000 rent includes utilities (it would have to, when you think about it), and there’s no shiki-kin (deposit) or reikin (gift money) which some people may not be able to put up all at one time. And it is better than being homeless (depending on your tastes, I suppose).

For Atsushi Nakanishi, jobless since Christmas, home is a cubicle barely bigger than a coffin — one of dozens of berths stacked two units high in one of central Tokyo’s decrepit “capsule” hotels.

“It’s just a place to crawl into and sleep,” he said, rolling his neck and stroking his black suit — one of just two he owns after discarding the rest of his wardrobe for lack of space. “You get used to it.” …

Still, it is a bleak world where deep sleep is rare. The capsules do not have doors, only screens that pull down. Every bump of the shoulder on the plastic walls, every muffled cough, echoes loudly through the rows. …

Most possessions, from shirts to shaving cream, must be kept in lockers. There is a common room with old couches, a dining area and rows of sinks. Cigarette smoke is everywhere, as are security cameras. But the hotel staff does its best to put guests at ease: “Welcome home,” employees say at the entrance.

First Freeters, then stays at Internet Cafes, now this. Yikes.

Strange fact: there seem to be no medium-weight rubber bands in Japan, at least not for sale. You can get scrawny, stringy ones, or you can get massive, inch-wide ones, but you can’t get anything in-between. I have no idea why that is. But it is.

So when I went to the U.S., one of the items on my shopping list was, strangely, rubber bands. I happened to stumble upon a rubber band ball at Fry’s Electronics.

Certainly one of the strangest things I’ve had to import….

I fell asleep at about 10:30 pm last night, on my way to the usual accelerated westbound jet-lag recovery. Which means that I woke up around 5 am this morning, and was able to catch the early dawn light.

I must say, my backside is glad to be back in Japan. Not that American toilets are terrible, but they pale in comparison to Japan’s. Especially in winter. The heated toilet seat is one of the greatest inventions ever. I can’t say how many times in the past few week I had to either pre-sit on the seat, clothed, to warm it up a bit, or else take the cold plunge right off the bat. Back here in Japan, the seat is nice & toasty whenever you need to use it.

Another difference, although strange: American toilets are lower and smaller. That’s the opposite of what I’d expect, but–at least with the units I used–that’s what I found. The seat itself is smaller in America, more round I think, making it harder to reach in while sitting; in Japan, the seats are more comfortably elongated, plenty of room. Also, I found myself sitting close to the floor in the U.S., while Japanese toilets are comfortably higher.

And the thing I missed most: a built-in bidet. Many Japanese toilets have them, with electronic controls on the side. Push a button, and a retractable arm comes out and then washes your backside with warm water. I resisted using these for year, being wary of anything that did something like that, but Sachi got me using it–and I came to depend on it so much that I very much noticed the lack of this feature while in the U.S. Not only does it keep you cleaner, but it saves a considerable amount of toilet paper. Why this has not caught on more, I don’t know. But it’s fairly common in Japan, and has been in use for decades.

Finally, there are public restrooms. I have noted this before on this blog, but public toilet stalls in America are horrible for privacy. Not only do the partitions start a foot or more from the floor, but there are half-inch-wide vertical gaps between the stall doors and the adjacent walls. How many times have you sat down in a stall in a crowded public restroom only to have more than one person press their eyeballs up against this crack to check on who’s in there? In Japan, public toilet stalls are more or less sealed. While there is a gap between the partition and the ceiling, everything else is closed. No gaps at foot level, no gaps in the door–you have actual privacy (visually, at least, although it helps with smells, too). In case there’s an issue about whether or not a stall is occupied, either the doors swing open when not locked, or there is an indicator outside showing if the lock is engaged.

That said, one still finds, all too often, “Japanese style” toilets in public stalls–that is, the weird, old-fashioned, hooded trenches which require one to squat down. Disgusting for several reasons, which I will not go into here. Why these are still used is beyond me–people who hate sharing a seat, or a concession to older people, perhaps. However, you rarely find a public bathroom which does not give you an option–though often times, if there are both types, the Japanese-style stall will be the only one unoccupied.

Sachi and I had a quick dinner at a Mexican grill in town tonight, and something I saw there made me realize something about Japan. A uniformed cop came in, had a drink, and left. And it made me realize that you never see that in Japan: uniformed police officers never come in to eating places as customers. You don’t see them sitting at tables eating food. Even donut joints.

Our New Year’s Card design for this year. It’s a lot harder than you might think to put convincing tiger stripes onto a Shiba Inu puppy. I had to use several different tiger photos to get just the right stripes, and spent a lot of time with color, brightness, and contrast correction. But I got it done, and Sachi printed out and sent the actual cards.

Happy Holidays!

P.S. — when we made the design, we hadn’t yet heard of the Tiger Woods embroglio.

In the video rental place I go to in Japan–Tsutaya, a huge chain–they have one narrow shelf of Blu-Ray titles. They say it’s because not many titles have gone to Blu-ray yet. I went to a local electronics store in the SF Bay Area today. This was their Blu-Ray section:

I think I mentioned this before: what the heck is going on with Blu-Ray in Japan?

Well, at least the car I’m in is new.

I’m trying out WordPress for iPhone 2.1, hoping the photos below will work. I’m adding shots of the whole car, the luggage racks (now with locks!), and the new displays above the seats.

On my way to SFO!

You see these everywhere now. My school even has these. The one pictured above is from the entrance to the supermarket on the ground floor of our apartment building. Hotels have them set up. I saw them at CEATEC. More and more, plastic pump-spray dispensers of alcohol-based hand wash and becoming ubiquitous (and thankfully, it’s the water-based stuff, not the icky snot-like transparent-lotion-cream stuff that used to be the norm).

And it turns out I am ahead of my time–I started using the stuff four years ago, when it was still hard to find. I could only find water-based wash at one place in Inagi, and when I moved to Ikebukuro, I bought six or eight extras which have lasted until now. And as I noted a few years back, they helped a lot–instead of catching colds several times a year, I am down to once or twice a year.

While I would like to claim to be a trend-setter, I am pretty sure that the real cause for the sudden mass use of this stuff is the Swine Flu–which, ironically, I caught anyway.

Wow. Even in Japan, printers are down to about fifty-five bucks. Sachi and I saw several in this price range when we went to pick up more postcards and some printer ink.

And I think that’s the idea: you get lulled into buying the printer for cheap, and then get hit with the real profit-margin sales when you’re forced to buy ink.

It was a relatively small graduating class this semester, but a very good one. Congratulations, guys!

Why do all street signs in Japan feature men wearing hats? I’m pretty sure that those went out of style at least forty years ago, probably even longer. Is the municipal graphics department that backed up?

I mentioned a few times before on this blog that the Tokyo government had gone all mercenary on scooter parking. Previously, driving a scooter in Tokyo was not only economical and far better pollution-wise than driving a car, but it was also very nice as one could park just about anywhere.

Trust Governor Ishihara & Co. to screw that up. A few years ago, they wanted to do something about sidewalk congestion. Frankly, that was never really a problem; where sidewalks were too narrow, people usually just didn’t park their bikes there. And if there was a problem, it was 90% caused by bicycles.

So, what did Tokyo do? Naturally, it made it illegal to park scooters on the sidewalk, and employed an army of green-suited ticketers to walk around in pairs and give parking tickets to everything in sight.

Did they target bicycles? Of course not. Primarily they go after scooters–which means that if you use a scooter in Tokyo, it’s now virtually impossible to park anywhere (very few businesses offer parking spaces). You’re told to use a for-pay parking lot, and those (1) are very expensive, (2) often are very far away from where you want to go, obviating the whole use of a bike, and (3) mostly don’t accommodate scooters or motorcycles, meaning that you have to scour the area and try a half dozen parking lots before you find one you can use–and hope that there are open spots there, which there often are not.

But did this accomplish the goal of freeing up sidewalks? Of course not, in part because that was never the goal. The goal was to raise revenues through citations, and I’m sure Tokyo is doing very well. But I for one no longer shop where I used to, as it’s just too much hassle–as I suspect many bikers similarly stopped visiting shops in popular areas for this reason.

But that’s not all: the sidewalks are exactly as crammed as they used to be, but now just with bicycles. No change, zero. Swell.

Worse, some areas are bafflingly anti-visitor. Note the sidewalk shown above: to keep bicycles from parking, they set up those orange barriers. That’s not a construction area, they just put those there to discourage parking. The result: the barriers eat up even more space than the bicycles ever used to. They’ve been up like that for about two years now. And on this one street, the owner of the pharmacy you see at the right side (the shop with balloons) uses the sidewalk as his personal parking lot for his van, blocking what little space is left. And the guy never gets a ticket. (I am fairly sure that the city gives businesses a break.) This is not just at a special time, this is pretty much the way it always is.

The result: Sidewalks are just as crammed as before, a whole class of economical and efficient vehicles is almost effectively banned, and businesses & shoppers are inconvenienced. But the Tokyo government gets to make some nice cash on the side.

So, job well done, Mr. Ishihara.

During a recent visit to Tokyu Hands, Sachi and I were tempted by the wigs:

We tried on about 5 or 6 before a clerk told us to cut that out (more I think because we were taking photos). Personally, I like the blond one: “Waaaayyynnee!!!!”

Sachi came out looking like one of my students:

Me, I just look cool.

Answer: CRC 5-56. Not that it’s a native Japanese product–I wasn’t able to figure out exactly where it originates from–but that’s the product name which Japanese recognize as much as Americans recognize WD-40 (which, by the way, stands for “Water Displacement – 40th Attempt”).

I found out about the product while looking for something else in the storage area at work, and stumbled across a can of this stuff. I thought it might be a WD-40 analog because of the little straw attached to the side, something recognizably unique to this kind of product. I asked a Japanese staff member, and sure enough, they confirmed that it’s a mechanical lubricant and cleaner, and yes, everyone recognizes the name.

It interested me because I really needed some. Various reasons, but the main one is the bedroom closets. The way our bedroom is set up, to get to the other side of the room, you have to squeeze past the foot of the bed, which is about a foot from our closet doors. Since I (gallantly) sleep on the far side of the bed, that’s my deal. Also, since I go to bed a few hours after Sachi quite often, I have to walk that in the dark while Sachi is trying to sleep.

And that’s the problem: walking by those closet doors causes loud squeaking; in the dark silence of 3:00 am, it’s pretty damned loud, enough to wake Sachi up half the time. So tonight, I sprayed the hinge-rail-thingies (technical term) with CRC 5-56, and now they’re nicely silent.

Next up is my bicycle, when I get the chance.

Gizmodo has a piece today on a cool-looking capsule hotel. Looks aside, my own experience with capsule hotels was less than satisfying. Far less.

What happens is that all the drunk businessmen congregate there after partying too late and missing the last train. It’s a feasible alternative since the capsule hotel is cheaper than a taxi ride home, and they have to be at work in 4-5 hours anyway.

Now, you’d think that these guys, being drunk and tired, having to go to work soon, and being so close to beds, would simply tuck in and nod off. But noooo. They stay up and drink more, talking to each other in the corridor right outside the tubes, and those in their tubes often are watching TV with no headphones and the volume turned up. Imagine trying to sleep in a regular hotel room, except with several drunk businessmen partying it up at the foot of your bed.

The one night I tried one of these places, I had to go to the front desk to ask for a different wing, you know, one where people were trying to sleep at 2:00 am. The guy was surprisingly unprepared for such an odd request, and had to go to an effort, finally putting me in an unused wing of tubes located right across from the air conditioning system, which made loud throbbing noises all night. At least they were regular and rhythmic, and I was eventually able to get to sleep.

Maybe I just had bad luck and most capsule hotels aren’t like this, but I am not eager to find out.