life @ enhasa

Otsuka Station

When I started going to Otsuka (in Tokyo, one stop east of Ikebukuro) two or three years ago, the station was old, run down — a concrete megalith with some passages carved out of it. Completely inaccessible. Over the past couple years they’ve gradually renovated it, and now it’s bright and open and accessible and lovely.

Yamanote Line and Toden-Arakawa Line at Otsuka Station

I don’t seem to have any pictures of pre-renovation Otsuka Stn., and they seem to be impossible to find on the internet, but I did find this video of a transfer from the Yamanote Line to the Toden-Arakawa line in old Otsuka Stn., so check it out if you like.

Otsuka Station at night

Happy new year!

It’s 2010! Isn’t that amazing? We’re truly living in THE FUTURE! (dramatic chord)

Yep, now that the future is here, I have big plans. This weekend, I’m gonna get up early Saturday morning, hop in my flying car and make my way to the local spaceport. From there, I’ll take an elevator up to our low-orbit halfway station before catching a transport to Luna, the Moon colony.

It should be a pretty cool trip.  I want to see the progress they’re making on the construction for the olympics (LUNA 2012 WOOOO), as some of the buildings, at least in drawings, look really cool.  I’ve also heard that there’s a pretty good vantage point where someone with a reasonably powerful telescope can watch progress on the construction of the Dyson sphere.  It’s gonna be done in about 5 years, you know.

What a great leap forward that will be for our civilization! I’m so glad we got together as a species and realized that if we work together, we can do great things, and fighting with each other is hyperfail. (Now that it’s the future, hyper- is the modifier of choice for strengthening adjectives.)  Ah, it’s good to be alive. Happy 2010!

… except NONE OF THAT IS TRUE.  What the FUCK.  I’ve spent my entire life waiting for the future — and not just any future. This SPECIFIC future.  Where could I have become so misguided into expecting a future (1) like this that would (2) be around now, in 2010?

"The Usborne Book of the Future", aka LIES LIES AND MORE LIES.

In THIS: The Usborne Book of the Future by Kenneth Gatland and David Jefferis.  I read this when I was in grade 4. And in grade 5. And in grade 6. And then someone stole the book from the library (and it wasn’t me, but it should have been), and so I couldn’t read it anymore.  I didn’t just read this occasionally. I would take it out from the library, read it cover to cover every day, renew my loan when my period was up, for as long as I could, and when I was compelled to return it, I’d pop in the next day and re-loan it.

This book is the source of my image of the future, my hopes and my dreams about what life as an adult would be for me.  AND NOT A SINGLE FRIGGIN’ PART HAS COME TRUE.  I’m a bitter, hate-filled individual who can’t feel happiness, and I BLAME THIS BOOK.  I don’t know if you could possibly understand the depth and breadth of my disappointment.  It’s all encompassing: no flying car, stalled space program, assholes still think that they’re more important than their neighbours, and so fight over fucking retarded shit like religion and gay marriage… there is nothing positive here!

Whenever I bitch about the future not coming, and how it’s 2010, it should be here, someone is always quick to point out, “Hey, your iPhone can do stuff that would have been completely unthinkable 30 years ago!  Isn’t that a sign that we’re living in the future?”

NO. IT ISN’T.  I’ll concede that, perhaps, it’s a sign that we’re living in A future, but not THE future.

Here is a brief list of things that were (not explicitly, but to the mind of a child) promised to be around by now, but which AREN’T:

• tidal energy (though it does exist, it’s just not widespread yet);
• nuclear fusion for energy (because the world is like OMG NUCYALER POWER IS SCARY ;_;);
• giant sea-based ammonia turbines for energy;
• liquid hydrogen as the main fuel for cars, aircraft, etc.;
• space-based solar power (Japan, last year, announced that they planned to build these, but won’t have the first one operational until 2030… but I don’t believe that either);
• space-based factories (we can barely manage to maintain the one space station we have, let alone build FACTORIES);
• moon colonies, mining the moon, and shooting the collected materials to off-world factories via giant railguns;
• mining the asteroid belt, and shooting the collected materials to factories orbiting “the capital-world of human colonies in the outer solar system”, Callisto. Patently ridiculous, but this was 1979, and they had no idea of the oceans of Europa, or even that there was water on the moon… which actually makes the moon colony even MORE ridiculous of an idea for them to have had…
• mining Jupiter’s atmosphere;
• space-based early earthquake detection, by satellite-based lasers focused on a reflector on the ground (there ARE space-based quake detectors, but they rely on detecting radiation and temperature increases);
• giant space-mirrors used to focus light on the nightside of the planet, to light up areas suffering blackouts, or other disasters, or to help farmers see to work at night, so they can work even LONGER hours for even LESS return (there have been proposals for anti-global warming mirrors, and solar-power mirrors, but nothing real);
• forest-fire-fighting robots (4-legged, self-righting, autonomous; not unlike this horrific thing, I guess…)
• Red Cross “hoverjets” (think the vehicles from Minority Report) that travel at 450km/h, and move in to disaster areas when alerted by satellite-based early warning systems;
• monorails to carry beef from the farm to the city; vacuum tubes (like those old-timey messaging systems) carrying grain from the farm to the city; “conventional trucks will be rarely used”;
• underwater farming, with people living in beefed up versions of ConShelf Two, and where “aqualung-equipped farmers are helped by dolphins, the sheepdogs of this underwater world“;
• spray-on synthetic skin for burn victims;
• a ‘hoverbed’, where patients are suspended on a cushion of air, so that there is no chance of pressure sores for long-term patients, and burn victims heal faster;
• curing headaches through electroshock (um, this sounds like some sort of 1890s “electricity is a wondercure!” bullshit);
• mechanical ESP enhancers.  What the WHAT? Now we’re in the realm of pure fantasy. “;
• a Star Trek-style “replicator”, which can fabricate anything at all from a pile of nearby elemental raw materials — this is explicitly supposed to have happened by 2000;
• “space-mirrors, under strict United Nations control, begin weather-control experiments” — Oh, the UN is in control? I FEEL SO SAFE;
• all the cars are Deloreans;
• space elevator;
• Olympics on the moon;
• giant space cities built at L5, out of moonsoil;
• terraforming Venus (though, this was based on an optimistic plan from Carl Sagan, so I can’t be tooooo critical, I guess);
• Earth develops a Saturn-style ring, only of man-made junk, not rock and ice;
• the destruction of Jupiter, using the constituent parts to create a Dyson sphere;
• Soviet space greenhouses (the Russians haven’t done anything like that for the ISS);
• first moonbaby born, signalling the start of an independent lunar civilization;
• eugenics become popular, via genetic engineering;
• personal jetpacks;
• trains of the future will be coal-powered… what the WHAT;
• dirigibles make a comeback (facepalm);
• a probe  named Daedalus will be built in Callisto’s orbit, and then sent to Barnard’s Star, looking for a suitable planet for colonization, and when it finds one, a world-ship would make its way there and that’s how the world of Pern was colonized (or  not, since it seems to orbit Alpha Sagitarii… why did I think it was Barnard’s Star…)
• teleportation in the Star Trek sense;
• warp, in the Star Trek sense.

In the interest of fairness, a brief list of things that were predicted, and THAT WE ACTUALLY HAVE RIGHT NOW:

• weather satellites (I don’t think this counts though, since they claim an ESA Meteosat was in orbit in 1977, and so it’s not really a prediction…)
• artificial blood (but again, perflurocarbons were known to work for oxygen delivery as early as 1966, so… yeaah);
• strength-enhancing exo-skeletons (though, it’s built by CyberDyne, aka the company that builds the Terminators…);
• not a prediction as such, but a prescient and very true statement: “Civilization is becoming increasingly dependent on computers. As machines take over, society becomes more vulnerable to natural and man-made disasters. If power supplies are interrupted, industries and cities grind to a halt. Unless people retain basic skills and crafts, parts or all of civilization could perish. Perhaps groups of craft workers could be set up as an insurance policy against global disaster.” The truest statement in the book is also the grimmest, most negative scenario in the book. Fucking classic.
• space-based telescopes, though they also speak of GIANT SPACE-BASED RADIO TELESCOPES, with the main purpose of listening for extraterrestrial signals.  A SETI wet dream, to be sure.
• long-distance videoconferencing (though, they predict 3D-holoconferencing);
• giant flat-screen TVs with STEREO SOUND WOOOO;
• video cameras that don’t require film, only MAGNETIC TAPE (I’m not sure whether to give them this or not, since we’ve moved past tape, as well);
• TiVo;
• e-mail, sort of. They see it as conventional mail, that you scan into a machine at the post office, and then it gets beamed via satellite to its destination, where it’s printed out. It’s like a glorified fax machine in their view;
• the wrist-based ubergadget — in reality, this is more like our smartphones of today, which most certainly aren’t wrist-based, but the spirit of this prediction has been met, what with their desire to be all things to all people, AND be GPS-enabled;
• widespread wind turbines provide energy;
• hybrid cars;
• jet-ski/sea-doo;
• maglev trains.

So yeah, happy new year! Welcome 2010, a magical year that always held so much promise, and filled me with so much hope, but which has turned out to be nothing but a giant steaming pile of excrement. And happy new year to you, Kenneth Gatland and David Jefferis. I hope you’re pleased with yourselves! Now build a machine that will allow me to jump Light Cones, and end up in THE FUTURE, instead of A FUTURE. Get to it!

(For those with an interest in this book, and who are not willing to drop $108+ on Amazon for it, a PDF can be downloaded here.)

Camellia

Camellia are one of my favourite flowering trees, and are really the only good part about cooler weather.  In Toyama, every winter, I’d make it a point to visit the GIANT IMMOVABLE CAMELLIA TREE AT NAGASAKA several times for photo funtime.  I don’t see myself making the trip out there this time, but with a small camellia tree outside my building, and with streets lined with camellia trees on the other side of town, I’ll make due.

So, a friend who I’ve known for ages on the interbutts was in Tokyo on Thursday (though he’s Australian) and had some time to kill, so he popped up here to Tochigi for dinner, which was nice. No one ever comes to visit me.

I asked around, and my colleagues decided that it would be a shame if he came to Tochigi and didn’t have gyoza, so they suggested I take him to MinMin, here in Takanezawa, for gyoza.  And you know what? That’s just what I did.

Garbo at MinMin

There’s a reason I don’t often eat out, though: I never know how to order.  Take me to a bar, I know how to order; take me to an izakaya, I know how to order; take me to a family restaurant, or a fast food place, I know how to order. Take me to a specialty shop, like MinMin, which only does gyoza? I don’t know how to order, because there’s always some sort of secret system that everyone just sort of knows.  I rely on the staff to set me right when I order incorrectly at these places.

But when the staff doesn’t set me right, it sets the stage for possible disaster.

My friend and I sat down, and decided we wanted to try all three types of gyoza available.  We thought, hmm, we can eat about 15 gyoza each, and there’s three types of gyoza, so let’s order ten of each gyoza.  I told the guy, very specifically, “We want ten individual gyoza.”  Now, I’ve been to gyoza restaurants that let you order individual gyoza, with a minimum order, and I’ve been to gyoza restaurants where you have to get “orders” of x gyoza each.  I wasn’t sure what type this place was, so I figured I’d start that way, and the man would correct me.  “Ah,” I thought he might say, “you must order in lots of six. So, how does two orders of six sound? Okay?”

He didn’t, though.  I said we wanted 10 (individual) pan fried gyoza, 10 (individual) deep fried gyoza and 10 (individual) boiled gyoza.  “Is that all?” “Yes,” I said, and he toddled off.  I spoke with my friend for a few minutes, and then got a terrible knot in my gut.  There was something not right.

I called the waiter over. “Now, you realize we wanted 10 INDIVIDUAL gyoza, yes?” and specially emphasized it. “What? No, here, gyoza come in orders of six, so you’ve ordered 60 individual gyoza of each type.”

Now, my friend and are, probably, GIANTS, LANDWHALES, etc., to this waiter, but still, you expect us each to down 90 gyoza? Fuck off! “No nono, you’ve made a horrible mistake, you daft twit! Run! Correct it! We only want one order of each, each.”

“Oh… OH! OH!” and the waiter ran off.  We didn’t end up paying for 180 gyoza, and so I assume that he’d caught it in enough time. Still, I imagine that some people who came in after us got gyoza that had been prepared for us and kept warm, instead of their own super-fresh gyoza. Ah well.

I think, had I gone in alone, and made this ordering mistake, the waiter would have corrected me. However, I had arrived with an Asian-looking fellow.  I did the ordering, and the waiter may have assumed that, had I misspoken, the Asian-looking fellow (who the waiter would have assumed to be Japanese) would have jumped in to correct me; when he didn’t, he must have thought, “… well, they are portly fellows. I guess 180 gyoza isn’t that strange!”

So yeah, it was partly my fault for not knowing my way around this particular gyoza shop, and partly the waiter’s fault for making silly assumptions. In the end, probably no harm was done, but I’ll probably get the stinkeye if I go back.

Pan-fried Gyoza

Anyway, our food finally came.  First, there was the ‘normal’ panfried gyoza.  They were well cooked, well crispy on the pan side, steamed to perfection on the other side. The filling wasn’t anything special or amazing — it was just good gyoza filling, exactly what you’d expect.  They were juicy, but not juicy to the point of needing to wear a bib.

deep fried gyoza

Next came the deep-fried gyoza.  I had expected them to be super crispy and greasy, but they used some sort of different dough for the deep fried gyoza, and they were crunchy but not crispy, and completely ungreasy.  The dough actually reminded me of something else I’ve have, but I couldn’t think of what for the life of me. They were great, though.

Boiled Gyoza

Finally were the boiled gyoza.  I’m sure that some people like boiled gyoza, and I do, you know, in nabe, or soup or whatever. But on their own? Nah, they’re not my thing, and so no matter how good MinMin’s may have been, I wouldn’t have much good to say about them, and so I shall refrain from comment.

All in all, our 6 orders of gyoza worked out to under 1500yen, which surprised my friend, who had been prepared to pony up as much as 5000yen for dinner.  Good value for what we got, I reckon.

View Larger Map

Utsunomiya MinMin has eleven shops scattered through out Utsunomiya with a few shops in outlying areas.  The Takanezawa restaurant is located at 高根沢宝石台1-8-18, and is open Wednesday-Monday, 11:30-20:00. Inquiries can be made to 028-675-0609.  There is parking, but only for eight cars.  They also do home delivery anywhere in the country of gyoza for omiyage purposes, at reasonable prices, I think.  If you’re ever in Tochigi, do give Utsunomiya MinMin a try, yes?

Succulents

You may remember that I’ve been trying to get jade plants and christmas cacti to grow from leaves for some time now.  I decided to put them all into pots of soil and move them to the bedroom where they’ll get a bit of sun, and see how that goes.

The tiny jade plant leaf I had in water never really rooted, but when I popped it in the soil, I noticed that it had grown two tinier leaves, so maybe it’ll do alright.

Christmas Cactus

Christmas Cactus

The Christmas Cactuses had rooted quite well, so I tossed one in soil and one in hydroculture.  The jar I chose for the hydroculture one isn’t best, though, as it’s difficult to tell the water level, but we’ll see anyway. The one in soil has a bud that I really ought to pinch off (it’s still just one leaf — I don’t see how it can safely survive a bloom), but I don’t think I will.  I’ll take my chances.

In other news, I LOVE buying plants at the Daiso, the 100yen shop.  Once a month or so I’ll pop in and have a look at their plants near the door, and they always seem to have a selection of interesting plants, for just 105 yen, so there’s no harm in picking one up. If it lives, I’ve added a new, interesting specimen to my place; if it dies, I’m not out much.

Lucky Bamboo

Coffee Tree

I picked up the silk jasmine in this way about a month ago. This time, I’ve picked up a “lucky bamboo” (which is neither lucky nor bamboo), and what is allegedly a coffee tree.  Who has a coffee tree plant? Seriously! It’s a bit of a rarity, and that’s why I picked it up.

I do hope the jade plants do well.  And the christmas cactuses.  And those Aloe Nobilis cuttings I planted way back!  They’re still not rotting or wilting or shrivelling or anything. But are they rooting? Short of (1) seeing new growth or (2) pulling one of them out to see what’s going on, I don’t really think there’s any way to tell.  Patience, I guess.

Just 5 more minutes...

Right, so here’s the deal.  I hate mornings.  I hate mornings SO VERY HARD.  I’ve never been a morning person.

Well, I say NEVER. I suppose when I was a little kid, I was a morning person.  I’d get up at 5 am or something so I could watch the weird oldtimey cartoons that were only run in the very early morning.  Things like Hercules or that cartoon with people on a sub or something…? I don’t know, frankly.

But at some point, I stopped being able to wake up in the morning.  I’d sleep until 11 am or noon or later, no matter how early I went to bed.  Something about how adolescents need more sleep because their bodies and minds are working overtime on the growing, or something.

Now that I’m getting older, I don’t sleep that late anymore, but weekends, no matter when I went to bed, I’ll still stay in bed until 10 or 10:30.  On work days when I need to be up at 6:50am? Torture, sheer and utter torture.

If I had to wake up to an obnoxious BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP, the fucking thing would be out the window and I’d be back to sleep immediately.  Hate that shit!  I’ve found, though, that if I’m waking up to music I like, I’m less willing to hit the snooze button, and more likely to roll my ass out of bed.

I have a clock radio that my iPod can attach to, and I just set it to a playlist, and it goes automatically when the alarm goes.  I let it play for an hour, and when it shuts off, that means it’s time to hurry up my morning routine and get out the door to work.  It’s actually quite an effective system.

Some people, I’m sure, would specifically pick songs every night before going to bed that they wanted to wake up to. Me? I just set my iPod to my Top Rated playlist, and let it go.  I thought I’d share some of the songs I woke up to last month, so you could hear and enjoy. Check it out after the jump.

Continue reading "Wake-Up Call – October" »

2009-11-08 Spider Plant

My spider plant, which I started in water from an offset, and after it had rooted well, popped into hydroculture, is still alive, but its tips have browned quite a lot lately.

Of course, spider plants and brown tips are like salt and pepper or bread and butter — you expect them to be together.  But these are getting pretty bad, and I’m not sure what the trouble is.  Some sites on the internet say it’ll be caused by not enough water; others say too much water; others say too much sun; other say not enough sun; others say a buildup of salts; other say overfertilization (which, let’s face it, would just be a specific case of salt buildup).  So I’m not entirely sure what the trouble is.

If it’s too much water, of course, that’s going to be an issue, since it’s a hydroculture, and IT LIVES IN WATER.

How do you deal with your spider plants’ brown tips?

In my time in Japan, I have come across some pretty epic (as well as some hyper-annoying) product jingles on TV and in supermarkets, but this one really takes the cake.

Natto Angel, a natto jingle done in the style of turn-of-the-millennium Morning Musume. Think “Love Machine”, only about natto. (Only, the artist is actually AKB48, which makes it EVEN WORSE)

The tape player looping this song was on top of one of the coolers, and as I leaned there, holding my phone up to it to get good quality audio, pretending to look like I was interested in the vegetables there, but too tired to stand alone, I must have looked a right tosser. But I did it all for YOU!

NATTO BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAM!

Baked Sweet Potato Kit Kat

Saw this at the supermarket the other day and decided to give it a go.  It’s not a full bag of sweet potato ones, but rather half-and-half split with normal kit kat.  (shrug)

There’s not a very strong sweet potato flavour from these, actually.  They taste like a generic white chocolate type.  They’re kind of like the kinako flavoured kit kat in that way.  Though the taste isn’t strong, if you take a big whiff of it before chowing down, there is a definite baked sweet potato fragrance.

All in all, nice to try just so you can say HAW! I ATE SWEET POTATO KIT KAT, but don’t expect a whole lot.

Salt Ramen Caramel

I was given this a few weeks ago but didn’t get around until trying it now.  Salt ramen caramel? Bizarre! How on earth does that even work? It wasn’t really salty at all. It wasn’t really caramel-y either.  It wasn’t ramen-y either.  It was just… nothing, really.  Oh well.