I was on my way to the subway this morning to meet a friend for lunch, and I saw this - a Far Side just begging to be written:

It then reminded me that a few weeks ago I’d seen this - all the traditional Japanese Autumn symbols set up for some portraits at a local dog boutique (jugo-ya full moon, tsukimi dango, pampas grass or could be bush clover - both are traditional Autumn symbols and I can’t tell from the photo but would guess the former):

The former surprised me a lot less than the latter. I suppose it’s because when I first came to Japan, it was not very usual to see a dog that was not a “traditional” Japanese dog (Shiba or Akita, etc.); and the dogs you did see were usually chained up outside the family house on a chain or rope that always seemed just a little bit too short. Now, of course, only several years later, you can barely go for a walk without tripping over a pack of long-haired dachshunds or several chihuahuas and you are then at the other extreme with scenes like this (and, in case you are wondering, there is no baby):

I was just updating another blog I maintain and thought I’d pop over and take a look at my blog. I was a wee bit shocked to realize that I’ve had an iPhone for almost 3 months. Oh well, at least I like it more now than I did before (although it is still lacking a few features I think it needs: “Mark as Read” would be a good starting point) (but, just as I typed that, it occurred to me that the feature might exist but I’ve yet to discover it).

Anyway, it’s been a busy few months and it does leave me pondering, yet again, if I should just scrap this endeavour. A kind commenter in Montreal, Van Hus, seems to think I should (but he also has some perverse desire to defend CNN writers, so I’m not sure we can take him too seriously).

My sister was here for a visit and we did a bit of travel: went to see F1 (hence the photo above, which was taken with the GIANT lens I lugged to the track 3 days running), went to Kyoto, toured around Tokyo. In case you are interested (and don’t worry if you’re not because I am not really an F1 fan either and don’t know much about it beyond the usual), the photo is the winning driver at Fuji Speedway this year, Alonso.

Here’s a classic Kyoto photo - this is Kinkaku-ji (aside from the striking gold facade, it is famous for being burned down by a monk in 1950 and then the act itself was immortalized in Mishima’s novel The Temple of the Golden Pavillion):

I don’t really take too many classic touristy photos these days - I tend to be more interested in things like this if I go “temple tromping”:

I’m off on another tour of the countryside for a few days on Thursday and I’m hoping the leaves are in full colour (although they seem a bit muted in colour here in Tokyo this year; but, at the same time, they are not fully changed yet). We’ll see…

PS: In case you are wondering what I mean by a “GIANT” lens, this will help you visualize it:

Anyway, what to write about? Well, how about the series of iEvents I was plagued with on Friday afternoon - a complete snowball of iChaos that now means my Big Mac is off to the iDoctor for some iService.

So, in a flurry of spontaneity (not catalyzed by me), I now have a 16GB iPhone. To be honest, I had been feeling rather ambivalent about the acquisition of an iPhone: Japanese mobile phones are pretty feature-rich compared to North American models prior to the iPhone and, despite the many Apple products I own, I wasn’t in a hurry to get one.

I’d had it for a few days and was being a bit lackadaisical about inputting my contacts, etc. (because unlike switching to other mobiles here, where the provider transfers all of your data from old phone to new, the iPhone requires you to start from scratch and, oddly enough, the CD that Softbank provides to help you transfer your data through your PC is for Windows only), but I decided to bite the bullet Friday and get it done.

As I was reaching to plug the USB connector from the phone to Big Mac, I pulled the monitor towards me slightly and inadvertently unplugged the computer while it was turned on and had a whack of programs open. Normally, when this happens with a Mac, you just turn it back on and you get a message saying “Your computer was not shut down properly, so now we are going to have to realign the solar system and make sure that you are still standing in the same spot on the same plane of reality” (okay, that’s not really the message, but it’s along those lines and you have to wait a bit as it takes your computer a few minutes to sort out the permissions, etc.).

Not this time…

After watching the sleep indicator (the little white light on the bottom right) flash intermittently and beep for a while (3 flashes in quick succession and a loud beep and then a lag and then 3 more, etc.), the screen went black and there were some sounds you definitely don’t want to hear coming from your computer: deep, high-pitched radio squelch and a lot of fuzz and static - it sounded like ET was indeed phoning home. This went on for quite some time (read: I let this go on for quite some time in the hopes that ET would actually connect to his home planet and bring up my desktop).

Now, for most people, because they never back up their data, this moment would be the moment of absolute fear and panic. Unlike most people, my problem is that I have too many backups (I experienced a hard disk failure a couple of years ago that left me extra cautious) and, in these backups, I have quite a bit of duplication of my data (which means a lot of hard disk space is eaten up by my cautious approach). So, for the most part, a computer meltdown doesn’t really phase me too much (and I have a laptop as well anyway, which is what I’m using to write this).

However, I did realize in that moment that I had not backed up approximately 5000 photos from the past 4 months because I shoot in RAW and each file is quite large and I didn’t have much room left on my 3 external hard drives. Oddly enough, on Thursday, the day before this happened, I went to Bic Camera and bought another 500GB hard drive, but hadn’t done the backup yet.

Anyway, what I realized in that moment was that I don’t really care all that much for all of that data - sure, it’s a lot of photos to lose, but in all of that mass I realized that there are really only about 20 photos within all of that ridiculous mass that I would really be sorry to lose - just 20 or so, including these few:

A kind of interesting realization…I’m much less attached to all of my photos than I thought I was.

Long story short, I did somehow manage to boot once from the startup CD and transfer all of the photos to the new backup drive. However, when I rebooted again from a cloned copy of my system on another drive, my hard disk was gone…poof…not visible and that’s that.

¥49,000 (about $500) and Apple will pick up my computer, pack it up and repair it in 4 to 10 days. I am glad I was able to retrieve my photos and am hoping I’ll have my big desktop back again sooner rather than later.

Yes, you know the headline I am talking about - Japan: Bunch of Grapes sold for $910:

I don’t really have any problem with such a story being reported, and it is certainly true that some pretty high prices are paid for fruit over here, BUT, in the AP wire story that almost every newspaper in the world seems to have picked up, it’s this sentence that gets me :

Fruit is generally expensive in Japan, and people often buy grapes, peaches and melons as luxury gifts. Japanese are often willing to pay top prices for high-end fruits, especially for the prestige of owning the very first ones of the year.

“Often” is used twice and it leaves the reader with the impression that what was a completely exceptional purchase (something that could happen only once a year for this type of grape and for a few other select fruits) is almost commonplace.

The truth is that most Japanese people buy their fruit at the supermarket, just like everywhere else in the world and some fruits are significantly more expensive than in other places (for example, a watermelon is probably an average $15 U.S.) while others are just slightly more expensive (say 30% more than you’d pay in North America), while others still are on par (for example, bananas and kiwis). But everything’s relative right? Bear in mind that food is either imported (think: transport costs, distribution costs, etc.) or grown domestically (think: limited agricultural land availability, a high cost of living for farmers, and an extraordinarily strong agricultural growers union) and also that Japanese shoppers are notoriously picky (they won’t overlook minor blemishes or bruising, so the fruits need to “look perfect”) and you can understand why general prices would be higher.

So, on to the real story behind the $910 grapes. To understand why such an auction and purchase would take place, you need to get deeper into Japanese culture than just saying people often buy certain fruits as “luxury gifts” - a number of factors come into play.

In general, Japanese consumers do not make purchasing decisions based on price alone - perceived freshness and quality are more significant and, in fact, a price that is “too low” suggests that the product must not be good enough quality. When it comes to food, most Japanese people prefer domestically grown produce because they feel it is safer (there’s a mistrust of food from China in particular), fresher, and tastes better.

In addition, there is the quest for perfection. Ask anyone working in Quality Control for a multinational company that does business in Japan and you are guaranteed to hear stories that detail either how Japanese customers (which include middle men/distributors) reject products regularly due to perceived flaws that would go undetected by buyers in other countries, or how quality standards are just so much higher here than any of their other production facilities in other countries. As an example of the former, I recently discovered that distributors often reject shipments of goods because the boxes are damaged even though the goods inside (i.e., the hundreds of packaged products inside the boxes) are completely intact and undamaged.

Imagine, for example, taking 40 china plates and packing them individually in cardboard and then placing those 40 cardboard packages in a large box filled with straw and styrofoam popcorn and then shipping that large box to a distributor on the other side of the world. The large box arrives and there is a minor rip on the outside that was incurred at some point in the shipping process. However, inside the large box, all the individual boxes are in perfect condition. Now imagine being told by the distributor that he cannot accept the large box because he will not be able to deliver such a box to his customer, a department store, because of the minor rip in the large box used only for shipping. If you’ve ever worked in shipping or procurement or package delivery, you’ll understand just how unbelievable this situation is (but it is true).

The third element, which is a core concept in Japanese culture dating at least back to the Heian period is the love of the ephemeral. If you’ve ever wondered why it is that Japanese people turn out in droves to sit under cherry trees while they are blossoming or why you cannot book a hotel room in Kyoto during the Autumn when all the leaves are changing colour or why those green tea Kit Kats are only in the stores for 1 month before they are replaced by a new flavour.

And this segues into the fourth element: an absolute love for newness. This love is self-evident in many aspects of Japanese culture, most documented perhaps is the marketing concept of Shinhatsubai (which basically translates to “new and improved product” and can help you understand why products are constantly appearing and disappearing and then re-appearing with modifications in this lightening fast market). Newness, however, is everywhere here: people don’t want to rent apartments that are more than 10 years old, culturally significant landmarks (such as temples) are regularly renovated or even knocked down and rebuilt, and you would be hard pressed to find a car on the roads that is more than 7 or 8 years old (those all get shipped to other countries in what is a very lucrative re-sale market).

So, the $910 grapes are domestic, they are new, they will only be in season a short time, and they are in perfect condition. This means they are valuable and their rarity only helped to boost that price.

So, anyway, as I was contemplating my return to the blogosphere
(could there be an uglier neologism?), I was kind of passively brainstorming
(is there such a thing? perhaps if you do it at my relaxed pace…)
potential topics and I happened to be in Shinjuku the other day and it
happened to be about 37C (but really felt about 42C in the sun) and I just
happened to come across this:

I have barely written a blog entry this entire year and, in the intervening 8 months, nothing’s changed outside of Krispy Kreme (okay, that’s not entirely true: they made a snake-type ramp at the front so that people don’t have to line up across the bridge and all the way to Takashimaya Times Square). Really…what compels people to line up for these things in the sweltering heat?

Okay, that’s done. I solemnly swear that I will never ever blog about Krispy Kreme again (that was the third time and that is my KK limit - always good to know one’s own limits, I say).

So, on to the next Shinjuku oddity.

As I rounded the corner from Odakyu Southern Terrace (the home of the now unmentionable greasy dough ring franchise) onto Koshu-kaido (the big main street that runs in front of the south exit of JR Shinjuku Station), I see this:

It is quite possibly one of the most amazing clouds I have ever seen - it was absolutely MASSIVE and, here’s the kicker: NOT ONE PERSON (aside from me) looked up and took notice (except the one old chief who noticed me and my camera and then followed my line of vision - if I hadn’t been taking a picture, he probably would’ve just carried on right across the street without looking up). Seriously…I took about 10 photos and in every frame it’s heads down across the board…

Life: you miss out on it if you’re never looking beyond the tip of your own snout…

Being obedient, here I am.

(That was a joke obviously…anyone who knows me would see through that in a nanosecond: “obedient” is the last adjective on the face of the earth that applies to me…)

Anyway, as you can see, a bit of a cosmetic change going on with the blog - bear with me as I bring the whole look in line with my website and find the time to write a proper blog entry: tomorrow evening’s project…in the meantime, jump on over to my Flickr page and look at some sushi porn and some seagulls…

Anyway, what I was struck by the other day was the contrast between these two scenes (pictures taken only minutes apart):

Yes, some people line up on January 2 for the traditional visit to the shrine and others line up for the traditional box of Krispy Kreme donuts…! You can’t really see it in the picture above, but there is a sign indicating that the waiting time to get your greasy dough rings is (are you ready for it?) one hour and twenty minutes. A year ago, I was amazed that people were lining up so long for donuts. Then, in the summer, when it was 40°C, I was amazed to see people standing in that heat waiting for donuts. Now, about a year-and-a-half later, I’m just dumbstruck…

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PS: A devout reader, Hali, and Adonica, thanks for your kind words…

Shari, I can’t remember if I thanked you for your comments about the bad RAM - I definitely got a bum stick, but have adapted to the inconvenience temporarily. I will take your advice and check our Crucial for RAM for my MacBook.

2007 has obviously NOT been the year of the blog for me. The truth of it is that earlier in the year, when my brother was dying in hospital (as the result of an assault), the thought of writing blog entries just didn’t seem very appropriate or necessary or interesting or compelling. Quite simply: I had nothing to say. Death will do that to you…

I am not sure I have anything to say even now…I’ve been directing most of my down-time into photography and just can’t seem to find anything to write about. At the same time, I can’t leave Madonna’s ghoulish face staring out at you from an ad for condos.

I actually started to write this about 2 weeks ago and then my whole blog site crashed (cue: sinister organ chords signalling a spooky coincidence). Nothing earth shattering that I really had to impart, so I left my blog in purgatory for a few days. What I actually wanted to write about is quite mundane - it was this:

I had just made myself a “Toast and Tomato” (as my father always called it, although he’d never put cheese on it: he was a purist). As I was savouring the flavours, I had this flood of really happy memories of my dad. When we were kids, just lounging around or reading or whatever, he’d saunter into the room and say: “Ya-wanna-toast-and-tomato…?” - it was, he knew, hard to resist because he was probably the world’s best toast and tomato maker (generous amounts of salt, pepper, and butter - there is nothing worse than a toast and tomato that has skimpy amounts of any of the key ingredients). Of course, I’d never turn him down and I think he really, truly, enjoyed preparing them - he had this thing about feeding people, being hospitable, offering them a drink. It was more than mere politeness: I think it truly made him happy to be able to make you something to eat; maybe it was more than that - maybe it was because he remembered scarcer times during the War and maybe because he could…who knows…? I certainly never thought that much about it when I was on the receiving end of a T & T…

After having these thoughts, I felt compelled to find this particular picture of me, my mum, and my dad - it was 1972, in Scotland (I think in Oban, “Gateway to the Highlands”, but I was too young to remember key details of our visit). I guess my sister was taking the picture (because she’s not in it and there was certainly no one else around to take the shot) - I love the big sky behind us, and it brings back a lot of happy memories each time I look at it.

I suppose this is a good way to end 2007…happy thoughts and memories of my family (although only my sister and I now remain…). I won’t dwell on the events of 2007: I am looking forward to 2008 and, if there are still any readers of this blog remaining, I hope that 2008 is full of good things for you too.

Almost New Year’s Eve here (a few more hours to go) - I’m heading out with my camera…

It’s pretty interesting what celebrities will attach their images to in Japan. I can only imagine how much she was paid for this, and I doubt very highly you’d see her face on a condo ad in any western country.

That being said, we seem to have moved into an era of celebrities unabashedly grabbing every single dollar they can get through maximum leveraging of their brand. I think there used to be a bit more restraint about this, but the idea of A-list celebrities “cheapening” their image by attaching it to any product seems to have disappeared.

Anyway, that’s what drove me to the Apple home page and, then, when I got there, I have to admit, I was pretty surprised to see this:

Out of curiosity, I clicked over to the Apple Japan homepage and there was no Al:

I dunno…not that I am really overly supportive of the selection of Al for the Nobel Peace Prize (I don’t equate environmental issues with peace initiatives); HOWEVER, I thought the Nobel Peace Prize was a global thing, and, perhaps even more important, I thought the whole point of Al’s big push for climate change was also supposed to be a global thing. Not for Apple, I guess, when you have a new product to push in a giant, tech-hungry market….