Where's the thermostat?

First off, I’d just like to make it clear that Japan is not the only country in the world in which trees are blooming this time of year. I took this here on the Seasons Park grounds.

Aside from a cold apartment, I have returned to a new office, which is also cold. There seems to be something wrong with the heating/cooling units in the lovely G-Box. With some of the thermostats, we get cold air no matter what temperature they’re set at. We’ve resorted to just turning them off in much of the office and wearing coats and sweaters, which seems like a pity in a nice new building. At least the carpets and the furniture are clean and we have room. And I can connect to a printer without having to play around with USB cables.

Just to bring you up to date on the progress, here is a series of pictures of the same part of the office.

26 January

6 March

10 April

Isn't that lovely?This is the reception area as it now appears. In case you can’t make it out, the sign taped on the wall says PLACE LOGO HERE. That’s our office joke, since we’ve been here several months and do not have a logo for the company yet.

We have a vending machine. It looks a lot like the ones I saw in Japan.
And here is my cubicle. Things to note:

• Astroboy (AKA Atom) – a souvenir of Japan
• Map of China so I won’t forget where I am
• Pennant that’s a memento of the Athens Olympics
• Dual monitors with a picture of downtown Tokyo
• Wallace and Gromit
• A pineapple, widely used as a sort of natural deodorizer, handy since the office smelled of paint when we moved in. We have dozens of them all around, though they’re starting to become more offenders than mitigators in the odor department. Pineapples are hugely popular here – you see vendors with carts full of them on almost every block. The fruit is a traditional housewarming gift, in addition to being a tasty treat.

We’re getting ready to process what could be millions of order forms, so we’ve bought a bunch of boxes to store them in. That madness will begin very shortly, and it’s likely to get very busy around here. We’ve added a few dozen people to our staff over the last couple weeks, with interviews for more taking place every day.

The delivery of the boxes was an interesting event in itself. As it turns out, our lovely 15-story building does not have a loading dock, so everything has to be brought in through the regular doors on handtrucks or dollies. Furthermore, city regulations prohibit large trucks from city streets between the hours of 6:00am and midnight. Furtherevenmore, the security guards won’t let unauthorized people into the building and are not allowed to call anyone in the building to get authorization. So a portion of the boxes were delivered in a truck small enough to be allowed in the daytime, and when they arrived, the shipping company person had to call the box vendor and the vendor called us and we sent someone down to let them in the building. I’m wondering if the same situation arose when all the A/C units were delivered.

As I write this on 14 April, the weather has turned very nice, and my apartment gets enough sun during the day to stay comfortable almost all night. I’ve been opening windows from time to time to get a little circulation going. Leaves are appearing on trees, I can walk around without a jacket sometimes, and the Ewoks have been replaced by normal children.

And there’s an addition the Dramatis Personae. RR is another American expat, I think the last of the long-term non-Chinese employees. He arrived while I was in Japan, and now has an apartment in the same building as me. That’s five of us at Seasons Park. RR is currently overseeing the process of paper form data entry.

My first night back in Beijing, TG, RR and I walked to a nearby restaurant called the Red Rose, which on the sign is described as a Xinjiang Muslim Restaurant (that’s the farthest west part of China for the geographically challenged). The place is plastered with Budweiser signs, so we ordered Buds (the only beer listed on the menu). Yes, beer in a Moslem restaurant. But this is China after all, not Kuwait. Anyway, the food was really good, and before long the large restaurant was quite full. Then music started playing over the PA on the stage, and a dancer came out wearing a beautiful dress. The music was kind of electronic, with Middle Eastern and Indian sounds, and reminded me of a contemporary Bollywood soundtrack. When she finished, she swooshed into the dressing room and another dancer came out – belly dancing this time. After one more dance from each of the women, a trio took the stage, two acoustic guitarists and a percussionist. They were excellent musicians, with a style that melded flamenco guitar with Middle Eastern and reggae elements. They played a few tunes, then left the stage for the dancers’ second set. On one song, which I think was a well-known Bollywood hit, a man from the audience jumped up and danced on the stage. And for another one of the dances, there was a snake, and the dancer came out and danced between the tables. For some reason she singled out RR, pulled him out of his chair and handed him the snake, then pulled him up to the stage, where he joined her for the past part of the song. While he was on stage, I grabbed his mobile phone and snapped a few pictures. As soon as we figure out how to get them off the phone, I’ll post one here. The musicians played a second set, and when we left were still playing. Bottom line, the place was hopping on a Sunday night. And the dancers were much better at their craft than the ones at the Indian restaurant I’ve been to.

On the immigration front, I’ve handed in my passport along with still more photos and paperwork to complete the process of getting a long-term work permit. I should have it back week after next.

Arigato, Fuji-san. Sayonara, Nihon!

Location: Kobe, Tokyo, Beijing
Date: 2007-03-31

Friday morning we checked out of the Hotel Okura and took a taxi to the Shinkansen station. With all our bags, we didn’t want to even try the City Loop bus. The car was a roomy Nissan Cedric, and it cost ¥1300, more than three times what the bus would have. The driver was a speed demon, but my experience with Beijing taxis has made me pretty numb to that.
During the train ride, we were treated to some views of Mt. Fuji.

After another three and a half hours on the Hikari, we were back at Tokyo Station, where we lugged our stuff to another platform and took a local to the Shimbashi Station. We checked in back at the Park Hotel Tokyo for one last night, and this time we got a room on a different side of the building.
It was still early in the day, so we took the Metro back up to Asakusa to finish off buying souvenirs and gifts. What a difference a few days made! The trees were in bloom this time.
And for the cat lovers out there, just imagine spending time and money here.
Here’s another example of information food. I do not doubt that the actual dish resembles this pretty closely. Yum!
It was dark by the time we got back to our room, and the view seemed worthy of a few megabytes worth of digital image storage.
I think I’ve seen this on a postcard. Wow.
After dropping off our purchases and taking a bunch of pictures, we went out for dinner at a Japanese noodle place, then took a detour into a Ginza toy shop, where I saw this robot soccer game. Didn’t buy it though. We finished off the evening at the Rose & Crown, a “Victorian Pub” in the Shiodome area. We saw a couple of other Rose & Crown locations around Tokyo. They have Suntory Black on tap, which is a fine tasting beer. We had been here a couple times before. Oddly enough, a pint of beer here is more expensive than almost any food item on the menu. Anyway, it was a comfortable end to our last full day in Japan.

The next morning we checked out of our room, then had a few hours to kill before the shuttle bus out to the airport. We spent it at the French bakery, Tully’s, and the Wave CD store in the Shiodome underground complex.

That’s about it. I’ll revisit the subject of Japan in future posts with thoughts about the country and its culture, as well as more comparisons with China. The flight back to Beijing was uneventful (since a delayed departure is a non-event). Mr. Y met me at the airport and drove me to Seasons Park, where I arrived around 11:30 pm. My plants seem to have survived, and it was very chilly inside. I turned up the thermostat only to have it blow cool air. No, I didn’t forget to pay a bill. The calendar says it’s spring, so they’ve switched off the heating units in all the apartments. Given that it’s still not that warm outside, this means sweaters and blankets.

I’ve spent all day doing laundry, getting a few essential groceries, and catching up on blog posts. And now it’s time for dinner.

More science fiction

Location: Kobe, Takarazuka, Kyoto
Date: 2007-03-29

At the risk of seeming like obsessive otaku, I must divulge that our next excursion was to the Tezuka Osamu Memorial Museum in Takarazuka. Tezuka was the creator of Astro Boy (known as Atom in Japan) and countless other manga, and is regarded as one of the founding fathers of comics and anime. Certainly his influence is easy to see in most anime, even if it’s only characters with big eyes and strange hair.

We left the Okura Hotel and walked up to the Sannomiya Station, stopping at Starbucks for coffee and pastries on the way (had to get the coffee mention in). It took a half hour or so to get to the relatively small town of Takarazuka. There was a sign pointing the way to the museum at the station’s exit, but after that, we didn’t see any more signs. We were standing on a corner looking confused when a nice older woman asked us in very good English what we were looking for. We told her and she walked with us up the street and pointed to the museum. “I’ve never been inside,” she said, “so I don’t know where the entrance is.”
Finding the entrance was easy. We went to the statue of the Phoenix (title character of a long-running series), and there it was.
The walkway up to the door is done like a Walk of Fame, with the “imagined footprints” of Tezuka’s characters in the cement. OK, it’s actually marble and they’re carved not imprinted.
For those not familiar with Tezuka, I’m not really sure how to describe him. In a way, he’s like the Walt Disney of Japan, except that he mostly stuck to still images, producing thousands and thousands of pages of stories in a career that spanned four decades. Having grown up in wartime, he developed a deep feeling that all life is precious, and that positive attitude carries through all his work. It’s not without conflict, but situations in his stories are often resolved without resorting to violence. His work Adolf is a strange and intriguing indictment of racism told in the lives of three characters, all named Adolf, one of whom became the leader of Germany, and in spite of his own Jewish roots, set about to purify the white race by eliminating the others.

There was a guide brochure in English, but almost none of the museum’s exhibits had anything but Japanese, so we just browsed and looked at the pictures. There were some very detailed drawings and paintings of insects from his youth, and some examples of early cartooning. His signature style of caricature developed early, with exaggerated hairstyles and bulbous noses.

The museum featured a library where large shelves were filled with copies of Tezuka’s works in a variety of languages. To my knowledge, some of them have still never appeared in English. We went into the little theater and watched a documentary film about Tezuka which was all in Japanese.
When we got back outside (after suffering much damage in the gift shop), we paused to take pictures of the “footprints” and statues, and I saw this man walk by with a cat on his shoulder.
The town of Takarazuka, like most of the places we visited, had a lot of art in public places. This statue, along with a similar companion, framed the approach to a bridge over a river.
We took our haul back to the hotel in Kobe, and made a spur of the moment decision to take the bullet train to Kyoto. We had originally planned to stay in Kyoto instead of Kobe, but it seemed that every hotel in Kyoto was booked solid during our time frame. And since we had rail passes, the trip would cost us nothing extra. We had just missed the City Loop bus, so we foolishly decided to walk to the station, which turned out to be further than we expected. It took us 45 minutes and was mostly uphill.
While we waited for the Hikari to arrive, I looked out the platform’s back window and saw the “ropeway” gondola cars going up the hill above town. We never did get a chance to go up there. The view of the harbor is supposed to be spectacular.
Boy are we glad we made the trip. Here’s a view of the interior of the Kyoto Station Building. There are many levels of shopping and dining, plus a nice hotel and a theater currently showing the musical Contact.
This is what part of it looks like from the outside.
Oddly enough, the Kyoto Station was home to Tezuka Osamu World, basically a gift shop and small theater. Maybe we knew in advance that it would be there.
Among many other businesses at the Kyoto Station was this dessert shop that had some wares on display. It attracted quite a crowd.
Across the street from the station is the Kyoto Tower Hotel. I’m not sure how the hotel got its name, but it has this thing stuck on top of it.
Also from the station, we could see a temple a few blocks away. It was getting pretty dark, but we walked down and snapped a few pictures. This is one of D’s.
Mine didn’t really turn out at all, except this one looking back towards the station showing the contrast of old and new. According to the sign, much of this construction dates from 1895, though it was rebuilt from structures dating from the 1600s.
We hopped back on the Shinkansen for Kobe and tried a short ride on that city’s subway to get us closer to our part of town. For dinner, we picked a Korean restaurant that turned out to be a small adventure of its own. The place was packed, and the only seats for us were in the back, on the raised platform where you take off your shoes and sit on the floor at low tables. With no English on the menu, and very little from the staff, we managed to order “whatever’s good” along with a couple of beers. “Chicken” was one word the waiter knew, and we told him spicy was OK. There are gas lines installed under the platform, and he set up a little burner on our table. A woman brought out a wok with meat, vegetables, and sauce in it and lit the burner. She returned every so often to stir it, and then signaled to us that it was done. It was spicy, but not unreasonably hot, and delicious. One other notable thing about the restaurant was that the chopsticks were metal. I was afraid they would be slippery and difficult to use, but I managed just fine.

Right next to us was a party of about twenty celebrating something. At first I thought it might be a birthday, since we saw cake, but when it came to the end of the meal, four or five different people gave speeches.
After we left the restaurant, we passed a dessert place (there seemed to be lots of them around) and went in for cake and coffee. Not as fancy as the creations of the place in Kyoto Station, but very good nonetheless.

Then D’s sharp eye caught an HMV sign, and we went in to experience some more Japanese culture. I neglected to mention our visit to a huge Tower Records store in Tokyo. Yes, Tower Records. The American company may have closed all its stores, but the Japanese chain was bought out and continues to this day under the same name. We went crazy in the Tokyo store, so you would think we didn’t need another CD store – or you would think that if you didn’t know us very well. More purchases to fill up the luggage. I found a single with Puffy covering “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and a CD+DVD from the show Nana featuring Anna Tsuchiya, a singer I like a lot.

Was that a full day or what?