Friday April 18
 
00:03
 
He’s Flying High

My brother is currently on a plane flying from Britain to Japan. I don’t know why, but there’s something weird about the fact that he’s actively doing something at the moment, yet I’m about to go sleep.

But then it has been a weird day. Last night I was shaken awake at 4am by a huge earthquake.

In the ~18months I’ve been in Japan, there’s been about 6 earthquakes that have majorly rocked my apartment or office.

Three of those have been in the last month or two.

That freaks me out. I’ve heard that Tokyo is on the “brink” of a major quake. People here don’t even think about it - just like South Koreans don’t think about the fact that they are still technically at war. But the recent rise in the number of earthquakes has certainly brought the fact to my attention.

I ended up going back to sleep and having a huge nightmare about a catastrophic earthquake hitting Tokyo, with buildings toppling down like dominoes in Shinjuku and surrounds, and me just escaping with my life.

Thankfully I have no “sixth sense” that I’m aware of, so I don’t regard it as any premonition. I just hope I sleep better tonight - in 6 hours time I have to get up and take the Narita Express to the airport to pick up my brother.  I’m not looking forward to the 6am rise.

Sunday April 13
 
20:02
 
It’s Strange The Things That You Miss When You Live Abroad

Of all th thingz u cld ask me 2 bring u over u want me to bring sum collar stiffenerz- weirdo

My family think I’m crazy - but it’s strange the things you miss/need from home when you’re abroad.

My brother is coming over last week. He asked me what I wanted him to bring to Tokyo. My list:

Metal collar stiffeners from Tie-Rack
Non-iron shirts from M&S
A can of Ambrosia tinned rice pudding

The can of rice pudding is for the Japanese who consistently look at me in disbelief when I tell them we have pudding made of rice in the UK. Japanese eat rice every day. They never think about making it into a pudding.

In fairness, the things I really want my brother to bring me, he can’t bring. They are:

Black pudding
British bangers
British bacon
Scottish bread
Scottish rolls
Irish soda bread from M&S
Potato scones
A big juicy yellow mellow
Low-fat hummus from the supermarket
Mr Kipling’s Mince Pies

Not being able to get hummus is one thing that has consistently driven my crazy living in Asia - in Hong Kong, in Korea, and in Japan. In Japan there are a couple of restaurants with hummus, so at least I could get it occasionally. Finally - this month - I found a supermarket that sells it, but it’s not the same.

Mince Pies also are something that I missed. In HK I could get them. In Korea, fat chance. In Japan, I can buy Robertson’s mincemeat and make my own. Except for one thing, Japan is miles better than Korea when it comes to international food - I can even get the English breakfast muffins I so longed for in Korea. What’s the one thing? Sour cream. It’s just thick gloob in Japan. Sour cream in Korea was gorgeous - in big tubs from Hyundae department store in Shinchon.

There is actually a Scottish Pub in Tokyo - or, at least, it claims to be. It’s called Scottish Glamour, which isn’t a good start. In fact, after going and seeing the bar menu, I immediately left. No Scottish beer (which, probably, is a good thing), and a cover charge to enter the bar. Any bar that tried to levy a cover charge in Scotland would be burnt to the ground.

I can’t find the URL for Scottish Glamour - but then since I would never recommend you go there, I didn’t try very hard.

Friday April 4
 
17:35
 
The Festival of the Steel Phallus

No, my blog hasn’t become a S11HT only blog. I do have some other things going on in my life.

The weekend is the yearly Kanamara Matsuri festival in Kanamara - The Festival of the Steel Phallus.

I didn’t make it there last year, but armed with my new DSLR, I plan to get up early on Sunday and head to the festival. My suspicion is that I’ll see more Western girls getting excited about the big steel cocks than Japanese. Don’t know why I think that, I just do.

From Tokyo Gaijins mailing list:

The Kanamara Matsuri (?????), also called Festival of the Steel Phallus, or in layman’s term “Penis festival”, is an annual Shinto fertility festival held in Kawasaki, Japan in spring. The penis forms the central theme of the event that’s reflected everywhere; in illustrations, candy, carved vegetables, decoration, a parade of mikoshis, etc.

The Kanamara Matsuri is centered around a local penis-venerating shrine, once popular among prostitutes who wished to pray for protection against sexually transmitted diseases. Today, the festival is used to raise money for HIV research. There’s also a legend of a demon that hid inside a young girl and castrated two young men on their wedding nights before a blacksmith fashioned an iron phallus that was used to break the demon’s teeth, leading to the enshrinement of the item.

Other attractions include locals carving penises out of daikon (radish), children and young women sitting astride penis-shaped seesaws for good luck and fertility blessings, as well as a seated banquet in the compound of Wakamiya Hachimangu shrine where the phallic radishes are auctioned. All are welcome to take part in the festival’s parade and banquet, which includes dancing and karaoke singing. Many revelers, Japanese and foreigners alike, turn out in kimono, Edo period attire or drag for this two-day event of phallic fun which is also attended by many of the area’s community leaders and civic dignitaries.

Check festival photos here:
http://tomuraya.co.jp/wakamiya-10.htm
http://www.deadhippo.com/photo_albums/kanamara/kanamara.htm

I’ve never been to a Tokyo Gaijins event. This time also, I’ll be meeting up with friends so I doubt I’ll join up with Tokyo Gaijins - I’m not really into being around big groups of foreigners. The mailing list is interesting for finding out about events in Tokyo though.

Tuesday April 1
 
00:55
 
Mobile Broadband

I’m a pretty resourceful chap, and over the past 18 months I’ve found several ways of getting around my company’s block on Gmail - including bringing my own laptop to work and buying a wifi booster, and using WAP on my mobile phone.But once you’ve tasted luxury, you don’t want to go back to beans on toast.

With the latest ban on logmein, and all the free Wifi networks gone, I was back to using QC or WAP to access gmail, and faced with warnings of “WARNING! Site Restricted! Your access has been logged!” from following links to about.com, etc, on Google searches.

So at the weekend, I finally admitted defeat and bought mobile broadband from EMobile.

There is very little written in English about EMobile in Japan, so I’m going to blog about my experience for the next two weeks. Why two weeks? You’ll see in a moment.

First I had to decide what to buy. I had three options:

1. Get a USB modem, and use with my Kohjinsha SA1 mini-notebook.

2. Get the EM・ONEα (S01SH2) Windows Mobile 6 internet PDA.

3. Get the EMonster (S11HT) Windows Mobile 6 smartphone. This is based on the HTC TyTN II smartphone, reviewed briefly here.

The first is probably the only one reasonably affordable without a one or two year commitment - but you need to have your laptop to use it. It’s also the fastest at 7.2Mbps. Since it’s a modem only, you don’t need to know Japanese to use it.

The second and third are similar. Both are Windows Mobile 6 based (Japanese only), both allow you to hook up a PC to allow the PC to access the internet. Their speed is 3.6Mbps. The problem is that they are expensive at 60~90,000 yen, and so you need to take out a 2 year contact to make them affordable. In fact, buying them without a contract costs more that buying them with a contact and paying cancellation penalty fees.

Despite being similar, there are important differences:

• The S11HT is a phone. The S01SH2 is not - it is for people who want good internet access.
• The S11HT has a smaller screen - 320×240 compared to 800×480 of the S01Sh2.
• The S11HT is smaller overall. The screen of the S01SH2 making it too bulky to go in the pocket.
• The S11HT has a slower processor. The S01SH2 feels “zippy” in comparison.
• The S11HT has Internet connection sharing - which means that you connect a PC to it, both the PC and the phone can access the internet. The phone can continue to receive mail, for example. The S01SH2 cannot access the internet if a PC is hooked to it - only one of the PC and the S01SH2 can access the internet at any time.
• The S11HT has insurance at ~300yen per month (3 USD) - so if you lose it, drop it in water, etc, you can get a new one for maximum 10,000 yen (100 USD). If you lose the S01SH2, you need to pay the cancellation charge of upto 48,000 yen (two year contract), or buy a new device at 90,000 yen.
• The S11HT has GPS. The S01SH2 does not.
• The S11HT has Mobile IE only. The S01SH2 has Opera also.

Both have advantages and disadvantages - one is a good standalone browser; the other is a phone and can keep retrieving email while sharing its connection with the PC - it was very difficult to choose which one to go for.

At first I wanted to get the S01SH2, because I prefered to have a proper internet tablet on the go - but I’m paranoid. The thought of losing the machine a week after buying it and having to pay 48,000 yen contact cancellation fee - I’d be gutted.

Since I was drawn to both of them, I decided to go for the S11HT.

It wasn’t quite as easy as that, however. EMobile has been running their mobile broadband service for a year or so now, and the coverage is still limited - but their mobile phone service only started this weekend. None of the phones had SIM cards, so you couldn’t check the signals. That made me very wary. Being locked into a 2 year contract or face cancellation fees, I wanted to make sure I had a get-out clause if I couldn’t get a signal at home of the office.

But that wasn’t easy. One place in Roppongi offered to let me refund if I brought the unit back within 5 days - but they wouldn’t have any in stock for another 10 days!

The large Bic Camera in Shibuya flatly refused to allow a refund after purchase if I couldn’t get a signal at my home or office. To me, it’s crazy to be expected to keep a mobile phone if you find you can’t get a signal at your apartment - why should I pay for service I can’t get? Bic Camera’s answer - go outside when you want to use the phone. My answer - why should I do that instead of switching to a provider that will give me the service I’m paying for?

Things went well at the smaller Bic Camera in Shibuya, however, and I did eventually get them to agree to a 14-day get-out clause, which they wrote on the contract and signed.
Hence 14 days.

That little blurb above really doesn’t do justice as to how difficult it was to get any store to allow a get out clause. It was a lot of walking around, asking different sales assistants, different branches of the same store. To me it’s crazy that one Bic Camera store would refuse but the other would allow it - but then also, when I looked in detail at the contracts, the two Bic Camera stores have completely different contracts for the same service, so who knows what is going on.

It was worth the effort, though - because my experience so far has been mixed.

I get an excellent reception at home. A quick speed test to the UK revealed 700kbps per second from the handset, and 360kbps from the PC via Bluetooth. That’s about a 1/4 of the theoretical maximum, and I’m going to a site in the UK.

At work, however, the reception is less good. Since I want to use it at work - that’s a problem.

It’s also unexpected. One of the guys I work with uses EMobile and has told me he’s always able to get a good connection at the office - but he’s using the USB modem. It’s possible the USB modem is better at grabbing signal.

One of the problems is we’re high in the sky, at more than 20 floors up. I noticed when I was using Wifi before that the reception would be more difficult when it was raining, and this morning the weather was terrible. Interestingly, the guy I work with also had problems getting some websites, so it could have been the weather playing its part.

The afternoon was better. Still a little patchy, but I could get internet access most of the time.

What surprised me, however, is how good Windows Mobile 6 is. There are the usual Windows unintuitive features - like there being no obvious way to do “copy & paste”, and I can’t find a way to switch off the sound for the keyboard slide without disabling all sounds… not even with someone there translating the Japanese for me. [Update: Thanks to p45 of the English HTC TyTN II manual, I found out that the sound for the keyboard sliding is not configured with all the other sounds under “Sounds” but has it’s own mini-control panel. Intuitive - huh? Still can’t find a Windows Mobile user guide anywhere.]

But there are good things I never expected. Mobile Outlook is fantastic, for example - completely unlike the PC equivalent, which is pants. It let’s me add multiple gmail accounts and sync them by imap. No longer do I have to logout of one gmail account to login to another (work; play), I can switch between them easily. And unlike Thunderbird, it handles the separation between accounts very well (I find Thunderbird clunky).

EMobile has removed Java from the installation, but I was able to download Java from here, and after installing it, I could get access to the Java Gmail applet, Opera Mini, and Google Maps for Mobile. The latter hooks up with the GPS, so places me on the map and updates the map as I walk around.

In fact the convenience of it all, combined with having a keyboard instead of tap-tap-tap to get the letter I want, makes me tempted to keep the thing even if I can’t get a good connection at work - it’s just streets ahead of what I was using before.

But I don’t know. It’s quite possible that if the signal stays bad, it’ll get to me - and I’ll end up taking it back and getting something from Softbank. Softbank will be significantly more expensive per month, and I know their “high speed” service is actually nothing near high speed (because my current phone is also “high speed”), but at least the signal will be stable.

Blimey, I never thought I’d be calling a Softbank signal stable.

I’ll be updating more on my EMobile experience over the next two weeks, assuming I keep it for two weeks.

Side note:

I just found this on the Softbank website (I can’t link to it because the page hides the URL):
Even if Unlimited Packet Discount is used, note that some communications do not apply to the fixed charge. [..] SoftBank sends Notification via SMS to customers (excluding corporate customers) who incur more than ¥100,000 in Packet Communication charges. Notification is sent the day after charges exceed ¥100,000.

So if you spend more than 1000 USD on packet charges, they’ll sent you an SMS to tell you. A bit late then, isn’t it?! This reminds me why I didn’t go with Softbank in the first place - their pricing scheme is so unclear. EMobile is a maximum 5980 Yen (60 USD) for unlimited usage.

Hmm, don’t get me started on Softbank and their high pressure rip-off sales tactics and dodgy pricing. They actually refused to sell me a contract free phone, because they were pushing their “free phone” 2 year tie-in, which had a penalty clause of 150% of the full price of the phone. It took an hour of arguing with them and threatening to go to head office and report the manager before the manager would sell me the phone, which is supposed to be freely available without contract - and even then she tried to refuse the sale again because I didn’t have my passport (which isn’t required if you have a credit card, alien registration card, and medical card). They will try anything to stop their subscribers from falling and falling - because once people transfer to Softbank, they are often disappointed by the quality - even signing Disney up. If you must go to Softbank, go to the Harajuku store and avoid the Roppongi store like the plague.

Sunday March 30
 
10:28
 
Never Mind Not Knowing Shibuya…

… I don’t even know my own house.

For 18 months it’s annoyed me that the mirror in the bathroom always stays steamed up after showering. Today I found out that the light switch next to the mirror is not only a light switch, but a mirror “de-steamer”. Fantastic.

My house has many other gadgets. One of the cooler ones is the automatic bath filler - enter the temperature that you want,and it will automatically fill up the bath with that temperature water, and stop at the right level. Or, at least, it would do if I knew how to work it.