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 11
 
10:01
 
Korean Space Priorities

Jon has a piece about the blast off of The First Korean In Space, Yi So-yeong. He comments:

Arirang mentions her plans to introduce her country’s traditional food and beverages such as kimchi specially developed and packaged for space to the crew aboard the ISS.

I once worked as a consultant for a Korean film producer wanting to film in Scotland.

Of all the things he could have been worried about - weather, permission for filming, getting the crew and equipment there, grants - the thing that most concerned him was: How can I get Kimchi for my crew? Koreans need their Kimchi for work.

It made me laugh that the same dialema also faced the organisers of this space mission. I imagine the list of priorities was:

1. Kimchi
2. Allowing smoking in the toilets
3. Soju
4. DMB TV reception in the shuttle
5. Enabling MSN messenger so that So-yeong can chat when she is supposed to be working

;)

Monday March 17
 
14:12
 
Completely Missing The Point

The Register has a piece on Soribada - Korean Napster - now being legal.

The Register seems to have missed a crutial point, however. Everyone has already moved to 당나귀.

I really do wonder how music companies survive in Korea. I don’t know anyone who buys physical music there. No-one. The only music Koreans seem to pay for is background music on their Cyworld homepages and Coloring on their cell phones (the songs that you hear when you call a Korean person, instead of their ringtones). Maybe that’s how the music companies survive?!

When I read articles like The Register’s, I can’t help but cringe. I see it all the time about Korea and Japan - foreign journalists analyse a piece of news without any understanding of what’s really going on within the country. They end up completely missing the point.

It’s like when people write about Japan’s “i-mode” phenomenon and why mobile internet never succeeded in Britain. They completely missed the fact that Japanese companies gave Japanese access to mobile internet early, so locked them in early; that they put on useful content, such as being able to search for train times; and that Japanese dont have a culture of surfing at work. Brits who were used to flash and dynamic sites were asked to downgrade to text sites to see stock reports. It doesn’t take a genius to see why mobile internet failed.

Sunday March 16
 
22:53
 
Homesick

Watching the latest episode of Lost tonight, it made me realise how “homesick” I am for Korea. I understand all the Korean, without the English translations. I understand how the Korean people think.

So why am I in Japan?

It is 100% down to work - or the lack of it in Korea.

Given the way life is turning out, I doubt I’ll ever be living in Korea again. That really saddens me.