Buying a car in Japan is a daunting task. Or, to be more precise, selecting a make/model of car to buy in Japan is a daunting task. Considering only domestic (Japanese) cars, there are nine major makers (Itsuzsu, Daihatsu, Honda, Suzui, Toyota, Mazda, Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Subaru) representing an incredible 217 models (a stunning 69 from Toyota alone). Then there are about 15 major foreign makers, representing another 120 different models.
To go along with all those models are a lot of different classifications. In addition to the normal sedan, SUV, wagon, minivan, and sports/specialty classifications are super-mini and “2BOX”. It turns out that the cars Fumie [...]
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With both my brother Mike and good friend Rick each expecting their first child in May, I made a quick list of things a new parent should have on hand. Many are obvious, but in any case, here's the first pass at a list, in no particular order:
no-tears shampoo - remarkably, they don't have this in Japan, so if you get the least bit of (Japanese) baby shampoo in the baby's eyes, you have a very very unhappy baby. Note that there's no baby bath in my list, as I found it substantially easier to cradle Anthony in one arm, bring him into the [...]
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Unlike America where a driver's license is easier to get than a dog license, Japan makes you go through a lot of very time consuming, expensive pain (roughly five thousand dollars worth) before you can get a license.
Wonderfully, though, it used to be that if you had an international driver's permit, you could pretty much drive indefinitely on that (with minimal cost each year to renew it in your home country). And, if you had the foreign license and met a few simple criteria, you could just pay a few bucks and get a Japanese license issued from it. This was super nice for the [...]
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While waiting the other day at an intersection I traverse often (under a huge maze of overpasses), it suddenly struck me that the name of the intersection might look funny to an English- (but not Japanese-) speaker: Ouchi. It's pronounced “oh-ooh-chi”, and sounds like the fictitious Irish name O'Coochie without the 'k' sound.
It's just a name, but for what it's worth, the component characters mean “big” and “inner”.
(And before you comment about how totally heinous the UI of the character-info page is, note that I stopped developing that service about 10 years ago -- it was the first web thing I ever did, and yes, I [...]
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Season changes in Japan tend to arrive like clockwork, and few changes are as well predicted (and highly anticipated) as the blooming of the cherry blossoms (“sakura”) . A cherry-blossom tree in full bloom is truly more than the sum of its parts, presenting an almost unearthly, indescribable beauty that no photograph can capture (although that doesn't stop hordes of both amateur and professional photographers from trying, myself included.)
Thus, it was with doubtless disappointment that the throngs of tourists that descend upon Kyoto this past weekend (many, certainly, from all over Japan, with tours scheduled long in advance) were treated to chilly fall-like brisk winds and [...]
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During a short drive this morning, it was readily apparent that the cherry blossoms had hit full bloom overnight, as the area offered a dramatically different view than yesterday. I didn't have much time, but did stop to snap the pic above (which certainly does nothing to lend justice to the actual beauty of the scene). It was quite overcast, which mutes the pictures much more than the actual scene.
Unfortunately, I'm coming down with a cold, so slept most of the day. I have to go out in the late afternoon, so will bring my camera along to see if I can get any [...]
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Cherry-blossom viewing can be wonderful, but only if you can find a quiet, relatively alone place in which to enjoy it. Otherwise, it's just an ugly spectacle. A few minutes' walk from where I live is Kyoto's “Maruyama Park”, famous for its 600 cherry trees, which are appropriately beautiful now that spring has sprung. I went there today, not to see the trees, but rather to see how bad the people were.
They were plentiful. People milling about everywhere, with festival venders hawking octopus balls and squid, people sitting in loud smelly groups on blue vinyl sheets drinking beer and smoking, among tour guides explaining to [...]
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Despite the cold I'm coming down with, I was able to get out for some pictures, and some of the cherry-blossom shots came out okay. I really wish I could place pictures inline in this blog -- the lack of this ability may be the one straw that breaks the Yahoo back, and forces me to move my blog elsewhere.
Some of today's pictures have made their way into my relatively new pretty picture gallery. A full-screen view of this pic or this pic is nice.
For an interesting comparison, look at this picture, along with the one linked from its caption, taken a week prior. Also, [...]
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Fumie's dad brought some Mangos from Malaysia today (quite illegally, I might add -- bad Daddy, bad!).
We were warned not to touch them, as some people apparently have some kind of painful skin reaction to mangos (including Fumie's dad, very apparently). We used Saran Wrap to hold it while we peeled it, then ate the fruity flesh with a fork. It was quite tasty... much more musky than the normal store-bought Mango I've had in the US or Japan, perhaps because they were picked ripe, not ripened on a boat during shipping.
I thought the warnings about skin reactions seemed a little farfetched, but [...]
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Truly, the cherry blossoms are quite pretty around where I live (map), thankfully neglected by the majority of both tourists and locals alike. While sitting with Anthony under some blossoms yesterday, I thought about how many have tried to put the feeling into words, and how they certainly must have failed. Not being one to pass up a chance to fail miserably, I've given it a go myself:
            Oh humble Cherry Tree             Passing the year in quiet slumber             Alive after the long winter             Heavily laden with Spring's finest glory             Beauty beyond the grasp of words             Not retarded crap like poetry
the [...]
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What a difference a few days makes. The two pictures above were taken six days apart, one before the blossoms had bloomed, and one after. (Actually, I have another picture taken just two days after the first which shows equally barren branches, but it's not as perfect a match location-wise.)
Here are a few more comparison shots: one, two, three.

There was some sun in a few of my cherry-blossom pictures, but for the most part there was very little sun this cherry-blossom season, and I was sick for most of it. I finally uploaded my most recent shots, and there are a few [...]
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I've moved my blog to: http://regex.info/blog/
Yahoo!360 was sufficiently well done (and sufficiently easy to get started with) that it got me to start the blog I'd been wanting for ages. But once Y!360 got me hooked on the drug that is blogging, it didn't follow through with enough features to satiate my needs. I realize that it's a beta product, of course, but a blog is a very, very sticky, all-or-nothing thing, and if it doesn't have enough features, well, it doesn't have enough features.
The most unforgivable lack is that of view statistics. Have 1,000 people seen my latest bit of written inspiration? Or [...]
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I really don't care for flying. It's not that I'm scared of it, or anything like that -- it's just that I'm sick of it. I used to fly a lot when I worked for Omron -- mostly 9- to 11-hour flights back and forth across the Pacific and the US.
Just on United Airlines, which I have tended to use the most, according to their Mileage Plus point record for me, my “Lifetime United flight miles” is 391,730, which is equivalent to more than 72 trans-Pacific flights. And that doesn't count the miles I did before I signed up for their point [...]
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We ended up getting out of Kyoto a half an hour late, and lost another hour due to traffic jams on the highway, of unknown origin. We would have been much later still if our timing would have been a bit less lucky -- after finally getting out of the hour-long holdup, we came across a 10-car accident, apparently about half a minute or a minute after it had happened. Two cars in front seemed to have had a minor rear-ender, and then behind them were eight cars were accordion'd together. I guess they were following too close (as most do in Japan, as elsewhere) and [...]
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Netgear shows a decided "all the world is windows" attitude.
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