I Need My Internet

My god, taking my WiFi internet access away was like stealing a glass of water from a man who was lost in the desert for weeks under a hole in the ozone layer, every day cloudless and zero humidity while a really fluffy towel constantly sucks what little moisture he has left away…and, well, you get the idea. The point is that I haven’t had any net access at all in nearly two weeks, and what I have now is being gotten on an old iMac with an impossibly difficult Japanese keyboard.

The result of this, combined with the fact that I need to do research for my lab project when my lab has made it clear that they don’t particularly want me within a thousand meters of them, has pushed me suddenly and unexpectedly towards the aquisition of a cellular modem and contract. I did not want to do this, previously, because the idea of spending close to sixty US dollars a month for anything less than an optic fiber net connection seemed ludicrous. It still does, really, but now that I have more or less decided for certain that I will be out of here at the end of the semester (not enough cash) I would only need to pay this fee for three or four months instead of, say, seven or eight.

The result of this is that I may, in fact, be back to 24/7 net access by the end of December, and maybe I will even be able to slip it past the rational portion of my brain by calling it a Christmas gift…I suppose I’ll just have to see how that goes.

In one last quick anecdote, it is entirely possible that Plaristocrates.com will have its own line of merchandise shortly. Though I can’t elborate on what that will entail, exactly, I can tell you that it will have to do with Japan (or rather its native tongue) and should be quite funny in a dry, sarcastic, almost inside-joke sort of way. I’m sure that you can barely, if at all, contain your enthusiasm and excitement.

// Norm out

Oh Yeah…

I also need to apologize to all of you who’ve e-mailed me in the last week or so…I did get all your messages, and I assure you that I will do my best to respond just as soon as I am able. My inbox is quite literally exploding with mail right now, and I even had to resort to using Outlook to download it all for later perusal, as opposed to using my custom webmail interface that I usually do.

Moral of the story: just give me a few days.

// Norm out

Biological Assassin

So, it seems that the Japanese love for arbitrary heirarchy is once again causing them to blindly do incredibly stupid things. Consider: I have a friend here, let’s call him Andre, as that is indeed his name. He’s from Costa Rica, and he’s having rather severe troubles with his abdominal region, namely his appendix. Normally, this is not a huge deal…it happens a lot, and you get it removed. But no, Japan is somehow afraid to do this to a foreigner. They’re screwing with all sorts of antibiotics and refusing to operate. This is despite the fact that the two foreign doctors at the hospital have said that they must operate now.

This is just offensive, to be honest. The entire situation is an unnecessary risk; you can die if your appendix explodes, that’s why they just yank it out at the first sign of trouble. After all, so far as medical science can tell, it serves no purpose other than to periodically try to kill you.

Thus far we of the gaijin persuasion are attempting to get something done, but the nature of Japanese society is such that the doctors simply will not listen to anything anyone else says…after all, they’re doctors, they know best, right? We can’t even bring an embassy into this, because Japan could care less about Costa Rica. If he were an American, shit could be done, but since he is not this is far less likely.

I’ll keep you posted as events warrant, I suppose.

//_Norm out

Stay Cool

I have, through means that are still somewhat hazy and unclear, come into possession of (or at least access to) a copy of DDR Extreme and a pad. This is a problem, as DDR has proven to be just as fun and addicting and, worst of all, time consuming as I always imagined it might be. It even has a diet mode, where I can enter my weight and other things and it will then set up a dancing program to loose weight, tracking calories burned. I have no idea who would use this, but that is not the point. The point is that this game is fun, so fun that Jeshua seems to have done rather serious damage to his feet after a three and a half hour session last weekend…he said something about bruising bones and doctors. Luckily, I am so good as he and probably don’t have the stamina to play that long anyway.

Elsewhere, Joey and I will be going on a field trip (apparently colleges still have those in Japan) to a Japanese high school today. I am not entirely sure what we’ll be doing, but it will probably involve observing teachers and classes and talking to people, which seems like a worthwhile endevor. Also, the fact that it is an all-girls high school has rather excited many of my fellow students, but they seem to forget that we are college juniors and they are in high school…to me, at least, this seems like an issue that must be considered.

//_Norm out

The Elder Cow

I got my train tickets for the Hokkaido trip today, and I must say that I was shocked at just how good a deal they are. I got five “all you can ride” tickets for about $100US…granted, their not usable on the shinkansen (bullet trains) but it’ll probably take two to get to Sapporo, which is fine with me because I want to stop other places anyway. Since we’ll use four of them for Hokkaido, Joey and I now plan to make a trip to Tokyo with Zen using the last ones; Akihabara is so close I can almost taste it, and it tastes like…well, electronic stuff I guess.

The trip to the high school was quite interesting, though a bit less so than I’d hoped, and I’ll probably hit that up in more detail tomorrow or so when there’s more time. For now, I direct your attention to the evil cow sign I found on Sunday in Nagamachi. I think the place is some sort of restaurant, but it could just as easily be a PETA protest against the eating of beef.

Leave it to the Japanese to come up with something like that.

//_Norm out

That Internet Thing Again

I don’t suppose there’s any point in linking stories since I’m sure all of you have already heard the news. I just think it’s funny that I found out from my Japanese language instructor about the whole Saddam thing, as opposed to regular news sources. It just goes to show how much not having a damn internet connection removes me from, well, just about anything that happened less than week ago.

My search for a stable net connection continues, and I think it’s possible, if not likely, that I will have one before the coming weekend. I know that I’ve said this before, but the situation became a bit more important when I realized that the International Student Center (the place with the public lab) will be closed for the whole of winter break. Now, I will be away in Hokkaido for a good week or so anyway, but I have research and stuff that needs to be done when I’m not. Either way, I think I will have to bite down and just get that stupid cellular net service.

For those of you who may have missed it, Penny Arcade has been doing a fundraising drive for their local Children’s Hospital for a while now, and I can’t believe how much they’ve raised. It’s absolutely insane, and it does a good job of showing what playing videogames does to children: it makes them grow up with big hearts.

//_Norm out

Connection Established: 32.0Kbps

It seems that, for once, I’ve managed to fullfill a statement I made on this website. Don’t get excited, I don’t think this will end up being any sort of pattern, but it’s nice to have it happen once in a while. You may now be asking: what exactly have I done? What I have done, my friends, is no less than secure myself a permanent internet connection via the folks at AirH. While the speed is no better than that of a typical dial-up connection, it does have the added benefit of being cellular and thus usable pretty much anywhere in Japan sans-wires. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a vast improvement over my previous state of not having a connection at all. Huge props go to Mitsu, who acted as my translator and senpai for internet procurement; not only did he help me get the thing at all, but he got them to drop the price of the CompactFlash card itself from 5850 yen to 850 yen because he is crafty.

What does my newfound connectivity mean for you? Basically, it means that this site will (hopefully) start living up to what I had originally intended for it. More frequent updates, updates to things like the sidebar (which were too hard to do on public computers), bug fixes, and much more will all happen with regularity from this point forward.

It also means that there is a chance I will end up playing FFXI…seeing as how two of my neighbors here have offered to pay for two months of the service for the opportunity to spend a weekend wacking omega rabbits, which seems like an immensely good deal to me.

//_Norm out

It’s About Friggin Time

I do my best not to get riled up by the things ignorant, uniformed people do. It wasn’t always this way, but I find that there’s rarely any use in getting angry when a stupid person says or does something, well, stupid. There are a few things, though, that I am so much a part of that I can’t help but get annoyed when outsiders drag it through the mud. I am talking, of course, about video games, but this isn’t going to be a rant about how some other guy ranted about how all games are muder simulators that do nothing but train our children to kill. No, instead I’m going to link you to an article that says something completely different, something that’s been a long time in coming.

You see, this is what needs to get coverage in the media today. Sure, it’s easy to write a sensational hype story based on the ravings of extremest protection groups whose sole purpose in life seems to be the irradication of all things video game related. The general public has proved over and over again that they’ll not only watch but actively believe when games are compared to, and blamed for, school shootings, serial killings, or robberies. It’s no trouble at all to take a group of people who are, on the whole, considered to be social rejects or, at best, willful outcasts and make them out to be raving lunatics ready to snap and kill entire busses of school children at the slightest provocation.

It’s about damn time that people started looking beyond the Grant Theft Autos and Postals, and started looking at what the gaming community itself is represented by. We gamers are more than just the sum of the violent games we sometimes play.

//_Norm out

The Christmas Box (TM)

My parents have, according to them, sent me a package that I have started referring to as the “Christmas box,” as it contains things that are indeed Christmas presents. My appreciation for this is boundless, but it has created a rather difficult situation for me. You see, the box should arrive sometime tomorrow instead of, say, Thursday, which is actually Christmas. This gives me nearly four full days, three of which I have no classes for, before I should open it and delve into its goodness. The fact of the matter, however, is that I have very little willpower when it comes to stuff like this; the box will be sitting there, easily within reach, constantly mocking my attempts to resist opening it. When you add in the relative lack of people who are actually still here besides me (having left either for their respective home countries or perhaps the ski trip) and you have me, mostly bored, starting at a box that could very well relieve said boredom if only it were to be opened.

Such a dilemma. To aid my decision, or at least to take the weight of it off my own shoulders and transfer it onto the community’s, I have posted a poll that asks the really important questions.

In between cleaning my room and studying for the last test (quiz really) that I have before break, I’ve been doing my best to make some long overdue updates and additions to this poor neglected website. First off, you may notice that, finally, there are some new linkups on the sidebar. The old system required me to edit the html directly in order to post such things, which is an obviously stupid way to do it. After spending the requisite ten minutes or so delving into MT’s more esoteric features I came up with a system that required me to right-click on the page I wish to link to. This is, I assure you, a much better system than the one I had before.

//_Norm out

Free At Last

With only a modicum of difficulty (including my studying the wrong chapter’s vocabulary last night) the final day of classes before winter break has been completed. It would not be inaccurate to say that I am relieved, although it would be a bit much to say that I am ecstatic. To celebrate the beginning of two weeks of relaxation and exploration we made a stop at the local cinema to catch a showing of The Last Samurai. I wasn’t expecting anything particularly wonderful, especially since the movie start Tom Cruise (of whom I am not a fan), but it ended up being pretty good. Sort of like a far-east Braveheart, only not nearly as long or as well done. The movie was, on the whole, formulaic and predictable, and the ending drags on a bit more than it has any right to do, but I think I was satisfied. It has some decent acting, a nice morally-inspiring plot (if you can ignore the obvious over-romanticizing of Japan and the Samurai in particular) and some pretty funny dialogue if you know any Japanese. I’d give it a recommendation if you can catch a matinee or if you’ve simply got nothing to do on an otherwise boring rainy day.

In other news, the Christmas Box (TM) has arrived and is currently in my possession. While I have opened the box itself, this was only to get at the foodstuffs I knew it contained. The actual Christmas presents are individually wrapped with little stickers instructing me not to open them until Christmas, which I suppose settles the entire debate. One other note about the contents of the box itself: upon opening, I was treated to a modern miracle of package engineering on par with the Roman Coliseum or the Great Pyramid, no joke. There was no wasted space, and everything that couldn’t be crammed with merchandise was instead cleverly crammed with bubble wrap. Don’t quote me on this, but I’m relatively certain that it could have survived a direct strike from a nuclear warhead or three.

//_Norm out

A Moment (Or Two) Of Weakness

I opened my Christmas presents yesterday. While I won’t attemp to deny my weakness, I did have a relatively decent rationalization. See, Joey and I (were) going to be leaving for our Hokkaido trip on the 26th, which meant that if I waited until Christmas day to do the opening I would have very little time to partake of the bounty inside. Of course, once I had done the opening Joey informed me that he would prefer to have a day’s rest after getting back from the skiing thing, and thus our departure date has slipped to the 28th, completely invalidating my excuses in the process. Eh, such is life.

Of course, the things I actually received were well worth the guilt anyway. A copy of Final Fantasy X-2 which is, interestingly, the first FF game I’ve owned since FF2 for the NES. I also got the new Civ III: Conquests expansion, the Indiana Jones trilogy box-set, and two books: Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash and The Philosophy of the Matrix. Oh yeah, the box itself also contained applesauce cake, of which I am a completely unabashed fan. Once my copy of FFXI arrives from the states courtesy of Tim, I should be more or less set on the gaming front until I leave this island in March (especially with Blizzard finally finishing The Frozen Throne).

I know it’s still just the beginning of Christmas Eve for those of you back in the states, so I’ll reserve any mentionings of Christmas cheer, Christmas joy, or anything else Christmas-like until sometime tomorrow, when I will probably be more coherent anyway.

//_Norm out

Hokkaido

Okay, so, in a about an hour or so I will be on my way to the northern island of Japan, Hokkaido. I tell you this mainly so that any lack of posting on my part will be understood, since I will likely be away from an easy connection. You will definitely get at least one or two messages from me, seeing as how I have this lovely PHS cellular network connection that (supposedly) works anywhere in Japan. I guess we’ll see.

I still haven’t gotten the new image gallery software working, I don’t really know when I will, so I will probably try to put some pictures into the actual posts themselves, which is something I’ve avoided in the past. I’ll make an attempt to get the software working in the free time I may or may not have this week, but right now it’s five am and I am way to tired to even comprehend it.

//_Norm out

Que The Music

Here I am, reporting to you from yet another capsule hotel, this one in Sapporo. For some strange reason I have always wanted to experience one of these things, and I actually think they’re a bit of okay. They’re not nearly as small as they were rumored to be, and they all include regular shower facilities and such. In fact, this particular hotel has a whole spa and onsen thing going on below us, all included in the base fee, which is kind of nice.

On the traveling aspect of things we’ve had some issues. Not yesterday, mind you; yesterday we managed to cover probably around 800km or more of track distance that took us all the way from Sendai to Aomori in around fourteen hours. This was no small miracle, really, and we had to go all “Mission Impossible” towards the end and jump on one of the express trains (which our tickets do not allow) for one station to get us there in time for the last regular train to Aomori…yeah, we’re like a couple of super-spies or some shit. Anyway, the problem was with today…even though we spent almost eleven straight hours on trains (there were no layovers this time) we couldn’t get any farther then Sapporo. Our goal had been to reach Wakkanai, the northernmost city in Japan, but when we suggested this to the nice ticket lady in Aomori she practically laughed out loud. It turns out that the trains in Hokkaido are slow, incredibly so. It actually throws a bit of a wrench in the works, and we may end up needing to procure a second set of the tickets we’re using now.

As it stands, our revised itinerary is to spend all day tomorrow roaming around Sapporo, seeing the sites and probably hitting up a few Book-Offs or something while we’re at it. We’ll crash at one of the youth hostels near the station, and then, pending investigations as to just how slow the trains will continue to be, we’ll either take the JR or hop a bus to Wakkanai. After that things get a little hazy…we’d like to spend a day in Wakkanai and then head back south into Hakodate, but that depends largely on train speeds and monetary situations. I’ll keep you posted as events warrant.

//_Norm out

It Was Also Raining

Once again I find myself sitting in the waiting room of yet another Japanese train station, this one somewhere between Sapporo and Wakkanai, I don’t remember which (despite its status as second largest in Hokkaido). We spent most of yesterday touring around Sapporo itself, or perhaps I should say that we tried to do so. Unfortunately, pretty much everything cool to do shuts down between December 29th and January 1st, so we couldn’t go to any of the museums or hit up the tours of the Sapporo Beer Garden (which is Japanese for brewery). In reality, Sapporo was the best place to have this happen…it may be a big city, but that’s pretty much all it has going for it. On the one hand, it would probably be a pretty cool place to live…it has the advantages of a major city, like Tokyo, but without the massive overcrowding they have there. It was also designed by an American, and so the street layouts actually make sense, which is really rare in Japan.

We finally broke up the litany of capsule hotels last night by staying in one of Sapporo’s two youth hostels. It worked out pretty well, as the hostel itself is real close to the [train] station and the other four guys we were bunking with were very cool. The proprietor was also a great guy, and he didn’t even bother to see if we were members of the youth hostel association (I am, Joey isn’t) and gave us the discounted price anyway. Nothing like saving money to perk your day up.

While not directly related to our trip, I saw a set of Sony noise-canceling headphones while we were browsing through a Best Denki in Sapporo. These things are simply phenomenal…they’re as small as the set I have now, they’re of the “behind the neck” variety that I prefer, and they fold up quite small if you want them to. The best part, of course, is the noise cancel feature…it runs off of a (triple or double, I don’t remember) A battery and cuts down background noise to almost zero. It’s really quite astounding…when you turn it on you can barely hear yourself talk! Previous noise-canceling headphones have been very expensive and of either the ear-bud or air-traffic controller variety, but these are both affordable (at 7000 yen) and stylish. I really want to get a set, but I will definitely have to wait until just before I leave for America if I do so.

//_Norm out

Hey, I Can See Russia From Here

Well, yeah, Happy New year and all that stuff, I guess. I may write some sort of introspective reflection on the previous year, but then again I may not. It’s all kind of up in the air right now, and besides I’d much rather tell you about the bodily function of the guy in the capsule diagonal from me last night.

Trust me, that one will make sense at the end.

Anyway, we made it to Wakkanai with as little trouble as can be expected when you do no prior planning at all. The youth hostel we stayed in this time around was really, really nice…nice like a decent hotel should be nice. The rooms were carpeted with TVs and their own heaters, a lounge area with beanbags to chill on, a library full of manga to read and a kotatsu to keep warm with while doing so. It had a dining area with yet another lounge that was also entirely too nice to be in a youth hostel and has a giant forty-inch or so television residing in it…all for about the same price we paid for the last one. We also met another set of really cool guys there, although these ones sort of stretched the “youth” in youth hostel, which I guess doesn’t actually matter. Either way, we swapped stories about out travels through Hokkaido and then hitched a ride with one of them up to the northernmost point in Japan, a trip that saved us about 1500 yen. After hanging there for a bit (the place has winds that will strip flesh from bone in mere minutes) we went back to Wakkanai and decided to get the hell out of that town, as there really isn’t much to do there. Thus, we grabbed a bus ticket and made it down to Sapporo (again) in about six hours time, a trip that simply leaves the trains standing. They had movies going via satellite link, music selections to listen to, and facilities for cooking food in the back (a microwave). This might not seem like much, but compared to the trains it’s like a friggin luxury yacht, not to mention the fact that it took half the time that the trains would have.

Anyway, all of this eventually lead us to the same capsule hotel you may remember me mentioning a few posts back, the one with the onsen in it. We ended up staying there (as all the hostels close on the thirty-first) and I got my first taste of the whole Japanese bathing thing. It seems incredibly stupid to me now, but at the time I was scared to death…you see, onsens are one of those Japanese cultural things that has no real parallel in American society. There are a myriad of rules, mostly unspoken, that you are simply supposed to know; I, of course, did not. After consulting Joey and his Lonely Planet guidebook, I went ahead and gave it a shot, and you know what? It was totally worth it. There’s nothing like being all dirty from traveling five hundred-odd kilometers and then getting squeaky clean and relaxing in a hot mineral bath. Basically, you go down into this warm, humid, underground marble warren that has a big, hot mineral-water wading pool, saunas, etc. In one portion there is a communal shower sort of thing with waist-high partitions making little nooks for cleaning. You sit on a stool and use the various soaps on the little shelf in front of you (body shampoo is something I hadn’t used before) and get all soapy, then use a detachable shower head to rinse yourself completely clean. Once you’re done with that you can go chill in a sauna or take a dip in that previously mentioned hot mineral bath, which just feels totally awesome after days of sitting on trains and busses.

I could stop here, but I figure I really should explain the whole bodily-functions comment, so I’ll just do so quickly. See, there was this (rather overweight) Japanese man sleeping in the capsule diagonally down from mine. Being a light sleeper, I am easily awakened by noises and thus his incredibly loud snoring kept me awake most of the night. The interesting thing was that anytime he paused in his snoring he would loose a most impressive fart, often for several seconds, and then immediately return to snoring. I suppose his body simply couldn’t handle expelling that much gas through two orifices at once.

Yeah, I apologize to all of you for that last mental image. Talk to you later (maybe) from Hakodate.

//_Norm out