Mr. Wake

Funny Blog

2008-02-27T10:23:00.002+09:00

I didn't like the white-people-are-uptight humor when Eddie Murphy first said that white people have tight butts, and I don't like it as the same joke continues to get beaten into the ground by people who think they are being edgy.

White-people-are-pretentious, however, is funny. Read this.

oh crap.

Alien Pajama Girls

2008-02-26T10:02:00.001+09:00

At Japundit.

...we spotted a pair of real live kigurumin (girls who wear a type of pajama-suit that resembles an animal and sometimes cartoon characters) strolling along off in the distance.

Safe for Work (but maybe not for your soul).

Ape Escape

2008-02-26T08:13:00.006+09:00

The Tama Zoo has become famous for it's yearly escape response drill. A zoo worker puts on an animal suit and runs around until zoo keepers pretend to shoot it with a tranquilizer. It's on the news, and based on the spectators, it seems to attract a crowd. Justifiably, in my opinion.

Via 3 Yen, a story about this and the unintended consequences shooting a guy in a furry animal suit has on the youngsters at The Daily Mail.

"the horror had all been a fantasy"

video from last year.

I didn't catch the Oscars. Who ended up winning Best Actor in an Simulated Animal Escape at a Zoo, Aquarium, or Laboratory?

Sick Kid

2008-02-21T20:30:00.002+09:00

Baby's got the pukes. Wife took her to the doctor, whose office is a two minute walk away, and he said that she's got the pukes and a fever. Watch for dehydration. He could either give her a shot that stops the pukes and then Wife could fill her with water. Or she could take her to the hospital and they can put water directly into her blood. Wife decided for shot and drinking. When they got home Baby was clearly getting some weird fever mojo. She said, "My hands. Where are they.? Oh, there they are." But soon Wife thought it might be a convenient time to go to the hospital. Everyone was at the house (except me) including her parents and two or three housekeepers and/or care workers. They were there to take care of her great aunt, Mino. So Wife went back to the doctor and asked to be hooked up at the hospital. He made the call.

Then I'm at work on my way to the dining hall and I get a call from my boss, Wife's brother. He told me to come to the office. You see I had no idea what was going on with the baby and the doctor. Boss told me that my baby was at the hospital, and that I should eat my lunch and go. So that's what I did. A coworker was nice enough to lead me there in his car, since there is no way I would have been able to follow directions in this country.

At the hospital I found Wife holding sleeping Baby with one of the housekeepers and/or care workers fussing over them. They had been admitted to the kiddie ward of the emergency room. Panic level: 0. In fact everyone was a little bored. Baby already had an IV drip going, and that would last about two hours. So we hung out for two hours and tried to guess what was wrong with the other kids. The one next to us was unusually calm for having a burst appendix. Wife didn't know how to say "burst appendix" in English, so she told me "her guts exploded." I said, "how the hell does that happen," and then we worked it out.

A nurse came by and said that there was a really important case coming in, and that the doctors and nurses would be busy with that. So it's possible we would have to chill for longer than two hours. Wife asked if baby could have another IV in that case. Why not? She'll just pee what she doesn't need. It's not like she's going to swell up like a little pink watermelon. The nurse said why not. When she left, Wife explained to me that she learned how to be a good patient from watching Gray's Anatomy and House. You have to be assertive. If you want something ask for it, even if you don't really know anything about medicine. If it's stupid the doctor won't do it anyway. Can't hurt.

Then we saw all the nurses and doctors go somewhere. The special case had arrived. A little later they all came back. We also saw someone walk buy with an insulated bag. So we thought maybe he was there to harvest the little organs (this line of thinking also comes from Gray's A and House). But then we realized that you probably can't harvest a baby's organs. You might as well harvest the whole baby, and that's what everyone was trying to do anyway. We actually have no idea how the special case turned out.

Once our two hours was up they shut off the IV (we ended up with just the one), and the doctor told us that Baby's innards were sufficiently moistened, and we would split. So naturally Wife asked if she could score some extra fever meds in case Baby's fever came back. He said why not.

Baby's doing fine now. She slept for about two days, during which the Gray's Anatomy Hours Watched Index skyrocketed. I can't watch the thing. I tried a few episodes, but it's so freakin girly I'm afraid I'm going to start menstruating if I watch anymore. Baby woke up yesterday and the first thing she said was, "Bread. Big bread. Big bread. Lots of bread." So she's got her appetite back. But the volume coming out the other end more than makes up for decline in puking.

Apparently she has the Norovirus. Which isn't fatal but is very annoying and quite contagious. Wife is hopeless. She's done for. I'm trying to lay low and avoid Baby juice.

Anpanmanland

2008-02-21T11:14:00.001+09:00

Last weekend wife, kid and I went to The Anpanman Children's Museum in Yokohama. If you ever hire a hit man to kill someone and need an alibi, go to the Anpanman Children's Museum. There are more cameras than children, and I must have been caught in a hundred pictures and home movies.

Anpanman is an odd superhero. He is a sentient pastry that can fly and has super strength. Often he rescues people by allowing them to eat a piece of his head. So he gets a little theme park in Yokohama.

Aika had no idea where she was going. So when we arrived she was justifiably surprised to see images her TV hero everywhere she looked.

"Mama, Anpanman."
"Yes, Aika."
"Mama, Anpanman."
"Yes. Hold on I'm buying tickets..."
"Mama....
Mama...
Mama...
Mama...
Mama..."
"What is it?"
"Anpanman."

We had to wait about 20 minutes to sit in the Anpanman car. It doesn't do anything. You just sit there.
The dog's name by the way is Cheese.

There are hundreds of food-based heroes in the Anpanverse. Here are some from the New World. Not sure what the deal is with Norro or Frida Kahlo.

I'm climbing on something. And there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

Secund thoughts.
I has dem. *

So much bacteria ... so little time.

I get it. Everyone can go. Even dismembered infants and little boys with railroad spikes in their heads.

Anpanmanfans

Transformers

2008-02-14T15:34:00.002+09:00

A skirt the transforms into a Coke machine.

It's not exactly a tank that changes into a giant robot, but it's a start. And it's way further along than the US is on transformer technology.

Ms. Tsukioka said her idea of the vending machine disguise was inspired by a trick used by Japan’s ancient ninja, who cloaked themselves at night under black blankets.

It's an interesting idea, but the article grew tedious. I read half of it. The slide show is cool, though.

Obama in Obama

2008-02-11T09:14:00.000+09:00

Cool or not cool.
Warning, potentially offensive.

4. White people have noses that are roughly the same size as a bus.

2008-02-11T09:03:00.000+09:00

The Daily Top Ten Blog tells us
The Top Ten Stereotypes the Japanese Have of Foreigners.

Based on my experience, these are spot on.

Bullet Train Rage

2008-02-06T16:22:00.000+09:00

Bullet train service in disarray after passenger clobbers conductor

Police are currently questioning the "bullet train rage" passenger and may arrest him for assault.

I think the guys coming up with these "rages" are scraping the bottom of the barrel. When I think of the bullet train, I think of maybe a "bullet train doze" or "bullet train attendant selling beer who will bow to me whether I buy something or not." But you can't deny this guy was pissed.

Services along the Nagano Shinkansen bullet train line were disrupted Tuesday after a passenger punched a conductor and hurled souvenirs and sandwiches at him because he didn't have a ticket for the first-class seat he was in, police and railway officials said.

They pull a knife, you pull a gun.
They send one of yours to the hospital, you hurl sandwiches and souvenirs.
That's the Nagano way.

It's kind of cute that throwing sandwiches is newsworthily violent behavior.

Also, this is the level of "disarray" we are working with:

Delayed while officials dealt with the incident, a large portion of the roughly 400 passengers who had been on board the bullet train when the incident occurred got off and caught the next Tokyo-bound Shinkansen that arrived at JR Takasaki Station about 9 minutes later.

Monkey vs. Demon

2008-02-05T10:23:00.000+09:00

Japanese TV answers yet another question that has plagued mankind for centuries:

What happens when you put a cute girl in a demon mask and have her try scare a chimpanzee into attacking her with beans.

It's not what you think.

Boobies

2008-02-02T13:05:00.001+09:00

Hey chief, what do we do with the water we used to clean the yogurt machine?

Sell it.

OK, no one's buying.

Fizz it. Put "Sparkling" on the label.

OK. Not working.

Add alcohol.

But it's yog-

Just do it!

OK. Um, this isn't working. Maybe we should just chuck the stuff.

Nonsense. Sex sells. But boobs on the bottle.

But, that doesn't make any sen-.

Just do it!

OK.

Prince of Chickens

2008-01-31T15:30:00.000+09:00

Lucky Abdullah of The Bogor Institute named Prince Fumihito Akishino a senior chicken researcher.

I swear to God.

from The Daily Gaijin.

OMG KY LOL

2008-01-31T11:55:00.000+09:00

Japanese kids make up their own LOL-speak based on their words and our letters.

From Japan Probe.

Got Lime?

2008-01-30T21:49:00.000+09:00

Technically Corona is an import in the US because it comes from another country. But it's not really an import. In Japan is really is. It's in that special section of the display case right between the Budweiser and the Heineken. Of course, since limes here are expensive it comes with a little packet of lime juice.

Next post: boobies!

White River, Black Store

2007-11-10T12:41:00.000+09:00

I drove up to the Shirakawa house this weekend. I have about 17 minutes of work that I can do at the factory here, and I hadn't actually been to my house in more than three months. In that time my knowledge of kanji has improved enough to notice that the choice of towns the exit ramp gives me mean "White River" and "Black Magnet". I go to White River (Shirakawa).

On the way in I stopped at the Black Store for no particular reason. The Black Store is a large, two-story box painted black roof to road, with the items it sells in plain, white letters. They sell so much stuff, the letters take up most of the surface

Plastic figures:

Collectible cards:

Fake guns:

Fishing poles:

Hemp products:

$800 jean jacket:

In addition I found console games, snowboards, stereos, and comics. And something else.

On the second floor, in the back of the DVD section is a curtain hanging down to about shoulder level. The curtain says something about you. If you go past, you have made an effort to cross a barrier to enter this part of the store. You didn't "accidentally" find yourself here. You made a choice, and here you are. This is the Library of Alexandria of J-porn.

The aisles are narrow and winding, and there are enough of them that I actually got lost. Every corner I turned was a another wall of smiles, uniforms, long silky black hair, and ... other things. There are apparently few restrictions in Japan regarding the visual techniques a producer of DVDs may use on their boxes to encourage sales. And if for some reason the cover leaves you hazy regarding its contents, you can always check out one of the many video screens tucked away in this fleshy labyrinth. I doubled back, retracing my steps, but no. The curtain back to the world of Bruce and Angelina wasn't there, just another wall of videos or comics or photo books.

What's the least erotic music you can think of? Did you pick the theme to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? It twinkles on an endless loop from one of those claw grabber games that are so popular here. But I remembered passing the thing on my way in. It was full of wrapped DVDs, so you don't know what your are going to end up with. I followed the song past the checkout -- a curtain hangs down to just above the counter top, that a purchase may be conducted in secret -- and I was back in familiar territory. Bruce and Angelina. No smiles here. Intensity, disaster, and zombies.

I had done a calculation on the back of a vinyl nurse's uniform I found. 75 units, each with 10 shelves. A shelf could be jammed with 35 videos, but most had a few boxes that let their perky, young performers face the front. Let's say 20 vids per shelf. Show times ranged from 60 minutes to 4 hours (I tip my hat to you, sir). Let's say 90 minutes.

15,000 videos. 22,500 hours. If it was your job to watch, and you worked for 40 hours per week, it would take more than 10 years to enjoy the Black Store's inventory of skin flicks. And that's assuming they stop making the stuff.

Halloween

2007-11-01T20:05:00.001+09:00

Last year for Halloween, while me and Wife's cousin were at work, our wives took their kids treak-or-treating. Neither one had ever done this before.

At about 2:00 in the afternoon the kids met up in costume and headed out into the neighborhood. But you can't just go walking around in Japan asking people for candy. So Wife had made arrangements with some friends and family. Trick-or-treating visits were scheduled. One of the visits was to Wife's great aunt who is getting on in years and likes visits from the little kids. But her memory isn't what it used to be. She usually doesn't remember who the kids belong to, and we couldn't count on her to snack up the children. So Wife had to go to her aunt's place ahead of time to give her the treats to give to the children. She was up late the night before assembling snack packs in theamed bags. No Smarties and Mary Janes. Or those orange and black de-toothers whose manufacturer was too embarrassed to brand. Each kid got a professional assortment with a little toy. With the little packs pre-delivered the party arrived at the aunt's house, and she promptly invited everyone in for tea. Wife found the bags she had hidden there before and had her aunt distribute. This was the great aunt's first Halloween, in fact she may not have even heard of it before. She wasn't quite sure what to make of the costumes and thought Aika was a ninja. That is one of those little tidbits that reminds you that you're in a foreign country. A 94-year-old woman sees a 1-year-old kid in an all black costume and ninja is the first thing that pops into her head. At 94 she may very well remember plagues of ninjas from her youth, her mother tirelessly shooing the secretive little assassins away with a broom. After enjoying tea and cakes and the kids making a mess of things, everyone came back to our house for a party.

I was very disappointed when I came home from work and found I had missed all of it. All of this was done by the very non-scary light of day. But at least I got the pictures.

Last year Aika was Darth Vader. This is most likely my favorite costume that she will ever wear.

This is the part where she tries to convince Piglet to join her and together they will rule the galaxy. Or it might be the part where she tells Piglet to take off her mask that she may see him with her own eyes. Aika was, frankly, terrible with the lines, and it was hard to tell.

Last year went so well that they decided to do the same thing this year. Oddly, Aika was too big to be Darth Vader, so she went as a witch. Her enjoyment of headgear made very little progress over the past year, but enough to take a picture.

She's nabbed a shoehorn. She has the power to grant wishes as long as you wish that it were easier to put on your shoes.

Squares

2007-10-29T20:48:00.000+09:00

New Coffee

2007-09-15T10:47:00.001+09:00

Newest coffee product: Vintage

Worldcon 2007

2007-09-11T20:12:00.000+09:00

By popular demand!
Worldcon, the world science fiction convention, was held last week in Yokohama. I was on the convention organizing committee, so for what it's worth I got all areas access. I'll toss up a few anecdotes.

The Mad Scientist Cafe.
Amazing idea. It's a hostess bar for people who are beyond nerd. Like a hostess bar, you pay for companionship. Like a hostess bar, your companion makes sure your glass is never empty and your dish never unsnacked. Unlike a hostess bar, the companionship is not that of a hot (sometimes), stupid (sometimes) babe. The companionship is that of a scientist in a white lab coat. They put a sticker on the back of your hand with the time you walked in written on it, and it costs Y500 for 20 minutes. I went with my friend Spider, and there were three points of interest.

The scientist who joined us was a young woman. The brochure says the scientists are often shy, and it gives some starter questions like "What do you study?" and "What are you fastidious about?" We didn't find out what our scientist was fastidious about, but she studies genetics and can make clones. Humans? No. But she could if she wanted to. Cats and Dogs? Rarely. Mice? All the time. She is up to her little genius kooter in cloned mice.

Our snack was bugs. I've eaten some unusual stuff in Asia, but I've always drawn the line at insects. A pretty girl in a white lab coat placed two petri dishes in front of us, one with bee larva and one with silkworm larva, both boiled. Spider had one of each, and I refused. The pretty girl said that the bee larva was actually not bad. Spider concurred, and recommended against the larger silkworms. Our otherwise delicate scientist popped a bee larva in her mouth to encourage me. Fine. I ate one. I have no recollection of what it tasted like.

We each ordered a drink that came with a big, glossy brochure. I don't even know if there was alcohol in it. Our scientist served us each a glass with some mixer at the bottom and a plastic bottle of water. In turn she unscrewed the caps and poured the water in to each of our glasses. As the water hit the mixer it became solid as if it were instantly turning into gelatin. In our glasses little, translucent, gray termite mounds piled up and then fell over themselves as the water splashed on top. The scientist said it was ice, and indeed it was like a slushy. She screwed the caps back on the bottles and told us to shake them. As we did so the water inside turned from regular, cold water into icy slush. Our scientist insisted that this was regular bottled water, and there was nothing special about the mixer. But she did tell us the secret. The water is already below freezing. But apparently if you bring water to below freezing slowly enough it will remain liquid until agitated. They have a special, science freezer that brings the water down over a period of ten hours.

Then our twenty minutes were up.

Next: Famous People I Met

Lesson 1

2006-12-02T21:18:00.000+09:00

Time to learn some Japanese!
In English there are several words regarding animal husbandry. Chickens are raised on a farm, cows and horses on a ranch. Farm animals and children are raised, pets are owned, and professionals breed dogs, cats, and horses. You have the same kind of thing in Japanese. Here it is:

This will be on the final.

The Final Frontier

2006-10-02T21:59:00.000+09:00

This stuff happened a while back, but I've been busy.

Took the ol' telescope for a spin. It came with a special telescopey digital camera that I had never used. I figured out how to connect scope, camera and laptop all together and had the whole arrangement spread out over the picnic table in the front yard. Kamakura is a city and there are lights. But Jupiter was up, and Jupiter is really really big. It's one of the biggest things around. And for this reason you can see it from a really really long way away even when there are street lights. Sorry for the all the explanations, but my mom reads this.

But before I hit the Jupe (that's what real astronomers say, "hit the Jupe") I went for a little lunar action ("lunar action" is all mine). Now, the moon is so much smaller than Jupiter it's not even funny, but it is much much closer. Because of this, it is even easier to see than Jupiter. However, the computer/scopecam combo blows for taking pictures of the moon (Note: I'm sure it's actually very good at this, but it blew when I tried it). So I took the rig apart and tried some afocal photography. This is a very fancy way of saying "holding a camera up to the eyepiece." In poking around the internet I found that people actually do stupid stuff like this, and they actually get decent results. Here's what I got with the scope and a regular digital camera.

Not bad if I do say so. Go ahead, click on it.

For Jupiter I got a little more technical than holding the camera up to the eyepiece. I should hope so, right? So I put the scopecam back on the scope, and plugged it into the laptop. The explanation that follows is less sarcastic and more interesting than the previous stuff. The scope has a computer in it and does not need any help from a dope like me on finding Jupiter. So it has a fix on Jupe, and through the scope software I could see Jupiter on my laptop. If you see Jupiter through the scope with your own eye it looks like a white disk with two faint grey lines (if you're lucky). The resolution on the scopecam is not so hot, so on the laptop it just looks like a white circle with nothing. Also, the atmosphere shimmers a bit, so the image goes in and out of focus. In order to get a nice, detailed picture here's what the scopecam does. It takes a bunch of pictures and stacks them on top of each other to make a single image. The stuff that is different in each picture gets filtered out, while the stuff that is the same (i.e. the planet) is highlighted. The trouble with this approach is that the image of Jupiter keeps jumping around. If the scope were still, Jupiter would gradually drift out of view due to the rotation of the Earth. The scope has motors so that it can compensate for this, but it's a little jerky (due to my lameness). So when you stack up a bunch of images you end up with a blurred piece of crap. It took me hours of experimentation, believing all my equipment was broken, and finally reading the first two pages of the manual to solve this problem. The software allows you to lock onto an object. If the image jumps around, the lock stays with the brightest object. So first I had to get a lock on Jupiter. Now, I had been waiting more that 20 years to "get a lock" on anything and the first thing I lock on to is a planet. The biggest planet around! Don't worry, I do not yet posses the technology to destroy Jupiter once locking on to it.

So I hit the Jupe twice. Slap slap. Once on the way in, once on the way out. I stacked fifty images to produce each of these. One of the post-stacked images has a exposure such that you can see some surface detail, but you can't see the moons. In the other you can see the moons, but no surface data. I combined them in Photoshop and then flipped it since everything you see in the telescope is a mirror image. Then to make sure I was on the right track I cracked open Starry Night, a program that can show how the planets and moons look on certain days. I entered the date of the photos and compared. See for yourself:

Me:

(sorry about the nerdy stuff in the corner. Astronomers do that).

Starry Night:

I don't know what I was expecting. What would I have done if they had been different? But the fact that they are the same allows us to do some identification. Those two little moons from left to right are Europa and Ganymede. You probably know that Europa has a surface of ice with possible liquid water beneath, but maybe you did not know that Ganymede does, too. Europa is about the same size as The Moon (The Moon), and Ganymede is about one and a half times as big. In fact, Ganymede is the biggest moon in the solar system. It is also bigger than ~~two~~ a planets, Mercury ~~and Pluto~~. Europa has the distinction of being the "smoothest object in the solar system." Yeah, I thought Fabio was pretty smooth, too.

But this is the coolest part. If you have read this far you will be rewarded. Click on the Starry Night picture. See that little black dot on the upper left side of Jupiter. It looks like a flaw in the image. Now click on the picture I took. The black dot is in that one, too. That, my friends, is the shadow of Io. You are looking at the interaction of four heavenly bodies: the light from the sun, the moon Io, the surface of Jupiter, and then to Earth in the garden in Kamakura.

Update: My scope got a busted motor and I had to take it in to be fixed. The sky has been cloudy since I got it back, and Jupiter is gone, maybe for good.

A Quiz

2006-08-06T12:00:00.000+09:00

Quick! What do these three words have in common?
Horse
Bacon
Sushi

Scroll down for the answer...

That's what this is. It is a serving of horse bacon sushi. No shit. Horse bacon sushi.

Of Tigers and Toilets

2006-07-08T12:00:00.000+09:00

A friend of mine sent me this link as if it were wierd. I don't know. Who among us can claim that they have never had singing tigers watch them use the toilet.

Shaka

2006-06-11T12:03:00.000+09:00

Shaka Zulu? Shaka Khan? Boom Shaka-laka? Nope. It's Shaka Shaka Potato.

Despite the Spartan English, it's pretty clear what you do. The fries come with a seasoning packet, spicy basil or American B-B-Q. You "in" the fries into the bag (note: in the event that the fries are served in the bag, which is always, instead of "inning" the fries you will want to "out" the napkins and seasoning packet). Next you "sprinkle" the seasoning in with the fries. Then you shaka like you just don't care.

The writing next to that little clock above the "Shaka Shaka Potato" indicates that from 2:00 PM on is "snack time." You will face cruel (but very polite) disappointment should you attempt to get your shaka shaka on before 2:00.

There is the stereotype of the American who travels to exotic lands only to eat nothing but McDonald's hamburgers. First off, most of the Westerners I've seen at Japanese McDonalds' have not been English speakers. Second, foreign McDonalds' are fascinating places. You can see what is important to the local culture by what they change. Likewise, what remains the same shows what aspects of the West local customers desire. The burgers are made with goat in India; in Thailand McD's is hangout for wealthy high schoolers; I hear one can purchase a glass of beer at the French McDonald's, and I'm not talking about a paper cup. In Japan you can get a bun made of rice. Recently they introduced the oddly phrased Ebi Filet-O sponsored by this homely lass. (Ebi means shrimp, and it is also this model's name.) The workers are polite, crisp, and professional. When this reporter ordered his Shaka Shaka Potato and a small coke, the coke was served immediately, but he had to wait on a new batch of fries. When the fries finally came, the cashier dumped his coke and prepared a fresh one, fearing melted ice and diminished fizz. That the Japanese love rice, sea food, and customer satisfaction are less than Earth-shattering observations. But what do we learn from their afternoon desire to shake a bag of potatoes?

Duck Season ... Rabbit Season ... BUG SEASON!

2006-06-04T14:28:00.000+09:00

Spring time. When a young man's heart turns to thoughts of love. In Japan it turns to thoughts of entomology. The rhinoceros beetles makes a spiffy spring time pet. A hardware store I went to was a one-stop shop for all your beetle needs, be they rhinoceros or stag. The cool thing about these bugs is that they hate each other. So it's easy for a young lad to get together with his chums and make their bugs fight.

Kits...

Cages...

Super bugwater...

But in these busy times what kid has the time to track down his own bugs? Not to worry. The hardware store has the solution in these pre-moistened containers.

But in these busy times what kid has time to go to the hardware store? Not to worry. There is Mushiking, the King of Beetles, a combination video game and collectible card game. You swipe the card of your champion bug into the machine and pit it against your friend's bug. The contest is based on rock, paper, scissors, but somehow your bug's individual strengths and weaknesses are taken into account. Also, the machine dispenses fresh beetle cards.

Make sure you read the story of Mushiking. It tells the story of all the bugs of the forest living in harmony with each other and with a single elf. But trouble starts when foreign bugs arrive in the forest, and now the bugs must rise up against the foreign ... hey, wait a minute.