Black Coffee (Deprecated)

Kayaking Macritchie Reservoir

Everyone snickered when I announced I'd received my folding kayak. Well, I took it out twice over the long weekend, once to the beach and once to the Macritchie Reservoir, and it was quite a treat.

These are photos of me slipping into small inlets around the MacRitchie reservoir this weekend. The boat is sleek, efficient, and when coasting, absolutely quiet. It ought to enable me to take some great nature photographs once I get my rig sorted out. Currently I'm still getting used to the boat. Expect a full and detailed coverage later.

Back in Singapore

Oh man... back from 50F Tokyo into 92F Singapore. Ugh. What a drag. At least the dogs were happy to see us.

Just sat down with a thermos of freshly-brewed "Tatoosh" blend from Zoka. It's really smooth, a nice thick nutty taste, and no acidity. Delightful. I didn't try it in Tokyo, but when I smelled the dark-roasted beans I knew it would tast phenomenal.

While I was away I see that my Travelsafe Snakebite envenomation kit arrived from the Netherlands. It looks like a very thorough kit; hopefully I'll never have to use it. I have two spares in case anyone in Singapore is looking for one.

Looks like we missed an earthquake by a few hours too...

Did I mention how uncomfortably hot it is?

CQ CQ

Today I went to the JR Line's Sugamo station to go to the Japan Amateur Radio Development (JARD) clubhouse to take my US FCC radio amateur exams.

Whee, I passed everything I took: Technician, General, and Code. In a few weeks the FCC will send me my callsign. I'm waiting for another other callsign too, as last month I passed my Singapore amateur radio license (there are no classes).

I over-studied for the easier Technician license. For the General license I did one skim through about 80% of the 432-question pool this morning which was apparently sufficient. As I completed the General exam I kept count of which answers I was Certain, Educated-Guessed, and Totally-Guessed. When I tallied the Certains + 0.5Educated + 0.25Totallies, I came up with a score of 25, one short of the 70% pass threshold. I never saw my final score, but apparently my tallying or coefficients were conservative. In retrospect, I wish I had taken the Amateur Extra exam too. If you have any sense and a bit of short-term memory it can't be that hard -- you get to see all the questions exactly as they'll appear on the test.

Afterwards, Ling admitted that this morning she kept hearing my NuMorse's trainer computer voice saying "ERROR" repeatedly. She was grimacing and fearing the worst. What she didn't realize was that I was practing 10-20 words-per-minute while the exam was at a glacial 5WPM. (At least that's what I was telling myself, hoping that I'd be able to flush several weeks of no-practice rust off my ears) I still have never bothered to learn the strange two-letter codes SK AR etc... Anyway, I had several minutes of clean copy today and answered all the comprehension questions fine, so who cares. SK.

JARD conducts these tests four or five times per year in Tokyo. I counted a dozen other students, taking a mix of upgrading exams and fresh exams. Everyone else was Japanese. The Volunteer Examiners (VE's) were very efficient. It was more fun taking the exam in Tokyo and being told I passed in Japanese.

So it was a nice day for me. Ling also had a good day -- we went to Daikanyama's "Three Dog Bakery" where we bought $150USD worth of pastries and snacks for Mona and Mister.

Zoka Coffee

Yesterday I noticed a new coffee place outside our hotel Akasaka Excel Hotel Tokyu. It was called 'Zoka' and somehow sounded familiar.

After scratching my head a while I realized that it sounded like the name of a coffee place in Seattle whose baristas regularly win all the barista competitions. I tried it today and found that it's the Tokyo branch of that same Seattle shop. It was incredibly good -- they served me one of the ten best lattes I've had in my life. As an extra bonus, they serve ham and cheese quiche. Heaven.

Definitely a five-star coffee shop. Coffee quality is as high as Peets and their drink preperation is better.

31die you should switch to this place ASAP.

More soaking

My back was sore this afternoon, so I went to another Onsen and Ling went shopping in Shinjuku.

There aren't that many Onsens in Tokyo, but I managed to find two at the same location, Azabu Juban Onsen & Koshinoyu. The guide warns that Koshinoyu is the more primitive onsen and Azabu Juban more like a spa. I wanted to go to Azabu Juban. I thought it was one entrance shared by both facilities. They don't share entrances, so I accidentally entered Koshinoyu. Ok, fine, so I tried it out. Like they said, it was primitive. The problem was the black water onsen. It was excruiatingly hot. The big dial thermometer on the wall said it was37C but it was so hot that I could never get used to it. It just kept hurting.

When my ears started ringing, I figured that was a good sign that this exercise should be over. I bailed on the place and went looking for Azabu Juban onsen. It was just around the side of the building.

Calling it a spa is overdoing it. As far as I could find, there was only a single onsen bath (pretty small in fact) but the temperature was quite moderate (curiously the thermometer was 42C -- but it was easily 20% cooler than the Koshinoyu Death Bath) and was comparatively relaxing. For me, the nicest part of an onsen is getting out and drying off under a breezy fan, then chilling out in the grungy changing room which invariably reaks of stale cigarette smoke (a smell that for some reason is quite pleasing to me sometimes). This place had great grungy, stale smoke facilties.

Then a quick 20 minute train ride back to Akasake-Mitsuke station and was off to dinner with Ling and our friend Katsu where I stuffed myself with lots of fried food and drank several mugs of beer.

Trip to the Onsen

If you appreciated how much walking Ling did today, you'd be amazed that she looks as happy as she does.

After a thirty minute train ride into the steep conifer, cedar hills of Kyoto we hiked uphill nonstop for an hour from Kigune over the hills to Karuna. Steep, muddy, rooty "steps" were all we had. The forest was amazingly tranquil and populated with a number of shrines. The temperature was in the thirties or forties, but we were sweating regardless.

After we reached the other tiny town, Karuna, we stopped at their mineral hot springs (onsen) and had yet another public soak. This was great. It was just like I imagined a onsen to be... outside, ambient temperature in the thirties, a slate pool 12x30ft, rimmed with broad cedar planks, steaming hot water, and with an immense view of a huge, steep hillside covered in cedars and pines. It made the long walk worth it.

Ling at the biggest of the temples we saw. Some cherry blossoms have already sprouted

It took four trains and three transfers to reach home. (beginning with a tiny two-car train from Karuna back to the main line.

We were beat by the time we got home. Yakitori sounded great, so I got a recommendation from the concierge and we visited Yakitori Torisee for a long and relaxing dinner. A long time ago my friend Roger sent me a copy of a great Japanese cooking/food show. This episode dealt with Yakitori. One of the things they mentioned was that traditional Yakitori restaurants serve only chicken, no pork. It's yet another shameful characteristic of Tokyo that their Yakitori restaurants serve pork. This was the first chicken-only yakitori restaurant I've eaten at. It was nice, their chicken was good. Ling managed to order two of the three best dishes (including lotus root w/ a chicken and chive mix). I managed to order some of the worst, including a potato dish that I thought was going to be some sort of potato cutlet/croquet but which turned out to be a basket of homecut french fries!

Oh, one other characteristic of traditional yakitori's exclusively chicken menu is that they serve chicken sashimi. Plates of raw chicekn parts. So I guess if I'd eat raw chicken in any situation it would be in Japan, but I've had drilled into me "don't eat undercooked chicken" for so long that this still would be a tough one for me. Additionally, I really wasn't in the mood for bad stomach tomorrow while I'm on a three-hour train ride to Tokyo. Consequently I didn't eat any. Maybe some other time.

---

Here are two more detailed writeups of the Kibune/Karuna area:

http://www.aaronwilliamson.com/travel/japan/kurama/kurama.htm

http://www.travellady.com/Issues/Issue56/kurama.htm

Posted by Nils Blutig at 08:48 AM | TrackBack

A public soak

We had a long day in Kasagi today. Afterwards I decided I could use the relaxation of a public bath (sento). Those regular readers of Black Coffee might recall my last visit to a public bath in Japan. This visit didn't have a whole lot in common.

Just a short taxi ride across the river, the Shomen-Yu Sento is a nondescript three storey building. As soon as I walked in I'd committed the same mistake as last time. The rule of thumb might as well be never take more than one step inside a senso before you remove your shoes. Invariably I walk over to the shoe lockers in my shoes, but even that's too far. The staff is not bashful to remind you of this fact.

Anyway, pop in, and the ground floor is the locker room. Then it's just you, a bit of a towel (you have to bring your own towel and toiletries at this sento), and the elevator to the third floor and all the baths. (I think the second floor has a steam room or something. I find those vile, so I didn't stop by)

The elevator door opens up, I look out, and through the steam I don't see anything but several hot tubs full of Japanese men. I barely stifled a Homer Simpson Scream. I collected myself while sitting on one of the tiny 6" stools at the washing stations. Washing was a pleasant delay tactic as I tried to figure out how I'd ever compel myself to crawl into a big tub of naked men.

At some point the pool the color of tea was totally empty, so I quickly scuttled over and jumped in. It was sort of way to trick myself, because I figured the pool wouldn't be empty for too long. Sure enough five minutes later some old man with a washcloth on his head waddled in. Somehow being first into the pool made is much less onerous. Once I was in, then I just stared into the cloud of steam that obscured the ceiling and drifted away in my own little world. More guys climbed in, but I was fairly oblivious to them.

Now my only problem was that I had been stupid and brought a single towel for drying. This has no place in the pool room - there is no place to hang it and keep it dry. Rule two: I should have brought a washcloth as well.

After enough soaking I jumped out of the tea pool and crawled into a little booth that had two thunderous houses blowing jets of water down onto me as I sat in a small pool of very hot, very chlorinated water. It gave a good pounding to my head and back, which felt pretty good.

After I'd had a gutful of cooking myself in the tubs I went back out into the locker and cooled off for a while under a fan, then I got dressed, and went over to the tiny sitting room adjacent. It stunk stunk stunk of stale cigarette smoke. The funny thing is, though, that sometimes rooms that stink stink stink of stale cigarette smoke somehow smell good and relaxing. So I popped 190JPY into the tiny Kirin vending machine and sat on a stool for twenty minutes staring at a 12" tv showing a bunch of Japanese Talking Heads apparently discussing Japanese domestic poltitics and some sort of controversy over a company named 'Pony Canyon.'

So this senso was interesting. It was much more a lounging and soaking chamber than the scrubbing and scouring assembly line I visited in Tokyo. Tomorrow Ling and I take a short trip into the country where we're going to wind up at a natural mineral hot springs. It will be interesting to see how this differs from the prior two.

Today I received my folding kayak

Ling and I spent the day in a the tiny town of Kasagi visiting the Fujita Canoe company where I collected my brand new Fujita 480EX folding kayak. We met Mr. Fujita and his son and learned about their fifty-year old company, toured their small craftsmen's factory, got an orientation session in assembling the kayak, and then lastly had a thirty minute paddle in a nearby river in temperatures of thirty-odd degrees.

In case you're thinking, "Folding Kayak??? Huh???" I promise you, it is incredibly cool to have a thirty pound backpack that contains a boat seaworthy enough to make heavy ocean passages under precise and efficient control. It's even more cool now that I have met that venerable family that has made these boats for decades.

I can't wait to get back to Singapore to give this a more extensive workout and learn all the standard self-rescue techniques.

I've got many more pictures and later will be publishing a full article of my visit to Fujita Canoe.

Medicinal Bath Salts

Ling and I were browsing a pharmacy/drug store (her favorite place to shop) today when I saw this box of bath salts. The wood block print (there is a terrible color cast in the photo I couldn't convince Photoshop to remove) label captivated me, so I bought the box for Ling.

So tonight as Ling prepared drew herself a bath, she shrieked for me to come in and see the tub:

The following photo, I swear, is TOTALLY undoctored -- what you are seeing is what I saw

It looks like she was soaking in a tub full of Prestone Automobile Radiator antifreeze. It's absolutely horrifying.

Afternoon train to Kyoto

We took the train from Osaka northeast to Kyoto today where we'll stay for three days. Everywhere has been cold and windy, but Kyoto also has snow flurries. The little snapshot photo I took in no way does this gigantic train station justice. It's huge and architecturally magnificent.

Osaka was just a convenience destination. Arriving here instead of Tokyo eliminated some back-tracking. From my limited observations it seemed like mostly a commercial/industrial city without a whole lot else.

Osaka is famous for Okonomiyaki, so last night Ling and I had a huge meal of three excellent Okonomiyaki at a restaurant named Chibo. The best one had kimchee as one of the ingredients.

We spent the afternoon doing our favorite Japanese sport -- eating things in the 10-storey tall Isetan department store's massive food court. Japan rules the world of mashed potato croquettes. Ling loves their strawberries so while she was drinking a fresh strawberry smoothy, I had one made of blended spinach and lemon. I figured that compensated for all deep fried rubbish I ate.

What's on the agenda? We're in Kyoto till Wednesday. On Monday we'll spend most of the day with the folks from the Fujita Folding Kayak company south of Kyoto. I'll be picking up my brand new Fujita 480 folding kayak, taking a tour of the factory, as well as get some orientation training in a nearby lake. (And no, it suddenly doesn't jump from 30F to 85F if I go south one hour by train) Ling is looking through the guide books now planning for this evening and Tuesday's activities. On wednesday we'll take an hour long Shinkansen ride to Tokyo. I'm hoping to fit in a visit to an onsen.

Any recommendations on things to see/do, or more importantly, good stuff to eat? I get the impression Kyoto is known mostly for kaiseki cuisine, which we're not huge fans of. Anything else to look for?

Kirin Taste Testing

As we were dashing from shop to shop in Osaka I spotted a dozen uniformed girls outside the Kirin Building handing out bags of kirin beers. Being my favorite beer of all, Ling and I dashed over and collected our booty samples. Tonight, after a freezing cold walk through Kyoto, I came back and taste tested my tiny cans of beer.

They gave me three beers:

The black-labelled "Original Brew": Sheer refreshment! Open up the smooth taste that goes perfectly with good times. Appears to be 5.5% ABV (alcohol by volume)

The green-labelled "Green Label": Green Label brings you a comfortabel time. The refreshing taste cheers your mind. 4.5% ABV.

The blue-labelled "Tanrei Alpha": Tanrei Alpha brings you two unique values, conceived to enhance your pleasant times. Please enjoy! Unknown ABV, I cannot find it on the can!

This leads to some other strange specification(s) I don't understand. The green can has a measurement "70%". The blue can has additional labels "99% and 60%." The black label has no special specification indicated.

So what are these special beers supposed to be?

I found this explanation of the blue label:

Low purine beer
Japan ?s Kirin Brewery has launched Tanrei Alpha (ABV 5.5 per cent), which has been created in response to consumer demand for a low purine beer. Purine, a type of nucleic acid, is found in many food items and part of alcoholic drinks, especially in foods with many cells such as dried fish, prawns and animal livers. Beer also contains purine from malt. Purine is a real problem for some people as it raises the level of uric acid in the blood, causing gout - a condition two million people in the UK and 590,000 people in Japan are believed to suffer from. The company has cut down the purine content by 90 per cent in comparison to regular beer products by a patented 'selective removal method', which takes away as much purine as possible while maintaining the smooth aftertaste. The product also contains a small amount of beer flavour to balance the taste. Launched on 5 February with a suggested retail price of 145 yen, it is also available in a larger 500ml can, retailing for 195 yen.

Here's Kirin's explanation of the Green Label:
Kirin Tanrei Green Label: Fewer Calories without Sacrificing Taste

Consumers are becoming more health conscious, and Kirin is helping them meet their health goals by offering low-calorie beverages that do not compromise on taste.
Tanrei Green Label is the low-calorie counterpart to Kirin?s main happo-shu brand, produced with 70% less sugar than our regular brew by adding a yeast extract.
Careful attention to consumer tastes resulted in Tanrei Green Label becoming the most successful product launch ever for a light beer or happo-shu, the first in that category to sell over one million cases. A healthier alternative at the same price as regular Tanrei, Green Label has reenergized the entire Tanrei brand and contributed to make it stand out from an increasingly crowded field.

The black-label is their traditional, regular beer, one that I'm very fond of.

So how do they taste?

Original
This is the only beer that had much of a smell at all. It had the best, most rich taste, as well. When you drink this beer it screams, "eat something with me."

Green Label
Very slight smell. Less-rich taste. Most aftertaste of all three. Had the most CO2 astringency. Weakest taste.

Blue Label
No smell. Probably the second-best taste.

So yeah, it's not that much of a contest... the Original Black Label is definitely the best. Could I discrimate them in a blind test? I think so. I still have three sample cans left, so later this week I'll see if I can tell the difference. The Green Label is the worst of the lot, although I still would prefer it to a heinous beer like Tiger, for example.

In researching these beers, I discovered that Kirin is producing a number of other beers that sound interesting. Unfortunately the only one I know to find is the Taruname System, an oversized can that comes with a tiny tap and a finger-sized C02 cartridge to make the head.

Leaving for Osaka in one hour...

...have the laptop and 1dmkii in tow, so hopefully will be posting interesting vignetttes soon!

Tokyo G-Cans Project Tour Guide for the Western Tourist

I'm taking a vacation to Tokyo next week. I wondered if it was possible to tour the amazing G-Cans project of Tokyo as featured on BoingBoing.

There isn't a lick of English to be found on the site, and I don't speak of lick of Japanese, so I asked my Japanese Colleague to check it out for me:

Hi I had a chat with a person in charge of the project.

The tour has been already full for March.
You can join it from May.

I confirmed by the website, all the tour in March are full.
http://www.ktr.mlit.go.jp/edogawa/topics/event/170201.html

So it's bad news for me (the tour is full) but it should be good news for others who want to tour the project in May or later -- it is possible. It will take some work. If you can't read the tour details in Japanese on the Edogawa River Office, you can read Google's All Your G-cans are belong to us translation. You might even take a flyer and contact the office and beg for an english speaker:

Inquiry: Flow mansion 344-0002 Haruhibu city gutter basket letter willow field 997 TEL: 048 - 763 - 4416 Morning 9: 00 - In the afternoon 4: 30 Monday close

Ultimately you're probably still going to need to get a Japanese speaker to help you out -- I highly doubt the tour itself has an English version, and you'd definitely want to hear all the amazing technical details about this place.

I would love to hear if anyone manages to get a tour of the Gcans project, bonus points for an English explanation.

iPod Sucks

I have a 20GB Ipod. It has a ?touchwheel? (the one that is like the surfcae of a touchpad on a laptop) and four buttons (<<, MENU, >, >>).

It used to work on my Windows XP SP1 machine with a Belkin F5U501 machine. The motherboard's capacitors destroyed themselves and I had to build a new PC.

Now I have a MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum running Windows XP SP2 with everything updated.

I absolutely cannot get it to be recognized by the Apple Software, or hardly even windows.

I've tried three different firewire cards (the old Belkin F5U501 Rev: A, a F5U01qcAPL, and the Via-based firewire built onto my motherboard). None work.

Maybe I was being stupid when I tried to install it. Since my model is fairly old, I didn't want it to try to install MusicMatch and all the other rubbish. Since I had already installed iTunes 4.71, I thought maybe if I just plugged in the iPod it would work straightaway (yeah.. right).

Anyway it DOESN'T work.

iPod manager never sees it. I turn on iPod manager, it sits there for 15 or 20 seconds, sees no ipods, and turns off. I've tried iPod Updated 2005-02-22. It behaves worse. Not only does it not seem to see the ipod, it just totally hangs the system generally and I have to power cycle things. iTunes 4.71 does not see the iPod either.

Windows Explorer does NOT see the drive anywhere as any sort of removable drive.

About the only response I get to the ipod is that when I plug it in both the ipod beeps and windows does its 'dum dum' you've-plugged-something-in nouise (it actually makes that noise twice). It also generally dum-dums when I unplug it. While it's plugged in, the ipod continaully says, "DO NOT DISCONNECT" but it otherwise does nothing. Ona few occasions it's replaced the screen with a giant CHARGING screen.

As I said, I cannot see the ipod listed as a 'removabledrive' on the Windows Explorer. If I go into system manager, however I see two entries:

Under disk drives, I have "Apple Computer_Inc. iPod IEEE 1394 SBP2 Device" which has a yellow exclamation point warning sign. If I look at properties it sayts under status, "This device cannot start. (Code 10)" It believfes it is Device Type: Disk drive Manufacturer: (Standard disk drvie) and Location LUN 0.

Under SBP2 IEEE 1394 Devices, it says, "SBP2 Complient IEEE 1394 Device." It claims, "this device is working properly". It says Device type SBP2 IEEE 1394 Device, Mfr: IEEE 1394 SBP-2 Device Vendor and Location: on OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller (this is the Belkin card).

I've tried uninstalling these devices rebooting. IT just goes back to the exact same state as earlier. It just will not work.

I've tried 'updating drivers' of the first device, but it couldn't find anything itself or on the installation disk that came with the ipod.

Any ideas? This sucks.

Back online after an obscene interuption

Managed to let my DNS record expire on karavshin.org today, so I may have dropped some mail, and this server wouldn't have been reachable. Everything is back to normal now, however.