Tokyo Tsure Zure Gusa

Japan, like everywhere else, often seems to be gradually losing local flavor as large corporations fill the streets with carbon copy restaurants and shops. Izakaya, Japanese restaurant/bars, are a particularly good example of this. It’s a little sad that an izakaya in Tokyo is basically the same as one in Iwate or Kyushu. Of course in Japan there are still plenty of local alternatives to corporate chains, but a lot of these can be intimidating for newcomers or downright unwelcoming to the uninvited. In Japanese a restaurant that is ichigensan okotowari, （一見さんお断り） basically denies entry to unintroduced new customers, as ridiculous as that sounds. So though there is definitely a lot of interest among young people in more traditional izakaya, many of these places are intimidating, especially to women.

So when I was walking down OK Yokocho （OK横丁）in Akabane with my family last night I was pleasantly surprised to see a new non-corporate izakaya having its grand opening.

A loft with a tatami-mat floor and individual irori hearths for table-cooking overlooks the central bar below. It was early when we got there and we were taken upstairs to a private room with its own irori. This was the first time I can remember having been to an izakaya with an irori. Basically hot coals were placed in a hearth in the center of the table over which we cooked our food. There was also a hook hanging from the ceiling for cooking nabe, but we didn’t order anything that used that. One of the specialties was a ginger/miso paste mixed with a bit of ground chicken. Besides the great atmosphere and delicious food, what really struck me about the place was how inviting it was. Despite being non-corporate, the staff was young, mostly in their early 30s, and the owner himself (whom we met) was just 36. We’ve been to some local izakaya where we were made to feel unwelcome for not knowing the proper specialty dish to order, or simply not ringing up enough of a bill, but all of that was absent here. I’d even recommend it to people who can’t read Japanese, as I’m sure the kind staff would use their perhaps limited English to help.

Chirori （ちろり） is a quick walk from Akabane station. Take the north exit and turn right (East) after the ticket gate. Turn left after exiting the station, walk past the bus area, and cross the street toward Ichiban-gai (一番街). Take the first left on Ichiban-gai into OK Yokocho. Chirori is on the left.

My first issue of Lapham’s Quarterly arrived today - the second volume by Lewis Lapham of Harper’s (the only other magazine to which I subscribe). The New Republic sums up the essence of the publication:

Lapham’s zeal to combat the creeping debasement of truth in the culture, combined with his passion for history, drove him to leave Harper’s after nearly thirty years and found Lapham’s Quarterly. The Quarterly is billed as a historical journal and looks something like The Paris Review. Each issue, Lapham chooses a single theme–it premiered with “war” in November, “money” follows in March, and “nature” is slotted for the summer–and assembles a set of relevant texts. The material is wonderfully eclectic: Not just the stuff of history books, but pop-culture lists, CIA assassination manuals, and vintage memorandums proposing, for instance, a way to demoralize the Cuban people by spreading unflattering photos of an overweight Fidel Castro. This scrapbook of “literary narrative and philosophical commentary, diaries, speeches, letters, and proclamations” as Lapham describes it in his preamble, is essentially a 172-page expansion of the Harper’s Readings section, itself a Lapham innovation from the start of his second term as editor in 1984. There’s also some new content: four essays in the back by contemporary historians, each about 2,000 to 3,000 words long. But for all those essays, the journal’s clearest message is this: Its editor’s interest, and his genius, lies not in editing, but in curating.

The full article is here.

What struck me first upon opening it was the complete lack of advertising. It’s a tome of a magazine at 221 pages of mostly text. This issue is “About Money.” I’m just a couple of articles in, but I’m already convinced that it’s very worth picking up.

The Classic Cafe of Nakano was reborn last November as Renaissance in Koenji. I was rather down when I heard that my favorite cafe in Tokyo had closed down with the death of the elderly proprietress, but some of the staff have resurrected the Classic in all its charm.

The new location is smaller than the original, housed in the basement of an unassuming office building, but stepping inside you immediately recognize the dim lighting and old decor. (The two photos above were taken with 1 second exposures, showing the room much more clearly than can be seen with the naked eye - it really is dark in there.) There have been a few changes; the tables and chairs were fixed and no longer rock when you shift your weight, and the classical music blared out of the speakers isn’t as scratchy-sounding as before. But the essential system remains the same - pay 400 yen to get in, receive your choice of coffee, tea, or painfully sweet orange drink, bring any food with you that you’d like, and request classical songs on the little chalkboard. (Coffee refills are 200 yen.)

It can be a little tricky to find the first time. Take the south exit of Koenji station and walk right along the tracks briefly until you get to the covered mall. Turn left and walk away from the tracks down the covered mall. Walk through the covered mall until you emerge onto an uncovered shopping street. It’s the first left after you cross into the open air street. (It’s one block before the post office sign on the right.) It’s "B" on this map.

The Classic, and now Renaissance, are called Meikyoku Kissa (名曲喫茶) in Japanese. They appeared mostly in postwar Japan around the 1950s, when record players were too expensive for most people to own. In the 1960s a foreign magazine featured one of these Meikyoku Kissa, describing them as a Japanese Greenwich Village, where young artists and bohemians hung out. They quickly became popular destinations for foreign backpackers, which created a striking image in this era when Westerners were still relatively rare in Tokyo. After that these cafes became locust points for local counterculture rather than classical music (though of course the music remains). While mainly frequented by scholars, artists, left wing activists, hippies, and the like, they became popular even as date spots for couples.

Most Meikyoku Kissa disappeared after record players became cheaply available, but a few famous spots have endured. Some of the things I always liked about the old Classic was near-complete darkness, the unfailingly twisted and generally incomprehensible art displayed on the walls (painted by the original owner), and the forlorn-looking goth artist women that served coffee with uniformly blank expressions. The smaller size gives less room for paintings at Renaissance, but they’ve successfully transplanted the atmosphere to the new place.

Makeshift dwellings coated in blue tarp are a common sight to Tokyo residents. Perhaps the most famous areas are along the Sumida River upstream of Asakusa and in Ueno park, but they are common enough in parks, under bridges, and along the many rivers that flow through Tokyo. A few days ago I was bicycling with my wife and son along a small dirt path next to the Arakawa River when we pass some rather elaborate blue tarp houses. (A side note - why do we say Sumida River and Arakawa River instead of using either Sumida and Ara or Sumidagawa and Arakawa? I live near the Arakawa, so I always want to say Sumidagawa River in English but it appears to be wrong…)

This afternoon I was left to my own ends so I headed back out to the river and tramped around on foot to get a better look at some of these houses. Several of them had TV antennas, washing machines, and other appliances powered by diesel generators.

When I walked past the above cluster of houses I saw a middle-aged man practicing his golf swing in the front "yard." I walked around to the front and approached. I greeted the man just as a large dog came around the corner of the house and started barking at me and growling. The man quieted the dog down a bit and told me he didn’t bite. Unconvinced, I smiled and approached cautiously.

I told the man, let’s call him Shiroishi-san, that I was impressed with the houses here and asked him how many people lived there. Shiroishi-san was very friendly and told me that three people lived there: a couple of former employees from bankrupt printing companies (there are a lot of them around Itabashi-ku) and an ex-carpenter. It turned out that he didn’t live there, but was waiting for one of the residents to return. Shiroishi-san lived in a nearby apartment and visited frequently. I mentioned I was surprised to see TV antennas and washing machines. Shiroishi-san told me that recently they didn’t have enough money to buy fuel for the generator, so they couldn’t use them. When they can’t find day labor, they make money collecting cans, a large bag of which can bring in about 1200 yen.

He told me that just in the last couple years there was a growing sense of community among the riverside squatters. He listed off the names and former occupations of the people living in the houses on either side, which included an elderly woman. I learned that last year a couple of people had died in their homes here just 20 meters further down the river, though only in their late 50s. (When I walked past the area later I saw several vases with flowers over an empty plot of land where a shack must have been.)

The above photo shows the view from the riverside looking back at Tokyo across a baseball field.

Shiroishi-san told me that a number of people would be getting together the next day to fish for eels in the river and fry them up. I guess local residents, both squatters and apartment-dwellers get together most Sundays at a spot near there to catch fish, eel, and shrimp. He said a Pakistani man who married a Japanese woman usually come as well and encouraged me to come. Tomorrow is the Arakawa Shimin Marathon, and the starting point is right near this location. The whole area will be full of food stands and beer vendors. Should be a very festive environment. I’ve never fished for eel before.

As I was on my way to use the ATM at the post office this morning the superintendent of our apartment building pulled me aside, saying that there had been a fire in the little indoor bicycle room. The bicycle that sits to the right of mine was always covered with a nylon-looking bag to protect it from accumulating the grime that everything in Tokyo gets coated in after about 24 hours exposure. Someone had lit this bag on fire, not only severely burning that bike, but melting my bike’s right pedal completely off! The floor was stained by puddles of melted plastic and the room smelled awful. The superintendent asked me when I had last used the bicycle, as they were unsure if this had happened the night before or two nights ago. (He only comes in a couple times a week.) I hadn’t ridden that bicycle in a few days (we have two), but was pretty sure that someone would have noticed it before then had it been done more than 18 hours ago.

When I got back from the post office there was a fire truck parked outside (despite the fact that there was no smoke and the unfortunate bicycles weren’t even hot anymore), four firefighters, and TEN police officers, including two plainclothes detectives. I went straight up to our apartment and soon we were called on the intercom to go down and get our damage report (for insurance purposes). My wife talked to the police, repeating what I had told the superintendent about our last bike ride, and got the damage report for our insurance. She said that except for the one cop doing the talking, the rest were just standing around watching.

This reminded me of an incident about five years ago when I visited Suruga Bank in Ginza, a Western Union office. A foreign man got upset at a teller for some reason and started yelling. He was not at all violent, just pissed and giving her a piece of his mind. He was out of line, but not dangerous. In a couple minutes, 14 police officers showed up including a couple detectives in trench coats. All for one guy who didn’t seem like much of a threat to anyone, and put up no physical resistance to the police, though he did verbally defend himself, saying he had done nothing wrong.

A friend of mine from South America has been hassled numerous times by the police, and he too has told me that he is often surrounded by 10 or more cops, most of whom just stand around. I don’t know if this overkill is limited to Tokyo or the operating procedure throughout Japan. My first assumption would be that it shows what a safe place Tokyo is. There must not be many crimes to pursue or they’d be stretched thinner, right? Well, Tokyo is a very safe city, but I don’t think this is necessarily the reason.

They do the same with fire trucks and firefighters. Last year there was a small kitchen fire in the apartment building across the street from us. It was limited to one unit and only smoke was visible from outside. I watched as 12 fire engines and dozens of firefighters converged on the scene. They took over the entire city block and all the streets around it. I guess that’s great. It’s a real contrast to the way it was in my hometown. My father was a City of Madison Firefighter, and there it was three guys to a rig. He said it should have been four or five guys, and budgets were keeping it at three. This increased their risk of injury, but they go the job done.

Can anyone tell me if this massing of civil servants occurs in other areas of Japan as well?

Today the Casio XD-G9700 finally arrived. Right now I have it sitting in front of me next to its predecessor, the Casio XD-GW9600. The XD-GW9600 has been a favorite among foreign students of Japanese since its release, and is clearly the best electronic dictionary for professional translators as well. The two models are of course quite similar. The question for now is whether the XD-GP9700 is worth spending the extra $75 or so instead of picking up a XD-GW9600 while they’re still available. (I don’t think the XD-GW9600 will vanish from the market for another six months or so at least.)

For this review I’ll only be looking at new features, so please check the XD-GW9600 review if you’re not familiar with it. These areas where there have been changes:

• Dictionaries
• Touch Panel Screen
• Audio
• Button Layout

Dictionaries:

The new XD-GP9700 has 16 English texts plus 39 other texts, while the XD-GW9600 has 17 English texts plus 23 other texts. This 55 to 40 difference sounds significant but it’s actually pretty meaningless. The only substantial difference dictionary-wise is the inclusion of Shogakukan’s third edition Progressive Japanese-English Dictionary in the XD-GP9700, which contains 90,000 entries. Other new texts are irrelevant for translators and students. (For example a guide to writing email in English, a wine companion, and numerous business English texts.)

So both the XD-GW9600 and XD-GP9700 remain head and shoulders above all other electronic dictionaries available now because of their inclusion of these dictionaries:

Random House English to Japanese: 345,000 entries
Kenkyusha 5th Edition Japanese to English: 480,000 entries (!!!)
Technical/Special term Japanese to English: 1,000,000 entries
Technical/Special term English to Japanese: 1,000,000 entries

Of course they also have the Reader’s, Reader’s Plus, and Genius dictionaries included in many other solid electronic dictionaries.

Touch Screen Panel:

The XD-GP9700 has both an enlarged panel for stylus pen input on the base and a touch-sensitive main screen. Like the Canon Wordtank V80, V90, V300, G70, and G90 the jump function can be used by touching the pen to the screen. There is one annoying difference though: you have to press the jump button before you can touch the screen to select a word. It’s a minor point, but it is kind of an annoying step. (To select a word you’d like to “jump to” or look up in another dictionary, just select the first character with the pen and tap it.) Scrolling can also be done by dragging with the stylus.

When searching the Kanjigen Kanji Dictionary with handwritten kanji input, you can pull up a large box on the main display and write the kanji there instead of on the small panel on the base. This is actually a really nice feature, giving you plenty of room to draw in complex multiple-stroke kanji.

Audio:

The XD-GP9700 includes voice recording of 10,000 Japanese words in the Meikyo dictionary and additional English vocal playback ability. The XD-GW9600 only had English voice recording. This seems to be rather useless. The only way to use this would be to look through the 70,000 entry Japanese to Japanese Meikyo dictionary, and happen upon the 1/7th of entries with a small [play] symbol. It seems random which words have this. For example 薬品 has audio, but 役に立つ does not. 郷里　does, but 恐竜 does not. This is not much of a benefit.

Button Layout:

A number of buttons have been eliminated to create a simpler layout. Now depending on what screen you’re looking at the touch panel will display buttons relevant to what you’re looking at. For example if you’re looking at an individual kanji in the Kanjigen dictionary, the button 熟語 (kanji compound) will appear. Tapping it will bring you the list of kanji compounds using that kanji (in any position). The only negative aspect of this is that it forces you to hold the pen while you’re using the dictionary, even if you don’t need to use any of the other touch panel functionality whereas previous it could be done with the tap of a button. This seems fine, as if you buy this dictionary you’ll probably want to be using the pen pretty constantly with it anyway.

Conclusion:

The XD-GP9700 is an improvement on the already fantastic XD-GW9600. That said, I’m undecided on if I would recommend spending the extra money on it while the XD-GW9600 is still around. With the price coming down on the XD-GW9600, it’s a tough call. At any rate, the XD-GW9600 won’t be around for much longer, and the price will inevitably come down on the XD-GP9700 a bit. I’m glad that Casio is continuing to produce excellent electronic dictionaries (and I wonder when Canon will take the hint).

If you’re outside Japan, as always you can find them at smartimports.net.

For a full list of the dictionaries (in Japanese), check Casio’s pages for the XD-GW9600 and the XD-GP9700.

Probably you’ve seen the above video or had it emailed to you a few times already. I was a bit slow on the uptake and only saw it for the first time on Super Tuesday.

Up until somewhat recently I was unenthusiastic about Obama, though I always preferred him over Hilary Clinton. I saw him as similar to Bill Clinton - very charismatic and inspiring, but basically a moderate Democrat in policy and action. I rather liked Kucinich and Feingold, who always stood against the Iraq War, insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, and other destructive corporate interests. But I think I was wrong to be cynical about Obama.

It may be naive, but I was really moved by this video. I’m very cynical about politics and often pretty negative about the world in general (though I like to think of myself as a positive person). Since the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq (though of course before that as well), countless atrocities have been committed in our name. Tens of thousands of civilians have died as a direct result of the war. (Probably more like hundreds of thousands if undocumented deaths are included.) I couldn’t really feel much more negatively about my country’s actions abroad.

But Obama’s words move me, give me hope. I think I could reconcile with my country if he were leading it, shaping the language of public discourse. Maybe we could start to repair the damage we’ve done. I don’t know if we can ever atone for the murder and torture we’ve wrought overseas, but we can at least stop. If we could start to bridge the divide of thought and culture that separates working Americans all suffering under the same oppression of the rich elite, there is no limit to what we could do.

The original text and video of Obama’s speech are available here.

After voting in the Global Democratic Primary yesterday I was inspired to come to the Democrats Abroad Japan Super Tuesday Breakfast Party in Shinjuku. There were about 20 of us there drinking coffee, talking, and heckling the CNN announcers as the results came in. I hadn’t been around so many politically-minded Americans in one place since visiting the States 15 months ago. Great fun! They also have a monthly discussion/liquoring-up group called “Drinking Liberally.” It looks pretty tempting…

Oh, and there were several news teams at the little gathering today, including CNN and Fuji TV. I was interviewed by Fuji TV and may or may not be on the final cut of the footage they’ll show at 11:30 tonight on Channel 8. I didn’t say anything profound, but it’s sort of a novelty to be on TV so I’m recording the spot just in case.

After talking with several passionate Obama-supporters I’ve finally caught the bug. I really loved Kucinich’s stance on all the issues, but Obama is now looking great as well. Even beyond policy matters I can hardly imagine the impact that his brilliance and charisma could have on American culture and the way it is viewed from abroad.

U.S. citizens in Japan can vote in the Democratic Primary in person on Tuesday, February 5th from 9am to 9pm in Tokyo. There’s a voting center in Shibuya. In Nagoya the voting center is open on Saturday the 9th. In Kyoto it’s Sunday the 10th.

Get out there (with all the Americans you can muster) and vote! Details on the Democrats in Japan website.

Casio’s February 2008 Electronic Dictionary lineup has been announced. There are no notable improvementa in the dictionary content for non-native speakers of Japanese, but the functionality has been improved with "twin touch panels." Now words on the screen can be selected with the stylus pen as well. On-screen scrolling can also be done by touching and dragging with the pen. In all of the 14 new models being released next month, there are five boxes for entering romaji on the base of the dictionary, and a large window can be brought up on the screen for entering a complicated kanji there instead of on the base. All these functionality improvements are detailed here (in Japanese).

Casio’s most popular model among English-speakers, the XD-GW9600 is being replaced with the XD-GP9700. The dictionaries remain effectively the same for the purposes of students and translators. (There are in fact 16 more "contents" but these are basically irrelevent to non-native Japanese. For example, a foreign relocation guide for Japanese moving abroad and a guide to wines.) While it’s not clear what the actual price will be for the new XD-GP9700 when it hits the market on February 15th, it’s certain to be significantly more expensive than the XD-GW9600. While the older XD-GW9600 is still available, I wonder if the "twin touch panel" is a significant-enough improvement in functionality to warrant the extra cost. We’ll have to wait until February 15th to see.

Casio’s other foreign language models have also been updated. The Italian XD-SP7500 replaces the old XD-SW7400, the Spanish XD-SP7500 replaces the old XD-SW7500, and the German XD-GP7150 replaces the XD-GW7150. In all of these cases, dictionaries remain largely unchanged, and only the "twin touch panel" is added.

Sharp also released a couple of new models recently, the PW-AT770 and the PW-GT570. I don’t find these noteworthy, however, as they lack the dictionaries I have come to expect from using the XD-GW9600. These Sharp models contain the pair of older Genius Japanese/English dictionaries and lack the Reader’s, Kenkyusha, and Random House dictionaries.