September 2003 Archives

Any foreigner who's lived here a while knows the nail-biting tension of having a visa renewed. We are all here by the good grace of the Japanese government and once every three years we must submit ourselves for inspection and a new seal of approval. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu!

So what's it like?

After collecting reference letters, employment contracts, tax documents, marriage certificates, and university diplomas, a trip to the Immigration office and several thousand yen worth of revenue stamps get the application in the queue. It vanishes into the fog of Japanese bureaucracy.

There is no way of knowing what is going on behind the scenes; only a sketch of the rules is written down for applicants. Do they check all those letters and contracts? Do they consider you by nationality, income, criminal record, age, or some sort of karmic merit system?

Who knows?

We sailed through the process this time. Whatever mysterious tests were applied to us, we passed. Our visa applications were filed on September 10 and we received the renewals yesterday. We've been granted another three years' stay in Japan. Our life continues, uninterrupted by any immediate international moves.

What I see when I am editing. AVI (556 Kb)

How my computer sees me.

How anyone else present might see me.

I am making good progress today, after nearly a week filled with other tasks and social events. By bedtime tonight I will have the entire shopping segment done and probably the entertainment section as well. That will leave only the hefty transportation segment and the credits to do. My goal is to have this wrapped up, mastered and in the hands of the duplication company before I go on vacation later this month.

The change of season heralds a change of products at the convenience stores. The Rose Pu Erh tea that Tod enjoyed this summer is gone, and we're casting around for some new drinks to take us through the winter.

Tod came home with some Ucon Cha yesterday. It's turmeric tea. I love Okinawan black sugar and turmeric candy and turmeric is a good tonic for the liver, so can you go wrong with turmeric tea? No, you cannot. It's really tasty. This brand is mild and subtly nut-pepper-ginger-citrus flavored.

Turmeric has been used in Indian cuisine as a flavoring and a food dye for 2500 years. It works great as a dye in modern times, too, it stains the plastic bottle yellow!

Tod also found a tumeric tea with ginnemu, a weedy mimosa that's used in the tropics to feed cattle. The ucon-ginnemu tea has a distinctive flavor. When he opened the bottle, it smelled a little bit like urine. I think I'll stick to the Ucon Cha.

Another tonic tea on the market contains guava. Guava is supposed to be good for your blood sugar levels. I don't understand that at all, but the tea has a minty-anise flavor that I enjoyed.

There are scads more new teas, mostly oolong and sencha variations. I'm sure we'll try them all over the next few weeks.

Last night was the flash mob; 9 people played rock paper scissors in the middle of Tokyo station. With only nine, it wasn't much of a mob but it was all over in 2 minutes, so it definitely qualified on the "flash" part.

I had a small role in the game. At 19:32, I dropped off the instructions at Cow #20. There didn't seem to be too many people there, just three guys hanging around on one corner of the space near the Maru Biru. So I sort of held up the papers a little bit and without breaking stride, walked over to the cow, sat the clipped together slips on the ground near a hoof, and walked away. MJ and I were the only non-Japanese there; I bet it must have confused everyone to see a foreigner with the secret instructions.

MJ got some pictures of the mob; I had my camera but was having too much fun playing to take it out and document.

Competing with the mob fun for most memorable moment of the evening, were two funny toilet incidents after. At an izakaya in Yaesu, MJ fell in love with the toilet paper. "It has stuff written all over it; steal me a roll," she requested. I didn't manage a roll, but I did spirit away these two sheets:

Boss, the location of your part has changed, hasn't it?

As long as it's for a purpose, we'll walk for anything (SIGN: a good man)

Definitely odd toilet paper.

My other toilet experience was in a different izakaya (it was a busy night) under the tracks at Yurakucho station. The ladies room is tucked into a tiny space with a low slanted ceiling--less than five feet off the ground at the highest point. I was so distracted by bumping my head that I forgot to lock the door. The woman who opened it moments after I sat down was not more shocked than I was. How do you gracefully exit that situation? I did my best with hastukashii---atama wo ki otsukete! (embarrassing--watch your head!) as I ducked out.

Following on the success of Recipe Thursday (which encouraged me to cook more often and make notes on what I was doing), and Video Saturdays (which helped me get back to my video projects), mediatinker will feature a column with ideas for sparking creativity and focussing your creative genius.

Most of the entries will be about changing the way you see or do things. Give your brain a different perspective on your world, and you'll make creative leaps more easily.

The Other Side
Changing my point of view and paying attention to what I see from the other side refreshes my mind, sweeps away the old thoughts, and sometimes sparks new ideas.

To change your perspective, take a walk on the other side of the street. You'll see the familiar neighborhood buildings and sidewalks from a different point of view. Don't forget to look around as you travel on the other side. What does your house look like from across the street?

I did this last week, and was pleased to note that the stark concrete wall I normally walk next to actually fits into the landscape nicely when seen from 10 meters away. And the tree at the corner that was heavily trimmed this spring has a very different shape than I thought.

Not a walker? Try parking in a difference place at the mall or parking down the street from your office. Exit your office through the service entrance. Catch a different bus. Walk to the opposite end of the train platform. Just put yourself slightly outside your usual place, no matter what that place is.

4:20 am - Tod comes to bed.
4:35 am - I rise for a glass of water...
4:50 am - 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Hokkaido. It rocks our house gently for about 45 seconds
5:10 am - First train rumbles past.
5:51 - 5:59 am - Rainbow over the Toppan building. I can see both ends. (Click for larger images.)

6:11 am - Coffee's brewing...

When you indicate the number 8 with your hands, how do you do it?

If you're American you probably hold up your hands like this:
Side by side, in front of your face. The left hand indicates five and the right hand shows the remaining three.

But in Japan, it's done like this:
With the hands held palms together. The hand behind shows five and the hand on top gives the rest.

I imagine that other places use this method as well, and it makes sense. The person looking at your hands only has to focus in one location and to check out the fingers on top to know the number. With the American method, I always end up scanning across the hands, taking in the face of the person holding them up, too. Not nearly so efficient.

A similar ease of use follows in the Japanese method for marking groups of 5. It uses the five strokes of the kanji for five. This is used all the time in restaurants:

At a glance, you can see the correct number. The American system of four vertical lines topped by a diagonal a slash across always forces me to double check wither it's three or four lines marked down and so on, though I have no problem when it's five or one. Maybe I'm just a little slow.

Holding husband's hand
With my umbrella bobbing
Homewards through typhoon.

Quiet splashing steps,
Damp chilly feet; my heart grows
Warm from his fingers.

We went to a baseball game with a flock of friends and Zousama looked at me so sweetly as we left that I picked him up and brought him along.

But when we reached the entrance gate the guards were a bit bemused.

"Um, is there a Japanese speaker?" said the man doing the bag check as he scanned our group for Nihonjin. We assured him that we'd be OK if he spoke Japanese.

"So, well...." he started.

"Oh, it's like a pillow," MJ said enthusiastically patting Sama's back. But the guard looked dubious and glanced over at the more seriously dressed superior off to the side who nodded in a "go ahead, continue" fashion.

"Well, um...well...." he stammered. His cohort chimed in with "You see, the seats are narrow..."

At which point, Tod came forward with Zousama's ticket. We had an extra. He placed the ticket on Sama's back. "This is his ticket. Is that OK?"

The guards attending to us giggled. So did all their friends who'd come over from other gates to watch this spectacle. Elephant with a ticket? Well, let him in!

Sama had a great time at the game, as did the rest of us.

Every day I learn something new about FCP4. Last night, I read the manual aloud (to my ever-willing audience, Tod and Zousama)--Chapter 10: Audio Basics--and figured out some ways to approach my really grungy audio. This morning I put into practice what I read and, wow, it really made a difference.

This afternoon, I mastered the "Color Correction 3-way" filter. Another "wow, how useful!" moment.

I'm now 30 seconds shy of being halfway finished. I'll do these remaining seconds before I go to bed tonight because tomorrow I'm taking a day off to celebrate the autumnal equinox. After that, back to the editing grind. (Which isn't such a grind after all. I'm pleasantly surprised.)

My goal is to premiere Hello Tokyo at Design Festa on November 15th. Want to come see? I'll post more details soon.

On Thursday, we got a new washing machine to replace our dryer.

Huh? New washing machine replaces old dryer? Yes! This Sanyo model AWD-A845Z, similar to the newly launched AWD-A860Z is a washer and dryer in one unit. You put the laundry in, press the course you want, and in 150 minutes, open the triple lids to reveal clean, dry clothes. It's really disconcerting. Call me old-fashioned, but things should come out of the washer wet.

It has a "no detergent" setting that cleans lightly soiled clothes by electrolysis (but only lightly soiled clothes), a blanket course, quick wash, heavy soil cleaning, dry clean mode, and 8 ways to use the dryer (combinations of low and high heat and various times and auto-sensors). Plus it will recycle your bath water. But we'd need a very long hose to do that, since the washing machine is in our kitchen.

Last year's price: 228,000 yen. Now on sale for 110,000 yen. Good bargain for our building owner and a great new machine for us.

Well, I've managed to recreate the title sequence in Final Cut.

Hello Tokyo title sequence. 0'46" (4.2 MB QT)

In terms of fancy editing, this is certainly the most challenging of the seven segments. It incorporates superimpose edits with image masks, super track fades, scrolling text and some other trickery. This version isn't exactly the same as the first one (check it out if you missed it) but it's acceptably similar.

Now I'm stuck into the next sequence, Phrases, and it's going relatively smoothly. One good thing about redoing the entire project is that I get to review and rethink my original edits. I'm paying closer attention to the audio sweetening this time. Tomorrow morning I will be creating a loop of "street noise" to play behind some of the voice overs.

"All junk mail?" I asked as Tod pulled the papers from our box.

"The library? Huh. Oh wait, it's the National Diet Library...this is Japan's Library of Congress...Oh! It's my ISSN!" I jumped up and down.

A few months ago, I applied to the Japanese registry for an International Standard Serial Number for mediatinker. I didn't hear back from them, so I wrote again a couple weeks back. They'd had a question about my application, which I answered and now I am the proud publisher of an internationally recognised serial.

Here is ISSN 1348-7752 at your service. You can use this number to refer to my weblog or to look it up the the international serial database.

I even have an official EAN-13 barcode for mediatinker (Tod generated it; he loves barcodes). It's not much benefit online, but if you ever wanted to take me to the checkout line with you...

There are a small handful of people in my life right now who make me stupidly happy. Every time we meet, I grin ear-to-ear and can't help rushing up to hug them. I babble incoherently in my excitement. If I were a puppy, I'd probably wet myself.

They aren't necessarily people I know very well and none of them has frequent contact with me. In some cases we've been close or worked together, now time and space have separated us. As it stands, I know only the surface of their experience.

The burst of joy comes precisely because our interaction is intermittent. With daily intercourse, I'd be drawn into the ups and downs of their lives and the jubilant magic would wear off. Keeping distance is what makes these people special but it would be awfully satisfying to shift to a solid friendship with any of them.

Is my elation requited? Probably not. I'm not bothered by it. I'm still grinning 18 hours after seeing Jon unexpectedly.

FCP may have deflated me the other day, but I'm back on top. I've figured out how to do most of the basics I need to do to get Hello Tokyo edited again.

But there are a lot of little quirky things I haven't sorted out yet and I keep having to think hard to do the basics. Still, I've made big progress over where I was two days ago and I should have the title sequence, the most complex part of the project, edited by the weekend.

Now I have to remember to mail in that rebate before it's too late!!

At lunch today, an elderly man occupied the table next to mine. He dined in the company of his portable oxygen tank.

I've seen him around before, ambling along the sidewalk with his tank in tow. Narrow plastic tubes pass under his nose allowing easier breathing. His hands are bloated and unwieldy. Maybe he suffers from emphysema. He's sometimes accompanied by a woman I assume is his daughter and a little boy that must be his grandson. Today he was on his own.

After finishing the tuna-tomato pasta (we ordered the same thing), he had a cup of coffee. He fumbled with the tiny tab on the container of "coffee white" for a moment or two before using his teeth to hold it while his hand pulled the packaging open. Then he struggled with his medications--five blister-packed pills--and with some effort managed to push them open.

It's a bitch getting older. Nobody escapes the inevitable physical decline and we can't predict how gracefully we'll age. But this old man was out there living life. He's slowed down, but hasn't stopped. I hope I can say the same thing in 30 years.

Yesterday was "Respect for the Aged" day. 19% of Japan's population is over 65.

Final Cut Pro is stressing me out. It's so different from Premiere that my firmly embedded paradigms don't work and I can't figure out how to do anything. 1200+ pages of manuals don't make things any easier.

So I'm feeling a little negative and I need to turn my thinking to the positive. Rather than talking trash at FCP when it doesn't behave as expected, I've come up with some code word equivalents:

complicated = comprehensive
confusing = full-featured
exhausting = exhilarating
frustrating = challenging
impossible = inspiring
stressful = stimulating

I'm not as good at political correctness, obfuscation, and double speak as the US government or George Orwell but then they aren't trying to master Final Cut.

Are you creative?

If I look around my spaces online and in real life, there's evidence that I am, and once in a while someone affirms it. But I don't usually feel creative. So to be more creative, I sometimes force myself to make more things, do things outside my usual realm, and build up my body of work.

And sometimes I set myself up for a public spectacle. On November 15th and 16th, I'll have a booth at Design Festa. What am I going to exhibit? No idea...yet. I'll choose a theme and work from there.

I'd really prefer to do this with others rather than solo, so here's an invitation:

COME BE CREATIVE WITH ME! Help me brainstorm theme ideas, and share my Design Festa booth. Add your music, video, art, photography or multimedia projects to my mix...

Tod gestures as he describes the Unix family tree with a very long diagram during a talk on FreeBSD for the Tokyo Linux Users' Group earlier today.

We followed up the technical talk with a nomikai where we discussed a wide range of non-tech topics, including kanji dissection and debate over whether Kansai or Tokyo style foods are better. Kitano-san made me call his pregnant wife to tell her he would be just a little bit late...

And then we all went off for a nijikai and enjoyed a rousing session of karaoke. Yuki is singing "Sk8tr Boi" while Baba tries to drown her out with "Linux Boi."

Tod, UltraBob and I managed a sanjikai at Corazon, our local pool hall. We discovered, to our dismay, that Corazon will close on the 23rd as their building is being torn down. More luxury apartments in the works, I suppose.

Looks like Tokyo's finally going to have a flash mob. This appeared in my Inbox last night:

There have been gatherings of strangers doing weird things in public in Tokyo and around Japan, like the Matrix events in June, and a group of people posing like comics covers. These are called "off" (presumably for off-line), but as far as I've been able to tell, there hasn't been anything called a flash mob here.

The idea of a flash mob, in case this Summer 2003 fad passed you by, is that someone sets a date, time and location for participants to gather (the "mob" bit) and do something silly for a very brief time, then disperse (the "flash" bit).

There's a bit of mystery, too, as the exact instructions aren't given out until minutes before the mob starts. People meet at published staging areas and get the final details there.

It's sort of performance art by strangers. Sounds like fun. Will I see you there? Details are forthcoming, the English website is http://www.geocities.com/alien_coruscater/mob.html

This easy variation of a classic entree is sure to impress at a party or quiet dinner at home.

Chicken Cordon Bleu

serves 2-4

2 chicken breasts, with or without skin
3 slices of deli ham, chopped
1/2 cup Swiss cheese, grate. I like Gruyere.
2 Tblsp white wine
1 clove garlic, minced
1 egg
flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
bread-crumbs
butter or oil for frying
wooden skewers or toothpicks

Mix the ham, cheese, garlic and wine. Lay the chicken breast flat, skin side down. With a very sharp knife, cut into the breast to make a pocket. You can do this from the side to make one big space, or make a slit down the middle, then open up smaller pockets to the right and left.

Stuff the pocket with the ham and cheese mixture. Close the pocket with a skewer or toothpicks and refrigerate the stuffed chicken for 30 minutes.

When the chicken is chilled, create a 3-pan "breading station". The shallow pan or bowl closest to your frying pan will have the crumbs, the middle pan will contain a beaten egg, and the pan farthest away contains the seasoned flour. Sit the chicken next to the flour.

Heat your frying pan to medium-hot and add 2 tablespoons of butter or oil.

To keep your hands from getting breaded as you work, you'll use the right hand to flour and crumb and the left hand to handle the chicken and dip into the egg wash.

Remove the skewer or toothpicks, and roll the chicken in the flour--use your right hand to dust the flour over the chicken. Next dip the chicken in the egg wash to coat thoroughly, and finally roll the egged chicken in the bread-crumbs. From there it goes straight into the pan. If you are doing a lot of breasts, you might want to sit them aside and add them to the pan at the same time.

Fry the chicken until done, turning frequently, for about 15-20 minutes. If the outside is getting too brown but the inside isn't cooked through, lower the heat and drop a lid on the pan.

To serve, you can place the chicken on the plate as is, or if you want to share one breast between two people, cut the breast into 1" slices to reveal the ham and cheese inside.

The Cow Parade has reached Tokyo. To be specific, it's come to Marunouchi. There's a lot of bovine weirdness along the corridor between my office and Tod's.

One of Tod's colleagues is convinced that these cows are going to explode tomorrow. They are all hollow fiberglass statues and would make mighty good places to hide bombs.

Should I worry? I have to be at the office tomorrow...

Something else to fear: a scientist (crack or crank, I'm not sure) is predicting that there will be a magnitude 7 earthquake in Tokyo within the next week. Maybe it's a good time to get around to checking the earthquake supplies, even though I should have done that on 9/1, Disaster Preparedness Day.

Final Cut Pro 4 is packaged in a big, black box with a multi-hued eye staring out from the side. Ominous. Weight: 5 kg, at least, and it's all manuals. I'm terrified.

"I'd be halfway through the first book by now," said Tod as he hefted the box. "But I bet this will sit on your desk for a few weeks before you install it. I know you."

He may be right.

On the other hand, maybe I'll whiz through my To Do list and install FCP4 later today. Tod says it will be an "exhilarating effort" to get it up and running and to learn the program inside out.

We'll see...

I can see this week is going to be weird.

Tod, normally a sloth in the morning, was awake and waking me up at 6 am. We've already had coffee, replayed the Jimmy Carter speech for Zoupi, dressed and gone out for breakfast. Tod's at work and I have just received Final Cut Pro from the friendly UPS guy.

I'm overwhelmed. I think I'll go take a nap.

Tod arrived home safely this morning; he rang me from Narita just before I left for day two of the printmaking workshop.

I'm exhausted from making art all day and Tod's tired from his travels, so we're going to sleep now. Zoupi will post about his Swiss adventures tomorrow, so don't forget to check zousan.com.

Note to self: stick to pens, printing and computers when if comes to art. Pencil, charcoal, pastels--all those soft, blendy media--just don't do it for me. But put a pen in my hand or, better yet, let me make prints and I am a happy camper.

I attended a drypoint engraving workshop today (and will go again tomorrow) at Right Brain Research in Azabu-Juban. Ryu Kadosaka is an amazing illustrator and a fantastic teacher. I learned so much today that my head is completely full. As I was packing up to leave class, I tried to put my glasses in my wallet.

I'd never done drypoint before and it's fun. You use a needle-tipped instrument to draw on a copper plate, then ink the plate, rub off the excess ink and run the plate and paper through a press. It's quite simple, but there are so many variables: what sort of lines you scratch; whether or not (and to what extent) you scrape or burnish the lines; how you control the ink on the plate. You never know exactly what you'll end up with...

I did a print that I turned out much better than I thought it would. In fact, I like it a great deal and will give it to my father who is celebrating his 66th birthday today. The print needs to dry for a week so that it stays flat, (sorry, Dad!) but when It's done, I'll put a photo up.

A dark shop on a busy street. A window display of antique reproductions. On a table outside, a display of manicure kits.

Interior decorations and grooming supplies are an odd combination; I was intrigued. And I have a fondness for manicure kits, even though my ragged nails can't be trimmed or trained into shape. So I stepped inside. And what do you know? More manicure kits. I ended up buying the one pictured above made by 777 Three Seven in Korea.

What an array! It contains: (l-r) toenail clipper, fingernail clipper, nosehair scissors, cuticle clipper, tweezers, cuticle knife, cuticle pusher, v-shaped cuticle trimmer, an earspoon, cuticle scissors and a file.

I am armed and prepared to declare war on my cuticles!

A simple, refreshing fruity drink--perfect for a late summer afternoon. Works great with slightly overripe kudamono, so clean out your fruit basket today.

Banana Peach Fruity Drink
1 banana, peeled and broken into chunks
1 peach, peeled, pitted and cut into chunks
1.5 cups apple juice
6 ice cubes
1 tot of rum (optional)

Put all the ingredients in the blender and puree. Adjust consistency with water, juice or more rum as desired. Pour over ice. Serves two.

This juice oxidizes (the banana turns brown), so it should be prepared just before serving.

No, it isn't finished, and my computer is being increasingly recalcitrant which make me doubt I'll ever get it done. Today was spent recovering from an overnight disaster that destroyed the entire project. I found a backup and sweated most of the day bringing it back to where it was last night at midnight. I've just gotten it squared away now and I'm ready to try to render again.

I'm sure we are all tired of all the dull and gruesome details of making Hello Tokyo, so consider this the final post in the saga. When it's done, I'll let you know.

And in other news:

I noticed yesterday that the Reference Kitten is now half price. That means my personal economy has just undergone a big devaluation...inflation...deflation? I don't know. If I understood economics I wouldn't calculate in kittens, would I? No matter what the right word is, everything costs twice as many kittens as it did last week. Except the reference kitten itself. I guess you can't sell a teenaged cat at kitten prices.

We had the most horrific thunderstorm this evening. The sky was red and there were five strikes that were near enough that I felt the electricity on my skin. I tried to sit out on the veranda to enjoy it, but it was too scary. After I turned off most of our valuable electronics, the Zous and I hunkered down in the living room and read aloud from The Complete Plain Words--guaranteed to calm the jumpiest elephant in half a page.

I captured some video of the cloud-to-cloud lightning and the moon peeking out as the storm moved away, but I won't have time to process it until Hello Tokyo is out of the way.

Disk space is sorted. I went through and carefully checked, double-checked and then deleted all the unused clips. I deleted about 180 that I'd captured for consideration but didn't put into the final cut. There are 247 video, audio and still files in the project. That's 19 clips/minute. It's not as overwhelming as it sounds.

So that housekeeping has cleared up enough space to move things around and give me room to render and compress. I'm feeling much relieved now. Thank you to everyone who offered suggestions on the weblog, in e-mail, and offline.

I'm at the stage in the project where the computer is maxing out its usually overspec'ed and rock solid capabilities. I've rebooted iru three times today when I pushed just a little too hard. Twice I've corrupted the Premiere preview files and had to re-render. And once I had to boot into OS 9 so that I could run Disk Warrior to fix suru, the SCSI disk where the project lives.

Digital video is a demanding task for any computer and this old G4 450MHz has seen its day. I'm looking forward to buying myself a new G5 early next year.

Input
I'm tired of eating alone. Tod, dear, please come home. Today I had yogurt, 4 cups of coffee, three cookies and dinner at Ampresso.

Today is Wish for More Disk Space Day. To fully render the project in uncompressed QuickTime so that I can pull it into Cleaner 6 to compress as MPG2 (using Cleaner's nice gamma adjustment and sound leveling features), I need 22 Gb of disk. I only have 19GB. Argh. I have three disks in varying degrees of fullness. Must figure out out whether there is any way to move things around and make just a little bit more space...

It is also Order Final Cut Pro 4 Before the Half-price Offer Runs Out Day. Since they won't ship to Japan, and Apple Japan doesn't sell the English version, I have to "game the system" and lie about where I live, have them mail it to my mother, and ask her to send it along to me.

And in the US, it is Labor Day. I'd completely forgotten.

Input
meusli with tofu milk, cheese toast, 2 cups of coffee, banana-peach smoothie, karaage, rice, simmered eggplant, salad, 2 glasses of water.