My backpack is something else. I pulled it out of the bag to find it had no straps. Then I realised that the cunning beast is able to pack away its own straps into a long tongue-shaped pocket running up the part that rests against your back. Having pulled out all the straps, and oooh my there are a lot -- including a variety of straps to strap straps onto straps -- the whole thing looked like a huge dead stag beetle on its back.
Then the dilemma came. What do I do with the long tongue-shaped flap that I unzipped to release all the straps? It can't zip back up because the straps are in the way now... and there appears to be nowhere for it to go... unless, of course, I'm content with walking around with this long black flap hanging off my arse.
I start to look everywhere on the backpack, almost turning it inside out in the hopes that it might solve the problem.... all the time finding more and more pockets and sub-compartments -- even a kind of parachute-like thing made of waterproof material that comes out of a side pocket to cover up the whole bag when it rains -- but nowhere for this flap. To make things more mysterious, it has an enigmatic strip of velcro along its bottom edge, at the point where it joins the bottom of the backpack, and yet there is no other velcro in sight for it to stick to.
By now I'm starting to think there must be an instruction booklet that I threw away without realising and so I start rummaging around in my bin. It's at this point that I start to swear at the air, cursing 21st century man for inventing backpacks so fucking complicated that they would conceivably need instruction manuals.
I give up for a while. Later I take a look at my backpack and I notice the thinnest, slenderest hint of a slit at the bottom of the bag. Working my fingers into it, I find more velcro! And lo and behold it opens up into a vast tongue-shaped cavity, running up the entire front of the bag, so deep that I can stick my arm in up to my elbow... a true Mary Poppins handbag moment. If I'm not careful, I'll be packing this bag somewhere out in a plain in Tibet and it'll swallow me up, and nobody will ever know what happened to me.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Time to move on
Talking of dogs I'd like to kill.... there was the poster of a dog that appeared on the wall of the living room/kitchen in my flat the other week. One of the ugliest posters I have ever seen.
I really don't get who made this this image and why - it's not cute, it's just horrible. And it appeared here (where I have drawn the red box), above the hamster cage.
Now this really caught me by surprise. My flatmate Kogo is one of those people who accumulates all sorts of shit that he doesn't need, and our living room is often treated as something of a warehouse. As I mentioned with the frog rug in a previous post, these things often appear without my consultation, even though I have to live with them. The hamsters also appeared without me being asked my opinion; he just assumed I would find them cute, when in fact I find them noisy and smelly. And that's quite apart from the fact that I can't believe I live with a 34 year old who sits there for hours looking at them, feeding them, photographing them and so on...
Well, I can tolerate all this providing nothing goes up on the white walls, as the whiteness gives the illusion of there being more space than there actually is. And since nothing has ever been on the walls, I assumed he saw things the same way. But then, suddenly this poster appears and it baffled me as much as the frog rug. What kind of grown man would actually choose to put that thing on his wall, especially when it's the only thing on the wall?? I suspect it was probably his girlfriend, that almost silent, ever present figure in the house (and I did NOT know she was going to be here all the time before I moved in).
Anyway, I was having none of it, so I told him it had to go, that the walls have to stay clear. And since I don't complain about things often he obliged, but what surprised me came next: I was expecting him to take it down, realise how ridiculous it is and either throw it away or put it away somewhere. Instead, he immediately started pulling down magnets and other posters off the side of the fridge and put it up there. This poster really seems to matter!
Unfortunately, while there was no tension over this, it did seem to trigger off a mini arms-race of minor complaint and counter minor-complaint about various little things around the house. I can't be bothered to go into them all, but suffice to say that he's a patronising cunt at times and takes the line that when there's a "problem" in the house like forgetting to turn off the light in the toilet it can only be me who's doing it. It was complete news to him that he does it sometimes too. Overall, I'm pretty fed up with his idiosyncracies and the intrusions they have on my personal space. I guess to sum it up, I pay half the rent, but I don't feel like I have authority over the flat -- 95% of the crap in here is his. Living here is a very fine balance between the cheapness of the rent and the convenience of the location versus the experience of living with the myriad idiosyncracies of this weird, human hamster and his little will-o-the-wisp concubine. If I can't live with someone I truly like and respect, then I need my own space. I'm not really in a financial position to move, but I may have a chance... and I will aim to have my own place soon, if not at some point later this year, then definitely next year.
I really don't get who made this this image and why - it's not cute, it's just horrible. And it appeared here (where I have drawn the red box), above the hamster cage.
Now this really caught me by surprise. My flatmate Kogo is one of those people who accumulates all sorts of shit that he doesn't need, and our living room is often treated as something of a warehouse. As I mentioned with the frog rug in a previous post, these things often appear without my consultation, even though I have to live with them. The hamsters also appeared without me being asked my opinion; he just assumed I would find them cute, when in fact I find them noisy and smelly. And that's quite apart from the fact that I can't believe I live with a 34 year old who sits there for hours looking at them, feeding them, photographing them and so on...
Well, I can tolerate all this providing nothing goes up on the white walls, as the whiteness gives the illusion of there being more space than there actually is. And since nothing has ever been on the walls, I assumed he saw things the same way. But then, suddenly this poster appears and it baffled me as much as the frog rug. What kind of grown man would actually choose to put that thing on his wall, especially when it's the only thing on the wall?? I suspect it was probably his girlfriend, that almost silent, ever present figure in the house (and I did NOT know she was going to be here all the time before I moved in).
Anyway, I was having none of it, so I told him it had to go, that the walls have to stay clear. And since I don't complain about things often he obliged, but what surprised me came next: I was expecting him to take it down, realise how ridiculous it is and either throw it away or put it away somewhere. Instead, he immediately started pulling down magnets and other posters off the side of the fridge and put it up there. This poster really seems to matter!
Unfortunately, while there was no tension over this, it did seem to trigger off a mini arms-race of minor complaint and counter minor-complaint about various little things around the house. I can't be bothered to go into them all, but suffice to say that he's a patronising cunt at times and takes the line that when there's a "problem" in the house like forgetting to turn off the light in the toilet it can only be me who's doing it. It was complete news to him that he does it sometimes too. Overall, I'm pretty fed up with his idiosyncracies and the intrusions they have on my personal space. I guess to sum it up, I pay half the rent, but I don't feel like I have authority over the flat -- 95% of the crap in here is his. Living here is a very fine balance between the cheapness of the rent and the convenience of the location versus the experience of living with the myriad idiosyncracies of this weird, human hamster and his little will-o-the-wisp concubine. If I can't live with someone I truly like and respect, then I need my own space. I'm not really in a financial position to move, but I may have a chance... and I will aim to have my own place soon, if not at some point later this year, then definitely next year.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Here boy, here boy, yeeees.... fetch the grenade.
For the last few days I've been doing all sorts of shopping and preparation for going to Tibet on Thursday. It's the first time I've ventured out somewhere where I actually need a backpack ("damn these mountains, why has nobody paved them yet!" I hear myself saying in a parallel dimension in which I took my stuff to Tibet in a wheelie bag) .
Wandering around outdoor shops has been very interesting... albeit a wallet-bleedingly expensive affair. I'm utterly resolved to travel as light as possible and have made sure I only bought a backpack big enough for what I really need. And yet going around these shops always entices you to buy things you hadn't thought of... like a large, filtered straw which allows you to drink water out of a pond or lake, should you find yourself stranded. It even comes with a purifying powder you can add to the water in a cup (assuming you have a cup) should it be particularly dirty. I felt it would be a useful, compact and light thing to have if things somehow go awry. The straw's packaging does remind you however, that the filter cannot purify water which fish are unable to live in or which contains industrial waste. Duh.
But being a Japanese product of course, this life-or-death situation has to be made cute. See the little angel, sucking the pond water out of a glass.
The picture tells you that even though you're so dehydrated and desperate as to suck water out of a high-altitude pond, you'll still look like an angel doing it. Awww. Or else that you're so far gone you'll be hallucinating that winged angels have come to save you when in fact it's the vultures that are gathering to finish you off.
Meanwhile, not so cute are the highly aggressive, rabid dogs that all five of my guidebooks (yes, five, no less) tell me I will encounter. At first I thought I could just carry rocks and throw them hard whenever an unfriendly dog gets too close, but upon buying guidebook number five yesterday (but it surpasses the other four in so many ways!) I read that even rocks don't deter them.
So this week I've been thinking at length about how to deter mad dogs. Fireworks? A chain I could tie around my waist and then pull out and swing at them if attacked? A bag of hot spices to throw in their faces? Coincidentally, a couple of regions of China have been doing mass culls of their dog populations because of some children getting rabies from dog bites. Basically that means the authorities have been clubbing them all to death unless their owners find a better way first. I love animals, but was a bit disappointed to hear Tibet wasn't culling its dogs. But I guess getting the Buddhist heartland to start killing things is going to be a bit hard.
So, the ideal solution would be an electronic dog repeller, which you can buy on the internet, although it's too late for that now. I've been trying to ask around at pet stores but the staff all look at me incredulously when I say I want to repel dogs, as if to say "Why would you want to repel dogs, dogs are kawaiiiiiii" and then I explain that I'm not talking namby-pamby Japanese rat-dogs that get carried around in Louis Vuitton cases, but hard core Chinese motherfuckers. Then they understand. However, the best they can offer is some weak spray that humans find okay but which dogs find repellent... but it's more the kind of thing designed to spray on a sofa so the family mutt doesn't sit on it.
I have managed to find a dog-whistle designed for "training" your dog, but I'm not sure if that means the sound it produces is unpleasant to the dog or just attracts it. As you can imagine, that detail matters quite a lot. While looking at torches, which I need so as to see the interior decor of unlit monasteries, I was considering buying a full-size metal Maglite, weighing it in my hands, knowing it could have dual use as a club.
But, don't get me wrong, I really do like animals. I saw a picture of a yak for the first time today and I'm sincerely looking forward to meeting one and exchanging pleasantries.
Wandering around outdoor shops has been very interesting... albeit a wallet-bleedingly expensive affair. I'm utterly resolved to travel as light as possible and have made sure I only bought a backpack big enough for what I really need. And yet going around these shops always entices you to buy things you hadn't thought of... like a large, filtered straw which allows you to drink water out of a pond or lake, should you find yourself stranded. It even comes with a purifying powder you can add to the water in a cup (assuming you have a cup) should it be particularly dirty. I felt it would be a useful, compact and light thing to have if things somehow go awry. The straw's packaging does remind you however, that the filter cannot purify water which fish are unable to live in or which contains industrial waste. Duh.
But being a Japanese product of course, this life-or-death situation has to be made cute. See the little angel, sucking the pond water out of a glass.
The picture tells you that even though you're so dehydrated and desperate as to suck water out of a high-altitude pond, you'll still look like an angel doing it. Awww. Or else that you're so far gone you'll be hallucinating that winged angels have come to save you when in fact it's the vultures that are gathering to finish you off.
Meanwhile, not so cute are the highly aggressive, rabid dogs that all five of my guidebooks (yes, five, no less) tell me I will encounter. At first I thought I could just carry rocks and throw them hard whenever an unfriendly dog gets too close, but upon buying guidebook number five yesterday (but it surpasses the other four in so many ways!) I read that even rocks don't deter them.
So this week I've been thinking at length about how to deter mad dogs. Fireworks? A chain I could tie around my waist and then pull out and swing at them if attacked? A bag of hot spices to throw in their faces? Coincidentally, a couple of regions of China have been doing mass culls of their dog populations because of some children getting rabies from dog bites. Basically that means the authorities have been clubbing them all to death unless their owners find a better way first. I love animals, but was a bit disappointed to hear Tibet wasn't culling its dogs. But I guess getting the Buddhist heartland to start killing things is going to be a bit hard.
So, the ideal solution would be an electronic dog repeller, which you can buy on the internet, although it's too late for that now. I've been trying to ask around at pet stores but the staff all look at me incredulously when I say I want to repel dogs, as if to say "Why would you want to repel dogs, dogs are kawaiiiiiii" and then I explain that I'm not talking namby-pamby Japanese rat-dogs that get carried around in Louis Vuitton cases, but hard core Chinese motherfuckers. Then they understand. However, the best they can offer is some weak spray that humans find okay but which dogs find repellent... but it's more the kind of thing designed to spray on a sofa so the family mutt doesn't sit on it.
I have managed to find a dog-whistle designed for "training" your dog, but I'm not sure if that means the sound it produces is unpleasant to the dog or just attracts it. As you can imagine, that detail matters quite a lot. While looking at torches, which I need so as to see the interior decor of unlit monasteries, I was considering buying a full-size metal Maglite, weighing it in my hands, knowing it could have dual use as a club.
But, don't get me wrong, I really do like animals. I saw a picture of a yak for the first time today and I'm sincerely looking forward to meeting one and exchanging pleasantries.
Sunday, August 06, 2006
I couldn't give a flying shit.
Finally getting around to posting yesterday's photos that illustrate Japan's culture of mollycoddling its citizens was in fact just to pave the way for this... the holy grail of the Japanese Nanny State.
What follows is a picture of a poster up in the toilet at the office... that tells you how to take a shit. Really.
The Japanese reads, in creepily familiar, friendly language, "Line up your body with the water properly, okay?"
And the diagrams show... well... the diagram on the left shows a little shitman doing a backflip dive into the bowl, getting it wrong and splurging his little shithead on the pan. And the diagram on the right shows the same little shitman attempting the same backflip dive and scoring full points for accuracy as he then goes potholing up the u-bend.
---
UPDATE
Aargh, I knew it was too good to be true. Apparently the poster was made by one of my non-Japanese colleagues, who wasn't impressed with the frequent occurences of collateral splatter left on the toilet. Still, it makes me feel like making my own signs and posting them up around Tokyo.
What follows is a picture of a poster up in the toilet at the office... that tells you how to take a shit. Really.
The Japanese reads, in creepily familiar, friendly language, "Line up your body with the water properly, okay?"
And the diagrams show... well... the diagram on the left shows a little shitman doing a backflip dive into the bowl, getting it wrong and splurging his little shithead on the pan. And the diagram on the right shows the same little shitman attempting the same backflip dive and scoring full points for accuracy as he then goes potholing up the u-bend.
---
UPDATE
Aargh, I knew it was too good to be true. Apparently the poster was made by one of my non-Japanese colleagues, who wasn't impressed with the frequent occurences of collateral splatter left on the toilet. Still, it makes me feel like making my own signs and posting them up around Tokyo.
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Mind the Air
This is a post I've been wanting to put up for several months, but have been waiting until I collected the the minimum number of photos to illustrate my case...
It's no news to any foreigner who's been living in Japan for any period of time, no matter how short, that the Japanese love to warn you about stuff. This has been written about plenty by all sorts of bloggers living in Japan, and my blog isn't specifically meant to be about Japan's quirky differences (my blog isn't actually about anything, really, just whatever comes into my head)... but I had to do a little photo essay on this topic for those of you back home who don't get to enjoy this everyday.
So, there are notices stuck on everything, particularly anything that can be perceived as a physical obstruction to your walking down the street. This means there are a hell of a lot of cones everywhere. And in addition, almost invariably a man with a white helmet and a stumpy light sabre to wave you in the right direction as you walk past the cone. Yes, even if the cone is at the side of an otherwise unobstructed pavement.
I don't have many photos of the storm troopers at work, but here are a couple:
"This way please, people. In spite of the cones, we can't trust you not to throw yourself blindly into the man on the ladder."
(Through loudhailer) "People, be aware that there is a fat white cable on the ground. Yes, a fat white cable surrounded by flashing cones, and which two seconds prior to the taking of this photo was entirely covered with yellow and black metal protective ramps for your safety. And yet in spite of all of this we simply cannot trust you not to throw yourself on the floor."
And then there is the issue of cones set out for the protection of... well, what?
Steps?
Flowers?
Air?
Question: "If the wind knocks over some cones in Japan, and nobody is around to see or hear it, does anyone care?"
Answer: "Duuh, of course! The people approaching the cones still walked around the outside of them and shortly thereafter a stormtrooper appeared to put them upright again."
And how do they hande this in England, you might ask? Well, as far back as in March, with this post in mind, I took some photos to show just how England deals with public safety.
"Aahh, faack it, that'll do."
"Aahh, faack it, pile 'em on. That'll do."
Interestingly, this is a sort of public artwork/fountain built into the pavement in the new "More London Place" near City Hall (yes, stupid name I know, but that's what the street is actually called)... and while it is essentially a cattle trap built to break the ankle of anyone who isn't looking where they're going, it goes mostly unguarded. I say mostly...
Because this exceptionally dangerous point is covered.
It's no news to any foreigner who's been living in Japan for any period of time, no matter how short, that the Japanese love to warn you about stuff. This has been written about plenty by all sorts of bloggers living in Japan, and my blog isn't specifically meant to be about Japan's quirky differences (my blog isn't actually about anything, really, just whatever comes into my head)... but I had to do a little photo essay on this topic for those of you back home who don't get to enjoy this everyday.
So, there are notices stuck on everything, particularly anything that can be perceived as a physical obstruction to your walking down the street. This means there are a hell of a lot of cones everywhere. And in addition, almost invariably a man with a white helmet and a stumpy light sabre to wave you in the right direction as you walk past the cone. Yes, even if the cone is at the side of an otherwise unobstructed pavement.
I don't have many photos of the storm troopers at work, but here are a couple:
"This way please, people. In spite of the cones, we can't trust you not to throw yourself blindly into the man on the ladder."
(Through loudhailer) "People, be aware that there is a fat white cable on the ground. Yes, a fat white cable surrounded by flashing cones, and which two seconds prior to the taking of this photo was entirely covered with yellow and black metal protective ramps for your safety. And yet in spite of all of this we simply cannot trust you not to throw yourself on the floor."
And then there is the issue of cones set out for the protection of... well, what?
Steps?
Flowers?
Air?
Question: "If the wind knocks over some cones in Japan, and nobody is around to see or hear it, does anyone care?"
Answer: "Duuh, of course! The people approaching the cones still walked around the outside of them and shortly thereafter a stormtrooper appeared to put them upright again."
And how do they hande this in England, you might ask? Well, as far back as in March, with this post in mind, I took some photos to show just how England deals with public safety.
"Aahh, faack it, that'll do."
"Aahh, faack it, pile 'em on. That'll do."
Interestingly, this is a sort of public artwork/fountain built into the pavement in the new "More London Place" near City Hall (yes, stupid name I know, but that's what the street is actually called)... and while it is essentially a cattle trap built to break the ankle of anyone who isn't looking where they're going, it goes mostly unguarded. I say mostly...
Because this exceptionally dangerous point is covered.
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