Me, in a picture taken earlier today-
Me (center), when I was around the same age as the students in the picture above-
The guy on the left is my best friend from college and most of high school. He now owns about 4 million dollars worth of townhouses in the Toronto metro area and counting, and in a few years will probably leave his corporate job and just live off investments. What the hell?
So I'm up to episode 6 of Season 5 of The Wire now. Just one aspect I wanted to talk about...
The big controversy this year is that the show has a story line about the newspaper The Baltimore Sun, where The Wire's creator David Simon, used to work before leaving on very bad terms with management. The paper had been bought out by a larger newspaper, and according to Simon, cutbacks seriously impacted the Sun's quality. More damning still, Simon claims one of his co-workers was fabricating news stories a la Jayson Blair, and that management tacitly approved these actions and looked the other way, because the sensationalistic stories sold newspapers.
The Sun story features a gruff, hardworking, meticulously principled Sun reporter beginning to work as an editor (a surrogate for David Simon), and a weasly young reporter that makes stuff up and gets praised for it. Simon has admitted, quite loudly, that this Season of The Wire was written as payback for a long standing grudge against the people that ran the paper at the time. In the above link, he concedes that in the end, the story, which basically retells his own real story at the paper, will have to stand up on its own as entertainment. So how does it?
The really remarkable thing about The Wire is that it looks down on the entire city of Baltimore and its problems, but rather than focusing blame on a single group of people, it looks at the entire system, and institutions that make problems possible. Everybody gets their story told, from the lowest drug dealer all the way up to the mayor. One scene might show a cop pulling up his numbers by making meaningless arrests. But its not really his fault, because the Chief of Police is calling on the men to do that. But its really not all his fault, because he's one step away from getting fired by the mayor. But its really not all the mayor's fault either, because his predecessor left the city broke, and its an election year, and so on, and so on, and so on.
You may not always like or sympathize with every character..but everyone gets their story told. As Simon has said, the show is tired of good and evil, and looks to explain problems rather than take the easy way out by pointing fingers at single institutions. As his surrogate reporter character says to the boss this season when the paper wants to launch a series blaming schools for inner city problems, "blaming the schools is like pointing to some faulty shingles on a house while its in the middle of a hurricane".
But when it comes to the Baltimore Sun, Simon seems to lose the sense of global perspective that served his reporting (and now usually serves his TV screen writing) so well. The bad reporter, Scott, is perhaps the first Opaque character on the Wire.
Usually, if a lowlife such as Marlo plans to murder someone, or the hitman Omar plans to rob someone, we the audience know what they're up to as soon as they do, and understand why they're choosing their path. We're given a panoramic perspective.
Not so at the Sun. At first, it isn't revealed that Scott is faking the stories. We find out about it at the same rate that the Simon character does, making him Scott the first bad guy on the Wire that we're not in on.
Nor are motivations discussed. McNulty fakes serial killings, arguably far more serious than anything a reporter fudging some stories does. We get to hear all about it. Why don't we get to see the motivations for Scott's transgressions too? Perhaps he's fearful of losing his job in the wake of all the budget cutbacks. Maybe he's concerned that his career is getting sidelined, and the pressure of sizing up to better reporters is too much for him. Maybe he realizes he's in too far, and lives in fear of getting caught, ending his career.
That's not to say that we would like him or sympathize him even if we knew those motivators. But we should get to decide. The way the story is presented, the heroic Simon character is good, period. And the Scott character is bad, period. And that type of storytelling breaks the rules. The whole plotline sticks out like a sore thumb amongst all the shades of gray that make up the rest of the show.
Bonus- article on The Wire at The New Yorker.
Recently I ran into this article by Malcolm Gladwell (The author of The Tipping Point and Blink) about people writing software that analyze songs and movie screenplays, and predict which ones will be hits. In fact, one company, Epigog, uses a neural network to analyze screenplays, based on the connectionist theory I'm on about so much. Apparently, Epigog's neural network accurately predicted the box office grosses of several big movies within a few million dollars. However, they're now employed by a major movie studio, and their technology has become fairly hush-hush.
More observable is Platinum Blue , software that analyzes music looking for songs that could chart. Some excerpts from the Gladwell article:
Four years ago, when [company owner] McCready was working with a similar version of the program at a firm in Barcelona, he ran thirty just-released albums, chosen at random, through his system. One stood out. The computer said that nine of the fourteen songs on the album had clear hit potential—which was unheard of. Nobody in his group knew much about the artist or had even listened to the record before, but the numbers said the album was going to be big, and McCready and his crew were of the belief that numbers do not lie. "Right around that time, a local newspaper came by and asked us what we were doing," McCready said. "We explained the hit-prediction thing, and that we were really turned on to a record by this artist called Norah Jones." The record was "Come Away with Me." It went on to sell twenty million copies and win eight Grammy awards.
Also-
This past spring, for instance, he analyzed "Crazy," by Gnarls Barkley. The computer calculated, first of all, the song's Hit Grade—that is, how close it was to the center of any of those sixty hit clusters. Its Hit Grade was 755, on a scale where anything above 700 is exceptional. The computer also found that "Crazy" belonged to the same hit cluster as Dido's "Thank You," James Blunt's "You're Beautiful," and Ashanti's "Baby," as well as older hits like "Let Me Be There," by Olivia Newton-John, and "One Sweet Day," by Mariah Carey, so that listeners who liked any of those songs would probably like "Crazy," too. Finally, the computer gave "Crazy" a Periodicity Grade—which refers to the fact that, at any given time, only twelve to fifteen hit clusters are "active," because from month to month the particular mathematical patterns that excite music listeners will shift around. "Crazy" 's periodicity score was 658—which suggested a very good fit with current tastes. The data said, in other words, that "Crazy" was almost certainly going to be huge—and, sure enough, it was.
I looked around and found this interview with the company owner on BBC radio, which actually plays a bit of music that their software predicted would be a hit, and found this song by an unsigned artist on myspace that is supposed to rank as a potential hit.
Understandably, a lot of people are unhappy about this. Here's a link to another blog that sees this development as us getting closer to machines dictating to us what sounds good, and hypothesizes that if a machine had delivered a mathematical judgment on Elvis or the Beatles, they may never have gone on to make some of the greatest pop music of all time.
Listening to the hits of the system predicted, it does seem to me that the software really is latching on to some quality of popular songs. The unsigned bands it hails differ a lot from Gnarls Barkley and Norah Jones in terms of style, but they share a similar sonic quality. Lots of reverb, with the notes leaking on to one another. And while its hard for a mere human to describe in words, The melodies all have a similar lilting, comforting quality.
Those qualities may not be the only things that matter in music. I actually don't always prefer these types of songs, even if I acknowledge that the artists that deliver this type of sound always seem to become more popular than the ones I really love. But on a basic level, if you want to find a song that will register on a similar level to James Blunt's "You're Beautiful" or Dido's "Thank You", it really does seem that it could help find those tunes.
I have two problems with it though-
1. Its predictions are tied to the past, not the future.
The software works by comparing the mathematical formula of new tracks to the formulas of thousands of billboard charting hit songs (and thousands more non-billboard charting non-hits), to see which patterns the new song are closer to.
Norah Jones, James Blunt and the song "Crazy" are all quite good. They're also quite conventional, and don't particularly differ from anything that was popular 30 years ago. (With their bizarre stage presence, Gnarls Barkley may seem to break this mold. But actually, the music is sampled from an old song from the 60's, and some have attributed its success to its classic qualities)
For now, that pattern works great. However, if this software became standardized, and trial and error became completely eliminated, no radically different music would ever get a shot. Then the "hit clusters" that the software tracks would stagnate to what had gained popularity before the software became standard. And we'd be stuck listening to what was a considered a hit up until 2007, with no further variation.
Would this software have stopped the fathers of rock and roll from getting big, just because they sounded sonically dissimilar to Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby, or whatever other crooner was popular before they came along? What about Little Richard? What about Chuck Berry? What about those thumping beats? I don't know much about how music looks on a spectrograph, but I suspect that those spiking metronomes would have made those songs look extremely different from hits of years past. It sure as hell wouldn't look like "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt. Sure, the software would match songs by those artists to one of its 60 "hit clusters"...now. But people have to make the judgments on new hit clusters in the first place. I suspect that in the recent past, some of those hit clusters didn't exist.
What about techno? What about Missy Elliot's "Pass that Dutch", a hit from years ago that used a digeridoo and layers of handclaps for its rhythm section? I don't doubt it shared a lot of qualities with hits of the past...but it also had a lot of very different qualities that likely would have sabotaged its Platinum Blue rating, at least at the time.
What about rap? Would it have liked Run DMC's first album back in the early 80's? What about techno? Would it have forecasted the success of The Prodigy's "Firestarter" -a massive worldwide hit consisting of electronic squeals and a ranting punk- back in the late 90's?
Now, you may hate techno and rap, and see that as a sign that the "James Blunt-ness meter" is doing its job. But that brings me to my next point.
2. There's no accounting for taste, and some people's tastes aren't profitable.
Actually, this reminds me of another Gladwell article, about how food companies started to look for one perfect flavor for a product, because one that pleases everyone equally often turns out to be pretty bland.
So instead of settling for one spaghetti sauce, that got the best overall average score, say, 6.5/10, they started putting out 3 or more flavors that each got scores of, say, 8/10 with a third of the population, even if each flavor's overall numbers were dragged down in the overall average by other people that hated it just as strongly. That's why, say, extra spicy chips are profitable. If it was the only flavor, 70% of the population would avoid it altogether. But the other 30% of the population prefer it over all else.
Apparently, the same thing goes for music. If you listen to the BBC radio broadcast above, someone designs the worst possible song by doing a profile of things about music everyone hates. And yet, and yet...he goes on to say that there are still several hundred people that prefer that particular type of song to all else. They might be the smallest group of all. But they're still out there.
And here's the thing- if your group is small enough, you might find that companies don't want to cater to you. Even the 3-30 major flavors of a given spaghettis sauce remain, to some extent, compromises between what you and millions of other people want. For example, my favorite pizza has lebanese donair kebab meat, feta cheese, banana peppers, black olives, onions and mushrooms. But I don't expect to see it sold pre-made at the supermarket anytime soon. To make everyone as happy as possible, Companies would have to put out hundreds of variations of their products, and that just isn't profitable on a mass scale.
In music, however, we already have those hundreds of variations. Tens of thousands actually, if only by trial error. So while the software may make the lowest common denominators easiest to strike on, and make the business more profitable, if you're a music fan that listens to 5 or more new albums a month, this kind of standardization could actually hurt you.
I listen to a lot of mainstream stuff too, but one of my favorite CDs a few years ago was by a failed white rapper called Cage that rapped about getting beaten by his biological father as a child over acoustic guitars. No-one else I've played it to likes it much. If Platinum Blue analyzed it, it would almost certainly give it the thumbs down. (And rightfully so, at least from a profit point of view -It didn't sell jack). But I would be a lot worse off if the machine had made the decision to cut it. And your own personal Cage could get the cut too.
Interesting article here about the unelectability of Hillary Clinton. In match-ups against the Republican front-runners, Clinton loses where Obama would win (or at least is in much greater danger of it). The argument then is that if you're dead set on Clinton then vote for her, but if you're on the fence, the smart choice is for Obama. Clinton is only viewed favorably by 50% of the population, and disliked by 46%.
As a brief qualifier to his basic point, he says:
You can imagine Obama running a horrible general election campaign and becoming less popular. No doubt his favorable ratings would drop a bit in the face of Republican attacks, as would hers.
But actually, I disagree about Clinton dropping at similar rates.
Clinton has already hit rock bottom in terms of public perception. Everyone knows who Hillary Clinton is, and formed a hard opinion of her years ago. The reason she looks like a bad match-up with poor ratings is because she's been sent through the Republican wringer already.
But even after 16 years of attacks, books and FOX news, she won't budge below 50%, and might even start to creep up a bit as she gets her message out. She's already been swift-boated within an inch of her life, and she holds approval with half the population? Thats actually pretty impressive. Bill Clinton himself rarely got above 60, and that was considered good.
So while her favorable ratings could fluctuate, the changes she'd see in polls this year would be very different from the ones he'd be bound to see. Obama is the golden boy right now, but that won't last forever. Its hard to remember now, but when he won the primary, John Kerry was a war hero made of steel. By the time they were done with him, he was a pathetic flip-flopper. The truth is none of us really know that much about Obama, except that he seems really interesting and promising. It's the political honeymoon for the new face. But that phase will pass, and fair or not, he'll get a beating, and look like a different person to us once he's through it.
All this comes when I'm having second thoughts about him. I'm beginning to notice that while Obama does great speeches, he's pretty lightweight when it comes to policy. When you put aside all the media frenzy about being Clinton being too frigid, etc, and just listen to her speak, she has a really impressive grasp on policy. Obama is inspirational, but I can't help think the job requires more than that.
I was just watching the SC debates, and Clinton came out with all kinds of great ideas for the economy -a 90-day moratorium on interests rates to try to make workouts for families close to losing their homes, energy bill tax credits, etc etc. She really had it down, it was impressive. They were some of the first good, concrete policy ideas I've heard this whole season.
Then Obama spoke, and I think he started out with a long, rising analogy to Martin Luther King, before offering a simple plan that sounded like a really basic version of Clinton's, but with less detail and thought. And as good as he was with the abstractions, for the first time I thought, "You know what? That's just not enough".
The reign of Abe, our last, conservative Prime Minister, is still not over, it seems. Right on the heels of mandatory fingerprinting for all foreigners here, the government now wants to implement mandatory Japanese tests for people that want work visas. How so, and to what extent? Well, we really don't know yet. Check out what the BBC is saying so far:
Officials say Japan's Foreign Minister, Masahiko Komura, has long held the view that it would be better if long-term visitor could speak Japanese.
Mr Komura says society benefits from foreigners speaking Japanese
He says it would improve their quality of life, and society as a whole here would benefit too.
Officials are quoted as saying that adding a language requirement to the visa application process could help to combat illegal immigration or terrorism.
But some here fear that requiring all foreign workers to learn Japanese before they arrive could harm Tokyo's efforts to attract international business and to compete with other Asian cities like Singapore and Hong Kong.
Edit- that didn't work...let me try again...
I've been thinking about this for a while, but didn't post it because I thought it would look like a downer, or some kind of existential crisis. It's not, really...just a reflection on getting older, and leaving my twenties. If I sound like I'm puffing myself up or egotistical, keep in mind I'm talking about my self-image then, not now.
When I was younger I assumed I knew it all, I guess all young people do, but I was so sure of myself that I assumed it was different for me. Outside of one kid I knew that built a laser-beam for his sixth-grade science project, I always thought I was smarter than anyone, and that I could understand or do anything as well as anyone else. This isn't to say I was always the best at what I did, or the most successful academically. But I saw the hard work people that excelled put into what they did. I knew it didn't come any easier to them than it would to me in the same situation. So even when I wasn't the best, I could safely say that that was because I wasn't trying to be. My interests were music and literature, and I was happy and comfortable in that sphere. It was a rationalization, I know, but it was a rationalization I believed.
I coasted through high school and graduated on the honors roll without any real effort. I could have done better, but I did well enough to keep myself satisfied. I breezed through college. I did sales in banking and racked up the most for the financial quarters I was there without much work. I figured out what I had to do, and once I had done that, it wasn't too hard. I learned to speak Japanese quickly compared to most people I knew teaching in the same city. I've met a lot of people that have better Japanese than me since, but that was how it seemed at the time.
Then I came to Fukuoka and started my Masters degree. A lot of my classmates had scores on the MATs in the 99th percentile, but I didn't feel like anyone had anything over me in the program. For a while things went on about the same as always.
But as time has gone on, I've found myself exposed to more and more things that while masterable, take significantly greater investments of time and energy to fully understand than I'm used to. I got into Connectionism a few years ago, and found myself reading books about it at a rate of only a few pages a day.
Then a few weeks ago, I read about scientists creating a brain in a petri dish out of rat neurons that can fly a jet simulator, basically, a real-world, technological success of connectionist theory. But when I rushed to read the papers to find out how they did it, I found that there was years of basic biology I needed to understand it. Realistically, I'll likely never get to the point where I can do that kind of thing myself.
Recently, I needed a computer program that could identify what words do and don't co-occur in two separate corpuses. Not knowing where to start, I emailed the entrepreneur turned MIT prof Philip Greenspun (whose blog you can find in my blogroll), and he told me what I was asking was an elementary thing that he would ask his first-year undergraduates to design. He told me it could simply be done in Microsoft Excel. What seemed so high-level to me was child's play to people in his field. Meanwhile, my eyes glaze over a bit just trying to get my head around very basic Bayesian filters...even though I really am interested in that stuff, and don't have my old stock excuse of "I could learn it if I wanted to" anymore. I just don't have the math background, and it would take real work to get it.
Right now I'm learning about statistics and statistical software, and writing papers on vocabulary testing. The author of the book I'm reading, Andy Field, is a psychologist. People I know in education talk about how shoddy research can be in our field, and how we need to get up to snuff by reading his stuff. The psychologist Andy Field, on the other hand, laughs about how psychology and the social sciences are dodgy and irreputable as a whole compared to "real" science, apparently feeling the same envy.
In short, As far as my liberal arts education can take me, I've arrived, and can go no further. I've reached the limit to what I can do without working hard for it. My interests have expanded into science, but I don't have the background education to dive into it. I'm interested in programming, but I don't have the basic chops to do it.
Remember that kid that built the laser beam for a sixth grade science project? He's still out there. Isolated in a small town he might seem like an anomaly, but in the wider world there are circles and communities of people all capable of doing those things. There are entire institutions where you need to have done stuff like that as a kid just to be eligible to get into the door, let alone succeed. There are fields where you need to have an IQ of 120 just to be considered a dummy.
So do I still think I'm smart? Yeah, sure...but I'm probably not as smart as I always liked to believe, and at any rate, the free ride is over. I've gotten as far as I can just coasting. From here on out if I want to do more with myself, I'm really going to have to work.
Pretty sweet. I can't believe I picked this up for fifty bucks while stopping by for a battery replacement.
You know whats really weird? Stopping to think how much technology has changed since you were a kid. When I was seven in the mid 80's we had a wall rotary dial phone and two TV channels via antenna. Now I can take pictures, listen to thousands of songs, send and receive letters from around the world, make phone calls, and even buy things with a tiny device that fits in the palm of my hand.
I've wrote about how Japan is sliding in electronics, but when it comes to Cell Phones this country is still doing great stuff. My current Casio cell phone has screaming 3G internet speeds, a fullscale web browser, mp3 player, great email functions, over a Gigabyte of storage with the SD card, and even a scanner that allows me to use it as a debit card at stores. I can type on it almost as fast as on a regular keyboard. I used to think of cheap digital watches when I thought of Casio, but this is a great product.
The only weak link on it is the camera, which is a mere 2 Megapixels (Every original photo you see on this blog was taken with it). I was never a camera guy, and 2 megapixels seemed fine when I first got it, but when I see photos elsewhere these days they make my own look pretty lacking. Check out these photos on Michaelpanda's blog, for example. No matter how I angle the shots, my cameraphone just can't get that level of color and definition.
My cell phone's battery was starting to conk out after two years, and was starting to drain in the middle of the day, so I went down to the AU shop to order a new one. As it turned out replacement batteries were only 3000 yen, or a bit under $30. While the saleswoman was going about making the order, I started browsing the new cells, and ever the salesperson, she asked me if anything caught my interest.
I actually didn't see anything that was all that better than my current phone, which was a little disappointing. I asked her if AU had anything by Casio, the maker of my current phone. I was worried they had stopped making phones for AU, since I didn't see anything. "Oh, we have a new Casio too", she said, popping into the back of the store and coming back with the phone pictured above. It's exactly the same as my current phone, only with a 5.1 Megapixel Camera. It has 9-point auto-focus, a high speed shutter, a big 2.8" 480x800 pixel VGA display, and even a flash. Its considered to be the first camera phones in the world that can be used as a full-one replacement to high-quality digital cameras (Link to mobile metalism, where this info and the above picture were taken from).
You'd think it would cost an arm and a leg, right? Well actually, since its been 2 years since my last cell phone, I've been accumulating points with my provider, and if I get it now, it'll only cost $50! A new battery for my cell phone would have cost 30 anyway, so basically for an extra 20, I can get a high-quality digital camera that if I bought standalone would likely cost me a couple hundred bucks.
I'll pick it up later today. I'll be in Osaka this weekend, where I can pick up a 2GB microSD card for it. Maybe I'll get some good test run photos out there while I'm at it.
Bonus extra nerdy tech details: It also has a built-in Japanese-English Dictionary, and the web browser has flash support, which means I can probably even check out youtube videos with it. Awesome!
When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth.
If it was a little shorter and more pithy, you could put it in a book of quotations.
Check out the whole interview from 1996. He predicted that Microsoft wouldn't find a way to control the web and that the desktop would become less relevant, and amazon and his own iTunes service. He even predicted how long it would take. Basically, he was one of the few internet pundits in the mid 90's that really knew what he was talking about. And he became a billionaire betting on his own ideas.
So Apple announced their brand-new, ultra-slim laptop Macbook Air today. Should you buy it? Check out my comparison chart, put together in Microsoft Word, then converted to a jpeg so I can actually get it online without blogger having a hernia. You can click to enlarge.
I've got to say, I'm disappointed. I plan on spending my computer budget for my new job on a macbook pro soon, and I was waiting for Apple to make their big announcement about a new laptop this week. The Macbook Pro hasn't seen a big change in a long time, and I figured it was due.
All kinds of rumors were in the air...the new laptop would be ultra-thin, have a multi-touch touchpad a la the iphone, and a solid state flash-memory hard drive. All cool stuff.
It all came true...but none of it for the regular lines of full-scale, fully functional computers. Rather than putting a single one of any of those improvements into their existing product line, they made a separate laptop called the Macbook Air. It's thin as a wafer, for sure. But you pay $1800-3000 US for it, more than any of the basic Macbooks, all for the privilege of a laptop thats thinner (not smaller in terms of width or length, just thinner).
All those cuts in power and memory, no DVD or CD drives, let alone burning, one USB port, so you're constantly unplugging and re-plugging in devices...all so its a little thinner? As you can see from the pictures, the original Macbooks were pretty thin as it stood. Getting it thinner is a nice little feature if manageable...but sacrificing the optical drive, a third of the clock speed, half the ram and two thirds of the hard drive space just to do it, and then charging more for it on top of all that? What a waste.
Its typical form over function. A year or two from now, they'll have a laptop with all the regular features in a similarly slim casing for a competitive price, and it'll be worth it. But until then, this is just first-generation bait for the early adopters that will shell out any price for the latest Apple gadget.
I really can't have a blog without spending at least one entry writing about how much I love the HBO show The Wire. If you're in the habit of reading blogs you've probably already heard of it, but in the slim chance you haven't, I'll do my duty (If it helps persuade you to watch it, The Wire is Barack Obama's favorite TV show).
The Wire was originally a cop show set in Baltimore written and produced by an ex- Baltimore schoolteacher and homicide cop of 30 years, and an ex-Baltimore Sun reporter that had covered multiple beats throughout the city. Between the two of them they had extensive knowledge of the city's government, social fabric and other institutions, and set about to make a show that told the entire city's story.
In the first, relatively unremarkable season, the most striking difference between The Wire and other cop shows was that it spent equal time on the drug dealers that the cops were trying to catch. So while the cops tried to crack a case, you'd get familiar with the culprits, and see what they were doing to avoid detection. You'd see the rivalries between the various drug gangs, and how the turf wars claimed victims and brought violence to the streets.
To be sure, there were horrible, coldblooded people in that world, but it went beyond the standard good-guy-versus-bad-guy template of TV to show the decay of the neighborhood since the 80's, and how the drug trade pulled in young kids. It also showed the restraints the police were under in terms of budget problems within the police department, and the futility the cops sometimes felt locking up cycle after cycle of young kids selling drugs on the corners, without ever addressing the core societal ills that led to them getting there in the first place.
Gradually, The Wire began to expand out. It brought the higher ups in the Police Department into the story, and the pressure they were under to deliver hard stats to the politicians that held the purse strings on their budgets. Then it brought in the mayor and the municipal government. Then it spawned out into education, to show the challenges that the schools have trying to give the neighborhood's kids a better future and keep them off the streets, even as Bush's No Child Left Behind act forces them to focus on standardized test scores for subject material that teachers can barely keep their students in their seats long enough to learn to read. Most recently, it brought in the Media, to show what the newspapers do or don't do to tell the voters about the system's ills.
The show became a sprawling, multi-scene and multi-setting affair with dozens of central characters. The fascinating thing is that often, characters from these various institutions rarely even meet one another or share scenes together, and yet, the actions of one institution can affect the others profoundly. Ultimately, The Wire became a show about the city of Baltimore itself, as much a docudrama as an action-packed fill-in for HBO post-Sopranos.
Anyway, if you want some advice on some excellent home viewing, rent/buy the DVDs of Season 4, by the far the best season to date. Don't make the mistake of starting with season 1, which is just a straight up cop show and will likely bore you. A lot of people I recommended it to insisted on doing that, and complained to me that it really wasn't that great for months until they finally got around to Seasons 3 and 4 and saw the light. Season 4 is a different beast altogether, with largely a different cast and set of characters. If you like it, you can always work your way backwards.
One other thing- Be sure to watch the episodes in order. Its not like the Sopranos or Sex and the City, where the individual episodes can stand on their own. The individual seasons stand alone really well, but as far as the individual episodes go if you don't start with the first episode of a season and end with the last, you'll be totally lost. Each season is basically a big, sprawling televised novel, with each episode functioning as a chapter.
Season 5 is just starting, I'll probably post my thoughts on it as it unfolds..
You know all those stories you've heard about how outrageously expensive fresh food is in Japan, like $7 for a tiny amount of strawberries? Forget about it. Those days are over, at least they are in Kyushu. I once read that half of Japan's food is imported, but I suspect that most of the other 50% is grown right here. Kyushu has more oranges, mangoes and vegetables than it knows what to do with, and they unload them in Fukuoka as if they were stolen goods. Check out these details-
A big bag of tangerines. As you can see, I've already eaten several. I'm not good with weights, but it feels like a good kilogram. The cost? 100 yen, or about 0.94 Canadian.
Also, a bag of little onions, the same weight as the tangerines, for 94 cents. A head of lettuce for 45 cents.
Strawberries...about 1.80 Canadian.
As for Dairy, this liter of milk cost about 88 cents. I just checked, and someone on a Canadian shopper's forum was spreading word that Loblaw's are selling a liter of milk for $2.86...on sale.
I remember moving to Fukuoka and thinking, "hey, that's a good deal!", but that was it. I had just come back from Thailand after a year, so everything seemed expensive regardless. But seeing the prices in Canada last time I was back, it strikes me how low the cost of living has gotten here. The stereotype of Japan is that its expensive, but with prices like this, its the best of both worlds. I earn far more money than I ever made in Canada, pay far lower income taxes, and even have a lower cost of living. I remember back in Canada no matter how good my job was and how much I was earning, feeling like everything everywhere was just a little more expensive than it should have been, and getting the feeling that prices were constantly creeping up, up, up. No matter how hard I tried to save, just being alive, going out a bit and shopping for groceries seemed to be a swift kick to my bank balance. Unless you were a doctor or something, those money matter were a reality of life.
But you know what? I never get that here. Japan has been in staglflation ever since I got here, and if anything prices seem to get cheaper, even as I get further in my career and earn more. The money just keeps coming, and my lifestyle just isn't expensive enough to do any real harm to it.
Off topic bonus- Two pieces Whale Bacon Sushi, $1.50!
If you're from Honshu (Japan's main island), most of the stuff I write on here probably doesn't surprise you or strike you as that unusual. But as big and wonderful as Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka are, today I'll write about something that you really have to come down to Kyushu for- pet goats.
People keep goats as pets not too far from Fukuoka city. In a small town about 20 minutes train ride north of Hakata station, you can see people taking them out on walks. A real estate agent in that town kept 15 of them to entertain customers' children, like a petting zoo.
My friend and her husband recently bought a house out in the countryside, and had trouble taking care of the weeds. They heard that the real estate agent was giving away the goats, and decided to pick up a couple to help with the problem. They don't even have to feed them, just let them eat stray grass. They got a boy and a girl, and they've already had two children. I suspect more are on the way! How do you think the Real Estate agent wound up with fifteen goats?
They're incredibly docile. They never leave the property, even without fences, not so much out of obedience as out of fear. When my friends' husband picks up the male, he just flops around.
They often come up to the house. My friend will be making coffee, and suddenly a goat will appear at the window, staring in at her accusingly.
They seem really happy with them, and the yard is utterly weedless. The only problem now? Dealing with all the goat droppings. Apparently as sweet and domesticated as they are, they're far too stupid to toilet train.
Describing the remote control for the new Nintendo Wii system as one of the most common and sophisticated computer input devices in the world, a researcher at the Carnegie Mellon Institute demonstrates how the technology can be used for all kinds of new groundbreaking applications. Even if you could care less about video games, this is really cool stuff-
Check out his homepage here.
I'm noticing a trend in Fukuoka ...a scooter or motorbike will go by with the driver pushing his friend on a bicycle either with his foot or his left hand, so that the guy on the bicycle is traveling alongside at the same speed. I saw it once just south of Momochi and thought it was just two friends that had thought of it. Then a couple nights ago, I saw it up in the hills around my house.
Has anyone seen people do that elsewhere?
It's funny what I do and don't get around to posting on this blog. Product placement on a trashy TV show will get 300 words, while major life events don't get write ups. 6 months after the fact, I still haven't written about my last major hitch-hiking trip to Okinawa. The main reason is media; blogger still isn't very good at uploading photos, so I put off photo-heavy posts a lot. But I've got more time now, so here it is.
I was spurned on by Kayne, who under my encouragement was hitch-hiking from Fukuoka to Nagoya. I spent a lot of time on the phone with him helping him find highway entrances, and realized that I was living vicariously through him. The summer was wide ahead of me, and I was sitting at home marking papers. I packed a few things and headed out the door.
First I went down to Kumamoto, which resulted in this post about Net Cafes doubling as hotels. Next I headed down to Ebino Kogen, a national park in in south central Kyushu, where I came across these wild deer. This is at a high altitude, making it a great break from the hot, sticky, near-tropical summer below.
While up there, the rational side of me started to think about going back. But I then I felt the call of the wild and the open road.
The one place in Japan I still hadn't been to was Okinawa, an archipelago of hundreds of islands that stretches for 1000 kilometers from the southern end of Japan (My island, Kyushu), down to Taiwan. In North America, its probably best known for the large US Army bases on the main island. But Okinawa is actually a very popular vacation destination in Japan. It has tropical weather and some of the best beaches in the world. It also has an interesting history, because the residents are not actually Japanese. They were colonized, and shifted to speaking Japanese earlier last century. I had always meant to go, but had just never got around to it.
"Why not just go from here straight to Okinawa?" I thought. "I can catch a ferry from Kagoshima. No plan, no preparation...just go, right now". So I did.
I admit I had moments of regret on the ferry. It was 24 HOURS. I made mincemeat of the two books I had bought in Kagoshima for the trip earlier on, and fond myself stuck with nothing to do. There were no beds or anything, just blankets laid on the floor, with everyone lying on them cramped in like human sardines. Being that close to strangers on a train for a few hours is manageable. But when both of your elbows are squeezed against the bodies of strangers for that long with no privacy, it can get really aggravating. But as it turned out, Okinawa was worth the wait.
I started out in Naha, the largest city on the south end of the main island, with the intention of winding up North, where the population thins out and the best beaches can be found. On the way to the highway, I came across this castle-
This is the highway entrance I started hitching on. Note the stone Lion protecting the expressway from typhoons on the left (Every house has one in front of it. They need all the luck they can get, because the typhoons can be brutal down there).
Very quickly I got a ride with a nice woman who had lived in the US for a few years as a child. She took me all the way to Naga, the largest town in the north. On the way, we stopped at a longstanding Okinawan tradition, a Drive-in A&W -straight out of the 50's, with waitresses that bring your food and root beer right to your parked car.
Back in Canada, outside of a few mall outlets, A&W is becoming a thing of the past, an also-ran of the fast food wars. The days of big drive-in A&W's are over; I think I remember being to one once out in rural Nova Scotia as a very small child. But in Okinawa they're everywhere. Americans brought the franchise to the islands when the bases were established. In the outside world, they lost ground to McDonalds, but here in Okinawa they still thrive, relics from the 50's still wildly popular in a little alcove that time forgot. (That's not all the Americans brought- Spam is a part of the local cuisine, with recipes that integrate spiced, canned meat into the traditional dishes).
I asked her where the good beaches were, and she told me about a little island off the northern coast, unbeknown even to most Japanese tourists. She said the beaches were so good they surprised even her, and she's lived in Okinawa most of her life. The ferry port wasn't so far from Naga, so she drove me right there, and even called up the guest house she had stayed at to make a reservation for me.
Here's a shot from the ferry. To the east, you can see a bridge connecting the main island to a smaller, closer one. Look at how bright and luminescent the water is under the bridge.
The island was great. I'll cop out and show you a picture of it from a calender on the wall of the guest house dining room. Its a better view of it than I could give you from the ground-
I rented a bicycle and cycled out to the flat land in the front of this picture. The beaches were fantastic. The amazing thing was that it seemed like no-one else was there. There were a couple locals drinking beer on the other end of the beach, but it seemed like a quiet ritual they went through at the end of every workday. Other than that no-one else was around. The water was like liquid glass. I floated around and drank up the tranquility.
Nightfall hit, and when it did, the island was pitch black. In fact, on clear nights, Iheya is famous for its incredible views of stars. As you know, most big telescopes are located in remote areas of the southern hemisphere, to escape the light pollution of nearby cities that glares out the view of the stars. So consider Iheya- deep in the middle of the Pacific, far even from the small city of Naha, with no street lights or urbanization. The island hosts a "moonlight marathon" every year.
I didn't get to enjoy those views though, because the sky clouded up, and threatened to rain. I biked back as fast as I could, I was stranded far from anywhere on a bicycle. Luckily I had an fold-up umbrella in my backpack, and I found a few sheltered areas to wait out the heaviest rainfall. Eventually I made it back to relative civilization (i.e, a couple houses) I found a little general store further down the road and stood around drinking Okinawan jasmine tea.
When the rain passed I made it back to the guest house for dinner. There was no menu per se, you just told the Mom what to cook, and she made it. The food was fantastic and I have to say, I like Okinawan food better than Japanese. The families kids were excited to have a guest, and showed me how to make a gun that shoots rubber bands out of disposable chopsticks and toothpicks.
In the morning I took the ferry back to the mainland. Trying to find my way back south, I began to realize just how isolated the little port to Iheya was. I never would have found it by myself. Going there with a someone who knew where it was was one thing, getting back myself was another. There was a spaghetti string of tiny roads on my atlas, and it was hard to make it all out. Walking through the farmland, I came across these tombs, very different from any I've seen in Japan, which tends to have graves similar to what we have back home-
Eventually I made it to Naga and began hitching down the west coast back to Naha. There were some great beaches along the way. Here's a nice one. It's too bad that the sky was so cloudy (it had just finished raining remember). Just imagine this scene with a blue sky.
I had a lot of little adventures and turns along the way, but this post is already really long and I should cut it short. A young family took me to see bulls raised for bullfighting, which is popular in Okinawa. Here's Dad with one of the contestants. I hope I get a chance to check out a match next time I go.
Finally, just for the hell of it, here's a guest house in Naha I saw an ad for, and snapped a shot of so I could find it next time I went. About 9 dollars a night for a dormitory room, 18 for a regular room. And it doesn't even look too bad, does it?
More on Tokyo... it takes a while to get around to uploading all the media. I took a walk through Yoyogi Park to go to Harajuku, to go see the Harajuku girls. It was late Sunday morning, maybe approaching 12.
Tokyo is a massive, endless concrete structure, pulsating with the energy of tens of millions of people. There are as many people in Tokyo's greater metro area than there are in the entire country of Canada. The people are endless and inescapable. Nowhere can you get away.
Except of course, in the park. Well, not get away completely exactly...the park is crowded too. But at least enjoy some of life's simpler, less frenetic pleasures. The first thing I saw was dozens of young moms and dads playing catch with their children, and running around throwing Frisbees. It was good to know that even in Tokyo, there was a place where kids could do something as basic to childhood as that.
It seemed like everyone was out having fun and enjoying the day. Next, I came across this group of people. Everyone was standing around clapping while a team of Brazilians and Japanese dressed all in white danced played Capoeira (edit, thanks to Nessa). It's a combination of dancing and fighting, in this case, with a lot more emphasis on the dancing, since a lot of the Japanese sparring with the Brazilians looked like they were new at it. They sort of play fought, doing dancy roundhouses at one another. Eventually one would get tuckered out (usually the novices rather than the Brazillian pro), and they'd tag someone else, and then they'd enter the circle and continue the dance.
Scarcely 20 meters away, this group was playing bongo drums. It seemed like a pretty mixed, all ages crowd.
Scarcely 20 meters away from that, this large group was dancing in silence (Don't be fooled by the music in the background,...that's just spillover from all these other guys).
This video doesn't really do it justice...some are dressed up in black suits and hats with sunglasses, like Yakuza. Some look like amusement park characters. Most perplexing, many are wearing manga-like masks of expressionless men.
Here are some skateboarders-
There were rollerbladers, people playing catch, relaxing in the sun, playing their guitars, dancing...basically, just out enjoying their Sunday. Watching it all, it struck me how cosmopolitan, multicultural, good-natured and inclusive it all it was, and how it broke the stereotype of Japan as this monogamous place where people march around in identical suits and never stop to smell the flowers.
Then I saw the park rules. Like all rules, it makes use of colorful cartoon characters to soften the tone, but the message is clear. See if you can tell what's NOT allowed.
No public performances. No drumming. No singing. No dancing. No radio-controlled planes or cars. No roller-blading. No baseball. No catch. No Frisbees. No soccer. No loitering.
Basically, as far as the city is concerned, the park is for walking, and maybe a little jogging, only. Even sitting around for too long is prohibited. Everything you just saw and read about above, not just the wacky wonderful stuff, but even the simple details like families playing with their kids, was in violation of the rules.
In smaller towns, people would abide. But Tokyo is ripping at the seams, and the city planners just won't acknowledge that its people need the room to unwind and play. Japan is still conservative, even if its people and youth are starting to have other ideas about what should be okay.
Just taking notice of the little things...the plastic things holding up construction barriers in this city are all shaped like little monkeys.
A lot of thought goes into construction aesthetics. The hilly roads around my place are painted red, for example. I met a guy in road construction that told me a lot of thought and meetings went into choosing that color. Some people wanted yellow, some beige.
Some construction planner was probably looking at these plastic rigs and said, "you know, if you make the centerpiece the head and these bits the limbs, they could look like monkeys. Wouldn't that be pleasing for everyone?
A major sports club in Japan has this picture featured in their advertising right now. In Nishijin in Fukuoka there's a huge poster of this looking out into the busy street.
