happylife

Foreigners in Tokyo

Foreigners in Tokyo have apparently increased while I was in Vancouver. This road sign backs up the fact; it has a warning message in four languages including English, Korean and Chinese besides Japanese. Someone say that Japan is getting more dangerous year by year because of the foreigners. That is true in a sense; the criminal ratio caused by foreigners is very high. However, I think the biggest reason for their crimes is on our side. As you know, Japan is one of the most exclusive country and it's very difficult for foreigners to live in this society. Foreigners without any Japanese connections cannot even rent an apartment if they had enough money. My American friend was saying that he was interviewed several times by the police while he was living in Japan for only one year. As I was treated in a very good manner when I was living in Vancouver, I sometimes feel sorry about the unkind attitude of Japanese society to foreigners. If it is more friendly and pleasant for foreigners, the crimes by foreigners would decrease. As we can't go back to the age of isolationism, we have to be more open just like Vancouver.

Spacious?

This picture shows the inside of the typical train car in Tokyo. It looks rather spacious against any other small things in this country, doesn't it? Of course, there is a reason for this spaciousness which is very urgent and pitiful. This large floor and long seats set along the wall are designed so that it can carry passengers as many as possible at one time. It might be incredible but this car is filled with passengers more than its capacity every morning and evening. Especially during the rush hours, extra station staff appears to crowd passengers into the car and railroad crossings are closed by those frequent trains. I remember someone described this scene as a slave ship in the present world. The more miserable thing is that most of the passengers have to be packed for more than one hour by twice every day. As they have no room to spread a newspaper, various electronic gadgets were invented such as a Walkman or a cellphone with digital television, but I don't think it is an essential solution. We all have to change our life style and the Internet can be the help to some degree. Do they really have to go to company everyday?

Vignette

I'm always carrying a compact digital camera so that I can take pictures of what I was fascinated. As you know, a digital camera is dramatically improving day by day; it is getting smaller and lighter with a brighter lens, a longer-life battery and more functions. Compared to an SLR (single-lens reflex) camera, it is way easier to use. As I'm not a professional cameraman, I think that the compact digital camera is the best choice for me and it is enough except for one thing. We can't usually take a beautiful vignette with a compact camera because its lens is too small and it is the major difference of pictures taken with an SLR and compact camera. To take a good picture with a compact camera, we have to care about the background. As we can't vignette the noisy background we have to think about other methods we need to delete the background by changing the angle or coming closer to the main object. What I want to mention in this article is about the third method. It is that we can use so-called a "macro mode" on most compact cameras. By just clicking the button with tulip icon, we can get a vignette like this picture with a $200 compact digital camera.

Thin client system

It is one of the most terrible experiences that our PC breaks down. It is not only the matter of the hardware itself; losing the important data and software stored in the PC is occasionally way more severe. To tell the truth, I have a tough experience in which I had to close my small business owing to my PC crash. Making a periodical backup is indispensable and effective, but it is not enough. Actually in my past case, I had a backup file which didn't work because it was specialized only to a particular type of PC and I couldn't get the same type of PC in place of my crashed one at that time. It was really a lesson to me and I've changed my way to design and create a system since then. Important system should be run on the server and should not depend on any special environment on the client. My Windows PC broke down this afternoon, but my service is still running with no problem. Only the problem is that I have no Windows PC client now and I have to spend unexpected money for it.

Getting worse

When I was a child there used to be several streets of shops in my neighborhood and we could always see a lot of house wives buying vegetables, meat and so on for the dinner every late afternoon. Most of the shops in the streets have been closed and the streets are now called "shutter streets." We can find these shutter streets all around Japan. It is like a ghost town and only the difference from the real ghost town is that there are a lot of residents in there; they don't have any other places to live in and are staying with no choice. Most house wives now do shopping in supermarkets and younger generation chooses convenience stores. Both of them are run by bigger companies with ample funds. Traditional private shops in the shutter streets seem to have no way to survive and they are vanishing one by one every day. I really miss them. I found this vegetable store in a shutter street running alone but there was no customer around there. I hope it survives even as a historic vegetable shop of 20th century in Japan.

Warped economics

Canadian dollar is now skyrocketing, especially to Japanese yen. It has accelerated since I came back to Tokyo. Fortunately or unfortunately, my decision to leave Vancouver was right; if I stayed there I would have wasted my money a lot. For example, the gas price in Vancouver was 70 cents per liter and the exchange rate was 70 yen for 1 Canadian dollar four years ago. It is now 1.20 dollars per liter and 116 yen for 1 Canadian dollar. It means that the gas price has increased almost 2.5 times just in four years. Most other things are in the similar conditions; everything is expensive and Vancouver is not an easy-to-live city any more. The Olympic Games in 2010 is one of the reason, but I think the bigger reason is on the Japan side. Although the Japanese government says that our economy is in good conditions, the interest rate cannot be raised because the economy is not so good in fact. Toyota has recorded the biggest sale, but it is a trick based on the extremely low exchange rate. Japanese yen is now too much underestimated and we will be facing a terrible backlash someday soon.

Fighting over Japan

This is not a story about political subject but about weather. Japan Meteorological Agency announced today that rainy season has begun in Tokyo. Different from the weather in Vancouver, it is rather obvious in Japan. In this season every year, northern cold airmass and southern warm airmass bump over Japan Islands and create seasonal rainy front, which moves slowly from south to north over the island and brings consisting rain for weeks. Of course we don't like this consisting, unpleasant and irritating rain, but it is indispensable for us to overcome the following dry summer; little rain in this season means serious water shortage in summer. To tell the truth, it was one of the important reasons why I lived in Vancouver for years; I dared to escape from this terrible wet season. Unfortunately I'm now in Japan and I'm really afraid of it. I'm already sweating only by thinking about it.

A happy light and chime

This is the close-up photo of my cellphone. The upper light usually indicates the radio intensity; I can use the cellphone when it is green and cannot when red. It sometimes turns into blue with a chime and I become happy. What does it mean? The cellphone can use email and I have set a special email address on it. It is so special that even I don't remember it. I made a small program on my business server so that it can send a short message to my cellphone only when my client made a payment or inquiry. It is working as a signal of income for me and that's why I become happy with the light and chime. It is not only enjoyable for me but also it is very effective for my business because I can make a quick response to my clients. Of course, this kind of idea is not my original. When I was working for the ex-company, I was forced to carry a pager always with me and it sometimes went off notwithstanding day or night whenever troubles happened on the server. I hate the pager sound and felt it was like a dog collar, but now this sound I love to listen so much that I would be happy if it disturbed my sleep.

Tokyo again

I'm already back to Tokyo and sweating a lot every day. The rainy season is coming just close. I'm not sure whether I can get through it. I have decided on this trip that I would live in Hokkaido this summer. Fortunately, I found a good room in Obihiro and already paid the rent for two months from the end of July. Thanks to the Internet, I can work every where all around the world, but it would be better if I could find a good place in Japan because I don't have to care about the visa and the exchange rate. When I was younger, I dreamed of living like a traveler, but I soon found that changing the living place daily or weekly is very tough for me. "How about monthly or yearly then?" is my current idea. If this moving goes well, I would live in the south of Japan this winter. It is very interesting to choose where to live next.

An ideal navigator

In the latter half of this trip, I rented a car with an amazing car navigation system. It was so great and useful that I could enjoy the trip without loosing my way at all. I didn't have to stop my car to read a map. All I had to do instead was setting my destination on the system by entering the name or the address of the city, the phone number of the hotel or just pointing out the goal on the map. Then the competent navigator automatically found the best route in a second and guided me with a voice navigation such as "In 500 meters, second left turn" or "right turn ahead." I though it was better than a human navigator because it never complains at me if I failed to turn. A quarrel between a driver and a navigator often occurs because of miscommunication, but this system never goes against the driver. If you can't read Japanese at all and you have to drive in Japan, it would be a good idea to rent a car with this navigation system because it has English language mode.