happylife

A tropical cafe

I spend most of time facing towards PC in my room every day. It is sometimes depressing especially when my work doesn't go well as I expect. Changing the environment around me is one of the best way I know and I sometimes go to cafes where I open my notebook PC to do work with. Different from Vancouver, it is difficult to find a good cafe in Tokyo because the land is limited. I don't like to drink a cup of coffee in a overcrowded cafe with strangers within 30cm. It's impossible to work with PC in such an environment. I was lucky to find a cafe in my neighbors which was almost ideal for me. It is a tropical and open style cafe with about ten tables. Half of them are located on a lawn garden each covered with a gazebo. The menu items are reasonable and my favorite is a glass of mango juice. Unbelievably it is in Tokyo and I can connect to the Internet with the Emobile's wireless service. It is just like a hideaway and there are always few customers. I will never write about the detailed information about the cafe because it is my secret place.

To make the most of a small parking lot

When I was walking around my home, I came across this small, private parking lot. As you can see in this picture, the car cannot be parked except on the head of this strip -- you wouldn't be able to open the any door of the car to get out because the both sides of the space are not enough. So, most of the strip can only be used as a private path to the parking lot. However, the owner of this land found a good idea to use the center part of the space as a flowerbed. Short flowers can be grown perfectly because the tires will never tread them. I think this idea might be applied to public roads. Most drivers will voluntarily slow down and never change lanes if the center part of the road would be flowerbeds.

To eat whale meat

I found this signboard in front of an old style Japanese restaurant & bar in Kushiro. One of the menu items impressed me a little. As you can see in this picture, there are four menu items on it including riceball, BBQ fish and steamed rice poured with green tea. These three are very popular menu items for most Japanese people and what do you think the rest in the red circle is? It is whale meat! Kushiro used to be one of the biggest ports for whale hunting ships and this signboard might have survived and been left in the history. As you know, Japanese have been eating whale for a long time though it is reducing now for some reasons. The world wide criticism which is sometimes  accompanied with brutal action is one of them. Another reason is that whale meat is not so tasty for most of us because we have so many other tasty and nutritious food other than whale. As for me, I have eaten whale meat only once in the last two decades and it is none of my business whether whale hunting is prohibited or protected, but I can't understand why only eating whlales are blamed while they are eating beef without any hesitation. They should recognize that we can't live without any sacrifice of other animals. I think there is no clear difference between cows and whales and it's nothing but ego to say "Don't eat whales because they are clever."

Kushiro

I was travelling around East Hokkaido Island last week. The purpose was to find a good place to stay in this summer and fortunately I found a cozy hotel in Kushiro City. The image of Kushiro is not so good for me because of the factory chimneys as you can see in this picture. It doesn't have a good hot spring either, as far as I know. However, it is clear that this city is one of the coolest cities in Japan in summer and it fits to my purpose very well. As you know, the summer in Tokyo is terrible; too hot and too humid. It's just like living in a sauna. I believe that Tokyo has already become a tropical city. So, I have to evacuate to a cooler place in summer. The hotel room is small and was damaged a little by the earthquake several years ago, but it has a sea view, it is furnished and its rent is super reasonable thanks to the hotel campaign. I'm thinking about staying there at least for one month and will decide whether to extend the stay or to move to another city.

A natural ending

Microsoft reportedly gave up the plan to purchase Yahoo. Sure, it was a quite natural ending but I was more or less relieved to hear the news because the ridiculous plan had possibly come true with the vast Microsoft money. As is admitted by a lot of people, the main stage of the software business has been changed from OS or resident software running on a single machine to networking software based on the Internet, and therefore, Microsoft business has been fundamentally at a low ebb. The problem is that they have too much money and no good idea to use it efficiently. They have to increase their income according to the principle of capitalism and sometimes do evil things just like this time. I think the only way for Microsoft to survive the next generation is to divide itself into a lot of smaller companies and laboratories. I want them not to do evil things any more if they can't make beautiful things.