Uoshin

cambecc — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 10:17:58 +0000

One of my favorite places to eat in Kichijoji is called Uoshin (魚真), an izakaya that always has an excellent selection of sashimi. They keep the two-page fresh list posted out front, hand-written everyday. They also serve various izakaya fare–most dishes based on fish–and bottles of my favorite Japanese beer, Yebisu (ヱビス). The staff are friendly and went out of their way to accommodate my family and me when we showed up not knowing what to expect. Inexplicably, some of the staff wear large, sparkling, golden bow ties. Not sure what that is about. Go early, especially on weekends, because the place is small and gets packed and/or reserved-out by 7pm. Unfortunately, its size and popularity make it rather smoky. Usually pay around 3,000 to 3,500 yen per person, beer included, and sometimes they give out multiple-use coupons good for 10% off on weekdays (excluding Fridays).

〒180-0004東京都武蔵野市吉祥寺本町2-18-8 キタガワビル2F

Kitagawa Building 2F, 2-18-8 Honcho, Kichijoji, Musashino-shi, Tokyo-to. 0422-23-2039. Open everyday until 11pm.

Update 2006-12-03: speaking of Yebisu beer, I’ve got to try the new “amber” version (see the comment section for a discussion on the pronunciation of “ヱ”), which I saw for sale right next to the register at the local ~~7-Eleven~~ 7&iHoldings.

Meat furniture

cambecc — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 07:17:51 +0000

Yes, meat furniture.

Vacation idea

cambecc — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 11:00:59 +0000

When you really need to get away, there’s the island of Tristan da Cunha:

Tristan da Cunha is an active volcanic island with rare wildlife & home to 270 British Citizens living in the world’s most isolated settlement of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, in the often hostile South Atlantic Ocean.
…
Trips to the most isolated community in the world need to be well planned… There are no package tours for independent travellers, no hotels, no airport, no holiday reps., no night clubs no restaurants, no jet skis nor safe sea swimming. Visitors are severaly limited due to lack of available shipping berths. Nevertheless, Tristan da Cunha is one of the world’s most sought after destinations for travellers determined to find a special place.

Roads

cambecc — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 16:08:35 +0000

Japan has some pretty interesting and complex roads. Browsing around with Google Earth, you might find, for example, the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line (東京湾アクアライン):

The Trans-Tokyo Bay Highway, also known as the Tokyo Bay Aqualine, is a 15.1 km marine crossing through the middle of Tokyo Bay… With the journey from Kawasaki [川崎] to Kisarazu [木更津] now taking just 15 minutes, the highway plays a vital economic role in integrating these two areas of prime industrial importance. The areas are otherwise separated by a 100-km journey through the heart of metropolitan Tokyo, so the Aqualine also eases traffic congestion in the broader metropolitan road network.

Apparently, the 31-year, $11.2 Billion project is sinking further into debt:

Traffic across the bridge (around 10000-15000 daily) is only about 1/3 of that originally planned. The toll was 4000 yen originally, but was lowered to 3000 yen in 2000 to increase traffic. Together with the high construction cost and high maintenance costs, the project is reportedly going further into debt each year.

See it for yourself:

Tokyo Aqua-Line, Kisaruazu side

Tokyo Aqua-Line, Kawasaki side

Following a tunnel a short distance north from here, you’ll find Haneda Airport (羽田空港), where the access roads seem unnecessarily complicated:

Haneda Airport

Actually, Narita Airport (成田国際空港) has pretty complicated access roads as well. The designers must have really liked curvy roads.

Narita Airport

The taxiways are also pretty impressively paved. But really, one can only speculate as to the constraints placed on the designers. I mean, when you have to build one of the world’s busiest airports around people like these guys…:

Narita Obstacle

…it’s gotta make your job difficult. But I bet the engineers enjoyed building the following interchange near Nagoya (名古屋). Plenty of space, plenty of steel and concrete:

Big interchange near Nagoya

This next one must have been fun, too. Looks like a double-decker interchange still under construction:

Two-level interchange near Nagoya

Unfortunately, if you give construction companies too much money, they come up with something like this thing (also under construction):

Complex interchange near Nagoya

Or concrete spaghetti like this in New Jersey:

Interchange for Routes 9 and 440 in New Jersey

Ichien Ramen

cambecc — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 12:20:12 +0000

I walk past the main Ichien Ramen (一圓) shop in Kichijoji pretty often. Although the ramen is nothing special, the nikuman and gyoza they sell outside are ridiculously huge. A set of five gyoza are 400 yen and enough to make a meal of. Unfortunately, like the ramen, quantity is emphasized over quality. See here for more pictures and info (Japanese).

Spray-painted on the storage box behind the corner banner are the words “Solve Tron”. Yeah.

2－17－2 Honcho, Kichijoji, Musashino-shi, Tokyo-to. Closed on Wednesdays.

Moved hosting service

cambecc — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 15:14:08 +0000

If you can read this, the DNS update has propagated and the site is live on A Small Orange, my new web hosting company. I’ve also upgraded to Wordpress 2, so excuse the bugs as I get the kinks worked out.

Update 2006-11-14 14:27 JST: Fun with DNS! So far, the “journal.nullschool.net” subdomain has propagated correctly, but “nullschool.net” still points to my old server.

We’re sorry, Internet banking is closed for the evening…

cambecc — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 15:59:21 +0000

Over the past couple years, I’ve had a few surprises and irritations when using the Japanese banking system:

Bank transfers cost 420 yen, even intra-bank transfers (only intra-branch transfers are free).
Direct deposits also cost (I think) 420 yen.
Cannot open a bank account at most banks unless you have lived in Japan at least six months.
Cannot open a bank account at most banks without a seal (印鑑).
Cannot change your address on file without some form of government issued ID on which the new address has been registered.
Cannot withdraw cash in person from a teller unless done from the specific branch that holds your account.
ATM withdrawls cost 105 yen on the weekends.
Many ATMs close at night (you know, because they’re… automatic…).
etc….

Tonight, I decided to try the Internet banking feature for my Mizuho bank account. Looks like I can add another bullet to the list:

Internet banking closes on weekend nights.

That’s right, I shit you not. If you refer to this page, you’ll see that Mizuho Internet banking is closed:

Saturdays 10 pm ~ 8 am the following Sunday
Sundays 9 pm ~ 7 am the following Monday
From 3 am to 5 am every 1st and 4th Saturday
January 1st ~ January 3rd

I’m imagining some small beleagured IT team, stuffed away in the bowels of Mizuho’s data center, frantically serving up pages as each request comes in. They have to rest sometime, right? After all, hiring a few more administrators is impossible.

Update 2006-11-12: Mizuho has expanded operations! Internet banking is unavailable only during these times:

Saturdays 10 pm ~ 8 am the following Sunday
From 3 am to 5 am every 1st and 4th Saturday

unknown portraits

cambecc — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 14:24:11 +0000

unknown portraits
Originally uploaded by cambecc.

Various strangers looking directly into my camera while I was taking a picture of someone/something else. Collected from a year’s worth of photos starting April 2004.

Someone keeps stealing Ebi-chan

cambecc — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 00:23:03 +0000

McDonald’s launched a new ebi-fillet sandwich with a marketing campaign featuring a beautiful model. Her actual name, 蛯原友里, even includes the kanji for “shrimp”. Wasn’t that clever.

They have banners and everything, but the banners don’t seem to stick around for very long. The McDonald’s next to my office has replaced theirs twice; and again this morning it was gone.

Tokyo Motor Show 2005

cambecc — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 06:24:50 +0000

Nullschool