Customer Service from the Internet

I ordered a present for Toby's birthday from amazon.ca. I had to order it from N America cuz it's a DVD and I want to be able to play it on my laptop. Recently, wondering where it was cuz it's LONG overdue, I checked the site and it's now estimated to be shipped (not arrive) between Feb 25 and March 25. That's over two months!

When I finally found a real human to email, they got back to me and waived my shipping fees (which equal the Canadian taxes I don't have to pay, heh). Nice, eh?

Friendly neighbourhood white supremacist

We went in to Shinjuku today, and while waiting for the train at our home station we happened to sit down next to a fellow gaijin (moderately uncommon in our little corner of Kanto suburbia). He was reading some printouts from some website or another, and when I glanced over I caught the title "American Renaissance", and some discussion about the portrayal of whites as subservient to non-whites in the popular media (like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon?), and how this is part of an attempt to establish a cultural hegemony of non-whites over whites. (The reader, if you are wondering, was of the caucasian persuasion.)

It seems rather unlikely that he actually believed what he was reading, since someone of that frame of mind probably wouldn't much enjoy life in Japan. Probably he was reading it for some other purpose--he's a sociologist, or he has a throwback uncle back home who disapproves of his choice to work in a foreign land and demanded that he enlighten himself with some literature... but who knows.

For a while I considered asking him about his choice of reading material, but Kate thought that, just in case, we shouldn't pick a fight with someone who could turn out to be our friendly neighbourhood white supremacist.

To be precise, though, American Renaissance doesn't really seem to be a white supremacist organization--it advocates the idea that America is a white nation, but doesn't seem to base this explicitly upon the idea that the white race is superior to all others. Thinking about white nationalism gets me feeling all nostalgic, as I have fond memories of the summer (a few years ago?) I spent dispensing righteous rhetorical smackdowns concerning the subject on this happy little board.

Movies, mostly

I mostly celebrated my birthday by completing my applications for grad school--mailed, submitted, paid for, finally, at last. Now for the waiting game.

Bit Torrent lives, and we recently watched a couple of movies we'd heard good things about, one after the other.

Garden State (which we actually saw second) was a bit of a disappointment. The movie sported a good variety of quirks, funny scenes, and moments of interesting character development/exposition--sometimes shown all-in-one, viz., some quirky aspect of a character's personality is revealed in a way that is humourous. These were all really nice touches. I just wish Zach Braff could've found a real script in which to incorporate these tidbits of wonder, because they would have added some real flavour to that script, if only it had existed.

It was such a disconnected mess that when the main character revealed his deep dark secret, I was left entirely unmoved--despite the extremely terrible deepness and darkness of said secret, which I readily recognize.

Some exasperating bits. #1: There was a throw-away gag near the beginning about some girl in a Vietnamese restaurant asking futilely for some bread. The thing is, bread is quite common in Vietnamese cooking. #2: The ending, which had my eyeballs rolling nigh out of their sockets to escape the corniness.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, on the other hand, was much, much better than I had anticipated from the hype, and I'd heard quite a bit of hype. Everything about this movie (acting, script, cinematography) was great throughout, but what really sealed it for me was the ending: the most authoritative smackdown on the idea of "happily ever after" that I've ever seen.

-OK.
-OK.

Brilliant!

Well, maybe it doesn't make so much sense out of context.

Best part: as Kate noticed, Bilbo's in the cast of one of the movies, and Frodo's in the other.

Anyway, Bit Torrent, don't fail us now! High hopes remain for I (heart) Huckabees.

Ain't It Cool News - View Article

Ain't It Cool News - View Article

This could be cool - I hope they don't wreck it.

Ringing in the New Year

Luckily for us, our xmas/New Year's break ended on our weekend, so having a few extra days off we decided to head down to Hakone, south of Yokohama. Hakone is a hot-spring resort kinda town. We found a place to stay ("ryokan", Japanese hotel) on the internet, made reservations and off we went.

We got there a little late in the day - which we thought would be ok. The lady at the ryokan told us that all the shops close early in Hakone, which we took to be a ploy to get us to spend more money eating dinner at the hotel instead of at a cheap restaurant nearby. So we went for a walk, looking for such a restaurant. When she said they close early, she meant really early - everything closes around 4pm! We managed to get some food at a 7-11 and had that, supplemented by some rice-balls from room service. That night we got some Star Treks in and that's about it. :)

The next day was our big sight-seeing day. We took off in the morning for Hakone Jinja, followed by a short hike up to the gondola area. They've built a tourist trap around it of course, but we did get some soba noodles for lunch at a supposedly famous shop there and they were quite good. Next, we took the gondola to the top of Mt. Komogatake, where we had a beautiful view of Fuji and the Yokohama/Odawara area. I don't think we've ever had such perfect weather (see for yourself, the pictures are up). We took the cable car down, thinking we would walk down the highway to the bottom, which was actually quite close to our ryokan. Five minutes down the mountain, however, the only other people on the cable car with us pulled over and offered us a ride, which we gladly accepted.

At the bottom of the mountain we took a short walk to see the stone Buddhas, which are carved into various rocks along the path. The scenery was great - it's so nice to have a change from the greys of Tokyo. Again, the pictures are up at the usual place.

We headed back to the hotel for a rest and then once more we headed out to get some omiyage (presents) and some Japanese desert. Then back again to the hotel for the outdoor onsen (hot spring) - just in time for sunset.

Now it's back to work. :(

Happy New Year!

There are a lot of ways to say "Happy New Year" in Japanese. I think it's important or something.

明けましておめでとう
良いお年を
今年も宜しく

And so on.

We're currently staying at my Uncle's place in Chiba Prefecture, where we had our second (mostly home-cooked) New Years feast. It's a delicious series of dishes, and they're full of positive symbolism and also a real bother to make.

Everyone else is doing top-ten lists for movies and music and such, but neither of us really keep up with new music, and we get all of our movies some time after they come out in theatres back home. So...

Top One Movie of 2004:

1. City of God

Actually, I think even that one was a 2003 (English) release. Harry Potter 3 and House of Flying Daggers were also quite good, but lately it's been hard to find new movies worthy of a top whatever list.

Oh well. Here's a more robust list:

Top Ten War Profiteers of 2004:

1. AEGIS
2. Bearing Point
3. Bechtel
4. BKSH & Associates
5. CACI and Titan
6. Custer Battles
7. Halliburton
8. Lockheed Martin
9. Loral Satellite
10. Qualcomm