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Kyoto Mid-Summer Pics

On the other hand, this lack in the whole irony concept, puts some of the clothing commonly spotted through the streets of Japan in a radically new, slightly scary, perspective…

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Lost in Irony

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Gion Matsuri etc.

Summer is officially here.

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Startup Sound

Dear local Kyoto-fu LDP candidate for the upcoming upper-house election:

True: I cannot cast a vote in this election and sway your chances either direction.

But let me assure you that, if you keep insisting on circling my block multiple times, every morning between 8 and 8:30, inane election slogans blaring from your van’s speakers at top volume, I will be more than happy to contribute to your historical legacy by setting post at the closest grassy knoll with whatever long-range weapon I can get my hands on.

Thanks.

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Election Fatigue…

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Kyoto Weekend: Rain or Shine

These “volunteers” will teach you English (and the Word of Jesus Christ Savior) for free, at three convenient locations around Kyoto.

Obviously, Japan is not doing enough to discourage missionaries these days…

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Learn English and Save Your Soul

Yep, that’s my daily commute.

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Rice Paddies

God how I would have loved to seat the design meeting for this one:

“- For our sign, we need something refined something that spells GLAMOUR…”

“- how about the silhouette of a woman sitting on her ass, spread-eagled, showing her crotch?”

“- Brilliant! That’s exactly what I meant!”

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Glamour

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Tonight near Sanjo Bridge

Japan: the country where trains being one minute late on the usual schedule warrants posting advance notices all over the station…

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Japanese Train Schedules

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April Picture Backlog

• … everybody is smiling, having a good time and randomly engaging in friendly conversations.
• … people you’ve never met spontaneously come up to you and offer you a beer (or a swig off whatever bottle of alcohol they are drinking from).
• … asking for a light gets you not only that, but also a brand new mini portable-ashtray as a gift (to you and surrounding Nature).
• … little kids and grandpas, dancing along with the rest of the hippie club kids, is the most natural sight in the world.
• … you are standing over the Kamogawa, surrounded by cherry blossoms, dancing to some of the funkiest, jazziest, house beats you’ve heard in a long while…

What a nice and unexpected way to cap a lovely hanami/easter picnic on a Sunday afternoon…

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Spring at Last…

Yea: not a lot of whities in my faculty.

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“Ah, you must be Mr Gaijin-san”

Seriously, who still buys these things?

My guess is: people who also just purchased a brand new Sony Minidisc player¹ and/or will only use devices that bears the same comforting look as the pocket calculator they had back in High School.

I don’t see why else anybody would willingly spend up to twice the price of an iPod Touch on a tool that will, at best, do roughly what any iPod/iPhone does… minus the thousands of non-Japanese-related features.

Trust me, I am very receptive to the argument of the simple tool that does one thing and does it well, without the clutter and confusion of a myriad peripheral features… But if that’s what it takes, buy an iPod Touch, forget it can be a music player, a web browser or a gaming platform and use it solely as a Japanese study tool: you will still be getting a better deal than with one of these ridiculously overpriced/underfeatured denshi jisho.

In case you are considering such a purchase, or if you already own an iPhone/iPod Touch and wondered what apps you should get in order to turn it into the ultimate Japanese studying tool, here are my three picks:

#1 Kotoba!

Kotoba! is the best mobile Japanese dictionary, bar none. It uses Jim Breen’s public Japanese dictionaries for its data and provides absolutely every single lookup method you could ever desire, combined into a sleek and intuitive UI. If you factor in Apple’s built-in handwritten Kanji input², you have a Japanese dictionary that far outpaces any handheld electronic toy out there.

With all that and despite being a commercial-grade application, Kotoba is absolutely free! Not “free”, not free³: absolutely free, as in freeware, born out of the dedication of its author, Pierre-Philippe di Costanzo. So get it now and go make a donation right after.

#2 KanjiBox

Yes, I am ever so slightly biased on that one…

But there is a reason I set out making KanjiBox for Facebook many years ago: none of the other kanji-studying application came even close to what I wanted in such a product (smart drilling, stats etc.). This is still mostly true with iPhone apps.

To me, a Japanese study app should offer, at the minimum:

1. Intelligent questions: not just throwing a couple random kanji and asking you to pick one (“Gee, I wonder which between 大 and 嘛 could mean big“)…
2. Smart drilling: what’s the point of using a software if it cannot store my answers and use the data to adjust to my level at all time.
3. Progress feedback: I don’t know about you, but knowing where I stand in my studies is a huge motivation factor. Sure, it’s a stupid bar chart, not a perfect representation of my actual everyday fluency, but it still helps setting studying goals for myself (and knowing whether I am somewhat ready for JLPT).

These, and a couple less critical, but still thoroughly enjoyable, features, such as the competitive edge brought by scoring (and comparing with your friends), are what I expect from language-studying software in the 21st century. And you would be surprised how few (if any) of the apps out there do that.

Which is why I have no qualms recommending my own KanjiBox to all serious Japanese students.

For those who can’t get themselves to purchase KanjiBox for whatever reason, I suppose my next choice would be Kanji, which fails at practically all the points mentioned above (it really is the most basic type of flashcard app), but at least has a nice clean UI and won’t set you back too much with its one-buck price tag (probably still too much for what it is). As for KanjiBox’s lesser doppelganger, Kanji Flip: I would perhaps recommend it (although I am no fan of its UI and self-quizzing method), but at $6, it is ridiculously overpriced (that’s twice KB’s price for half the features).

I am sure there are a few free applications that do most of what the ones above do (after all, Kotoba is by far the best dictionary app, and it’s free). But frankly I haven’t seen them yet. And you do know what they say about getting what you pay for.

#3 Japanese Podcasts

Alright, I lied, it’s not an app.

But you now have a pocket-size device with a powerful dictionary and a versatile study guide: it would still be silly not to take advantage of the fact that it can play sound and music (huh, some would even say it is its primary purpose).

I have personally never found Japanese dictionary with audio cues and other attempts at replacing a basic classroom teacher, to be very useful, for two reasons: 1) you will still need to spend time with a real native Japanese speaker anyway (especially around the beginning). 2) Japanese pronunciation is really straightforward: if after a couple hours’ worth of studying you cannot pronounce every single word in a dictionary, you probably need to take on another hobby.

On the other hand, nothing (and certainly not rote learning of entire lists of kanji and vocabulary) will ever replace listening and conversation practice.

Better than limited phrasebook apps, I think using the iPod for what it was meant to do —download and play music/podcasts — is a nicer way to get your regular dose of Japanese practice. As for which podcasts: there just isn’t a way to recommend something that fits all levels and interests.

For beginners, Japanese 101 has a nice array of podcast material (not so convinced by their apps, on the other hand), if you are at a slightly more advanced level, I would suggest directly checking out real everyday-life Japanese podcasts, in a topic that you like. The important part being to find materials that are engaging and updated regularly…

If you really don’t know where to start (and have a sufficiently advanced levels), check out NHK’s podcasts: they have a variety of feeds covering many different topics from daily news to pop music (they also have Japanese lessons, but I don’t know what they are worth).

Whatever you do, stay the hell away from those “Hi, I am 14-year old Mike from Arkansas, and I will be teaching you Japanese: KONNECHEVA!” podcasts… No offense, but I have a couple Astrud Gilberto records at home: you don’t see me trying to teach you Portuguese over the Internet…

頑張って！

And that’s it. For $201.99, you have the ultimate Japanese learning and reference device. And it even plays music for that price!

Why only three recommendations when there are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of Japanese-related apps in the iTunes App Store? Because as mentioned above, there is a beauty to simplicity. Redundant tools rarely improve your experience, they just scatter your attention (and waste your money). That being said, feel free to explore more apps (and send me your recommendations, if you think they deserve being added here⁴).

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3 Apps to Turn your iPod into a Japanese Study Tool…

1. “fit up to twenty tracks in your pocket!”
2. ok, not quite Kanji: Chinese Hanzi… but for most purposes, it will really work just the same. Just make sure you set it with Traditional Chinese, not simplified
3. “Free… for a limited time. Purchase the full version for only $19.99″
4. Need I mention that “WRITE Your Name in JAPANEESE” and other “60 KANA YOU MUST KNOW” apps, really do not need to be brought to my attention.

Although it could probably go lighter on the whole Mission: Impossible antics (unfortunately, it seems you just can’t sell a documentary nowadays if it doesn’t feature endless gratuitous action montages), the scenes it captures are captivating and hard to ignore. Beyond the expected money shot of an expanse of ocean literally red with dolphin blood, the investigative work offers some fascinating insights into the cynical political maneuvering that goes on to ensure the fishing doesn’t stop.

The vast farce that is the International Whaling Commission and a long tradition of Japan’s bribing third world island countries for votes, gets the bashing it deserves: I don’t care what your opinions on the whaling issue are, if you seriously believe in the “scientific whaling” argument, you are very misinformed or a moron.

Casual observers of Japanese modern history do not need to be told of its infamous propensity to always side with industries against public welfare, when environmental or public health scandals strike. Others will probably think that the recount of Minamata disease’s infamous cover-up is exaggerated… After all, while Western countries routinely poison locals in remote third-world countries and get away with it, it is quite a rare thing for a country to let companies do it on its own soil and unfalteringly support them when things go awry (and long after that). Long-time residents will also enjoy the nod to Japan’s sub-par criminal justice system, delight in spotting the usual cast of Japanese administration characters (the blatantly corrupt – yet utterly polite – cop on local business’ payroll, the roboticized bureaucratic talking-head, the government “scientist” spouting pseudo-science etc. etc.), without, unfortunately, escaping the usual trite clichés (is there a single japanese story that cannot be illustrated with a nail and a hammer?).

This documentary is not without its faults and I honestly have my doubt about the efficiency of the “Us vs. Them” brand of activism, when confronted to Japanese culture. But regardless of which side of the Blubber Hamburger / Cute Smiling Cetacean debate you stand on, there are a couple items worth pondering in there.

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The Cove: Japan’s Delicious Dolphin Burger Industry

Guess them all and win a bunch of iTunes coupons for free installs of KanjiBox for iPhone (along with my undying respect for your extensive musical culture).

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Think you know Japanese music?

I wasn’t exactly handed a winning ticket at the Genetic Lottery. As a kid, it would have taken less time to list the parts that did work as they should have. But things got under control and I am generally fine these days (beside that violent twitching on the left side of my face and the regular furball coughing, that is).

However, God personally hates me and wants to make sure I know it. Which is why I belong to the statistically improbable demographic of young people with recurring kidney stone problems despite relatively healthy dietary habits (people in their twenties who barely drink a can of coke a month aren’t supposed to get kidney stones, let alone chronic ones). On a nearly regular basis, about once every two years, I get to enjoy the pain of childbirth, minus naming process and postpartum hormones rush.

On the plus side, with the years, the routine has started to take the edge off (or I am developing a much higher tolerance to pain): when a stone episode strikes, nowadays, I just casually recoil in a fetal position for a couple hours at a time while waiting for it to pass; years ago: I would longingly stare at a kitchen knife while considering my options for self-surgery on the spot.

The other good thing is that I have learned to recognise early symptoms (as well as the time they are likely to occur: mine always happen in Winter, for no reason any specialist has ever been able to explain satisfyingly), which helps preventing me from making bad decisions… such as embarking on a 15 hour trip home to San Francisco from Paris via London (aka: the Story of my First Stone). Testament to the good old pre-911 days: when some security guy at Heathrow noticed the sweaty, grimacing guy waiting for his plane, went and asked “Sir, I must ask you: have you been consuming any drugs?” and got a near-hysterical answer of “No, but if you have any, I’ll take them!” through gritted teeth… he just walked away as he came.

These days, once the chest pain shows up, I would know better than trying to lob it with 2 aspirins and a cup of boiling hot tea purchased on the Eurostar for sole comfort.

Three days into the current episode, I finally went for a consultation at my nearby hospital: a CT scan confirmed the obvious and I was sent on my way with the usual advices and a couple prescription drugs.

Incidentally: I payed ¥5,000 (less than $50) for a full consultation and a CT scan, both of which took a grand total of 40 minutes, from the moment I stepped into my neighbourhood clinic. The actual cost, pre-universal-coverage, was ¥19,000, or about $200 (for that money, a US CT technician won’t even spit on you): dear US readers, aren’t you glad you live in a country gloriously free of such pesky Universal Healthcare and reasonable health costs.

Anyway, all that to say that I am slightly incapacitated at the moment, and lagging on communication (although oddly productive on whatever I manage to put my mind to, in between two bouts of holding my abdomen, wondering if downing a bottle of Draino might help). It will get better and I’ll catch up on email and everything, soon (i.e. anywhere from next week to next year).

That’s it for the immediate personal health update. Everybody with a normally working pair of kidneys and zero interest in the practice of hobbyist medicine at home can (and should) stop reading right now. Trust me, there’s nothing interesting under the fold.

Kidney Stones remedies

Like anybody confronted to their 4th or 5th stone in a decade, I have collected a good deal of empirical knowledge on the issue. It also helped that the first two episodes happened outside of the realm of modern medical medicine: the magic of timing, transatlantic flights and insurrance-less lulls between [proper] jobs in the land of proudly unaffordable healthcare (needless to say: in between years of fully covered, perfect health… try to tell me God doesn’t have it in for me, after that).

Googling and webbing of all stone-related issues tends to yield a mix of obvious, factual and completely moronic/batshit insane advices. With a recurring theme being the product-pushing agenda of the websites giving said advice. In light of this, I figured I would compile a few of my anecdotal findings on the matter, for the sake of the odd Google seeker who may end up here.

Note that:

1. I am not a doctor (unless you count that honorary degree in Love Potion and Curse Healing from Kinshasa’s University of Black Magic). I shouldn’t even have to tell you to consult with a professional, before anything else (frankly, if you hadn’t figured that for yourself, you shouldn’t have the IQ required to operate a computer). Once you have seen a physician, received a diagnostic, commiserating pat on the head, painkiller prescription (and little useful else): feel free to come back here.

2. These aren’t tips to prevent reoccurrence of stones. I’ll let you google/consult for these. Although, they may not always do the trick (take it from somebody who’s been drinking liters of water a day and depriving himself of chocolate for the past few years, and yet is currently contemplating removing the coating from his painkillers to try and snort them for faster absorption).

3. The focus here is on things that will help you deal with pain (and, possibly, but with absolutely no guarantee, help pass the stone faster… on the assumption that not wriggling in pain and spams, helps smooth the descent).

4. Any [already questionable] advice contained here applies only to calcium oxalate crystals (you know, the cool spiky-looking ones that seem designed to tear your insides while clawing their way out). Some might work for other types of stones, but no guarantee here.

That being said, and before going into things that work, let’s start with:

Things that don’t work

Cranberry juice and all other bullshit herbal grandma remedies. Not because they are bullshit herbal grandma remedies with usually zero evidence-based medical results, but because they all apply to a completely unrelated issue. Kidney stones (calcium oxalate ones, that is) aren’t UTI, nor even caused by UTI and rarely have anything to do with UTI. Whatever anecdotal health benefit cranberry juice (and dozens other Flower Power remedies) may have, are entirely geared at UTIs. Drinking cranberry juice while passing a stone has been proved to help, only insofar as drinking any fluid helps. So feel free to replace cranberry juice by gallons of gin&tonic and call it a family remedy: your chances are the same.

Things that work

Water goes without saying. Gallons and gallons of it. All the time, all day long. That stone isn’t gonna carry itself down (that being said, if/when your kidney shows sign of excessive straining on echo or CT scans, lots of water might no longer be a good idea: that’s what your doctor’s advices are for).

Painkillers obviously work. Although if you have tried, you already know that even the strongest painkillers have a very limited effect, in time and in strength. Dosage increases will barely help. And unless you fancy a life of addiction to opiates, they are rarely a good idea. NSAID are the standard fare (also: they are easier to keep on the stomach than opiates, which helps if you aren’t hooked to an IV feed). I have found antispasmodics to be more helpful in the long term (less direct pain relief, but less cramping, which is precisely the point).
Anyway, no real point discussing pharmaceuticals here: you will need a prescription (or a very good dealer), that, again, is what your family doctor is for.

Cannabis. Yep, herbal remedies aren’t completely useless after all. Surprisingly enough, medical cannabis isn’t just a hoax pulled by aging Californian hippies trying to ensure good-quality supplies at cheap price: there’s a reason cancer patients are told to smoke some reefer.
In addition to being a powerful analgesic, cannabinoids have antispasmodic and muscle-relaxant properties, which is precisely what your strained tubes need (less spasm/constriction = less friction = less pain). Trust me (err, I mean: trust my good friend who tried once, officer), it works well. And if it doesn’t, you can always just put on some Bob Marley records and bob your head to it until you forget all your troubles (just kidding).

Of course, were you to choose the weedy path of natural remedies, you should probably avoid living in a country where possession of any drugs (that are not tobacco or alcohol) is a crime on par with killing kittens or having sex with underage schoolgirls (just kidding, of course: the latter is perfectly OK and barely frowned upon by Japanese society, provided you are a well-off middle-aged businessman who doesn’t mind buying them Hello Kitty toys in return).

Which leaves you with:

Heating pads. No joke.
Heating pads (preferably the strong, chemical kind, universally available in Japan, where they are known as ‘kairo’) are a real life-saver. Staying warm is key: keeping one or two strong heating pads over your lower abdomen at all time, greatly helps with the background pain and seems to lower the recurrence of acute pain episodes. During last year’s episode, I was able to be nearly functional for three weeks, including a (very sober) New Year’s Eve party, patiently waiting for my two stones to go down their merry way (or, more exactly: until a very nasty surgical device was inserted to bring them out once it was realised they wouldn’t come out on their own, but that’s beside the point).
If you live in Japan (or another country where these awesome little pads are easily available), go to your nearest pharmacy and buy a few hundreds. If you don’t:

Hot baths are an obvious piece of advice. But just in case you had not noticed yet: dipping into near-boiling water at regular intervals will do miracles to subdue the pain. Just make sure not to get cold chills when you get out.

Things that Might Work

For pain management, the doctor at my local Japanese clinic only prescribed antispasmodics and told me to come back if I needed stronger (which didn’t bother me much, considering how little effect stronger meds usually have anyway).

Along with the antispasmodics, was a prescription for a slightly stranger medication called Urocalun, which turned out to be a rather Japan-specific drug, based on some plant extract (yes: another herbal remedy, but this one comes with somewhat scientific studies attached, rather than your crazy grandmother’s aunt recommendation). Most salient research papers I could find on the topic are in Japanese and only appeared in domestic publications (as is unfortunately typical of a vast amount of Japanese research) where methodologies are, ahem, not always of the highest scientific grade, or sometimes feature downright bizarre ideas (rope jumping as a way to pass stones, anybody?). More importantly, it is not always clear whether Urocalun is only effective as a preventive treatment or can also help during acute episodes.

But at least, there seems to be some scientific basis going for it (which is more than lots of pseudoscientific remedies like homeopathy ever had) and is the first I ever hear of a widely distributed drug treatment for kidney stones (other than palliative, that is). I have the tablets and will be taking them religiously for the next few weeks, we’ll see if it helps.

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Kidney Stones: A Beginner’s Guide…

Japanese girl at local bar: Do your prefer Japanese girls or foreign girls?

Dave: Err… huh… dunno… Country doesn’t have much to do with it…

Japanese girl: Aaah, of course… It does not matter…

Dave: Indeed.

[...]

Japanese girl: Ok, so… Which type of girl do you prefer: long straight black hair or blonde with blue eyes?

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The Art of Subtle Rephrasing

KanjiStory.com is a website geared towards people studying Japanese kanji (and, I guess, to a lesser extent, Chinese… but it probably needs some tuning for that). It provides a simple yet powerful interface for people to write kanji mnemonics in the form of a simple story.

The best way to see what I mean is to go register (10 seconds, one click), read a few stories and finally: take a stab at writing your own. Allowing users to contribute stories is at least 90% of the point of this website at this stage, so please do not just go, check out the dozen sample stories and call it a day without trying the editor.

The current version of the website, although quite spiffy code-wise, needs a huge amount of work to be called a proper beta. And then, there are two million cool features just waiting to be added. However, given my very limited time resources, I figured I would first check to see how much interest (and active participation) in the project I can raise, before committing any more time working on it.

Do not hesitate to post your comments and suggestions below, but keep in mind that this is all very early-stage development and that many new features will come, once (if) this ever takes off the ground as a community project.

As an aside, if you are a reasonably experienced PHP dev with an interest in contributing to this project: get in touch (use the address: “zedrdave” at Google’s mail).

If you want to be kept informed of future KanjiStory-related news, easiest way for now is to sign-up as a fan on the facebook page (until I set up a proper forum and RSS feed on the website).

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Kanji Stories…

Note to Self of Yesterday Night: Maybe not so heavy on the distilled sweet potato juice, next time. Should consider picking a recreational heroin habit instead.

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Weekend Patterns

It was… MURDER!

The things you learn, chatting with your elderly neighbours, stark-naked and soaking in boiling hot water…

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Sentō Gossiping

A beach where the sand plays koto with the crashing waves for backup singing, you could be meeting up at the front gate of Kyoto Estación with your icebox, your sun hats, enough ice to build an igloo and bags upon bags of useless 100en beach toys, you could be riding a train small enough to fit in your childhood railway model kit, diving through mountains and popping out along the coast, you could be walking a deserted country trail down to your very own 10 acres of pristine white sand, swimming the warm waters of the Sea of Japan in August, you could be preparing fresh guacamole in the sunset with a piña colada in your hand, you could be barbecuing tandoori chicken in the dark, you could call on to your cro-magnon roots and be the Master of Fire for a night, you could sit around a bonfire, burning your fingers trying to melt marshmallows on chopsticks, you could be laying back on a beach, sand in your hair, skies in your eyes, noticing the Great Starry River for the first time since you started living on an island of neons and streetlights: for every late Summer shooting star you catch out of the corner of your eye, drink your tequila and bite a lemon, if you missed it: drink anyway because it is damn good stuff and made from cactus so it can’t be bad for you, you could start running along the beach, throw your underwear at random and dive headfirst into the sea for midnight skinny dipping, you could light up the sky and wake up the fishes with fireworks until you run out of lighters or energy, whichever comes first, you could be playing poker with a flashlight and a stash of one-yen coin and realise that beachwear makes for very quick rounds of strip poker, you could be falling asleep with the sound of waves crashing at your feet, you could be eating chocolate on bread for breakfast with an aftertaste of salt on your lips, you could be making fresh yakisoba with grilled slices of pumpkin for dessert, you could be spending your day playing in the waves or napping in the shadow, you could be listening to the sand singing under your feet, you could be doing a thousand other things under the sun…

Of course, you could.

Happy birthday to me. Another year of backward aging and waning maturity on the way back to infantile bliss.

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You Could…

KanjiBox for iPhone

By far the best way to spend your Summer while improving your Japanese (whether at the beach or on a crowded Tokyo subway, wedged between two sweaty salarymen). This application works on all iPhone and iPod Touch models (provided they run iPhone OS 3.0 or later) and is entirely offline (doesn’t use any internet connection at all).

More info and screenshots on KanjiBox’s website…

And of course, for our ipod-deprived brethren, there is always KanjiBox for Facebook: free and full of fun multiplayer goodness!

Post originally published on: Dave's Blog (please leave your comments over there)

Study Kanji on your iPhone

This 48 hour stint in Tokyo was much more compact than last week’s but we still managed to fit a couple funandhappythings.

Saturday, Ken and Shizu drove us to Design Festa where we spent the afternoon looking for those elusive two or three pearls of awesome/weird/crazy, usually lost in a sea of homemade flea-market t-shirts and Tokyu Hands-style jewelry (hey, starving art students need to eat too). To be honest, nothing mind-blowing (and not even that much of the usual WTF shock stock that people tend to expect from Design Festa)… but some entertaining live shows:
Dora video played drums while random bits of video samples (including at some point, a strident Japanese CM for toilet air freshener) played in the back. The result sounded at times not quite unlike a Death Metal band, from which you’d remove everyone save for the drummer: loud, energetic and quite funny.
Somewhere on the main stage, three butt-naked guys covered in gold paint and sporting massive fully-erect fake penises (also covered in gold) were executing some sort of butoh-like contemporary dance involving a chain and the music from William Tell overture. Somehow, Design Festa always seem to feature a few naked guys doing strange contemporary dances. Never twice the same guys.
The last act we caught before leaving, Crazy Angel Company wasn’t breaking new grounds, comparatively, but did a nice job of livening the venue a bit with their energetic Japanese-style brass band music and accompanying choreography. They closed with their own rendition of the Soran Bushi, a famous Japanese folk classic with an infectious back-and-forth chorus, of which H. eventually grew very tired, after a weekend of constant humming from my part.

On the way back and after running a couple errands for the following day, we lucked out in grabbing a table at Chacha Yufudachi on a saturday night with no reservation (strange, I know, to be going to a Kyoto-cuisine place while on a trip to Tokyo, but both Chacha branches are among my favourite restaurants in Shinjuku, both for the food and the atmosphere). We capped the night with a few drinks at Albatross’ brand new extension in Golden Gai: in fact, merely the first floor of their previous location, which has been added as a semi-independent branch to the second-floor’s bar. Same familiar faces and friendly crowd as usual, although we unfortunately had to make it home for last train in order to be fresh and rested for the next day.

And next day was awesome, indeed: lovely people, gorgeous groom and bride, delicious food, excellent wine (of course) and charming surroundings… But I won’t bore you with the details of my gorgeous friends’ happiness: after all, if you are of those who care, you were probably there (and if you weren’t, you know where to find much better reports than my own very incomplete remembrances of that wonderful day).

One (short) night and a nozomi ride later, I am back at plotting world domination, one DNA strand at a time… Which reminds me I might finally get to that piece about the why’s and how’s of Bioinformatics this week, if I can escape the tempting embrace of procrastination long enough…

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東京物語 – Subtitles…