Marcus' World

Tokyo Travels

Yesterday we returned from Tokyo at 9 AM, after departing on the same day at 4 PM Tokyo time. When I was in college I thought it was strange to arrive in Chicago at the same time I'd left Columbus.  Now I know that was no big deal.

While in Tokyo we stayed at the Kimi Ryokan, which the Lonely Planet Tokyo describes as "perhaps the best budget accommodation" in the city.  I can't verify that claim, but will say that it was a very pleasant stay.  The rooms were tiny, and we slept on simple mattresses on top of tatami mats. Shared showers and sinks, as well as a traditional Japanese bath on the second floor, were the main amenities. Guests could store food in the lounge, and even buy a beer from the lounge vending machine if you so desired.

Vending machines are everywhere in Tokyo; one estimate I read is that there is one vending machine for every 20 people in Japan. In Tokyo the ratio felt much higher. A person could walk two blocks and have several opportunities to buy a plethora of refreshing beverages.  Early in the trip Helen developed a taste for milk coffee (available for 110 yen, approximately $1.10). Once I got a hot coffee drink that I thought would be iced.  And at the airport heading home I bought a Coke simply because the container was cool.  This was decadence.

Sometimes we had to use vending machines to order food at a restaurant; we did this twice. There aren't always pictures of each dish, so without Helen my strategy would have been to pick something at random and hope it was good. But Helen diligently noted the characters on the display models out front before we went into the restaurant and placed our order.

Once we ordered beer from a vending machine--at the Sapporo Beer Museum. All that came out was a token, which we traded in for a sample of four small glasses of beer at the bar. At the museum I reconfirmed my great preference for light to dark beers. Helen doesn't drink beer, but she loved the beer jelly and beer crackers.

My favorite museum was the John Lennon Museum in Saitama Shintoshin (about 30 minutes from Tokyo.)  Yoko Ono opened the museum in 2000, on the 60th anniversary of Lennon's birth.  It tells the story of John's early years; the incredible rush of early fame; when he met Yoko (who used to let strangers cut her clothes off as a performance artist in the 1960's); the breakup of the Beatles and their peace campaign; Lennon's harassment by the US government for said peace campaign; Lennon's downward spiral into drugging and boozing in the early 70's; Lennon's redemption as a happy house-husband in New York City in the mid-70's; Lennon's untimely murder at the hands of Mark David Chapman just after the release of the album Double Fantasy with Yoko.  (Chapman isn't named at the museum. He's still in prison at Attica, and apparently he spends a lot of time in the library.)

Lennon was an amazing musician and devoted father, but it's  still odd to go to an entire museum dedicated to just one person.  But no more odd than going to a museum that's all about parasites.  We did that too, and were rewarded with a view of an 8.8 meter tapeworm that once lived inside a man in Yokohama. Loyal blog readers, I suggest that you cook with care.

Tokyoites have a fabulously reliable train system, and my favorite was the Yamanote line that whisked commuters around the city on an aboveground track.  This train featured silent commercials, frequently for Contac.  Just as two warriors are about to cross swords, one warrior sneezes and the other man wins.  This commercial never got old. Loyal blog readers, I suggest that you buy Contac to prevent sneezing.

You probably won't need to buy tissues (although we did once, at a Seven Eleven.) Outside many train stations young people give away tissue packets with advertising on them.  Once we scored an honest-to-goodness tissue box, which fit perfectly inside our bag and provided for easy-access tissues for the rest of the day. I needed those tissues, because whenever I wasn't having fun I was blowing my nose.

We mostly stayed in Tokyo, where we saw a fun kabuki show as well as the extensive gardens of the Imperial Palace.  We also went to the Tokyo Dome and took in the scene surrounding the Boston Red Sox-Oakland A's game; this was right after a futile attempt to spot the sumo wrestlers who live in the Ryoguku neighborhood.  And we went to the world famous Tokyo Fish Market to watch men poke dead tuna with hooks.  And we strolled among the cherry blossoms in Ueno Park, with what felt like the rest of Tokyo.  Once I head a man tell his friends (in a language I actually understood!), "I can't stay out of everyone's pictures."

Our longest excursion was to the Hokane region, which offers views of Mt. Fuji and delicious eggs cooked in the hot water generated from volcanic ash.  These eggs have pitch black shells, and are one of the reasons people come to Hokane.  From Tokyo you take one train; a second train; a cable car; and finally a "ropeway," which is basically a flying pod in the sky.  Actually getting to Hokane felt like a great accomplishment.  On the way back we stopped in at an onsen, a public bath.  Helen donned her birthday suit, but in the end I got cold feet and sat by the (what else?) vending machines.

Long trips make for good reading.  On the flight there I read Amanda Davis's novel Wonder When You'll Miss Me, which is the book club selection in two week's time.  While in Tokyo--and especially on that epic voyage to Hokane--I dove deep into Zadie Smith's amazing novel On Beauty.  On the flight home I finished On Beauty. As soon as we landed (basically) I started recommending it to friends.

Thanks for the memories, Tokyo. And thanks for the good reads, Amanda and Zadie.

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Below are a few pictures, taken by fabulous photographer Helen. The full album is here.

 

Espresso Machine Maintenance/On the Perch

This morning we returned from Tokyo. As I write Helen is putting her usual brilliant captions on her usual fabulous photos. I am in several of the photos, eating various foods. These were usually staged shots for photographer Helen; sometimes I was more in the mood for the spotlight than others!

But I digress. Tomorrow I'll do a full report on the Tokyo adventures, complete with some of those pictures. 

For now I'd like to write about the Western Regional Barista Competition, which is taking place in Berkeley this weekend. It is one of ten regional competitions that will eventually yield the best barista in the United States for 2008. That person will go on to Denmark to represent the US at the international level. The Specialty Coffee Association of America sanctions the US activities.

I didn't know any of this when we went to the competition today (about seven hours after touching down from Tokyo). I merely knew that I wanted a free coffee and to be part of a scene.   Both goals were achieved. We went to a fascinating talk about the process of making espresso blends, while enjoying cappuccinos lovingly prepared by the baristas at Verve in Santa Cruz, CA. Then we listened to a dairy man talk about the difference between organic and non-organic milk, and about how the quality of the milk is an essential component in the quality of a coffee. Another lecture, which had already happened when we got there, was called, "Espresso Machine Maintenance."  What I wouldn't have given to see the prefix "Zen and the Art of..." in front of that title.

As today's top finalists were about to be announced (baristas from throughout California and one from Seattle are competing), we left.  All told we attended the competition for about 90 minutes. For that entire time, I had two thoughts: a. Everybody knows each other (except us); b. Everybody knows a lot more about coffee than I do.

I thought mostly casual attendees--like us--would be there. Although we must have had company, passionate coffee lovers carried the day. Like so many events, this ostensibly open gathering was primarily intended for a select group.  Nothing against the barista competition--this kind of thing happens all the time. For some reason I'm especially drawn to outings that others would avoid unless they had a deep investment in the outcome.

So today it dawned on me that I prefer the perch to the fray.  Whenever you get caught up with a particular group (like passionate coffee lovers, say), eventually everything you see is refracted through their viewpoint.  It's better to remain aloof but accessible. While some people use their energies to further whatever cause they believe in, somebody else has to watch. I seem to be destined to stay on the perch.

Tokyo Bound, and a Summer in Seoul for Helen

Helen and I are off to Tokyo tomorrow, for a week-long urban immersion. (I wish it was a bit longer, but business school students only get so much time off for Spring Break.) We've talked about going to Japan for years, so we only have ourselves to blame that the yen is so strong against the dollar when we finally did it!

We've been to Hong Kong twice, but nowhere else in Asia.  That changes starting now, and by the end of the summer we'll both have been to Korea too. 

This week Helen accepted an offer for a summer position at LG Electronics, which is headquartered in Seoul.  It's a 9 week assignment for a marketing project, complete with company housing.  I'll be holding down the fort in Berkeley, with firm plans to go to Seoul to celebrate Helen's birthday in early July. Fortunately Helen will have a month or so at home before moving on to the London Business School for the fall semester.

All in all lots of time apart, but after 7 years of marriage I'm sure we can handle it.  Business school certainly yields many growth opportunities for everyone involved.

Wikipedia's Growing Pains

Nicholson Baker--the bane of librarians everywhere ever since his assault on microfilm in Doublefold (2001)--has turned in a fascinating status report about Wikipedia in a recent issue of the New York Review of Books.

It's very much worth reading to enjoy Baker's inimitable prose--you don't often come across a word like "panjundrum."  But here's a comparatively straight-laced summary:

Baker becomes obsessed with the ease of editing Wikipedia articles, and so he starts to edit articles himself (under the user name "Wageless.")  Eventually he takes up the cause of rescuing articles slated for deletion by zealous volunteer editors--just like he sought to save the books and newsprint that librarians wanted to microfilm.

Baker goes into depth about the evolution of Wikipedia: from an anarchic place in which all articles were welcome, into a more regulated domain in which the "deletionists" and "inclusionists" do battle. (The Economist has a starchier take on this same debate in the most recent "Technology Quarterly.")  Of course some rules are necessary to give structure to the Wikipedia, but in Baker's view--and mine--the numerous regulations now threaten to strangle the spirit of innovation that launched Wikipedia in the first place.  One chilling example: "Notability purges," in which zealous volunteers peg articles for deletion because they aren't deemed to be about worthy topics.

One man's trash is another man's treasure.  There are no page or length restrictions in the Wikipedia (obviously), so who am I to judge what should matter to you?

The healthy side of Wikipedia regulation manifests itself whenever people delete silly or unfactual edits within individual articles. Several years ago I inserted a nonsense sentence into an article (can't remember which one), and was pleased to see it gone by dawn.  But the mood these days is much more sinister. Baker quotes Andrew Lih:  "The preference now is for excising, deleting, restricting information rather than letting it sit there and grow."

There is a bright side, thank goodness.  Those worried about the Wikipedia censors can join the awkwardly named Wikiproject Proposed Deletion Patrolling project.  This is a splinter faction within the Wikipedia community; anyone can resist the notability purges and spur the Wikipedia to hew closer to its original spirit.

To the cyber-barricades, I say--the more articles about Pokemon, the better!

Birthday 2008

Today was my 31st birthday, and I had a great time.  This morning I arrived to work to discover a card from my manager. Tonight several friends accompanied us to a pleasant dinner at Orso Restaurant, a new establishment on the Berkeley scene that has great food but no business (yet).  Finally our old friends Jason and Alice treated me to a post-dinner drink. We searched for Remy Martin--which I was briefly obsessed about during our college days at Northwestern--but discovered that it's hard to find in these parts. We're not in Chicago anymore, but that didn't stop us from having a good time.

All throughout the day people sent me Facebook emails, wall posts, and gifts.  This was my first experience of the Facebook full court press, and it felt great. It's hard to respond to so many posts, and that's a nice problem to have.

The Wright Stuff

I lost some respect for Barack Obama this week.  It's not because his preacher is a firebrand, but because Obama wants us to believe that he hasn't known this for years.

Some incendiary clips of Obama's minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, burst on the scene a few days ago.  Among other things, the Reverend Wright has called America the "US-KKK-A" and claimed "God Damn" America (revising the Good Lord's blessings, which are more customary.)  According to Wright, we still live in a downtrodden country ruled by rich white people.

If you watch extended clips of Wright's sermons, these sound bites come into focus.  The sermons are a little bit theater; a little bit Bible; and a little bit sociology.  All in all, they are compelling speeches meant to anger or soothe (depending on who is listening) and to provoke.  It's a free country, so let the Reverend speak.

Two days ago, on the Huffington Post, Senator Obama sought to distance himself from some of  Wright's comments. He "vehemently disagrees"; "strongly condemn[s]"; and "categorically denounces" the good Reverend's words. Yesterday Wright left his post as honorary spiritual adviser to Obama.

OK. Fine. Obama is good at using contrite language and playing damage control.  But his argument that he never knew the Reverend Wright said such things--"The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation."--is both laughable and insulting.

After a while we all develop reputations.  Some people are shy; others like to launch practical jokes; and so on.  Reverend Wright aims to push the envelope and to cause controversy.  Even if Senator Obama didn't hear the Reverend's exact words "that are the cause of this controversy" (note the parsing in that clause), he surely knew who he was dealing with. There's a reason that Obama rescinded his invitation to Reverend Wright to issue the convocation when he announced his candidacy last year.

Reverend Wright is not interested in the post-racial "politics of hope" that Obama purportedly supports.  He's interested in fighting what he perceives to be continuing systemic injustice against African-Americans.   Whether this is playing the racial card or fighting the good fight, it is where the Reverend stands. 

If Obama stands with him, then that "politics of hope" routine has been a sham.  And if Obama stands against him, then the Reverend should have had no role in his campaign in the first place. 

The Ever-so-Fusty Atlantic Monthly

I stopped subscribing to the Atlantic Monthly about six months ago, in a brief attempt to reduce the clutter of unread magazines.  And besides, my DC pal Bruce stopped working there.

A few months later I resumed the subscription, though, because of a bunch of unused air miles. I'll let it lapse again when the year runs out, unless more hard-to-use-otherwise miles appear. In the meantime, I will read as much Sandra Tsing Loh as I can get my hands on.

And I'll also read Ross Douthat, an Atlantic senior editor and one of America's best known young conservatives. In the April print issue, Douthat has an interesting analysis of Hollywood's return to the "paranoid 1970's" in recent films that deal with the Iraq war.  (There's not an online version yet--which is an ironic fact, as will soon be clear.)

You can agree or disagree with Douthat's conclusions. He has some valid points, but like anyone else there's an axe to grind. What stood out to me is this fairly non-consequential sentence: "...as though the two decades were 'twin dark alleys in the American imagination,' Eric Lichtenfeld wrote recently in the online magazine Slate..."

Hmm--the "online" magazine Slate.  My guess is that no more than 2% of the Atlantic's reader base doesn't already know that Slate is online.  And that 2% doesn't own a computer.  Now that it's 2008, this level of fussiness is quite fusty (and funny).

I say again: Native print media outlets, at ease! You will always have a place in my heart.  But as I blogged 2.5 years ago, this online stuff is here to stay.

Eliot Spitzer, aka George Fox

My morning BART-MUNI ride was consumed by reading about every salacious detail of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's procurement of the services of a high-priced call girl last month.

Obviously he should resign, for the good of his family, the good of his party, and the health of his state.

Of all the details about how he did it, this one stood out to me: Spitzer used the alias "George Fox" while booking the room for his secret rendezvous at the Mayflower Hotel.

First I thought that Spitzer chose "George Fox" randomly. Well, it turns out that a good friend of Spitzer's is named George Fox.  This shows how far Spitzer was willing to go not to get caught: if the tides had broken another way, an innocent man named George Fox could have had his career destroyed.  And the ever-so-virtuous governor of New York would have been the first to express outrage.

Online Identity Management: Hiding Pieces of Yourself In Order to Get Ahead

On our epic journey home from Berkeley Bagel this morning, Helen and I started talking about how you have to be careful about what you post online because potential employers Google you before they ever meet you.

The archetypal example: A picture of yourself passed out drunk at the age of 20 winds up on the Internet, and you're denied a good job even though you are eminently qualified for it.

On the one hand, I'm just as self-interested as anyone else. For example...I've refused to join certain Facebook groups because people I work with are on FB, and I don't want to be seen as frivolous whenever they get a feed about a silly cause I've joined.

On the other hand, I think, "Oh please! That person who denied you the job because of your drunken photo was probably even more drunk when they were 20 years old."

We've entered truly uncharted waters in recent years, in which personal and professional lives blend online in an unprecedented way. Before the Web, an employer would never ask about your college partying habits; such questions were immaterial to the available position.

They still are.

The difference now, of course, is that the evidence of your "debauchery" is now online.  So I'm dismayed at how all good strivers are feverishly wiping away evidence of their completely normal behavior from the Web.  Not saying that I would do anything different, just that we should all step back and examine the full cost of ambition.  One of those costs: We're creating Potemkin versions of ourselves even though the real versions are perfectly fine.

Almost as Good as New York Bagels

Since arriving in the Bay Area we've been on a quest to find an authentic New York-style bagel.  The offerings at Noah's New York Bagels don't even come close--an insult compounded by the fact that Noah's trades heavily in New York imagery inside its stores. (Then again, Subway sandwich shops don't have much in common with NYC either.)

Through the Yelp grapevine we learned about Berkeley Bagel (which is actually in Albany, CA). This morning we made a northern pilgrimage to the bagel shop, because Helen refuses to ride the bus. 

Once we arrived--almost an hour later--I was hungry. My original idea was to get a sesame seed bagel toasted with butter, just like I used to get on most Saturday mornings at the Bagel Mill.  However, Berkeley Bagel charges 10 cents for the toasting and 50 cents for the butter! Irrationally, then, I decided I might as well get a breakfast bagel...even though it cost more than my original humble idea, it didn't seem like that much more after all of the add-in costs were factored in. Helen also splurged, relative to our former habits, and got a bagel with strawberry cream cheese.

I'm pleased to report that the bagels were big and authentic--if not quite as hearty as the fare at Bagel Mill.  As Helen says, at least they "have the right idea" up there at Berkeley Bagel of Albany.