The security guard frightens me...

I don't feel safer...

We have our own security guard that watches over us in the office, truth to be told I'm not sure whether he is actually an employee of the company or if he's there outsourced by some security company on a more or less permanent basis (probably the latter).

As most security guards in Japan, he's an elderly man, a little less fragile looking than most, but still in no way intimidating anyway you look at it. The only problem is that he creeps me out immensely... And for some unknown reason he has taken an interest and apparent liking to me, learning my name and  never failing to come and look at me with a leery creepy looking smile. Sometimes he sneaks up on me and I don't notice him until he's basically upon me and can't run away quickly enough and have to listen to some story before I can escape.

I have no idea why he creeps me out so much, but I always end up feeling dirty after running into him and hearing the "Hello Mr. Salaryman, how are things?" seeing that leery grin on his face... I feel slightly dirty and sexually harassed without any substantial reason for it, I guess I just have to put up with it even though I have contemplated calling security, but that would just give him a reason to come around more often...

The thing I hate the most about Japan... The one Yen coins...

Squeeze a bunch of one yen coins and you still end up with nada

There are quite a few things I dislike about Japan and even a few things that I would say I hate about living here. But the thing I hate the most, without any competition, about Japan is the one yen coins... The fact using the Japanese yen means a lot more zeroes than shopping in the Euro countries or the US dollar is ok, it's a bit inconvenient, particularly in business when the figures can get quite high and it gets confusing to try and keep in mind the word for "hundreds of millions", "trillions" and what not, but it's ok. Not everywhere can be the same.

But I hate the one yen coin with a vengeance... One yen is basically worthless. If you collect 120 pieces of them you can theoretically buy a coke in a vending machine, assuming you first change them into actual usable money such as ten yen coins (but the bank would laugh at you and probably charge you a counting and administrative fee at a cost of 1.5 yen per yen). But one yen in itself is worth about $0.01 USD... I would be perfectly fine with all prices rounded to the nearest five, I would even be fine with it being rounded up, as long as we could get rid of those useless one yen coins.

One yen coins are never usable in vending machines and for me, having these coin is for one purpose and one purpose only; to keep me from getting more one yen coins in change... That's the only tangible value that a one yen coin holds for me. If I go shopping something and it ends up to, say, 1,853 JPY, If I have three yen coins in spare change I can save myself from getting any one yen coins in change. I can go through significant time scavenging my wallet for any lost coins and get seriously annoyed when I have to take them in change. Sometimes they have those collection boxes for Tohoku, UNICEF or some other charity, but giving 4 yen in coins feels beyond cheap.

I've always wondered what the manufacturing cost (including labour and raw material) of making one one yen coin is, but I have the feeling that it's around ... ... ... one yen or so... If there's any petition to get rid of those annoying little coins, let me know and I'll gladly sign up for it!     

Bizarro Tokyo: Osaka

Like this, but with escalators

From the outside, Japan might seem the same wherever in the country you go, but there are cultural differences across the different regions in Japan.

One of the more well known is the straightforward and direct to the point Kansai culture (compared to the more vague and avoidance of getting to any point at all costs Tokyo-culture). Back in the good 'ol days the emperor and/or shogunate nested in Tokyo with the court, entertaining themselves with Nou theatre and other boring stuff, poor as dirt, but enjoying being the highest social class. Meanwhile, back in Kansai, the merchants reigned, lowest on the social ladder but loaded with cash and access to Kabuki theatre, booze and women of ill repute.
I guess I don't have to mention that I prefer the Kansai style...

When getting off the shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka, the first sign that things are not completely right is the escalators... For some reason, Osaka and Kyoto people have taken to standing on the right side of the escalator with walkers passing by on the left while the opposite goes for Tokyo and the rest of civilised Japan. On the shinkansen Shin-Osaka station chaos reigns supreme on the escalators though as the Tokyoites are coming in to try and bargain with the sly business savvy Osaka merchants. The people coming from Tokyo and the people returning home can easily be identified by which side on the escalator they stand on.

Sometimes I take some minor pleasure in standing the right side in Osaka knowing that I adapt to the odd local customs and melt in more than most Tokyoites.

At one point I tried to find out why Osaka people chose to stand on the right side of escalators and the answer I got was that they hold their valuables in their right hand and are afraid that people might steal it or bump into it and accidentally ruin it. But as this was told to me by a Tokyoite I have some doubt about the truth fullness of this. Still, now you know on which side of the escalator you should stand on, great, huh? 

I know you don't want to hear this from me...

Is this a challenge?

In the new company, people are generally nice, friendly and helpful although I can sometimes feel the tension of being the "new guy" as opinions and ideas are welcome, up to a point. It can be a bit frustrating, but at the same time I can completely relate to attitude as you have to start with proving your worth before the voice internally gets stronger. After a little more than half a year, I'm starting to get a little warmed up but still some ways to go. 

Earlier in the week, I was working with a colleague in our Quality Assurance department, drafting up a formal and very important letter to the authorities regarding one of the products that I'm in charge of. We had some back and forth on the key issues to clarify and make sure that we had a common understanding of what we wanted to say and this worked quite smoothly without any big disagreements. My counterpart got to work drafting out the formal letter and I did not really think much about it as he and his team work with stuff like this on a daily basis, so I trusted that they would draft up a good letter. 

A few drafts of the letter were sent back and forward for input and feedback and I focused on making sure that the right stuff was in there and not thinking much about the language used. At the end of the day a "final draft" was sent to me, looking very nice with all the right stuff in there apart from one very awkward and strange sentence in Japanese. I probably spent 10 minutes reading it back and forth, assuming that they would not make such a simple mistake I started to wonder whether it was my Japanese that was the problem and not the sentence. After asking a few (Japanese) colleagues close to me, of their opinion, they all agreed with me that the Japanese indeed was strange.

At the deadline was getting close, I quickly shot of an e-mail to the QA guy highlighting the sentence and adding a suggestion followed by "I'll call you know". I called the guy up and the, up until now, very friendly QA manager first responded with indignity that I would question his Japanese ability and a mildly condescending attitude suggesting that I had perhaps not grasped the Japanese. However, after a few minutes of conversation and him looking at his sentence he got silent for a few seconds, followed by a meek "Oh, yes, I see what you mean, this sentence actually is a bit odd...".

I really did feel a bit bad about giving him the news that the Japanese was odd as they take considerable pride in their competency in drafting up advanced letters (both in topics and written Japanese level) and I probably was one of the people least suited to correct his Japanese... I did my best though to keep a humble attitude towards it and it all ended happily.

Me and comic books

Where's the rape kit? I think this seal did get serious injuries!

Currently I don't really have as much time to spend on the blog as I'd like to and being busy at home with the little one and being the new guy at work also means that I don't have as many amusing work stories yet, but fear not, I'll keep up the blog but it's probably not the most dynamic time right now.

So, I thought I'd sprinkle in one of my few personal introvert posts instead. This one about me and comic books. Those of you completely uninterested in the topic might as well skip it, I won't be upset with you.

When I grew up, I would say I probably read basically as much comic books as the average kid. In Sweden that mostly meant Donald Duck and some of the local Swedish humour comics ("91:an", "Lilla Fridolf" etc.). Reading comics weren't frowned upon at home and as our Dad liked the old Carl Barks Donald Duck comics from the 50's and Lee Falk's "The Phantom" (which for some reason falled into obscurity in the US but remained extremely popular in Sweden) I guess it was mildly encouraged even. As I got a bit older I switched from the cartoon comics to Superman and Superboy, which at that time in the early eighties was heavily geared towards younger kids with pretty silly plots.

Then as I got a little older still I started to get into the Marvel comics, particularly Spider-man, X-men and the Fantastic Four as those were published in Swedish language editions. For a little while I even started buying imported US Marvel comics as the Swedish publication tended to lag a few years and the offering was limited. But on a limited weekly allowance this was pretty minor, but still, going up to Stockholm and one of the few real comic book stores and check out all the American books was quite the event. 

But as I started high-school I had begun to outgrow the stories and my interest and money instead shifted to music and I basically stopped buying comics. It's not that I didn't want to like comics, it was just that I found the stories a bit too juvenile and not particularly interesting anymore. I had checked out some of the comics geared for an adult market but found them dull, expensive and focused on sex and nudity instead of stories (which I found a bit pointless as regular real porn seemed more fitting to fullfill any needs of sex and nudity). Then I remember one summer at a used market close to our summer house when our family was staying there and I came across a few cheap used copies of the Swedish edition of Watchmen and it completely blew me away. I remember managing to scavenge most of the back issues but lacking one of the volumes in the middle (in Sweden they were published two US editions combined in one). But Watchmen demonstrated how great and mature comic books could be when done right. Then a Swedish company started publishing some of the US Vertigo contemporary horror comics ("Hellblazer", "Swamp Thing" etc.) and they caught my interest, but after a while the publication stopped as the market was not large enough in Sweden. Buying imported English language versions was not really an option either as money was tight and imported stuff considerably more expensive. So throughout University I knew there were some interesting stuff out there but access to it was strictly limited.

After university I moved to Japan and started doing my Salaryman thing. For the first time in my life I found myself with a decent paycheck and money to spend on other stuff than the pure necessities. As the Japanese Amazon shop provided quite good access to US publications at decent prices I started to order some comics on a regular basis. Mostly trade paperbacks of the larger "mature-audiences" titles like Preacher, Hellblazer, Sandman and whatnot. But I still kept very far away from the Superhero comics. But sometime in 2004 or so during a visit in Sweden, facing the 10+ hour flight home, I went to the local book shop to see if I could pick up some interesting serial killer biographies or other interesting and nurturing reading to kill time with on a long flight. The bookshop also had a quite large comic section in it, but as there really wasn't anything out on the market that I particularly wanted, I didn't really plan on buying any comics. But then I saw "The Ultimates", at first I didn't really know what it was about much, but through reading on the back and quickly flipping through it I figured out that it was a reimagining of the classic superhero team "The Avengers". Without any big expectations, I bought it as I thought it might help kill an hour or so on the flight with some brain dead superhero comics.

As you might understand, it completely blew me away. It had somewhat the same effect that reading Watchmen had had on me many many years earlier. The Ultimates showed how cool it could be with superheroes if you left all the silliness and stupidity behind and put the superheroes in a somewhat realistic contemporary setting. When I first read the books, I remember how I kept thinking "this should really be made into a film". So again I started glancing a bit on the Superhero stuff out there and granted, most of it still was crap, but I started to find some really good stuff in there as well. As it turned out, the kids nowadays never read comic books, so it seems like the stories aged with the readers so by the time I came back to the superhero comics, they were no longer really written for the kids but for an audience in their 20's and 30's.

Well... "What about Manga?" you might think... The irony in it is that I live in Japan with plenty of access to cheap manga everywhere and the Japanese ability to be able to read it without too much effort, but I just never really got it... I don't hate on Manga as an art-form or storytelling device, but I just never really could get into it as I am used to the Western pacing, style and clearer divisions between genres. I tried "Akira" and some of the bigger titles back in the day and really really tried to like it, but in the end I just gave up...

There you have it, the story of me and comic books. If you made it all the way to this you might even have found it mildly interesting, who knows?        

Hey! I read "My name is Loco and I'm a racist"

No need to lower your expectations for "My name is Loco" though!

To be completely honest, I didn't really have particularly high expectations on neighbourhood blogger Loco's self-published book "My name is Loco and I'm a racist". Well, maybe that doesn't sound completely right actually, I did have expectations on it being worth 10 bucks/1000 yen but I didn't expect it to be a "real" book in terms of editing, packaging and overall feel. My expectations were more of a re-packaging of posts and a little edited to be able to give some consistency and then published as a book. As I know Loco's writing from the blog, I would have been fine with this and I thought I'd write a generally nice "review" here saying something like "it holds up in book format as well".

I was wrong, to my surprise and delight, it's a "real" book. Like the man himself says, it's hard to label it, but I'd guess it's more of a memoir than anything else with large parts of it taking place in Japan (but by no means all). Loco comes from a completely different background from me, being black and growing up in New York during times of racial tension. The path that he has travelled is also very different from mine, but this is what makes it interesting to me as I find it interesting to read different perspectives from that of mine.

As the title of the book hints at, a lot of the book is discussing the topic of racism, but not in a theoretical judgemental way, but instead based on the personal experiences that Loco has had, in Japan and the US. Not only directed at him, as a black guy, but also his own prejudice. I unfortunately don't really have the time to elaborate more on the contents, but you can check out the Amazon page for more info, but if you have any interest in Japan and/or racial issues I can only strongly recommend the book. It's very well written, and contrary to my assumption, it's not a bunch of post from his blog fused into a blog (there's a few posts in there, but they mostly fit right in and if I hadn't read them on the blog, I'd never figured it out). It's also a ferociously honest book and at times quite emotional, but manages to pull it off.

So, anything I didn't like about it? Well, not much to be honest, there's just a few small things that I'd maybe recommend Loco to think about by the time the book goes into it's 4th printing. As great as the cover of the book is, I find it jarring a bit with the content as the cover makes it look like it's a book with funny anecdotes about the square peg in Japan. Don't get me wrong, there's humour in there, but it's not the dominating theme. I guess it's up to personal taste, but slap on a more suitable cover and put it in airport book shops and I think it could really reach an audience. Then there's just one or two posts from the blog that come off as slightly disjointed in context as people are mentioned in one chapter and then again later on in the book but there's nothing to bridge what has happened in the relationships (did anyone understand that?). It's more of a teaser than anything as one chapter makes me interested in knowing more on what happened later on but is not followed up on later in the book. Then finally, a really small thing, but in a few places the book writes out the Japanese characters for words but in most places it does not. For a nano-second or so it shakes my brain a bit and I personally think that the Japanese characters are not needed as the book is not for Japanese learning purposes anyway.

In conclusion. Get the book. If you are the type of person that haven't figured out e-books it's also available in a paperback edition now here. I'm eagerly looking forward to his upcoming stuff and what he could possibly pull off with hopefully decent sales from My Name is Loco behind him!

(Maybe I need to explain the choice of picture here a bit... But what I meant to illustrate here is how I initially expected the product to be like only to be surprised to see that it actually looks exactly like the picture on the box with no need to lower any expectations)       

Sluts, Madame and hags, a trip through the girls of Tokyo with the Ginza line

Something like thi
The Ginza line is probably the subway I hate the most apart from the Oedo line. If I don't have my facts completely messed up, I believe it's the oldest subway of Tokyo. Not old in a good "oh, I feel the wings of history" way, but old in a bad way like that half crazy old lady in your neighbourhood. The stations are old, dirty with low ceilings make them a bit claustrophobic. Also the stations were built at a time when hundreds of thousands of Salarymen did not yet experience the joy of the morning commute through the subway, so the trains are short with few cars and thus almost always crowded, even off peek hours.

But I can at least handle this train line, I don't enjoy using it but it does it's job in getting me from point A to point B quickly. The interesting thing about the Ginza line is how it starts from Shibuya, goes all the way through central Tokyo, including the posh Ginza district and stops at Asakusa, part of the old Tokyo. 

It also makes it quiet interesting to see how the clientele of female passengers changes as the train goes from Shibuya though Ginza. The girls getting on in Shibuya consists mostly of the "fashionably slutty" (for "trashy slutty" you need to go to Shinjuku) young girls into the "gal"-fashion. But as the train make it's through Tokyo the "gals" start to get replaced with the more posh and elegant Ginza ladies crowd with expensive brand handbags and elegant fashion sense. The point where the to types of women mix is a fascinating, albeit brief time, it's almost like seeing two worlds collide. Two things that are not meant to meet, something like seeing lions and zebras play or like a silver age JLA/JSA crossover.
Then as the train goes further, again the females change from the Giza ladies to the regular mix of Tokyo girls and women and then finally into the old hags of Asakusa. It really is a fascinating journey of girls/women to take. It should be noted that the salarymen are exactly the same across the whole line so it might not be as an interesting journey for the ladies...

My daughter indeed!

Kill enemies, score points!

Again, apologies for the lack of posting recently, the cold and entering a quite work-intense period at the company has made it difficult to gather up the energy to post much recently... For the first time in quite a few weekends I had a weekend without work and found it extremely difficult to get rid of little toddler Sunshine as she kept following me wherever I went in the house to make sure I wasn't running out on her again. That she's now also figured out how to climb stairs and move the sorry excuse of a baby-gate we put at the bottom of the stairs means that she is not restricted in movements either.


So, I did turn on the Playstation to relax with an exceptionally gory game and of course, within minutes of going upstairs to the computer/work/Salaryman-play-room I heard the panting and patter of feet as she climbed up the streets, followed by a squeal of joy as she saw me and my iPad next to me (it's quite packed with toddler-friendly apps). As she's now a little past a year and a half, I briefly considered whether I needed to turn off the gory game as to not traumatize her but decided against it for the moment. As she hopped up next to me on the sofa, grabbing the iPad with her hands, she noticed the noise and movement from the tv-screen and stared at the game for a few moments, just as I was shooting up a few enemies and putting my knife through the eye of one of them. 
I expected perhaps some crying or in best case indifference, but instead she screamed out a huge happy "Yay!" as I kept up the killing in the game, each kill followed by a happy "Yay!" for about half a minute until she decided that the iPad provided more fun and she turned her attention to that instead. 


So yep, not that there was any doubt before, but if this isn't complete and final confirmation that she's my little daughter, I don't know what is! 

Hip Hop is dead!

...because I'm a teenager, with a little gold...

I'm sure that all of my readers knew this already, but hip-hop as any form of counter-society movement/music is very dead...
I used to be a punk in spirit and from high school a fan of industrial music (we used to call it "synthare" = EBM-head) but what I carried with me from the punk days is an enthusiasm for anything that comes from the cracks in the side-walk and out of the ordinary.
.
Going back in time, this means that even though I never really got the point of hip-hop I really liked the message that NWA and Public Enemy were sending when they got political (which wasn't enough if you ask me...). 
As I liked, and still like, aggressive music, I always felt that it would be great to have the hip-hop revolutionary guys take one step further from the mainstream and just launch into the counter-culture, but instead they became the mainstream... This is not as much of a point as it is a reflection as there are few songs that I love as much as "Straight outta Compton", just that the revolution got kinda lost... In any case, the whole point of this post is that we recently had the whole senior management over here in Japan and they made a big deal out of it with fancy videos and stuff...


The thing was that in one of the videos presenting the senior management they had the whole hip-hop thing going, with scratching and everything, while presenting a couple of middle-aged white dudes... At that precise moment I felt that hip-hop, as any form of social commentary was dead...  When a few middle-aged white dudes at an american medical device company thinks it's "cool" to have a soundtrack of hip-hop beats and scratching, that means that the whole thing is dead...    

It's cold and miserable here!

Wouldn't make a difference here...

First off, apologies for the lack of posting recently, work, Toddler Sunshine and the cold here in Japan at the moment makes it hard to find time to do any amusing or insightful posts. 


As I mention this every year, I thought I should follow through with my tradition and complain about the cold this year again. Ok, Tokyo is not that extremely cold compared to northern Europe or northern north america but it's the lack of central heating and proper insulation that makes it feel a lot worse here... Although the Salaryman base of operations is a new house and built a lot smarter to keep some of the heat inside, it still is pretty cold inside and now after the whole Fukushima ordeal electricity is not something that you want to use too much of (both for financial and general power saving reasons) making it hard to protect oneself from the cold apart from putting on another layer...


Unfortunately we do not have any temporary escape plan this year either, before babies and stuff, this would be the perfect time to take a quick vacation to a considerable warmer country in south-east asia and get to hate on the heat again before coming back to the giant fridge that is Japan. So we just have to gut through another month or so of cold before spring...

It's completely Loco!

I wonder if anyone told him that backpacks are for dorks?

There's a select few of the bloggers from Japan that I feel some form of closeness to. As I personally don't actively go out hunt for Japan blogs much it usually takes a little time for that odd virtual "relationship" to form. The closeness does not necessarily form due to content, writing style or stuff like that, probably more out of the approach to blogging. I've never actively set out to get in any kind of blogging community or participated in Japan related message boards so it's more organic than anything.

Then there's also these bloggers that I know of and respect without feeling particularly close to in a blogging sense. One of those is Loco in Yokohama that's run by Baye "Loco" McNeil. As far as I know, he's probably been around as long as this little blog, I've been aware of the blog for a while and while not following it extremely diligently, it's still been a blog that I've enjoyed at times and always respected. But I've never really felt particularly "close" to it and there's one big difference; Loco almost always felt like a pro. He's a Writer that writes a blog because he's a Writer. Thematically and in his posts, he always felt like a pro following a path that he's set out for himself as a writer, not like me who don't particularly care about grammatical errors or plan very much about what I'm writing about a given day. So not "feeling particularly close" to my blog is not really a bad thing in that sense.

So to my not so big surprise, Loco has self-published his first book "Hi my name is Loco". It doesn't feel like a surprise but more like a logical consequence for him moving from a blog to publishing a book. Don't let the cartoony cover fool you though, it's not a collection of amusing anecdotes about living in Japan, from what I've gathered it confronts the theme of racism in Japan head on in parts. But you can click the link above yourself to check it out, read some excerpts and check out his blog to get a feeling for what the book is about.


To be completely honest, I don't really think that much of racism in Japan as I've been exposed to more mean-spirited racism living in Sweden than in Japan as a half-Japanese-Swedish guy with looks leaning towards Asian. But Loco, as a black guy from New York, coming to Japan without much knowledge of what to expect (at least that's what I've gathered) gets exposed to a lot of it from expected and unexpected corners.


I bought the book when I saw it was out and it's currently stored in the Kindle app on my iPad and am looking forward to reading it as soon as I finish up what already is queued up. I'm also quite convinced that it's ten bucks well spent as his blog kinda vouches for the quality (hey, if you check out his blog and hate the writing, then maybe this book ain't for you but then you can get on with your life without feeling like you wasted money). I might post a "review" with my thoughts on it when I've finished up with it as well.


If the above got your interest even a little, you can do yourself a favor and check out the blog and book site and see if it catches your interest.
...now, maybe it's time for me to dust off those thoughts about publishing that collection of essays and thoughts on Manpanzees that's been cooking in my head for a few years...      

Neighbourhood Vigilante

Does anyone remember "Vigilante"?

The area where the Salaryman HQ was established is a very safe area. Compared to other cities of similar size, Tokyo is a relatively safe place (but like anywhere, if you're set on looking for trouble I'm sure you'll find it) and our place in the suburbs of Tokyo is even safer. The community of houses are all new with very little around it and there's no traffic just passing through so any suspicious looking vehicles or people hanging around are sure to be noticed.

We had that one burglary in conjunction with the earthquake when all the predators and bottom feeder came out to play, but after that basically everyone signed up for private security companies (which I grudgingly agreed to as I didn't want to end up as the only unprotected house, ripe for the taking). Also, a lot of the women in the neighbourhood are housewives with small kids, so the area is quite lively on weekdays as well. The only time that I could image burglars striking would be the New Year's vacation when many houses stand empty as people leave Tokyo to be with their relatives, but that's only once a year and no burglaries were reported this time.

Despite this, our neighbourhood "council" decided to make the area even safer and initiate our own little neighbourhood vigilante squad to take turns patrolling the area. As exited I'm about joining a vigilante squad (Note to self; I need to make sure I arm myself with some menacing toy before patrolling) it feels like a completely meaningless and annoying endeavour to begin with, and the other day the chairman came around to check that the Salaryman family were up to do their part for the team. As I try to keep friendly with the neighbourhood I kept the Salaryman family's thoughts about this to myself and nodded and agreed that we'll do our part with pride. 

But as he told me the details of our duty I had trouble to not burst out laughing at the stupidity and futility of it all... Apparently, to not make thing inconvenient and make sure that everyone can participate, the "patrol" hours were set to once a day at noon, consisting of walking the maybe 50 meters of roads connecting our community to the main road and see if there's anything " suspicious" going on. Then followed by one "late" night shift once a week, but put at 5 pm to not make it too inconvenient and dark to see properly. Also, it will be cancelled on holidays as many people are away and can't be expected to perform their patrolling duties.

I wonder if any prospective burglars will show the same consideration when planning the next big heist of maybe a wide screen TV, blue ray players and some minor jewelry that a break in in our area can yield them? Will they consider that we're too convenient to not patrol during the actual hours when the burglars are roaming about?

But hey, I'll keep the peace, take toddler Sunshine with me out to patrol and spend 5 minutes walking around, tick off "nothing suspicious" one Sunday a year, but somehow do not feel one bit more secure than before the vigilante squad... If I'm going to do something completely meaningless, at least it's nicer to do it at convenient times.

Evil terrorist Swedes!

These ones are particularly Evil...

For the first time in ages (at the minimum a little over a year) me and Mrs. Sunshine managed to get a little time to ourselves to go see a movie while the in-laws watched over Toddler Sunshine. The movie we chose to go and see was "Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol" since it seemed like the best option available and a reasonably sure bet for both of us.

As expected, the movie was entertaining (the story didn't make much sense, but it was more about action scenes and exotic locations than anything else) and I almost forgot that 'ol Tom Cruise is a Scientologist most of the time. But the greatest thing about the movie was that for the first time in Hollywood history, the main villain was a Swede! I find it most puzzling that no movie until now has thought to make the main terrorist villain a middle-aged, white and slightly overweight Swedish physics professor? When you think about it, they must be the most hateful and evil people on the planet, perfectly cut out to be a believable and realistic terrorist villain as us Swedes are so well known and feared for our aggressiveness and fanaticism.


It's also a good balance to the image of all Swedes as pervert closet Nazis that the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" David Fincher movie probably will create.    

The Day that Customer Service Died

This year we could have a quite peaceful New Year celebration, staying at home in the Salaryman HQ as Mother came to visit, it passed by with little fuss and we could avoid the worst trappings of a traditional Japanese New Year's celebration (e.g. huddling around freezing, horrible traditional "osechi" food" etc.). Although Mother is technically Japanese, she's lived in Sweden now for over 40 years and basically forgotten all the traditional Japanese stuff and has no particular craving for it either.

On the 2nd of January, things are starting to revert back to normal and nowadays most of the big sales start already from the 1st making Tokyo seem a little less of a ghost town. On the 2nd I ventured out to our local mall/department store to just check out the sale and scout a little for an additional TV that we are thinking of getting. Although everything was basically open for business the crowds that regularly haunt the mall on a weekend were nowhere to be seen and the place felt quite deserted. As I went in to the local electronic goods shop to possibly scout for a bargain TV, first checking out what was on display and waiting for one of the usually so aggressive sales reps to put his claws in me. As I was looking around, very much looking like a potential customer for a few minutes, no sales rep came around (usually they are very aggressive as they usually get incentive based on their sales, and TVs are probably one of the more attractive areas for them). Looking towards the service counter I could see three of them hanging around looking bored and tired.

As I realised that no one would come around to discuss my potential purchase, I went over to the service counter and said to one of the guys "Hey, I'm thinking of buying a TV and was hoping to get a little help?". The sales rep looked like I had put a huge burden on him, let out a big sigh and followed me over to the TV section. I pointed out one of the TVs that I had been considering and said "I'm thinking of this TV, is it available?" and without almost no delay I got back a "Nope, that one is not in stock and it'll take a while before we get in new ones" (followed by silence). In a normal case, what I would have expected here is a follow up with alternate suggestions or some kind of pitch, but the rep seemed satisfied with his response and went back to looking bored. So I followed up with a "Ok, but how about these versions that are around the same price, are those in stock?". Again met with a big sigh and a "Fine, I'll go check" as he noted down something in his notebook that probably was meant to be the product codes but looked just like doodles to me. After a few minutes he came back "Nope, those are also sold out, dunno when we'll get them back in stock". With that I gave up and left the store, as TV-less as I had been when I went in there.

On the way out, I stopped by the Subway sandwich shop to get some lunch for the Salaryman family. I've shopped there countless of times before and service is usually flawless, fast and never with any mix-ups. However this day the two girls working the counter seemed completely depressed and for the second time I was met with a huge sigh as I placed my order. The standard politeness was completely gone and replaced with complete and utter indifference. 

But in the end, I completely sympathise with these poor souls that have to work on the 2nd of January serving the few people that actually venture out when the rest of the country are chilling out at home. We went out today again and things seemed to have reverted more back to normal, but the 2nd of January seem to be the twilight zone of Japanese customer service when they can't be bothered to keep up pretences.

I'm no big fan of Japanese popular music, neither the mainstream music nor the alternative scene (I hate visual-K with a vengeance) but I must admit that the hit song "Laser Beam" by commercial electronic pop girl-group Perfume has burrowed itself down in my brain.  

Enter the (year of the) Dragon!

Did we ever get to see "Aunt Petunia"?

So, another year is coming to it's end and with some surprise and horror I realise that this will be the fifth year of existence for this little blog. Japan is now finally leaving the year of the puny rabbit for the year of the mighty dragon. As has now become an institution at this blog, I will do a quick review of the year 2011 for you.

Biggest Event of 2011 is basically a no-brainer... The earthquake and following tsunami that struck Japan on March 11 is without any competition the biggest event of the year. To be honest, living in the Tokyo area and working (more than) full time as a salaryman with a hungry family to feed when I get home, it's really hard to believe that it was less than a year ago the earthquake struck. Life in Tokyo pretty quickly went back to normal, but every now and then reminders of the horrible tragedy shows up. The quake itself and the week directly following it will forever be etched in my mind though, pretty scary stuff.

Biggest Non-Earthquake Related Event of 2011 is the changing of jobs (again) making me realise just how painful it can be to change jobs from a comfy (but not challenging) position where you know everything and everyone to a completely new environment way out of the comfort zone, having to go through the 'ol song and dance routine again. Now, almost six months later, I'm finally starting to settle in and getting my bearings, just about when an old friend gave me a call out of the blue with a very attractive job offer (we'll see what happens to that, the job seems great, but the timing for me is equally not-great).

Girl that Occupied my Brain in 2011 is... ... ... toddler Sunshine. I wish they came with a manual, but as she is now over a year and half, she's getting a little easier to interpret. As nice as it is with the Sunshine girls at home, I'm starting to feel the need for a Jnr. Salaryman to maintain the status quo of mutually assured self destruction  

Most Important New Life Companion of 2011 is my beloved iPad! As my new job carries with it a lot more travelling across the country in work, the iPad has become invaluable as I have packed enough entertainment there to last me at least a year. The iPad is packed with movies, e-books, e-magazines, games and comics and as if it's not enough to use it out of the home, I basically carry it around with me all the time in the house as well. The only drawback I can see is that I'm getting a bit lazy with it, using my stationary computer much less than before and dropping comments on other people's blogs I read and appreciate becomes a little more of a hassle (sorry about that!).

Biggest Revelation of 2011 is much harder to pinpoint... Looking back, 2011 was actually a quite poor year when it came to great movies and music (hey, at least what came up on my radar) with no particular movie or music artist and/or album that really rocked my world (hey, there were quite a few really good ones though), but when it comes to the world of entertainment I guess discovering the TV-show Dexter and working my way through the first five seasons in the commute comes pretty high. I had heard the name before but never really thought it was worth investing the time to try and watch until Big Bro recommended it and I got hooked.

Best Video Game of 2011 is actually much harder as a large number of really really great games came out in 2011, but for me, the without doubt best game of 2011 has been The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. This game has forced me to neglect both family, work and precious sleeping time as I've been completely immersed in the world of that game. Part of me is happy to say that it looks like I have quite some ways to go until I finish the game, but the other part of me feels bad about me withdrawing into my den to play the game when I really have better things to do. If you're into games, you probably already know the game so I won't mention it in any detail, but it's like a mix of Fallout, the Elder Scrolls, Diablo and a bunch of other games I can't remember now. The sense of wonder and fun of exploration that I felt when playing the game is one that I probably haven't felt since I first played Fallout 2 or even way back to Wasteland on the old C64...   

Best Blog of 2011 is probably also worth a mention. I'm not sure on how much of an achievement it is coming from me, as I don't really read blogs that much, basically the stuff that is on my blogroll from time to time ,but I don't go out hunting for new blogs to read. But the blog that I find most interesting is that of Aussie bird Corinne in the outback of Kyoto and her blog "Always leaving things unfinishe" (yes, the final "d" is not supposed to be there). At this point, I get the feeling that we already share most of the readership base (or to be more correct, most of the people who read my blog also check out hers, her horde of foreign women married to Japanese men probably couldn't care less about my blog) so I might be preaching to the mosque here, but if you haven't checked it out I highly recommend you to do so. A very close runner-up is the good 'ol Badboy Chris with his "Confessions of a Badboy in Japan", and the rest is in the blogroll.

Whatever Happened to... of 2011 is a brand new category for this year (let's pretend that I'm consistent here, just for kicks) and is custom made for The Octopus! Good 'ol Octopus had a quite funny blog (although very irregularly updated at the best of times) and was one of "my regular" commentators whose comments quite often made me burst out in a grin-like parody of a smile, but who, since autumn seemed to stop existing on the Internet.

With that, I want to wish all of my readers a very Happy New Year! Hope you all have a great 2012 and hope to see you around here in the year of the Dragon.

Up until now, I've steadily increased my readership base year by year, but in 2011 the earthquake (for obvious reasons) drove a lot more traffic to my site so I feel a bit anxious about having 2012 be the first year that my pageviews go down compared to the year before it, so tell your friends, ok?