Seattle P-I: Ichiro’s goals? Numbers tough to imagine. In the midst of the typical article about spring training (coincident with the first full day of squad workouts and everybody being in camp), John Hickey speaks frightening truth:

Spring training is conducive to dreams.

Oh, hell yes. Go Mariners!

Chad Orzel: “To the extent that I do believe that blogs will change society, I think it will be a different kind of change than readers of political blogs are looking for. Political blogs aren’t a new kind of journalism, they’re a new kind of punditry– they’re talk radio with lower barriers to entry.”

Amen to that.

One thing I’d add is that the only thing about blogging that’s fundamentally different from any other form of Web site in the entire history of the World Wide Web is that the person doing the writing doesn’t actually have to have any technical knowledge. As Teresa Nielsen Hayden has said, it used to be that there was some kind of barrier to making a nuisance of yourself in public. You either had to “learn how to run a mimeograph, and you had to pay postage to distribute your deatheless prose,” and the people who didn’t “found other hobbies.” The Web dramatically lowered the knowledge barrier to this kind of thing; blogging per se didn’t change anything — there have been personal journals on the Web since the earliest days of http — but blogging software changed much: It eliminated the need to know anything about HTML and Web site configuration and management.

The revolution had nothing to do with Pyra or Blogger or Instacracker or whoever, it had everything to do with Marc and NCSA — remember this? I do.

The format changed by getting easier, the underlying essence did not. I am undecided as to whether this is, on the whole, a positive thing or not.

Update: Has it really been 11 years since Mosaic came out? Holy hell.

Let’s face it: February sucks. It sucks so much, in fact, that all kinds of organizations, from unions to my former home province, look for any reason at all to declare at least one long weekend during the whole thing. Reading break, so welcome in November (read: near the end of fall semester), comes ridiculously early in the winter/spring term, and spring break.. well, you’ve seen the late night commercials. Spring break looks like a lot of fun.

But most of us don’t have spring break, and most of us don’t work for entities that are willing to declare holidays. Some of us, in fact, work for entities where a declared holiday has absolutely no effect on whether you can slack off at home while hung over or not. Which sucks, but this is the life we chose. So February, for the majority of us, sucks.

When I was a kid, it meant snow, crazy-cold weather punctuated by crazy-warm chinooks (depending on the vagarities of coastal weather), being tackled to the thawing turf during those rare moments of mid-winter warmth, and not getting Valentine’s Day cards. Now that I’m theoretically grown up and live elsewhere, I have to watch for the mud and deal with crazy-cold weather punctuated by rain. I don’t get tackled anymore, and as for the Valentine’s Day cards.. well, let’s just say that some years are better than others, and this was a very good year.

As I’ve gotten older, though, and as I’ve come to have different hobbies, and as my love for certain things has intensified, I’ve begun to see February in an entirely different light. And it all has to do with four simple little words that make most of my friends roll their eyes: “Pitchers and catchers report.” Go ahead, laugh. It’s stupid. It’s baseball. Sports fandom, for the non-fan, is always incomprehenisbly dumb. But baseball, the sport of the long season, the sport with 162 days of news and surprise and delight, has six months of dormancy — and every year, I anticipate the approach of the new season a little bit more. Those words become sweeter every year; the wait between the end of the World Series and Opening Day becomes longer every year, too.

This year felt worse than most. I missed baseball more that I think I did last year, despite the crappy crappy season of Mariners baseball I was forced to endure in 2004. Anticipation built and built, thanks to some truly brilliant moves on the part of the team, and I cannot wait for 4 April — it’s just going to be a beautiful thing, watching this team take to the field. Last year I went to Arizona for my first spring training; this year, it’s not possible, but I’ll be there in spirit. There’s no better way to kiss the winter goodbye, and usher in spring, than watching the fledgling baseball season get off the ground. A fabulous, wonderous thing.

The old game waits under the white
Deeper than frozen grass
Down at the frost line, it waits
To return, when the birds return
It starts to wake in the south
where it’s never quite stopped
Where winter is a doze of hibernation
The game wakes gradually
fathering vigor to itself as the days lengthen late in February
and grow warmer
Old muscles grow limber
Young arms throw strong and wild
Clogged vein systems in veteran oaks and left-fielders both
Unstop themselves putting forth leaves and line drives
in Florida’s March

Migrating north with the swallows
Baseball and the grasses first green
Enter Cleveland, Kansas City, Boston
–Donald Hall

Go Mariners.

Following the euthanizing of Under a Blackened Sky, I decided I still needed some kind of outlet for idiotic inanities, and this seems like as good a place as any. The truly sad thing is that I’m likely to end up updating more over here than I ever did at the other place, and that I’ll also end up giving money to the LJ guys because I use and (ugh, I can’t believe I’m about to say this) actually like their software. So here we are.

I’ve been back and forth between Victoria and the mainland a lot lately, for four or five days at a stretch, living in hotels and generally missing people who know who they are. This week I’ve been staying in Richmond — the downtowny part of Richmond, I mean. The part you drive through from time to time, but don’t actually spend any time in. It’s a neat place, and I’m starting to wonder why I never realized that before. It reminds me a bit of being in Tokyo, without actually being in Tokyo (or leaving the country, for that matter) — once again, there are lots of little short people all over the place, talking in a language you don’t understand, with signage you can’t read, and, if you were to walk into a random shop in both Richmond and Tokyo, you’re probably about as likely to find someone who can speak English.

It’s the little things: More neon than you might be used to seeing in North American (though Vancouver has always been a little unique in that department), strobe lights advertising stuff, incomprehensible deals on strange prodcuts you’ve never heard of, bizarre foods, both prepared and raw, and a preponderance of really damn good and fast Asian food.

This can get particularly funny — I went to a Japanese bistro last night, where the food was better than average North American quality, but worse than what you’d get on the other side of the Pacific. As you might expect, the menu isn’t really in English.. but it’s also not in Japanese, either. I walked into the restaurant, and the staff yelled out, “Irrashimase!” just like they do Over There. “Cool!” I thought. “This is one of those Japanese restaurants!” I turned to the guy closest to me, and said, in Japanese, “Good evening, and thank you; I’d like a table for one, please.” And I got this blank look back. “Oh-kay, clearly not one of those Japanese restaurants.” Yet Cantonese was widely spoken and understood. I don’t know what to make of this.

No, people don’t drive on the wrong side of the road, and the alleys and streets aren’t quite as vibrant, but there’s a touch of difference about this place that I find kind of appealing. Two years ago, the last time I spent any significant amount of time in Richmond (about a day), it mostly annoyed me; now, I kinda like it. But Yaohan is easily the equal of any shopping mall you’re likely to find in Japan, and if you close your eyes.. well, you might not believe it, but you could fool yourself.

One of the benefits of getting to the airport super-early is that — at least on airlines that for inexplicable reasons don’t do pre-assigned seat selection — you get your pick of seats. In my case, following my horrible experience on the way to Japan, I asked for, and got, a seat in an exit row. Unlimited leg room. Ahhh.

What I didn’t know is that sitting in an exit row dooms you to losing about two or three inches of lateral space for your ass, apparently because the armrests now have to contain both the IFE system and your table tray, so there’s a big lump that pokes you in the thigh. I would have been okay with that, really, but I still traded my 51H away for something much, much better. It was further in the back of the plane.

Owing to a quirk of scheduling JL18 was not full. It wasn’t even close to full. In the waiting room at Narita I saw what looked like an inordinately large number of small, screaming-age children. This seemed odd; what seemed odder was the number of these children who — how do I put this delicately — were not of the same, er, genetic heritage as their theoretical parents. Some discreet inquiries revealed that this was a group coming back from China with their new Chinese orphanschildren. I’m deeply torn about this. On the one hand it’s touching and heartwarming to know that these kids will have homes with loving parents; on the other, it’s.. kinda creepy. “I went to China and all I got was..”

Yeah, I’m not going to finish that joke. I still have one flight left; I’d like to not go to hell before I get home.

Anyway. Flight not full. Whole rows of seats unoccupied. As soon as the seatbelt sign was off I bolted for the back of the aircraft. Scoped out the center section of row 61, stole six pillows, five blankets, and made myself a little fort. I spent the entire flight more or less horizontal, which is to say that while I didn’t get a whole heap of sleep I did manage to have a much more comfortable flight than I did last time. (Also, I learned that four seats in a 747 are just enough for me to stretch out completely. Walking around during the flight, I noticed that several Japanese people were able to do it in three.) It was great, me and my little blanket fort. It felt like I was about six. Highly recommended way of flying, even if the flight attendants do look at you kind of strangely. But, what relaxation! Blankets over my head, earphones in, eyes closed.. I didn’t hear the Chinese kids screaming the whole way to Vancouver.

Nor did I hear the fire alarm go off. I’ve always wondered what kind of jackass is so stupid — or so desperate — to try smoking in an airplane bathroom. Well, now I know: It was the kind of jackass that was flying from Tokyo to Vancouver last night. I’d like to think this is born out of drug dependency rather than outright stupidity, but the flight attendants were p-i-s-s-e-d o-f-f. A very stern annoucement was made — sterner, by the way, in Japanese than in English. “Evidence of smoking has been found in a lavatory! We wish to remind you that we will open the door and throw you out over the Pacific if we catch you doing it again!” Personally, given the fact that there are signs in the lavs warning of potential precautionary landings in the event of smoke detector activation, I would have enjoyed a trip to Elmendorf or Anchorage or Fairbanks. That would have been fun.

So happy to be back in Canada. So happy to be able to read signs again. So happy to be able to read menus again. So happy to be able to say, “Venti Passion tea lemonade, please,” instead of pointing, miming the drink, and mumbling, “Sore wa onegaishimasu.” Woohoo.

There’s a down side to this, of course: 22 voice mails were waiting for me when I turned my phone on. And a dozen text messages. I have a lot of catching up to do.

Of course, having written that, I just sat through an Air Canada announcement entirely in Japanese, and it was like, “Hey, where am I?” Cut me a little slack; my body thinks its 04:27 tomorrow, and I don’t think I can see straight enough to keep typing.

Japan Times, 22 October 2004, Page 2: Typhoon keeps SDF busy across nation

Jiji Press: The Self-Defense Forces have been busy this year with natural disaster relief operations, with a record number of typhoons striking Japan and causing floods and mudslides across the nation.

So far this year, the SDF has deployed some 11,000 troops for search and rescue operations, as well as water supply and other relief activities.

The number is nearly double that for the whole of last year.

The SDF has received requests for disaster relief from 15 prefectures, compared with four last year. All of last year's cases involved water-related disasters.

Surging demand for SDF disaster relief work reflects the devastating floods triggered by a weeklong spell of torrential rain in the Hokuriku region in July, as well as damage from powerful typhoons that struck the archipelago.

In July's Hokuriku disaster alone, nearly 7,000 SDF troops were deployed for rescue and relief operations in Niigata and Fukui prefectures.

The operations, which ranged from search and rescue to distributing clean water and disinfecting contaminated areas, lasted as long as two weeks.

Meanwhile, Typhoon Tokage, the 10th to make landfall this season, struck wide areas from the Kansai region in western Japan to the Kanto eastern region on Wednesday through early Thursday morning, killing at least 57 people.

As of early Thursday, Miyazaki, Kagawa, Okayama, Kyoto, Hyogo, and Gifu prefectures had sought SDF disaster relief assistance for the havoc caused by Tokage.

The previous record for the number of typhoons making landfall in a season was six. Generally, only two or three typhoons hit Japan directly.

Japan Times, 22 October 2004, Page 1: Cruelest typhoon in 25 years kills 62: 27 still missing amid mudslides, floods

Kyodo News: Typhoon Tokage left at least 62 people dead, 27 missing and more than 300 injured as it cleared Japan on Thursday morning, the worst carnage wreaked by a typhoon in 25 years.

The typhoon brought downpours and strong winds that destroyed houses and important cultural properties. It also disrupted transportation services across the country before being downgraded to an extratropical depression around 9 a.m.

The number of casualties caused by Tokage, which means lizard and is the Japanese name for the Lacerta constellation, was the worst since an October 1979 typhoon that left 115 dead or missing, the Cabinet Office said.

In September 1991, three typhoons struck Japan and left 86 people dead or missing, while 93 were dead or unaccounted for due to two typhoons and heavy rains between July and August 1993, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi met with Yoshitaka Murata, state minister in charge of disaster management, in the afternoon and ordered the immediate dispatch of a government fact-finding team.

Emergency disaster headquarters were established the same day, with the first meeting held in the late afternoon.

Many of the casualties were the result of landslides triggered by torrential rain, as well as high ocean waves and swollen rivers that crashed through embankments.

As dawn broke and weather conditions improved early Thursday, local authorities and rescue workers resumed efforts to search for the missing and assist those left stranded.

At the site of a mudslide that swalloed several homes in the city of Miyazu, Kyoto Prefecture, the bodies of two people had been found by Thursday morning.

In the city of Maizuru in the prefecture, rescuers transported a group of 37 people to safety after they were stranded on the roof of a sightseeing bus. The group, mostly elderly people who were returning from a hot spring in Fukui Prefecture to Toyooka, Hyogo Prefecture, spent the night on the bus roof after it was almost completely submerged in floodwaters from the nearby Yura River.

Group members said they climbed onto the roof after breaking the windows of the vehicle with coat hangers. At one point during the night, the water had completely covered the bus and had come up to their stomachs.

"At that time, I really thought it was all over," a 65 year-old woman said in recalling her ordeal. "But all of us managed to remain strong."

Another woman said she was able to remain calm while they waited for help for more than nine hours in the cold. "But I could not hold back tears when I was rescued," she said.

In Toyooka and Izushi, Hyogo Prefecture, people were rescued from the rooftops of their flooded homes.

And in waters off Toyama port, the Kaiwo Maru, a training ship operated by the National Institute for Sea Training, crashed into breakwaters late Wednesday after its anchor was washed away by strong winds.

NB: If it’s been a while since you’ve been here, you’ll probably want to scroll down until you see the picture of Miyajima’s floating torii, read that, and then work your way up. I’ve back-posted about four days worth of entries in addition to this one, which will be supplemented tomorrow at some point with more detail. There would be more tonight, but it’s quarter after eleven, and I’m spent.

Hikari 310 pulled into Tokyo station on time, 14:43 JST on 21 October, 2004. It took me about two seconds after stepping off the train to make up my mind about what I was going to do. Ever since the encounter with Fuji-san I had been toying with the idea of abandoning the old plan. The old plan was for me to catch the earliest NEX back out to Narita and fall into my hotel. It had a lot of appeal: I could go to the health club and work out, get that massage I’ve been hankering for, catch up on my e-mail, and generally relax my last night in Japan. And, had the weather been crappy, it would have been exactly what I would have done.

Instead, the remnants of the typhoon had long since departed the Kanto plain, and, at 14:43 in the afternoon, the sun was approaching the western horizon, scorching metropolitan Tokyo with That Light. You know the light I’m talking about — the light I had for about four days on this trip, and never in Tokyo. Well, I’m not one to let an opportunity like this pass, and I did have half a roll of film to finish off. “Where could I go in four hours in Tokyo?” I wondered. Ah. What was it that I missed out on thanks to the first typhoon? Asakusa, and Senso-ji. Simple deal: Hop the Yamanote line to Ueno, pop onto the Ginza subway line, and come out practically on the temple’s front doorstep. Take some pictures, have something to eat, be back at Tokyo-eki for the 18:03 departure to Narita. Perfect.

A brilliant idea, as it turned out.

By the time I finished dropping my luggage off in Tokyo’s cloakroom (for an extoritonate charge, by the way) and made it up to the Yamanote line platform, the light was even better that it was on the way in. I decided to, um, make a stop in an undisclosed location for the purpose of picking up a gift for someone that will remain undisclosed until they, um, receive it (preferably sooner rather than later, but you never can tell). Back on the train up to Ueno; I caught a glimpse of the park through the station windows, and I’ll tell you this: It’s a hell of a lot nicer-looking in the golden sunshine than in the pouring rain. Have I mentioned I’m really annoyed about the crappy weather I had during this trip? No? Well, I am.

Senso-ji didn’t disappoint. I’ll elaborate tomorrow, but for now let’s just say that I committed a cardinal sin in getting stuck somewhere photogenic with no film appropriate for the circumstances. It’s funny that I had everything in my bag except color ISO 400 C41 film. Had 800 color film. Had BW C41 400 speed film. Had a range of E6. But no Portra400. This is the part where I bang my head against the gate.

I stopped at Daikinuya, a tempura place just off [mumble] in Asakusa that came highly recommended by a number of people whose opinions I trust. For Y1,890 I had the best tempura ebi donburi I’ve ever had, anywhere. It’s not your typical tempura, either; this stuff was seasoned before and after it spent quality time in the oil, and the shrimp had been splayed open, creating a flat tail about an inch wide.. oh, it was delicious.

The expedition had an additional purpose. While I was deeply ambivalent about leaving Tokyo two weeks ago (thanks to the crowds and the fact I was sick and tired of not being able to find anything), I don’t think I had yet fully adjusted to life in Japan. The trip into the city today was partly about seeing whether I could tolerate Tokyo now that I am adjusted. Would I like the city more now that I was comfortable in a foreign country?

Answer: Hell yeah. Tokyo: Not such a bad place after all. Even at rush hour on the trains, it.. wasn’t so bad. It almost makes me not want to leave, now that I’ve got the hang of this place.

That said, it’s probably time for me to go. I was standing on the NEX platform in Tokyo station earlier tonight, and then at the hotel’s registration desk, and then in the lounge, and..

I kept thinking how annoyed I was the place was full of gaijin.

Definitely time to go home.

This is a travel day and there would normally be nothing to write about (“got on the train, rode it for nine hours, got off”), so I think what I’ll do is blog the train ride at least to Shin-Osaka and see how it works. I can’t promise it’ll be interesting, but this will give me a chance to catch up with some ideas that have been rattling around in my head for the past two weeks I haven’t written about yet, as well as serve as a record of my trip halfway along the length of Japan. Hey. If some random jackanape can blog the birth of his daughter (??!!?), I can blog my train trip for as long as my battery holds out.

pre-0843: Kamome 2 left Nagasaki this morning at 06:30 according to my cellphone’s clock. Exactly 6:30. I mean, the clock ticked over, and the train started to move. The accuracy of the timing here is almost frightening. Nationally, the average lateness of a shinkansen last year was 12 seconds. Twelve seconds. For every shinkansen, everywhere in the country. I don’t think I can do anything to a precision of twelve seconds.

I’m going to have to find a good picture of these trains. They’re ridiculously cool. They look like eggs with wheels, the seats are business-class style, upholstered in leather and — I swear I am not making this up — the floors are hardwood laminate. In a train! Hardwood! My house isn’t this nice.

0843: I had been sweating the seven minute train change in Hakata. The Komame LEX from Nagasaki arrived in Hakata at 0835; Hikari 352 left Hakata at 0843. “That’s insane,” I’m sure you’re thinking. “Seven minutes to change trains? Get right out of here. Who the hell booked your tickets?” A fair point, I guess, except that (a) I booked them myself, and (b) it turns out that seven minutes is plenty of time. The shinkansen tracks are only a two or three minute walk from the local tracks, and I made it to the platform before my train did. This is Japan. Seven minutes is plenty of time. Nothing is ever late. Nothing. My food comes on time. The trains run on a hilariously tight and carefully regulated schedule. Hell, leaving the hotel this morning, I stepped outside at almost exactly 0600, and a taxi pulled up just as I had requested.

0857: Arriving in Kokura. Kokura was supposed to be the site of the second nuclear bombing, but cloud cover saved it (and doomed Nagasaki). From the train, it looks like a very industrial town, with a number of tall smokestacks off on the north side. You can tell this is earthquake country — every tall free-standing structure (i.e., things that aren’t buildings) I’ve seen is wrapped in protective scaffolding. Go, civil engineers, go!

As an aside, I can’t help but wonder where Japan’s nuclear reactors are, and whether you can see them from the train. Japan is, if memory serves, one of the places that never built big US-style cooling towers and so their reactors look vaguely, disconcertingly Russian.

By the way, almost everything taller than about five feet in this country is painted in aviation avoidance orange and white, and will probably feature at least three red anticollision lights. It’s really weird, and along with the power lines that run everywhere probably one of the Japan’s most distinctive man-made features.

If Japan had…

.. a national building material, it would be ferroconcrete.
.. a national noble gas, it would be neon.
.. a national electric fixture, it would be the red anticollision light.
.. a national 70s lighting pattern, it would be strobe.

0904: We’re in a big-assed long tunnel. I bet we’re going from Kyushu to Honshu. Civil engineering is almost like a sport in this country — who can build the bigger bridge/tunnel/skyscraper/industrial plant/whatever? The Japanese are in love with concrete (or “ferroconcrete,” as they more accurately call it over here), which makes sense from an engineering perspective, and are able to do some truly amazing things with it. The old buildings that fall down or get burned or whatever that don’t absolutely have to be re-built in a traditional manner get re-done in concrete. It’s unreal.

If you watch the Discovery Channel or TLC periodically you’ll come across one of their “monsters of civil engineering” shows, and inevitably there’ll be some segment on Japanese civil works projects, usually a bridge. I got to see one in the flesh yesterday in Nagasaki — a giant bridge is being built spanning the mouth of Nagasaki harbor; I have no idea whether this is a wise or even necessary thing to do, but the unfinished span looks damned impressive even though it is, um, unfinished.

0918: Pulling into Shin-Yamaguchi. I have nothing to say about this city and know virtually nothing about it, except there’s a very cool-looking railyard below us with an honest-to-god turntable. I haven’t seen one of those in.. years.

Took advantage of the small break at Shin-Yamaguchi to haul out hallie’s AC adaptor. Yay electricity! (It’s my luck that I’m in the first row of seats on this train, in this car: If you’re traveling on the train and want to work, don’t count on this happening — AC is available only in the first row of seats in every car on Hikari RailStar services offered by JR West.)

0945: Hey, I recognize this landscape! We’re near Hiroshima (just outside Miyajima-guchi, actually). I pay attention. Score one for me.

I solved a fruity mystery on Tuesday. For a long time I’ve wondered where, exactly, those mandarin oranges come from. “Product of Japan” the box says, but Japan isn’t exactly known for its vast orchards and fields of produce. “Do they have room for the giant orchards needed to satisfy the endless appetite of North Americans for these oranges?” I used to wonder. Look at the pallet next time you’re in the grocery store around Christmas. That’s a lot of oranges. Now think about how many more pallets there are all over the continent. That’s a lot of oranges.

Well, I figured it out. They’re grown in Kyushu. There are fields of them — not vast fields in the sense that we’d think of the prairies as vast — but there are fields with lots of orange trees all over Kyushu. One mystery solved! (Now, if I can only figure out how they get the caramel inside a Caramilk ba–wait, I figured that one out in biochemistry. It’s an enzyme.)

0951: “We will be making a brief stop at Hiroshima.” Have I mentioned before that I really like this city? I do. Like Kyoto it’s not huge — around a million people — which is just about right as far as I’m concerned for a major city. At the risk of finding a silver lining inside of a dark cloud that really shouldn’t have one, one positive side effect of the bombing is that Neo-Hiroshima emerged with a fabulously navigable road network. Unlike Tokyo or Kyoto, everything’s on a grid, and it’s damn easy to get around. (Nagasaki is like this, too, sort of, and Kobe is reputed to be this way as well, though I have no first-hand evidence of this. Also, Kobe was designed that way, whereas Nagasaki and Hiroshima were rebuilt that way.) And as I said before, it isn’t a depressing place at all.

(I’m willing to concede that my enthusiasm for Hiroshima might have something to do with the absolutely gorgeous weather we had while I was here. It’s entirely possibly that I would have liked the city a whole lot less had it been typhooning.)

Here’s something I bet you didn’t know. Kyoto was spared Allied bombing during World War II out of consideration for its cultural history, but when it came time to pick targets for the nuclear bombs, the Americans wanted pristine cities so as to better evaluate the effects of the weapons. Guess what was first on their list? Yep. After all, what’s more pristine than a city you haven’t bombed yet? Kyoto was a primary target for a distressingly long period of time before Stinson yanked it off the list in late 1944, thinking about the post-war occupation strategy. I didn’t know this until I got to the museum in Hiroshima, and the discovery was.. weirdly upsetting. I couldn’t believe it was even seriously discussed. And confusing: You won’t bomb it with incidiary weapons and conventional munitions because you don’t want to wreck the cultural treasures in the city — but nuking the place, oh, well, that’s an entirely different story.. geez.

1002: There are LED boards at both ends of shinkansen cars that scroll text across them more or less non-stop during a trip. Periodically these will provide things that are comprehensible to.. well, anyone who doesn’t understand the language, things like “Ladies and gentlement, welcome to the Shinkansen. This is the Hikari RailStar superexpress bound for Shin-Osaka. We will be stopping at…” (In case you’re not paying attention, this announcement is also read in a strange, almost British accent.) The most obvious use for these things is to explain where you are and what the next station is — a highly useful and desirable thing! Also, sometime you get a speed report. “[random kanji and hirigana] 285 km/h [random kanji and hirigana].” You can figure that one out without the context, though it’s repreated in English (“We are now traveling at 285 km/h”) for clarity. But I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the hell the boards said the rest of the time.

Until this morning. I realized they’re news tickers when they’re not displaying train-related information! “[random k+h] 24.8% (-1.4) [random k+h] $1 = Y108 (+1.42) [random k+h] NY 55 [random k+h] 4-2 [random k+h].” I don’t know specifically what it was trying to say, but could fill in the blanks. And really, do you need an English translation for that last bit? Come on. I saw some sweat bands in a shop on kitsch shop on Miyajima. One pair had the number 51 on them, the other the number 55. Each number can only mean one thing in this country..

Periodically an announcement will scroll across asking for your cooperation in keeping an eye out for suspicious packages on trains or in stations. It is exactly the announcement you get in airports. I’m kind of curious how long this has been going on — has it been since 1995? Since 2001? Forever? I’d like to ask, but I don’t know who I’d ask even if I could..

The train crew keeps buzzing in and out of the car. Every time they enter or leave a compartment they bow. I’ve almost got the hang of it: Bow when you’re thanking someone for something, bow when you’re being thanked, and bow whenever you feel like it. I’ve been doing it almost involuntarily since I got here; i wonder how long it’s going to take me to stop once I get home?

1026: Okay, now it feels like we’re going 285 km/h. I don’t think you can go this fast, this low, anywhere in the continental United States. I mean, there are airpseed restrictions below 10,000 feet, and it goes without saying that the cops will get really really pissed if you do 285 in your car on a highway. Try it if you don’t believe me. The only place most people experience 285 km/h is at altitude, and you never get the same sense of speed. I’ve tried taking some pictures from the train, and they’ve been pretty bad, over all, thanks to the high shutter speed needed to freeze action and the fact that by the time you can aim your camera and get focus lock, you’re past whatever it was you wanted to take a picture of. So it’s, um, a little pointless. Bah.

1033: The best thing about train travel in Japan is that you go through some incomprehensibly industrial parts of the country. Thus, you can have great fun trying to guess what the purpose of a particular building is, or what they do in that giant plant. What the hell is that huge green thing that looks like a huge trash compactor? (Chances are good that it’s.. a trash compactor of some kind.) One thing that has continually run through my mind since I got here is how much some parts of Japan look like.. a SimCity game gone horribly wrong. Stop laughing! I’m serious! So far as I can tell there’s almost no urban planning, building designs seem to change randomly and have no relationship to when they were built, and transit systems look like they were rammed through because the location was convenient, not because it would have caused less destruction — all of which are true in my games. Even the buildings look a lot like they do in SimCity; I’m not willing to put money on it, but I suspect the Maxis graphics artists took cues from Japanese reality. I swear, for instance, that I saw SC4’s minor league stadium in Fukuoka. And the industrial “grinding unit” tile is something I’ve seen at least a half-dozen times here. Not to mention the “mixing tanks” and “Havoc Bioengineering.”

I wish you could plant bamboo forests in the game. Those are cool.

Stopping at Okayama. Gales of cigarette smoke blow through the compartment every time the forward door opens (the space between cars is a kind of air lock for smoke; I’m in car 5, and car 6 is apparently one of the cars for fucking up your lungs). This problem was made significantly worse on the leg from Fukuyama to Okayama, thanks to the teenage girls sitting in the interspace continually tripping the door sensor.

1053: You know what I’m realizing? There is practically no pristine mountain top in all of (southern) Japan. The tallest hill or mountain in view almost always has something on top — usually an antenna farm. The upshot of this is that you have phenomenal cellular coverage everywhere you go.

Pulling into Himeji. It’s.. interesting how Himejijo doesn’t really dominate the skyline approaching from the south the way it does when you’re arriving from the north. Too many buildings, I guess. Tough for it to stand out and fire the imagination the way it did when I came in here. (Stopped at the platform I can almost see half of the keep through the urban canyon.) Leaving the station, I can see why — it’s much flatter, with considerably less development on the other side.

One more stop before we hit Osaka. Damn, this (writing) makes the trip go way faster. I was going to watch DVDs, but this is much more fun.

It’s pretty clear the typhoon came through here and dumped an assload of water on this area. You know how you sometimes hear about rivers being described as “swollen”? This is the first time I’ve ever seen a river where I didn’t think that was hyperbole. The fields look like lakes.

1112: I went to a steak place for dinner last night. Mmm, mmm, good. I realized it was the first time in almost two and a half weeks that I’d had beef, and it was Kobe beef, at that. We’re sliding into Shin-Kobe right now. I’m told the cattle are fed beer and given massages. I don’t know whether this is true or not, but they do taste good. I’m not sure, however, that the added value is worth it — that might have been the most expensive beef I’ve had in years that wasn’t several inches thick.

1200: Changed trains, had lunch. I’m back. We’re leaving Kyoto, my favorite city in Japan. I wish I could just jump off the train and go exploring in the northwest of the city. (sigh) I still can’t believe the Americans seriously considered using this place essentially as a proving ground for nuclear bombs. Assholes.

1208: Well, that was weird. I was watching Lost in Translation on my laptop (because that’s what was in the drive and I don’t feel like digging around for anything else) — specifically, the part where Charlotte goes to Kyoto — and the in-seat service woman came by right around the point where Sofia Coppola and Lance Acord pan up to show the Kyoto station signboard, and I got the strangest look from her. A “what the hell are you doing?” look, only about five times as intense. As Instacracker says, “Heh.”

I was trying to take a look at the photography of Kyoto, specifically of Heian-jingu. Now that I’ve been there and I know what it looks like, and I’ve looked at it through my lens, I wanted to see if I agreed with her choices. (Well, okay, maybe they were Acord’s choices. I sometimes think DOP is the most underappreciated job in movies.) By and large, I think it’s a very flattering picture, and I’ll be thrilled to death if 1/12th of my photography turns out that well — but then, I suspect it might be difficult to take a bad picture of Heian-jingu. That said, I think I would have given my left arm for the weather she had while shooting there: I had to shoot Heian-jingu on a bright, hazy day; to be able to shoot it on an overcast, slightly dark day.. would have been awesome. Of course, at the time, I likely would have bitched owing to the fact that this kind of light more or less requires the use of a tripod, but whatever.

We’ll see. I didn’t do a lot of digital that day, so I don’t know how it’s going to render. The day my all film comes back from the lab is going to be an exceptionally happy day. If I get three good frames per roll of film, I’m going to call the photographic component of this trip a smashing success.

1240: Between Maibara and Gifu-Hashima, there’s even more evidence of the typhoon. Whole fields are flooded, and it looks like the water invaded some parts of the city. Wow. That’s deep water, too. From what I can tell, the river here overflowed its banks and.. well, you know how it works. Several electrical substations are flooded. I wonder whether the power’s out around here? (I would damn well hope so!)

There’s a really weird black thing here — the Sanyo “Solar Ark.” I meant to spend some quality time on Google looking this thing up. (Update: Oh. That’s what it is.)

I’m spending a lot of time glued to the window. There’s a reasonably good chance of something specific happening today, but I don’t want to say any more about it in case I jinx it..

1255: Nagoya. Aaaah! Invasion of the Japanese schoolgirls! They’re everywhere. Holy god. You can’t escape. WTF is going on? I’ve run into them everywhere the past couple of days. Is it mass field trip season, or something? (Update: They all got off at Toyohashi.)

Tokyo, here we come!

1320: The sky is clear to the west. This is a very, very good sign. (Still not saying anything!)

1351: It finally happened. My last full day in Japan, at 1351 JST, I finally got a chance to see something I had wanted to see the entire trip. Fuji-san popped out on the left side of the train, and stuck its head up through the hills. I can finally understand why it plays such a huge role in the psyche of the Japanese — it’s a gorgeous mountain, frighteningly symmetrical, almost like a child’s drawing of a mountain. It looked like there was snow on the peak, and — oh, hell, I wish my camera had had film in it and wasn’t packed away so I could have done better than those crappy digital pictures I ended up taking, because it was a sight that required film (preferably slow film, on a tripod, with the right light) to do it justice. Digital can’t convey the same amount of depth and beauty, at least, not my digital camera.

At this point, of course, hallie’s batteries packed it in. We’ve got a lot of progress to make in the battery-life department.

Japan Times, 21 October 2004: Typhoon kills 17, leaves trail of havoc

Kyodo News: At least 17 people were dead Wednesday as massive Typhoon Tokage chruned north across the Japanese archipelago after hitting Kochi Prefecture. The typhoon made landfall near Tosashimizu, Kochi Prefecture, around 1 p.m. and advanced through the main island of Honshu later in the day, leaving at least 20 missing and more than 120 injured, the Meteorological Agency said.

The season's 23rd typhoon became the record 10th to make landfall on the archipelago in one season.

Many areas nationwide were swamped by downpours and strong winds due to Tokage, which means lizard and is the Japanese name for the Lacerta contellation. October rainfall in Tokyo topped 570 mm, rewriting the montly record set in 1945.

A 31 year-old man was found dead after driving into a river in the city of Miyazaki. Two men separately fixing their roofs in Nagasaki and Ehime prefectures fell to their deaths.

In Tosashimizu, one of five fishermen who were washed away by waves while moving their boats was later found dead. In Muroto, Kochi Prefecture, an elderly couple and a man died when their houses were demolished by high waves, according to local authorities.

The Torrential rains also triggered landslides around the country.

A 24 year-old woman in Ehine Prefecture suffocated after he house was buried in a landslide around midday.

A man who fell into a flooded canal in Miyazaki Prefecture was found dead, as was a newspaper delivery man in Oita Prefecture who apparently fell into a river.

Among the missing were two fishermen who were washed away by high waves in Chiba Prefecture.

Under strong winds, the 4,883-ton Bahamian-flagged containership OOCL SETO ran aground on Kakeroma Island, Kagashima Prefecture, early Wednesday. No injuries were reported among the 16 Filipino crew members, according to the Japan Coast Guard.

It said the vessel was pulled to safety in the afternoon and plans to continue on to its destination of Hong Kong as early as Thursday.

The 9,900-ton Japanese freighter Shuri meanwhile became stranded around 5 a.m. on Uma Island in the Seto Inland Sea off Imabari, Ehime Prefecture. None of the 12 crew was injured.

The typhoon also wreaked havoc with air and land transportation.

A total of 874 domestic flights had been canceled as of 6 p.m., affecting about 103,000 passengers in what could be the largest number of cancellations in a single day this year due to a typhoon.

On the Tokaido Shinkansen Line linking Tokyo and Osaka, all bullet train services were halted at 3:47 p.m. due to heavy rain, operator East Japan Railway Co. said. The trains resumed operations at 7:10 p.m.

Thirty-eight bullet train runs were canceled and 15 other train services were delayed on the Sanyo Shinkansen Line as of noon, affecting about 27,000 people, operators said. Some trains on the Kyushu Shinkansen Line were also canceled.

Utility firms said that some 110,000 homes in the Kinki, Chugoku, and Shikoku regions temporarily lost power due to the typhoon.

The Hyogo Prefectural Government issued a request in the afternoon for the Ground Self-Defense Force to be dispatched to provide emergency disaster assistance in the city of Sumoto, located on Awaji Island in the Seto Inland Seat.

The Sumoto River, which runs through the city, threatened to overflow, prefectural officials said. Some 100 troops responded to the call.

Ohama in Fukui Prefecture also issued an evacuation order to some 11,000 households because many rivers in the city were feared to flood.