How many paper bags do you keep in your room?
Do you separate them as 1) good one and 2) bad one?
The other day, one of my friends found that I used a little navy Bulgari paper bag to put all my medicine, and she screamed that I was so stupid. She also "advised" me that such a "good bag" may wanna be used when attending some fancy occasions, she said, "Well Hiro, you don't wanna smash such a good bag..., I mean at least, in Japan"
Okay, I agree that little Bulgari one may be rare for me, because I don't go there that often, plus, that bag wasn't the one I've got from my shopping anyway. I once stopped by the store and got some brochure or something. I mean, free paper bag from Bulgari.
But, here in Japan, paper bags are no longer just a shop's ad bags.
We use them as fashionable sub bags. And therefore, we do have to choose the coolest one matched with our outfits of the day.
I attended one of my friends' wedding reception the other day, and noticed that all girls did carry paper bags. Somehow smart idea, tho, coz, normally party dresses don't look good with a big tote bag or a a briefcase. We can only carry small purses, yet, need to bring our makeup stuffs, cameras, and cell phone etc. And so, paper bags work perfectly.
When looking around girls at the reception, tho, I found that they all carried brand paper bags, like, paper bags from Gucci, Bulgari or Hermes. Hunting World seemed to be popular that day, too. Yeah, my friend advice was right.
Yeah I understand that supermarket one doesn't match, but I also wondered why we cannot just go to convenience stores or stationary shops to buy "just a paper bag" with no name on it.
I mean, I know, and guess you all know why we wanna carry an orange Hermes paper bag, navy Bulgari one or red Cartier one in public. This is the statement to the world of: "Hey, I often go shopping at this shop so I have a plenty of extra paper bags to use as a sub bag" ...., right?
I still feel awkward to follow the path, but, I guess I have to return Bulgari to get another brochure :)
Monday, June 30, 2008
Safe and scary Japan
I still cannot figure out what exactly is going on here.
Japan is safe. Sure it's so safe. You can leave your umbrella at the convenience store entrance while you shop around. And you can park your bicycle in front of your train station for a day only with the little front wheel lock (actually, there's no bike holder on the street anyway). You may wanna carry your purse around but still it's safe to leave your food at the McDonald's table when you wanna use the bathroom. Yeah, you don't have to worry about someone will bring away your stuff. SAFE, isn't it?
At the same time, tho, normal people can easily turn into criminal offenders. TV news everyday reported murder cases, but, those were not occurred at the yeah-seems-to-be-definitely-unsafe kind of site. Those crimes occur at the upper middle class neighborhood. And most criminals we can see on TV news aren't any gangsters or any of those who needed to commit crimes under the life thread circumstances.
For example, one day, I've seen the news of son killing his father, then grandmother killing her daughter-in-low, and a guy killing his neighbor. What a heck. Those suspects may have gone to school, supermarket or work the day before their actions, and suddenly decided to kill someone just because they were frustrated. Scary.
I can only come up with one idea of the possible background of those crimes, tho. Japanese people are always submissive, are patient or are not supposed to say something aloud. They've probably had nothing to release what they have in their mind for a long time and suddenly they are snapped. Being submissive is supposed to be one of our beauties, but, nowadays, the idea of our culture is being misunderstood, I guess.
In Japan, another beauty is that we are supposed to sense what others' are thinking or what others want without them saying anything. But I really think this idea is the reason that takes people to the wrong way.
Say what you want, when you want, yet, nicely.
Japan is safe. Sure it's so safe. You can leave your umbrella at the convenience store entrance while you shop around. And you can park your bicycle in front of your train station for a day only with the little front wheel lock (actually, there's no bike holder on the street anyway). You may wanna carry your purse around but still it's safe to leave your food at the McDonald's table when you wanna use the bathroom. Yeah, you don't have to worry about someone will bring away your stuff. SAFE, isn't it?
At the same time, tho, normal people can easily turn into criminal offenders. TV news everyday reported murder cases, but, those were not occurred at the yeah-seems-to-be-definitely-unsafe kind of site. Those crimes occur at the upper middle class neighborhood. And most criminals we can see on TV news aren't any gangsters or any of those who needed to commit crimes under the life thread circumstances.
For example, one day, I've seen the news of son killing his father, then grandmother killing her daughter-in-low, and a guy killing his neighbor. What a heck. Those suspects may have gone to school, supermarket or work the day before their actions, and suddenly decided to kill someone just because they were frustrated. Scary.
I can only come up with one idea of the possible background of those crimes, tho. Japanese people are always submissive, are patient or are not supposed to say something aloud. They've probably had nothing to release what they have in their mind for a long time and suddenly they are snapped. Being submissive is supposed to be one of our beauties, but, nowadays, the idea of our culture is being misunderstood, I guess.
In Japan, another beauty is that we are supposed to sense what others' are thinking or what others want without them saying anything. But I really think this idea is the reason that takes people to the wrong way.
Say what you want, when you want, yet, nicely.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Fear of insecurity
Hey guys, Japan is being more and more sick lately. It's been six months since I moved back to Japan, and I could clearly see something has totally changed, or I could say something has gone worse in my country.
I guess some of you guys have heard about the recent incident in Akihabara, aka, electric town.
In case for those who doesn't know, what happened is: one guy killed seven innocent pedestrians randomly last Sunday at this neighborhood. He rented a truck, came to the area and drove through the pedestrian-only street to hit people. And worse, he swung around a knife on the street and ended up killing such a lot of people. Crazy.
Now this guy was arrested and many TV programs including gossipy ones now started talking about him.
According to those news, the trigger of his motivation was that "He was pissed because his uniform wasn't in his locker room." The suspect was a temp stuff, and one day, he found his company uniform wasn't where it's supposed to be. He thought it was intentional and was a message of being fired. And he snapped, and then, killed people. Darn, what a heck is going on with this country? Is killing such an easy thing?
And here comes more. This is not the only crazy news I saw on TV lately.
This news reminded me of another one, not the murder news, though, : One TV broadcaster committed suicide in her car.
This one may not have reported internationally. One freelance TV reporter, whom everyone thinks she's cute, intelligent and successful, was found dead in her car. Obvious suicide case. She had her blog and she kept writing about her anxiety of her work, future and her life itself.
Suddenly several rumors came up on this news, such as; this girl didn't have a boyfriend or had a bad relationship with her ex, or more. But everybody could see she could have made enough money, she had an above average looks. If the rumor was close enough to her motivation of suicide, what the heck was she thinking? Her life was at least "seemed to be more glamourous" than ordinal people's one.
These two news may not be seen to have any similarity. But to me, both cases seemed to be triggered by their insecurity. And I was surprised of the power and fear of insecurity. Gee, people can do anything when being insecure and when the situation lasts long.
I can say compare to, say, American people, Japanese are a bit more sensitive in terms of the condition of "being out of the rail." So I guess we can be insecure more easily than others. As you know, we prefer being the same with others. We prefer not being stood out. Otherwise people around you start saying something wrong about you. So once you have the possibility of you being out of the loop, it would be so scary.
Hope people will be a bit more torelable of being different from others. And hope people won't gossip too much about others without knowing much about them.
Darn, hope I won't see such kind of news any more.
I guess some of you guys have heard about the recent incident in Akihabara, aka, electric town.
In case for those who doesn't know, what happened is: one guy killed seven innocent pedestrians randomly last Sunday at this neighborhood. He rented a truck, came to the area and drove through the pedestrian-only street to hit people. And worse, he swung around a knife on the street and ended up killing such a lot of people. Crazy.
Now this guy was arrested and many TV programs including gossipy ones now started talking about him.
According to those news, the trigger of his motivation was that "He was pissed because his uniform wasn't in his locker room." The suspect was a temp stuff, and one day, he found his company uniform wasn't where it's supposed to be. He thought it was intentional and was a message of being fired. And he snapped, and then, killed people. Darn, what a heck is going on with this country? Is killing such an easy thing?
And here comes more. This is not the only crazy news I saw on TV lately.
This news reminded me of another one, not the murder news, though, : One TV broadcaster committed suicide in her car.
This one may not have reported internationally. One freelance TV reporter, whom everyone thinks she's cute, intelligent and successful, was found dead in her car. Obvious suicide case. She had her blog and she kept writing about her anxiety of her work, future and her life itself.
Suddenly several rumors came up on this news, such as; this girl didn't have a boyfriend or had a bad relationship with her ex, or more. But everybody could see she could have made enough money, she had an above average looks. If the rumor was close enough to her motivation of suicide, what the heck was she thinking? Her life was at least "seemed to be more glamourous" than ordinal people's one.
These two news may not be seen to have any similarity. But to me, both cases seemed to be triggered by their insecurity. And I was surprised of the power and fear of insecurity. Gee, people can do anything when being insecure and when the situation lasts long.
I can say compare to, say, American people, Japanese are a bit more sensitive in terms of the condition of "being out of the rail." So I guess we can be insecure more easily than others. As you know, we prefer being the same with others. We prefer not being stood out. Otherwise people around you start saying something wrong about you. So once you have the possibility of you being out of the loop, it would be so scary.
Hope people will be a bit more torelable of being different from others. And hope people won't gossip too much about others without knowing much about them.
Darn, hope I won't see such kind of news any more.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Kappabashi
LOOK AT THIS BIG COOK!
This pretty much made me laugh. No way. But this is quite easy to know what the street is for. And I'm pretty much sure that Lonely Planet may feature this area for a good Tokyo trip tip. This "Kappabashi Street" is a shopping street for food industry people. You can buy almost of everything you need to open up restaurants, bars, or even bakery.
And that is why, you can also buy fake sushi like these ;)
This is made of candle and is pretty much well known to use for the showcase display. This is quite famous among international tourists to buy "fake sushi". But this is also well known among amateur baking lovers for a reasonable shopping street for our baking goodies. There are no fresh food stores, but, you can buy almost of everything you need like pans, pots or cake "things"
I stopped almost of every stores but still made me wanna come back here again. Cool. I couldn't buy anything this time, because there are too many things I wanna get. I should wait to come back here again until me finishing a long shopping list.
This pretty much made me laugh. No way. But this is quite easy to know what the street is for. And I'm pretty much sure that Lonely Planet may feature this area for a good Tokyo trip tip. This "Kappabashi Street" is a shopping street for food industry people. You can buy almost of everything you need to open up restaurants, bars, or even bakery.
And that is why, you can also buy fake sushi like these ;)
This is made of candle and is pretty much well known to use for the showcase display. This is quite famous among international tourists to buy "fake sushi". But this is also well known among amateur baking lovers for a reasonable shopping street for our baking goodies. There are no fresh food stores, but, you can buy almost of everything you need like pans, pots or cake "things"
I stopped almost of every stores but still made me wanna come back here again. Cool. I couldn't buy anything this time, because there are too many things I wanna get. I should wait to come back here again until me finishing a long shopping list.
Friday, May 23, 2008
I should put this photo
I should put this photo, even though it's wrong angle.
(I don't know how to fix the angle, tho...)
This is the latest bread I baked. Aren't they cute?
(I don't know how to fix the angle, tho...)
This is the latest bread I baked. Aren't they cute?
Monday, May 12, 2008
Nice to be international
I couldn't sleep last night.
Tough, really. Crawling on my bed for a couple of hours, looking at the window and seeing outside became brighter. When I grabbed my cell phone to check the time, it was 4 a.m. It didn't give me any damage at all since I didn't have much to do today, tho, being unable to sleep is always tough anyway.
I started playing with my cell phone and ended up calling in Indianapolis. Luckily, my friend was awake in other side of the globe. Plus, ---I don't know if that was coincident or not---, she was at the Asian festival. Funny. We talked for five or six minutes but that made me feel so relaxed and I was able to come back to sleep.
Nice to be international.
Tough, really. Crawling on my bed for a couple of hours, looking at the window and seeing outside became brighter. When I grabbed my cell phone to check the time, it was 4 a.m. It didn't give me any damage at all since I didn't have much to do today, tho, being unable to sleep is always tough anyway.
I started playing with my cell phone and ended up calling in Indianapolis. Luckily, my friend was awake in other side of the globe. Plus, ---I don't know if that was coincident or not---, she was at the Asian festival. Funny. We talked for five or six minutes but that made me feel so relaxed and I was able to come back to sleep.
Nice to be international.
Friday, May 9, 2008
AMEYA-YOKOCHO
YOKOCHO means "off-street"
But doesn't this street look like the main one? Almost the Times Square in NYC (kidding)
It's in UENO area, and I went to check out the exhibition hosted by the Tokyo University of Art. (I've recently been pretty much a exhibition visitor.)
http://www.bauhaus-dessau.jp/
The exhibition itself was really interesting, but, I loved the raucous Yokocho, too.
I saw one fish store showed the 13,000-yen-price tag (about $130) for the frozen tuna but yelling "It's only 1,000 yen!"
Funny.
But doesn't this street look like the main one? Almost the Times Square in NYC (kidding)
It's in UENO area, and I went to check out the exhibition hosted by the Tokyo University of Art. (I've recently been pretty much a exhibition visitor.)
http://www.bauhaus-dessau.jp/
The exhibition itself was really interesting, but, I loved the raucous Yokocho, too.
I saw one fish store showed the 13,000-yen-price tag (about $130) for the frozen tuna but yelling "It's only 1,000 yen!"
Funny.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
TASPO
Japanese vending machines sell quite a lot of things. More than coke. Really.
So, you can buy beer or cigarette at any time no matter how young you are. When some big leaguers came to Japan in 2006 for the exhibition game, they all surprised seeing the beer machine, but said, "Maybe, Japanese kids are well-educated and they don't go buy those things."
Hmmm, we wish we could be that well. Nope, unfortunately.
And so, from now on, adults have to obtain the ID card called TASPO. Smokers have to apply for the age verified card by filling out the info like your DOB or address. This service started in March from several cities and gradually progressed nationwide. Tokyo are may be set in July, the last month of the service period.
http://www.taspo.jp/english/index.html
Japan still has a better smoker-friendly circumstance than the US. And I thought that was, in a way, a good thing, because it's all up to our moral control.
I hope Japanese kids will grow up just as the big leaguers think.
So, you can buy beer or cigarette at any time no matter how young you are. When some big leaguers came to Japan in 2006 for the exhibition game, they all surprised seeing the beer machine, but said, "Maybe, Japanese kids are well-educated and they don't go buy those things."
Hmmm, we wish we could be that well. Nope, unfortunately.
And so, from now on, adults have to obtain the ID card called TASPO. Smokers have to apply for the age verified card by filling out the info like your DOB or address. This service started in March from several cities and gradually progressed nationwide. Tokyo are may be set in July, the last month of the service period.
http://www.taspo.jp/english/index.html
Japan still has a better smoker-friendly circumstance than the US. And I thought that was, in a way, a good thing, because it's all up to our moral control.
I hope Japanese kids will grow up just as the big leaguers think.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Hello again
Okay folks,
I switched my blog from old one to this one hoping this helps my easy work on blogging. Do please check out this blog every once awhile and drop me some comments or suggestions.
As many of you guys know already, I started my radio job in April and things seem to be good, well, so far, at least. I am not sure how the directors and producers actually think about my work, but, so far, they haven't told me anything yet. Hope I can keep this schedule for at least six months or so.
There's still not enough friends in Tokyo, but luckily, I start getting many invitations to museum or music concerts, so, I've been around many cool places for free. Yay.
One of the latest favorites is Mori Museum in Roppongi.
http://www.mori.art.museum/eng/index.html
The Turner Prize-related exhibition is going on now. That was awesome. But the real cool thing on this museum is it's location. It's on the 52nd floor of the building and the museum ticket gives us the access to the observatory, too.
I guess I was able to take some shots of Tokyo Tower from the observatory, but, there are so many people being around, I gave up waiting. Well, I guess I have many more opportunities to come back to the museum, so, let me take better shots the next time.
How are YOU??
I switched my blog from old one to this one hoping this helps my easy work on blogging. Do please check out this blog every once awhile and drop me some comments or suggestions.
As many of you guys know already, I started my radio job in April and things seem to be good, well, so far, at least. I am not sure how the directors and producers actually think about my work, but, so far, they haven't told me anything yet. Hope I can keep this schedule for at least six months or so.
There's still not enough friends in Tokyo, but luckily, I start getting many invitations to museum or music concerts, so, I've been around many cool places for free. Yay.
One of the latest favorites is Mori Museum in Roppongi.
http://www.mori.art.museum/eng/index.html
The Turner Prize-related exhibition is going on now. That was awesome. But the real cool thing on this museum is it's location. It's on the 52nd floor of the building and the museum ticket gives us the access to the observatory, too.
I guess I was able to take some shots of Tokyo Tower from the observatory, but, there are so many people being around, I gave up waiting. Well, I guess I have many more opportunities to come back to the museum, so, let me take better shots the next time.
How are YOU??
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