Happy year of the dragon!

Happy New Year!
2012 is, as well as being a leap year, and possibly the doomsday year (like it is almost every year may I add. I am personally looking forward to Year 2038 myself.)...
achem. 2012 is the year of the Dragon! Which may possibly be the coolest zodiac animal ever...Except for the Dog of course. (no guesses as to which year this blogger was born in).

the above photo is of various new years themed docorations, including a little dragon charm I got at a shrine. I think I'm going to start collecting all of the animals. What, don't look at me like that, I will most likely still be around 12 years from now! Even though I am turning 30 in less than 2 weeks. It does somewhat feel like the world might be ending, if only for me personally.

... Believe it or not, no one puts up all the new years cards on display as I have in this arrangement. It's quite a shame as they're attractive and original, they should be enjoyed before being shuttered up in the yearly shoebox-in-the-closet, only to be unearthed the next year when looking up addresses.
But if you're like my mother in law and recieve several hundred.... I suppose my decoration scheme wouldn't really work. ;)

Anyways, this year we did lots of new years Japanese traditional events. Like cleaning the whole house and sending out new years cards and going to a shrine and stuff.
But check out our awesome new years card, featuring 'Noboru-kun', our 20 year old newt that refuses to die. It's the year of the dragon so we figured eh, close enough.

Hope you all have similarly unusually long life-spans!
Cheers to a happy and healthy 2012~ kanpai!

iPhones overtaking the Galapagos

It wasn't that long ago that Japanese cell phones were considered the most advanced in the world.
They were developed by, and for, Japanese users, with functions that were so intrinsically linked to Japanese culture that the makers somehow didn't bother to export to other countries. (e-mojis anyone?)
Back about seven years ago when I was an exchange student, most american cell phones were black and white, and the most advanced feature on them was a melody for a ring-tone (ok, there were PDAs but they were terrifically expensive).
And yet, as documented by yours truly, even way back then my cheapo Japanese model had full color, Java support for games, text-completion, a camera, and if you were willing to shell out the yen, internet support.

Fast forward a few years after that, Japanese phonese evolved even further to have email, SMS, analog television, 'digital wallet' IC chip feature you could use to buzz through train ticket gates automatically, infrared remote to beam information to your friend's phone without emailing it... and of course the highest megapixel count cameras you could want in a cell phone.
If those weren't enough, extra application downloads were just a button click away.

They evolved in a closed ecosystem independently from the rest of the world, filling their own environmental niches. Thus, Japanese cell phones (keitai) were nicked-named after the isolated archipelego, the 'galapagos islands'.
But these last few years, like a foreign species taking root, the iPhone has been sweeping even the Japanese market. Although it's much easier to type in Japanese in standard Japanese phones (they were built with that in mind!) and other complaints I hear on a daily basis from my coworkers, the sheer number of people using iPhones is causing an envy factor.
Now that major cellphone carriers SoftBank and recently, AU, have the licenses to sell iPhones, they've been selling like hotcakes. Or Beard Papa's chou-creams.

Why is this ?
There are still a lot of features from normal Japanese keitais that haven't been picked up by iPhones, things that are convenient and often taken for granted. Like the 'osaifu-keitai' - (digital money system).

I'm thinking the root of iPhone popularity is a combination of two things.
One, iPhone Applications are fun and often free, and universal for all carriers, and visible on the web for everyone, making them talking points.
Two - while Japanese 'Galapagos' phones have an overwhelming number of impressive features, these are hidden on text-only back menus.
Case in point; I've owned my current keitai for over three years now, and am STILL finding new things out about my phone: For instance - a jogging GPS tracker that will post your stats online for you and tell you how far you've run. This is a big feature! But it doesn't have much of a presence on the phone, or app store, and hence isn't something you'd chat about over the water cooler at the office. I know I have a Japanese - English dictionary pre-installed on my phone because I explicitly asked for such a model. But it was so hard to find, the clerk at the store had to show me how to bring it up.

Now on the iPhone, of course, really every single feature on the phone is visible with a bright graphic button visible on the first page. Easy to use, pretty, easy to talk to your friends about.

I was reading Malcom Gladwell's book 'What the Dog Saw', and it had an interesting article about the salesman Ron Popeil who made those kitchen gadgets you always see ads for on cable TV.
This particular quote about the difficulty of use of the VCR (another Japanese invention?) caught my eye as particularly relevent.

"If Ron had been the one to introduce the VCR, in other words, he would not simply have sold it in an infomercial.

He would also have changed the VCR itself, so that it made sense in an infomercial.
The clock, for example, wouldn’t be digital. (The haplessly blinking unset clock has, of course, become a symbol of frustration.)
The tape wouldn’t be inserted behind a hidden door — it would be out in plain view, just like the chicken in the rotisserie, so that if it was recording you could see the spools turn.

The controls wouldn’t be discreet buttons; they would be large, and they would make a reassuring click as they were pushed up and down, and each step of the taping process would be identified with a big obvious numeral so that you could set it and forget it.

And would it be a slender black, low-profile box? Of course not.
Ours is a culture in which the term “black box” is synonymous with incomprehensibility.
Ron’s VCR would be in red-and-white plastic, both opaque and translucent swirl, or maybe 364 Alcoa aluminum, painted in some bold primary color, and it would sit on top of the television, not below it, so that when your neighbor or your friend came over he would spot it immediately and say, “Wow, you have one of those Ronco Tape-O-Matics!”

I guess what I'm trying to say is, the iPhone is like a Japanese cell phone, re-invented by Ron Popeil.
;)

Decocars

At the risk of making a sweeping general stereotype, I'm going to go ahead and say that here in Japan people have a thing for graphics. By graphics, I mean little cartoons used as visual representation for anything that could possibly be represented by cartoons, like rude manners, or the universal animation of a bowing cartoon lady when you buy something from a vending machine... and in some cases, extends to things that probably shouldn't be cartoonized.

Case in point - this year's medical exam included a picture of how to take a poo sample, as per a drawing of an adorable brown blob (let's call him Mr Poopy) riding a toilet backwards as he excreted his own fecal matter.

You think I kid! You are the lucky ones.

But the point I was trying to make was that ANYTHING is fair game when graphics are concerned here - either as subject matter or medium. So I really shouldn't have been surprised when a gang of motorists cruised down the highway in cars painted in.... anime figures!

...apparently this is a thing here. In fact, cars painted with really embarrassing painted emblems and doe-eyed cartoon girls are called 'ita-shya' - the kanji for which is 痛車; literally, 'painful car'. Check it out, it's got it's own wikipedia article! This hobby is bordering on legitimate! http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%97%9B%E8%BB%8A

So anyways, while most cars driving down the streets are normal and boring, every now and then I'll see a car decorated up the wazoo and will, like a crazy woman, try to chase it down, cell phone camera out. Here are the fruits of about a year of lucky shots! (note, some were inside a car dealership - Toyota was having a 'Full Metal Alchemist' tie-in.)

There is a whole realm of transportation decorating - including trucks (deco-trucks) and ... Did you see? One of them was a TRAIN! It had a retro 70's anime motif. Wow. Come to think of it, ANA seems to have a standing deal with Pokemon and has pikachus dancing merrily on the wings of their Boeing 747s.

Better Pikachu than Mr. Poopy!

(and we don't even know) The Name of Our Band

Oops, another month has slipped away and I haven't posted anything! For shame, for shame. A quick update then?

I'm in a band! Playing electric guitar! (I borrowed the guitar from Takeshi's friend who hasn't played it since high school). Did I ever mention this is my second band? The first one was a bunch of old farts (I call them this out of love. Also because they were all in their fities and sixties). from England. There were six guitarists! Four too many! The six guitarists all wanted to do blues, while the bassist (the leader) wanted to do classic rock... you can probably guess how that worked out.

So, I tried applying for bands by looking at the bulletin boards near music shops. Of course they are all in Japanese. I was too nervous to cold call people to try out for bands, talk about intimidating~!!
I, being much more computer-friendly anyways, went online and found a band member search forum.
An ad for an "Advantage Lucy" cover band caught my eye. Advantage Lucy was a relatively minor indies band that reached their peak about ten years ago. When I was studying abroad, I picked up their CD in a ten pack of random CDs at a clearance sale for less than 100 yen, and theirs was the only CD I kept. Anyways, I figured, if these guys are trying to find someone for such an obscure cover band, they're probably legitimate.

It's been sort of rocky, because the bass player (the leader, again) has been causing trouble by threatening to quit twice, making the drummer quit, then arguing with the lead guitarist about who the new drummer should be, ultimately going off with the new drummer and asking me to come along. Jeez, don't drag me into your emo power struggles... !

I stayed with the guitarist and singer and new drummer #2. But now we don't have a bass player, and worse! Our band doesn't even have a name. Heavens to Betsy! We've been practicing for about three - four months now... if we find a new bassist in time, we want to do a gig in December. I've been practicing! I have calluses on my fingers to prove it. Also, the huge magazine rack in the living room (normally filled with fishing and boxing magazines) now also has ONE guitar magazine.

Next rehearsal is this weekend! Will there be more drama and power struggles? Will we find a bass player and schedule a gig? And more importantly, will we finally decide on a name?!
dum dum duummmmm!! Until next time....

TGS and Dash-Mura

TGS and Dash-Mura Yesterday I went to the Tokyo Game Show! ...which is deceptively titled, as the show itself is all the way out in the boondocks of Chiba prefecture. But anyways. It's a huge deal, a video game conference and show of epic proportions, Japanese equivalent of E3.

I work in the game industry, so as a little treat to its employees my company bought everyone business day passes and allowed us a half day off to go check it out. I was only there for a morning and had to scuttle back in the afternoon to get to the office, but here are some of the games I liked the looks of: Ni no Kuni : So Level 5, a game developer that brought us Dark Cloud and Dragon Quest VIII , teamed up with Japan's national treasure of an anime studio "Studio Ghibli" (Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, the list goes on and on) to make the most beautiful looking game ever called 'Ni no Kuni'. It's a Japanese style RPG with cell-animated look that level 5 does so well. They already made one for the DS (didn't play it) but now they're making one for the PS3.

I'm SO EXCITED!!

I really like pretty games. As long as the characters in the game aren't too annoying (sorry Star Ocean, End of Time, I wanted to like you, but I can't stand girl characters with no substance other than a squeaky voice and massive titties), I say, bring on the HD. I'm spoiled, can't even play games on the Wii anymore because compared to the PS3, the graphics are crap. But Ni no Kuni... oh sweet Ghibli, I can't keep the drool in my mouth.

Other games I want to get my little paws on... Biohazard Revelations was fun to play and looked really good on the 3DS. Once I turned off the 3D, that is. Have you played or used 3D handhelds? They're different from 3DTV or movies, you don't have to wear glasses , you just have to hold it exactly right about a foot away from your face. I tried the 3DS out in the local 'denki-ya' a few months ago and was amused, until I put down the console, looked at real life things again, and my brain was like 'wait, this is 3D too! wait? what?!?!' and then gave me a massive headache for several hours afterwards.

Another very pretty game was Dragon's Dogma, which looks a lot like a western-style RPG like Dragon Age or Oblivion, only done by the Japanese company Capcom. I mean, you can tell they were trying to copy Dragon Age. The towns look the same. The character designs look the same. There's even a Dragon in the title. But it *looks* so much better. The previews and glances I stole over other people's shoulders got me pretty excited, but hopefully they'll bring something new to the genre and not fall into the trap of trying so hard to copy something all the fun is squeezed out of it.

FFXIII-2 ... I'm a sucker for Final Fantasy games. And once I got past that FFXIII wasn't an RPG, but a strategy action game, I had a lot of fun with it. I'll probably pick up a copy of the sequel, that features the continued adventures of Lightning and her sister Sarah. I tried it on the XBox, which is kind of strange because I read somewhere (oh yeah, this hilarious Penny Arcade comic) that the Microsoft's XBox 360 console will be slowly but surely phased out of Japanese stores. Like, all of them. The stores were fed up with slow sales and consumer complaints of crashes and glitches. I've never owned and XBox or its kin, so I wasn't particularly moved by this announcement, but it does seem a little unfair. Microsoft at least hasn't had a Massive Outage of it's Play Online services like a certain Japanese company I know. Whose name starts with an S and rhymes with Tony.

But that's not going to stop me from picking up a Sony Vita (their new handheld console). It already has like 80 games I want lined up! It has touch panels on the front and *back*! And best of all it doesn't encourage you to use the headache inducing 3D functions!
but I digress.

By the way, at the game show, there was an earthquake... just a little 6.2 magnituder. These happen all the time, so I didn't think much of it, but apparently it was a big deal to the international guests coming from places the earth is slightly less prone to movement.
...About that... it was just the 6 month anniversary of 3/11 this weekend, and there are still aftershocks, and still radiation troubles.

Speaking of televised treasures of the country, one of the best TV shows on air here is the show called 'Tetsuwan Dash'. : A group of four funny, good looking guys started a show ten years ago where they made a farm and started living off the land, raising sheep, digging a well, making a rice field, doing everything the old fashioned way with out electricity or power tools or pesticides. It's a really wonderful, environmentally-minded show. That wasn't the only thing they did, they drove an entire loop around Japan's coastline in a home-converted solar van... a little bit every week, in a little people carrier with a big 'ol solar panel on the roof. (they just finally finished their five year loop last year!)
Two years ago they also started and taking a tiny piece of the dirty Tokyo bay and putting in new sand, planting seaweed, nursing the little clams, and now it has a bunch of marine life in that one spot.

But the heart of their show was really the village they made, called 'Dash Mura'. It was a fixture of Sunday nights, Takeshi and I watched it every weekend, watching them laughing and cursing and making pickles or sheering their sheep or trying to figure out how to keep the monkeys from stealing their peaches. The location of the village was kept a secret, but after the earthquake, it turned out the village is in Fukushima.

Not only is Dash-mura Fukushima, it's within the 20Km exclusion zone. I can speak for the whole country when I say that that gets to me, the reality of the situation, when every Sunday we see the guys not able to go back to their farm.

This weekend on the show, on the anniversary of the quake, they went back wearing special radiation suits and gas masks, taking readings. The village was overgrown with weeds, but the peaches were still there, being eaten by the monkeys, the pumpkins were growing wild and had boar bites in them, and the honeybees had moved into the well. It had a beautiful overgrown wild feel, and if you didn't know, you would have never guessed that there was high radiation. The highest spots were the dead leaves, up to 35 microseiverts per hour, but overall the average was around 12 microseiverts per hour, still enough to make you pretty sick if you live there for a year.

I don't know any of the farmers in Fukushima but, thanks to Tetsuwan Dash, I can feel acutely that sadness of not being able to go back to that beautiful, painstakingly kept land. Its so cruel, and ironic, that the farm they made without electricity was rendered uninhabitable by a power plant.

Okay ... you nitpickers with the phD in Nitpickery are going to say 'that's not ironic! ironic would be ... a farm made without electricity being rendered useless by *lack* of electricity!'...
Fine, you win. But it's at least tragic. So please excuse me while I sniffle over here.

Maybe the real irony is me blogging about power-hogging video games and the tragedy of Fukushima in the same post? *looks away guiltily* ...
... by the way, Tokyo managed to cut its power consumption by more than 15% this summer, with both corporations and individuals doing what they could. Corporations turned off the lights of vending machines, civilians used fans instead of AC whenever possible and swapped out their light bulbs for LED lights. So at least we're giving this funky new thing called 'energy conservation' the old college try!

Papers, please : applying for a Permanent Resident Visa in Japan

Being a foreigner in Japan has its quirks. Most of it I've come to terms with, like little kids openly staring at me on the street, or adults secretly staring on the train. Or is it that I have something on my face? Thanks to the humid weather I've recently developed a series of pimples that have consolidated and formed a giant zit the size of a softball on my right cheek. So maybe that's the real reason for the stares. Either way I'm very zen about it. (Except for you, giant zit the size of a grapefruit. I'm not zen about you.)

But anyways, another annoyance with being 'alien' is the little matter about visas. As the spouse of a japanese citizen, I "only" have to renew my visa once every three years or risk deportation. For some reason this date is always August 26 and it falls on Mom's birthday, so once every three years I'm like "happy birthday mom OH SHIT MY VISA APPLICATION!!"
This year was one of those years. (happy belated birthday mom!)
So I trudged on down to the immigration office in Shinagawa with lots of official papers. Of course on a weekday. You have to take a day off of work to submit your application, and another day off for the privelege to pay them some money when it is successful. Or if they don't accept it, you get to try again from square one. (luckily that has't happened to me. yet. I don't have that many vacation days left!)

About a month ago I was out drinking with some other expats, and one of them let me in on a little known secret: if you're the spouse of a japanese citizen, you can skip the normal 10 year residency requirement and apply for a permanent resident status after only 3 years. I have hellllla lived in Japan for more than 3 years. I am reminded of this fact every time someone says "hey Kyra your japanese is really good! how long have you lived in Japan for?" (about twice a week) and I dutifully do the math in my head. Um... about six and a half? 1 as an exchange student, two and a half before New York, three after New York. Anyways, enough for the damn requirement.

Permanent residency is ... well, the next best thing to citizenship, which I don't really want because being a japanese citizen means you have to either a. give up your american citizenship and be glared at when entering the US and be suspected of being a tax evader, or b. don't give it up and live within a legal grey area according to japanese law. So, permanent residence should be ok. anyways it means I won't have to update my visa, so no more excuses for missing mom's birthday. Hmmm... ;)

Before I went to update my normal spouse visa, I thought I would be really clever this time and look at the immigration office's website for what would be necessary to get the mythical permanent resident visa. It was there I discovered, although there is supposedly only a 3 year requirement, there is also a hidden requirement: the ability to read the extremely long, complicated directions on how to apply, in Japanese.

If you go to the official site, they have English. Here you go, here's the page. http://www.immi-moj.go.jp/english/tetuduki/kanri/shyorui/05.html
looks easy enough, right? Oh wait, what's that under "Necessary Documents"?
"For more information on necessary documents, please refer to your regional immigration office or immigration information center. "
In other words, we're not going to bother to translate for you, so feel free to continue your journey up shit creek without a paddle, stupid foreigner! BwaHaHaHa!!

The worst part is, even if you go to the immigration office and ask them for the requirements, they give you the three page single spaced list, get this: in Japanese.
Then they snicker at you.

Well I'm going to foil their evil plan and help translate. That's right guys, I'm on your side! Together we can get you your permanent resident visa!
...Unfortnately the requirements change depending on your current visa status, and gets really confusing really fast, so I'm just going to list with MY requirements: if you're the spouse of a japanese citizen, and assuming you work.

First of all, here's the official list. In Japanese, natch.
http://www.moj.go.jp/ONLINE/IMMIGRATION/ZAIRYU_EIJYU/zairyu_eijyu01.html

Let's see what it says. You need eight things, are you ready? Get out your pencils!

１ 永住許可申請書: eijyuu kyoka shinkei shyo . It's the application form where you write your name and address and why you want the visa and stuff like that. You can download it here: http://www.moj.go.jp/content/000050359.pdf

２ パスポート及び外国人登録証明書　提示 : passport and foreigners card. It says 'either' but they ask for both.

3. 身分を証する文書等（取次証明書，戸籍謄本等 : An official paper that identifies you. I chose the kosekitohon, because it also fulfills #4. It's going to be your spouses if you're married, it will have your name on it. this is like a birth certificate but it has marraige entered on there. You will probably have to apply to the prefecture your spouse was born in for it and pay about 450 yen for one copy. seriously this was probably the hardest to get because I applied by mail, and takeshi's prefecture had a form to fill out and you had to pay the 450 in special stamps and include copies of your passport and lots of crap. I got two just in case, I really don't want to have to go through that again.

4. 　配偶者の方の戸籍謄本　１通 spouses's kosekitohon. same as above. you only need the one.

5.申請人を含む家族全員（世帯）の外国人登録原票記載事項証明書（外国人の方）及び住民票（日本人の方） For all members in your household, provide either their foreigner's card (if foreigners) or juminhyo (proof of residence) if they're japanese. The proof of residency can't just be a phone bill or something, no no. It's an official paper you have to get from your city office. They are also only open weekdays. Of course. Go there and look for the sign that says 住民票 and fill out a form and take a number, apply for the copy that has your entire household on it, and that will do. I think one form cost another 400 yen. This thing is getting expensive!

6.申請人又は申請人を扶養する方の職業を証明する次のいずれかの資料 会社等に勤務している場合 So, if you work, you need to get a fancy peice of paper from your office. If you're dependent on your spouse you need them to get one from their office for you. It can't just be a paystub or something, what, are you kidding me? this is Japan, you have to have the OFFICIAL form. it has to be a : BAM! This thing right here. 在職証明書　. You can do what I did and email your HR department and copy those kanji into your email. ;) I think if you're self-employed, there's a couple more papers you have to bring. If you figure it out please comment!

７ 直近（過去１年分）の申請人又は申請人を扶養する方の所得及び納税状況を証明 する次のいずれかの資料 : Something that proves you (if you work) or your spouse(if you're a dependent) have been paying taxes.
This is the document they specify: "　住民税の課税" (residency tax receipt) Must be within the last year. This is much easier if you have opted to have resident's taxes withdrawn from your paycheck, because then your residence tax will be on the little long white paper with blue ink that comes with your paycheck once a year around may. Bring a copy of that if you have it. If you haven't opted in for the automatic withdrawal scheme, you'll *know* because an enormous bill will come from the city office four times a year and it's extremely unpleasant. In that case you have to go to the city office *again* (same trip if you're smart) and ask for this thing: 住民税の課税（又は非課税）証明書及び納税証明書.

8.身元保証に関する資料 guarantor's authorization and signature. Basically get someone to promise they'll take care of you if everything goes wrong. I had my hubby sign mine. I think if your spouse is your dependent, you might be better off getting their parents to sign it. You can download the form here: http://www.moj.go.jp/content/000001990.pdf
You need them to stamp it with their official inkan (if japanese) or signature (if foreign) before you take it in to the office.

So uh, I think that's everything! I took all that stuff to the office, and waited in a two hour line (or was it three hours? it blurred together at the end) and got a little paper that says 'wait 6 months to a year'. So bad news, you're staying illegally if your normal one expires. Just be safe and renew it while you're there already. ... No I'm not explaining all the papers required to renew your visa, THAT one at least is in English!

I've got my fingers crossed and am about 85% confident I translated all the requirements right and will get my visa without a hitch, but I'll let you know for sure.
In six months to one year's time. o_O;

a little over my head...

I started using some 'mindmapping' software to keep track of my tasks at work, so I thought 'maybe I'll try that with my personal projects too!'

..
..
Woah. Maybe I'm biting off a little more than I can chew here. But what can I say, I love my projects. They make me happy.

A check next to a note means I'm working on it ok, where as an exclamation mark means I think I should be getting my ass in gear on that one.

As you can see, I'm making terrible progress with my home programming category. Don't worry, I have excuses! As an experienced excuse-giver, I have plenty!
1. when I get home, I'm all tired out from programming all day and don't want to look at computers, except for maybe facebook. damn, fb, you're addictive.
2. and this is probably the main reason:
The back room where the desktop computer is with the higher processing power and more memory and where I have Eclipse set up and everything... is also the room where we keep the cat toilet.
Damn, no matter how much I clean it (alright not enough, obviously), I start to have respiratory problems if I stay in there too long.
...come to think of it, ... maybe I should set up the computer somewhere else. ;)

But at least I finally got a Flash license from my company!.. they're nearly a thousand dollars, which explained their reluctance, but I've been asking for one for like two years now. I can only use it at work, but that's a start!

Another point of interest, you can see there are no exclamation points near Gemini. I finally finished the first draft, so I'm cutting myself some slack in that area. But my book (Tokyo By Pen) has some bits that relate to current events, so I really can't wait too long or it'll seem old.

just from looking at this list there are some items that need some explanation, so here are some links for your nerdily pleasure.

Evil Editor is an editor's blog where he rates and mocks/praises people's query letters and generally gives helpful advice.
http://evileditor.net/

While we're on the subject of query letters, another favorite reference is Miss Snark (her blog hasn't been updated in years, but it's a great archive of querying advice). http://misssnark.blogspot.com/

"Heroku" is a Ruby on Rails platform hosting service, where you can get started for free, recommended by the kind folks at the Tokyo on Rails meetup.
http://www.heroku.com/

'Geeks' is the Tokyo Geeks meetup, where I help out with organizing geeky events around Tokyo. Yessss, even my social life is geeky. *shrug* http://www.meetup.com/TokyoGeeks

What are some good songs to learn on guitar that everyone knows? I'm thinking along the lines of 'Yellow' by Coldplay, 'Love is what I got' by Sublime, Everlong by Foo Fighters...

See you next time, where I will blog about my amazing penrose tile quilt!
... as you can see by the exclamation mark, I'm procrastinating, but never you mind that ;)