Neil Hopcroft

If you have to take me apart to get me there then I’d rather stay at home

Walking through the 80s scifi tunnels below Shinjukus skyscraper district I discovered yet another little shopping mall tucked away around a corner – this one I suspect was linked to a hotel since it had plush carpets and was full of some of the tackiest shops you’ve ever seen. They were selling pure ugliness in a faux European style. Or maybe some bright spark back in the old continent exported all the ugly things they could find (well, apart from the ones hirez shot) to somewhere with more of a market for that sort of thing.

Onward, further through the tunnels, just as I was expecting to be assaulted by Tom Baker, I found a clock to rival the one in Bracknell, only this is underground so it is made with lights instead of fountains. On the ground there are twelve pedestals arranged in a circle, each an inch or two higher than the previous. Above the pedestals there is a circle of red strip lights playing out a timed pattern. A few yards toward a pair of tunnels leading back to the main tunnel back to the station there was a transporter unit. Just like in Star Trek, only I couldn’t get it to work, and neither could the Taiwanese family passing in the other direction wondering what I was up to. I managed to get the lights on the floor to change colour, so I figured I was doing something right, but the damned thing wouldn’t transport me anywhere.

Just as well really, ‘cos I needed to pop in to Tokyu Hands and buy some shelves. Steph was right about shelves – they transform your life. Everything is so much tidier now. No shopping trip would be complete without the discovery of some insane gadget, today was no exception – I found a motorised tie rack. I figure this counts as gratuitous technology[0] so I’ll be aiming to buy one once I’ve got some more money over here…

[0] Did I mention I’d updated my interest list and was surprised that noone else is interested in gratuitous technology (or that I can’t spell?)

Stupid question: Where did “Fasten your seatbelt Dorothy, we’re going for a ride” come from?

Opheera McDoom writes some insanity about suing Jews for something reported in the bible… which wouldn’t have caught my eye had it been written by anyone else.

Some of the ME lot will, I’m sure, appreciate Mr Lincolns Shoes

Since everyone else is doing the ‘describe me in one word’ meme, I figured that memes are getting so streamlined these days that this was nearly as far as they could go…but theres one step further:

Describe me in no words at all.

On a slightly more serious note – I’ve been wondering if theres changes that I could make to the way I write this journal that would make it more interesting for people. So, do you have any suggestions? Would you like to hear more descriptions of things and places? More about my emotional state? More about my views on the things going around me? More about my work? Less of any of these things? Other ideas?

Perhaps I could run some silly games here? Something like – you give me a word (or phrase) and I’ll take a photograph inspired by it.

Oh dear, it seems to have taken me a while to recover from the raucous week of rock and roll debauchery, I must be getting old. But now I’m back, and I want to turn up the soundtrack to my life another notch.

Last week saw the first train outage I’d encountered – I’ve been here two and a half months and I’ve not encountered any problems. So there was going to be utter chaos when it did happen – and there was. There was a flash thunder storm (which looked particularly beautiful from the six floor) which lasted about twenty minutes earlier in the evening, so I decided to stay at the office for a bit until the rain went away. By the time I left the Yamanote line was broken, the first clue was that the barriers were open – that never happens, then there was a train full of bored looking commuters in the platform. I joined them for a little while, until it became obvious there wasn’t going to be much movement in the near future. At which point I nipped down to the subway station and caught a random train deciding to get off somewhere that, for whatever reason, looked interesting.

There was a work celebration last Friday, to mark the (successful) passing of a deadline. We were taken to a Brazilian restaurant not far from my flat where they fed us meat. Lots of meat. As much as you could eat. There was a bit of veg too for those not convinced about the idea of eating cows. Then there was a token scoop of ice cream to take away the taste of beef – of course, since everything works over here they’d melted and refrozen the scoop of icecream into the bottom of the little bowl so it didn’t spin around or roll off when you tried to spoon at it.

We were efficiently ejected from the restaurant as they had more bookings for the tables, so we retired to ‘Oh God!’. An Irish film theme bar with a decidely seedy 80s mirrored nightclub feel to it, except for the perfect victorian chandalier over the pool table. They were showing the Mexican while I was talking to some Indians with a background of noisy drunken Finns talking Japanese. I felt so cosmopolitan.

On saturday I met up with Nobue-san, a Japanese friend of godgirl and minusbat, who was much better at reading the local menus than me – we ended up in a wonderful little traditional Japanese restaurant around the back streets of Aoyama somewhere. The company and the food were great, although the setting reminded me a little more of a stable than an eatery. Then there was the ice cream. A perfectly formed cone of soft ice cream turned up in a little silver cone holder, complete with handle and everything. Am I the only one who finds this unusual? Do we have those back home and I never noticed? Should I buy one and bring it home?

I seem to be having some trouble sending things to anyone at darkwave, did I accidentally annoy dishmop too? Or am I just being stupid again?

error report

Looking at this[0] brought to mind some of my thought experiments[1] and memories of porting GOCR to EPOC. Both of which have been rotting rather since my initial enthusiasm just after christmas.

So much for my next ‘next big thing’…one day I’ll have either the time or the patience to get there.

[0] Auto translation of signposts using an iPaq and networked image processing and translation tools – requires high speed connection, all processing done on server, three-box solution.
[1] Auto translation of anything using 7650 (any Series 60) based OCR and network translation tools, requires network coverage, one-box solution.

neilh@docomo.ne.jp is retired due to spiralling spam load – mail me for its replacement address.