Tottori: Blame it on the Rain

When we biked across Missouri (more on this later), we kicked it in a primarily old-school fashion: though we carry iPod touches with us in case of an Angry Birds-related emergency, they were largely unneeded on the Katy Trail, which is exceedingly difficult to get lost on.

Missouri's Katy Trail, a.k.a. "Ol' No-Turns."

Likewise, our trip down the California coast (more on this, too) was relatively straightforward.  We did bring a couple of paper maps put out by Adventure Cycling, and these came in very handy: with a single glance at the elevation profile, we could be fully prepared for the climbs ahead by despairing for days in advance.

Not so with Japan.  The route we'd planned to take us to our WWOOF host's and then to a ferry port takes us through five prefectures and two major regions of Japan.  Short of carrying an atlas with us, there was no map that would show us the way, and certainly none that would point out the 7-11s and city parks.  So, iPods.

Between the Google Maps app and an array of online weather reports, we did it like true Millenials and used technology to keep ourselves informed on the road.  Each conbini we would pass on the road -- in the cities, they are thick on the ground, with three Family Marts within sight of each other, but in the hinterlands of Tottori they are precious indeed -- was an exercise in information-gathering.  We crouch on the concrete in front of the glass showing the porn mags, surreptitiously charging our electronics while we slurp down canned coffee and eat hard-boiled egg after hard-boiled egg, and we research.  How far until the next campsite, how likely is it we would have a mountain pass today, where's the nearest supermarket, what are the chances of rain?  Once we finish with our research, we pack up once more and hit the road, unless of course someone has written something somewhere on the internet, in which case we have another coffee.

There is no accurate way to measure how many hours we've spent right here or at one of a hundred identical conbinis, so I'll just conservatively estimate "a buhdillion."

After resting for a day in Tottori, a city known for its pears and its sand, we edged along the coast of the Sea of Japan (or as we would begin to refer to it after reaching Korea, "the Sea of Korea"), happy to be finished with mountains for awhile.  On the second day on the road, while stopping at a Lawson for our usual breakfast of yogurt, dried fruit, eggs, and coffee, we noticed that Yahoo weather predicted a 60% chance of rain for the following day.  The Japan Meteorological Association, usually a considerably more optimistic source, pegged it at 100%, but rated the accuracy of that prediction only a "B," meaning it had a 75% chance of being correct.  Both of these predicted the rain only growing heavier from the afternoon.  Weather.com predicted no rain at all.

Not to get too Andy Rooneyish (-esque?), but I've always found weather reports to be completely mystifying.  If a 50% chance of rain is predicted, then surely the meteorologists are right in either outcome, right?  I tend to assume that a 60% chance of rain means that it is certainly, 100% raining somewhere, just not necessarily where I'm standing at any particular time.

We woke up in the city park where we had camped at 5, and had everything packed by 7:30.  We were determined to make it to shelter before the rain started, or at least make it to another conbini in time for second breakfast.  The sky had grown gray and threatening by midday, but Providence led us to yet another Lawson for another cup of coffee and another bout of Interneting.  We had scarcely made it under the awning when the sky began to fall.  "Adequate rain gear" not having been on our packing list, we've been making do by wrapping ponchos around our loads and hoping for the best, a technique that works fine in light rain and gets our bodies and our stuff completely drenched in heavy rain.  This was heavy, too.

Another check of the weather reports.  Yahoo was pretty sure that it wasn't raining at the moment, but that it was due to pick up and fall through the afternoon.  The JMA concurred, as did Weather.com, a unique convergence of three darts on three separate dartboards.  Google Maps indicated a campground just a kilometer ahead of us, and considering the odds that the rain would keep up for the rest of the day and night, it seemed prudent to push through the rain and set up camp as quickly as possible.  Dripping wet, our glasses fogged and streaked, we arrived at the empty campsite and began hanging all of our possessions to dry under the shelter.  A shame that we couldn't make much progress on this day, we said, but at least we made it to cover before the rain got much heavier.




Before we could even break out our knitting, the rain had stopped.  "I'm sure it'll pick up again any minute," I said, keeping a smile of relief clamped on.  "It sure is a good thing we made it here, though it's a shame we missed this brief break in the rain!"

Needless to say, the rain had finished.  By 2 p.m., the sun had come out, leaving us to sit in our pajamas and mournfully watch our clothes and sleeping bags dry on the clothesline.  If we had waited at the Lawson for another cup of coffee, we would have missed the rain entirely, and could be halfway to Shimane already.

お台場公園キャンプ場, just across from the Daiei Road Station.  The first and only time we've been approached for a fee in an abandoned campsite, and at 1000 yen, completely reasonable.

The mysterious poor posture of the trees of the Tottori coast.

We learned what we had already known, the hard lesson we had learned a dozen times over: don't trust information you get from the Internet.

Robo-Boogie

It is the distant future: the year 2011. There are times where having the opportunity to write about life in Japan is a precious gift. This is absolutely one of those times.

The other day, Osaka hosted the world's first bipedal robot marathon. I'll just repeat that: Osaka was home to the first-ever 26.2 mile race of bipedal robots. If your reaction to this is anything like mine, you are expecting news of the successful launch of Skynet any day now.

The proud winner of this year's marathon. Look at that charming smile!

So yeah, it's pretty much "I for one welcome our cruel robot overlords" time. Except, of course, for the fact that these robots are adorably tiny. Please enjoy these highlights from the race.

It's even better if you imagine "Yakkity Sax" playing from 0:17.

The blog post containing actual information about this race is here. A chilling vision of what could one day come to pass is here. Please write your congressman today and demand that robo-American relations are represented in the government.

Slam the Phone

(Warning: self-indulgent poem ahead.)

Softbank is one of the biggest cell phone providers in Japan; their celebrity endorsements are the stuff of legends, from a single photo of Brad Pitt with a porn 'stache to an entire series of billboards, movies, songs, music videos, and concerts featuring a boy band called Smap (that, as far as I can tell, doesn't exist outside the advertising universe, kind of like that FreeCreditWhatever pirate band or the Black Eyed Peas). Also, the mascot is a dog named "Father."

A while back, I had to spend an hour and a half waiting for the only English speaking member of the Softbank staff, and since I had hilariously forgotten to bring a book, all I had to entertain myself was my cheap-ass Jellybean cell phone that boasts features like Calendar and Notepad. Here is the fruit of an hour and a half trapped in Softbank, with the original formatting preserved as closely as possible:


for all the sleek, the bright-lit
mirror white shined clear to t
he next century, for the packe
ts, for the whimsy, for the unli
kely friendship of a white dog
and a smiling mute black man,
for the blessing of the apple co
rporation and his holiness mick
ey mouse, for the freshest beat
s piped in from the west coast,
for the promises made by an ar
my of vested men and the vang
uard of pleasant women who ca
nnot help us, for the soft milky
leather and multifareous jellybe
ans and offers of unprecedented
generosity, i am not happy. i ha
ve stayed in the neverland of do
gs and fluorescent day for too lo
ng and find myself aged before
my time.

Internet 101: A Series of Tubes

The following is a public service message for the chronologically advanced and/or technologically deficient. It is not intended for critical purposes, but rather for entertainment and education. As the Baby Boomers say: Be thee warned, freeman varlet.

Here at "Amazing Tales of the Gaijin Patrol" (now the #4 Google result for gaijin+tales), we like three things better than anything else: cross-cultural understanding, garlic bread, and comments on our blog. Despite the inherent dishonesty of such activities, we frequently solicit comments through sternly-worded pleas or idle threats at the ends of our posts -- after all, here we are throwing our backs out getting the word to the international community, and all we look for in return is the occasional word of reaction (and, oh, maybe a book deal). We love to hear from you, in short! There are obstacles, however...computational obstacles.

We often get feedback from some of our readers who encounter difficulty with the "Comments" section of the blog. Most of these readers are...well...OK, if you have bought the Beatles' "White Album" more than three times (for instance, CD, cassette tape, vinyl, and wax cylinder) then you may have the occasional problem interfacing with the inter-webs. I don't want to turn this into a generational war, so I'll keep the focus on our peers; after all, we may not have invented it, but Generation Y does self-absorption at least as well as the Boomers (damn, and I was going to keep this civil!). Jenn and I, I believe, are of the last generation that will be able to remember the first website they ever went to (the Animorphs fansite, in my case, back in 1995) and the first generation to be turned to by prior generations for tech support help.

Again, parents, grandparents, and relatives and friends who happened to be born before "MacGyver" first aired: I hope you take no offense at any of this. We love you very much, and if my rhetoric comes off as arrogant and patronizing, just remember that it's all pathetic compensation for my generation not accomplishing anything more impressive than accumulating large collections of Beanie Babies and Pokemon.

We don't have any magical instant understanding of technology. I am perpetually baffled by the inner workings of my computer, and I am still in caveman-level awe of Google Earth. This sums up the generational situation rather well, I think. For reference: here is how to comment on any of the posts on this blog:

1. Click on the link at the bottom of the post that says "0 comments"...or, if you don't see that, any other link that contains the word "comment."

2. Type your comment in the box provided.

3. Type the letters in the word verification form, if applicable (if there's a picture with some fuzzy, slanted letters and numbers with an empty white form under it, just type what you see in the box).

4. Choose how to identify yourself: if you have a Google or Gmail account, put that in the boxes provided. If not, best to go with "Name/URL," where you can leave your name. Don't worry about the "URL" box unless you have a website that you want to plug. When you're all done, click the orange "Publish Your Comment" button. See picture.


That's about it. If you have any questions or anything you want to tell us, go ahead and give the "Comments" thing a spin! And to the next generation: if you happen to scroll up this blog post from the archives of the Global Digital Techno-Consciousness, I hope you have a good laugh on your way to help remind Grandpa Harry how to check his cyber-mail again.

The air space doesn't get much more special than this.

Hands down, Japan's greatest contribution to modern culture has to be karaoke. Using the latest in audio-visual technology, karaoke (literally, "empty orchestra") advances human revelry to the next level: for centuries of Friday nights, humanity has simply drunkenly belted their favorite songs at friends without concern for rhythm or key. With karaoke, however, one can do exactly the same thing but into a microphone (and thus, do it much louder). Progress in its most basic form.

Instant fame, 21st-century style. Radio star death optional.

It's no secret to anyone who knows us that Jenn and I are big fans of karaoke -- our final year at Truman State, we whiled away many happy Tuesday nights at the Dukum Inn, waiting for our turn to entertain the rest of the bar. Karaoke taps into some very primal instincts in human nature; in our case, the love of attention, and in my case, the love of showing off sophisticated musical preferences (the latter is the same instinct acted upon by males of all species -- instead of inflating neck wattles or sounding a mating call, the average 21st century douchey while male makes playlists). In its American incarnation, karaoke is fun, usually free entertainment, its enjoyment factor only slightly diminished by the high ratio of time spent singing to time spent watching drunk twentysomethings slur "IT'S PAIGE'S BIRTHDAY! HAY, PAIGE'S BIRTHDAY IS TODAY!" into the mike.

Imagine our delight, then, to find that, like haiku, Godzilla, and sushi, something was lost in karaoke's translation in America. Now here is the proper way to do karaoke: operating on the same commercial principles as the Love Hotel, you get to rent a small, windowless private room for a set amount of time. Drinks are delivered to the room, and are occasionally included in the price; karaoke usually goes better with adult beverages (again, like haiku, Godzilla, and sushi). The central advantage of this form of karaoke is that the "IT'S HER BIRTHDAY" ladies are left at the door, meaning that you only have to embarrass yourself in front of your dearest friends. And the selection of English songs is usually quite decent!


The choice of songs is a little quirky at times, but as long as you want to sing Queen, Frank Sinatra, or Madonna, you're pretty much covered. Of course, they lack some pretty important artists like the Magnetic Fields, Leonard Cohen, [deleted due to extreme pomposity - ed.] but I manage somehow, I guess.

We tried to make some videos of karaoke outings, but something about the volume of the speakers, the quality of the recording device used, and an insufficiency of pixie dust made them come out too horrible for human sensory organs to process; it's similar to a leprechaun losing its magic outside of Ireland or a kebab being inedible except at a kebab shop after 10 p.m. Here is a rough approximation of what we do on the weekends, though.

Big in Japan

Japan is known for its amazing forays into the world of the tiny: miniaturization is big (so to speak) over here, with Japan continually cranking out tiny cars, microcircuits, and porn comics so minute that they cannot be seen with the naked eye. On a side note, Japanese people are known for being somewhat miniature as well, as seen in such popular media as this website's sidebar, taken from some movie or another; I had been looking forward to being taller than average, actually, and had high hopes that I might be in the position of kicking sand into innocent faces and inquiring about lower-altitude weather. Sadly, this has not been the case...I am, indeed, too big to be comfortable in most of the furniture here while still being close enough to average height to feel inadequate on trains and in police lineups. But I digress.

I wanted to tell the world about the latest and greatest tiny thing coming from Japan that isn't a Pokemon:

See that? That's a tiny apple. And it's not the only one!

They come in packs, roving the country in search of fresh...sunlight. And water. I had to buy about 20 of them, most of which are still in the Gaijin Fridge. Turns out about all they're good for is spectacular feats of forced perspective.

This is my publicity photo for the next logical step in the angsty-tween-vampire craze: Twilight Babies. (Note to any Mormon Vampire Authoresses reading this: please don't sue me!)

And the best thing about these new Nano-Apples? I'm told they're High Definition.

P.S.: I have all of next week off in observance of Midterms Week (a festival during which Americans are ritually sent home without pay), and it is my official promise to you, the readers who make this possible, that I will try to post something on the blog every day next week. And that's an Internet Promise, which is as good as gold and can be redeemed for 10 cents off shipping at baconnaise.com.