No time to leave a legend

A bit confused earlier today. Someone talked about his motto being “Live, love and leave a legend”. I wondered for a moment about that statement. It sounded really nice and all, but it just didn't resonate with me.

I think I had a problem with the part about leaving a legend.

I soon realized why - it just doesn't sound like something I want to sacrifice my net-surfing and book-reading and movie-watching time for.

Hiking

Spent the day in the mountains.

Assembled at 7am at Sai Market – me, Kasumi, Mio and Nakata-san.

First we went to Naeba-san. Hiked a long ways to an outdoor onsen.

Then hiked back to the car.

Drove to Gunma and found this small onsen village. Had ramen. Dip in the onsen. Very big, very clean, very comfortable. Had a mechanical Chinese foot massage.

Drove back to Tokyo. Made a stop at a service area. Had kenchin jiro soup.

Home party

Had a home party today. Kasumi’s party.

In attendance were Noda-san and Tango-san, Jack and Tetsuko, and Kaien and her son. The kid is starting Shogakko now.

It was fun talking to everyone. Noda-san and Tango-san as usual are not very knowledgeable about many things.

Jack talked about his mistrust and disdain for the power structure in the U.S. He said that the whole creation of wealth is based on the military. The worst thing about it is that it is not just one or a handful of people at the top orchestrating this thing, it is so deeply part of the system that everybody, or at least a very great number of people, are dependent on this military-industrial complex.

He did not believe Bush is evil, just dumb. He thinks Cheney is the worst of the current administration. I agreed, the guy is creepy. We talked about possible Bush Administration involvement in 9/11, he mentioned someone who wrote that bin Laden was a stooge for these guys, but Jack did not believe things went that far. I agreed with him there too.

Kaien also talked about some weird interesting stuff. Nowadays China is ridiculously capitalist. Universities are all privatized. Only the rich can attend. The gap between the rich and the poor is very bad. It sounds like a horrible society. Jack said that China always had a huge gap between those at the bottom of the heap and those at the top, and now it has reverted to that.

Museum day

Today was a major museum day.

I went to Uguisudani with Kasumi and Yoshida-san. Our first stop was the Tokyo National Museum (Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan).

Here was the order we saw/did things.

1) Checked out the Kichijoten National Treasure painting of Lakshmi. In addition we saw objects from the Yakushiji temple and its pagodas, mostly from the 8^th century. The Lakshmi painting was definitely the centerpiece.

2) Saw a gorgeous resplendent collection of fine and decorative art from Japan as displayed in exhibitions in the west in the 19th century. A couple of things really struck me. One was a black underglazed porcelain framed piece. The artwork looked exactly like the kinds you see with the blue underglaze, but the black was a twist on it. It looked very cool and elegant. Another was a couple of shiny gold knife bejeweled knife cases.

3) We ate a fabulous lunch at the Hotel Okura Garden Terrace located in the Horyujikan. I had the Gastronomy Lunch, which included a fillet of beef steak along with shrimp in a reddish-orange creamy sauce. It set me back 3150 yen plus tax but was well worth it. The bread too was nice, seemed like a multi-grain brown bread.

4) Looked at a fine collection of objects from the Horyuji Temple, mostly from the 8th century. Some pieces that stood out in my mind were paper with sutras written on them. The kanji looks like the same characters as now. There was also a sutra in Sanskrit which looked exactly like today’s Devanagari scripts, not that I know them or anything. The writings were so clear and so neat they could have been done yesterday.

After this we walked into Ueno Park. We came upon the Tokyo-to Bijutsukan (Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum). There was an exhibition of objects from the Sechuan period in China. I wasn’t that interested but they were. It cost 1300 yen to get in. I decided to be a good sport, and also to take in these cultural things when it is foisted upon me. I probably sure as hell wouldn’t go on my own, but we grow as a result of both our own choices and also going along with what those close to us are doing.

After all this I was pretty museumed-out. As we continued walking through Ueno Park we passed by a science museum. Yoshida-san asked if we want to see that but I said I am overflowing with museum info at this point.

We then got on the Yamanote Line from Ueno Station’s Koen-guchi and went home.

Scripting problems

Tired, hungover, needed extra sleep. Call from client at almost 11am to ask when I will arrive. I tell them an hour from now. They want me to participate in an IM session.

IM session goes from shortly after 11am to around 4pm! Lots of stuff discussed. Towards the end MSN Messenger seemed to kick me out. I couldn’t sign back on and then realized that I cannot connect to the internet.

Eventually restarting my router fixed this.

I go out on my bicycle to Nerima area. Eat lunch at Fracasso.

Return home, try to solve the problem of why some scripts do not work on my machine.

I finally figured out that Norton Anti Virus Script Blocking feature has been causing this. I checked it off and the scripts worked.

I am sure that this feature does not unconditionally block all scripts. Otherwise you could not do much on the internet in this day and age, and I am a big net surfer. Reading information on Symantec’s website, it seems that it is supposed to detect scripts with virus-like behaviour. So does this mean that my scripts exhibit virus-like behaviours?

I also found that in NAV Auto-Protect displays "Off" and Email Scanning displays "Error" in the System Status screen. I could not solve this, looked around the web. Found the answer in the Symantec website. The conclusion was that I need to reinstall NAV. Did, fixed the problem.

One more aside. In the past I had disabled Symantec Password manager since I suspected it had something to do with my scripting trouble. Clearly it did not, since the problem persisted after I disabled it. Anyway I am now using it again and my scripts work fine. So the cause was simply the Script Blocking feature.

Blotto

Blotto event at Milk. On the way to Ebisu got off at Shibuya and went to Subway. Delicious as usual. Saw Don and Tim DJ-ing. Kasumi also went, a rarity. She became very sleepy and we left part way through. We left a little after 1am, just before Jeff's live was about to start. I was disappointed because I wanted to see the live performance. Kasumi still had not eaten so we first tried to go to the Mos Burger in Ebisu but it was closed. We then went to Denny's at Kyu-Yamate and 246. It was nostalgic to go to that area again. Franna's still seems to be there, across the street.

Today

Went to Kagawa-sensei's office in the morning. Got medication to help my coughing and phlegm in my lungs.

After that went to Sai Market. Hung out with Sugi-san and Takahashi-san, the Plannet Works duo. My mother-in-law sat with us. Particularly Sugi-san seems to really suck up to her. It was fine in the time we spent together, we had a lot of fun, but I can see it being one of those things that eventually really gets to me.

Went to Jonathan with Kasumi. Ate the wafu kinoko spaghetti.

Came home. Took bath for over 21 minutes, sitting through the first six songs (first half) of my Temptations CD. 39 degrees. It was toooo hot! I will set it back to 38 degrees tomorrow.

Too sick for movie

Met Bob in Shinjuku in afternoon. Plan was to eat lunch then go see Charlie's Angels, but I was not feeling well. Flu and fever. We went for okonomi yaki. Ate a fair bit. Was feeling worse and worse as time goes on. Went home, really bad shape.

BBQ at Don's house

The Ichimuras, The Itos, Justin, Jeff and his girlfriend Noriko, Nick (DJ Muthafunka), Tim, this couple where the husband is a genki American guy working in a toy shop... Lots of fun. Nick took over the the BBQ duties and made some great stuff.

Day in Kamakura

What a terrific day. Left with Kasumi early for Kamakura. Met Kumiko Matsui. Then Fusa-sn arrived on her bicycle. We all rented bikes. Spent the day bicycling around with Matsui-san and Fusa-san. Checked out a small art gallery located off a dirt road in the hills. What a place for a gallery! Solo exhibition by a Korean woman artist. She is in her 60s and seems to have quite a feminist conciousness.

Then went past a bakery, bought some ham sandwiches and other breads. Went back to Fusa--san's shop. Hung out for a long time.

Okonomi-yaki

Met Rogan and Haruka at Tsutaya 4th floor, magazine area. Went to JPop Cafe, drank some wine and ate some salads.

After that walked around for a while in Shibuya. Went to Comix, across the street from the Beam building. They sell old American DC and Marvel comics for only 100 yen! Some are 300 yen. I bought two Thor comics and two Hulk comics, all were 100 yen.

We then went to this okonomi yaki place. It was really good, and not expensive. It took a while to decide on it, because there was also this very tempting shabu-shabu place for 1500 yen all-you-can-eat. Haruka seemed really tilted towards the shabu-shabu, she wanted meat! Rogan seemed more inclined towards the okonomi yaki. Maybe he thought that if we go there he would be able to keep it to under 1000 yen.

Eel

Went to Una-something for dinner with Kasumi. Ate una-juu. Really good eel. Drank uulong-cha. Trying to stay away from alcohol for a while, after my Bobby’s Blunder (see previous post).

Debauchery and drunkenness

Drank and ate with Yamana-san, her boyfriend (whose name I didn’t catch), and their friend Mori-san, who I rather liked. Really guzzled the beer and sake. After that, on the way home I went to Bobby’s Bar. Met a French fellow, Nicolas. Ordered a Guiness. During the time, also tippled a glass of Czech absinthe, and a shot of this really potent killer brew appropriately named Bobby’s special.

Was devastatingly drunk. Fell asleep at the bar. Awoke past 4am, then caught a cab home. Was a hungover wreck the next day.