海の家

One side the chirashi for the open room in our building

鎌倉材木座海岸でうちのマンションに売りの物件あり。134号線の向こうに海が広がるビーチフロントのマンション。サーフボード置き場もあるからサーファーに最適。今日明日オープンルームを行っているけど、急に来られなくても不動産に連絡したらいつでも見せてくれるでしょう。チラシのスキャンをご覧ください。

Beach life?

One side the chirashi for the open room in our building

I live in a great place, right across Route 134 from the beach at Zaimokuza. The commute is awful, but it’s worth it to be able to open up the window and hear the waves. The unit two doors down from ours if up for sale. It’s a pretty good price for the area. I scanned the flyer and offer it for your perusal. They’re having an open house this weekend, which leaves only tomorrow, but you can always contact the real estate company if you’re interested.

Japan Gadget Spasm 47

I’ve had another Japan gadget spasm. Ask people who love electronics and live in Japan why they live in Japan, and a good number of us will reply that this being gadget heaven is a deciding factor.

If you like homegrown gadgets, that is. Today’s case will bring back painful memories to Nokia fans who had to fight to get hold of one of their favorite mobile phone units years ago simply because no carrier wanted them to sell well here.

I bought this brand spanking new HTC Desire, the first one on the market in Japan. Reserved it two weeks before delivery. Couldn’t wait to get it going. It’s just different enough from the iPod touch, which I have been using for months, to be frustrating in many little ways. But it works just fine and is so much more customizable. I’m in love.

Then, today, I left the special USB cable you need to charge the battery in the office. Fine. Well, I would need a second cable anyway to avoid carrying the original one around all the time.

I went to the big retail electronics shop where I bought the thing, found a salesperson who did not turn away to avoid having to deal with a foreigner, and pulled out my new phone.

Him: “What is that?”

Me: “It’s an HTC Desire. New Smartphone. I bought it on this floor just a week ago.”

Note: If you bring a product back to a Japanese electronics megastore, and you don’t want to be kept waiting hours while the origin of said product is tracked down, it is vital to let the salespeople know the floor, better yet to show them the aisle and shelf, from which you made your acquisition. This is inventory micro-management at its most nightmarish. If you can manage to get a business card from your “concierge” (silly new term), hold onto it. It is worth more than gold. It attaches a name and responsibility to your well spent money and greatly ups the chances of efficient service if you ever need that.

Anyway, him: “Hm? Oh, right. The new HTC Desire. And what is it you need, sir?”

His look begged me not to tell him it was broken.

Me: “I’m just looking for a spare USB cable to charge it up.”

Him: “Oh, well, that’s a ‘micro pin’ USB cable you have there, sir. HTC’s phone is the only one to use that size, so we don’t have any in stock.”

Me: “Nothing? Not even a third-party charger [severely over priced]?”

Him: “No, no. Sorry, sir. You’ll have to go to a Softbank (that’s the carrier) Shop and order one.”

Me: “I can’t even order one here?”

Him: “You would likely get it several days earlier by going through the Softbank Shop, sir.”

Me: “Fine. Thanks.”

End of discussion. I have repeated this scene 46 (ish) times with different foreign electronics products through the years. This guy was not even worth a heavy sigh of frustration.

Now, Sony Ericsson’s  Xperia (sounds like the name of a B grade horror film from the 1960s) has been selling like hotcakes, breaking records and making the news everywhere. The next revolution! The true harbinger of the age of the Smartphone in Japan! (Sorry, Apple, but whatever your success, you didn’t know you really were just a door opener.)

In the same shop in which I acquired my HTC, I saw various accessories for that Xperia on the shelf. The home field advantage strikes again.

The good news is that the Desire seems to be doing well. It will sell enough to merit accessories people won’t have to special order. But right now, right at the start, that’s the hard time. When you are buying non-Japanese electronics brands in Japan, the road to realizing your gadget dreams can be a long one.

Down to about two months to a Significant Announcement. More later.

テレビをつけない土曜日

ゴールデンウィーク最初の土曜日。テレビを見る方がおかしいと言えるでしょう。ただし2010年はゴールデンウィークに入る直前に風邪を引き、未だにダウンです。ベッドでゆっくり寝るか、テレビを見て時間を過ごす絶好の条件です。本当は一応つけてみましたが、今一みたいコンテンツがなく、DVDを入れる、ゲームをする元気もありませんでした。何をしたかというと、見ての通りパソコンをつけました。でも最近はフェースブックやツィッターなどでステータスアップデートを書いたり読んだりするのが面白くなく、ずっと頭の中で練っている新規プロジェクトにようやく着手しました。仕事関係のプロジェクトですね、やっぱり。どうも最近は仕事から離れられなくて・・・それならそれで趣味になるような仕事を考えることにしました。近い内に、遅くても梅雨まで発表できると思います。楽しみにしていただきたいですが、最初は発表する側が一番楽しみにするでしょうね、やっぱり。

New Projects

It’s not that I have lost interest in Oburaidan, as I predicted I might. I have instead been concentrating on a couple of new ideas. These ideas (two, so far, and interlinked) are big enough in scope that they require most of the attention I can spare. But I had probably not go further into this until I can make an announcement.

New tricks

I just spent most of a lovely spring Saturday editing a TV clip for a client. I have gotten them on NHK, Japan’s national public broadcasting network, twice so far this year. Them and one of their partners, so it was actually three jobs which we pulled off with flying colors. The client is not paying for TV monitoring (an admittedly expensive service), so here the PR Guy has been, sitting in front of the boob tube and then the PC.

About the only part of this for which I am thankful is that I am picking up new skills. Today I figured out how to record from digital TV straight to a PC without spending (much) money. I have also become a bit of a hand at editing video. These skills, which are chores today, might make for a nice hobby down the road.

Starting your own business in any foreign country presents special hurdles. It’s not just language. You have to learn a lot of new tricks and offer something either completely different or better than what’s available in your field.

Let’s see. My experience includes starting two companies, consulting numerous friends on starting their own companies, translating from Japanese to English and vice-versa, writing copy in both English and Japanese, graphic design (amateurish but got the job done), trade and consumer event planning and execution, trade show booth planning and execution, building bilingual web portals, planning and running online campaigns, using CMS systems to update clients’ websites, just about any kind of web research you can think of, photography, videography, serving as Japan spokesperson, media training, crisis management training and a lot more.

Tomorrow will see another job, this time a wedding reception the client is sponsoring as part of a consumer campaign. Having built this one from scratch, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

A lot of this would not be possible without the support of some highly talented professionals, but I suppose if there is one upside to this bloody awful economic situation, it is that I am learning new tricks.

Monstrous

Spent a quiet Thursday evening last week watching a film called “Monster,” or “Battlefield Tokyo” in Japanese. It was awful, so bad that I watched it right through for some needed laughs and to see how awful it could get.

The director and producers seem to have wanted to remake “Cloverfield.” Huh? I guess they felt Cloverfield should have been set in Tokyo in the first place. Well,  the vintage Japanese monster movies of the 50s and 60s have better effects. These folks could not even make shots of sudden static on the screen look real.

Then there is the inexplicable underlying theme of global warming. The two main characters are in Tokyo to do a documentary about global warming. They get here and immediately begin playing the typical token foreigners. How these  two, toting a video camera that probably cost less than 10 brown notes in Akihabara, get an appointment with some sort of government official in some sort of environment-related government office, which looks like a rundown apartment in need of a good dusting and re-painting, is the mystery that starts the action.

But we hear nothing again of global warming until some little scenes during the ending credits with silly young people saying silly things about global warming. I guess we are supposed to think the monster appeared because of global warming. Just a guess.

Why am I writing this much about a movie which I really, honestly suggest everyone else avoid?

Well, it brought back a childhood memory. I grew up in Morristown, New Jersey, and my father was a volunteer firefighter. This seemed a really cool job. Whenever there was a fire, the sirens of the closest firehouse blared extremely loudly. This was to let drivers know there were going to be firetrucks and ambulances on the road, and to be ready to pull over to let them pass. We lived just up the hill from the aptly named Hillside Firehouse. There was another one in hearing distance, the name of which escapes me at the moment. Each firehouse had a distinct siren blast, probably to avoid confusion. Both of these gave me nightmares.

I watched Godzilla movies, which did not ever scare me when I watched them, but I did start having nightmares about a Godzilla-style monster, with a roar that sounded just like one of those firehouse sirens, chasing me through the neighborhood.

The sound of the monster in “Monster” is completely different, but it is the only signal you get (apart from cheap destruction scenes) that there is a monster somewhere in this film. The sound of the siren from my childhood was scary, especially when it woke you up in the middle of the night. Today, it’s almost like an old friend, a piece of my childhood I had forgotten. Maybe that made the 90 minutes of “Monster” less of a waste.

If you want to see a truly entertaining (sorry, but it is) monster movie about the perils of harming the environment, watch “Godzilla Versus the Smog Monster.” This film is still fun 39 years after it debuted, and it’s scary because the message is still valid.

ロリータが閉まる、かも

麻布十番のカフェロリータが今月をもって閉まるとの話を耳にしました。個人的にたくさんの楽しい時間、無駄な時間、話題いっぱいの時間を過ごした店ですが、不況の波が押し寄せて、今年に入ってからあまり行かなくなり、関係ないと思うけど店の状況も著しく悪化したようです。

値段が安い、わりと狭い店です。入る人は一杯のコーヒーかビールをかかえて何時間でもいられる優しい店です。でもこの良心的な態度は命取りでもあったようです。客の回転が鈍く、一品だけ買うのが主流でしたら、それは赤字になります。

オーナーが閉めると言ったとたんに、複数の方面から買収のオファーが来ている様子です。しかし誰かが買っても、中身がだいぶ変わるでしょう。今のビジネスモデルは継続できないことは明らかですから。

外国人の友達に「カフェロリータに行こう」とはじめて言うと、そのリアクションが面白かったです。（ナボコフを読んだ人にはわかります）すばらしいスタッフが心地いい、癒し系の空間をずっと作ってくれました。ありがとうを言いたいです。オーナーさんもがんばりにがんばって、ありがとう。結局不況の波に逆らえなかったみたいですが、カフェロリータは忘れません。

Thanks for the memories.

注：３月いっぱいでとりあえず今のロリータは終わります。その後、次のオーナーで続くかもしれませんが、今の店が確かに終わるようです。

The Bar closes… Maybe

It’s supposed to snow tonight. Very cold rain is pouring down now. I have caught the seasonal cold bug, too. One comes when autumn breaks, the other when spring is breaking. Right on time again.

I read somewhere that you build immunity to each cold virus for a period of years, so you don’t often catch the same cold twice. Something like that. Well, there must be a line of similar-but-just-a-little-bit-different colds out there just waiting to turn my life miserable twice a year.

On to tonight’s topic. Like a lot of foreigners living in Tokyo, I drink at the same bar most times when I drink. Or I end up there for the last beer before heading home. That bar is set to close this month, the latest victim of the Economy (capital E intentional). The Economy is having a large impact on every part of my life these days, but I didn’t dream it would hit my main location for socializing.

I know the owner of the place and suspected things were not going well. Last week, she said she would lose less money if she just closed  the doors and paid the rent on an empty space, so she made the hard decision to close down.

This is not the first bad turn for the Bar (as I shall call it). The previous owner, another very nice person, lost everything on unrelated business interests and sold it to the current owner for a song. She did not change much. Reinvented the menu and hired all new employees, but in general it was the same old Bar.

It’s funny that all the other businesses in the neighborhood thought the Bar was the only place doing well. There are almost always people at the tables, and the atmosphere is bright. They let patrons bring their dogs in (I am guessing this is not strictly legal), so there is even a small canine group of regulars.

The location is prime, open onto a busy street with folding glass panels all along the street-facing facade which they open up on nice days. During the daylight hours, it’s mostly a coffee shop. Various tea and coffee drinks are all under 500 yen, and draft beers are also 500 yen. Very affordable from the customer’s point of view. This seems to be the problem.

People come in and order a coffee or a beer, and then they sit around for an hour or even hours drinking nothing but water after that first purchase. Enough people so you notice just use the place to meet friends and have a quick beverage before heading out for the main event of the evening. It’s a small place with two to three employees on duty from 11:00 am to 4:00 am. I have asked myself before this how they are making money.

I think our bunch of regulars kept the place going for the first several years. Seriously, we love the place and it had some interesting energy when we first started hanging out there. But the Economy has impacted all of us. My office used to be in the same neighborhood as the Bar, but we moved last year to cut expenses, and now I have to go out of my way to visit. I get there once a week these days, if even that often.

Other former regulars have also moved on in the past few years. We all go out of our way to visit when in the neighborhood, but we and the various interesting people you could  count on to drop by for a beer laid down quite a bit of cash in the Bar every weekday, cash which is no longer flowing in. (We half seriously called ourselves the shareholders once on a time.)

Last Friday, I got word that various parties are interested in the Bar now that the owner has announced she is closing. Deals are being presented from multiple parties, if what I hear is true. They must all have plans to redesign the place so it makes money.

I would be cautious. The Economy is not ready to return to lowercase yet. The Bar does get a lot of foot traffic in front of it, but even with the current low prices, most of those people just walk on by. If they raise prices, those casual visitors who did decorate the place will not come back. If they keep the same pricing, they will inherit the same bad model.

If a white knight does appear and the place stays open, I will continue to visit when I can for old times’ sake. I just get the feeling this is one business that ought to be allowed to pass away quietly. The timing does not seem quite right.

Thursday and a gadget

It’s a rainy Thursday night, cold like winter, the perfect kind of time to play around with a new gadget. This blog project is my newest gadget, so here I am. I have been in Japan for 25 years. For someone who loves science fiction, who turned his garage into the bridge of a starship in junior high school, I could have done a lot worse for myself than to choose Japan as a place to settle down.

Akihabara, just a few stops on the Yamanote Line from Tokyo Station, is heaven for gadget lovers. When I go back to where I grew up, I always visit every electronics store I see. But the fare at these stores is so sparse compared to any electronics store in Japan. I could spend hours in Yodobashi Camera and more hours walking up and down junk street deep in the Akihabara district.

But hardware gadgets cost money, of which I am recently in short supply, whereas a lot of the software gadgets are free. And I love to write.

I still prefer the hardware, but this will do just fine on a rainy Thursday night.