Many Poorly Shot iphone pictures of Roppongi

I got a requested for more pictures, so I thought I'd put together a little photo tour of the Roppongi area where I'm living. If you haven't read my previous post on Roppongi you can find it here. I apologize for the general poor quality of the pictures and videos, I took them with my iphone and I'm a pretty big amateur when it comes to photography. If anyone wants to send me a critique with some advice that would be much appreciated.

Well lets get started by walking straight out my front door past the Hugo Boss shop, and there are a whole bunch of expensive designer shops.

In the top of the frame you see a bridge type thing. Here's the shot of my building from up there. My building is the kind of ugly one in the middle.

Just off to the right here is the base of the Morri Tower of Roppongi Hills. There's a kind of outdoor stage there where there happened to be some sort of all day Hula dancing event going on. I took this movie a group of adorable 10ish year old girls doing their routine.

I also took another movie to try and give you a sense of the environment, with Morri Tower looming over the stage. It came out a bit skewed, amateur I know, sorry.

Here's a shot looking down on the stage from the stairs you see behind.

And here's one from the top of the stairs of Midtown Tokyo Tower in the distance. We'll be going there later.

Also at Roppongi Hills, there's this huge spiderish sculpture.

If you head off the main streets just south of Roppongi Hills, you'll find a neighborhood called Azujuban. Azujuban has kind of a European feel with lots of small street side cafes and boutiques.

There's even a McDonalds, although this is the most chique McDonalds I have ever seen.

In Azujuban you'll find places like McDonalds right next to more traditional Asian establishments. Not sure how I would describe this place, but definitely not chique.

This is the restaurant that has the best bruschetta I've ever had. The seafood pasta with cream sauce was also fantastic.

Tokyo is one of the best culinary cities in the world but it can be a bit tough for vegetarians. There just doesn't seem to be a big vegetarian culture here, even vegetable dishes are often prepared with stock made from meat. There are vegetarian places of course they just take a little more work to find. One vegetarian place I've come to like quite a bit is Eat More Greens Cafe in Azujuban. They also have a great craft beer selection.

The food certainly beats Athan's fair. Soymilk coconut doughnut and matcha late, yummmm...

After Azujuban, I made my way back to Roppongi crossing. Roppongi crossing is where all of the seedy night clubs and western chain restaurants are located.

Here's Outback Steakhouse and TGI Fridays. Haven't gotten around to trying either of these places, annd probably not going to either.

I find it pretty amusing that come nightfall it's impossible to walk by these American chains without getting propositioned for "massages."

Also at Roppongi Crossing there are giant screens with advertisements going. I've seen this one several times and it still makes me scratch my head.

One thing about Roppongi crossing is that you wouldn't even know some of best places existed if you weren't looking for them. Here for instance is the entrance to Ant'n Bee, which I wrote about earlier here. You go in here and down the stairs.

Next up I made my way north of Roppongi Crossing to the Tokyo Midtown complex. On my way I saw a pet store and they were selling baby monkeys!!!!!!

Tokyo Midtown is another upscale complex like Roppongi Hills, also includes a tower as well.

Here though they have these interactive digital maps.

Now at first this just seems like a large touchscreen, which would be cool and all but not that big a deal. Then you realize you don't actually have to touch the screen to hit the buttons. You just have to gesture your finger towards it and it works. It's crazy, like that consol in Minority Report, I have no idea how it works but it's wild.

After Tokyo Midtown, I went back to Roppongi Hills to check out the Mori Art Museum which is on the 52nd floor along with the observation deck. Unfortunately there was no photography allowed in the Museum but you can read about the exhibit here. The Michilin man type guy was my favorite. The theme of the exhibit was "windows" and one piece was a large clear glass sculture of a closed window, which they had placed in front of a real window so you could look through it out onto a huge vista of Tokyo (remember 52nd floor!). Very cool.

Luckily out on the observation deck photography was allowed. So here's a shot of the Tokyo Tower, and of my apartment from above.

Anyway that's it. If anyone has any more requests be sure to send them on.

Nomihodai and boozing in Japan for cheap

When you first arrive in Japan the price of a good drink can be a bit shocking. Luckily it doesn't take long to figure out that if you're buying your drinks one at a time you're doing it wrong.

Actually getting drunk is one of the few things where westerners get a monetary break in Tokyo, because many bars offer a nomihodai deal. Instead of buying drinks one at a time, with nomihodai you pay a flat fee for all you can drink for a set amount of time, usually an hour or two. Fortunately all these deals seem to have been priced for people with significantly less body mass then your typical western male. Finding nomihodai for $10-20 for an hour isn't hard to do.

The Japanese write nomihodai with Kanji as 飲み放題, rather delightfully combining the Kanji for drink 飲 and liberate or freedom 放. The last one just means topic or something. If you're planning on coming to Japan you might want to commit at least this word to memory.

Now you would think the economic incentives at play with nomihodai would just encourage people to get really wasted all the time.

Actually, as it turns out, that's pretty much exactly what happens. The streets are generally filled with amicable drunk people, especially salarymen as work drinking parties usually include nomihodai.

Last night I checked out a deal for 1000yen ($12 USD) for an hour and a half nomihodai. The place promised over 100 drink types. However, when we showed up we were a little surprised to find out that at this place you were supposed to serve yourself. So this bar was a room on the fourth floor of a building with a few tables, a wall stacked with booze, and a guy who collected money. Genius.

Although I should also add they had a kitchen. But you aren't going to this place for the food. The walls seemed to be just plywood with random words and pictures drawn on them, we figured this must be what passes for a dive bar here.

Now those of you recoiling at the thought of having to pour your own beer needn't worry and who hasn't fretted one time or another about getting the perfect balance of head/body on a draft beer? This place came equipped with a rather ingenious device.

If the Prince of Bel Air Opened a Burger Joint He Would Call it...

Actually a chain, these are all over Tokyo. A Hamburger will set you back $7-$12. I tried the burger with avocado it was quite good.

(IYI) The iPhone, Trade, and Reading Between the Lines

David Foster Wallace used to mark certain passages in some of his non-fiction works with an "IYI" tag standing for "If you're interested," which you almost certainly were since he was writing it. But the tag signaled that the topic was not necessarily one people commonly found interesting, he wasn't going to try and sell you on it being interesting and was in many ways tangential to the main point of the piece. I'm going to shamelessly crib that device from him, marking this post as strictly IYI, feel free to skip this one, with the weekend approaching there will be more pictures of funny things and drunken stories coming soon enough.

The art of reading between the lines is useful anywhere but particularly in Japan, where so little of what matters is ever entrusted to words - Eamonn Fingleton

That's the lead to an awesome piece called Translating Japan by Eamonn Fingleton, on the Japanese Government's communication after the earthquake and Japan's continued role as a crucial hub in the global economic system. Fingleton is a Tokyo resident of 25 years and longtime writer on economics and finance. It's a bit long but I highly recommend it.

With so much left unsaid, Fingleton emphasizes the importance of watching how people act. I've already experienced the tendency towards omission and vagueness in my apartment hunt. What are my options? How much will this cost? Are there any additional fees? Is this negotiable? What documents do I need? are questions that are rarely met with a straight answer, and the answers have a tendency to change from day to day and based on who's asking. In the US this kind of vagueness would be a clear sign of duplicity, but in Japan I'm not so sure. There's a pretty good chance from the Real Estate Agent's perspective she's communicating everything as clear as possible to us, we're just not reading between the lines.

Fingleton's main observation is that the earthquake, the resulting disruption to Japanese industry and it's repercussions to global manufacturing chains reminded everyone just how crucial a cog in the wheel Japan is when all the focus is on China these days. Ford reportedly stopped producing black cars in the US due to shortage of chemicals produced in Japan. Apple faced shortages of key components for iPads and iPhones.

I was initially directed to Fingleton's website by the Atlantic's James Fallows, another former longtime Japan and China expat, who reposted this graphic from a December WSJ article on where the real value in production of the iPhone comes from.

The iPhone is assembled in China, so every iPhone exported to the US shows up in our trade imbalance stats with them, but really virtually all of the actual value from the export flows to other countries who produce the more valuable components of the iPhone which are exported to China. Japanese manufacturing is responsible for 10 times more of the value of the iPhone then Chinese manufacturing, and 5 times more then those components made in the US. This means that with respect to the iPhone production line the US is a net exporter to China.

Fingleton's thesis is that the Japanese Government and business leaders have intentionally overstated the degree of economic dysfunction in Japan over the past twenty years to keep political pressure off while they have quietly become more and more important players in key export markets. Since the Japan real estate crash in 1990, and the commencement of Japan's "Lost Decade" exports have risen five fold and the yen has appreciated 63% against the dollar. Fingleton acknowledges that there are many difficult issues facing Japan, but confidently predicts the country will quickly rebound economically after the 3/11 disaster.

Hanging out at a Shimokitazawa Cafe

And if that last post was a bit heavy for you here's a cat sitting in a cafe

Candle Night

Candle night is a Japan wide movement started about 10 years ago which asks people on the night before the summer and winter solstices to turn off the lights for a couple hours and do something by candle night. The english slogan for the event is "Turn off out the lights, slow down." A more litteral translation would be "Turn of out the lights, and have a slow night."

The events central mission to get people to turn off their lights for a couple hours is all the more poignent given the Earthquake and continuing energy supply issues, and the corresponding conservation initiatives.

There were gatherings all over Tokyo, and Japan to pass candle night. I went to one held at the Zojoji temple, which is within walking distance of Roppongi. The Zojoji temple is one of the oldest and largest Buddhist temples in Japan. The organization itself was founded in 1393, and established in its current location in 1598. It was the primary temple of the Tokugawa family Shoguns (I think that's enough historical terms for a good 2-3hours on Wikipedia).

There was music, food, beer. The mood wasn't festive, but it wasn't overly solemn either. The main performers played on top of the temple steps. The temple with Tokyo Tower looming in the background made for an incredible scene. The Tokyo Tower is just a bit taller then the Eifel Tower to give you a sense of the scale. It had been raining most of the day and the entire city was covered in a light mist. The brightly lit tower seemed to color the entire sky orange. I wish I had a better camera, along with the necessary knowledge and skills to put it to good use.

Just before 8pm, after one of the acts finished performing, the two announcers came out said a few words in Japanese then led everyone in a countdown. At the time I didn't know to what.

"roku, go, yo, san, ni, ichi" Then the entire Tokyo tower went dark along with the entire sky.

After the tower was extinguished, a woman came out and on top of the candlelit steps read a poem. I couldn't understand what was said but it was clearly the most emotional part of the night.

For the most part Tokyo doesn't feel like a place that just experienced a major shock and tragedy. The energy saving initiatives are a constant reminder of the earthquake and ongoing efforts at the Fukushima plant. Even at my office the lights in many of the hallways and foyers are turned off. Only two of the four elevators are in use and employees are encouraged to use the stairs. Despite these reminders people seem to have adapted, and no one ever seems to mention them. The only time any of the 3/11 events are brought up is in a kind of matter of fact way like "oh because of everything that happened you're probably going to get a better deal on rent."

I'm sure a big part of it is the expat bubble I live insulates me from the Japanese media that might address the events. This was my first experience at a place where there was some collective recognition and reflection on the tragedy.

I haven't felt comfortable enough with any Japanese yet to try bringing up the topic. Although I'm curious to hear their stories and how things have changed. Hopefully once I've been here a bit longer I'll have some more fully formed thoughts on everything.

Ms. Octopus Recommends the Tokyo Black

In case you hadn't heard Tokyo is - at least as far as craft beer is concerned - now the Portland of the Far East. An article popped up in Slate this week on the booming craft beer industry in Japan. The article can be found here- true to Slate's must be counterintuitive all the time style the title makes Tokyo the junior partner to Portland. Featured in the article is a little bar in Roppongi called the Ant'n Bee.

As I enjoy craft beer and the bar was located a five minute walk from my apartment I decided to check the place out along with a co-worker of mine.

We ducked down into the cramped establishment and grabbed a couple seats at the bar next to a Japanese salaryman. After exchanging polite good evenings with the bartenders I ordered my first beer of the night, a citrus brown ale from the brewery Akura. The salaryman saw me take out my pocket sized notebook that I use to record various Japanese phrases, words, or in this case beer names. Apparently impressed with the level of interest I was showing he asked me if I liked craft beer in passable english.

"I love craft beer" - I responded, and the salaryman tells us three things

1) He was an alcoholic (in a joking sense, I think/hope)

2) He loves American craft beers

3) This is the best craft beer bar in Tokyo

The Salaryman was curious how us two Gaijin's managed to stumble into the best craft beer bar in Tokyo. We told him about the article, this was the first he had heard of it.

He turned to the bartenders and told them in Japanese about the article, this was the first they had heard of it too, and apparently our salaryman is not lying about being a regular in this place.

One of the female bartenders came up to us and told us they had free internet, so we pulled out our iphones and brought up the article. When they saw the Ant'n Bee they were very surprised and excited.

About this time I was gearing up for my second beer, and I was asking for recommendations.

The salaryman pointed out that all of the staff''s recommendations are on the menu in the little yellow boxes with arrows pointing to certain beers. In the boxes were japanese text. One said

"tako no osusume" essentially Tako recommends, and pointed to a dark ale called Tokyo Black - which I order. Then the salaryman goes to Tako and says "she's an octopus!"

Confused looks form on our faces.

"Her name means octopus in Japanese," the bartender confirms this, the salaryman continues and says her name is fitting because when she is drunk she gets pink in the face and her arms flap all over the place.

Of course not to be outdone the other bartender, Takechan comes over

"and I'm miss bamboo"

Alright so we have miss Octopus and miss Bamboo serving us drinks. I'm suddenly envious of native Japanese who get proper Kanji names with cool meanings and such, instead of boring old Katakana.

Curious about more of the Kanji on the menu we start asking our new friend to explain what else is going on. At the top of the page is the place is the place where the day is - and by which day I mean which token cause this day is dedicated to. Think "international day of the dolphin." However, in this case it's a a bit more difficult.

It was relatively easy to figure out that it was the "International day of fighting against..." something. The something was rather difficult and took 15min or so of googling.

It turns out it was "International day of Fighting against Desertification" - Global warming maybe?

The third beer I tried was Ms. Bamboos recommendation. Easily my favorite beer of the night Daisen G Beer's "Yagou."Definitely recommended.

At about this time a 63 year old man walks in dressed head to toe in a cowboy getup, that looks straight out of a 70s TV variety show with a black cowboy hat and stopsign red shirt with those tassley things and everything.

Apparently he is friends with our salaryman and the two shake hands. He turns toward us and proclaims

I am naughty by nature!

Umm... come again?

Our salaryman interjects "He is naughty by nature," he says nodding vigorously. Everyone but us thinks this requires no further explanations.

As best we can figure he means that he is young at heart. Our much younger salaryman tells us he is "Green with envy" at the thought of the cowboy's life.

The cowboy explains to us that he is 63 and apparently makes his living as a country singer in Ginza.

Around 12-12:30 most people started filing out either to catch the last train home or to head to a club. We decide to take our leave of our new friends with promises that we will stop back in soon and see the regular crowd.

Ant'n Bee - Recommended

Underground

So the past couple weeks I've been pretty busy putting my life here together, getting a bank account, alien registration, health insurance, cell phone, looking for Apartments etc. and working. So I haven't had time to really do all that much that's cool and worth writing and reading about.

So instead of writing about something interesting I'm going to write a little bit about my commute. I sent an email to a few of my co-workers saying how many stairs and escalators I had to go up and down during my commute, but it elicited no reaction leading me to believe that you can't convey with words how ridiculous some of these stations are. So here is a photo tour of my commute through Roppongi and Shinjuku stations. Sorry if the pictures are a bit blurry I was trying to take them in a discrete way during rush hour while on my way to work.

First up descending down into Roppongi Station to get on the Oeido line, represented by the pink circle.

A hundred feet underground or so I finally get to the gates, where I swipe my Passmo (Tokyo's charlie card)

Then I keep going down...

Then I get on this train!

I get off at Shinjuku Station. Here my route is fairly simple but I have to go up two GIANT escalators each maybe 100ft of vertical.

Then I have to go back down some stairs to get on the Keio line.

Where people wait in orderly lines to get on the train. There are basically four blue lines on the floor creating 3 columns leading to each train door. People line up in the two columns at the edges so that people leaving the train can go through the middle column. Everyone observes the lines nobody cuts.

Then I arrive at the fairly boring train station by our office, only a couple flights of stairs.

Fruit in Japan

Fresh fruit in Japan is notoriously expensive. Cantaloupe cost over $30 and are considered a great delicacy.

However, apparently Cantaloupe pale in comparison to the Densuke watermelon. One was recently sold at an auction for 300,000 yen, or about $4,000.

See article here

http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2011/06/14/densuke-watermelon-a-bargain-at-4000/?mod=WSJBlog

We can thank the Chinese for this one

You know I had really intended to hold off on the whole post funny pictures of ridiculous things in Japan for a bit. It's kind of a cheap way to get laughs, and it will probably get old after awhile. But jesus this one was tee'd up for me. Here's another shot just to appreciate the scale of the things.

That mind you is a twenty or so person table underneath the bell. Now I know what you're thinking dear reader, "Oh in a city of 32 million people there's bound to be some ridiculous things, you probably found this image on the internet somewhere rode the train an hour, then spent another half hour wandering around to find this obscure place." That would be a perfectly reasonable thing to think, except that this is from a chinese cafe on the 2nd floor of the building where I live. I literally sleep 50 or so ft above this on the 7th floor.

A coworker and I decided to give the place a try after a few hours of apartment hunting. We were seated at the large table with the bell and sat there at least 20 minutes before realizing what was right infront of us. I think we even touched the bell wondering if it was metal (undetermined). When we realized what it was we looked around and saw the entire place was decorated along these lines. The only reason I didn't take more pictures was because I didn't want to seem too obnoxious after standing up and taking these two.

I will be investigating this further...

Impressions at 2 weeks

Some brief impressions at week 2, keep in mind I've only gotten to experience an tiny, tiny, sliver of the incredibly diverse Japanese culture and people. I don't mean this account to be authoritative or to really come off as knowledgable in any way. Just impressions thats all.

1. Everyone is very polite. I mean everyone, waiters, store clerks, mail men, even bouncers. When I'm out for a run in the morning, police officers will say "Ohiyo Gozaimasu" a polite good morning. My boss, an American who recently moved here told us a story, in which he stepped out of the way of an oncoming ambulance with it's sirens going and the driver of the ambulance thanked him as they went by. Maybe it's the Bostonian in me but it weirds me out a little bit when when people are overly nice back in the states, it's hard to not think that it's a front, are you really that excited to take my order? Not that I want to deal with Debby Downers either, but I generally prefer to deal with people who come off as genuine. The thing about Japan is that the politeness feels genuine, maybe I just can't pick up the subtle clues yet, or maybe I'm being treated a bit different because I'm a light skinned foreigner, but for some for some reason I don't think so.

2. Part of the reason I don't think so, is because everyone is so conscientious and diligent about their job. Like people at the McDonalds really care about getting the job done right. I think back to my days as a Best Buy employee where it was pretty much do the bare minimum amount of work not to get fired. The people at the local government office where I had to register when I got here were very concerned that I fill out everything properly and made sure everything was in order before I left. Anyone have that experience at a DMV at the states? Sometimes it almost feels like they take it too far, they are so concerned with getting things done properly that they aren't flexible.

3. Food is excellent across the board, which probably follows from #2. While technically it is true what they say about portion size here, it is smaller relative to standard American sizes. I think the portion sizes aren't that small, but you just don't have the option to go to something like Olive Garden and get a large portion of reasonably priced mediocre food. It's almost as if the size quantity trade off just doesn't exist here. That said, lunch specials are fairly standard here, you may pay like 10-12 dollars you usually get like a 4-5 course meal that usually include some primary meal of meat/fish/noodles along with rice, soup, salad, and coffee. Which all combined is a pretty good deal and filling. I've yet to really to really explore brunch here, and while I'm sure the food will be excellent that's the one meal I'm most expecting to be disappointed at, since brunch in the US is by far the most optimal solution to the quality/quantity/price problem. God I miss the Colossal Hungry Man Special...

4. Even the cheap beer here is good. Asahi - extra dry is actually really good and refreshing. It doesn't really bother me when I can't figure out how to order a more exotic brew. It's actually caused a bit of an identity crisis, in America I considered my self a bit of a beer snob, never caught dead in a bar with a Millar Light. How can I be a beer snob in a country with no bad beer? Maybe I'll have to become a shochu snob instead.

5. Definitely going to need to learn to speak Japanese. While I guess it would be possible to get by here without speaking it, I don't think you can really live here without engaging with the language. It's not just that lots of people don't speak English - although that's certainly part of it, you would shut yourself from meeting and interacting with a lot of people - there seems to be a whole rhythm to how people interact here that can't be translated into another language. I'm on the ice wearing sneakers, when everyone else has skates.

2 tickets to the gun show at Muscle Theater going for about 12,000 - 20,000 yen

That's about $150-200 US.

Oh you think I'm kidding

When I saw this wandering around Shibuya I was fairly confused, I mean was this a typo?

From their website

Muscle Musical's performance transcends languages, there are no lyrics, but top Japanese athletes show a fully energetic performance where the "muscles play the music"

Other then that though the website is pretty vague about what happens at these performances. But it does say these Muscle Musicals are the raison d'etre of the Muscle Theater.

Fortunately in this day and age we're not forced to choose between satisfying our curiosity and dropping $120 dollars.

Enter youtube

$120 = Bargain

Katakana and Japanese Words Borrowed from Other Languages

Can you figure out what this means? It's actually not as hard as you might think, the first word here is the same in both English and Japanese, although with a slightly different pronunciation. But, in order to read this you must know Katakana and trust me when you are in Tokyo you are going to want to know what this means.

Katakana is one of the three Japanese writing systems. Two of these are phonetic alphabets collectively called the "kana." Katakana is one, Hiragana is the other. Katakana and Hiragana are really mirror images of each other kind of like upper and lower case letters in english. Each symbol either represents a vowel sound or a consonant then a vowel sound. For example アrepresents "a" and ホ represents "ho" in Katakana. The pronunciations of the vowels and consonants are the same as in Spanish I'm told. (I know I'm dropping a lot of knowledge right now but bear with me here).

The major difference in usage between Katakana and Hiragana is that Katakana is used to represent words "borrowed" from other languages. One of the things that really surprised me about learning Japanese was just how many of and how common these borrowed words are. Essentially they take the word from the other language and try to stay as close to the original as possible but using the Japanese alphabet. Of course because the Japanese alphabet is missing a lot of the phonetic sounds used in english the words become a bit different - lacking L for instance.

To native english speakers a lot of these words can sound like odd mispronunciations of words we know. For instance

Beer - ビ－ル (biiru)

Tequila - テキ－ラ(tekiira)

Bread パン (pan - from portuguese)

oh and

Sexual Harassment -セカル ハラセメント(sekaru harasemento) learned that one during my new employee initiation.

To see the full alphabet head on over to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana

Now back to the sign, the first four characters are in Katakana, the last character is from the third Japanese writing system called "Kanji" which are essentially chinese characters which represent ideas rather then phonetics.

The first for characters are カ "ka", ラ"ra", オ"o", and ケ"ke", oh yea that's right KARAOKE!

The last kanji symbol stands for "building" or "mansion" so this can be read as "karaoke mansion." Which as far as I can tell is a chain karaoke spot around Tokyo, I've seen a few of these place all around the city. I haven't had the opportunity to check one out yet but it's very, very high on my to do list.

One other thing Katakana is used for is foreign names. I had to get business cards with my contact info in both Japanese and English, this led to a rather large debate among my team at work about how exactly to Japanesize my name. The big debate was over the start of "Hoover" the "oo" is most closely associated with the "u" sound in japanese but japanese doesn't use "hu" the choice was between "fu" and "ho". We went back and forth a bit trying both out loud and eventually settled on

マシュ－ フ－バ－ (Mashuu Fuubaa)

So that's my Japanese name and I've got 100 business cards with it.

Quick random list

So far I have

1. Eaten french fries (Furaida Poteto) with chopsticks at an Irish pub
2. Had a stranger fall asleep on me on the train.
3. Sat through new employee orientation given in Japanese
4. Ordered 100 business cards with my contact info in Japanese and English
5. Discovered coffee flavored jello is not good at all
6. Ordered breakfast via an unmanned electronic ticket machine at what was a rough approximation of a diner while waiting for the subway to open
7. Lost the complimentary umbrella that came with my temporary apartment
8. Been sold another iphone (a white one!) by a Peruvian

Who's afraid of a little radiation?

In case anyone out there is still worried about radiation levels in Tokyo, I'd like to direct you this chart put together by XKCD a couple months ago.

http://xkcd.com/radiation/

Also check out this comparison of radiation dosage on trans-pacific flights.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/5731894295/

Even within a few miles of the plant radiation levels are fairly low.

I don't mean to downplay the scale of the human and environmental disaster by any means (I will likely have more on this later). There are certainly valid concerns out there of the impact of the leak on crops, livestock and fisheries, but I think the scale of the ongoing danger posed by the radiation leakage has been a bit overblown.

So there's one less excuse to come visit me!

Oh so you thought this would be easy

Tokyo's system of public transportation is renowned for it's scale, efficiency, and complexity. Tokyo is a thoroughly rail based city with all major centers of commerce anchored by the stations. Of course I didn't realize just how complex the system was until I arrived here.

For instance here is a map of the Tokyo subway system.

Complicated yes. This is what I expected based on my googling of the Tokyo subway system. Of course I realized once I got here this excludes all of the private rail lines, (that is not publicly owned but anyone can ride them) which are also an integral part of Tokyo's transportation infrastructure. Here is a map showing all of the private rail lines (at least as far as I know)

And as it turns out each of these single lines is an oversimplification as many different trains run along the same lines and make different stops. For instance the Keio line which I take on my daily commute has trains that come in 6 flavors, local, commuter rapid, express, semi-special express, and special express.

Keep in mind that this is depicted as a single line on the broader Tokyo rail map (the 2nd one) above.

This means determining the most efficient commute route is actually a fairly complex optimization problem.

My standard commute would be say take the express from Shinjuku to Tsutsujigakoa, then the local to Kukoryo.

Or it may be faster to take the semi-special or special express from Shinjuku to Meidaimae, then the express to Tsutsujigakoa, then local to Kukoryo.

Or then again I may take the semi-special or special all the way to Chofu and then take the local back two stops to Kukoryo.

Which route is faster all depends on which trains are coming quickest.

The reverse of my commute is further complicated by the "New Keio Line" which technically goes to Shinjuku as well goes to a separate station from the rest of the Keio line and continues on past it.

On the upside trains arrive and leave on the exact minute they say they will, and some kind of train comes virtually every minute during rush hour and every 2-3 minutes on off hours.

The main hubs in this transportation are these massive underground complexes, that include malls, shops of all kinds, endless escalators, and even public artwork. I've learned the sense of direction which I hold in such high regard does not extend at all to these subterranean labyrinths and have managed to get myself horribly lost in Shinjuku station whenever I try and deviate from my normal routine - which I'm just getting down now.

I'll leave it up to the reader to imagine what the results would be if this incredibly complex system was managed by the MBTA...