To Matsumoto and beyond...

my, my, hey, hey,
rock and roll is here to stay…
~ Neil Young

My mind is pretty scattered these days. The first week out here was pretty nice; I had more time than things to be done. Sad to say, that problem didn’t last for long. Life is once again high-octane, unleaded, and fully combustible. (Wham playing “Wake me up before you go-go” in the background.) Work projects are in full swing and weekends and evenings always seem to find a way to fill themselves... As a result, I haven’t had a chance to write to you all in awhile. Thankfully, I find myself with a free evening tonight (the only items on my agenda being a load of wash and a few dirty dishes). So, where did we leave off? Hmmm….let’s see - ah yes. Way back when…Friday evening…company dinner…

Wait for it…waiiiittt for itttt…ahh, I always have to warm up. If you think the long side-tangents are exhausting to read - try writing one sometime…they’re excruciating.
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On the following day (the Saturday after the company dinner), I had been invited to go and see a punk rock show. One of the engineers, Taka, plays in a Japanese punk band and they were one of three acts at a small theatre in Matsumoto. *Pause*

Let’s do a little bit of leg work to set this up. Let’s back up a few days to the Tuesday of my first week at work. As one might have guessed, I had been getting to know my coworkers a little bit at a time. In talking with one of the engineers, Miyakoshi-san a.k.a. “Taka” I found out that he played the guitar. (Actually, I already knew he played the guitar, but we weren’t acquainted yet.) As most of you know, Huggies hearts music. I didn’t want be cut off from playing music for a whole 3 months. So before I left the States, I had been trying to find a way to get one of my guitars out to Japan or to buy one when I arrived. So I asked Taka about finding a place to buy a guitar and he said that he thought Suwa was more or less a one horse town. If I really wanted to find a good music store, I should go to a larger city, like Matsumoto. He then invited me to come with him to Matsumoto and do some music shopping. I asked if I could come to see his band play and he seemed excited at the prospect. I told him I’d check my schedule and confirm with him later in the week. I would later discover Taka thought I wanted to shop for CDs, not a guitar, and that one of the other engineers, Toshikatsu, wanted to lend me their guitar. After looking around, I would also discover that the cheapest guitars out here are pretty bad - brands I have never heard of before - and they run right around $285+ USD. I wasn’t too keen on the idea of taking someone else’s guitar, but they thought that even the cheapest guitars would be too expensive to just buy and ditch after three months… So that put me in the position of either: taking someone’s guitar or seeming like a willful American with too much cash. I was ready to spend up to $300 on a new guitar - considering the fact that it would be $150 bucks to ship my guitar one way. But at Toshikatsu’s insistence and with the agreement that he’d let me know whenever he wanted it back, I accepted the lent guitar. Let’s get back to the original side-tangent: Taka’s invitation to Matsumoto. So, naturally, I accepted the invitation to see the punk show and to tour Matsumoto.

After learning that I wasn’t really interested in CD shopping, Taka mentioned that Matsumoto was famous for a castle that had been built there. Long story short? I spent the day at Matsumoto with three other engineers from Sun Medical, seeing the castle, a real old school Shinto shrine, the amazing cherry blossoms, and the punk show (actually it was 2 engineers for most of the day, and then we joined Taka in the evening for the show). You can check out pictures of them online at my flickr site. I don’t think I’ll be able to do a better job with words, so...yeah, I’m just gonna be lazy there. Later we’ll explore our feelings by taking a hard look at the mechanization of the ceramic mug industry and what that’s done to our personal and corporate identities… (If you don’t have the link for my videos and pictures handy, they should be in a separate post below.)
The cherry blossoms and the castle were very picturesque. There were plenty of people in the city (it’s one of the two largest cities in Nagano prefecture; the other city being Nagano City of prior Olympic renown. Matsumoto is about a 25-35 minute trip from Suwa by car or train.) Matsumoto was the first place that I saw other westerners, like myself. There were people enjoying a traditional Japanese style picnic, called hanami, eating and drinking under the cherry blossoms. After walking around the castle a bit and enjoying a few Kodak moments, we stopped in at the music store and browsed a bit. I got to check out the guitars and the selection and pricing confirmed that Taka and Toshikatsu had already advised me of. After putzing around the music shop, hit a little coffee shop, grabbing a muffin and a mocha or a latte etc. then headed over to the music venue.

The show was ok - Taka’s band was good. The other two acts were rather bad, the opener was downright horrible. I probably clapped the hardest for him in between songs because I felt pretty bad for him. The crowd was nice - but he had a bad case of stagefright and of generally sounding not so good… (I’ll upload a video…ask me about Japanese vocals in general sometime. That’s a tangent I don’t have time for…) I was surprised by how small the theatre was at first, but once the concert started it made more sense. About 20-25 people ended up coming to the show. Taka’s band had a decent sound and plenty of energy, which made them fun to watch. Towards the end of the show, he actually jumped into the crowd and after yelling and shaking a bunch of the fans, slapped the guitar on me and indicated that I should get onstage and play. The rest of the band just kept playing while he was getting his point across. Seeing as I’m a shy and timid person I graciously declined his kind offer. Hahaha, seriously tho, I got up on stage and started playing the most ridiculous solo of my life (ridiculous in that I tried play faster than I could and was probably in a different key, but based on the atonal nature of the riff and the massive distortion, the fact that there were only 20 people there and I wouldn’t see most of them ever again, I didn’t really care how horrible it sounded…) while of course jumping around, I even broke a string…it was a lot of fun. That was my first solid example of what Taka’s like, a bit unpredictable at times. His personality is definitely honest and open, and I appreciate that. I’ll be interested to learn more about my coworkers throughout this season.

After the concert, Toshikatsu, Usgowa, and I rode the train home to Suwa. Toshi and I grabbed dinner at a fast food restaurant. (I had pork with freshly cut strips of ginger, gohan (rice), miso shiro (miso soup), and a salad. It was all very delicious.) I slept pretty soundly that night.

The next work week was full of wonder and excitement - ISO 14708 standards, IEC 60068-1 standards, and protocol writing. If that’s not a good time, then…ummmmm… Actually, I do appreciate the perspective I’m gaining through this process, namely applying internationally recognized standards to a specific product or set of products. In addition, I’m learning about the external Controller and its circuitry in much greater depth.

In addition to learning things about qualification and testing, work is teaching me something else vital. My coworkers have been teaching me all about Japanese food, including the local restaurants. As engineers, we have been eating out about 1 or 2 times each week. I’m finding that Japanese cuisine and I can be friends (for the most part.) My favorite so far is the ton-katsu, breaded pork cutlet with an amazing sauce - reminiscent of Worcestershire sauce, but thicker, sweeter, and less salty. The “ton-katsu” restaurant was styled after traditional Japanese architecture, with seating on the floor. (I should be posting picture of examples of this style soon. Basically, it involves a lot of stained wooden beams - think old school karate movies…) The tables are located in ‘rooms’ that are elevated off the rest of the floor (3-5 inches up). Shoes are removed and left on the ‘lower level’ floor before stepping up into the room. Then it’s simple matter of placing/adjusting your seat cushion and taking a seat at the low table. Differences between Western and Japanese cuisine extend beyond the food and furniture. As I’m sure you’re aware, they use hashi (chopsticks) instead of knife, fork, spoon. Instead of serving water with their meals, the typical beverage is hot, Japanese green tea. (Strangely enough something that we often call ‘green tea,’ Japanese people call red “co” tea “ocha.”) Naturally, one can order additional beverages with the meal, but green tea is their ‘water.’ (Another note: at one Japanese fast food restaurant they served ice water, not green tea.) Disgressing to the differences in cuisine across the cultures: instead of napkins, they use some kind of moist cloth, often like a washcloth. It arrives already wet and usually warm. People wipe their hands off with the towel in place of washing their hands before dinner. Sometimes people will wipe their faces and necks with it as well. It then serves as their general napkin equivalent for the rest of the meal. Most meals are served with multiple dishes. Typical setups include: the main entrée, a serving of rice, miso soup, sometimes garnishes/dipping sauce(s), and perhaps a salad. As I’ve mentioned before, presentation seems to be an important part of the meal for the Japanese people.

The Rolling Sushi Restaurant (let’s call it RSR) was an experience. Some of the stuff there was pretty good. Some of it was - eh, not so much. You’ll have to check out the footage and pictures from the multimedia sites to get the effect, but basically, Sushi was just ‘rolling’ by us on a conveyor belt. Whenever someone saw something they wanted, they just grabbed it off the conveyor belt and ate it. They had some tuna, salmon, raw shrimp - with the antennae/eyes still attached, crab legs, crab brains, octopus, and squid to name a few. I tried many kinds of sushi and I was ‘on a roll’ (i.e. “mondane” no problem, in fact, I hadn’t gagged/puked since coming to Japan.) I guess coming to Japan, I was mentally braced for all the raw seafood. Raw crab, fish, shrimp, whatever. Up to this point, including that evening, I had eaten little whole squid, octopus cooked and raw, many varieties of raw fish (various types of sashimi and sushi), uncooked crab -including crab brains - which if you’ve ever shelled crabs - c’mon, that’s just nasty… Still, up to that point, mondane - no problem. Tonight, there was a new challenge; one that caught me off guard. (Mom, you may want to skip ahead to the next paragraph.) Now, before you all start clapping, let me just set the record straight - I didn’t puke. I didn’t really even come very close to puking. I did however, gag twice as I struggled to swallow a large chunk of chewy, RAW horse flesh. One of the engineers had “kindly” selected it for me from the conveyor belt and politely offered it for me to try. I had already made it through a couple round of sushi, the nights octopus, and the crab brains. I made the mistake of looking at the ‘horse sushi’ before I picked it up. It was noticeably darker than the raw fish flesh. I could see the striations of fat and muscle. After taking a picture or two, I shoveled it in and started chewing. (Let the games begin…) The whole chewing business didn’t go so well. It was too chewy to really bite through it. So after a few healthy chomps, I tried to swallow it more or less whole. It didn’t go down. After a solid gag, I calmly collected my cup of tea and drank a mouthful to coax it down. During the chewing and gagging process, I distinctly recall two words floating through my consciousness “glue” and “factory.” I hoped that the present company would attribute my watering eyes to fresh horseradish and ginger in the sushi but… Haha, so that’s the first time I’ve ever eaten horse, and raw horse at that. I highly recommend it to you all.

I am pleased to say that there was one element of solid, objective truth that stayed me through my tribulation. I was comforted in the knowledge that not more than 40 feet away, sat that great and mighty bastion of American consumerism, present in every corner of our globe, yes, I’m speaking of the Pride of American cuisine, those glorious golden arches of freedom fries, McDonald’s. It has been a charitable friend, cleansing away the stains of raw squid, eggs, horse, brains and the like… In a culture where raw flesh and strange foods abound, there are no words to describe the catharsis of eating a Big Mac value meal with large fries and a large drink… There’s also a KFC right up the street a few blocks. Seriously though, beyond the hyperbole - its nice to grab a burger for a change of pace…

The following weekend was fairly low key. I did a fair amount of shopping - grocery and apartmentwise. I cleaned my apartment for the first time, and did some loads of laundry. I listened to Mike’s message from 2 weeks earlier - easily downloadable at PCOP.org. That was really cool... Other than that, like I said, it was low key.

Last week, work has been pretty good. I’ve started actually running some tests with an environmental testing chamber (ooooooohhhh) with adjustable temperature and humidity. (No longer do you have to go to the tropics, ESPEC will bring the tropics to you!) One of the workers for Misuzu is running in an upcoming election for the local government. She stopped by the office to campaign a bit. I guess it was cool? I also got to meet Dr. Kenji Yamazaki (Yamazaki sensei). He is part of the family that owns Sun Medical and my company, Evaheart. He’s kind of a big deal in his field and in our company. I am very pleased to report that he is also a kind, personable individual that does not come across as self-important at all. I got a chance to hear his review of a prototype my supervisor had been working on for quite some time and shipped out just before I went over. It was really cool to get the chance to hear Yamazaki sensei’s feedback and to pass along the constructive comments and congratulations to my supervisor, Jon G. at Evaheart. (No that's not an allusion to memory loss...)

Wow, we are almost caught up to the present. Not to worry, there’s still tons to tell…including the story of the mighty jetcoaster and climbing mount fuji. Haha, I’ll write more when I can, but for now, I’m gonna have to say goodnight and catch some zzzzzzz’s.

God bless,

Jonathan

P.S. The predicted subsequent phone conversation - my side of the phone call…

No, Mom. I didn’t REALLY climb Mount Fuji, ok? … Yeah, I know, but I … uh-huh … Yeah, but I mean … Well it was gonna be a surprise and I thought that … Uh-huh … ok … Yeah … yeah, it isn’t a good idea to joke about things like that … right … ok … uh-huh … well, I love you too … alright … Goodbye.