Kyoto and Fuji-san

Dan and Timmy K were in town on separate business trips, which were good excuses for weekend trips out of Tokyo. I've been itching to get outta town more often, as you know.

Tim and I spent the July 4-5 weekend in Kyoto, which is a 7-hour bus ride from Tokyo, or a 2-hour ride on the shinkansen. Kyoto is to Tokyo, what Beijing is to Shanghai (that's probably not the best analogy). It felt far more like "real Japan" than Tokyo, and I suppose there are good historical reasons for that. Temples, shrines and castles everywhere you look. And at night, the kids just hang out in yukatas and drink by the river banks. Very nice, relaxed feel compared to the insanity of Tokyo. It was a bit of a rushed trip, though. A weekend is nowhere near enough time to see all of Kyoto. I definitely intend to head back sometime soon.

The weekend after, Dan flew in for a weekend stopover in Tokyo, en route from China to Lebanon (??). We stayed out all night on Friday, slept all day Saturday, and headed out to Mount Fuji early Saturday evening. We started the climb at 10:30pm, caught sunrise 6 hours later at 4:30am, made it to the summit by 5am, and were back down by 9am. There is such a huge human traffic jam once you get near the summit (see photo below), that it takes more than an hour just to climb the last 100-200m. We were back in Tokyo that afternoon, barely in time for Tim to make his 4pm flight, and Dan to catch his 6pm. I slept about 14 hours that night, and could barely walk for the next two days. They say that say a wise man climbs Fuji once, and only a fool climbs twice (I don't know who "they" are). One of the most epic weekends in recent memory.

Hmm, what else? My friends all seem to be leaving Tokyo at the same time, which is a bummer. Paulette, Arnab and Gustav, all within the span of two weeks. They all claim they'll be back, though. It's a long weekend ("Marine Day", don't ask), so I'm gonna get off my laptop and go get some sun.

Sanjusangen-do, Kyoto. Conveniently situated next to the Hyatt Regency.

Kiyomizu-Dera, Kyoto.

Cafe & Restaurant White Lover, Kyoto. Something gets lost in translation, I'm sure.

Late Friday night / early Saturday morning in Tokyo. It's cool, they're just taking a breather while waiting for the first train home.

At a rest stop, about two hours into the climb. Yeah, I wear my sunglasses at night.

Human traffic jam.

Sunrise atop Fuji. Stunning.

Victory! The three of us are a lot unhappier than we look in this picture. It's cold, windy and our legs hate us. And a 3-hour descent lies ahead.

June

It's July already? June just flew by, didn't it? Let's see, I took a trip to Canada, passed two JSDA exams, caught the flu twice and had a bunch of visitors pass through. My sister's wedding was a blast and a blur at the same time. It was a lot of running around doing "wedding chores", and just getting caught up in the insanity. I barely ate anything all day, but rumour has it that the food was fabulous. Mostly, I remember floating around all day with a big grin on my face.

The June 26-27 weekend was a mostly-unplanned-but-fantastic weekend, too. Went out every night, and met quite a few gaijin who were fluent in Japanese. They seemed to be the gooey core of Tokyo's non-Roppongi gaijin. I like meeting people like that. It gives me hope for gaijin-kind, and something to work towards.

I just got back from a weekend in Kyoto. I'll post pictures once I feel less lazy. The humidity has really descended upon Japan over the last few weeks. Every night feels like an A/C night. People are warning me that it only gets worse. I am afraid.

My sister's wedding day henna do.

The baraat arrives. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baraat)

Gittin' down at the wedding reception. That's my Mom, my sister and her new father-in-law.

Psycho dancer guy at JZ Brat in Shibuya, on Saturday night. I'm told he's a big deal in Japan.

Remnants of a Sunday night thali at Raj Mahal in Roppongi.

En route to Canada

As you might guess from the title, I am writing this post in-transit, on my way back home to Toronto for my sister's wedding next Saturday. There are a few things I want to say, but what has weighed on my mind most heavily for the past week is the untimely passing of professor Rajeev Motwani.

Probably the most fitting way for you learn about his remarkable life is to simply Google his name.

A personal memory of Rajeev: Every professor at Stanford is brilliant. To me, what distinguished Rajeev was his knack for sitting through a lengthy theoretical discussion, and at the end picking out exactly the one or two ideas that were most interesting and worth exploring. He would then deliver a succinct summary statement that would leave you saying "Yup. That's exactly right." I experienced it first-hand, when I was a nervous first-year PhD student giving my first talk at the data privacy group meeting. I gave my pitch, answered some questions, after which it all somehow became clear to him. What I ought to do (obviously!) was write the constraints of my problem as simple Boolean expressions, and then somehow figure out how to optimize over the space of truth tables! Yup, that's exactly right. That little nugget eventually led to my first published piece of research as a PhD student.

Rajeev was officially my co-advisor, and was going to be on my thesis defense committee. I was actually planning to send him an e-mail this past weekend, to schedule a possible defense date for this fall. Imagine my shock when I logged into facebook on Saturday morning and saw the news (Raghu, Jennifer, thanks for spreading the news). All those who ever had the chance to work with him, in any capacity, should consider themselves privileged. He was 47.

OK, on to some scattered pre-flight thoughts on more cheerful topics. I'm now at the departure gate, waiting to board my flight. (Why are people in such a rush to get to their assigned seat? 12 hours of sitting time isn't enough?)

I've gotten used to telling people that my sister is getting married, but I really still can't believe it. In my six months in Japan, I haven't left Tokyo even once. My first trip outside Tokyo is to Canada. Jeebus. I need to explore more of Japan. I've totally fallen off the exercise schedule, which may be a problem because I'm signed up for a half-marathon in July.

It's my Mom's birthday today, and it will still be her birthday by the time I get to Canada! Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals tonight, Pittsburgh and Detroit. Perfect timing to arrive in Canada. It's been a fun two weeks, with Scott, Shruthi and Radhika visiting and crashing at my place. I passed the JSDA exam! I am taking the second (and last) exam the day after I get back from Toronto.

I might need to write something here next week on the shock of being home, after 6 months in Asia. (edit: I am finishing up this post from my parents' place in Scarborough.)

Some pictures from the last couple of weeks.

Japanese freestyle reggae at Drum Song in Shimokitazawa.

Riding the Tokyo Metro with Scott (and Shruthi, who took this picture). Gangsta.

Comic pantomime guy on a Sunday in Yoyogi park. I liked him.

Takeshita Dori in Harajuku on a Sunday afternoon.

Dinner in Azabu Juban with Radhika and her travel buddies, Dave and Ingrid.

Visitors and the JSDA

Since April, my apartment has been seeing a nice, steady flow of couch surfers coming through. Soon after Jane's visit over Golden Week, Anand and Menka dropped by Tokyo for a visit. Radhika is going to be here in a week or so, Anand is slated to return sometime in June, and I think Dan is coming by once he gets his act together. I get really excited about visitors. It's a big thing for me. Spending such an obscene amount of time at work means that my place sits empty, wasting away, most waking hours of the day. I'm lucky enough to have a spacious pad in an absurdly expensive city, so I love the idea of sharing it with friends and random visitors (sorry, sappy). Waste not want not. I've been thinking about updating my hospitality club profile, to point to Tokyo. (I've been neglecting my HC e-mails for the past year and a half, mostly from travellers asking for a crash pad in San Francisco.)

Just a couple of hours ago, as I was studying for the JSDA (see below), I got an e-mail from Scotty telling me he'd just boarded an airplane in Houston, and that he'll be in Tokyo in 13 hours! I'm so psyched right now!

In other news, I've been wasting inordinate amounts of time studying for the JSDA exam, which I'm writing on Tuesday (the JSDA is like the Series 7, but for Japan). This, at the expense of thesis-writing and chilling out with friends. The material is utterly useless for my job, but the law mandates that I have to write it. Precious hours of my life that I'll never get back. Sigh. (Thankfully, the weather has been lousy, so being indoors hasn't been torturous.)

The study strategy for the JSDA is as follows. There is roughly 1300 pages of material to cover, on the minutiae of Japanese securities law. Clearly, I'm not coming anywhere close to learning all that useless crap. Instead, I've just been attempting questions from past exams (getting most of them wrong), and then memorizing the correct answers in the hope that the questions come up again on the exam. Consensus has it that this approach gives me the best shot at passing (I need 70%). How pathetic. I feel dumber for having studied for this exam.

Anyways, I'm done complaining for now, so here are some pictures.

I strolled into the KDDI store in Harajuku a couple of weeks ago for no good reason, and stumbled upon "Soul Gumbo" putting on a free show. (Nope, I've never heard of them either.)

The drummer from "native" (lowercase n), during their show last Saturday at Spuma, in Shibuya.

Our table (minus me) at Spuma.

Shiny disco balls.

DJ Niche on the decks last night at Velours.

Golden Week

It's been a busy few weeks since I last posted here. Jane dropped by Tokyo for a couple weeks, on a visa run from Oz, surfing on my couch. Her visit coincided nicely with Golden Week in Japan, so we got to spend some quality time hanging out. We rarely managed to connect in San Francisco, so it's ironic that we both had to travel halfway across the world to make this happen. When it's time, it's time.

So, yeah, it was a pretty intense two weeks of going out too much, staying up too late, and eating and drinking filth. So, with help from Jane and Paulette (my support group of sorts), I'm now on day five of a two-week "detox" diet: fruits, veggies, grains, tofu, no oil and definitely no sugar.

Before Jane got here, I could have counted on one hand the number of times I had actually used my kitchen to prepare a home-cooked meal. Sad. On weekdays, I was always buying my lunches and dinners (and eating at my desk, sigh) and on weekends I would just eat out. The situation is a lot better now, especially now that I'm trying to detox for a bit.

This week I went for my first non-treadmill (i.e., outdoor) run since moving to Tokyo. 30 minutes, a light easy jog, and so very overdue.

Jane at the Yebisu Beer Museum. She had borrowed my camera all week, and left me with a collection of masterpieces.

Outside "Ever" in Aoyama. That's Niche, Matzz, Arnab and me.

When it's late and you're fiending for sugar, you invent stuff like Banana Japana.

I was too shy to look at the camera, for some reason.

Delicious. I don't even know what these are called.

Still here

Wow, I've really fallen off the deep end with this blogging thing. This has been my longest lapse yet. Almost 4 weeks. I guess I've been too busy actually doing stuff in Tokyo to have time to write about it. But don't worry, I'm still here.

So, let's see. The last three weekends have been pretty action-packed. March 28 was Roppongi Art Night, where they turn a high-class (read: high-priced) neighbourhood into an all-night open-air free-to-the-public art gallery. Awesome night. I have to say, though, that for an all-night (6 pm to 6 am) art party that included fire-breathing robots, it wasn't as insane as I would have expected or hoped. There were hordes of people out, and everybody was orderly and respectful, which seemed unfortunate. If this were SF or NY, there would have been a bit more insanity, I'm sure. But that's just the Japanese way.

http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/tablog/entries.en/2009/04/roppongi-art-night.html

March 29 and the entire April 4 weekend was dominated by hanami festivities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanami

Had a small house-warming get-together at my place last weekend. Good times. I was forced to finally install curtains in my apartment. Inviting guests over with bedsheets-suspended-by-hangers in my windows would be plain embarrassing. Dropped by a random German guy's place at midnight on Friday to buy the curtains, hit some hardware stores on Saturday afternoon to get the fixtures, and then installed the curtains Saturday evening. Pretty solid execution, I have to say.

Giant fire-breathing robot (although I was too slow with the camera to catch the fire). Only in Japan.

Under a big blue bubble. Abstract art at its best.

Collaborative mural, to which visitors were encouraged to contribute.

Hanami at Yoyogi koen on April 4. We stayed in the park well past nightfall.

Hanami with the vegans in Shinjuku gyoen on April 5.

Late night in my apartment after the housewarming.

Shunbun no hi

Just came off a much-needed three-day weekend. Friday was a national holiday in Japan to celebrate the Spring Equinox (shunbun no hi).

It's amazing (and by that I mean annoying) how much time is consumed just bootstrapping one's life in a brand new city. With the help of my trusty nihongo-speaking Swedish friend Gustav, I managed to score a bunch of used furniture at a sayonara sale this past Friday. Doing that ate up pretty much all of Friday, unfortunately.

Arnab, an old co-worker from the Infusion days (!) showed up in Tokyo on Friday evening, which was very cool. He's going to be here for the next few months. (As much as I like to hate on FB, I admit I would have never known he was here if it weren't for that news feed.)

I'm a bit bummed that I'm missing all the chaos, planning and excitement around my sister's upcoming wedding. She has the worst timing. I can't believe she didn't plan around my moving Tokyo. On the upside, I'm avoiding all the associated grunt work, I guess.

Neon traffic cop, waving the cars by, just taking care of business.

Posing with the day's bounty of used furniture.

That's Gustav, who helped me rent this truck, and pretty much made the whole expedition happen.

The current state of my apartment. Getting there. Need to get actual curtains to replace the bed sheet hanging in the window.

Came home on Friday night to find my bathroom flooded with shower water. That's the downside of living in a 35 year-old building, I guess.