The Freeze Tokyo 2008

Aaaaaaaaaa!!!! Another cool "freeze" that I missed! So not fair... -__-...

The Freeze Tokyo 2008



Over 130 people gathered and FROZE for five minutes in the busiest, most crowded part of Ginza in Tokyo, Japan on May 25, 2008. The freeze was inspired by Improv Everywhere, NYC.


Another must see video from the same event~
"The Extras: The Cops"



Japanese police is hilarious ;)

p.s. For those who are interested - here is the entry I wrote about the similar freeze event in HK this year at Times Square: Frozen Times - Square Reborn

Shockwave Traffic Jam

Read an interesting article on newScientistTech about a first time real-life simulation of a phenomenon called "Shockwave traffic jam".

You may wonder what is "Shockwave traffic jam"? You know, those annoying traffic jams that occur for no apparent reason when you are on the road driving. The road does not really have heavy traffic and most cars seem to be going smoothly, but all of a sudden a traffic jam will happen out of not where.... And you wonder why....

This is why - A team of Japanese researchers recreated this kind of seemingly-unnecessary traffic jam with 22 cars in a circular test-track based on the "shockwave" mathematical theory.



From the video, you can see that usually this type of traffic jams are caused by human errors. Every time when a single driver, due to whatever reason, slows down, may be just a bit, then his small deceleration will ripple through to the cars in the back in growing magnitude. The ones that are immediately behind must slow down more and more. The ones that are further back might even need to come to a complete stop, causing a shockwave jam of vehicles.

I was really interested in the study and amazed by the video (Hurrah to the creative Japanese scientists!!). I replayed the video many times to observe the shockwave phenomenon, its cause and effect. So glad that I don''t need to suffer from that anymore (well... at least not for another long while). ^_~

For the first time in life, Amazon actually recommended something that is useful...

I hated Amazon recommendations usually because they are useless most of the times.

There is a little something you ought to know about Amazon...
God forbids that you once have bought something irrelevant to your interest from them, may be for somebody else, may be it's a joke gift, or a one time thing. Then there is no way to "erase" that record from the Amazon DB, so they will keep recommend you stuff remotely related to that thing that you bought 10 years ago for the next 20 years~
Don't believe me? Try buying a guy thong from them and you'll see... Don't blame me for whatever will happen to you in the next 20 years thou.... ;)

My Chinese New Year Presents
Fortunately for me, this time they actually recommended something that I am quite interested in!! =)
The first one is a book and DVD package called "Living Japanese: Diversity in Language and Lifestyles" that contains interviews with 37 native Japanese from age 7 to 75 on their diverse viewpoints on cultural and social issues!!
May be it's just me - but it sounds totally interesting and cool to me. (yea, I am still hooked on the Japanese culture even though my living-and-working-in-Tokyo dream didn't turn out as cool as I thought...)


The second one is a compilation of nine short, curious stories published in the Japanese magazine "Shukan Asahi". The book's name is "Reading Japanese in a Smile". Read a bunch of reviews online about this book. Supposedly an interesting read and the stories are "full of the magic element of fun". We'll see how big of a smile I'll have when I am reading this... ;)

Last but not least...
Need to say thanks to my not-so-secret Chinese-New Year Santa (^_~)v

And also thanks to my super nice "mail-girl" who will deliver them from overseas in person, heh heh!! (For those who don't know, trying to have US Amazon deliver stuff to HK is a pain... esp for your wallet...)
Yea, they will be my early Chinese New Year presents!!!!! YAY!!!

Kafka on the Shore

Just finished reading Kafka on the shore by my favorite Japanese author Haruki Murakami at the gym yesterday (yea, I read while running... I know I am weird ;) Or I like to think of it as "special power" that I have, haha...)


Kafka on the Shore is such a powerful story (or should I say stories? ^o^ Those who have read the book will probably know what I mean~) So many riddles.... so many metaphors.... at so many different levels.... I have to admit, I probably don't get half of them... Murakami is AWESOME!! 村上はいつも最高です！

I googled for reviews and reader comments of the novel after I finished. And guess what, the response from readers were so overwhelmingly huge that the publisher actually built a (Japanese-only) website to help readers understand the book when it came out in 2002. Out of the 8000 questions submitted by people regarding the book and its riddles (yea, trust me, you'll have A LOT of questions reading the book), Murakami personally answered 1200+ of them.

I was so eager to find out this site. Disappointedly I found out that they took the website down in 2003 and instead published all the responses and Murakami's replies in a book, with a valuable collection of additional materials regarding the story into a separate book called 少年カフカ (literal translation: Teenage Boy Kafka).


The more I checked out the content of its book, the more I wanted it (as always, haha... ) The most disappointing thing was that the book seemed to be some kind of limited edition published back in 2003 and was out of stock for a pretty long time on a bunch of major Japanese book carriers that I know of (e.g. Amazon Japan, Kinokuniya, etc).

I felt like I have become like a drug addict: the harder it is to get, the more I WANT IT!! P_P

Despite how frantically I searched on the web on where I could buy the book, it seemed pretty clear that there is no way I can buy it in HK or in SF.... =(

I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT!!!!!!!!!


p.s. Sorry, dad, I still haven't sorted through my 800+ Taipei pictures yet and not to mention to blog about them. I was soooo busy catching up with work that was delayed by my stupid cold last week =( But I am feeling much better now, so don't worry, okay? =)

Love Love Hot Cake??

Can somebody tell me how does this get on Bloomberg?


"Love Love Hot Cake" Fantasies in Japan Fuel Concern










Should have gone to a maid cafe when I was still in Tokyo!!! >_<

Poodle or ....... Sheep???

From the The Sydney Morning Herald : Japanese fooled in poodle scam

"The scam was uncovered when Japanese movie star Maiko Kawamaki went on a talk-show and wondered why her new pet would not bark or eat dog food."

"... Then hundreds of other women got in touch with police to say they feared their new "poodle" was also a sheep."


Well....

This is a Poodle~

AND

This is a SHEEP!!!!!!











btw, what's up with a Poodle being so much more expensive than a sheep??!?!??!?!!!

Kyoto Trip Day 2

One of the big missions (for Mike) to come to Kyoto this time was to see the Himeji Castle, which is at Himeji, an hour further away from Kyoto by Shinkensen; therefore, we made sure we DID go to visit this biggest castle in Japan on the second day of our Kyoto trip.

Second day - Himeji (姫路城)

Himeji Castle is the biggest castle in Japan. The whole city of Himeji was built because of this castle.
















































It turned out that the outer part of the Himeji Castle was a lot more impressive than the inner part (will tell you why in a second).
So... Mike took extra shots of its outer awesome looks to make the admission fee that we paid worthy.





































There are many doors and gateways in the caslte. Kind of fun to walk around and pass through.









Guess the people in the old times were much shorter than a white guy nowadays, huh?! =)













The only part that was opened for public in the castle is its central tower. In order to get in, everyone has to take off their shoes, wear the provided shared slippers, and CARRY THEIR OWN shoes the whole time!!! (yea, did I tell you that Japanese people are obsessed with rules and processes?!?!)





The inner of the tower was this 5 story wooden tower. Even though they re-constructed the tower so that it can be open to public, much of its structure was un-altered, including the wood used to built the thing. Therefore, they didn't let too much light into the tower, since that might destroy the old woods. As a result, much of the tower was very dark and gave people a grim feeling...




A model of the reconstructure of the castle tower, in the scale of 1:20.







Weapons.... very old ones....















All the stairs in the tower were very steep. Mike's theory was that since the Japanese people were so short in the old times that they had a much lower center of gravity; therefore, they could still balance well with all these steep stairs. (i.e. On the other hand, Mike didn't balance that well on them) =p




You can see a lot of unrested spirits died from the war period running through the dark hallways of the castle. Don't worry, they are usually very quiet and just give you a cool chill.

J/k - the truth is Mike messed up this picture and created all these "special effects". Though... I wonder if there were really spirits remained in the castle, they would....






















The sharp contrast between the darkness inside the wooden tower and the brightness outside created these seemingly "glamorous" shots =)











At the very top of the tower is this small resting room that you can see the pretty view of the surrounding areas of the castle. However, as you can see, it's SMALL and thus is crowded with all the other tourists.







View from the tower top windows.










The boundary of the Himeji Castle was pretty, surrouding by a river; a bit similar to the Tokyo Imperial Palace.























Koko-en 好古園 (Ko Garden)

Though Himeji Castle was a bit of a small disappointment, we discovered a nice surprise next to the castle, Koko-en, a spendid, must-see garden for any serious Japanese garden freaks.

Koko-en is split into nine main gardens based on the Edo period style.

Why am I holding an umberlla? Well... no, raining... I forgot to bring my sunblock and don't want to be a fried BBQ pork at the end of the day.... =p






I love these small stones across the shallow river band. I kept running back and forth on them and almost couldn't stop.







Tiny door for tiny people....?








My favorite garden of the nine - the Bamboo Garden!!! Love its simplicity and.... greeness!!!








"Cheeze..."








We took a slow train back from Himeji back to Kyoto which took about an hour and a half. I was sleeping the whole way ;)

We grabbed a quick bite near the Kyoto station and walked around a bit. Saw the Kyoto Tower at night.








The conclusion of the day is that - I think I like English castles much more than Japanese castles. =)