JeremyScofield.commy space out there
Unfortunately, if you want fresh fish in Tokyo the most famous way to get it is a trip to the Tsukiji Fish Market before the sun rises. At least it does not smell too strong in the winter!
Knowing how threatened tuna likely are as a species it was very saddening to see so many featured and sold so prominently.
Today the weather was nice and it was a quiet weekday morning so I decided to go out and shoot some autumn photos at Shinjuku Gyoen. It was really nice and relaxing with so few people there. In the past it has always been a challenge shooting on the weekends as there are usually more shooters that trees in the park. If you have some time, please take a look at some of the photos I took.
ママチャリ(mama-chari)
1. A utility bike for getting around, about as disposable as an umbrella.
2. A traffic hazard in the hands of the unskilled or reckless.
3. A vehicle for little rebellion.
My experience with mamachari goes back to 1999 during my first visit to Japan. I was living in Osaka, a city famous for its bad drivers and traffic accidents. On the morning after I arrived I was walking down a sidewalk when suddenly an old lady burst into the road from an alley without warning, slowing or even looking back. Putting her life in her hands she had pulled into the road on her bicycle and swerved into traffic without so much as a glance to see if there were cars or pedestrians, trusting that her luck would last and she would get to the store another day. At first I thought this was unusual coming from a relatively orderly bike-friendly city in Canada but alas, I saw he same type of situation repeated daily. Walking down the sidewalk hearing the constant ding-ding of a bike bell demanding I get out of the way. I could not accept that I should always have to wait for bikes to pass, it just didn’t seem right!
After asking around, it turned out that from what I could find out it wasn’t right. Riding on the sidewalk in disregard of pedestrians is as illegal here as it is in my hometown in Canada. Feeling rebellious, I took to wearing overhead headphones when walking so I could politely ignore the bells that I couldn’t hear but the paranoia that something was coming up behind me wouldn’t go away. Being a relatively fast walker I am entirely unaccustomed to people coming up behind me on a regular basis and rarely have had to watch my back. After being hit by from behind by several bikes riding on the sidewalk and even one scooter head on coming off the road my feeling of injustice solidified.
Living here in Tokyo has not made me feel any better about bikes, and if anything people’s bike manners here are worse. They ride on the sidewalk, dodge from the road to the sidewalk to the road randomly, wobble, ring bells and park wherever they like. Places there are bike lanes specifically to allow both cyclists and pedestrians to co-exist are so crowded with illegally parked bikes that people ride on the pedestrian side, ringing their bells and expecting pedestrians to jump out of the way. For me, being a cyclist who rides on the road and generally follows traffic laws, it can be fairly hard to take. A woman riding a bike with 3 kids on it in traffic while texting on her phone, only the youngest baby wearing an oversized helmet loose on the back of its head. And again the next day. It is a wonder more people don’t die.
But wait, they do! Recently in Japan there has been a push to actually enforce the traffic code in regards to bikes which, as it turns out, does not allow any but small children and the very elderly to ride on the sidewalk. It seems that Japan has a much higher number of bicycle related deaths than other countries that have clearly enforced traffic laws and bikes are commonly ridden. In fact, the number of bike related deaths has been increasing at a good pace. So what has been the result of the push by the police? Now there are a bunch of wobbly people on the road and no one dares use a bell when they ride on the sidewalk. It seems more like a band-aid than a cure. I don’t think there will be a significant reduction in deaths until helmets laws and rider education/punishment are enacted.
As for the little rebellion: People will park bikes anywhere they like, even beside or on “No Bike Parking” signs. You can see several hundred bikes in a row along a fence that says “No Bikes” or in a bicycle riding lane. I am kind of torn between seeing it as petty rebellion or simply bad manners. When I have seen conflicts over it it has always been quit amusing, with people coming up with excuses like “but it would take over 10 minutes to walk to the station”, “I am only going to leave it here for a few minutes” or my personal favorite “but I have parked here for years and never had a problem!” when you can clearly see the no bike parking sign has been there for several years as well.
To put things in a bit of perspective there are some really bad cyclists in my home town in Canada too. My favorite example from Canada is a “conversation” I witnessed between a cyclist on the sidewalk late on a Saturday night and a police officer:
Police officer: “Please get off the bike”
Cyclist (a bit drunk): “But why, I am just trying to get home”
Police officer: “Are you aware that it is illegal to ride on the sidewalk?”
Cyclist (thinking as fast as possible): “But officer, I thought it would be worse to ride on the road without lights, and someone stole my helmet. Besides, I’ve had a few drinks and thought it would be safer to ride home on the sidewalk since drinking and driving on the road is illegal.”
Police officer: “So your excuse for riding on the sidewalk is that you have no lights, no helmet and are drunk so it would be the lesser of evils?”
….and on it went. It was good Saturday night entertainment.
My point is that there are reckless, inconsiderate people on bikes everywhere, but nowhere in a developed country have I seen it as common as here in Japan. The strange thing is that bike laws are generally for the sake of reducing deaths and serious injury. Why fight them, even as a little rebellion?
I would argue that most people here in Japan use their bikes in entirely illegal ways: they will ride a bike illegally on the sidewalk where they illegally park it, rinse and repeat. Obviously people’s love of mamachari overrides their love of lawfulness: rebellion!
Whether one is a Mac fanboy, a anti-Mac hater or somewhere in-between it is hard to challenge the success that Steve Jobs had in his life. Being an innovator who knew to support other innovators, Steve was one to often surprise the world. From game-changing products to media, his ability to create and repackage things to capture the imagination of the world led him to become one of the best known CEO’s in history, both loved and hated. How many other leaders of industry have been mourned in such a way after they have passed on? His loss has not passed without remark; from the person-on-the-street to the president of the United States kind words have been said in many languages around the world. The things he created give the world another small piece of common ground. Perhaps this is the most important legacy of his life and career.
Steve Jobs will be missed.
With the 50% government stake in Japan Tobacco it is not really surprising that the fight against cigarettes is not being handled very efficiently at a national level, but allowing products to clearly condition children towards cigarettes these days is a bit much. I took this photo two days ago so these are still around. In many city wards in Tokyo as well as other parts of Japan smoking has been banned in public places, so I was a little bit surprised to see this about one block from an amusement park, a major movie theatre and a Toys-R-Us in a ward that has banned smoking. I know that similar products have been sold in North America but I have not seen them for a very long time, and the caption which roughly reads “Really?! If you blow it smokes like a real cigarette!” written in a manner that any elementary school kid can read is a bit much these days.
I was already at my morning coffee (iced tea) when the rather strong rain hit, and I am pretty glad that I did not decide to come here later than I did.
People have always fought over any little difference in preference or belief. I am sure that early humans found over which type of stick was better to use as a club when any of them could have done the same job. The same is clearly still true today and in my personal spheres is most pronounced when it comes to devices. Android, iOS, Mac, Windows (notice I chose alphabetical order to avoid showing a bias) are all popular, widely used and hotly fought over. Android people look down on iOS users and vice versa which Mac and Windows users sit in different camps and tend not to play nice. It is all very emotional for people.
I personally just find it very tiring and sometimes a bit frustrating. I do not buy devices to buy into one belief system or another, I buy devices that do what I want them to with a minimum of fuss, work together and fit into my workflow. They are tools to get things done. In my case those have moved towards Apple products, not because they are all superior but simply because they fit better into my current workflow and do what I want them to with a minimum of fuss. iOS devices work well with Mac computers and they can easily share resources and media so I have an iPhone. iPad was the only game in town when I got one and already having iOS apps it was more cost effective. I am not saying that Android phones are not great, or that for other people they are not perfect. There was no value judgement involved and I get very tired of having to feel like I must defend my choice to use iOS devices. Realistically, if I had gone with Android (which was not they best product when I bought into iOS, although that has changed since) I would have to go through the tiring process of defending that choice. Why do people have to be so obsessed with such things? Like I said, I think that people have always been that way, but that does not make it any easier for those of use who just want to get on with living our lives and not worry about such things.
Why don’t I just ignore those fights and life my life? As an IT pro it is pretty much impossible to avoid being asked (grilled) about such things and still do my job.
Can’t we all just get along?
I got a new pair of summer shoes this week and although that might not seem blog-worthy, when you are living in Japan, are 190cm tall and wear size 13’s (31cm) it really is a big deal. Last time I was out of the country it was still winter/spring so I bought a new pair of shoes for casual use: a really nice pair of Adidas skate shoes on sale from the online store. But that was during cool weather when a slightly heavier shoe was a nice thing. Enter summer, early July and already into the 35C plus daily weather for several weeks now. Those skate shoes are no longer something that I can comfortably wear all day, nor have my Cons survived the heavy use all spring. Time to head down to the store and buy some new shoes? If only it were so easy.
It turns out that although there were plenty of shoes around my size this winter in Japan surprisingly enough this trend did not continue into summer. In fact, I can still buy fall/winter casual hiking shoes in my size but if I want something designed for temperatures over 20C I am out of luck at most retailers. I can also buy imported leather dress shoes, golf shoes, tennis shoes, track shoes or marathon runners on occasion with a bit of searching. None of these really suit my summer style nor are actually that good for walking around the city in the summer on the hot asphalt. In Japan men’s shoe sizes end at about 28-29cm (about size 10), so the top of the range here is close to the average in North America. Socks here generally range from 25-27cm (about size 8.5 or 9) on average, so socks are generally out for me too. If only I were more average.
Checking online I discovered that I can order custom Adidas or Nike shoes in a reasonable range of sizes from Japan and I can even customize them to my liking! This sounded great until I checked and found that the expected delivery dates were in 4 weeks or so, half way through the summer. Buying shoes this way will be great for the future but I need shoes roundabout now.
Off to Harajuku I go, making a run to the Nike Harajuku flagship store. Surely they must have something I can buy! I finally managed to find a staff member who wasn’t wasting time hitting on girls who weren’t looking to buy shoes and asked about shoes in my size. It turns out they had one pair of shoes in one colour in my size in store! Yay! I bought them like they were the last pair of shoes in the world and I am now the proud owner of a pair of red, white and black Nike Free Run+ 2 barefoot style running shoes. I am finding them very comfortable and light. Just what I needed for summer. If not for these barefoot runners I might have really been barefoot!
Is it just me, or did Firefox not just update to a shiny new version 4? It was a few months ago, and as an IT pro I can say that a lot of companies are still doing internal testing to decide on when or if to upgrade to version 4. Other companies are probably rolling out Firefox 4 to users computers in phases and hope to be finished soon. now they have released 4.1 (oops, version 5) right on its heels. Not only that, but they announced the end of security support for Firefox 4 which is all of 2-3 months old. This could be then end of Firefox in the enterprise market, and that would be a sad thing as it was the only real competitor with Internet Explorer as Google Chrome updates to new versions much too often and tends to leave IT departments worried about the changes and the impact on existing standard software.
Oh wait, isn’t that what Mozilla’s Firefox just did? Maybe following Google’s example wasn’t the best strategy. And it looks like following is what Firefox is going to be doing more and more from now on as their stable market share shrinks to devoted users, people who don’t pay attention to their browser and non-corporate professionals who don’t worry about their add-ons or compatibility. Even for a lot of Firefox devotees it might be a bit of a stretch as it is likely at least some of their plug-ins won’t work. Only time will tell at this point, but I would not predict an upsurge in Firefox’s market share after this shift in policy.
Maybe it is time to switch back to Safari on my Mac.
Sitting on the train most people probably feel anonymous. I personally like to pretend I am anonymous, but I know that the reality is probably different. At any time, without my knowledge, a photo of me could be taken, or even a photo with me in the background, and posted to the internet, where either Facebook, Google, Bing or some other service could realize the person in the photo is me and tag it if there is an existing photo associated with my name on one or more services. I could be completely unaware that such a photo existed until one day someone mentions it, it shows up in a search or I get turned down for a job because of something I might have been doing. The reality is that if you have any online presence at all, whether it be on Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn or any one of the other social media sites and you do not have complete awareness and control of your privacy settings on all of those sites you do not know exactly where you will pop up. If you do have no web-presence or are sure that you have complete control congratulations; you are one of the rare people who does not have to think about these things any further.
For the rest of us, a combination of privacy and information control is likely necessary to keep our online presence under control. As it is a virtual impossibility these days to be socially active and remain anonymous, there are a few steps that I have taken to help control my online image:
There are a lot of other things you can do, but some basic measures like the ones I have mentioned can help you control information about yourself can make your life a lot easier. As the days of anonymity are probably over, it is a good idea to take control instead and shape your image in a way that better represents who you want people to think you are!