Log book

17 Sep 06, 11pm Smiley Misc Blue Ray
I went to Yodobashi camera (a big eletronics chain) today and found that they are already selling Blue Ray DVD writers for computers. They are not cheap though, between $600 and $1000. However, they can generally also write regular DVDs and CDs. There are two Blue Ray DVD disk capacities: 25 GB and 50 GB. The 25 GB disks go for ~$12 and the 50 GB disks for twice that price. I guess I won't be buying one anytime soon. Interesingly enough, Toshiba's HD-DVD was nowhere to be found. I wonder if that is a (bad) sign already.
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17 Sep 06, 9pm Smiley Projects Sound system
I finally bought (ordered) a surround sound system today. I got the "FreeStyle II (FS-321II)" from Bose. It looks like they only sell it in Japan. It is a 5.1 system, but with 3 speakers. That is, there are 3 speakers, but the two front-speakers each contain 2 speakers. That, together with some signal processing is supposed to give the surround sound effect. The thing is, I don't actually watch that many DVDs these days and even fewer DVDs that have an impressive sound track. Most of the time we use it to listen to music and I think the speakers are pretty good for that mix of usage. We'll see. It is supposed to arrive on Sunday.
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17 Sep 06, 8pm Smiley Fun activity Trip
This week will be my "summer vacation"! We're going to Hokkaido. Tomorrow we'll leave and on Saturday evening we'll fly back. We will have a car there and in those 5 days drive from one airport to another, every day staying at a different hotel. Hiromi already researched the route. I am looking forward to it! I'll try to take some pictures and I'll upload them when I'm back.
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06 Sep 06, 9pm Smiley Work Form over content
Appearance is very important in Japan, but sometimes it seems it might be a little overvalued. Here is a nice example.

There are yearly dental checkups at Toshiba, which I think is a good thing. Today I had my checkup. It was my first time and did not really know what to expect. Well, I just expected a regular checkup, like you would have at a regular dentist. But that was not quite the case. When I stepped into the room, I felt like I stepped into some kind of "factory". There were 8 chairs so that 8 people could be checked at the same time. There were only a couple of dentists and hence they moved from chair to chair to perform the checkups. However, there were 20 assistants or so, all female, about the same age, wearing the same, pretty costume and they took take care of you when the dentist was not around. It reminded me a little bit of Charlie and the Chocolate factory (the nurses being the Oompa-Loompas; they're about the same height too) and I expected them to burst out singing at some point, but that did not happen. I was a little disappointed. Anyway, the actual checkup lasted exactly 10 seconds! Afterwards the assistant took 2 minutes to explain the result and tell me how great my teeth are (which tells you something about how bad the teeth of Japanese in general are). But that wasn't all, she then proceeded with a teeth cleaning. Sounds promising, but that part took a whole 3 minutes, so you can imagine how well my teeth were cleaned. And that was the end of it. Before you can say Oompa-Loompa 50 times in a row, you're out of there, back in the real world. Toshiba can claim they provide free dental checkups and cleaning for their employees, and although your teeth weren't actually checked or cleaned, you enjoyed another surreal Japanese experience. Too bad the Oompa-Loompas, eh, I mean, assistants didn't sing.
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26 Aug 06, 8pm Smiley Projects How to make okonomiyaki
After my sister saw the okonomiyaki picture of log book entry August 5th, she said she also wanted to try to make it. When I told that to Hiromi, she thought it would be fun to send my sister a little okonomiyaki "kit" with all ingredients that might be difficult to buy in Holland. We would then make it ourselves, take pictures and send them with instructions to my sister. We actually did that and it resulted in a pdf file titled "how to make okonomiyaki". It might be possible to buy the ingredients in the US at a Japanese store, so if you ever want to try it out, give it a shot and let me know whether it worked out (^^)
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15 Aug 06, 5pm Smiley Projects Paper doors
Original door. As you can see, the paper is not tight at all and it looks rather ugly. I think my landlord might have tried to do it himself, but it looks like he used bad glue or something.Step 1: Remove the paper from the door. It is best to first make the paper wet and let it sit for a couple a minutes. Afterwards the paper can easily be removed.
Step 2: Remove the remaining glue from the frame with water. This is a bit of a pain in the butt.Step 3: Attach the paper to the frame by heating it with an iron. Of course you can also buy old-fashioned paper that requires regular glue, but the new high-tech paper is much more convenient. Initially I thought that somehow the paper would also tighten itself, but that was not the case. The paper will indeed be tight right after you iron it, but it becomes wavy once it cools down.
Step 4: Once the paper has been attached, the edges need to be cut. The result that you see is the result that you get when you follow the instructions to the end. They forgot to write down the most crucial step: you need to spray it with water, which will tighten the paper when it dries. The final result! Doesn't it look beautiful?
I've finally fixed the Japanese (paper) doors! It was quite a bit of work, but I am very satified with the result. The steps are shown on the right. There were 4 doors that needed to be redone and it took me probably 8 hours total.

The steps that are shown in the pictures are according to the instructions that came with the paper. However, one crucial step was missing from the instructions: the final step is to spray the paper with water, which causes the paper to shrink when it dries and pulls it tight. I can't believe this was not written down, because without it there is no way to make it look nice at all. Anyway, Hiromi saved the day by telling me about this.
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11 Aug 06, 8pm Smiley Movie/DVD The Uchoten Hotel Rating 2.5
It started out good, but the second half is a bit boring.
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11 Aug 06, 8pm Smiley Movie/DVD Waterboys Rating 2.5
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11 Aug 06, 1am Smiley Misc Friday [7/7]
This is the final picture of our little "What has Remco been eating this week?" project. Corn soup, baked potatoes, hamburger and pasta salad were on today's menu. All the soups are actually made by Hiromi; they are not from a can. We bought a very handy blender/mincer/mixer that can be used to turn pretty much anything into puree and from there into soup. I use it to make milkshakes.
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10 Aug 06, 1am Smiley Misc Thursday [6/7]
Today we had another one of my favorites: salmon "hoiruyaki". It is salmon, topped with various mushrooms, mayonaise and cheese, baked wrapped inside aluminum foil. Delicious. Vegetables du-jour were broccoli and mini tomatoes with dressing and cabbage soup.
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09 Aug 06, 12am Smiley Misc Wednesday [5/7]
Hiromi was not here tonight, but before she left she prepared dinner: curry rice and salad. I like curry rice a lot. It is different from indian curry and it is generally not really spicy. There are a lot of specialized curry rice restaurants and they are generally fast-food like. Hiromi's version is a lot healthier than common curry rice, because she puts a lot of veggies in the curry.
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08 Aug 06, 12am Smiley Misc Tuesday [4/7]
Today's menu was chinese food: fried shrimp + string beans, stir-fried egg and tomato, "zasai", rice and a dish called "mabodofu" that consists of tofu-cubes and minced meat in a spicy sauce.
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07 Aug 06, 12am Smiley Misc Monday [3/7]
Tonight's menu consisted of grilled chicken, pasta with cream sauce, salad, bread rolls, and, eh, beer. Indeed, beer is a recurrent item, because it's summer; beer tastes great in hot weather (^^) The chicken was grilled with the same grill pan that we used yesterday (see yesterday's pic). It really works well and the chicken was very nice and juicy. I was skeptical at first of the need for such a relatively expensive piece of metal, but now I'm convinced that it does make a difference.
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06 Aug 06, 12am Smiley Misc Sunday [2/7]
Again we used the little gas unit to cook our food at the table. This time it was steak and veggies. We originally bought the gas unit for shabu-shabu, but obviously it has many other uses as well. To complete the dinner, there was potato soup, little bread rolls, dark beer and for desert "shibusuto" cake.
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05 Aug 06, 1am Smiley Projects Picture dinner [1/7]


For one week, every night, I will take a picture of my dinner and post it here. All credit as far as the food and presentation is concerned goes to Hiromi. I do the dishes, but I will spare you the pictures of the sparkling clean plates.

Tonight we had okonomiyaki (shown in the second picture) and yakiudon (in the center of first the picture). Okonomiyaki is a kind of pancake / pizza. The main ingredients are cabbage and dough, but otherwise you can put pretty much anything you like in the mix. Often seafood or meat is added. We had shrimp, vegetables and pork (on the outside). Yakiudon is stir-fried udon noodles (really thick noodles). The bowls contain tofu and the glasses beer.
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04 Aug 06, 11pm Smiley Misc Hot
Summer has arrived and it has gotten hot. Not unusually hot though, just the normal just-kill-me-now kind of heat & humidity. It is such a waste, because you can't do anything in this kind of weather. I hope it will cool down by the end of next week, because that is when the "summer vacation" starts (weekend + 3 days off).
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03 Aug 06, 8pm Smiley Movie/DVD Barbershop Rating 2.5
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30 Jul 06, 1am Smiley Fun activity Fireworks
It is summer which means it is the season of big fireworks. If you would want to, you could probably go see fireworks every weekend somewhere nearby. We've been twice to fireworks in Yokohama, so far. They were very nice and lasted an hour each. The Japanese of course turn this into a big event and arrive early to get a good "seat". They bring their bento-box, beer and something to sit on and hang out until the fireworks start. Although it does get extremely busy, the fireworks are huge and can be seen pretty much anywhere, so the arriving early part is more a social thing than anything else.

Many girls wear a summer kimono and some of the guys too. I think at some point I should buy a summer kimono too, complete with wooden sandals, that could be interesting. Don't worry, if that happens, I will definitely post a picture.
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28 Jul 06, 9pm Smiley Fun activity Driving
Today I drove in Japan for the first time! We rented a car to move a futon back to my host family and buy some big boxes. I was fun to drive again; it has been a while. It definitely takes some time to get used to the Japanese traffic, though. The roads are a lot narrower here than in the US and of course you have to drive on the other side of the road. On top of that, cars are parked everywhere, often making a whole lane unusable. That is really bad and dangerous. On the other hand, there are simply no parking spaces anywhere either, so you're pretty much forced to park your car on the street.

The car came with a car navigator (car nagivators are very common in Japan), which was also a first time for me. However, I have mixed feelings about it. When it works it is great, but when it doesn't work it is extremely fustrating. Probably part of it is getting used to it and previewing the route that it suggests so that you get a high-level idea of where it will take you. You also have to check the route for toll-roads; there are a lot of them here and they are not cheap.

I think for now it makes most sense for me to remain car-less and simply rent one when I really need it. For work and going to Yokohama and such the train is much cheaper, faster and more convenient. Futhermore, if you buy something big you can have it delivered, generally for free.
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23 Jul 06, 1am Smiley Fun activity Unagi day
Today was a special day on which you're supposed to eat unagi (BBQed eel). There seem to be a lot of days in Japan that are tied to food and the Japanese seem to be very diligent in following those traditions. We went to Takashimaya in Yokohama to buy unagi, but we were not the only ones who had that idea; although there were many different sale stands where they sold unagi, in some cases you had to wait for more than an hour!

At home we created our own rice/unagi bowls with two layers of unagi, i.e., rice - unagi - rice - unagi (top layer). It was excellent! Japanese food is probably one of the best things about Japan.
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20 Jul 06, 4am Smiley Movie/DVD Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Rating 3.0
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30 Jun 06, 8pm Smiley Work Work
Today, _Saturday_ July 1st, was Toshiba's birthday. To celebrate it, they made everybody come in for work in the morning, "because it's tradition", is what they say when you ask, "wtf?". That is a reason that they seem to use a lot at Toshiba, which is really worrying as far as I'm concerned.

To further make this an unforgettable experience, there was no "flex time", which meant that we had to start at 8:15am. In case you were thinking of taking half a vacation day and stay home, you were mistaken, because it would have cost you a whole vacation day. They thought about everything, the bastards. They sure know how to throw a party at Toshiba.

Interestingly enough, I did get a lot of work done this morning.
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25 Jun 06, 4am Smiley Friends & Family Visit




My mom visited me for a week. It is difficult to remember what was interesting when I first came here, but I think I was able to show enough stuff to keep her entertained. She also spent some time alone with Hiromi and that seemed to have gone well too, even though Hiromi's English is very poor at best. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. The pictures were taken in Kamakura.
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23 Jun 06, 3am Smiley Movie/DVD King Kong Rating 3.0
Too long.
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22 Jun 06, 3am Smiley Movie/DVD A Tale of Two Sisters Rating 2.5
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21 Jun 06, 3am Smiley Movie/DVD Finding Neverland Rating 3.0
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20 Jun 06, 3am Smiley Movie/DVD Capote Rating 3.0
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19 Jun 06, 3am Smiley Movie/DVD Walk the Line Rating 3.0
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11 Jun 06, 6pm Smiley Misc Results from sleeping clinic
I got the results from the sleeping clinic today, but I'm not sure what to make of them. In fact, their hypothesis of what might be wrong seems "out there", which makes you wonder about the validity of the rest too.

Anyway, in general the sleep quality is (or at least was that particular night) bad: 60%. That means that I only slept 60% of the time that I was supposed to sleep. Although I am sure my actual sleep quality is not good, the actual number will vary greatly per night and situation.

Related to the sleep quality is the distribution of time spend in each of the sleeping stages. When you sleep you cycle through 5 stages of sleep: REM sleep (when you dream) and 4 stages of non-REM sleep, where stage 1 is the lightest form of sleep and stage 4 the deepest. Here is a comparison between the amount of time you are supposed to spend in each stage and what they measured in my case:

Stage       "Normal"   Measured
===============================
REM           25%         22%
1 (light)      5%         26%
2             45%         44%
3             12%          7%
4 (deep)      13%        0.7%

In other words, I am sleeping very lightly, which might explain why I am still tired in the morning, even when I feel I slept a (relatively) long time.

Further they noticed a light form of sleep apnea (when you stop breathing for a short time) and hypopnea (under-breathing). However, supposedly this is not an issue since it happened relatively infrequently and there was never an oxygen problem. This was actually news to me and based on doing some research on the web I think it might turn out to be a lot more important than the doctor suggested.

Finally, they observed that I suffered from a condition called "sleep onset REM". Normally you are supposed to have your first period of REM sleep after 90 minutes of non-REM sleep, but in my case it happened much earlier. Based on this alone they came up with the hypothesis that I might have narcolepsy! Indead, sleep onset REM is a symptom of narcolepsy, but it is not unique to narcolepsy. The unique symptom of narcolepsy is that you suddenly fall asleep, _during the day_. You can't control this and it is therefore a very dangerous problem. However, I don't have that problem, so I am not sure why they jumped to the conclusion that I might have narcolepsy. In fact, after doing some research myself, I found that sleep onset REM is also a symptom of sleep apnea, which seems like a much more reasonable explanation.

Anyway, I have to go back for a blood test to check for narcolepsy. But I am pretty sure it will just confirm that I don't have it. I'm thinking of asking for the raw data they collected during the night and sending it to another clinic (maybe the one at Stanford) for a second opinion. For now it does not seem anything will change.
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10 Jun 06, 3am Smiley Movie/DVD Nana Rating 2.5
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05 Jun 06, 3am Smiley Movie/DVD The Da Vinci Code Rating 3.0
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31 May 06, 3am Smiley Misc Wired
I went to the clinic at 6pm today, "checked in", went for dinner and returned at 7:30 to get ready for bed. The room was small, just big enough for the bed and the equipment, but of course you're only supposed to sleep there. At 8pm two nurses dropped by to wire me up. They placed 20 sensors on me, mostly on my head and face. You can't tell from the picture, but there were also sensors on the top and back of my head, and behind my ears. There were also little tubes in my nose, I guess to track my breathing. Also notice the two belts.

By 8:30pm the nurses were done and I was supposed to go to sleep. Yeah right. Of course that didn't work and I was awake until at least 2:30am, after which I slept for a couple of hours and woke up again. I was expecting them to drop by at some point with a big hammer to knock me out, but then I wondered whether they can even tell real-time whether somebody is actually sleeping. In case you're wondering, yes, you can go to the bathroom. I had to press a button and a nurse would drop by to disconnect me from the equipment. The cable ends were all put in a little bag that I had to take with me. It must have been hilarious to see me walk around with all the sensors all over me and the cables leading to the little bag that I was carrying around.

Twice the nurses came rushing into my room in the middle of the night to reconnect a cable. There were 5 other patients and I bet the nurses must have been busy all night long disconnecting people who wanted to go to the bathroom, reconnecting wires, making sure that all the data was properly being recorded, etc. However, they were very nice and did not seem to mind at all.

At 5:30am they woke me up and by 6am I had left the building. I went straight to work after that. I was pretty tired though.

Next week I am supposed to get the results. Let's hope it won't be "I'm sorry, but you didn't sleep long enough so you'll have to come in again".
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29 May 06, 6am Smiley Misc Finally
I got a call from the sleeping clinic today. Apparently there was a cancellation and they wanted to know whether I'd like to come in. So tomorrow evening at 6 I'm going over there to try to sleep! Finally! If I remember, I'll bring a camera and ask them to take a picture of me, all wired up. I guess I better go to bed early tonight and try to get some sleep.
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28 May 06, 5am Smiley Misc Kaimono (shopping)
My mom will come to visit me in three weeks, and that has prompted me to finally "fix" some little things around the house, in particular to buy missing items, such as a toothbrush holder, pastry forks, storage baskets, candles, a (tall) ironing board, etc. I've also tidied up the modem and computer cables, reorganized my kitchen cabinets and such. I still need to work on the "washitsu" (the tatami room). I'd like to get a Japanese painting for it and maybe a plant or something. Finally, I'd like to redo the paper doors, since I think the landlord did a bad job on those. That could be fun. Supposedly it is not that difficult, but I guess I will find out.
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22 May 06, 4am Smiley Misc Hot
It's starting to become hot and humid again. Soon the rainy season will start and it's all down hill from then on. Yuck. I should buy a couple of fans, so that I won't have to use the airco when I don't have too. At least I do have 3 aircos, they are going to be my best friends this summer.

On the bright side, my plants are very happy. I think it was a little too cold for them in the winter and they did not look so happy, but now they've really come alive. I fact, I'm a little worried about one of them, since it has grown 40 cm in the last couple of weeks, and if it grows another 40 cm it will hit the ceiling. It would be a shame to prune it though.
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21 May 06, 4am Smiley Misc Water pressure
I've never been very happy with the water pressure in my apt, but I never bothered to do anything about it. However, Hiromi was complaining about it too and it does become more of a problem when two people are using water at the same time, because one will basically be out of luck. So I asked my landlord, but he did not seemed too surprised, which made me believe that it wasn't simply that somebody had forgotten to fully open the main water valve for my apt (which is what I had been thinking / hoping). Oh well, too bad. However, the landlord's wife's story was slightly different and after listening to her I decided to check the valve myself. And indeed, it was almost closed! Man, what a difference it makes. It used to take ~30 minutes to fill the bathtub, but now it's done in 10. Refilling of the toilet reservoir is a lot faster too, but unfortunately a lot more noisy too. I guess you can't have it all.
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11 May 06, 5am Smiley Web page New schedule
I've decided to change my working schedule a bit and go to work earlier. That way I can go home earlier too, and I don't have to feel bad about not only coming in after my boss, but also leaving earlier. From now on I will start work at 8:30am and leave between 6pm and 7pm. That means that I will have to leave home around 7:50am in the morning. Damn, that sounds early.
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09 May 06, 3am Smiley Fun activity Sumo






I went to see sumo wrestling today with a friend! Here are some pictures. (The quality is not all that great, since it was a little too dark inside.) The new tournament started yesterday and lasts 2 weeks. Unfortunately, the nr. 1 sumo wrestler (Asashoryu) got injured yesterday and wasn't there.

We had good seats, although the seats themselves sucked. That is, there are not seats; you sit on a pillow. It is really cramped and uncomfortable. You can see a little of this in the bottom picture. Although the first bout started at 10am in the morning already, I did not get there until 2:30pm, and I am glad about that too. In the remaining 3:30 hours I saw the top 40 bouts and that was more than enough.

It was a little bit like going to baseball in the sense that most of the Japanese were spending more time eating (bento-boxes) and drinking (sake and beer) than watching. And just like baseball, the action part is very short and you are mostly waiting for something to happen. Unfortunately, there were no hotdogs. (^_^)
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07 May 06, 5am Smiley Work Back to work
Golden Week is over and tomorrow I have to go back to work. <Sigh>. I am not really ready to go back to work yet though. Oh well. On Tuesday I'm going to a sumo-wrestling game with a friend, so this will be a short week anyway.
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05 May 06, 5am Smiley Fun activity Yokohama skyline
Here is a picture of the Yokohama skyline, although it is not the "center" of Yokohama. The tallest tower is the "land mark tower". I took the picture from the top of the Yokohama Marine tower.
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05 May 06, 3am Smiley Fun activity Curry Museum
We went to a "curry museum" in Yokohama today. It was not really a museum, but instead a collection of curry restaurants in a theme-park-like environment. It was very busy, probably partially because it is still Golden Week. We went to two different restaurants and the curry was great. The picture shows the curry(-rice bowl) of one of the restaurants. Normally curry is simply poured over rice and served as is, but in this case they added an egg and cheese on top and put it in the oven to get the result as shown in the picture. I think I'll try this at home too at some point.
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29 Apr 06, 6pm Smiley Fun activity Food


Here are some pictures of the food that we ate on our trip. The sushi was awesome! The second picture shows a bowl of rice with unagi. It actually has 3 layers of unagi, two on top and one inside! It is a lot of food and it's not cheap either: $35 for one bowl!
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28 Apr 06, 6pm Smiley Fun activity Fuji-san


We went away for the weekend, to a place at the coast. Family of Hiromi lives there and have a second house (apartment) that we were able to use. The apartment building is right at the edge of the water front and people were actually fishing from their balconies! The view is also very nice, and if the weather is good you can see Mount Fuji ("fuji-san" in Japanese). However, we drove to Mount Fuji to get a closer look and take some pictures. In the photo we are standing at a lake taking pictures.
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28 Apr 06, 3am Smiley Work Golden Week
From May 1st - May 5th it is "Golden week" in Japan and I have the whole week off from work. Golden Week is one of the three main holidays in Japan. The other two are New Year's and summer vacation. The latter is the shortest vacation (3 days only).

Interestingly enough Toshiba (at least RDC where I work) shuts down completely during Golden Week. They actually shut down the power completely and not even the mail servers stay up and running. In fact, servers will start shutting down on Friday at 4 pm already, and you are basically forced to go home. I don't really understand this and somehow it seems unthinkable that they do this. I wonder how many machines won't come back up on the Monday after Golden Week.

I am going to go on a little trip with Hiromi and will probably hang out with her here in Yokohama the rest of the time. Hopefully the weather will be nice.
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24 Apr 06, 3am Smiley Misc Ouch
I took the new sleeping pills again last night, hoping it would go better. But instead I felt even worse today after waking up. In fact, I got sick and had to throw up, twice. The second time some blood came out too, which got me worried. So I went to the hospital (with Hiromi, who was able to help a great deal) and they told me that probably the combination of the drugs and drinking alcohol so now and then has weakend my stomach. They gave me dugs to fix the problem and did not make a particularly big deal about it, but I have decided to go in de-tox, since the sleeping pills are not really helping that much anyway. For now I'm going to stop with sleeping pills, alcohol and coffee all together. That should give my body some rest. I'll just wait for my appointment with the sleeping clinic and go from there.
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23 Apr 06, 3am Smiley Misc No success
These new pills are not really a success; I did not sleep all that well and my head hurts. Dammit.
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22 Apr 06, 3am Smiley Misc More pills
I got new sleeping pills today. I now have to take 3 different pills, and a fourth one if I still can't fall asleep! I feel it's getting a bit out of control. Hopefully I will sleep...
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10 Apr 06, 4am Smiley Fun activity Draibu suru
A while back I was invited for a "draibu suru" trip with my landlord and his wife. "Draibu suru" comes from "to drive" ("suru" means "to do") and it has the meaning of "to go on a drive". It is basically like taking a little day trip by car. It is very popular in Japan. The plan was to go to Kamakura, today. I had asked if Hiromi could come too, since a) it would be more fun (at least for me), and b) she would be able to entertain them better than I am able to do. :) That does not seem like a big deal, right? But interestingly enough, there is a little Japanese custom that makes it slightly more complicated than it needs to be. That custom is that when you go out for dinner with a (small) group, a single person (or couple) pays for everything. The Japanese like to do it that way. Obviously on our trip we would go for lunch and/or dinner somewhere and given their seniority, my landlord might feel obligated to pay. In fact, the previous time (which was the first time) I went to dinner with them, that is exactly what happened; they paid. So asking if Hiromi could come too might seem like "free-loading" or something like that. And in fact, when I asked my landlord he indeed hesitated. But of course I knew he would never dare to say "no" (another, sometimes very handy, Japanese "custom") and although I had already decided that I would pay for everything this time anyway, I just pretended to be totally unaware. Now you might think that I am reading into this too much, but interestingly enough when I asked Hiromi if she would like to come along, she also expressed concerns about the paying issue. They are so sensitive, the Japanese, mostly about how they might inconvenience other people.

The trip was actually very nice and I think it worked out well, also for them.
Posted by Remco. View/add comments (0)
07 Apr 06, 10pm Smiley Misc Appointment
I went to the sleeping clinic today to make an appointment. The doctor I talked to was really nice and he explained the procedure to me. You have to show up at 6pm and they will show you to your room. Supposedly it looks much like a business hotel. Between 6pm and 7:30pm you can eat and relax a bit. At 8pm you take a shower and afterwards they prep you. They put sensors all over your body: on your head, near your eyes, mouth, on your chest, and on your legs. And then you're supposed to go to sleep, at 9pm at night! Are you kidding me? But they assured me that they never had a patient who did not sleep. Ha, we'll see about that. Oh yeah, and around 5am they wake you and you can take a shower and go home.

So obviously I'm dying to spend the night there at the clinic, but the appointment is not until June 23rd! Supposedly they will give me a ring if there are any cancellations, but I am not sure why they would give me any preferential treatment over all the other people. Anyway, it does not look like anything will happen anytime soon.
Posted by Remco. View/add comments (0)
05 Apr 06, 5am Smiley Misc Sleeping clinic
I went back to the clinic today and because things have not gotten any better, I got a referral to a "real" sleeping clinic. You might wonder what I was doing at the current clinic if there is also a "real" sleeping clinic, and so am I. Anyway, I have to make an appointment this new clinic and they will ask me to sleep at the clinic for one night to monitor me. Hopefully that will find some minor problem that can easily be resolved and then we can all go happily back to sleep.
Posted by Remco. View/add comments (1)

Rating 4.0 Excellent   Rating 2.5 So-so   Rating 1.0 Very bad
Rating 3.5 Great   Rating 2.0 Not good   Rating 0.5 Ouch!
Rating 3.0 Good   Rating 1.5 Bad   Rating 0.0 Walked out

Last Updated: 13 May 2006, 2:00pm   -   Generated: 5 Sep 2010, 7:33am