Fruit and Juice 1
Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much fresh fruit in Tokyo, and what there is is fairly expensive. Good juice as well is hard to come by.
I guess good juice is hard to find in San Francisco as well, but I made a staple of Tropicana Pure Premium, and had no trouble getting good apple juice when I got bored of that. I’m having a hard time finding a replacement for these. The 100% juice Tropicana orange juice tastes like Tang, and that’s the best I’ve found so far (though I haven’t visited any high-end or specialty stores yet). Even though I’m not that picky about the type of juice I drink—I’d be pretty happy making a staple of mango juice or guava juice, or something along those lines—I do tend to be picky about the quality of the juice. Juice from concentrate appeals much less, and I despise those juicemakers that use white grape, apple, or peach juice with mango pulp and call it mango juice. That practice seems to be as common in Tokyo as in SF.
We’ll have to see how the fruit is more towards summer. Right now, the apples don’t look good, the oranges are kind of dry (and bitter!), and the strawberries seem oddly artificial. I’ll have to play around more with the possibilities.
*****
Tokyo transit is a bit of a nightmare. It’s incredibly efficient and timely, but it’s also hard to make sense of and very expensive. It’s interesting in that it’s on the one hand a perfect model of the efficiency espoused by those who feel that such efficiency can only be accomplished by private enterprise and on the other hand a perfect example of the unfortunate side effects of having an essential public service run by a handful of competing corporations. The rail system is run by several companies: JR (the largest passenger railway company in the world, according to the wikipedia), Tokyo Metro (the network of Tokyo Metro’s lines is referred to as the Tokyo subway, although I haven’t really been able to see the difference between the subway and non-subway rail lines), Keihin, Keio, Odakyu, Keisei, and probably a half-dozen others. This is particularly obnoxious since, while as a whole, this network of companies provides a fairly comprehensive transportation system, each provides very little information about the others’ services (e.g., you don’t see many maps with more than one rail system depicted on it), each requires buying a separate ticket (which makes transferring between companies pretty expensive), and each comes with its own multi-trip system, with a few companies providing inter-company multi-trip systems (though I’m not sure if any of them are all-inclusive).
The bus system is essentially the same, but it’s made much worse by the fact that, while you can easily find a guide to the rail system in any guidebook, bookstore atlas or roadmap, or helpful Website, it’s much, much harder to find useful information on the bus lines of more than one company at a time. Particularly odd to me is that my atlas of Tokyo has all of the bus stops marked, but none of the bus lines or routes depicted or listed anywhere. The best solution for finding my bus routes so far is note all the bus stops within walking distance, and look through the bus companies’ Websites in order of preference to see which buses service those stops and where they go.
I do of course recognize that being a newcomer (both to Japan and to Tokyo specifically) and being someone that speaks little Japanese are both significant aggravating factors here, but I can’t help but thing that these matters aside, the Tokyo transportation network provides some challenges that would be eliminated by a single public service or by a better-regulated network with an eye towards inter-operability. The negative consequences of these moves are of course entirely debatable, though I’d be a fool to think there aren’t any.
3 Women (Robert Altman, 1977) 2
On DVD at Sach’s apartment, with Lucía and Sach, on 30 March, 2007, at around 23:30.
This film definitely lost a little something on the small screen. Among other things, I found Willie’s drawings significantly less ominous and chilling than when I saw this at the Castro. Nevertheless, the film was as mysterious and unsettling as ever. How would I classify this film? It certainly carries conventions from certain genres (horror, in particular), but it also very much defies classification. Anyways, probably the most frightening thing in the film is Millie’s notion of good eating. That her cooking potatoes at the end of the film provides such stark contrast and is such an improvement over everything else she made or talked about over the course of the film says everything. And yet I have to wonder: are there people that have watched this film and thought nothing of it?
(**)
쉬리 (강제규, 1999) 3
Shiri (Kang Je-gyu, 1999)
On DVD at Sach’s apartment with Lucía and Sach on 27 March, 2007, at around 22:30.
I guess you have to know the context in which this film was made to really understand what all the fuss is. I certainly don’t—I haven’t really seen any Korean films from then, and in the mid-90s I had no clue what was going in Korean politics at the time. That said, it was an enjoyable action film, despite its more ridiculous elements (an explosive as powerful as a nuclear weapon that is indistinguishable from water and is set off by a combination of heat and a certain color temperature of light). It’s kind of nice how the marketing of the film so contrasted the actual content, particularly in regard to the female lead (she’s never dressed anything like the way she is on the posters and packaging I’ve seen).
()
Safe and sound in Tokyo 8
I have arrived safe and sound in Tokyo. I’m staying in Setagaya, and working out of Shibuya. This is going to be very interesting. When I collect my wits, I’ll start carrying my camera and uploading pictures.