Blahgorrhea

A couple things I appreciated about the Japanese meal time experience: towels, tea, and the check. The meal starts off with a warm towel to wipe your hands with. No need to travel to the bathroom to clean your hands before eating (where you would probably end up with cold wet hands anyway). And then you get a cup of hot tea, which typically stays full throughout the meal. With the cold weather outside, this hot tea is a welcome respite, and most places serve a good brew of dark green tea. One place served smoked tea, which was impressively good, and if I knew how to distinguish smoked tea from the hundreds of other teas available at the markets, I would have brought some back for myself. Finally, when you are finished ordering, the check is left at the table and when you decide to leave, you take the check to the register, settle up and take off. For a foreigner especially, this makes the conclusion of a meal easy, but it also serves another good purpose: to separate the food handlers (the wait staff) from the money handlers (the hosting staff). Makes a nice psychological division as well as a practical cleanliness one.

For a country that is literally religiously fanatical about cleanliness (Shintoism is obsessed with purity), there is a serious lack of napkins at your disposal. Granted, I am an awkward Westerner and thus tend to make a mess of myself while slurping goopy slimy fermented vegetables with chopsticks, but because there were never napkins at the restaurants, I ended up wiping my face with my hand and then my hand on my pants. Wouldn’t a napkin be easier and cleaner? Our tour guide one day told us the Japanese are paranoid about trash and that we should never throw our trash in someone else’s garbage can. Given that, and the lack of napkins, I envision millions of Japanese walking around with pockets full of soiled handkerchiefs, tissues and towels. Wouldn’t it be cleaner just to throw those all out in public trash cans?

The Japanese do not bathe in the morning. That’s just what they do. they wake up, eat some kind of weird breakfast consisting of a combination of pork, noodles and seaweed and then head out to work dirty. But when they return home for dinner, assuming they have not gotten piss drunk with their colleagues, they shower and soak briefly in a stiflingly hot tub before eating dinner. In a traditional household, I suppose they even wrap themselves in a lightweight kimona called a yukata for their dinner. That is how Jen and I ate our meal at the mountain top temple in Koya-san, and it is a very civilized way to end your day.

Why do we bring back souvenirs from vacations for people? A few sleepless nights before departing for Japan, I was running through a list of people it would be polite of me to bring back gifts for, and I thought how silly of a notion this is. Given the root of the word, French for “to remember,” it makes no sense to bring back gifts of remembrance from places that other people did not go to, and thus have no memories of. My apartment is filled with artwork, trinkets and tchotchkes from all over the world, but only the ones that I bought for myself carry real memories and thus higher value. Sure, it is cool that I have three iron stirrups from different countries in South America, but having never been to those places, they are merely objects taking up space in an already crammed room. [Continue reading…]

In stark contract to The Constantines who preceded The Hold Steady at tonight’s show, these guys know how to rock. The lead singer is a frantic manic talk-singer with a nervous twitch, singing crazy lyrics and backed up by a hard rocking band. The lead guitarist knows how to have fun on stage without looking like a tool. The bassist did his own thing in good style, which is what makes a bassist cool, while the drummer kept a solid beat with nice breaks. The keyboardist, who I will refer to as “The Frenchman,” was totally out of place with the rest of the band (he should have been playing with The Arcade Fire), but he kicked some ass in his own way, lifting a bottle of red wine to his lips as the guitarist and bassist sipped from a bottle of Beam. This band has a unique musical style and tons of energy; they know how to get the crowd pumped. When the lead singer ended the evening with the words, “This was the best night of my life,” you really believed that’s what he thought and not just a line he gives every audience, though I’m sure tomorrow night might bring the best night of his life again.

Tonight I saw The Constantines play at the Great American Music Hall. The band consists of Screech playing keyboards, his older brother singing in the style of Tom Waits, Ricky Schroeder’s way geekier cousin playing guitar, a one-note bassist and a drummer. Their music was really pretty good, and I would have fully enjoyed the show had it not been quite so obvious that they had taken correspondence classes from the publishers of the “… for Dummies” series of books — classes such as “An Uplifted Fist: Rock Power to the People,” “Guitar for Rockers: Move the Neck, Make the Sound,” and “Bass Note: Fast and Above Your Head.” It is not so egregious that they were doing these things on stage, but just that they looked uncomfortable doing them. Be natural, guys, and enjoy playing your music.

They may not be elegant, but they are simple and cheap. Oh, and they are pretty damn durable, too.

“What am I talking about,” you may be asking. I’m talking about accessories like wallets, notebook holders, and whatnot made out of only duct tape. The original inspiration for this comes straight from the source, but I was intrigued by the design for the Ducster, a wallet to hold a Hipster PDA. I modified the design quite a bit to suit my own tastes, and I had a great time playing around with it. I wonder if more people would want more accessories like this? I’m considering playing around with a wallet that fits my needs and maybe even using that clear packaging tape instead of duct tape. I bet that would look sweet!

My friend Seiken has a band called Foxtail Somersault. It is wall of sound, shoe-gazing music. Lots of layers. Lots of electronics that Seiken plays with as he cranks on his guitar. They really quite good. They play at the Make-Out Room tonight, so if you live in San Francisco, you should go.