Thursday, December 31, 2009

2010

Happy New Year

Year of the Tiger.

Happy New Year. あけましておめでとうございます。

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Towards A More Progressive Viewpoint

No, not progressive politics, progressive eyeglasses. I got a pair recently, since I was having real trouble reading small print. Bifocals or reading glasses are one of those inevitable things in life: if you don't need them now, don't worry - you will, eventually. As we age, we all start having trouble focusing close and eventually we will need reading glasses or bifocal glasses to help us. It's called presbyopia, and everybody gets it sooner or later. Up until now I've had only a vague notion of what bifocals and reading glasses actually do.

Lenses and focusing

At the top a lens - our eye, say, or a camera lens - is focusing on an object very far away. The light through a lens bends so that it all comes together at a point1. When that point hits our sensors on the left (whether a piece of film, an electronic camera sensor or our retina) we get a sharp view of the object.

Below we've moved close to the object. The light from it now comes from much steeper angles. But the lens still bends light the same amount as before. The light rays on both sides act like a see-saw, with the lens itself as the center point. So the point of focus moves further away.


Lenses and focusing

We need to change the focus depending on the distance. At the top is how a camera lens does it: the point of focus is behind the sensor, so we move the lens forward until the point of focus is on the sensor again.

The second picture illustrates how our eyes focus. Since the lens isn't bending the light strongly enough, we squish the lens so that it becomes thicker and bends light more. We can do that since our lenses are soft and jelly-like, unlike the glass lenses used in cameras.


Lenses and focusing

Like many, many other people, I'm near-sighted. At the top we see the cause: the retina in the back of the eye sits too far away from the lens. Even when the lens is as flat as possible it still bends light too much to bring far-away things into focus. We can fix this with a convex lens, like the one on the right, that'll effectively weaken our own lens and let us focus far away. Think of it as the curve of the convex lens being subtracted from the curve of our own lens.

Presbyopia is the inability to focus close, and at the bottom we see the reason for it: as we age the lens gradually hardens, and it can no longer thicken enough to bend the light for close objects. The way to fix this is with a convex lens like the one on the right that will help make the eyes stronger. The curve of the concave lens is added to the curve of our own lens, effectively making the combination thicker.


So, with presbyopia you can use a convex lens to get closer focus. Cheap reading glasses sold here and there are exactly that2. This is sufficient for people with otherwise good eyesight.

With nearsightedness you use a concave lens to get infinity focus. Now, here's a problem: what do you do if you're both near-sighted and presbyopic? As you can see in the figure above, the corrective lenses are opposites: one cancels out the other. How do you make a lens that corrects for both at the same time?

Well, you don't. A concave lens for near-sightedness worsens presbyopia - it makes the minimum focusing distance longer - while a convex lens for presbyopia worsens focus at infinity. This is why they're called reading glasses; you can't see far away wearing them so you only use them for close work.

Since glasses for near-sightedness worsens presbyopia, people can get around mild presbyopia simply by removing their glasses or looking below or above the rim when they read; you see this quite often. But once the presbyopia worsens it's no longer enough. People that have astigmatism as well - like me - need glasses at all viewing distances, so removing your glasses doesn't help much.

You could have two pairs of glasses of course, and switch between them. That's a hassle, though, so you'd really like to combine them into one pair. The traditional - and still best - method is simply to "cut out" the lower central part of concave lenses for near-sightedness and replace with convex lenses for presbyopia. That gives you those characteristic half-moon bifocal glasses that people instantly recognize as "old-folks glasses". While they're really the best type of glasses, they're not well liked.

Instead we have progressive glasses, so named because they go smoothly from a nearsighted concave lens toward the top to a convex (or at least less concave) lens at the bottom. This is actually very complicated; you want the change to be gradual, without too much visual bending, blurring or other weird effects during the transformation. We don't look through a point in the glasses, but through a whole area, so a single point in the lens may both be part of the lower edge of the concave near-sighted area toward the top, and part of the convex presbyopic area at the bottom at the same time. Add the astigmatic correction for people like me and the lens surface will get quite complicated.

There's apparently many progressive lens designs, but they are all compromises between conflicting goals. In my case I get far sight in the upper center; near sight in the lower center and towards the edges; and middle sight in a roughly H-shaped area in the very center and along the left and right edges.

One effect that creates problems for some people is that these are lenses, and they don't just move the focus forward or back. Concave lenses make things smaller, and convex lenses make them bigger - magnifying glasses are just strong convex lenses after all. Now, eye-wear lenses are typically fairly weak, but the effect is not negligible. The eyes of near-sighted people tend to look smaller, and the eyes of strongly far-sighted people can look huge behind their glasses.

This also means that the world looks a bit smaller and zoomed out when you wear concave lenses for near-sightedness. And the world looms a bit closer with convex reading lenses. This is normally fine; you quickly get used to it. But with progressive lenses the world gets smaller in some areas of your field of view and larger in other areas, like a funhouse mirror. And as you move around and move your head things shift between these areas to bend, stretch, distort and generally make you feel a little like you're drunk. People normally get used to this - I had no problems - but some people never really adapt. They're better off with bifocal glasses instead.

There are progressive contact lenses, by the way, where you get far vision in the very center and close vision around the edge, but people who've tried them don't seem too impressed. Another way is to wear a contact for far sight on one eye, and close on the other. Me, I'll just rather wear glasses; I've done so for most of my life after all, so this is no problem for me.

--

#1 You have perhaps heard the term "diopter". It's a measure of how strong a lens is, and is really just the inverse of the distance from the lens to the point of focus when you focus on something infinitely far away. So a 1-diopter lens will bring the light together one meter behind the lens. A 2-diopter lens brings it to a point 1/2 meters away; a 10-diopter lens focuses infinity at 1/10 meter - ten centimeters - away and so on.


#2 As an aside, "macro filters" for cameras are the same thing too: an extra lens you screw in front of your ordinary camera lens so you can get closer and get a bigger picture of small things. They're an inexpensive way to play with macro photography.

For SLR cameras, you can also get "extension tubes". They're hollow tubes that fit between the camera and lens and simply move the lens further from the sensor so you focus closer than you normally could.

Monday, December 28, 2009

Back to Work

We're back from Hokkaido. We came home late last night and only did the most pressing things (like putting away all the salmon, squid, sausages and cheeses we've bought) before collapsing in bed.

Today is a work day for me, and tomorrow is the first day of the New Year holidays, which last until monday next week this year. We have a single monday workday before a week off, in other words, and needless to say, the department isn't exactly a buzzing hive of frantic activity today. There's a grand total of three students in the main room, and none of the other postdocs or faculty have yet to show up. Most of them have taken the day off, of course.

Me, I have a poster and a presentation to prepare for next month, and I've yet to finishn the modeling I was hoping to have done by then. So I work today, and I expect to plod away at it over the holiday as well.

I have plenty to do, there's a big pile of pictures to go through, and two rolls of film to develop and scan. Don't expect quick, complete Hokkaido holiday coverage here in other words.

Crane

Japanese crane, Hokkaido. Quick train shot.

Friday, December 25, 2009

Interlude

We've arrived in Sapporo after three nights in eastern Hokkaido. Haven't had time to really go through the pictures taken so far, but here's one from when we left for Hokkaido from Osaka:

Fuji

Mount Fuji.


Here's a handy tip: For various reasons (mostly to do with atmospheric dispersion), shots taken from an airplane tend to look much better when you convert them to black and white.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Merry Christmas!

We're in Hokkaido for Christmas, where we're relaxing far away from the stresses of city life. We had a sleep in, had a long walk in the snow-covered countryside, I've just returned from a long soak in the hostel's hot spring bath, and with any luck we'll be stuffed to the gills with sushi and beer by tonight. And just so you see what we're leaving behind:

Shinsaibashi

Crowds gather along Shinsaibashi shopping street to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas. Go ahead, click on the image; it looks much better large.


Big Duck

Huge Friendly Duck says Merry Christmas!

Monday, December 21, 2009

Huge, Friendly Duck Is Back (And We're Leaving (but only temporarily))

The Huge rubber duck that floated by Nakanoshima island in Osaka this summer is back! There's a winter light festival happening along Nakanoshima southern beach, from the western end up to the City Hall, and the enormous rubber duck is also back for a repeat appearance. Which makes me inexplicably happy. The festival is apparently up until the 25th, so if you happen to be in Osaka, there's still a chance to go see it.

Big Duck

It's my favourite humongous friendly rubber duck, really. Surprisingly difficult to photograph, though. By the way, if you happen to go here, there's a really good, inexpensive Indian restaurant in the basement of the building just next to the duck. You can take the stairs from the riverside right to the back entrance.


In other news, we're leaving for our winter holiday in Hokkaido tomorrow morning. Which partly explains my relative silence here - I've been trying to finish up some stuff before we leave. We're going to Akan national park again, then to Sapporo for a couple of nights. It should be a lot of fun; I've been looking forward to this all autumn.

Nakanoshima

The trees along Nakanoshima are decorated, and there's some hot food stalls and things like that as well. Dress warm; the wind along the river is freezing.


Christmas Display

There's some Christmas-themed displays as well. We only got this far before the cold got the better of us, so I don't really know what it looks like towards the City Hall.


Parrot

One guy brought his parrot for a photo shoot. He had a padded cage and only brought it out for a minute or so. My guess is, he's making a New Year's card.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

An Apple A Day

Ritsuko has plenty of friends and acquaintances spread out all over Japan. There's a stronger tradition of gift-giving here than I'm used to; it's not just for celebrations or holidays, but you send stuff to each other now and again for no particular reason. One friend of Ritsuko's (a friend of her fathers, originally) lives and works in Aomori; visiting him was one reason we went there in August last year. Aomori is famous for good tuna, depressed economy and great apples. So, last week, we got a box full of them (apples, not economies):

An Apple A Day

An apple a day - that's 32 days, half green, half red. And they're big enough that one is plenty for both us to share.


Time to look up some new apple recipes, methinks. We've gotten a box every year for the past few years, and while they're really, really good - juicy and tender and with a perfect balance of sweetness and tartness - they are big and there's quite a lot of them. I sometimes fry them: peel and slice, sprinkle some sugar and cinnamon on both sides and fry in a pan until they start to brown. Eat with ice cream. This year I'd like to try making a real apple pie, though; if anybody has a good recipe (with ingredients easy to find in Japan) I'm all ears.

Aomori, by the way, will get a direct Shinkansen connection late next year. At 320km/h it'll eventually cover Tokyo-Aomori in about three hours, faster and more convenient than flying once you consider the airport travel time, check-in, baggage claim and so on. I really like the Shinkansen. You go straight from one city center to the other without having to transfer or wait in some nondescript departure hall. And with comfortable seats, lots of legroom, little noise and on-board internet I'd prefer it over flying any way.

We could leave Osaka in the morning; have a leisurely lunch and some window shopping in Tokyo; then leave for Aomori in the afternoon, with plenty of time to check in at the hotel and have an appetite-building stroll along the waterfront before dinner. Next year.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Sunday

Yay, a completely free Sunday! It's been hectic lately, with work, the JLPT test and all, so I decided I'd take this Sunday off. I would not read any research papers, not study Japanese, not even check my email (well, not a lot). I could develop some film, I could read a book, I could snuggle with my wife, I could ...
"The building fire inspection is next week so we need to tidy up the balcony. And it's New Year in just a few weeks so we might as well give the balcony a thorough cleaning while we're at it."

... I could spend the day scrubbing a year worth of grime off the air conditioners, the bay doors and the walls, I guess.

Now it's Monday morning. My shoulders and arms ache whenever I move. My hands are still red and swollen from the cleaning liquids, and they hurt from scrapes, cuts and abrasions - plaster looks good, but it's like cleaning rough sandpaper. I'm happy to be back at work again, where the most physical thing required of me is to occasionally lift my coffee cup.

I did get to develop a roll in the morning, though. We had a wonderful mushroom pasta for dinner. And the balcony looks great.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

The Amazing Store

Ikea is amazing. No, not their furniture, but about how very, very good they are at selling things. It doesn't matter if you want or need anything or not when you go inside; once you walk out that door you will have a bag full of, well, stuff - useful-seeming, well-designed, inexpensive stuff, true - that you only vaguely even remember picking up on your endless trek through the store.

We went to Ikea today for groceries. They're by far the best source for essential foods like pickled herring, lingonberry jam and gravlax around here. And food was really the only thing we needed. But somehow we still came home with a pillow, a picture frame and other odds and ends I'm pretty sure I had no idea we needed up until now. I'm still pretty sure we don't actually need any of it, in fact.

So they're good. But even more, there's never any overt sales pressure, no blaring "Extra! Cheap!" signs or pushy salespeople. You never feel forced to buy anything; it's just that you run into piles of really cool stuff throughout the store, somehow looking far better and more useful in that pile than it will ever do once you get it home. You know this, and you still end up buying it. That's not just good, that's sublime.

Oh, and the herring is pretty good too.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

JLPT 1

Yes, it's the time of year again, when the leaves have fallen, when the rain turns cold and miserable, and when people's thoughts turn towards the year-end parties and the coming holiday - and when foreigners throughout the country gather to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Like last year I took the level 1 test, and like last year I'm going to fail.

Which is fine; I took it just for practice. Unlike last year, however, it didn't feel impossible. I have a decent idea on what parts of the language need improvement (everything) and how much more I need to improve (a lot.) The JLPT is being remade next year, with a new level in between the current 2 and 3, a somewhat different scoring system, and new names for the levels. Oh, and level 1 will reportedly become slightly harder.

So I figure that to the extent passing level 1 has any meaning1 I might as well take the new test rather than the old. My current plan is to make a real attempt on level one this time next year, and if/when I fail that, try again in June next year. Of course, the vagaries of life can and will interfere (when work and study competes for attention work wins every time) but that's the plan at least. I've already started going through the vocabulary and kanji "for real". We'll see.

--

#1 A lot of people seem to really overestimate the value of a JLPT1 certificate. Here's a bit of reality: If Japanese proficiency is important for a job, then having JLPT1 or JLPT2 may make the difference between landing a job interview and not doing so. But that's it - no interviewer, in Japan or abroad, is going settle with a test score. They'll make sure you actually can use the language, including conversation and writing which are not covered by the test. Actually knowing the language is critical in other words; having a test certificate is much less so. "Studying for the test" is relly pointless in this case.

And if Japanese is not important then a JLPT test certificate is much like being treasurer at your local photography club, or having a forklift licence - it makes for a nicely rounded CV but it's not going to have any material effect.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Hatoyama Gets Off

CAN YOU HEAR ME?
The current DPJ government here in Japan was voted into power to break with old-time ruling party LDP, in part because of the habitual political funding sleaze. However, Hatoyama Yukio - DPJ leader and current prime minister - has been fighting a criminal investigation about fraudulent political donations since he was chosen as DPJ leader. Oh, and he was chosen because his predecessor Ozawa - now party whip - was, and still is, under investigation for fraudulent political donations. I've heard plenty of cynical comments about this around the lunch table lately.

The amount a person or a company can donate to a politicians fund-raising organization is pretty strictly limited. Notably this goes even for the politicians themselves; even if you're very rich you're subject to the same limitation on how much money you can give and use for your own campaign1. Running for office and staying in office both take a lot of money, though, so it's not surprising that people habitually try to circumvent or outright ignore those rules.

To the relief of the prime minister and his party, the prosecutor has decided not to indict him. Hatoyama was suspected of creating fake donors - using the names of dead people, and of unwitting people who never donated anything - and padding receipts to funnel 350 million yen of his own money into his political organization. The prosecutors have determined that one of his aides - who had access to some of his funds - probably acted alone in registering fake donors. They can't show that Hatoyama himself actually knew about this.
 
Now, I don't move in the kind of esoteric circles that the likes of Bridgestone heirs do, and I realize the value of money is different to people like him, but I do find it stretching my credulity to believe that 350 million could just go unnoticed and that he never asked what might have happened to it. I mean, it's not the kind of money that can get lost under the sofa cushions - it'd be obviously too lumpy to sit in.

"Um, it seems there's been 350 million yen withdrawn from this account since 2004? About 100 million per year."

"Yes, sir, quite right."

"Oh. Where'd it go to?"

"Sundry expenses, sir."

"Ahh, I see. Detergent, pool cleaning and such, no doubt. Oh, but just look what a lot of donations the campaign fund got over the same period! About 100 million yen extra each year. Amazing isn't it!"

"Yes sir. Quite, sir. Amazing, sir."


Another part of the investigation is about 900 million yen given as "loans" to the organization from his mother. This is a different issue, and related to the Japanese tax laws. The inheritance tax is fairly substantial here, so there's a lot of legal do's and don'ts about what you do with your assets. These "loans" where never meant to be repaid; they were effectively gifts to Hatoyama from his mother (his brother also received similar "loans"), and probably intended to get around the inheritance tax. He and/or she will probably have to pay gift tax on that money, and possibly a penalty as well.

As an aside, an inheritance tax sounds reasonable, and probably is when done right. The problem is, in practice it hits very unevenly, and can end up with the opposite effect from what was intended. If you apply an inheritance tax evenly on all assets you get effects like widows forced from their family homes and family-owned companies broken up in order to pay the tax. That seems morally wrong to the public and is politically unpalatable, so most countries' tax laws give special - and rather arbitrary - exemptions for such things. But all exemptions give more loopholes for people to get around the tax, which lawmakers then try to close with more specific laws.

We end up with a situation where, if you use your savings to buy a home your children will pay no tax once you pass away, but if you sell the home to move to assisted living - or you just prefer to rent an apartment rather than buy - they'll have to pay tax on that very same money. If you're wealthy enough to own a controlling stake in a company your inheritance tax rate will end up much lower than if you don't. And you get laws like gift taxes between family members, that people - like the Hatoyama's - then try to get around by disguising the gifts as loans or something else.

As the system grows more Byzantine, the one constant throughout is that the more money you have, the more opportunities are open for you to lessen or avoid the tax altogether. The tax ends up hitting those will less money harder than those with more, and the few families with huge fortunes ends up paying almost nothing at all, relatively speaking - which more often than not is completely opposite of the stated goal of such a tax.

Sweden got rid of the inheritance tax a few years ago; it cost almost as much to administer as it brought in revenue, and in practice it had none of the equalizing effects it was supposed to. It's still politically contentious, though, and if the opposition wins the election next year it's not unlikely that some form of the tax is reinstated. The leaders of all three parties in the opposition coalition - the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Communists - know the tax is useless in practice. But it's a potent symbolic question for the Communists, and reinstating it'd be a cheap way to placate their members and gain their support for the overall budget. Ah, well.

#1 A noble intent to level the playing field, no doubt, but in practice you pretty much have to be wealthy to stand for election anyway; you don't have time to hold down a job and campaign at the same time. If you and your family can't afford you to quit your job, campaign for a year and then find yourself unelected and unemployed then you don't have any business in politics. And of course, if you're wealthy you're likely to have wealthy friends, relatives and business contacts that are happy to donate to you and round up more donations on your behalf. The thought is nice, though.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Revenge Served Cold

Off-topic and of somewhat dubious veracity, but if it's true it's too cool not to share: It seems that the son of a certain Michael Young inherited a substantial sum of money from his father. The father was an old-time bigot, a mean-spiritedly religious misanthrope and heartily disliked by his son.

So now the son is donating his fathers money, in small sums, to any and all causes opposing everything his father stood for: Revenge is sweet

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Japan Reviews its Projects

The new DPJ government is holding a review of government-financed projects. The aim is to cut wasteful spending to shrink the deficit and release money for other, better uses. The fun thing is, the review is in public, and televised. Basically, each of the selected projects (they only review about 10% of all projects this round) gets an hour or so to explain themselves and be questioned by a panel tasked with evaluating them. At the end the panel votes their recommendation (so far almost always reducing or cutting projects altogether). Shisaku has an excellent writeup here.

The idea and process is basically sound, if rather hurried. The problem is that the evaluation is really fiscal in nature - does this project pay for itself or not - and doesn't take other factors fully into account. This really should be the first step in a two-step process: First evaluate the direct fiscal value of projects. Then evaluate the larger political/societal consequences too.

The fiscal value of military defence, for instance, is probably dubious for many countries. It's a very expensive system preventing very rare threats. It may simply not be cost-effective to prevent a once-per-century invasion. A small police force-like coast guard and a professional rescue corps could do most or all that an army does in peace-time at a fraction of the cost, while a bit of the savings could be used to pay off would-be invaders, or rent an army short-term from a friendly country when needed. Ridiculous? Of course. There's value in a national defence force beyond the direct fiscal balance in the perceived safety and stability.

Tango for Money
Applying for grant money

Most scientific research is probably wasteful from a direct cost-benefit perspective. Research projects generally have little impact on society; even most medical research have only the most tenuous, indirect effect on the well-being of people. The very nature of research means it's normal and common for projects to fail. Scientists themselves are happy to admit their projects are often motivated by personal curiosity.

We could keep just the few projects with direct societal impact and quick pay-off and stop funding basic research, long-term projects or anything highly risky. That is absolutely an option, and if you're in financial crisis and you have to choose, science is certainly not as important as, say, functioning emergency services or health care. And no matter how well off, no society can afford to finance research in everyarea. You need to choose. But to choose wisely you need to know the consequences of your choice.

So, what are the consequences of not doing research in a particular field? We'd not lose the knowledge - the research would mostly still be done somewhere - but lose the ability to use it.
 
A modern country - that "information society" thing - lives and dies by the skill of its people. That skill is more often than not imparted through higher education. Educators at that level are normally required to have a research degree - a doctorate - and are often also required to do some amount of research along with their teaching. Why is that? It's because doing research is the only way to become intimately familiar with a field, familiar enough that you understand where the field is going, and can decide what to teach, not just how. So you need people with research experience to teach at your universities and colleges. Medical doctors need research experience too, and company labs need young researchers to staff them.

But that means you have to offer ways for students to become researchers. You can't become a scientist just by studying - you need to actually work in real research projects. And the current teachers are also researchers, remember, and need to do research along with their teaching. Not to mention that they're researchers because they find it fun and rewarding. Scientists as a group are very mobile - a couple of colleagues of mine have worked in six countries this past ten years - and if you remove their ability to do research, including "useless" but interesting projects, many will simply pull up their tent pegs and leave.

So you do need enough research funding to support the research activities of university faculty and graduate students, or you're going to find ourself without good quality higher education in the field. Which will soon mean you'll find yourself without many of your brighter young people as they leave for better training abroad, and frequently not coming back.

"Welcome, Mr. Bond, we've been expecting you"

Applied science? Fundamental science? Who cares, as long as it's cool?


"OK", you say, "so fund applied science, things we can use. Skip the abstract stuff." But applied and basic research isn't really separable. Applied research feeds on the advances in fundamental science, and theoretical science is often guided by the needs of applied scientists. Many research projects employ people from both ends of the spectrum and researchers themselves sometimes drift back and forth over time.

Look at mathematics, which at the research level may seem hopelessly abstract and useless. But it's long been tightly coupled to physics and has evolved as a tool in response to the needs of physicists. More recently the information sciences have also influenced the development of mathematics, and benefit from it in turn.

So if you want graduates skilled in a particular field you do need to support both applied and basic research, and enough of it to sustain a community of researchers. And it will mean supporting high-risk as well as low-risk projects and enduring a fair number of disappointments and outright failures. Research projects do in other words have a value beyond the immediate cost-benefit calculations, and projects that support other research in turn even more so.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Wako Business

I'm off to Wako-shi northwest of Tokyo. Wako is not called "The Pearl of Saitama", the birthplace of no celebrities of note and not the site of a fondly remembered romantic drama from the 1950's that now doesn't draw hordes of visitors eager to walk the same cobblestoned streets as the young couple in the movie, on account of no such movie existing.

Its claim to fame, relatively speaking, is instead the Riken institute headquarters. The research project I'm a small part of is financed through Riken, so it's a natural place for us to hold project meetings. It's far enough that I can't get there the same day; instead I leave this afternoon, stay in illustrious Ikebukuro and take the train out to Wako tomorrow morning. I can just make the last Shinkansen to Osaka tomorrow, which gets me to my front door right about half past midnight. Pretty OK.

If that maglev between Tokyo and Osaka ever becomes reality I'd be able to make this a day trip - more likely I'm already retired by then of course.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

The Rice Cooker Is Dead

Our rice cooker broke the other day. The magic smoke has escaped; it's gone, passed away, pushing up the daisies, taken down the sign, wearing a wooden overcoat. Bereft of life, it's gone to meet its maker. It is an ex- ... you get the idea.

When I first came here I was just a little bewildered over the rice cooker. Sure, people eat rice everyday, but why have a separate machine taking up space in the small kitchen just to cook something? I used to eat pasta almost every day (and had the waistline to prove it), but I never felt a need for a pasta cooker or anything.

Pasta or potatoes are simply boiled until done. But rice is rinsed, soaked for half an hour or more, then slow cooked until dry. It's a slower process, where you need to measure rice and water precisely, wait for it to soak, then monitor the cooking pot so it doesn't burn. It's a hassle, it keeps you around the kitchen for almost an hour, and if you forget the pot you'll eat burnt, crunchy rice, and perhaps even get to explain the wailing smoke alarms and the black, smoldering pot on the balcony to the frowning fireman standing at your door.

With a rice cooker you never burn your rice. They run the cooking process without any help. You can fill the cooker with rice and water in the morning, set the timer, go to work, and have soft, fluffy rice waiting when you get home at night. They can keep the finished rice warm and soft for hours and hours, so it doesn't matter if you end up eating much later than you thought. And they're insulated so they're more energy efficient than a stove - and they don't heat up the kitchen in the hot summer.

Our stove has a rice-cooking function that monitors the temperature and turns off the gas when the water runs out in the pot. This works fairly well, actually, and has given us some time to shop around for a new rice cooker. And we've needed it - it's amazing just how many variations there are on this simple theme. From basic rice cookers for a couple thousand yen or so, up to SuperUltraDeluxe models in the nosebleed-inducing 70000-80000 yen range.

They all do much the same thing of course. It's basically an enclosed metal pot with a heater and temperature sensor in the bottom and a tight lid with a pressure valve at the top. Put rice and water in it and press the button. It will let the rice soak, then heat it until it slow boils. When the water is absorbed the temperature starts rising in the bottom, and the cooker cuts the heater temperature until it just keeps the rice warm. The remaining steam in the pot can't escape through the tight lid so it keeps the rice moist and soft.

As you move up in price you get better brands, larger capacity, induction heating (apparently improves on the keeping time and energy use), non-stick and copper pots, better design, steamer function and so on. Seems that paying much more than 15-20k yen won't really get you any better functionality or quality though. We'll see, but we have to get one soon - they're too convenient to go without.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Osaka Black and White

I'm a little preoccupied at the moment; the winds of change are sweeping through the economic and political landscape, and buffeting my little corner of it as well. Also, the JLPT Japanese test is held again in less than three weeks or so, and while I don't plan to pass it this year either I still want to prepare a bit. I don't really have the time or the inclination to write any long, substantial posts right now, in other words. But I don't want to go silent either, so in place of anything substantial I'll do some shorter fluff pieces instead.

First, let's do a classic - let's do a picture post!

Farmer

It's autumn, and the farmers are busy preparing for winter. This woman was digging up part of her rice field - it turns out that soil tends to pile up around the field water drains, so she was moving the excess over to the vegetable garden.


Diner

In the Umeda underground, near the Hanshin railways side, you find this counter-only kushikatsu diner. I love the atmosphere, and I keep wanting to eat here but since we're always on the way to eat somewhere else we never get the chance.


Nakanoshima

Nakanoshima island between Umeda and Namba, from one of the bridges over Okawa. I like the film noir-like atmosphere.

Why is it so grainy? It's 35mm film, and I accidentally underexposed it two or three stops. Push the brightness back up and you get lots of grain.


Silent Space

The lobby of Crystal Tower, one of the highrises north of Osaka castle. There's a café on the bottom floor, but the building is really still and quiet on a Sunday afternoon.


Juggler

A juggler is entertaining people on the roof of Namba Parks shopping center. This was a few weeks ago; the weather wouldn't really permit this today.


Café Life

A café around Nishiohashi. This area is kind of hip: there's plenty of cafés and italian-style restaurants; clothing and second-hand stores; art, music and design schools; bicycle makers (if you're a hipster and need a fixie, this is the place), guitar shops and so on. Everything you need to be an offbeat and spontaneous 20-something with an artistic, deep, sensitive side you can pick up right in the neighbourhood.

It's also where our closest large supermarket is, so we get to go wander around this area quite a lot. The atmosphere is relaxed and the shops are fun to watch.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Smoke Detector Stats

Busy, busy, but I have to take up an obvious piece of faulty reasoning here. An opinionator in the Swedish daily paper Dagens Nyheter by the name of Malin Siwe has a short piece arguing against excessive safety regulations. It's not really unusually bad; indeed, that's my problem with it. This is rather typical for newspaper opinion pieces, in fact.

She is trying to make a perfectly good point: when safety rules become too numerous and too detailed, people end up trying to comply with the rules rather than actually improving safety. The problem with the piece is that her main example is an argument in favour of more rules, not against it. And her lack of statistical understanding means she is completely oblivious to that fact. Here's the relevant passages (roughly translated, emphases mine):

All apartment buildings built since 1999 must have smoke detectors. Many local governments rule that all homes must have them installed. Nine out of ten households have such smoke detectors today.

...

Most cases [of deadly home fires] lacked a smoke detector, but they were there in a large minority of cases - and some worked.


She's arguing that smoke detectors don't help, and that a law mandating them everywhere wouldn't do any good. But she is innumerate enough that her example is actually arguing against her position. Now, can anybody spot the problem above? The information in bold is enough to figure it out.

90% of homes have smoke detectors and 10% do not. Now, if smoke detectors really were useless, then 90% of the fatal fires would also happen in smoke detector-equipped homes while 10% would happen in detector-less ones. But they don't. As she says, a "large minority" of fatal cases happened when a smoke detector was present. Even with a generous interpretation of "large minority", less than half of fatal fires happened when there was a smoke detector in the home.

Let's be very generous, in fact, and say that half - 50% - of fatal fires happened in homes with smoke detectors. In that case, you're nine times less likely to die if you have a smoke detector than if you don't. If "large minority had smoke detectors" actually is something like a third then the number is closer to 20 times. That, to me, is some very persuasive data in favour of mandating smoke detectors.

I don't have a background in statistics1. I suck at this kind of reasoning, so I always need to draw a figure or two to really understand what is going on. Just to make it clear, take a look at the figures below:


diagram 1

The total area of the rectangle above is all the homes, smoke detector or not. The blue part - 90% - is the homes with a smoke detector. The small orange part at 10% are the homes without. We want to figure out how much more likely you are to have a fatal fire if you're in a home without a smoke detector.


diagram 2

Now we add the fires; that's the small rectangle straddling the two home areas. We don't know how many fires there are compared to the overall number of homes, but it doesn't matter. We're only interested in the difference in risk between smoke detector and detector-less homes.

We were generous above, and said that half the fires where in homes with smoke detectors. So half of the "fire" area is on the "smoke detector" side, and half on the "no detector" side. Again, the size of the "fire" area depends on how many fires there are, but the proportions don't change.

Now, note that the "fire"-part is a much bigger part of the "no detector" area than it is of the "smoke detector" area. That is the point - a much larger proportion of no-detector homes will have a fire than the proportion of smoke detector ones. You're much more likely to have a fatal fire without a smoke detector than when you do.



Let's make it clearer still: Here's the "no detector" area at the top, and the "smoke detector" area at the bottom. We've scaled them so we can compare them directly. Again, the "fire" area - the risk of having a fatal fire - is much larger for the detector-less homes than for those with a detector.

How large the risk is depends on the total number of homes and the number of fatal fires. But the difference in risk depends only on the proportion of smoke detectors, and the proportion of fires in those homes. With our numbers - 90% of homes have smoke detectors, and have 50% of the fires - it turns out you're nine times more likely to have a fatal fire when you don't have a detector than when you do.


Now, she points out that only some smoke detectors actually work. True enough - but that means a larger proportion of fires should be counted among households without smoke detectors too, and becomes an argument in favour of mandating smoke detectors and periodic checks, rather than against. Even with the most pessimistic estimate of working smoke detectors, you're still a couple of times more likely to avoid a fatal fire when you have one in your home2.

For those who can't read Swedish she also has a rather confused line of argument around the total number of fatal fires, but it's so incomplete and specious that the only thing it shows is that she doesn't understand high-school level statistics.

Now, I don't blame her. She's not good with statistics - but then, most people are not. Nobody is good at everything. Where she goes wrong is not in misunderstanding statistics; it's in not asking somebody who does understand it for feedback and help.

This is why I despair over the future of the newspaper. After all, the defining difference between professionally staffed newspapers and bloggers is supposed to be that newspapers have the time, the resources and the know-how to check original sources, ask experts for second opinions, fact-check every word and edit the finished text. This opinion piece could have been sanity-checked in ten minutes by anybody with a basic mathematical background. No need to even go outside; somebody from the newspaper's Accounting or IT department would have enough math background to catch the faulty reasoning.

But it wasn't fact checked. As it is, the columnist has published a blog post an opinion piece arguing against the (otherwise quite reasonable) standpoint it was meant to support. When newspaper opinion and editorials ends up reading like second-rate blog posts, I'd rather just skip the papers and read first-rate posts on the net instead.


#1 To the occasional frustration of my coworkers.


#2 I don't know about you, but given the choice I'd rather not burn to death if I can help it. Fire safety is cheap compared to the consequences.

We have legally required smoke detectors, central fire alarm and sprinkler system throughout the apartment, a fire door in the corridor and an emergency ladder on the balcony. It is tested and checked once a year by a couple of fire-safety inspectors; we even get to activate the ladder and climb onto it if we want so we really know how it works. In addition we've added a small fire extinguisher in the kitchen near the gas stove, and we plan to add another one in the bedroom.

Living right on top of an active fault in an earthquake-prone country tends to focus your mind in these matters.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Observations On the Nature of Distance, As Occasioned By a Sushi Lunch

I realized something interesting about physical and mental distances today. A colleague from Slovenia is visiting ATR (my former workplace) for two weeks and we decided to get together for lunch. As it happens, ATR is in the same area as NAIST, my current workplace. Getting there is quite inconvenient, though.

First you walk from NAIST to the Kita Ikoma station. Wait for a train and take it (through a tunnel) to the next station over, Gakken-Nara Tomigaoka. From there you either walk or take a bus for Keihanna that leaves every half hour; they're not synced with the trains so you may or may not have to wait for quite a while. Half the buses go fairly direct, half take a scenic detour through the suburbs. All in all the trip takes a bit more than an hour. That's the red line in the map below.

Naist and ATR map

NAIST on the center left, ATR upper right corner. Lower left is Kita Ikoma station, lower right is Gakken-Nara Tomigaoka. The long, red wiggly line is the path taken with train and bus. The short yellow line is by foot. An eagle-eyed observer may suspect that you can actually go straight across, making the distance even shorter; they would be right.


After lunch, with beautiful late summer-like weather (still over 20° here this year) and a stomach full of sushi, I decide it's a good idea to try to walk back, rather than take the train. And I discover that the whole distance takes all of 45 minutes - almost twenty minutes faster than taking the bus and train. That's the yellow line. In fact, the most inconvenient part, from NAIST to Gakken Nara Tomigaoka station takes only fifteen minutes to walk, the exact same time it takes to walk to Kita Ikoma. Taking the train this one stop is simply a waste of time and 200 yen. This is still a fairly roundabout route; you can go right across if you want, from village to village, and probably shave another ten minutes off that walking time.

I had a nice walk after lunch - so what? What's interesting to me is how wedded I've been to the idea that I have to go by train. When I worked at ATR I always took the train from Osaka, and I of course go to NAIST by train as well. So to me, they are isolated islands in my mental map, with no route between them except this "wormhole" or "gate" that is the train linking them to the rest of my world. ATR is part of Keihanna and Housono village where I lived for a couple of years; it's a fairly large area in my mind, with two separate train stations leading away from it. NAIST is a much smaller and more recent island with the Kita Ikoma station as the only exit.

So even with a map right in front of me I simply never really connected the areas in my mind. The only route I knew was via the train stations, so I've always taken the train without thinking about it. Now that I've walked across they're suddenly no longer separate islands, but one connected area. Of course, it's still an island, separate from Osaka on one hand, and Kyoto on the other since I've never really traveled between those areas either, just magically whisked between them by train.

Mental map

To the left, my map before today's walk; to the right, afterwards. The lines are the "magic portals" - trains - connecting my mental areas. "Osaka" and "Kyoto" are of course really several disconnected maps in their own right. I could probably easily merge "saidaji" with ATR; I've just never had reason to actually go there by foot or bicycle.


One thing I wonder is what kind of transport will alter mental maps like this and what kind will not. Walking can obviously connect and merge areas like it did for me today, and I think bicycles do too. I'm not sure about cars and bikes when you drive; if you're a passenger I strongly suspect you don't.

Being in control rather than a passive observer is probably important (although there's a delightful old experiment by Tolman (I think) where rats wheeled around a maze in a cart do learn the maze without actually running in it). But as important, I suspect, is feedback on the distance you travel. One reason a train doesn't connect areas at all is probably because you get no feedback on how far you're actually going. When you walk or bicycle, you feel the distance directly. With motor transport you don't. In the diagram above I could probably add "Tokyo" right next to Kyoto with a magic line between them, and add "Okinawa", "Helsinki" and "Ho-Chi Minh"-areas via a small, separate "Kansai Airport" blob. They'd all be at the same mental non-distance between each other to me.

I'm sure there must be several studies about this. If I wasn't already buried neck-deep in other papers I need to read I'd go take a look. If anybody already has references about this, though, feel free to send them my way.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

The Future of the Sports Car

Toyota is leaving Formula 1 racing. BMW has decided to quit next year, Honda left already last year, and Renault is reportedly considering leaving as well. Rally has seen losses of car company teams. Crisis for high-end racing, and it's not surprising during a severe economic recession of course, but there's perhaps more to it than that.

The generation-long rivalry between sports car maker Porsche and mass-market Volkswagen ended recently - and symbolically - with Volkswagen taking over Porsche outright (Ferrari is of course already a subdivision of Fiat). And Honda has stopped building sports cars altogether.

Corvette

The muscle car - a dying breed? They are beautiful, though.


The sports car, the muscle car, the two-seater runabout, is - well, not disappearing, exactly; there's always going to be enthusiasts and car models that cater to them. But the era of the Fast Car is coming to an end.

The sports car has long been a small but serious market segment, important far beyond their sales numbers. They are aspirational cars, something to build your brand and lure people into your showrooms to buy one of your mainstream models. Think of how many teen-age boys have had a beloved poster of some sports car or another, and how many of those ended up getting a car from that same manufacturer when they grew older.

More people than ever have licenses and cars to drive. The car is still a very desirable item. But the nature of car ownership is changing. To more and more young people, a car is no longer a defining symbol of adulthood, and the interest in vehicles as a hobby is waning. Ask any motor club about how the median age of its members have changed over the past generation or so.

Also, the car itself is increasingly being viewed as a pollutant and as the main link still chaining us to the current oil-based economy that is increasingly seen as untenable in the long run. Instead, the cars that capture buyers imagination and grab press headlines are increasingly small and efficient cars, and the future-looking all-electric vehicles. A traditional sports car, with its thirsty engine and flashy looks, seems backwards-looking, a symbol of wastefulness as much as youthful fun. A sports car in your line-up no longer helps sell your ordinary cars; indeed, it may be a net negative.

And of course, with electric vehicles the impression of the car changes. It becomes more of an appliance, like your refrigerator, than a potent lifestyle symbol. A gasoline engine is an amazing Rube Goldberg-esque contraption of mechanical linkages and delicately balanced interactions. It is both very accessible to those who wish to tinker with it, and very temperamental, making it well worth tinkering with.

An all-electric system is different. It's far more even, more predictable and reliable, and any required tuning is done completely through software. Not that there's a huge scope for tuning; electric drive systems come pretty close to your theoretical performance limits right from the start. There's just not much fun in hacking an electric car, and plenty of high-voltage danger for anybody trying. The car hobby - car building and tuning especially - is going to have a hard time adapting to this change.

Pink Cars

Pink car covers near Yotsubashi, Osaka.


Spreading lack of interest in muscle cars, the negative brand impression of selling thirsty, wasteful gasoline vehicles, the disproportionate cost of keeping up a high-end small-volume brand, and the lack of proper return on investment on very expensive racing programs - those are the reasons that sports cars are slowly disappearing and car makers are turning away from high-end motor sports. The current recession has just accelerated a change already on the way.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Elephant Time, Mouse Time

Library
In my copious spare time1 I'm reading another book after finally getting through "The devotion of suspect X"2. This time I'm not doing a novel, but a non-fiction popular science book. It's a good change of pace, and as a bonus I get to practice some useful vocabulary you don't encounter in most fiction or news reporting.

The book is "ゾウの時間ネズミの時間ーサイズの生物学" ("Elephant time, Mouse time - the biology of size") by Tatsuo Motogawa. It's a look at how body size affects various aspects of animal life. The title itself suggests the overall theme: An elephant and a mouse have very different life spans, but their lives scale with size. A mouse has a much faster generation time, it moves and reacts much faster than an elephant - it must look hopelessly slow and ponderous to a mouse - and even their internal organs work faster. The mouse may end up doing as much as the elephant throughout its life so they live "as long", subjectively, even though the life span is very different.
 
There's chapters on energy use and food intake, how the size of prey versus size of predator, movement range and population density, cellular activity, speed, organ size and so forth. The book is not just about mammals either; it covers related differences between warm-blooded animals, insects, unicellular animals and water life versus land life as well.

At about 230 pages including appendices it's not a big, heavy book. I've read about a fourth of it so far and I find it both enjoyable and very accessible. There's a bit of specialized vocabulary of course (I'd find it disappointing if there weren't) but his style is clear and direct so it's not a problem. The math is minimal, and what there is, is clearly explained and presented. The appendices give more background for those who need or enjoy such things.

If there's one thing I find a bit annoying it's his occasional tendency to insert largely irrelevant observations on Japan in the text. This is something a fair number of Japanese writers seem to do, though; there's even a thriving publishing genre comparing Japan to other countries, always either doom-and-gloom negative or fiercely patriotically positive.

A less scrupulous blogger would probably spin long involved yarns about how this preoccupation reflects on the Japanese society and its insecurities (and so falling prey to the exact same phenomenon they try to analyze). Me, I don't think this is exceptional at all. Everybody loves to hear about themselves, and it's just the form of self-affirmation that differs. The simplistic "We're Special so We're #1!", "We're Special so We're Doomed!"-format is just one that resonates with part of the Japanese public. It's simply akin to when other people slap their flag on every available flat space, or obsessively compare athletic, technical or historical accomplishments with other countries.

These distracting detours aside - and in truth there aren't many of them - it is a fun book; engaging and inspiring enough that it makes me wish I'd studied ecology as a student. It doesn't seem to have been translated, but if you do know Japanese - or if you study it - you can certainly do much worse than to pick this one up at your local book store.

As an aside, this was published in the 中公新書 (chūkōshincho) book series. There's several series of small, inexpensive pocket books here that are either reprinting older works or publishing narrow-interest books like this one in various fields. This series seem to publish a lot of popular academic (science and the arts) and technical works. I've also bought - but not yet read - a biography on Euler, a work on insect neuroanatomy and a book by a retired JR train driver on the design and operation of railways3. They all seem very promising, so I'm not wanting for reading material once I finish this one.

--
#1 My blessed half-hour of peace and solitude on the morning train. The evening ride is for studying Japanese.

Seriously, even ignoring the money - just the parking fees at home and work would almost reach my current monthly train cost - I wouldn't want to commute by car. This free time is too important to waste on driving.


#2 I know I wasn't very favourably impressed with it. But it turns out it may not completely be the books' own fault. I read it after finishing Reason by Miyuki Miyabe. Ritsuko is also reading another book now, after she finished a Miyabe book series, and she, too, finds that wanting, even though it's a book she should like. It may simply be that Miyabes works are so good that whatever you read afterwards becomes a let-down by comparison.


#3 Why yes, I am a geek. How did you guess?

Sunday, November 1, 2009

November

It's the morning of November 1st. And outside it is, at this moment, 24 degrees.

Current value and today's curve in red, yesterday in orange. one-week averages for this week and this week last year in blue.


The winter may be wet and miserable in Osaka, but at least it's never long. This kind of summer-like weather in November is pretty rare even here though. Better go out and make use of it while we can. Of course, right now "go out and make use of it" for me mainly means reading papers in a café rather than at home, but at least it's something.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Mabo Ramen

With my recent post about ramen and curry and all, I wanted to mention yesterday's set meal at our university cafeteria: Mabo Ramen. "Mabo" is mabo tofu, a Chinese dish that resembles chilli: a fairly thin, spicy meat sauce with pieces of tofu. It's eaten with rice and is quite popular here. "Mabo Ramen", then, is a bowl of soy-sauce flavoured ramen, but instead of bean sprouts and the rest, you pour a ladle-full of mabo tofu right into the bowl and stir.

Soy-sauce ramen is fairly dark, and the meat sauce thickens it to resemble hot, dark mud. The white pieces of tofu float merrily on top, not unlike winter-pale, overweight guests at a spa enjoying a mud bath. Suddenly the surface erupts as the bone-yellow ramen floats to the surface like some blind, mad Lovecraftian Elder God. Its multitudinous1 tentacled strands glisten as they blindly grope and envelop the first unlucky tofu bather, to drag him under, shrieking in fear, towards the unknowlable insane horror at the center of the huge slithering mass...

..and once I stopped playing with my food I tried actually tasting it. As it turns out, It's really, really good. The flavours complement each other very well, and the meat sauce gives the soup a thick, satisfying consistency. And it shouldn't be too surprising; after all, a mabo tofu and small ramen is a fairly common set menu at cheap Chinese restaurants already. Pouring them into the same bowl is just a natural next step. Anyway, I'm certainly having it again if it shows up on the menu at some point.

--

#1 I really think "multitudinous" is a good word, and used far too little these days. It's not that easy to fit expressions like "multitudinous tentacles" into everyday conversation2, unfortunately. "Multitudinous whiteboard markers" just doesn't have the same ring to it.


#2 If you can, you're probably leading a more interesting life than I do.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Autumn

It's finally autumn here. The leaves are starting to turn and daytime temperatures have dropped to 20° or so. The weather alternates between high, dry, brilliantly blue skies and leaden clouds with drizzling rain. The light is just a little subdued, the colors slightly muted. The evenings are cool and crisp, and the chill now lingers in the shadows even on sunny days. And all along comes the smell of damp earth and gently decomposing leaves. This is my favourite season.

We took a walk around Osaka castle last weekend to enjoy the end of summer. Turns out we were not the only ones with that idea; the castle park was teeming with people. Really, this is the best time of year to enjoy this part of Japan.

Picknick

This quartet was having an English-style picknick in the castle park. Apparently they don't believe in doing things halfway.


Neyagawa

Part of the outer moat - really a tributary of Neyagawa river - surrounding the park, looking northeast where a cluster of business high-rises adds some big-city ambience. Panasonic has a neat four-story interior and home-improvement exhibition here; you can while away an hour or so browsing kitchens, bathrooms, flooring and light fixtures.


Castle Park

There's several tree-lined roads like this one circling the park and they're very popular among walkers, runners and cyclists alike. These are Ginkgo trees; the leaves will turn a bright, clear yellow in another week or three.

They shed small, round nuts that are pretty good dried and roasted, but they're like ball bearings on the road and a danger to anybody with bad balance or weak legs. I head that the city only plants male Ginkgo trees nowadays, since they don't shed seeds.


Osaka Caslte

The outer northwestern castle ramparts and a guard building. The castle area may not look like much for European eyes accustomed to wading hip-deep in medieval architecture, but it's still a very pleasant park in the city center. Also, it's gratifying to see that not everything in this city is torn down and destroyed once it becomes old and worn.


Getting to Carnegie Hall

Saxophone player practising along the northern moat (he's in the big moat picture above too, along with another musician playing the banjo). I love the jazz-inspired clothing.

Homes and apartments don't have a lot of heat insulation due to the mild climate, but that means they're not very soundproof either - thick rock-wool insulation and triple glazing stops sound as well as heat after all. Amateur musicians playing brass winds and other loud instruments are often unable to practice at home. So you frequently find people like this gentleman practising in public parks, along rivers, under motorways or wherever they can without disturbing anyone.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Curry vs. Ramen

Ho hum. The new Japanese government is still trying to find its legs and the opposition is looking for a voice; meanwhile voters realize the promised brave new world looks much like the present one. In Sweden the media tries to whip up early election fever to sell copy, but has only succeeded in giving a a small neo nazi-connected xenophobic party some free publicity.

Or in headline form: "New government constrained by inexperience, previous policies, economic situation" and "Fascist xenophobes still dislike immigrants, other cultures". What's next - "Penguins admit to liking fish"? There's nothing much worth commenting on in other words.

Let's take a look at something a little more inspiring. On Saturday Asahi Shinbun took an investigative look at something really important:

Curry or Ramen ?


curry Rice

Homemade chicken curry and rice with potatoes, carrots and mushrooms. Leftover curry goes great with udon noodles or spaghetti; you just thin it out a bit to make it more like a sauce.


Curry - Kare Raisu - evolved from Indian curries. Today it's a spicy stew in a thick, brown savoury vegetable sauce. You usually eat it with white rice and pickles, though curry udon (udon noodles in runny curry) is also quite popular. It really resembles a thick European-style meat stew more than anything else, and the only trace of the Indian dish is the spiciness.

ramen

Ramen at Kyoto station. Old image; for some reason I don't have any good recent shots of this dish; I guess I'm too busy eating it to remember taking a picture.


Ramen is Chinese noodles in a thick soup with fried pork, bean sprouts, green onions, bamboo shoots, boiled egg, nori, corn and any number of other possible ingredients. It's based on a Chinese dish but has evolved far from its roots - ramen is sold in China as a Japanese food.

Both are simple, satisfying comfort foods; the kind that hit the spot when you eat alone, when you work late at night, or when you're nursing a hangover. Both trace their origins to a foreign dish but now have little in common with it. In Europe, pizza, kebab and falafel, originally from Italy and the near East, are dishes much in the same spirit1.

Anyway, Asahi polled over 7000 people on their favourite comfort-food to see which came out on top. So, which won?

curry57%-ramen43%

Curry 57%, Ramen 43%.


Curry is more popular than ramen, 57% to 43%. On the other hand, while only 1 in 4 (27%) curry people eat it at least once a week, over half (55%) of ramen lovers indulged that often.

curry and ramen types

Popular types of curry (on the left) and ramen (on the right). Only types with more than 10% popularity is shown.


Which kind of curry and ramen where the most popular? For curry, more than a quarter picked beef curry, with pork, vegetable, chicken and katsu (fried pork cutlet) all between the 10% and 15% marks. "Real" Indian curry was chosen only by 6%; but then, it really isn't the same dish any more and can't be compared directly.

The defining ingredient in ramen is the soup, an oh-so-thick concoction of pig bones and vegetables that is slowly simmered and reduced for many hours. A dollop of the heavy soup is mixed with lighter, flavoured stock right in the bowl. Soy-flavoured soup came in first with over a quarter of respondents. Miso-flavoured and tonkotsu ("pig bone" - heavy and greasy) where about equally popular with the thinner salt-flavoured soup rounding off the list.

Me, I like curry and ramen both, but given a choice I prefer ramen. Hokkaido style ramen - thick miso-flavoured soup with corn and butter - is great, and so is tonkotsu ramen. We normally eat curry at home, but my favourite curry chain is Jōtō Curry here in Osaka. They do a fairly spicy curry with the meat completely rendered into the sauce that goes great with fried shrimp or a pork cutlet.


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#1 In Sweden, one of the most popular pizzas is the "kebab pizza", with the contents of a kebab - garlic sauce and all - spread over a pizza pie with cheese and tomatoes. Cultural mashups are great.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Konkatsu

The Japanese language has a thing for coining new words by abbreviation. A common pattern is to take one syllable or character from each of two words to create a new one. For instance, "結婚 約束" (kekkon yakusoku, "marriage-promise") is today abbreviated to "婚約" (konyaku, "engagement"). "京都 大学" (Kyoto Daigaku, "Kyoto University"), my current employer, is normally referred to as "京大" (Kyodai); other large universities tend to follow the same pattern. A common word among the students here is "就活" (shūkatsu, "job hunting"), which comes from "就職 活動" (shūshoku katsudō, "employment-finding activity").

Today I learned of a fairly new, increasingly popular word borrowing the same "katsu"-ending: "婚活" (konkatsu, "marriage hunting"), from "結婚 活動" (kekkon katsudo, "marriage activity")1. The longer phrase does not (to my knowledge) exist; the pattern is copied straight from "job hunting" above. Apparently "konkatsu" can be used in any marriage-seeking context; the tv show this morning was showing "konkatsu hair styles" and "konkatsu meiku" (makeup) which I assume is some style that makes you look eligible and desireable for marriage or something like that. A "konkatsu event" is a matchmaking party, and so on.

Of course, there's no way of knowing if this neologism will have staying power. Most new, trendy words have their time in the sun only to fade away again after a while. My guess is it will hang around. Marriage - or lack thereof - is a constant worry for a lot of younger people here2, and konkatsu is a useful and catchy term for all matchmaking and marriage-seeking issues. Of course, tv shows and advertisements blaring "婚活しよう!" ("Let's seek marriage!") and "婚活は20代から!" ("Marriage hunting starts at 20!") could well turn people off the word permanently - to say nothing of turning people off the idea of marriage itself.

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#1 To the best of my knowledge, the origin of "tonkatsu" has nothing to do with hunting pigs.


#2 You know, maybe if this society was not so single-mindedly focused on marriage as the sole approved form of partnership, it would not be such a major hang-up for so many people. The current idea of a formally married nuclear family with breadwinner and housewife is a very recent invention after all; it's not like you'd be giving up an age-old tradition or anything if other forms of partnerships would be legally and socially recognized.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Pool

We saw the movie プール (Pool) last week. It's the same pair of actors - Satomi Kobayashi and Masako Motai - that appeared in Megane that we saw in 2007, and Kamome Shokudo in 2006. And though the director and script writer is different this time, it shares the overall mood and style with those earlier movies.

Briefly, the film is (and I'm not giving anything away here, don't worry) about a young woman that visits her mother in Thailand where she runs a quiet vacation resort. Also living there is a caretaker, a young Thai boy and an older woman. They talk a bit. There's a pool. And... that's it, really.

If this sounds suspiciously similar in style to both Megane1 and Kamome Shokudo2 then you're quite correct. The overall mood and pacing is very similar. People meet, nothing much happens, it ends. Sounds pointless, I know, but you sit and enjoy it all the same. Is "Pool" worth seeing? Yes, I think so. It's better than Megane, which had a preachy undertone; but not quite up to the level of Kamome Shokudo, with its whimsical sense of the absurd that makes it one of my favourite recent films. "Pool" is a solid, fun movie well worth seeing if you have the chance.

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#1 Woman comes to southern Japanese island for vacation, meets odd people wearing glasses.

#2 Japanese woman has a cafe in Helsinki, befriends odd people, makes cinnamon rolls and onigiri.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Utsurundesu - Fuji one-use camera

We went to Kobe a few weeks ago (as usual, I know - but it's a nice place). The weather was absolutely perfect; a cool, completely clear day with pure blue sky and just a hint of approaching autumn in the air. After lunch at a south Indian restaurant and inspired by the weather we walked to the mountainside and took the Shin-Kobe cable car up the mountain. For whatever reason, however, I had neither a digital camera nor a color film camera with me. Black and white film is a wonderful medium, but it's admittedly less than ideal for capturing brilliant blue autumn skies.

Kobe, again

Kobe, from the ropeway. At the top is a restaurant and a few souvenir shaps (of course), and a public herb garden that is quite nice, though a bit bedraggled from too many visitors.


Fortunately help was close at hand. I've often seen these disposable one-use film cameras for sale in convenience stores and shops, and here we had an opportunity to test one. It seemed like fun, it was certainly better than nothing, and if the results were really disastrously bad we'd still be no worse off than without it.

Film With Lens

The Fuji "Utsurundesu" single-use camera. "Film With Lens" is a pretty accurate slogan. There's several variants, with iso 400 film as well as 1600 and with various length of film. There's a waterproof version, and yes, there's a Hello Kitty one too. This one is 400 speed film, with 27 shots and a built-in flash. Cost is just shy of 1000 yen - about twice the price of just buying the film itself.


The camera is a snap-together plastic shell with a fixed lens, fixed shutter and a flash. The 35mm film is already wound out in the camera, and as you shoot you wind the film back into the canister. You don't have to rewind it once you're done, and your shots are safe inside the can if anything would happen. The camera store takes out the film and develops it as usual. They send the shell back to Fuji where they put in a new film, attach a new wrapper and send it out to the shops again. It's really a rental camera rather than a disposable one in other words.

Kobe mountainside Ropeway Station

On the left, Kobe's Kitano district, with its old European-style buildings. On the right, the ground station for the Shin-Kobe ropeway. The two pictures are taken with the exact same shutter speed and aperture. The left image is in direct, cloudless midday sunshine, while the right one is indoors, with only a shadow-side window and north-facing opening letting in dim light. Despite the large difference in light, the film manages to record both scenes nicely - though the indoor scene is probably near the practical limit for it, as the grain increases a lot.


This camera is a latter-day descendant of the box camera, like the one I wrote about last summer. It aims to be simple to use, robust and inexpensive, and like a box camera it succeeds admirably. The focus distance, the shutter speed and the aperture are all fixed1. The lens is 32mm - that's pretty wide. No focusing errors, ever; with a wide lens and a small aperture everything is more or less in focus. You really have no exposure problems either. Negative film has lots and lots of exposure latitude, so whether you're in bright sunlight or dim shadows you'll still get a usable image. The small flash is only needed for night-time shots or dim indoor light.

Isuzu Bakery
Isuzu Bakery, Kobe

This is the most portable camera I've ever used. It weighs 88 grams - less than even the smallest digital camera. It really is small enough to fit in your shirt pocket (and the light weight means your shirt doesn't sag). The shutter emits a discreet "clk" sound that you wouldn't notice a meter away. Apart from the flash there's no need for a battery or external power so you could stuff one of these into your bag and just forget about it until you need it.

And a fair number of here people do just that: they keep one of these in the car. If they get involved in an accident they may need to document the scene and any damage. And they use these not just because of the reliability and cost; film is seen as more trustworthy than digital cameras since it's very hard to manipulate a negative without leaving traces. Just keep one in the trunk and replace it every few years.

The results? Good. In fact, surprisingly good. The small prints we got (9x11) look just fine if a little contrasty; the shop probably use their "holiday snapshots" setting, with lots of color and contrast, when printing from these cameras. They'd be perfect for passing around to friends and relatives. As you can see in the images here they're clearly good enough for web use too.
 
Eagle-eye

A man observes Kobe from the greenhouse balcony.


Of course, "good enough" is not the same as "perfect". It has a cheap, plastic lens after all, so it flares a lot, there's plenty of light falloff in the corners (arguably not a bad thing for blue-sky shots like these), fairly low contrast and low resolution. This is a great snapshot camera, but it's a complement, not a replacement for a more serious camera if you are interested in photography.

Kobe Ropeway

Kobe ropeway in late afternoon. Fuji Utsurundesu camera.


Kobe Ropeway

Kobe ropeway in late afternoon. Pentax 67.


A quick comparison

The medium format camera and the 35mm instant camera pictures, showing the same spot at the same size. My digital SLR camera would end up somewhere in between, though fairly close to the MF shot in resolution. Good to know there's a reason to keep lugging the 6x7-format camera around.


I like this camera - and the idea of this camera - so much, in fact, that I'd like to have one like it for real. I'd basically want a reusable version of this camera with selectable aperture and focus, but still very simple and very compact; something I could throw in my bag and forget about until I need it. It would be a near perfect street camera, backup camera and small camera to take along on business trips. Ritsuko has a Canon Demi half-frame camera; it comes close, though it's completely dependent on its light meter. I'll see what I can find.

Update: My blog entries usually take a fair amount of time to write, and scanning film for the illustrations doesn't exactly speed it up either. Since I first wrote this I got myself a candidate camera that seems to fit my requirements. I'll write about it when I've used it for a while.

Sakaisuji Underground

Sakaisuji subway line entrance. Late afternoon, bad weather and under cover so it was getting fairly dark already. I used the built-in flash to brighten up the entrance and get the light level closer to the outside street. Grainy, yes, but I feel it enhances this picture.


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#1 The shutter speed is 1/140 and aperture is f/10 according to Fuji's online documentation. With a 400-speed film it's about right for decently sunny days.