Bouncing Red Ball

This is my very first post in this blog, so to liven things up I will show you guys something current in Japan. Universities in Japan usually hold their daigakusai (university festival) in the month of November. These festivals usually includes college students transforming their university into little stalls selling drinks and food. There are entertainments everywhere too. From live bands, dance performances, to little comedy plays to accompany you while you roam around looking for interesting stuff and sizzling hot bits to get you through the coldness.

Just the other day, we went to visit Tokyo University of Foreign Students. They are having their 85th festival there from Nov. 21 to 25, which is a bit lengthy compared to other universities. Yes, this is the last day, so if you’re around the vicinity just ride the Chuou Line to Musashisakai, from there change train riding the Seibu Tamagawa and get down at Tama Station, and you’re there already. The place was bursting with people when we’re there, people lining up to get them German sausages, students who doesn’t seem to drink were selling all sorts of gin, and people grabbing imported beers I haven’t even seen before.

Tokyo Gaidai Gaigosai is a bit especial in that the university is probably the best foreign language university in Japan. The university teaches various foreign language and cultures, from Thai, Filipino, Bahasa, Chinese, to Spanish, Portuguese, French, Deutsch, Italian, Polish, Russian. So when they hold their university festival, there are many stalls that cater to these culture’s food and specialty liquors. Be sure to visit, if not now then next year, or you could visit the university you’re closed to, there must be something good happening there every November.

It’s been ages since I updated Bouncing Red Ball. Things have been slower lately, days-off getting wasted, plans getting wrecked and boredom just stopping short of overwhelming. There are two things I’m waiting for right now: 1.) The 2007 World Chess Championship which starts in five days in Mexico City; and 2.) much closer to home, Typhoon No. 9 which slams Tokyo in a couple of hours. This typhoon promises to be one of the strongest this year; classes in elementary schools all over Japan has been suspended.

Don’t you ever wonder why growing certain plants is against the law? And have you thought of a rational explanation for that? (Just thinking aloud.)

Things are really slow around here all I can take pictures of are flowering plants. The poppies below are your common variety weed, not a source of opium.

So what did you do during the Golden Week?

We had a choice: have a leisurely picnic at a nearby park or hike up a 2,400-meter mountain a hundred kilometers away. We didn’t need to think twice. After we made a final check on the weather, bought raincoats from Joyful Honda just in case and stuffed our packs with provisions and cameras (digital and film, APS-sized to medium format), we woke up one fine morning at 5AM and drove all the way to Chuzenjiko in Tochigi, at the foot of Mount Nantai, ready to start the climb.

I had thought that, with freezing temperatures at night (we planned to sleep on the mountain) and the dubious fitness of the climbing party (not to mention the 10% chance of rain), the misery level of this little adventure would approach that of waiting in line for a ride in Disneyland. Fortunately, even with snow on the mountain (which we didn’t expect — but should have) and our heavy packs (besides the cameras, we brought a tent and sleeping bags) wearing us down; and even with one of us getting leg cramps during the first day, all went well in the end. We climbed up and back down and brought home some really nice pictures.

The photo above is a crop of the original picture taken just below the peak and shows Chuzenjiko (the lake) on the background. Click for a bigger version. Notice we don’t have our day packs; we left them inside our tent halfway up the mountain. ^_^;;

I came to Japan in spring and inside the dormitory which would be my home for the next twelve months was a tree with no leaves but full of flowers. I had never seen anything like it before. The sakura is one of my first and most vivid images of Japan.

The sakura (or “cherry blossom” as many foreigners call it) is a well-known symbol of Japan, symbolizing rebirth in spring and ephemeral beauty. The sakura would stand lifeless in winter but in one brief period in spring its branches would erupt with tiny white or pinkish flowers, blanketing the whole tree.

Everyone anticipates this important event; conversations around the country would start with, “I heard the sakura would bloom earlier than usual this year…” or end with “See you at the hanami!” Hanami is the traditional cherry blossoms viewing in Japan, when people would gather beneath the branches of the sakura trees and have parties. It is the event people look forward to in spring.

Spring in Japan without cherry blossoms would be like morning without the sun.

The end of the fiscal year in Japan is fast approaching and it seems everyone is caught up in a great rush to wrap things up and finish deadlines before starting the new year in spring. Reports have to be written, products manufactured in quantity, flaws detected and fixed, inventories counted, resignation letters submitted, contracts renewed, moving plans finalized, the list goes on and on… And we’re caught up in this rush, too, of course.

But when you’re over your head with work in the office or factory, it’s always refreshing to take a break and head to the great outdoors.

Here’s a photo of a friend of mine, testing his ultra-modern Pentax K10D coupled with an ancient Takumar 400mm/f5.6. While Nikon gets all the credit for making their pro dSLRs compatible with their manual lenses, no camera company beats Pentax for lens backward-compatibility. Old, rusty M42 screwmount lenses work on the newest Pentax dSLRs without a hitch.

If you liked Asimo, you’ll love Plen, the skating robot. You can have this diminutive robot for ¥250,000 excluding tax. From the website (translated from Japanese):

CREATE: After you finish putting together the kit, you can freely create motions for your Plen with the supplied software. No special tools are necessary; you can assemble the kit with only a “plus” screwdriver. There is also no programming skills to create the motions. They can be created intuitively with the mouse.

CONTROL: When you finish making the motions, you can control your Plen remotely with a Bluetooth-enabled device (like AU mobile phones). You can also use your AU phones to download motions from a server. You can then send these motions to your Plen and play them instantly.

MOTION: Plen comes with over 20 motions to create a variety of expressions. Even programming beginners can immediately enjoy Plen’s varied motions after initialization. Please enjoy Plen’s motion performance by attaching the supplied roller skates kit.

Plen is powered by a 33MHz ARM7 processor, Bluetooth-enabled, connects to a USB port, stands 23cm, weighs 700 grams and can run (or skate) for 25 minutes without recharging.

This is one cool robot (see the video on the website). Unfortunately though, the Motion Editor works only for Windows XP, my AU phone is not Bluetooth capable, nor do I have ¥262,500 to spare. But Plen is cool nonetheless (even on video).

(Regarding that “plus” screwdriver above: not too long ago, I had this conversation with a friend at work: Me: “Can you get me that ‘plus’ screwdriver?” Him: “What do you mean ‘plus’ screwdriver?” Me: “‘Plus’, you know, there’s a ‘minus’ and a ‘plus’ screwdriver…” (I showed him the “plus” screwdriver.) Him: “You know, there’s no such thing as a ‘plus’ or ‘minus’ screwdriver; only the regular screwdriver and the Phillips type.” (Obviously, he was a newcomer in Japan because the Japanese call screwdrivers either ‘plus’ or ‘minus’.))

(Thanks to Nestle Poell for the link.)

The other day I was watching a Japanese bangumi where they feature famous athletes attempting to perform tasks given them according to their specialties. One of the guests was Shunsuke Nakamura (中村俊輔), the Celtic midfielder. He was tasked to shoot 10 soccer balls over a wall into two rings (one on each upper corner of the goal) barely the size of a basketball ring. (The other guest was a famous sprinter who ran the 50-meter dash against an Enzo Ferrari driven by a professional race car driver. Guess who won? Hint: it’s red and worth $1,000,000.) But Shunsuke Nakamura was impressive, bending no less than 4 soccer balls over the wall and into the rings.

Perhaps Nakamura’s most famous goal on the field was the spectacular 30-yard free kick against Manchester United (video above) in the 2006 Champions’ League which eventually eliminated Manchester United. With that wonderful goal, he became the only Japanese to score in the Champions’ League. He is also sometimes called the “Beckham of Asia” and although he doesn’t have Beckham’s looks, he can probably bend it better than the former galactico. The J-League coach Steve Perryman once said Nakamura was so good he “could open a tin of beans with his left foot”. Click here for a collection of Nakamura’s free kicks at YouTube.