Welcome Home

When I got back from Japan, the first question a lot of co-workers and friends asked was "so what do you miss most about Japan." My usual response was to chuckle and say "the vending machines." Now, there's some truth to that statement, but really, I miss a whole lot. Many of those things are things I miss about living in Germany as well, but one unique thing seems interesting to write about right now.

First though, I feel like clarifying the vending machine remark; vending machines are ubiquitous throughout Japan. A gaijin Lyle and I hung out with at one point mentioned a rumor that Tokyo has more vending machines than all of the US. This is a number I doubt, but from what I saw it wasn't that far-fetched. It seemed like one couldn't go more than 5 feet without running into a set of vending machines. It took smaller towns like Kurabuchi to get down to the frequency of vending machines I'd see in larger US cities.

So why would I miss this? Two reasons. First, the smallest bill in Yen is 1000, which is roughly $10. That means that 100 and 500 Yen ($1-$5) come in coin form. This makes Japanese vending machines a million times easier to use than US ones, where I rarely have the right combination of bills and change to get a $1.25 soda. The second reason is selection; the vast majority of vending machines were for drinks (the rest were cigarettes and a few had beer; I never saw any of the more... creative ones people claim exist), but unlike the US those weren't limited to bottled water and soda. There was often tea, vitamin drinks, and coffee, not to mention an assortment of soft drinks that were more varied than anything in the US (how I miss CC Lemon). Many of the machines had milk tea and cafe au lait, both of which often had both cold and warm versions. The latter was very nice in the cold weather.

What is it I miss right now? Kotatsu. While they aren't nearly as necessary in American homes as they were in Japanese homes, I really wish I had one in my apartment. Why? My apartment's heating is probably one of my biggest complaints about it. It has two small electric heating elements in the living room/kitchen space, which is two stories high thanks to a loft above the kitchen, and thus not kept warm very well by the two lame heaters. Lyle's kerosine heater did a better job than these do. |f I need a lame electric heater, I think I'd be much happier and better served by one in a table with a thick blanket than by what I have now.

I think there might be a little more to it than that though; most of the kotatsu I saw were fairly small (which makes sense given the size of most Japanese homes), so when eating dinner with a group of people, it felt a lot more social than a dinner at someone else's house here in the States (though I suppose the fact that we ate sukiyaki when we ate at one of Lyle's co-worker's house didn't hurt that either). I think I'd almost go so far as to say I prefer the smaller houses I saw; if it weren't for the poor heating, I'd love to find a house like Lyle's around here. Well, I would if housing prices here weren't lame.

Mystery Hunt

Two weeks ago I went to Boston to participate in the MIT Mystery Hunt. I've been relatively active in a lot of the Microsoft-run puzzle events (between helping run the intern events and playing in the last two Puzzle Hunts), so when someone I knew from various puzzle-related stuff at work asked if I wanted to join, I jumped at the chance.

All in all, I'm glad I went, but I think I prefer the local hunts. Truthfully, I probably could have worked with the remote team (i.e., folks who didn't fly out to Boston) and noticed very little difference. There were some aspects of the hunt that made the event feel a little amateur; answers were phoned in to a human with no leeway on answers, some of which could be very vague (e.g., one had us translate Chinese to English, which proved to be very ambiguous and frustrating). While this isn't necessarily dissimilar to how things are done in other events, I like to think that if a team called the people running the event and could explain the puzzle, they'd get the answer if there was a translation error.

I probably could complain more, but on reflection, there's always a lot to complain about after a Hunt; some puzzles simply don't sync with everyone, and even after hearing the answer it can be natural to think "that person is crazy."

As I said though, I'm glad I went. I've been thinking more and more that I'd like to travel more, so while I spent most of the time in either a hotel room or a classroom, I'm glad I got out of the state. I suppose I rode the subway as well, which only serves to remind me how much I hate the lack of decent public transit around Puget Sound.

And all of this reminds me that I need to book another weekend flight here pretty soon.

Traveling Home

I plan on coming back and posting pictures and stories about my trip to visit Lyle in Japan, but as I'm really tired from the fight back, I though I'd post a few anecdotes worth remembering:

• My original itinerary involved flying to SFO, chilling out in San Francisco for an our, and then flying to Seattle. Thankfully, when I got to Narita Airport, the first thing they asked when I checked in was "we overbooked the SFO flight; is a direct flight OK?"
  
  The answer is an obvious "absolutely." While this would potentially cause issues for my ride (since I was coming in two hours early, now at the wee hours of 8am), I appreciate any opportunity to skip connections.



• When I finally did board the plane, they upped me to business class. This was incredibly awesome, as it meant I had tons of leg room (too much, actually), awesome food, and an otherwise comfortable 8 hour flight across the pacific. The flight included an awesome view of the sunset over Mt. Fuji, which is great, because the weather in Tokyo was always so bad that I could never see the thing.



• As comfortable as the flight was, I still couldn't sleep. So now I have to relive Saturday as though I never slept Friday night. I've got some errands to run (no food left) and some other things I'd like to do, but I really don't think I should drive. Oh well.

I'll try to get photos up quickly (or at least start getting some up) and posting impressions. I have the feeling that Lyle is the only one who reads this though so maybe I can take my time since he experienced pretty much everything I did first hand.

Traveling

I'm spending this Christmas/New Years in Japan visiting Lyle. Once again I've managed to visit a country without the prep I ought to have done, leaving me to marvel how well (relatively speaking) one can get by without actually talking to the people around you. I should have packed lighter though.

There will probably be lots of stuff I ought to write about, but what seems really interesting to me right now is jet lag; I really, really thought it wouldn't be an issue since I was traveling westward, and the time difference really meant that everything was about six hours later than normal. Staying up can be a little hard, but I'm honestly surprised by the fact that I keep waking up at 4am and what's worse, feeling refreshed.

I'm probably just happy to be on vacation; I figured I'd have no problem sleeping in, but I'm getting less sleep than I'm used to and generally feeling better during the day than I usually do. I suppose actually being exposed to sunlight for most of the day isn't hurting the situation though.

I'm making an effort to take pictures; ideally I'll upload them sometime after I get back.

Never Again

Since Lyle has harassed me for not posting often, I recon this might be something worth posting: I finally went through the excruciating experience that is buying a new car. I don't think having a new car is particularly interesting, but the experience of dealing with car salesmen is something I'd like to avoid for as long as I can.

I'd like to say I largely tried to follow this advice, though I strayed in some areas; most local dealers don't seem very interested in giving quotes over the phone (or online, much to my dissatisfaction). I think the smartest thing I did was bring a friend, who turned out to be much better at confronting the typical salesman bull that I was cognizant of, but not silver-tongued enough to counter.

I'm particularly shocked at how haggling turned out to work. I had been led to believe that haggling would involve us lowballing them while they argued for an insanely high price. This was sort of true (on their end), but our demands stayed still throughout the whole negotiations, and in truth all that happened is was that we sat in the dealership for several hours until they agreed to the price I wanted.

The day after was fairly amusing too; there were a few dealerships I stopped by to try similar makes. Suffice to say, one place (a Mazda dealership in Renton; never go there if you can avoid it), was populated by the slimiest of salesmen, who wouldn't take no for an answer after I test drove a single car of theirs. They called me back the following day, and when I told them I had purchased a car, their response was "*lowered voice* Oh. Well, congratulations. *click*". I burst into laughter.

Other's Vices

I've come to the sad realization that I've taken on a number of a former roomate's 'vices.' Which is to say, I now drink lots of coffee and beer. Of course, I've taken the latter to a bit of an extreme given that I've been homebrewing for about a year, which means I pretty much always have an ample supply of some sort of beer sitting around.

I've actually backed off on the former a bit, and while I suppose I can thank Sean for getting me to start drinking beer, Europe is entirely to blame for my coffee drinking. Thanks to work getting their free coffee (which isn't great, but I drink it anyway) act together late last year, I was drinking several cups a day for a while. Nowadays I'll have a cup or two in the morning, and spend the rest of the day drinking tea (typically caffeine-free red 'tea', before anyone claims I'm a caffeine addict).


I do miss the weekly dinner-and-beer nights we had in Livermore. It'd be nice to find folks around here interested in doing that sort of thing regularly. I also ought to plan for some brewery trips in the future; now that Sean lives in Colorado I have an excuse to head there, Oregon isn't too far away, and visiting Stone in Escondido would be nice sometime.

End of Line

This weekend was the eleventh (and my second) Puzzle Hunt. Despite some near-drama when getting teams together earlier in the year, I ended up on a team that was a whole lot of fun and did surprisingly well. We spent most of the hunt in the top 5 and finished in fifth. Things started to drag towards the end, due to the rather normal situation of not being very clever at 4am and only having a handful of puzzles left, but we managed to drag ourselves out of that and finished around 10:30am, meaning I got to get some much-needed sleep prior to the wrap-up.

Despite the nap, I'm still really beat. I did a much better job of staying awake this time around, though around 9am I found myself nearly dosing off and don't think I was very helpful at that point. I sort of wish this was a three-day weekend so I could have a day to recover.

Hopefully we'll be able to keep the same team together for the next hunt; I bet we can do pretty well.