James Andrews

I arrived at Narita Airport last night around 6pm. Quickly made my way through immigration and customs without a hassle. Was very happy that the line at immigration was 10 people long. My wife arrived 10 minutes late, which gave me time to buy a soda, and some oreo cookie bites at the store in the airport (at reasonable prices go figure, go Japan!).

It’s now 6:30am. Now starts a week or two of waking up ridonkulously early. Happens on most trips that I don’t sleep very well in the plane. I’ve had my buttered toast breakfast. Greated the dog, who was confused that someone was awake at 6am. I found a key waiting for me on the coffee table. I assume it’s the key to the house. Attached to it is a barcode card, it looks like it’s for a grocery store. Very nice of my wife to lay it out for me to have.

My wife is still in bed after a late night up. She has a wedding party to attend too and then a full day of classes at her ballet studio. I will drive her to the train station and then possibly return to my home in Japan and maybe do things with her father, or go off exploring.

I need to be able to go places without relying solely on public transportation. On the list of things to do is find a user bicycle shop, and hopefully find a bicycle for $30-$40 US. That way I don’t have to rely on the buses all the time.

For the last 15 years it has been the big todo from environmentalists that the earth is warming and we the human race are the cause. I’m not here to argue that the human race isn’t contributing to any warming of the earth that is happening. It would be stupid to assume that we weren’t contributing to any climate change, cause we are.

The earth’s ecosystem is a complex beast. No one on the planet fully understands it. Sure we can predict the weather, and based on conditions we can assume that there may be a hurricane forming, or tornados may touch down and cause havoc, but in reality our understanding is minimal. Over the past 4.54 billion years the earth has been around, it has gone though many natuarlly occuring changes. Just as we age and evolve, the earth too ages and evolves. Going through seasons year after year, the glacial ages, and temperate ages. The earth’s ecosystem is not designed to stay at one extreme or the other, and takes thousands of years to swap from one extreme to the other. The last glacial period ended roughly 10,000 years ago, and it is theorized that that they run on 40,000 and 100,000 year cycles. It’s not a stretch to believe that this global warming is mostly naturally occuring and that eventually we will have another ice age that flips it 180.

What gets to me is all the fear mongering over global warming. OMGOMGOMG we have to do something! Do we? Sure, I think we do, but not because of global warming. We cause a lot of polution. The acid rain falling from the sky. The large amounts of plastic in the pacific ocean. The smut and smog that cause severe breathing problems within our population. All these things destroy the environment, and are honestly things we should fix. We should burn less oil, we should find renewable energy sources, but not because of global warming. Stop listening to the fear mongering, stop blaming the freak 65F degree day in Boston on global warming. Stop polluting for the sake of saving our environment for our children today and for their future children. Lead the way so that they can live in a better world than we do.

I am a huge fan of Cirque du Soleil. For many years I have tried to see as many shows as possible as they have come through the Boston area. I even got to see La Nouba at Disney World in Florida, which is one of the shows that does not travel around. I have enjoyed them all immensely. Today my wife treated me to ZED. This is one of the non traveling shows and it is hosted at Tokyo Disney.

As with most Cirques ZED starts out with 2 clowns, that wander the amphitheater harrassing members of the audience, and doing silly things. We were in the first row stage left all the way in the corner. The clowns did there thing, and one was even hiding under the stage near us, we knew he was there, there was no surprising us. The show starts off with the 2 clowns opening a very large storybook, then a very dramatic start to the show begins. The way they drew the curtain open. The main character ZED’s entrance which scared the day lights out of me. I thought for sure something had gone wrong, but it hadn’t. With the curtains drawn it revealed a steam punkish kind of set, which was pretty cool.

All the acts were wonderful. Very well performed with only a couple acrobatic mis-steps, but I expect that, they do this every day, sometimes twice, that’s a lot of hard physical work. The last act was not interesting to me, but I do know that it’s physically hard to do.

I found out that Japanese don’t usually give standing ovations. I don’t know why, but I was standing up clapping, and a few other audience members joined Miho and I. The performers really appreciated it. Some came and shook our hands, and gave us high fives. It was very cool to have them interact with us.

If you are in Tokyo, and haven’t seen ZED, it’s a good time, and you should try to go. As usual it was wonderful. I’ll give it 5 of 5 juggling balls.d

Well for over that last 12 years I have. I’d hear of something, and want it, but website either had no english access, or only took payments and orders to japanese addresses. I would like to introduce you to a new way of thinking. The new world order in buying stuff from overseas comes in a couple different flavors.

Enter Tenso.com. Tenso is a service that allows you to place an order on a Japanese website and have the item shipped to a Japanese address. In turn Tenso takes your ordered items and routes it to your address. You could be in the US, or the UK, or Antarctica, but they’ll ship it too you. Of course there is a small fee, an you do have additional shipping charges, but for many people who unlike me don’t have a fiance who lives in Japan, it’s a great option.

Contender #2 is a professional purchasing service. Though this site seems a little less professionally done, the idea is great. You find the item you want on a website, fill in the requested information and they then track down the item, quote you a price and they order for you, and ship it too you.

So in case you have something you want to get, here’s the easy way to get them.

What is a Bento? In Japanese Bento or “o bento” is basically a boxed meal usually a boxed lunch. When you are on trains that are not local or local expresses there is usually a woman (i have yet to see a man) walking down the isles with a little cart selling food items, including pre-made bentos. Usually stuff I won’t eat, but that’s another topic. There are bentos sold in the convenience stores, and there are even little bento shops that sell nothing but bentos in disposable cartons.

Bento is so common in Japan that they come in all shapes and sizes. A simple google search shows images of many styles of bento boxes. Some are traditional japanese style, some are child themed with popular cartoon characters, some are single layers, and yet others are multi layered. Available at the ¥100 shops (100 yen about US$1) for cheap plastic bentos, and up to ¥6000 for those that have seals, and a chopstick holder.

A friend had posted about her plans to lose weight in her Livejournal. One of the links for food she’s making was at a site called JustBento(which is where I got the idea for this post). It’s an interesting website all about planning a Japanese style bento, and but also give recipes on non japanese style bentos. Which I am planning on trying in the near future. Including customized, non traditional onigiri (Japanese rice balls).

What I really like about the site is that the person blogging has a system for putting deciding what is in the bento. Basically portioned out by protein, carbs, and vegetables, and has also prepared a handy PDF to help. It’s a good resource, and if you are interested in Japanese food, or are trying to lose weight you should give it a look.