Downside of the season: cold and rainy. Upside of the season: cherry blossoms!
Tokyo doesn't offer much in the way of antiquities but the Meiji shrine and its surrounding park are a green oasis of tranquility surrounded by city.
Tokyo has lots of tall buildings but I particularly appreciate the NTT Docomo building for its 1930 New York vibe. I converted the image to grayscale but on another cold rainy day there wasn't much hue in the picture anyway.
A group of young ladies in Asakusa. Before you get too excited, I'm pretty sure they're all tourists.
Asakusa at night.
Doesn't look very Japanese? Actually this is the interior of Magellan's restaurant in the Tokyo DisneySea park, themed to Portuguese exploration. This was my first visit to this park---Disneylands exist around the world but DisneySea exists only in Tokyo. I must say I was really impressed with the design and execution of the park. For example, most theme parks have fake mountains and fake caves with fake rocks but Tokyo DisneySea has the most realistic fake rocks and grandest fake caves I have ever seen. Most visitors probably won't notice it consciously but it really aids the suspension of disbelief. I also learned later from Google Maps that a road cuts straight across the middle of the park but it is camouflaged so smoothly that one never suspects it is there.
Change of location---ocean scenery near Nagasaki.
View from our hotel window in Nagasaki.
Exterior shot of Haneda airport.
Japanese commuter train on the Sobu Line with cherry blossoms. Commuter trains never looked this good.
Creepy autonomous chair at Haneda airport. I, for one, welcome our new chair overlords and would like to point out I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground slipcover factories.
This is outside my normal range of topics for this blog, but I just spent roughly an hour figuring this out and on-line resources were weirdly unhelpful. At the end of the post I'll say more about this, but first the how-to:
The assumption is that your computer has both a built-in CD drive and an external CD drive attached. Windows Media Player (WMP) wants to use the internal drive for burning CDs but for whatever reason you want to use the external drive. How do you make WMP do this?
(Note this discussion is for burning CDs, not ripping or something else. I'm using Windows 10 but maybe it will work in some other versions.)
1. Plug the external drive in and put in a blank CD.
2. If a window pops up saying "What do you want to do with this CD", click the little X in the corner to close it without responding.
3. Open Windows Explorer and right-click on the external CD drive. (If Windows Explorer fails to recognize the external drive, then you have yet another issue that I don't know about, sorry.)
4. Choose "Properties" from the drop-down list.
5. Choose the "Recording" tab.
6. If your computer is like mine, you will see "Disc burning" and then "Select the disc-burning drive that Windows will use by default." Under this select your external CD drive.
7. Close this little window.
8. Open Windows Media Player and select the "Burn" tab on the top right-hand side.
9. If your computer is like mine, it will still show the internal drive as the burning destination. However, under that the words "Next drive" have appeared. Click on that until your external CD drive is the one shown above (probably just one click).
10. Drag music files into the list below the tab as normally.
11. Click the "Start burn" button at the top of the list as normally.
I tried this and it worked for me. I'm listening to the disc now (Pat Metheny "Bright Size Life").
Good luck!
-oOo-
Okay now for the rant. I started this journey by searching "windows media player change burn drive" on Google, and the following results show up at the top of the list:
As you can see the first highlighted search result shows part of the response and it appears to be actually relevant although also rather intense. However when you click on the result the page that comes up is different:
So we see that the respondent has avoided answering the question asked and instead tried to change the subject. I don't get it. If that answer is "sorry can't do this" then just say so. But what really peeves me is the bait-and-switch on the part of Google. I spent maybe an hour following other search results and always the same result. Don't answer the question, change the subject.
As a tail-end baby boomer, a reliable source of entertainment here in 2023 is listening to 30-something (or even 20-something) experts explain to me what life was like in the 60's. Among other things, this comes up in the context of Critical Race Theory (CRT). I don't intend to opine on CRT as such in this post, partly because so far any explanation I hear suffers from such obvious fallacies that I think I must be hearing wrong. (Feel free to try explaining it in the comments, anyone who can refrain from ad-hominem attacks.)
However, part of the background to the CRT discussion is the assertion that hitherto history education in the U.S. has glossed over slavery and racism. This is just wrong. As someone who grew up in the south in the 60's, who went to lily-white schools with some of the most smugly racist people you could want to meet, I can assure you that we did learn about slavery, we did learn about Jim Crow. And the message was clear that racism was bad, Jim Crow was bad.
That was in history class. We were also required to read and discuss Huckleberry Finn in English class. In this respect I think our education on racism might have run considerably deeper in the 1960's than now in the 2020's---I'm not sure that students today still have this requirement. This may have less to do with glossing over racism than protecting tender young minds from the burden of reading an actual book.
Now this is all according to my recollection. Recently, however, I realized we have proof in plain sight that in the 60's people were quite aware of the role of racism in U.S. history and took it seriously.
That is the movie 1776, released in 1972. Actually it was based on a stage musical that opened in 1969, which is why we can consider it as a data point from the 60's. The movie is rather like an earlier version of Hamilton, although 1776 aims for historical accuracy rather than race-swapping and employing hip-hop idiom. Most of the story takes place within the meeting room of the Continental Congress (which you can visit, looking more or less exactly as in the film, if you visit Philadelphia). It describes the surprisingly difficult process of coming to a consensus among the American colonies on declaring independence from England.
I like the movie. It's both fun and educational.
When I was in college, I found in the library a copy of the libretto for this show--a small book which listed all the dialogue. At the end was an appendix--an excellent idea--which noted the historical accuracies and inaccuracies of the story: this really happened, this we made up, this we surmised etc. One particular point I still recall; I'll come back to this later.
So, interesting fact which you can learn from this movie: the original draft of the Declaration of Independence included a paragraph on the evils of slavery. You don't see it now because the southern states, enthusiastic slave-holders that they were, insisted it be removed as the price of their support for independence. This is a huge plot point, the major crisis of the story. There's even a dark dramatic musical number, pointing up the hypocrisy of northerners who were also profiting from the slave trade.
This was in 1969.
Now what I learned from the appendix to the libretto: The main characters of the film are John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson; and John Adams is the first among these. The writers took the license of merging the character of John Adams with his brother Samuel Adams.
During the forementioned crisis our three protagonists are arguing over whether to strike the slavery paragraph from the Declaration of Independence. John Adams says: "If we give in on this issue posterity will never forgive us." This is an actual quote, from a letter of Sam Adams--almost an exact quote.
Actually what Sam Adams really said was: "If we give in on this issue, there will be trouble a hundred years hence; posterity will never forgive us." (italics mine) And the authors explain that they had to take out this prescient phrase, which was just waaay too on the nose.
Anyway, don't trust anyone who tells you that the role of slavery and racism in U.S. history was somehow covered up until just recently. It wasn't.
...as in how to trigger and improve your reminiscence of a pleasant experience. (You could do the same for an unpleasant experience, but why?)
Certain stimuli are known to trigger reminiscence. The most well-known is scent. Decades ago, my first job was at a fence company. I spend hours in the shed out back, putting pointed tops on picket boards, using a specially-designed power tool as scary as any chainsaw used in a massacre. To this day, when I smell freshly-cut lumber, it instantly takes me back to that shed.
Then again, one of my first posts here noted how the scent of wood pervaded with incense smoke takes me to a Japanese temple.
Theoretically you can stimulate a reminscence by (1) identifying a relevant scent to the experience and then (2) deliberately exposing yourself to the scent later. The problem with this is that if you leave step (1) to chance, step (2) is likely to be hard to pull off. My suggestion is to artificially associate an unusual but easily obtainable scent with the initial experience, so that you can later expose yourself to the scent at will.
What kind of scent? Perhaps an herbal oil. These come in small convenient vials. But choose a scent you are not already overly familiar with.
I haven't tried this yet.
A second trigger for reminiscence, as everybody knows, is music. Everyone has songs that trigger memories of a certain time and place, or even a particular experience. Often the experience itself provides the musical trigger. Visit Disneyland, and when you come back you can find the ambient music loops on YouTube. Sometimes the connection is more complicated---I recently wrote about how a certain Quincy Jones song reminds me of walking in Tokyo at night.
But here again you can forge an artificial connection. On my trip to Myanmar some years ago (incredible bit of fortuitous timing), I made a point of listening to the Double song Rangoon Moon repeatedly. And now listening to it takes me back to that trip.
So next time you are planning a happy experience, design a soundtrack for it ahead of time. Then use your music player while the experience is happening, or on the way there and back.
This post is primarily a prediction, and secondarily a rant.
When I was a kid growing up in the 60's and 70's, the future looked awesome. Flying cars, moving sidewalks, cities on the Moon.... Now of course we have none of that. The technology of real 2022 is no match for what was envisioned.
This however is not what I choose to rant about today. No, my complaint is that the technology of 2022 is bland compared to what we had already in the 70's.
Hollywood knows this already, which is why the John Wick series, The Mechanic, the Loki series, etc. use retro technology.
Technology has become more capable but less beautiful, and frankly less cognizant of human needs.
The Studebaker interior is carefully designed. Every element has a specific purpose and a specific stable and predictable haptic design. One can reach and manipulate any control without taking eyes off the road.
The Tesla has a cheap tablet glued to the dashboard.
Some call the Tesla design elegant. No it isn't. No design is elegant which functions poorly. Make no mistake, the driving factor in this design choice was cheapness. But I don't need to dive deeper into the particular case of Tesla, which has been and continues to be well commented on elsewhere.
So I call your attention to this strange discrepancy---it doesn't mean I'm the first to catch on to it. As noted above, Hollywood is wise to it. One more example: in the James Bond movie Spectre:
When Bond gifts Moneypenny with an "untraceable" phone, it's not another featureless rectangle but actually has physical, touchable buttons. This was an older Samsung model that was already obsolete when the movies came out. But a contemporary phone would have been just too bland.
You've heard of "steampunk" I hope? Appreciating the beauty and elegance or steam-era technology. The best example I know is Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,
although I'm pretty sure the term "steampunk" didn't exist when this movie was made. Perhaps less well known is "dieselpunk"
which celebrates the aesthetic of World War II-era technology. Note that both of these are rather fuzzy terms, and the elements "steam" and "diesel" refer more to an era than a literal energy source.
And so it would seem to be time to coin a new term Transistorpunk. Celebrating the aesthetic of technology from the 60's and 70's more or less. Not limited to transistors, but including vacuum tubes, nixie tubes, definitely tactile push buttons.
"If you don't do something about it, you're going to have taco trucks on every corner." --Marco Gutierrez, 2016.
I'm one of those who likes to say "there are two kinds of people," although what two kinds those are may vary from day to day. Today I'm here to tell you that people can be divided into novelty seekers and novelty avoiders. This difference illuminates a lot of what we see in life, including our politics. (This post is not about politics, but there are many serious researchers [which I am not] who could tell you much about the connection.) I find the quote above (meant as a serious warning) a perfect illustration. Gutierrez clearly is not only a novelty-avoider but apparently cannot imagine that some people (novelty-seekers) find the prospect of a taco truck on every corner rather enticing.
As is often the case, I myself am a particularly interesting example.
I say this because over the arc of my life I have transitioned from being a novelty-avoider to a novelty-seeker--proof that we are not born destined to be one or the other. As a small kid, our family went to eat very occasionally to a Chinese restaurant. I was the one who insisted on ordering from the "American" section of the menu and would sit there eating a hamburger while the rest of the family gorged themselves on Chinese food. This, by the way, was the only time that I would have any interaction with Asian people, limited to looking at the waitress in the Chinese restaurant. Our environment was just extremely homogeneous.
I stubbornly refused to even try Chinese food until the age of fifteen, when I was finally coaxed into eating a bit, and it quickly became my favorite. A lesson to be had there.
My friends and I had only the vaguest concept of differences between countries of East Asia. We were really only aware even of the existence of China and Japan--and Vietnam as well, since there was a war going on there. But in our minds they were essentially indistinguishable. When it came to Japan, we could have named two special characteristics--they took off their shoes inside the house, and they ate raw fish (which in those days seemed incredibly bizarre).
That was a long time ago. Now I have a considerably deeper understanding and interest in things Japanese, which has enriched my life in many ways, some not at all obvious. Thinking back, I have realized that my first impressions of Japan came from the movies--from two particular movies. I have since rewatched both of these many times, and recommend both of them to people who enjoy low-key comedy.
The first is Teahouse of the August Moon (1956). Perhaps I'll have more to say about this one in the future.
The second is Walk Don't Run (1966), a unique kind of three-sided love story which takes place in modern-day (1964) Tokyo. It also happens to be Cary Grant's last movie, and it's good to see he was a smooth as ever.
In those days we had no VHS, no DVD, no streaming on demand, which means the only way I would see this movie is being taken by my parents to the movie theater. As a kid, I completely ignored the main plot of the movie, but some of the broader moments of comedy made an impression on me that I can still recall today--for example the romantic lead Jim Hutton taking a flying leap into a public bath. Those scenes are what I consciously recall.
Several years later, in adolescence, other minor events triggered a serious fascination with things Japanese: the butterfly effect in action. It was then that I started studying the Japanese language. These two movies had vanished from active recall by then--I could not even have told you the titles.
Next event in the story: in 1983 I visited Japan for the first time. Yeah, it was great, and it fleshed out all kinds of rather superficial knowledge I had from books and photos. Fragrances, the feel of the air, all kinds of things you can only get from being there. (Ah, here is the exception that proves the rule.)
And then in 1984: I hear Quincy Jones' song Velas on the radio for the first time. Super-mellow R&B, with the legendary Toots Thielemans on the harmonica. But I'm hearing something else in the music. To me this sounds like Tokyo--like walking on one of the urban backstreets at night. These are not the vast neon jungles you see in the movies, but tranquil, a mixture of shops and homes, passers-by but not crowded, with a balmy summer breeze. It's not the kind of place that tourists take pictures of, but in retrospect it's a fond idyllic memory. I did find one 1983 photo, and put it at the top of this post.
I couldn't account for this effect of the music--not yet.
But one day shortly thereafter: I was browsing in a used record store. Once again, in those days we had no MP3's, no music streaming. Acquiring music depended on having the luck to come across it in a store. On that day I came across this:
As I have said, by this time I no longer remembered the title of this movie nor had thought about it for many years. So my first thought looking at this was: Hey, I know this movie!
And then the next thing I noticed: It's Quincy Jones!
And later I found: and Toots Thielemans!
Naturally I bought the record and listened--music I had heard just once eighteen years earlier, and never once thought about.
Breezy cheerful R&B. That whistling is Toots Thielemans again. Not at all "Oriental" sounding, but it was embedded in my subconscious as "Japan" since age eight.
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