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Onsen are very popular in Japan. As Japan is on an active tectonic fault, it’s prone to earthquakes and has volcanic activity. One of the upsides of this is a significant number of hot springs all over the place. As in most places these are used for vacation and therapeutic purposes. So popular are hot springs that their water is sometimes trucked many miles by road tanker. For example, there’s an Onsen near the Nippon 2007 site (The Pacifico Yokohama) which receives its water daily by road from the Atami Onsen down the coast.

I visited the Atami Onsen  (Atami Train Station picture) for a staff meeting of the Nippon 2007 worldcon over the weekend. There’s a  bunch of pictures from the banquet and the party on the gallery. Unfortunately, since I have eczema, taking baths in very hot water is not a good idea, so I didn’t try out the hot baths myself. For those worried about reports of mixed bathing facilities, the vast majority of Onsen do NOT have mixed bathing. For some reason, possibly to do with differences in the facilities or the feed of the water, the hotel we were in would switch around which of the two facilities was male and which female. If visiting these places without a Japanese reader (and the signs used there were not so simple as just otoko/onna, but used more complicated kanji signs which I wouldn’t have been happy relying on, although I was fairly sure I could tell which was which) then you should ask the staff.

It was still an interesting experience. The staff shared “Tatami Rooms” with up to five to a room. These Tatami Rooms consisted of two parts: a really traditional tatami room which contained floor level seats (backs and seats but no legs) and table, during the day, and which were re-set to futons in the evening. The other half contained two western style single beds. So if you’re going as a couple , you could have one such room and it would serve as a suite. Don’t expect that to be cheap, however. I’m not sure what the split was between the room and the banquet, but it was about Y13000 for me to share the room and pay for the banquet.
One of the rooms the staff were using  was given over to a “Tatami Room Party” on the Saturday night. It was still going very strong when I bailed at 3am. Room parties look like they’re alive and well and living in Japanese fandom.

An ode to the RIAA

Great stuff.

Yesterday (Tuesday 16th January) I went around the Conference and Exhibition Centres where the Nippon 2007 worldcon will be held. Tamie-san helped John and Peggy Rae Sapienza move from a hotel near Narita to one of the convention hotels. I met up with them and we had lunch in the Intercontinental Hotel (fairly nice but very expensive and quite small portions) then met with staff from the conference centre. They showed us many of the rooms we’ll be using for the convention, including the main theatre, the smaller programme rooms and the big exhibit hall which is where most of the elements of my division will be sited. There are some photos on the gallery, principally of the big barn of the Exhibit Hall. We were also shown the Harbour Lounges where some of the evening events will probably be taking place.

Lots of useful information about the programme rooms, which will inform our discussions this coming weekend at a staff meeting in Atami.

Exhibit Hall A is pretty close to a rectangle 80m by 45m. It has a set of toilets at the loading dock end. There’s a convenience store just outside the entrance to the hall, which is open from 07:00 to 23:00. The store contains an ATM which takes Visa and Mastercard – useful for the dealer’s room.

Despite having been to Paris many times I’ve never been up the eye-ful tower. I was skeptical about the worth of such things until I went on a flight around the London Eye a few years ago. So, I decided that I should visit the Tokyo Tower fairly early in my trip to Tokyo. Since John and Peggy Rae Sapienza are over from the US for a few weeks I arranged to meet them near the tower. Since they were staying out near Narita, we met at Hamamatsu-Cho station which was convenient for both of us coming in. Unfortunately it was a little further to walk than it looked on the map so John and Peggy Rae were a bit wasted later on in the day due to the initial walk. Still, we managed to find each other easily enough at Hamamatsu-Cho station and make our way without incident up to the Tower, John and I stopping to take some pictures at the Zojou-ji shrine on the way past (see the gallery).

Apparently, on a really clear day, one can see Fuji-san from the Tower. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a clear enough day so even the nearby mountains were little more than dimly-perceived misty shapes. I took quite a few photos of the view from the tower, out over Port of Tokyo and of the many skyscrapers visible (see the gallery).

A worthwhile thing to do if in Tokyo. Only 820 yen (adult) to go to the 150m observatory. There’s a higher level observatory at 250m, for a higher price, if you feel like being on top of the world.

In the UK, we have things called muffins and American muffins. A muffin is a small bread-like roll which is designed for toasting. An American muffin is a large Fairy Cake.

In the US they have muffins (large Fairy Cakes) and English muffins, which are sort of like the UK version but not quite. They’ve got larger holes within the bread and they toast to a much crisper, harder surface.

In Japan, you can get something much closer to muffins than an English muffin is.

Oh, and the microwave in my guest house room can also work as a toaster (it’s a bit slower than a normal electric toaster or grill but at least it works) and as a conventional oven as well.

As those who know me even moderately are aware, I’m still wedded to my Psion 5 PDA. Yes, it’s old technology, but it does what I need. The main reason I’m still using it, though, is the lack of a decent clamshell keyboard replacement device. Every so often, someone promises something that looks like it might be a replacement I’d use, but mostly they’re vapourware. Today’s Register shows a device at the CES in Las Vegas that looks like what I’ve been waiting for, though. I’m still not entirely sure about the looks of that keyboard, but the fold-out-and-out case design looks like it might be OK. It’s only just a bit bigger than a Psion.
Since I’m in the land of the technophile, I’ll have to go and see what they’ve got down at Shinjuku and Akihabara. I’ve already got a loyalty card with Yodobashi Camera from buying my camera there.

Yesterday I got a terrible longing for a Mars Bar. Now, I don’t often eat Mars Bars. A bit too much sugar in them without anything to “cut” it with, so if I have a chocolate bar it would normally be a Snickers or something else with nuts or fruit or rice in it. I think this might be a “want what you can’t get” thing. Anyway, Mars Bars don’t seem to be regularly available here, although for some reasons Snickers often are. So, I had to settle for a Snickers instead.

On the other hand, I bought some crisps at the Yuri supermarket (literally “profitable” store, I think) today. They were “baked potato with butter” flavour. They really were, too. Yum!

There have been a number of pieces I’ve read about the way English people behave on trains and the underground. The most detailed was Kate Fox’s “Watching the English”. The main rules for the English are:

• Don’t talk to anyone.
• You may ask for information about what stop it is, or may grumble (preferably in an ironic manner) about delays or maybe the weather, to each other.
• If you have travelled regularly (i.e. most days for years) with a particular traveller, then you might nod to them each day.
• Newspapers are for hiding behind.
• Never meet the gaze of someone else or if you do, break the eye contact as soon as possible.
• When using a mobile phone always shout, preferably starting the call with “I’m on the train!” or “I’m on the train! Yes, on the train! Can you hear me?”. Whenever possible make highly private phone calls and laugh often, loudly and annoyingly whenever feasible.
• Ignore the “quiet carriage” signs or even walk the entire length of the platform at Paddington to get on to the quiet carriage with a small child and a cat.
  OK, so I made this one up after the second time in a week in December finding people in the quiet carriage with a sub-5 yo child. The first family that did this had the mother tell the child to be quiet because it was the quiet carriage very early on in the trip and then herself became much louder than the child in a card game she instigated. It was the second family who had the cat, who was much quieter than the homo insapiens.
• When people ignore the quiet carriage signs sigh, tut quietly and look pointedly at the “quiet carriage” signs but under no circumstances verbally point out to people that it is the quiet carriage.

The Japanese clearly share some of these rules: (more…)

In an attempt to avoid being squashed too much on my first proper working day in Tokyo, I left it until after 9am to get the train into Tokyo. Leaving Ikuta station at 09:15 or so, the local stopping train wasn’t particularly full. As usual I got off the local train at tongue-twisting Mukogaoka-Yuen to pick up one of the faster express services. That arrived on an adjacent platform while the local stopping train was still there but was already pretty full before the group off my train got on to it, and I’d ended up at the back of the queue (see another post I’ll make today for queueing and other etiquette on trains in Tokyo). So, I decided to hop back on the local train and pass one more station up to the easier to pronounce (and remember) Noborito and catch the next express from there, figuring it might be less crowded by then. I could have just waited at Mukogaoka-Yuen, but what the heck. I was nearer the front of the queue at Noborito to get on the next semi-express (between Noborito and Shinjuku the semi-express and the express are identical). This was still pretty crowded but when we got to the next express stop, another tongue-twister – Seijogakuen-Mae, even more people got on and very few got off. It wasn’t quite white-gloves packing people in. As Murata-sensei put it, we could all still breathe. But even so, it was pretty sardine-like in there.

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I spent much of the day with Inoue-san and Tamie-san at a new year’s party at their apartment in Mitaka, another Western suburb of Tokyo. It took about an hour to get there between two trains and a bus. Imaoka Ato-san (deep in thought using the computer in this photo) kindly agreed to meet me at the train station and show me where to go on the bus and to their door. After hanging around outside for a bit at the station I popped back inside and found Ato-san waiting there for me, of course. We wandered over towards the bus stops and he rang Tamie-san on his keitai (Japanese for mobile phone, also keitai-denwa). She’d forgotten something she needed for the party (don’t you always) so we had to retrace our steps to the station which is in the same building at Kichijouji as the shopping centre. That done, we headed back tot he bus station once again. It had turned a little bit colder in Tokyo today, though it’s probably still a little unseasonably warm. During the wait for the bus, another of the Nippon committee turned up and joined us in the queue, heading for the same party. When getting off the bus we found that another of the Inoue’s friends had also been on the bus so there were four of us at the door when we arrived.

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