Streetpassing

I got a 3DS on Friday, thereby satiating my primal, consumerist needs and jumping on a bandwagon even before my friend G-dog, who owns every console under the sun. The damned Home Delivery Network decided to bring it round at 5.30pm, however, which I was not happy about, having seen via tracking that it was 'out for delivery' at 9.20am. Anyways, I am thus far besotted with the shiny blue thing.

It features something called Streetpass, which is a way for 3DSes to communicate with each other while in sleep mode (if you wish - it's optional). Basically, if you walk within a few feet of someone else with a 3DS in sleep mode, your 'Mii', a CG representation of yourself, will join their system, and theirs will join yours. You can see their character's name, favourite things and you can personalise a greeting as well.

There are two other features in the 3DS's 'Mii Plaza', which is the meeting area for all the Miis you've collected. There's a picture puzzle, where you start with one piece, but must acquire new ones from the Miis you meet. There's also Streetpass Quest, where your collected Miis must go on an adventure to fight ghosts and rescue you, who are the king and has been captured. Each character can only do a limited number of actions before having to give up, and once you've used one once, it can't be used again. This means you have to keep collecting new Miis to continue the quest, or else hire strange cat-people by spending game coins. The game coins are collected through the 3DS's pedometer while in sleep mode, so even if you don't pick up new Miis, the exercise you're doing will allow you to play anyway.

I headed into the city centre yesterday to do some writing, and take the opportunity to see if I'd pick anyone up on my 3DS. I wasn't sure how much of a response there would be the day after release, and after getting off the bus and walking the short way to the book shop coffee shop, I went into the Mii Plaza to check. Zilch so far, but that wasn't surprising. However, when I was done with my work, I walked a bit along Princes Street, into two game/media stores and even into a clothing sale where I picked up some shoes. When I made it onto the bus for home (made troublesome by the Edinburgh tram roadworks starting up again, I took another look. And behold! I had three new Mii friends. It told me I had picked them up 26 minutes before (two of them) and 30 minutes before. I'm not sure where I was at that time, but I found it exciting nonetheless. I promptly sent my adventurers on a quest and they managed to retrieve a Mario hat before becoming fatigued and having to go home. But now my Mii is wearing the Mario hat and will appear in it to everyone who collects him through Streetpass from now until I change it.

Makes me wish I was in Japan. One trip through Akihabara and I'm sure I'd pick up a few hundred Miis.

Sanity Check

I keep finding myself on websites that have video ads on the sidebar, which is annoying enough because the sound isn't muted like these things used to be, but also because of the kind of ads that appear.

Here's one - Dettol motion sensing hand soap dispenser. "Never touch a germy soap pump again!" they proudly declare. Now, call me old-fashioned, but when I touch a soap pump, usually it's to get some soap. And, slave to tradition that I am, I generally proceed to wash my hands with it. Am I an idiot to believe that any harm that may befall me from touchy a dirty soap pump would be mitigated by my subsequent hand-washing? Are Dettol saying that their soap isn't good enough to properly clean your hands?

Idiots.

Due hesitancy

I'm always suspsicious of nouns that end in 'y' that mean the same as another noun with the same root - hesitance and hesitancy. Hesitancy sounds like something George W would say.

Anyway, I've delayed my driving test again. My lesson was a bit of a nightmare today. I pretty much hate everything.

Fortunately, it turned out that I didn't get charged for rebooking my test, as I was before. I thought they charged you for canceling to offset their losses if your date wasn't picked up by someone else. It turns out they don't do that, but in fact some test dates/times are more expensive than others. I got charged extra the last time because I switched to a Saturday. This time I switched to a Thursday and I actually got the fee discounted. So there was an upside there.

Awkwardly, at the end of the lesson when we were talking things over, my instructor took a phone call from his car's manufacturer about a fault with his car that they're not acknowledging, and he got pretty testy with the girl on the other end. I could hear both sides of the conversation and could understand why he might be upset, but I think he went a bit overboard in venting his frustrations. And I was trapped in the driver's seat not knowing where to look.

It's not the first time I've considered getting another instructor, but it's so close to the end now there's not really much point. I just want to get the whole messy mess over with as soon as possible and never drive again.

Contemplating Disaster

I think the world is looking at the devastation in Japan in horror, and I'm with them. I couldn't quite connect to the tragedy at first (the BBC reported an awful lot from Tokyo, which was barely affected by the quake) but then I imagined what it would be like to be engulfed by water, losing any sense of where you are, and seeing your life flash before you in that instant. It's horrible to think about.

The quake and tsunami didn't affect the area around where I was living in Japan, and everyone I know over there is fine. Still, there are a few who have had trouble getting in contact with friends and family in the affected areas. I'm sure the country will be shaken up for a while.

But the Japanese spirit is a resilient one. They'll get through this, and the rest of the world is mobilising to help. It's good to see the international community rallying after a crisis.

And still, I want to go back.

The Persistence of Memory

When Jurassic Park came out, I'm sure it must have been some kind of a phenomenon. It certainly felt that way to my 7-year-old self. We had this thing...not sure where it was from, but it was a leaflet for ordering merchandise. My mum got me and my brother a baseball cap and a t-shirt each. The smallest size was for age 12. When mine arrived, the fact that it was like a marquee on me didn't stop me from wearing it most of that summer. When I grew into it (which didn't seem to take that long) I was sure it must have shrunk. I must have been at one of those growth spurty stages.

Anyway, before we went to see Jurassic Park in the cinema, my mum read us one of those simplified book-of-the-film things. One moment that stuck in my mind was the scene where Dennis Nedry crashes his car trying to escape off the island, and is spat at by a dilophosaurus, who goes on to kill him. When we finally saw it on the big screen, that was the one scene I couldn't watch. I hid my head in my hands until Sam Neill came back.

The stupid thing is, we got the film on video as well, and I did the same thing whenever we watched it again. Ten years later I'd still never watched the scene in its entirety. I suppose in the same way as with the t-shirt, where I didn't trust that I was getting bigger year on year, I never stopped to consider I might be brave enough to deal with a dilophosaur attack. Maybe it was habit more than anything else.

I bring it up because Jurassic Park was on TV last weekend and for the first time in years, I sat down to watch it. And still, when that scene came, I found myself not wanting to look at the screen. Worse than that, I made excuses in my head about why I was too busy to look at the screen at that point, that I didn't have anything to prove. Eventually I decided enough was enough, and I watched it. It was nothing really, of course, though it still creeped me out as I looked. Remnants of emotions from childhood. Weird things.

Incidentally, I caught a bit of the end of King Solomon's Mines last night. This was another film that delighted my brother and I when we were little, though we can only have seen it once or twice. I think it must have been about 18 years since I last saw it, and could barely even remember what it was about, but when I saw John Rhys-Davies' character (basically an evil version of his Indiana Jones character) enter a room of diamonds with a gun pointed at the other, German villain, I suddenly remembered what was going to happen. He was going to make the other guy eat the diamonds. The memory traveled from childhood like a bullet. I astounded myself.

I wonder if there are any things that have happened since childhood that I'll still remember as vividly in ten or twenty years. Somehow I doubt it.

The week that was

I haven't blogged for a while. I've had a few things going on, and the last week was pretty stressful.

There was a temporary job going at the Japanese Consulate here in Edinburgh, filling in while someone takes maternity leave. I really wanted the job. I sent in a CV (resume, for Americanos) that was crafted so perfectly to the position as advertised, and was delighted by an email inviting me for an interview on Wednesday. Other things going on this week, to put things in context, were driving lessons on Monday, Wednesay and Thursday, teaching on Tuesday and Wednesday and writing 40 lines of poetry for my creative writing course, due in on Thursday. Also, my friend Terrina, a fellow Tokushima JET alumnus, was visiting. She actually helped me buy a suit on Tuesday after I realised I'd lost a pair of black trousers and didn't have a matching suit set.

Anyway, I spent most of the week as a mess of nerves, partly from being really invested in the idea of getting this job, and partly also from driving lessons, which had gone badly the previous weeks. My test is booked for the 10th of March at the moment so there's a bit of pressure there. I prepared answers to a good number of common interview questions and headed off to the consulate on Wednesday afternoon. The person who was seen before me was one of the other two JET returners who came back at the same as me, who I met at the reception at the consul general's house, and had been working as a CIR (and therefore fluent in Japanese) so I knew competition would be tough. I was kind of pissed off about this fact. I was hoping all the former JET people who were potentially better qualified than me would already have jobs by now.

The interview involved being asked questions by two of the consuls, while the Scottish lady who would be taking maternity, and the consul general himself, watched and 'moderated'. I thought the interview went okay - it was hard to tell because it was only about ten minutes long and didn't feel very in-depth. The only odd point was after I'd given a perhaps slightly vague answer to a "Why are you interested in Japan?" type question from the first interviewer, and then when the second interviewer took over later, he more or less said, "I'm not sure exactly from what you've said what exactly your interest in Japan is" in a kind of accusatory manner. It was like he was saying, "What's REALLY going on here?" Maybe he had a point. I'm not even sure why I'm interested in Japan. I used to be super interested in Japanese anime and dramas, but after moving there I just loved it as a place. The country itself, and the language were my interests. I tried to explain that. I hope that wasn't what cost me the job (as I found I wasn't successful on Friday) - that would be unfortunate. But it's no use beating myself up about things I can't ever know. Anyway, I was told to expect to hear the result in the next couple of days since they wanted to sort it out quickly.

Thursday was devoted to polishing poetry. Well, perhaps not so much polishing as removing some of the grubbier stains. A poem is never finished, merely abandoned. Here's my favourite of the two I submitted, which I post here because it was inspired by Steve, the occasional fox visitor to our back garden:

Urban fox

There is a sometime visitor,
a midnight stalker, sleepwalker,
with eyes like candle flames that see me looking.
Not like his woodland brothers at all – rich red, well-fed,
no - a shadow of a pastoral past
that dined on chickens and made farmers mad.
Is he a parallel for our ruin,
This city slicker, this Freegan with a scrawny shell,
his coat an indifferent, mucky brown with scars of war – snout cut
by rims of baked bean tins from toppled bins,
A walking wreck?

If I could speak his tongue, or else
give meaning to a look, the way dogs do, I’d ask
What made him choose this life of ours,
This dusty, dirty orange glow
of takeaways and ready meals.
Was it the social memory
Of horns, of horses and of hounds,
and men in red in hot pursuit? “You fool,” I’d say,
“The hunt’s long-gone,
The countryside is safe, it’s us
that’s doomed, and chased and overwhelmed
by so much nonsense.”

And yet with this lone wolf, this pioneer
I feel a sense of camaraderie,
As one who also walks
A path of some resistance, a
Late-night escapader, fridge-raider
Insomniac and ponderer
Of the urban fox.

Anyway, I told my Canadian friend Terrina that I'd spend the day with her on Friday, since I'd been busy for much of the rest of the week. She decided we'd do a Highland tour, going up through the Trossachs, past Glencoe to Loch Ness. As a 1-day tour, heading all the way to Loch Ness involves a lot of driving. We were never really off the bus for much longer than an hour at a time. The weather was typically Scottish, fluctuating between bright sunshine and torrential rain, as if the heavens are suffering from ADHD. Terrina has an indomitable spirit that is infectious, however, so we had a good time. We fed highland cows, ate bad pasta, did a boat tour on Loch Ness and tasted whisky on the way home. I was aware all day that my fate RE: the job would probably have been decided. I had my phone on me, though the correspondence previously had all been done through email so I wasn't sure if I should expect a phone call. By the time we got back to Edinburgh I'd convinced myself I hadn't got the job, because I was sure they would have had to confirm it with me over the phone since it was a Friday and they would be closed over the weekend. I think that helped, really. Having the long bus journey to start consoling myself, so that by the time I got home, five and a half hours after leaving Loch Ness, I was almost ready to read the bad news. It was still a pretty crushing disappointment. In my head I'd already started living an exciting inner-city life, having moved out of my parents' house and started writing seriously on evenings and weekends. DREAMS ftw.

It's odd, because it took me a while before I decided whether I really wanted this job or not. I supposed after finally deciding I did, I invested more and more of my hopes into it until it was like I was applying to be the next ambassador to Japan, rather than a low-level functionary. The job might have been a load of arse. I will never no. I will try to get over it.

Irrationally missing Japan

There's this tv show that started last week. Justin Lee Collins 'goes native' in Japan, ostensibly to find the 'real Japan', the one beyond his stereotypical notion. I've seen a fair few shows of this type, where the presenter goes around experiencing various aspects of the culture, getting access to the local world that a regular tourist never enjoys. In this case, things are a little different, and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

The usual stuff has come up - host clubs, weird-flavoured food products, karaoke, theme bars, a sex dolls. What I find weird about it is these little pieces to camera that Collins does after encountering some of the stranger aspects. Now, Justin Lee Collins is best known as a kind of hyperactive presenter-comedian who doesn't take things seriously. But in these pieces to camera - and they're not even to camera - the camera looks at him while he talks to someone diagonally behind the camera, as if it's filming a secret conversation - he suddenly puts on his judgemental hat and talks about how disturbing and awful whatever he's just seen is, in a very serious tone.

I don't know what to make of it. His reactions seem genuine, but it annoys me that he thinks that that's all Japan is. His researchers and producers have no doubt gone to every effort to ensure he sees the most messed up aspects of the country. What he probably doesn't realise is that if you showed the average non-city dwelling Japanese person most of this stuff, they'd have a similar reaction. You'd probably surprise a few Tokyoites as well. It would be fine if he'd said he was deliberately trying to find the craziest aspects of Japanese culture, but instead he's claimed to have gone in search of reality, and stands in judgement of what he's found. Shame on you, JLC.

I almost always avoid watching TV shows about Japan, because they make me want to be back there. Most of the stuff on TV is a Japan I never went to, or at least never lived in. It's not all bright lights, hi-tech gadgetry and maid cafes. But still, seeing all that stuff reminds me of my visits to the cities, which were always some of the most fun times in my overall more sedate time in the country. I don't want to lose my connections through the people I knew and the language I learned. I'll go back some day.