Hot Music Videos

I'm still on a pretty strong Grizzly Bear kick at the moment (click here for my last post about them). I just love it when bands (and their labels) make it easy for you to obsess over them by posting lots of freely viewable and embeddable videos online.

And Grizzly Bear is a good example of this. You can find their music videos and other random performances on video sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. By the way, after you watch the official Grizzly Bear video for their hit "Two Weeks", go ahead and watch this fan video as well. Ho. Lee. Crap.

On to my newest discovery, this time from a band called OK Go. They just released an absolutely ridiculous video for their song "This Too Shall Pass" that simply entertains, amazes, and brings you back to your high school science class days all at the same time.

Without further ado:



Most of the videos mentioned above are available in HD (high definition), so if you'd like to see better quality versions, they shouldn't be hard to find.

And a quick hint for any record label execs who happen across this blog for some strange reason: this type of thing makes me buy CDs, write about what I paid money for, and generally become passionate about your product. If I can't embed the videos that I like in my own site and share my interests with others, guess what? I'm not going to pay money for the stuff that you're flogging.

Hot Music Videos

Cheap Red Wine

Drinking wine from a box is something that a lot of people do. Myself included. I clearly recall the days (read: college) when many small get-togethers with friends involved at least one three liter box of the stuff. The wine wasn't phenomenal, but at that stage of my life I didn't really care. I believe my style of thinking was more along the lines of 'Three liters of wine for under fifteen dollars? OK, I'll take four, please.'

And that style of thinking is still with me to some extent, although I'm sure it resurfaces less frequently than my wallet would like.

One such instance was this past weekend when I picked up a 600 yen bottle of red wine housed in a plastic bottle. Apparently beverage behemoth, Suntory, has teamed up with a winery or two in France to produce a red and white Cocovin. They both come packaged in plastic.

Yes, plastic.

Big deal, right? Haven't we already gotten used to screw-top caps due to the cork shortage? Aren't we destined for packaging techniques that reduce shipping costs? Hell, some of the Beaujolais Nouveau sold this year in Japan hit the shelves in plastic. Not that the stuff was great wine or anything, but you get the picture. And I believe that was a pretty faithful rendition of what was going through my mind at the time.

Well...I guess I should have known better. As you probably guessed, the wine was a little bit...interesting. I'm now slightly suspicious that the wine shipped under the Cocovin brand has leftover Beaujolais Nouveau mixed in with it. It has that same kind of brash floral aroma that vaults out of the bottle as soon as it's uncorked unscrewed. And it's just as floral on the palate, but coming from me that's not a compliment. I started to get the feeling that I was sucking on a lilac bush. And the taste lingered for quite a while after I had gulped. Yikes.

White wines are the ones that have more acidity; it defines them, gives them a presence and a backbone that is expected and appreciated. However, the Cocovin red, for whatever reason, is light on tannins but heavy on acidity, especially in the finish. The result is a rather flowery-sour aftertaste.

That said, you get what you pay for, and I certainly did. For those who wish to head down this route, I would highly recommend putting the red in the fridge for at least an hour before opening. After the mercury drops, the aroma calms down and the aftertaste diminishes noticeably. At that temperature, you could argue that it's worth 600 yen.

Oh woe is us. Is this what we're in for? It seems fairly obvious that in order to sell people on the whole 'wine in a plastic bottle' thing, even if it's going to make our hooch cheaper, a lot of said wine better be pretty damned good. Otherwise we're not going to buy it. We'll be headed straight down the whole rosé path again (nobody would buy it until it was renamed blush, remember?). Anyway, message to Suntory: please try again.

But I digress. Come to think of it, two extra seconds of brain usage and I would have realized that I haven't bought wine in anything other than a glass bottle for a good 10 years. There's obviously a reason for that.

Lesson learned. I guess I actually care about what I drink now. The extra 300 yen per bottle is well worth it.

Cheap Red Wine

New Phone: Sony Ericsson S001

Had a little bit of a mishap on Monday evening and gave my trusty cell phone a 40 minute dip in the washing machine. It came out looking all sparkly and shiny, but it didn't really feel like turning on.

And no, I hadn't backed up my address book.

So we headed over to the au shop in Tanashi on Tuesday afternoon to figure out what could be done. Apparently you can ship your phone off to the manufacturer, and they can often get the data off of a phone that has drowned. The service takes about a week and costs 10,500 yen (roughly US$100). But while we were chatting about what to do, and the guy I was talking to was explaining my options to me, my phone started to buzz as an e-mail came through.

It's alive!

Why the au guy hadn't bothered to check whether or not the data was retrievable is perhaps an issue for another time, but the good news is that he was able to get my entire address book out of it and onto my new phone.

And my new phone is the green one pictured above. It has an eight mega-pixel Sony Cyber-shot camera crammed inside it, and there seem to be a lot of bells and whistles that I still have no idea how to use.

The one thing that I don't like so much about it is the fact that the 'clear' button rests just slightly below the down button, so it's very easy for people with adult-sized hands to hit them both at the same time.

Other than that, I don't have any serious complaints as of yet. I never thought I'd buy a slide phone, but my options were a bit limited to be honest with you. I'm still a little bummed because I really liked my old phone. It had a scrollbar which made tearing through a long message or my address book very easy.

Oh well. That's life, I guess. I learned my lesson. I immediately backed up my address book, which was miraculously salvaged from my water-logged cell, when I returned home.

New Phone: Sony Ericsson S001

TV Commercials (except the ones I'm in) are Evil

Back in the day, commercial advertising in the states was limited to either A-list celebs, or nobodies like me.

But recently things in the US have become more Japanese. A lot of the lines that were never crossed before, such as the stars of a TV drama leading an ad that airs in the middle of said drama, are miles behind us now.

I've never been a fan of TV commercials (although they sometimes help pay the bills), but Corey Levitan puts it more eloquently than I normally do:

Just as advertisers weaseled themselves onto pay cable and into DVDs, they've figured out how to prevent me from skipping over their irrelevant and annoying messages on television as well.

And it's you weasels who let them do it.

If you're a TV commercial hater, then give the rest of this a read.

TV Commercials (except the ones I'm in) are Evil

Pricey Watermelon

This a picture of a Densuke watermelon at the Inageya supermarket near here.

I recently read that the first of these black watermelons was auctioned off for 650,000 yen (roughly $6,000) at the beginning of this season.

In that same article I read that supermarkets were selling them for between twenty and thirty thousand yen (200 to 300 dollars), but the ones in Hanakoganei are going for the bargain price of 5,800 yen (about $54).

About 10,000 of these melons were grown on the northern island of Hokkaido this year, so a very limited number are available at any one store.

It looks like a bowling ball...

Pricey Watermelon

New Shinjuku Burger King

I don't normally get all excited about hamburgers, but I'm so tired of McDonald's and Lotteria that little things like this make me happy.

A new Burger King outlet recently opened near Seibu-Shinjuku station. That's two in Shinjuku (by my count--I'm probably wrong though), and this new outlet, despite marking the border between the train station and the seediest part of the ward (Kabuki-cho), is 100% non-smoking. Well, except for those two tables out front of course.

This place used to be a Lotteria--located only about a hundred meters from the south exit of Seibu-Shinjuku station (go down the stairs, cross over to McDonald's and turn left).

I haven't been in there yet, but I will venture inside soon.

McDonald's still gets my 100 yen every morning when I buy coffee though.

New Shinjuku Burger King

Whale Slaughter: Elementary School Field Trip

Wada, Japan, one of the last legal bastions of whaling in this country, brings the youngsters out to watch the slaughter.

Japanese children as young as ten are watching whales being slaughtered to teach them the "cultural importance" of Japan's controversial commercial whaling industry.

The picture to the right is an AP photo snapped by David Guttenfelder of local schoolkids in Wada, Japan reaching out to touch the severed head of a Beard's Beaked whale.

Please read the rest of the article on your own.

Whale Slaughter: Elementary School Field Trip

Blue Hawaii by PEPSI

The new Pepsi product, Blue Hawaii, caught my attention when I walked into a convenience store recently.

It's a bit too small to read, but the words under the giant "Blue Hawaii" on the bottle are "pineapple and lemon".

Reminds me of this.

Blue Hawaii by PEPSI

Weird English at the Stationery Store

I make a point of visiting stationery stores when I go to Korea. It's a one stop shop for all of your study and souvenir needs.

It's also one of my favorite places to find wacky permutations of the English language, many of them worthy of admission at Engrish.com.

One such example is pictured to the right. This is a shopping/gift bag that was on sale at a shop in front of Busan National University.

Intending to spruce the text up with a little extra English, the designer of this bag unwisely opted for plagiarizing the first 22 words of an article in the JoongAng Daily English newspaper (which can be found here). The resulting creation is just plain weird.

On the plus side, at least this example is grammatically correct except for the fact that it's a sentence fragment.

Weird English at the Stationery Store

Mitsui Outlet Park Iruma

**Although it's no longer new, this post continues to draw a lot of interest. I have therefore updated it slightly to remove some of the information that is no longer relevant. Updated July 7th, 2011.

A new outlet shopping center, Mitsui Outlet Park Iruma (三井アウトレットパーク 入間) opened in Saitama this week, and we paid the place a visit yesterday afternoon. It's big.

We found some good "opening" sales, but not every shop was providing shocking discounts.

I counted no less than 204 outlets in my facilities map. Important details that I discovered during my wanderings through the enormous two-floor mall: expensive coffee can be purchased at a few different places including the Tully's coffee shop on the second floor near the bus terminal exit, cheap coffee can be found near the register at the Family Mart convenience store on the first floor; in terms of sportswear, Puma had the coolest shoes and Nike the best prices; there's a food court on the second floor called "Forest Kitchen" if you're in search of slightly cheaper fare--bento (boxed lunches) and onigiri (rice balls) can, of course, be found in the Family Mart; kids with just a little too much energy can be brought to Club Yu Kids on the second floor next to Family Mart.

Transportation

The closest train station is Iruma-shi on the Seibu-Ikebukuro line. But then it's a 20 minute bus ride from the station to the outlets (map in Japanese).

Or at least it would be on a normal weekend. As you can see from the picture to the right, there were lines to get into some of the shops, and the place was packed even though it was a weekday. The free shuttle bus from Musashino-fujisawa station was supposed to take only 15-20 minutes, but it ended up being about a one-hour-trip because of the traffic (shuttle bus service will cease after Golden Week 2008). Mitsui Outlet Park is equipped with six separate parking areas, so they're prepared for the onslaught, but the poor roads surrounding the place aren't. The shuttle bus approaches the outlets from a right turn lane on route 16 that doesn't have a protected green light, so a vehicle is able to squeeze through oncoming traffic about once every two to four minutes. It's ridiculous.

I recommend paying for a bus ticket from Iruma-shi station instead. It should cost between 190 and 300 yen per person (there are several buses that head toward Mitsui Outlet Park including the number 30 and 31), and the buses won't get as bogged down in traffic because they don't try to turn into the poorly governed entrance. Actually, I can't swear that the number 30 doesn't turn into the parking lot as it's a new line set up specifically for the shops and we didn't take it. We did, however, take the 31 back from the shops, and that took 20 minutes on the nose. That bus goes to Iruma-shi station as well. It cost 190 yen per person. The bus stop is across the street from the outlets to the left of the Eneos gas station.

Mitsui Outlet Park and Costco

This is Mitsui's fourth, and largest, outlet mall in the Kanto region. They also have shops in western Tokyo, Chiba and Kanagawa. While not the easiest to get to on busy days, the Iruma outlets carry the added bonus of sitting directly adjacent to a Costco wholesale market. For those who aren't familiar with the many wonders available at the giant wholesaler (membership required to shop there), you're missing out! Membership cards work at all 500+ Costco's worldwide, and the range of items sold there is shocking. Additionally, Costco's little dining area provides a cheap, albeit not very healthy, alternative to the pricier food in the restaurants in the outlet mall. Remember those huge slices of pizza and bottomless cups of cola? Yup, Costco in Japan is pretty much the same as back home. Membership for one person/family costs 4,200 yen (per year).

Anyway, the place is worth a visit, but I recommend waiting a week or two, or maybe until after Golden Week. There's something for everyone--from LEGO Clickbrick to Coach accessories, from Fred Perry to Bose, and from BCBGMAXAZRIA to Franc franc.

Mitsui Outlet Park Iruma

Changwon Starbucks has Smoking Lounge

Changwon city, South Korea, is a rapidly growing city. It sits about 50 minutes west of Busan by bus, and it's one of the only properly planned cities in the country. Canberra, Australia, apparently, was used as a template for the city.

The population is still rather small, but it's attracting jobs and development like few other municipalities. What that happens, the chains come flocking.

This is a picture from the inside of the city's first Starbucks. It's massive. The one thing that I found to be different about this particular shop was the fact that it is the first Starbucks I've seen with my own eyes that has a smoking room in it. I have no idea why Starbucks felt compelled to do that as the Korean citizenry is quite amenable to the idea that smoking should be done outside.

Starbucks outlets in Japan, by all accounts a much more tobacco-friendly nation, have ashtray-equipped tables outside their outlets.

Changwon Starbucks has Smoking Lounge

Artsy South Korean Electrical Appliances

This captured my interest while I was browsing in an electronics store.

This isn't a photo of a picture frame. Well, it is a picture frame, but it's also something else.

It's an air conditioner.

South Korean appliances are leaning towards the floral these days with lots of companies opting for similar designs--lots of red appliances too.

In addition to this picture frame air conditioner, they had others that looked like paintings. It's a nice way to disguise that ugly unit hanging on the wall--especially if you can change the display.

Artsy South Korean Electrical Appliances

Trip to Busan (South Korea)

Just got back from a week in Busan, South Korea to spend time with family and friends.

It was great to see everyone and catch up--we hadn't made the trip since 2006.

As always, Korea changed a lot since the last time we were there. There are gadgets everywhere now; money, signatures and other personal information are often transmitted wirelessly in places as diverse as convenience stores and the DMV.

Other innovations/trends abounded as well, and one of them was the newest (?) type of vending machine that has popped up everywhere--a book vendor.

The one in this photo was at the DMV, but the most common place to find them is in train stations. Books (paperback) usually sell for 2,000 won each which is pretty cheap. 2,000 won is roughly the equivalent of 200 yen or two US dollars.

Trip to Busan (South Korea)

New Ladies Clothing Store Under Shinjuku Station

Love it.

New Ladies Clothing Store Under Shinjuku Station

Magazine/Comic Browsing (except nudes) Blocked at Convenience Store

A small army of people can normally be found huddled in front of the magazine racks leafing through their favorite comic books and magazines.

One thing that you'll often notice when walking into a convenience store in Japan is that there is a line of people (usually guys) reading manga (comic books) or perusing some other form of paperbacked entertainment. In most places you're not required to actually purchase the magazine--one can basically read the mag in its entirety and then leave without buying anything.

I never really understood why this is allowed.

One convenience store near Kamishakujii station on the Seibu-Shinjuku line in western Tokyo has decided to take a stand against this practice. Some poor worker was made to go through their entire rack of print material and bind all of it shut with plastic packaging twine. That must have taken a while.

I was so surprised to see that a shop manager had done the necessary profit-geared mental acrobatics (in other words, they figured out that customers tend not to buy magazines they can read for free) that I failed to notice an even odder managerial decision.

The only magazines that weren't restricted from perusal were the ones with adult content. Maybe the workers want easy access to them during the duller hours of the afternoon?

Sorry, kids, we've padlocked your comic books. But there's some other enjoyable material just over to the right. You're welcome!

Magazine/Comic Browsing (except nudes) Blocked at Convenience Store

Have you ever seen a Tokyo convenience store go out of business?

Until recently, this was an AMPM convenience store.

The AMPM in our building decided to cash in its chips and get out of town (Kodaira-shi, Tokyo). AMPM is a huge chain, so they must have really been hurting!

Have you ever seen a Tokyo convenience store go out of business?

SONY to do away with DRM

I threw a bit of a hissy-fit a couple of years ago over the digital rights managment (DRM) software that SONY was building into its CDs.

As soon as you popped a SONY CD into your computer, a nasty little program would load onto your computer. While being illegal in and of itself, it had the unexpected consequence of making the computer more susceptible to a viral attack.

Well, there are finally whispers that SONY has reversed course and decided that it needs to be a little more realistic about this matter.

SONY is expected to make an announcement soon about its decision to ditch DRM.

SONY to do away with DRM

Antivirus Program Switch (APS)

I'm in the middle of an anitvirus program switch (APS) again. I was with Norton for a long time (which is inexplicably popular), but bravely got over that addiction. Trend Micro's PC-cillin (aka Virus Buster in Japan) was a breath of fresh air in that it didn't conflict with most of the other things on my hard-drive (unlike Norton). The sudden dearth of blue screens of death was not something that I lamented. I stuck with Trend Micro for two years.

But Trend Micro was a bit of a resource hog. Not nearly as bad as Norton, but it still slowed my computer down to the point that it was difficult to have more than one other window open while I was doing a scan. Plus there was no perceivable way for me to switch to an English-based version of the software because I had originally downloaded the software over the Internet and I'm located in Tokyo (so I was only allowed to have a Japanese version of the software). I could have just lied and said that I was in America, but I believe that the fewer hassles the better when dealing with credit cards, so I opted to be truthful. Oops.

One other thing that annoyed me about Trend Micro is that it's not easy to delete it from your computer. They make it unnecessarily difficult to get rid of it. They require you to type in a password when you go through the control panel's add/delete program function (Windows). I've kept all of my correspondence with Trend Micro, and after a long-winded search I didn't find any mention of a password...in other words, I wasn't able to uninstall the very program that I paid money to purchase. That didn't make me happy. I expect this type of underhanded tactic from SONY; I don't appreciate it coming from companies that seem to be otherwise rooted in reality. Long story short--I may not go back to Trend Micro in the future even though I was relatively happy with the product.

Now I'm testing out NOD32 Antivirus which is doing pretty well so far. They provide a free trial download, so I'm currently working through that. The one problem that I've noticed so far is that iTunes is now acting all funky. I purchased an album from iTunes after the APS, and after allowing me to listen to the first two tracks, my computer lost the rest of the tracks. OK. Reboot, try again. My computer finds them and allows me to listen to one of the tracks that had previously disappeared, but then loses the rest of them again. When I say lose, I mean that a search of both hard-drives turns up empty. We'll see how that goes.

Other than that, NOD32 seems to be a bit lighter than the other programs I've tried in the past. Of course, my hard-drive is pretty well maxed out, so any antivirus program is going to have its work cut out trying to plow through such a huge number of files. But NOD32 seems to do its job without sucking up an unreasonable amount of computer resources.

Hopefully everything will work out with the iTunes conflict (I'm not discounting the possibility that remnants of Trend Micro are responsible for the bug), and I will become a paying NOD32 customer at the end of the month.

Antivirus Program Switch (APS)

iPod Pricing

I found this old receipt while cleaning.

It's from April of 2004 when I got my first iPod.

The reason why I'm posting it here is because of the price (sorry if it's hard to read).

A 40GB iPod (3rd Generation?) cost 55,440 yen back then!

Throw in the dock connector and the total is 57, 960 yen ($531 according to the current exchange rate).

I'm glad that I forked over the extra cash for the iPod protection plan because last April I was able to trade in my original iPod and get a new one for free. The replacement is now semi-permanently attached to the stereo in the living room.

In September I upgraded to an 80GB iPod Classic. If memory serves, it cost me 29,800 yen ($273).

Funny how that works.

At this rate, in April of 2010 the price of a 160GB iPod, which will probably be the size of the current Nano by then, should be around 16,000 yen ($147).

iPod Pricing

Global Domination

I don't know what other markets Starbucks has moved into, but I have read that they are on a worldwide expansion mission of McDonald's proportions. There are currently somewhere between 13,000 and 15,000 Starbucks shops around the world, but last year they publicized the fact that they are aiming for 40,000 locations. To put that number in perspective, the golden arches of MickeyD's can be found in front of around 30,000 storefronts globally.

While looking for a bottle of my favorite Scotch, The Balvenie Doublewood 12 Year Old, I happened upon the two bottles of liqueur pictured here. The asking price, if I remember correctly, is in the 3,000 yen range (US$30-ish), so you can bet that I'll be saving my cash for future bottles of The Balvenie, but I have to say that the pair of Starbucks liqueurs only just barely surprised me.

Coffee and spirits have long been mixed (although I rarely, if ever, dump my gin into my after-dinner coffee), and pricey bottles of coffee-flavored liqueur are a logical extension of the Starbucks branding of low-key sophistication.

Shinanoya's Shinjuku branch carries the Starbucks offerings, if you are so inclined, as well as a whole lot more.

Global Domination