Photo published

One of my photo that I took of the monorail
at the Museum of Science Fiction in Seattle
got published in the Schmap Seattle guide -
the online and the Apple iphone version.

People and Culture

The best part of living in the US is that
it has people from all over the world.
I find it very interesting to interact with
people from different countries, having
different cultures and different point of
views.
Interacting with them really expands your
thinking and alters the way you perceive things.

Each country has its own uniqueness and its
perception of what is crucial.

But the best part is finding out that
a lot of things are perceived as same
by all the different cultures of the world.

I want to somehow meet up people from every
country in my lifetime .

Here are the people I have worked with
till now :

# American
# Armenian
# Italian
# Indian
# French
# Phillippino
# Colombian
# Spanish
# Korean
# Japanese
# Chinese
# Taiwanese
# German
# English
# Singaporean
# Russian

Culture Contrasts

Below is an Infographic I made to visualize the differences
I found while living in 3 very different countries of the
world - Japan, US and India.

All these are my personal observations and not based on
any official data. All the visuals are made by me.

Please feel free to give your opinions and suggestions.
Click on the image for a larger version :

Natto

Finally got the courage to try some Natto.
Natto is according to wikipedia - its the traditional Japanese food made
from fermented soybeans, popular especially for breakfast.
For some, nattō can be an acquired taste due to its powerful smell,
strong flavor, and sticky consistency.

Didn't like it one bit.

Capsule toys

I will admit I am addicted to capsule toys. What are capsule toys ?
When you either put in ¥100 coin(s) in a round-shaped vending machine,
turn the dial, and out comes a small sphere plastic container,
containing a tiny capsule toy. They are basically toys in a various themes,
from figurines of anime, video games to weird crazy stuff.
They cost 200 to 400 yen depending on the object. Its kind of a gamble too
coz you are never sure which character you end up getting and if you go
to the same machine, you might end up with the same character again.
Here are how the machines look -



Here are some of my toys -



My favorite ones -


This one is from the Miyazaki classic - Lupin III -The Castle of Cagliostro


Here is my team mate Ben assembling his collection -

My teammate Sean has a more "interesting" collection -



But my absolute favorite find, which I must say is very rare and I had
very pieces only was - Poop on a stick that... lights up !


Now if Poop on a stick with a sad face that lights up wasn't weird enough,
it also comes with an extensible antennae to hold it up high(?) !


Now who would want to buy something like that seriously ?
Err..My teammates and I of course bought it as part of "cultural study"
but why would anyone sane wanna buy poop on a stick that lights up ??

Btw, good article on PingMag about capsule toys here.

Last 10 days in Japan...alas.

Where the hell is Matt ?

Matt Harding is a 32-year-old videogame designer who quit his job in 2003 to travel around Asia. Along the way, he recorded and posted a short video of himself doing an elbow-intensive jig in Hanoi. That clip got passed from one person to the next and eventually got the attention of Stride Gum, which decided to sponsor two more of his trips. In his latest video, Harding visits 42 countries over 14 months and invites the locals to join in the fun.

I want his job. I am ready to dance silly.


Where the hell is Matt ?

Maid cafes

I mentioned about Maid cafes in my post about my Tokyo trip and finally
found time to write about it.
So what exactly is a Maid cafe ? Maid cafe is in its core essence a cafe
where you can have coffee, tea and etc beverages and snacks like a regular
cafe but ...wait for it......you get them served by pretty girls dressed
in French maid uniform and they refer you by “My master”.
Moreover paying them extra you can get your photograph with your favorite
maid or for the desperate people out there, paying them extra you can play
card games and have a conversation with your favorite maid.
That exactly is how one would describe a Maid cafe.



So when my teammate Ben, who has now being living in Japan since a year,
suggested we go out to check a Maid Cafe in Tokyo as a part of
our “cultural study”, I was intrigued .
So a bunch of us headed to “@home” a very well known Maid cafe.
Entry in the cafe is on basis of entry fee per person(around 700 yen,
that is about $7 or Rs 350) and a time limit of 1 hour. You get in ,
take a table and a maid will be assigned to serve your table for your
allocated one hour. The cafe we went into was almost tastefully decorated,
more like a cross between modern and Japanese traditional décor.
No photography allowed inside. There were quite a few female guests
too at the place, unlike what I had imagined. Our menu had a list of
beverages and snacks and choices like we would like to have a photograph
taken with our favorite maid, or play a game with one. or just chat with
them(all for extra cash of course).We ordered our tea and coffee and
our “maid” came with the tray, she made the traditional Japanese green
tea for my teammate Sean, mixed sugar into my Latte and stirred it well,
in short, the services of a maid. After making the beverages, now this is a standard gesture in all maid cafe, the maid made a heart shape sign with
both her hands and said something like “moi moi”,the meaning of which I still haven't quiet been able to get, since it doesn't have a direct English meaning,
but it's suppose to mean something like-“lots of love/passion/devotion to my master”.But in short thats what a maid says every time she serves you your drink.
We had a nice time drinking our beverages and checking out other maids,
each of them having their own unique style of dressing and styling.
We were of course keeping an eye on the time since its just limited to one hour
or we get to pay extra.

At the end of our one hour, each of us were given a card, which had
our name behind, and after a specific number of visits (in the range of hundreds)
we could get free drinks and snacks. As I was wondering who would actually
visit this place so many times, it was announced that a guy had just had his
200th visit in this maid cafe.Everyone chapped for him and all the maids in
the cafe posed for a photo with him. Wow.





I also eventually visited another maid cafe in Osaka, this one was more classy and themed like a wizard school, where all the maids were training in magic, on the lines of Harry Potter.

My take on maid cafes ? Well again I would say something like this can only
exist in Japan. When I first heard the description of a maid cafe before
visiting it...well...it sounded not very classy....more like a place for
guys to visit. But in Japan, where you have Karaoke and Cos-play as something
very common and normal,this too is one of the designed entertainment activity.
But to me personally, they were more of like a themed restaurant found in any
of the amusement parks, something I would probably visit once or twice just
to take in the entire experience. But as a substitution for say a regular
cafe place like Starbucks, maybe not, first ,since it turns out to be a bit expensive and secondly, regular visit to the place would not be able to
sustain the amusement factor or the charm for me.
But on the whole this is one unique experience everyone visiting Japan must go through once at least.

Fugu

Osaka is of course famous for its Octopus delicacies, but it also known
for its “Fugu” or Blow fish.
As its known, only licensed restaurants can serve Fugu fish,since
there is a specific technique of cutting the fish or else the poison
from the body of fish can spread all over and result in the death of the
person eating the fish. Most restaurant serving Fugu have huge paper
Fugu fish outside there restaurant like this -

Now this is one fish who keeps the possibility of revenge open, I must say.

On another note, found this picture which will make me more unpopular
with my sushi loving friends -

Gojira

The original poster for the iconic monster's first movie appearance.
Unfortunately I have not yet been able to acquire one for my poster collection.
This photo is of the poster up at Sharp Corporation HQ in Japan.

My Apartment

So I have been allocated a great apartment on the 11th floor, all to myself.
It has living room, kitchen, bathroom with shower/tub, a separate toilet
room,a western style bedroom and a tatami room.
Now Japanese apartments are a little bit different in few aspects.
First rule, no shoes inside the apartment, change to your slippers
when you enter the apartment.
Second rule, Japanese bathroom are a bit different, you have the shower
and the tub, but you never put bubble bath or any kind of
soap into the tub. You take a shower first, clean yourself,
go into the tub (which according to Japanese style should have very hot
Water), soak in it, then come out and use the soap in the shower.
Traditionally, the hot water in the tub should not get dirty since
the same water is supposed to be used by other members of your family (!).
The toilet is awesome, I will need to do a separate blog entry for it,
but for starter let me tell you -it needs to be plugged in.
If you want to see the state of the art in toilet systems visit Japan.
It has temperature control for the seats, various systems for water
sprays and flushing etc. And of course you can do all this using the
touch sensitive interface panel on the side.I have 2 bedrooms to choose
from – a western style room and a tatami room,which actually is the
traditional Japanese room with Bamboo mats on the floor and a sliding
screen door.



I am using the western style room since the smell of the mats kind of
bothers me And also the western style room has a attached balcony .



Things I can do with the spare Tatami room (things suggest by my friends
actually) – meditate for spiritual enlightenment,practice samurai sword
fighting, do Yoga (since I am an Indian, and all Indians go Yoga of course).
Well....lets just keep it empty for now.

Well that's all about my apartment, Oh, and one minute thing, many apartments
have good views from their balcony, you know like greenery, parks or the
beach.

The view from my apartment ?

A state of the art artificial speed boat racing arena stadium !!
Yes ladies and gentlemen, I can look out of my balcony to see
speed boat racing tournaments...absolutely free...great view.



For example:
Hmm I have no movies to watch on my laptop-let me see some Speed boat racing.
Hmm...I am eating a banana ..let me watch the speedboat race and eat the banana.
Hmm...I have no work to do-let me watch some speedboat racing.
Hmmm...I have lots of work to do - let me watch some speedboat racing anyways.
Etc...etc...you all get the point I hope.