A new home for a new blog

I moved my restart of Joe VS Japan to Blogger because I have a separate blogger account that I use already and it makes more logistical sense to do both at the same time through the same email. I'm just trying to make my internet life a bit easier. Anyawy, content has been completely moved to here and the previous home has been deleted. Hopefully anyone who was reading will be back here.

Tokyo Decadance 6/20/2009

In a feature I should call "Tales from a few weeks ago" which will cover things that I was too lazy to update on at the time, I'll talk about Tokyo Decadance.

For those of you who don't know, Tokyo Decadance is probably one of the most interesting events that occurs in Tokyo. It's a monthly club event that makes an attempt to combine the various underground club people into one event so you have lolitas and goths mixed with cyber and fetish and whatever else you can think of. It tends to succeed as it's generally crowded and full of interesting people.

Here are a few examples:

























Anyway, Tokyo Decadance itself occurs almost monthly. Sometimes there are off months due to European tours but generally it's monthly. A standard Decadance involves DJs, various shows and a lot of cool fashion and interesting people. It's the perfect venue for creative people to have a fun night and a meet other creative people.
If you are ever in Tokyo when there is a Tokyo Decadance I urge you to stop by at least once.

Studying at the foot of Mani

Last weekend my cell phone broke.  Suddenly, the buttons stopped working so I stopped being able to do anything with the phone except turn it on and off and briefly use it as a flashlight in the dark.  As there are many cheaper and better flashlight alternatives, I decided to get myself a new phone.
Getting a cell phone in Japan can be easy or it can be somewhat similar to a Gnostic entry password to heaven, that is to say, full of bizarre passwords and hand signals.  My phone buying experience was more of the latter.
Japan has 3 major phone carriers:  Kddi/Au, Docomo and Softbank.  I have, for the entirety of my time in Japan (5 years total), always used Kddi/Au as my provider.  Mostly because it has a good service range and good pricing plans.  The phones tended to be less cool than the Docomo phones though as Docomo tends to put all types of extra features in before anyone else.  Softbank, the former Vodafone, was never much of an option because they generally had bad coverage when compared to Kddi/Au or Docomo even if their pricing plans are cheaper.
Anyway, my phone is broken so I head to the Au shop in order to figure out something.  I browsed around at phones and I can honestly say I am always impressed by new phone functions.  There were solar charging phones and built in exercise/calorie counters, 10 megapixel cameras and a bevy of other standard features that would have seemed impossible, and probably were, 5 years ago.
After speaking with the shop staff I found that buying a new phone would be expensive and fixing my current phone would take weeks so, instead of renewing, I took a bold step in the direction of the new and canceled my contract.  The process was, after I spoke the necessary passwords, gave the required hand gestures and danced the needed jig, relatively painless.
The closest cell phone shop to my house is a Softbank shop so I figured I'd give them a chance and went in.  There were some pretty spectacular phones there, ones with highly functioning cameras and e-book readers and whatever else you can think of in terms of cell phone use.
All of the Japanese cell phones, even the basic, "free if you sign up for anything" phones are incredibly function heavy (unless you specifically buy the phones for old people that purposely have minimal functions) but in the end I decided on aniPhone 3GS.
The benefits for the iPhone are many while the drawbacks are few, though seemingly the drawbacks are rather Japan centered.  For example, the biggest complaint I've heard about theiphone is the lack of infrared sending/receiving.  While never all that popular in the US, infrared sending is very popular in Japan for exchanging numbers back an forth between phones.  I've used it many many times myself.  TheiPhone lacks this function.
The workaround appears to be use of a QR code.  Pretty much all Japanese phones can read QR codes (those codes that look like a magic eye puzzle but can be used to read data) and theiPhone offers a cheap (115 yen) app that creates one out of any address book data you might have. Though still, this isn't ideal.
Thought the benefits far outweigh the few negatives.  For example, I was able to combine my phone, my ipod and my electronic dictionary all within the iphone while also gaining the ability to watch movies (yeah my ipod was 5 years old and couldn't display video).  My bag is so much lighter.
I'm sure most of you know the iPhone is a good phone, however the process of getting the iPhone was not so easy.  I had to do a lot of ridiculous hoop jumping to get mine.
Let me summarize in easy to read list form:

1. Go to Softbank shop and order the iPhone (it wasn't released in Japan until the 26th)
2. Fill out a ridiculous amount of paperwork which required all types of extra stuff I needed to go home and get (bank card, credit card, passport, foreigner registration).
3. Wait for a call confirming the arrival of the iPhone.
4. Schedule an available time to activate the iPhone after the phone arrived.
5. Go to the scheduled activation, again carrying all of my related items, in order to fill out more paperwork and do more waiting involving activation.
6. Fill out forms for some cashback related stuff.
7. Pay a truckload of money. (On a side note, I really had to pay a ton because my visa is not valid for 24 more months, actually it still has 22 months on it but that was not good enough to get an immediate discount.  This left me having to pay full, undiscounted price for the iphone with the guarantee that I would get the discount price back over the period of 24 months.)
8. Leave with my iPhone and download a ton of Japanese iPhone apps.
9. Manually input all of my previous contacts.

In the end, I feel less like I got a new phone and more like I joined an arcane mystery school.  However, I have a new phone and hopefully I won't have to go through this again for another 5 years at least.

Of Pepsi and Perilla

Summer has arrived in Tokyo again which is a signal for all types of things. The first being the extreme rise in my electrity bill due to near constant air conditioner use, but after that, is the release of another strange flavor of Pepsi.

Like the others most of you probably know about (cucumber, yogurt) this year's entry into the wide world of Japanese Pepsi variants is Shiso:

Shiso Pepsi

Shiso, also known as perilla or beefsteak plant, is commonly used in japan as a wrapper for various things. It is also used as flavoring in soups and for all types of other dishes, my personal favorite being Shiso Gyoza.

I must admit, Shiso is not the first flavor that comes to mind when I think "this would be an awesome flavort to sweeten and carbonate!", actually it's pretty low on my list, somewhere in between hot dog and shallot. So, needless to say, I didn't quite go into the taste test of this with high hopes. However, the taste ends up being not so terrible. It's definitely shiso but sweet enough to not be overpoweringly so. I would describe it as a sweet, grassy flavor with a hint of mint. Actually, that kind of makes it sound worse than it is.

Welcome Back

6 years ago, I ran the somewhat popular (couple hundred thousand hits per month!) blog "joevsjapan.com". I ran the blog in my initial days in Japan while I was studying abroad and tended to post on topics of varied interest.

The site itself was a self hosted wordpress blog.

The problem came when I returned to the US and, due to the timing, found that I had lost my domain name to ad scammers. I guess I lapsed the registration renewal period in the time that I was lacking internet access when I moved back. Anyway, the blog became no more after that.

Until now.

I moved back to Japan four years ago and have been silently updating on Japan related topics on my private blog for the entire time. For those of you who actually know me, some of the content here might be repetative. For those who don't, expect something interesting and exciting.

For now, this has just started back up so there is little content or design going on. Bear with me while I get things back up to working order.

Regards.

Joe