badmigraine
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Posts posted by badmigraine
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ONIP, where I worked we paid every month, regardless of whether we went to any enkai or not...
When we did go, it always seemed that you didn't get very much food for your money. That enkai thing at some izakayas is a big racket.
5,000 for a couple plates of appetizers and a couple of drinks...better to skip the enkai and get drunk at home with instant noodles and cans of beer.
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My own kangeikais and soubetsukais.
These two miserable occasions are the only times I cannot reasonably or unreasonably avoid the dreaded Karaoke Torture.
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Enderzero, what do you mean they are only useful for learners? The better you get, the faster and harder you fall. Pipe, moguls, jumps, steeps...
Mr. Matthews, I'd rather risk being mocked than risk breaking my wrist.
The best wrist guards for snowboarding are the ones built into the gloves so you don't have to get an extra piece of equipment. Check out web links to Seirus Da Bone gloves/mitts. I used these last season and they are great. Not only to they give your wrists some protection against breakage a la rollerblade wrist guard, but they also cover the heel of your palm so no matter how many times you slam down on ice, you don't get that annoying bruised palm.
As readers of TW Snowboard (or is it Snowboarder) mag know from Dr. George's column, hard metal wrist guards merely transfer the force from your wrist joint to your forearm bones. This isn't very useful, because those bones break too.
The best wrist guards are stiff but flexible plastic held on the front and back of the wrist by an adjustable velcro strap. You are bolstering the strength of your wrist without transferring unnatural forces to your forearm bones.
I'm a big fan of protective gear. I guess I would never impress the Dope Guys in the Posse with my helmet, butt/hip pad undershorts and wristguard gloves. Too bad. I really cared what those guys thought--that's what riding is all about anyway, right?
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You should see some of these 38-year-old balding prats walking around the shopping mall in complete replica uniforms of this or that pro player.
Sheesh.
They look like toddlers dressed by their mother.
I enjoy watching sports and prefer college sports to pro. At the college level, people aren't as polished and it's harder to buy/stack a team with ringers like the Yankees do. For college kids the coaching makes a bigger difference in the game and the players are more likely to listen to the coach. The lesser team or players have a good shot at winning. Reminds me of when I played sports in high school and college.
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I love 'em...for someone trying to improve their Japanese, they are the most pleasant pedagogical tool imaginable.
Same story every time, so you already know what is going to happen. All you have to do is listen to the Japanese and learn.
And none of that rarified brand-me-as-a-perpetual-outsider "Kinou wa nani o shimasta ka?" textbook Japanese either.
I never like waiting for serial instalments to come out, whether it be a sci-fi mag in the US, Shonen Jump or a J TV drama etc.
Better to wait until the whole thing is done, then go out and rent all the vids at once. You can closet yourself in your room with a crate of chips, beer, cookies and instant noodles, and watch the whole thing in one marathon fell swoop.
Sheer bliss!
I am a man in touch with my feelings, folks. Why just this morning, I touched myself when I thought of Seto Asaka and Esumi Makiko, my favorite dorama gals.
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Wearing suits and neckties to work.
Grossly overeating to the point of morbid obesity.
Attempting to legislate morality.
Puerile obsession with professional sports from childhood through retirement age.
Bad haircuts for men.
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If you must ride, then country is the best for sure.
Where I lived in Tokyo, it was so crowded and everything was so jammed in together, there wasn't even space to park my motorcycle.
I tried it here and there, and each time some obaasan or cop told me "no parking here!"
Then I tried it some other places, and often people would kick the winkers until they were smashed, or put cooking oil over the saddle, or let all the air out of all the tires.
I finally found a place that did not seem to have been claimed by any of the ancient residents of this area that seemed to have somehow become owners of small sections of public street.
After that, my bike became something of a fixture in that one spot and as such was soon appearing on the radar of bike parts thieves and bosozoku/chinpira type people.
Many a time I came out of the apartment, or back from working late, to find someone or the other squatting next to my bike with tools and plastic bags.
Many a time I came back from a weekend out of town to find the winkers all gone, the fuses gone, once the windshield was stolen, once they tried to get off the saddle, once the backrest was missing and somebody stole the saddlebags too. The mirrors would go occasionally too.
I must have spent about 30,000 per month on replacing parts or fixing winkers smashed by some a-hole who thought they had a right to destroy my bike because I parked it legally on a stretch of road that they had long since claimed as their own.
The weirdest thing about this to me was, my apt. and the bike were parked less than 50 meters from the Omori Police Headquarters on Dai-Ichi-Keihin. All in full view of the police station folks.
You'd have thought thieves would try somewhere else, not right in front of the police station.
And you'd have thought the police would have seen and arrested these thieves.
But then again, you would have thought that you could park your bike safely nearby without some vicious old grandma or bitter old grandad kicking off the winkers or taking a screwdriver to the gas tank paint, too.
"Japan is a safety country..."
Ahem.
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Jared, even worse than mispronunciation of my name was the way my elementary, middle and upper school teachers all called me by my older brother's name.
He was something of a brain and they remembered him. So I was naturally "Mark" as well.
I guess I was about as memorable to them as chopped liver or a potted plant.
Sheesh.
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Let me see if I can talk you out of riding motorcycles.
I rode older BMW boxers and had some Honda and Kawi standards in the 80s and early 90s. We used to ride around northern Michigan, then I moved to LA and we'd ride up to San Francisco, visit Monterey, go to Vegas, camp/tour in Oregon, along the Pacific Coast Highway...those were great times. Then when I moved to Tokyo I got a used BMW K75s off some German guy for cheap and felt good about having a bike and riding free and easy.
But it soon became apparent that big city riding SUCKS, so I sold it.
Not a day went by when I didn't have a lucky escape. Oil patches on the road, taxis zooming in to cut me off then suddenly opening that automatic door, opposing traffic suddenly turning right across the road in front of me, bad drivers and old people weaving across lanes without looking in mirrors or head checking, planks bottles shoes and branches on the road suddenly revealed when the car in front swerves around them, kids and bicycles and scooters darting out of parked cars and blind spots, pebbles inexplicably spilled on sharp curves, huge buses and transport vehicles blocking and weaving over the roadway...
I was a pretty careful rider and had years of experience under my belt, but I was lucky if I had a day without some kind of scare in it.
There was little joy in central Tokyo riding, as I was forced to go really slowly amid pouring rain, or in oppressive sweltering heat and humidity (wear the leathers and sweat even more, or ride stupid soft and pink but comfy in a t-shirt?). The diesel and gas fumes were overpowering. The constant roar of traffic and engines was headache-inducing. Traffic jams, endless lights and signals, back roads where my 750 was not allowed (I took it there anyway). Having to ride ever slower and with the utmost caution because of all the constant dangers and stupid traps every kilo...
As a biker you get used to these scares because they are a fact of life and you are on notice that this kind of stuff goes on.
But even the starship Enterprise can't keep full shields on all the time. No matter how defensively you ride, someday, some idiot car driver--be it a kid playing with the radio and not watching the road, be it an old person running a light or cutting you off, be it a couple of cars having an accident right in front of you--chances are, someday, you are going to have a problem.
And the fact that I was accepting these risks and irrationally expecting that my problem, if it occurred, wouldn't result in a severed leg, a crushed pelvis, loss of a square meter of skin, or paralysis, was even more scary to me.
Ever been in a car accident? Ever seen one? Ever narrowly missed one?
I've had several, and only one, on black ice in the dead of winter, was my fault. The others were (i) a kid ran a stop sign and t-boned the side of my car, totaling it; (ii) a drunk plumber in a giant pickup truck rear-ended me while I was stopped at a red light, pushing my car into the busy intersection where it was creamed by oncoming traffic; (iii) an idiot fiddling with his radio failed to see the brake lights on the expressway, and piled into my rear end; (iv) a mattress flew off a truck in front of me on the expressway, with speeding cars on either side I had to drive straight over it and broke the car's tie rods and skidded into another lane, sideswiping another car; (v) instant double flat tires from broken bottles in the street that must have been put there by malicious kids...
These are the main ones I remember. Now what if I had been on my motorcycle in those cases? I think I'd most surely be maimed, possibly dead.
What can a biker do about these risks? Nothing, except don't ride. There's nothing you can do to eliminate the risk of being t-boned by a drunk driver or a jerk who runs a stop sign.
Even good drivers make mistakes. Ever accidentally run a stop sign or drifted into another lane without checking first? After a few years of driving, most everyone has done these things.
Drivers screw up all the time. Drunk drivers, old drivers, inexperienced drivers, road rage drivers, stupid drivers. Mechanical problems, road problems, cascading series of unpredictable circumstances... When the next accident inevitably happens, you don't want to be around there on a motorcycle.
My stepmom is a nurse. She showed me some polaroids of motorcycle accident victims. Not a week goes by when they don't get another one in the hospital there. How about no lower jaw? How about knees crushed to jelly? Ever seen the look on the face of a guy who's rehabbing a crushed pelvis? She said most of these guys crashed due to other people's mistakes...the only thing they did wrong was be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In some sense it's hypocritical of me to adopt this position, because I had my fun riding for many years, and I look back on those days with a warm feeling of pleasure.
But then when I really think about it--think about zooming along at 130 kph for hour after hour on the freeway, a pink vulnerable smidgen of living flesh, it horrifies me. It absolutely horrifies me! And I am glad I was lucky enough to make it through without serious trouble.
Many bikers have had this conversation before. Maybe someone will now post something like "BM, there are risks in everything..." or "stats show the chances of getting hurt on a bike are lower than XYX"... Yeah, sure. But why roll these dice? The stakes are too high. This is one risk that is totally within your control.
Ride safe!
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Ocean's right, Ken and Hana have become cliched names for mixed-race Japanese kids. Meeting yet another one is just as anti-climactic and vaguely puzzling as meeting yet another Irish-American "Tim Martin", yet another Jewish "David Cohen", or yet another Korean "Jun Cho". These are all fine names coming from various cultural, historical and personal naming conventions...and each and every person who bears them is a wonderful individual, a miracle of creation, a human being.
But in naming one's own kids, one may wish to consider something a bit more imaginative than the old saw "John Smith", eh?
There are loads of "half" kids named Ken and Hana. It has been going on so long, my law firm boss, who is half, is named Ken...and he is 50.
A J guy at my old company and his J wife had a kid while in the US. They figured that even though he had 100% Japanese DNA, he'd be an international child, so they named him Ken ("we wanted a name easy for both Americans and Japanese to pronounce..." )
How about we turn this into a productive thread by coming up with some good names besides Ken that would work in both Japan and the US?
Here's my top 5:
ENG----------JAPANESE
5. Barker--------"Baka-san"
4. Ben Joseph----"Ben-jo san"
3. Richard Nagai--"Dick Nagai"
2. Archie K. Barker-"atchi ike, baka"
and my top recommendation for naming your kids in Japan,
1. Gary Cadell------"Geri ga deru san"
I strongly feel that the above names would give the child a sense of distinction and difference, without relying on cliches or compromising too much to cater to the pronunciation of two entirely different countries.
If more children were named as carefully as I have suggested above, the world would surely be a better place.
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Oh, and by the way...
Here is a good link about getting into ski/snowboard shape during the off-season!
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Why yes, I do know about the subject of police getting really angry.Quote:I just had a policeman say that I cant use them in Japan. He got really angry. Does anyone know about this subject.
It really irritates me the way some cops, whether in Japan, the US, or wherever, take personal offense and then dispense burning righteous anger at your not following bureaucratic-type laws about bicycles, inline skates, parking meters. As if you were an axe murderer...well even if you were, is it the cop's job to yell angrily at you?
In such cases you are seeing the skull beneath the skin of authority and control, and it ain't pretty. Some people are just driven to tell others what to do. They love being in charge, and look!--they get a uniform and gun too.
They have all sorts of power over you because they are invested with unquestionable authority of the state. They can tell you anything ("inline skating is illegal in Japan") and you just have to take it, unless you have cameras and witnesses there and want to hire a lawyer.
Not a lot of lawyers like to take that kind of case because (coincidentally, of course!) they often end up being harassed and audited repeatedly by the tax authorities, given several "illegal lane change" or "1 mph over the speed limit"-type tickets on the road in front of their house, and having paperwork, evidence and cooperation withheld in other cases on their ledgers.
So, for example, when it is your word against theirs, they can lie on the witness stand about how fast you were driving, or whether there was a bag of pot in your glove compartment, and you lose.
A police officer, LIE? Impossible, right? Unheard of.
Um.
"Inline skating is illegal in Japan..."
Yes, I know about this subject.
I've had plenty of experience with police corruption in my career as a lawyer. Some of them like to "serve and protect", by breaking laws indiscriminately, lying, withholding evidence, abusing state powers for personal satisfaction or gain, beating suspects and prisoners, failing to protect inmates from sodomy, violence and degradation like mixing human waste with their daily food and urinating through the bars into their cells, and even murdering some suspects before trial, or watching other prisoners murder child sex offenders in jail.
I also had plenty of experiences with Japanese police, as a "foreigner"...like being frisked and patted down in the middle of a busy street, while wearing my suit and carrying a briefcase and standing with another business-suited lawyer ("sorry, we thought you might be a criminal...")...being held for questioning at a kouban for over an hour because I made the mistake of asking directions (as I left, "be more careful next time..." Huh? Be careful of what? Cops?)...being stopped at every corner, over and over again, by the same cops, to have my bike reg sticker checked for the nth time, then on the day my own bike was stolen, being told to buzz off because that is not an important crime and I'll never get the bike back ("be more careful with your bike next time, they are easily stolen if you don't lock them" Uh...it was locked, you idiot)...etc. etc.
I don't know anything about whether inline skating is OK or not on this or that kind of street, or in this or that ward or municipality in Japan.
But I do know that you will continue to have trouble with cops getting angry, because that is what a lot of them think is their job.
There are a lot of fine police officers, but there are also plenty of bad apples.
Let's face it. What kind of person gravitates to a job where you get a gun, badge, uniform, and a way to get away with all kinds of illegal, petty and brutal stuff?
When the Berlin Wall came down a lot of ordinary folk went over to the formerly communist East Germany, curious to see exactly what kind of propaganda those commies had been printing in their history textbooks about the US, Western Europe, etc. Everyone was expecting to see page after page of outrageous lies.
Actually, the commie history textbooks didn't contain any false facts at all...just true information, selectively reported. Like about white people exterminating the Native Americans, keeping black slaves...corporate corruption, police brutality, hunger and ghetto living in the inner cities, environmental disasters...the list goes on. You can find all this stuff yourself in our own daily papers, but you never expect it to be in another country's history textbook. A lot of it is pretty damning, but we pretend it isn't there or doesn't happen.
Cops and the criminal/penal system are a fine example of how we avert our collective gaze from the truth.
The police and prision system in the US is a terrible example of human rights abuses, police corruption and selective enforcement of laws. The criminal justice system is tragically flawed.
Cops...they scare me, I don't trust them and I have oodles of personal experience with bad seeds on the police force.
Have a nice day!
And keep off those skates.
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Too bad about Kandatsu. That was the only Niigata resort I liked.
It had that steep (but not long, unfortunately) front mogul hill. It was never crowded and always a blast.
And it has a great collection of onsen in the lodge, including a rotenburo, bubble jet bath, cold water bath, steam room and sauna.
What a great place. Day trips from Tokyo, including shinkansen fare, lift ticket, onsen admission and 1000 off lunch, all for about 13,000 per person.
If it closes, I probably won't bother going up to Niigata because the other resorts there just don't interest me very much.
That is, if I go back to Japan!
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Yeah, I guess you're right. It is an amazingly stupid problem on an expensive, high-end board from a famous maker.
At this point though I have to either fix it myself, or pay $50 shipping fees to send it back to the shop or to Salomon for warranty service...so I am going to learn to live with it.
As for other boards, I wish I had a collection of them!
But which ones? Without demoing them one just doesn't know where to drop one's hundreds of dollars...
I don't know anybody who rides like me except hardbooters/freecarvers on their occasional soft boot day. So I am looking at what they are riding and hoping to demo some of it next season!
I want to try a Donek or Prior. I bet their topsheet holes always match the inserts.
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"Elbows off the table"?
I haven't heard that one since I was about 7.
What is the effing point of it? Is there any practical or intrinsically polite value to this rule? Or is it simply one of those nonsensical archaic legacies like neckties and "bless you" after a sneeze?
My elbows are on the table most of the time. Otherwise, I'd have to hold them artificially pinned to my sides, or uncomfortably suspended in mid-air as if they were wings hovering over the table.
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Threading through the topsheet would seem to facilitate delamming, so I am going to carefully enlarge the topsheet holes by the very tiny amount that they occlude the inserts.
I have to do it in such a way that I do not void the warranty. I think I can do it so it looks like nothing was done at all.
The warranty lasts until the end of next April so I will have a whole season to monitor any topsheet changes.
Salomon is very good about warranty. I've seen many a thread on other message boards about how Salomon handles delams by giving you a brand-new next-year model of the same board.
Salomon boards ride so incredibly well, I would certainly buy another in an instant. Now that I know a simple solution to getting the board up and running OK, I am happy again.
Now that's loyalty. I wonder if they would sponsor me?
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I don't think it is intentional, and it doesn't sound like a good thing.
You are forcing things and that is scary on a new board. You don't know if the screw is perfectly straight and seated properly in the threads, yet you have to bear down with considerable force to get through the topsheet.
Also, you slip and miss a few times and make a lot of scratches in the topsheet. I'll be covering the whole area with duct tape before doing any more of this tricky work.
Finally--and worst of all--I wonder if forcibly screwing through the topsheet will gradually lift the topsheet away from the inserts, resulting in a small circle of topsheet delamination around the screw hole?
I wouldn't expect such a small delam to affect the seating or hold of the inserts in the board's core. But over time it might allow water to leak in under the topsheet, and progressively delam a larger area under the bindings.
I guess I'll find that out next season.
I'll probably use a mini burr file to carefully weaken or remove the portion of topsheet that occludes the metal screw hole inserts.
I should not have to go through this to mount the bindings. Even if it takes only 10 minutes per screw, that is 80 minutes to do something that should be a 5-minute job, doable on slope or with beer in hand.
I assume that once the screws have made it through the topsheet, future adjustments or binding switches will be quick and easy, as the topsheet will have been pushed or crushed out of the way of the insert holes.
Does anybody else think this is a fine example of crappy quality control?
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The local shop called the official Salomon rep, and here was the rep's response:
"Yes, this year many customers thought it was tricky getting screws into the holes. The holes in the board's topsheet are very slightly smaller than the screw inserts beneath. So you have to carefully push the screw through the topsheet hole to get to the insert threads beneath. Using a beefy, large handled Phillips-head screwdriver, put the screw exactly over the hole, make sure it is perfectly straight, then push straight down hard. Then start turning. The screw should catch in the threads..."
After hearing this, the guy at the shop tried it.
He said it took him about five minutes, but he finally got in one screw. It is really tricky, because you have to exert considerable downward pressure and don't know whether or not the screw is cross-threaded. But it can be done.
The upshot: my board is like a tight young virgin.
Matter resolved.
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In keeping with the notion that e-mail outboxes are the diaries of the Net age, I wanted to archive all my Outlook Express mails--both sent and received--in the following manner:
1.
Put all received and sent messages into one file, ordered by date. This way, when you look at things later in life, you can see the original mail and all the responses, in the proper order. They may be separated by intervening mails, but the chronological order will be preserved so that viewing this massive file will be an accurate diary-like experience.
2.
Convert the e-mails from Microsoft Outlook Express's proprietary ".dbx" format into Word format (preserving Japanese and other double-byte characters).
That would be enough for me.
I've had the following problems trying to do this:
A.
What about attachments? Pictures, Word documents, Excel documents, etc. that are attached to e-mails cannot be converted or stored so simply. In the past when archiving e-mails I've had to strip all attachments and save the mails as a text file.
B.
When converting to Word or .txt format, sometimes I lost Japanese character support. All J messages turn into Martian.
If you do a Google search for "archive Outlook Express mail", you'll find links to many mail archiving programs that can help you with this sort of thing.
Some of them allow you to open and/or search by name, date, mail address, or keyword from mailboxes containing .dbx, .mbx (Eudora), and .pst (MS Outlook) files.
Some are much simpler.
Many of these are shareware or even freeware. Look into it!
Don't take a chance on losing your precious hoard of e-mails, one day when you are 75 years old you may wish to re-read some of the brilliant or banal exchanges of these amazing years.
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I'm already on a Salomon 550, and it takes any standard screws no problem. They just go right in, as they should.
I have screws from Salomon bindings too...they won't go in my new Salomon board.
Pretty screwy, eh?
I can't wait to find out why this happened. I'll post the result for those who are interested.
What galls me the most is the brazen "Salomon Quality Control" sticker on the board.
It would seem to me that even the most basic quality check would be to see if the damn screw inserts are the right ones...sheesh.
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I got a Salomon Fastback off the Net from a New Hampshire store.
It was a great deal...except that binding screws don't fit into the insert screw holes.
The holes seem too small. Or maybe the thread pitch is wrong...or the threads aren't properly cut...weird. Loctite is not the issue either: the screws won't even start in the holes.
Snowboard binding screws are all a standard size. But just to be sure, I tried screws from a Salomon binding, a Burton binding, a Flow binding and even Palmer PowerLinks...no go.
I thought maybe I'd bought a counterfeit board.
My sis got a Salomon Ivy off the Net from an Arizona store a couple weeks ago. So last night I went over to her place to check it out...and it was the same problem all over again: binding screws don't fit into the insert holes.
Could these boards BOTH be counterfeit?, I thought. They sure SEEM like the real deal, right down to having all the usual stickers/papers and fine details like die-cut graphics, a textured base, etc.
They even had "Salomon Quality Control" stickers on them. (Ha ha.)
This afternoon I went up to a local Salomon dealer here in Michigan. I tried my binding screw in one of their Salomon Ivy boards...same problem: screws don't fit the holes.
Eventually I had the whole floor staff trying to put screws into my Fastback, into their Ivy, into my sister's Ivy...all without success.
It doesn't seem to be a case of counterfeit boards.
The dealer's calling its Salomon rep tomorrow to see if he knows anything about this problem. I'll post the eventual outcome, in case anyone's interested.
Has anyone else had this problem? Seems like maybe Salomon used poor quality or defective inserts in a number of boards. If this is a production defect, there have to be more than these 3 boards--one each from New Hampshire, Arizona and Michigan.
Wot's uh the deal?
Weird.
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CherryBoy, what exactly do you mean?
I've eaten with Chinese people who purposely burp to show appreciation, but I never noticed Japanese people making excessive or theatrical noises while eating.
Are you referring to loud boisterous behavior designed to show enthusiasm and good cheer (usually linked to alcohol consumption)?
Or are you talking about purposely exaggerated chewing and swallowing noises?
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Hey Lama, you in Oz for the winter?
Let me ask you something about Australian beer.
I used to take women to a place in Tokyo as a lead-in to getting them drunk and playful.
They had "Coopers" beer from Oz--one green label, one red label. Both were pretty good. I always had one of each before wine or mixers.
What's the rep of Coopers in Oz? Is it a mainstream beer, a local's beer, or what?
Also, what is the "Budweiser" of Oz? Sitting here in Michigan, I'd have to guess either Fosters or Castlemaine.
Cheers from the land of lakes and no mountains!
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My expert eye judges Megumi's dugs to be the Real Thing. No supra-costal water balloons inserted there, folks! Squeeze to your heart's content, those are naturally honest mammaries.
Wrist guards (again)
in Snow talk, trip reports, Japan avalanche & backcountry
Posted
i don`t know many `pros` who wear wrist gaurds...
You be the judge...are these really valid reasons to avoid cheap, simple protective gear?
As for pros, look at the lists of injuries they all have. They could do with a bit more than wrist guards, don't you think? I don't know many pros who HAVEN't had a bad injury or three. Bad example.
My wrist-protector gloves don't even look like wrist protector gloves. If I didn't tell you what they were, you wouldn't even notice. They look like normal gloves. No brace to wear underneath, no dorky bulky additions. They only cost $35...a lot less than some of those other fancy-make gloves that offer zero impact protection.
"How to fall correctly"? Um...I think I know what you mean, but even after learning to fall correctly, you are still falling, and you usually fall onto your hands. After 30 or so of these per day, your second day of riding is going to be a bit painful. Ditto for the next few days.
Are you riding powder every day? At least half of my riding is, unfortunately, on hardpack and ice. What about you? I'd rather have wrist guards and the plastic sheet over my palm. I've tried it both ways, and there is less pain when I use them...both at the end of the day, and the next few days after!
If you like unnecessary pain while riding, may I suggest putting brambles in the back of your undies, sand under your eyelids, and loosen all the screws in your bindings.
This is basic protective gear unnoticeable to others...not even as "uncool" as a helmet...
You guys have issues about that or something? I think I'm mocking you!