badmigraine
-
Content Count
932 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by badmigraine
-
-
_freak,
I am on the prowl for the last thing we need to buy at this end-of-the-year stage: Flow bindings for my wife. She's wanting the stiffest possible, which are the Pro-C BX, or the FL-11 FR.
All the online shops I checked are out of stock, so tomorrow I am calling the US distributor office (in Canada, oddly enough) to see what I can track down.
Shopping and sleuthing are kinda fun, but I sure hope we find what we are looking for.
Why are you wanting a Flow board? To be honest, I have wondered what those boards are like. I've heard nothing at all about them, good or bad...
Are you using their bindings too?
How do ya get Flow stuff at cost?!
-
Hey _freak
I just Google what I want, then work the search results until I find the best deal...
I have no store loyalty at all.
I did notice that many of the places I scoped out will ship internationally, though of course you have to pay a bit more for the shipping component, and may get hit with import duty.
You looking for anything in particular?
-
Mikazooks, can you post up a few links to funky streams?
One of my faves is http://www.digitallyimported.com/
In part because of the good tunes (hard trance, DJ mixes, classical), and in part because it is reliable (hardly ever down, never slow).
-
"Banning" guns won't do much of anything in the US. Look how well the "ban" on pot or cocaine or any other illegal drug works... They will still come in. Maybe the number would be greatly reduced but that is not going to help much right now.
Why?
There are millions of guns floating around all over the place in the US. Pistols, shotguns, rifles, semi-automatic and antique guns, you name it.
MILLIONS of them.
And most are unregistered and untraceable, so you can't officially just call them in.
Banning them just prevents most ordinary people from being able to buy them, leaving them with no way to deter people out there with guns from doing the bad things they might do.
Especially BAD people!
What to do about this? I have no good solution to this problem.
Nobody does.
And yeah, it really is interesting how a place like Canada, which has a relatively high gun ownership level, has such low levels of gun-related crime.
I lived in Switzerland for awhile as a boy. Most every Swiss household has an M-1 rifle or the like in their house...they all had mandatory military training and they have guns and you don't see them blowing each other away in the streets.
One suggestion I have is to legalize and regulate and tax "illegal" drugs, the way we regulate alcohol and tobacco.
The price of drugs would come way, way down, and it would no longer be the stuff of gang wars and the violent out from a dead-end ghetto life. The tax money, which would be huge, would go to hospitals and schools and other fine programs (until dirty politicians, as usual, got their pork-barrel hands on it).
It has been suggested that the tax revenue from such drug sales could be used to pay $200 or so per weapon sold to the govt. or the police, no questions asked. That is not a bad idea.
I suppose, in legalizing drugs, you'd have an increase in various other social problems due to the relative ease of obtaining illegal drugs. However, the total human cost would be a mere fraction of the cost of maintaining the vastly expensive, hugely hypocritical "War on [some] Drugs" which clearly does not work, costs an unbelievable amount of money, results in so many murders, destroyed families/lives, perpetuates a ghetto lifestyle and racist stereotypes, etc.
US jails and courts are clogged with petty "crooks" who sold a few joints or snorted coke. This costs and incredible amount of money, and even results in early release of other offenders due to triple or even quadruple overcrowding of prisons.
Apparently it costs billions each year to equip and maintain all these drug police, case workers, paramilitary types, surveillance equipment, weapons, etc.
That's MY tax dollars at work.
It costs the state about $25,000 per person to keep a human in jail. More of MY tax dollars...
Gee, my college room, board and tuition was about the same as that, and I had to borrow/pay the whole darn amount myself!
Well, just one view.
-
In my CD player right now (all are collections burned from mp3s ripped off Kazaa lite!):
1.
Vicente Fernandez (I think the most famous of all "rancheras" singers)
2.
Red House Painters
3.
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult
But that is not what I am listening to right now.
Right now, I am listening to the blaring sound of "Dexter's Laboratory" emanating from the living room. My wife loves watching American cartoons to help improve her English.
Even worse, she sides with Dexter's stupid little sister!
Sheesh.
-
Hey Mogs--was that konbini near my house a Lawson's or am/pm?
I memorized it "on purpose" several times, but still can't remember...
I remember white flourescent lights, and a sign/in-store logo paint made up of blue and orange or red lines.
Erm...
-
Hey _freak, I knowed you weren't trying to start anything!
It was a good question that got me wondering exactly what it was that had me move back here, when I could have stayed in Japan working, or loafed around Niseko all winter (!), or gone to Italy or even New Zealand to board with Mogski's olds.
Since posting my reasons (a) - ©, I've come up with another one: me and my siblings live around a smallish lake, and my bro has lots of boats including a MasterCraft ski boat and an X-Star wakeboarding boat.
Now for people trapped in the flat, warm and green midwest, this is a nice solution for the boarding jones that comes on from time to time.
That and these tubs of freezable margaritas selling at Sam's Club for about 500 yen (you dump in as much tequila as you want and pop the tub in the freezer...the next day you've got the equivalent of about 2 pitchers of frozen lime or strawberry margarita that you can just scoop out like ice cream into glasses and drink away...
Ahhh summer...
-
My wife has tiny feet. According to the Flow catalogue, she is at the bottom of their size range (M size base, M size strap) with a 23.5 cm boot.
The thing is, we couldn't find a 23.5 cm boot she liked in women's sizes, so ended up buying a youth-size boys' boot that fits her. The outer dimensions seem slightly smaller than for a woman's 23.5.
Has anyone seen a 23.5 cm boot in a Flow? Does it ratchet down tight enough, or are we getting to the limit of the size chart here?
Ta
-
I just rounded out my full gear renewal, all done at end-of-season blowout prices.
First there was the $90 Flow bindings bought with Mogski's approval in Utah.
Then there were the Burton Ruler boots got for about $100.
And finally, a Salomon Fastback board for $270!!
Not bad, not bad!! Sure this is an expensive hobby, but you can get a full kit at 40% to 50% discounts if you buy at the end of the season.
My sister picked up a Salomon Ivy board for $198 online just last week.
My wife got Burton Rulers too, for only $68! Her board is fine for next year, but I will be trying to chase down some Flows for her, too.
I sure do love shopping!!
Anyone else get super-great end-of-season deals that they feel like crowing about?
-
Gero-yaki means "fried puke".
I always found okonomiyaki to be unpleasant.
First, I don't like restaurants where you come out with your clothes and hair stinking like fried smoky oil or the like...this is true of many poorly-ventilated yaki-niku, okonomiyaki, and some Chinese restaurants. I'll go, but I hate smelling that smell in my clothes all day long.
Second, I find the ingredients of okonomiyaki, taken individually, to be nothing special. Putting them all together with some egg batter on a griddle and making a fried frisbee out of them only makes it worse.
Third, this food is really heavy, oily and, well, much like fried puke to me. It sits heavy on my stomach for hours and hours, and what with my clothes reeking of fried oil and food smoke at the same time, I really can't stand the experience.
I went a total of 3 times during 8 years in Tokyo...once because I was curious, again because I thought "maybe I was wrong...", and then once more because it would have been extremely rude to refuse.
So much for Tokyo okonomiyaki.
Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki are reputed to be different and better, lighter and more delicious.
I tried them in Okayama and guess what? They are about as different to the Tokyo ones as McDonald's fries are different from Burger King fries. Big deal.
I have written them off entirely.
As a sidelight to this commentary, I find "hiyashi-chuuka" to be comletely unremarkable and forgettable. This is another example of a totally unremarkable agglomeration of totally unremarkable ingredients that gets undue raves for nothing at all...
Now that it is April, my wife is excitedly saying "When it gets hot, I want to eat hiyashi-chuuka!!" and of course I will have to join, but really. Hiyashi-chuuka is nothing but sliced-up school lunchmeat, carrots, hard-boiled egg slices and cukes over cold instant ramen.
Nothing special here, folks!!
And it is most certainly NOT chuuka ("Chinese food").
-
Yeh--and get this: they call Coke and 7-Up etc. "pop" (pronounced nasally, as in "PAHHHHP"
"Anybody want a pop?"
Michigan. Who woulda thunk?
-
DISCLAIMER: Long hours of company work and poor study habits have enabled me to reach a level of Japanese similar to the level of the English of the Chinese cook Hop Sing on the 60s western TV show "Bonanza". That being said, I feel qualified to make field judgments about the pronunciation of certain words.
--end disclaimer--
On other discussion sites like "Japan Today News" we've all heard a lot of sneery whining about "wa-sei eigo" and native Japanese speakers who ignorantly mangle and mutilate English words and generally don't even realize they were borrowed from English in the first place.
I suppose we could make the same complaint about native English speakers who blare out egregious mispronunciations of Japanese words with blithe eager brazen dimwitted ignorance.
Here are some examples that I hear in Walled Lake, Michigan:
KERRY OKIE
No, this is not an Irish redneck. It is "karaoke".
SAKI
Not the pen name of the writer Hector Hugh Munro (December 18, 1870 - November 13, 1916), but rather the rice wine that gives a remarkable headache.
CRODDY
Not a pommy insult, but rather a style of martial arts.
FUJIYAMA
I myself don't even know why it is pronounced "Fujisan", so I can't even begin to try to explain this to Americans.
WASSUP B!
Not a rapper, Japanese horseradish.
SHHTAGI
Mushrooms, not underwear.
Gentlemen, you have the floor.
-
Imagine--every post you ever made, from #1 until the one you made yesterday!!
Some of you have been posting here for years. It sure would bring back memories to read all one's posts in chronological order!!
Let's face it. E-mail outboxes are the diaries of the 21st century. I archive mine, don't you?
A Ski Japan Guide + Snow Japan Guide Scrapbook... A sort of magical memory book of one of the very best places to hang out on the Net...and YOU WERE THERE!!
I'd sure like to have a CD or CDs of the complete SJG posts, from incept date to the present!
I wonder how much memory that would take up?
Well, I sure would pay for something like that!
-
mikazooki, your Jan 2002 bill is ward tax due because you were registered in that ward on Jan. 1, 2002.
It is calculated by taking your 2001 Japan income and multiplying it by a percentage (the actual percentage varies by ward, I believe it's around 2% to 5% or so).
My information is that if you are registered in your ward on January 1, 2002, then you owe the tax. This would be true regardless of where you physically live/work, because the mere fact of being a registered inhabitant of that ward on Jan. 1 makes you liable for the tax.
If you had cancelled your visa upon leaving in May, 2001, you'd owe no tax.
I've never heard of this "prove you worked 12 months outside of Japan" gambit, but it sounds plausible. Maybe living/working outside of Japan for 12 consecutive months somehow removes you from the ward registration rolls, retroactive to the date the 12 months began (May, '01 for you)?
If so, that would mean you were technically NOT registered in that ward on Jan. 1, '02, and therefore not liable for the tax.
Maybe that's it?
Zooks, why can't you prove you were working for the 12 months outside of Japan?
Presumably the immigration entry/exit stamps in your passport will show you were physically present in another country for long enough to have been working there for 12 months.
You can't assemble any pay stubs, bank/checking account deposit records, credit card statements, telephone bills, or anything like that which would evidence employment for that period?
One final thought: as a lawyer, I doubt that the issue of whether you are or are not considered "registered" in a ward depends upon the fact of EMPLOYMENT elsewhere. Rather, I would think it had to do only with place of LEGAL RESIDENCE (you can only have 1 of these).
Legal residence is more than mere physical presence. At some point, physical presence in a place becomes more than just a long vacation or wandering around. It becomes legal residence and can be evidenced by one, some or a cluster of things: intention to make a place your primary abode, employment in that place, having a bank account there, phone/gas/electric/water bills in your name there, renting/buying accommodations there, having a vehicle there, etc.
Of course mere physical presence in another country (the entry/exit stamps in your passport should show this) is one strong factor that you could use as evidence of your legal residence outside of Japan.
How about if you get some other stuff too, like a notarized copy of your apartment rental contract, your utility bills, your bank account outside of Japan, and employment records if you can find them. If you can't get employment records, how about getting sworn statements from people who have personal knowledge of it and will vouch for the fact that you did?
It may be that your ward's request for proof of 12 months of consecutive employment outside of Japan is a lazy way of saying "prove your legal residence outside of Japan"...employment records would be slam-dunk evidence thereof, so maybe that is why they are asking for that.
If you took a lot of this stuff down to the ward and made your case, you might get somewhere. Even if you didn't, you'd be no worse off than before, since they can't put you in jail and as far as I know can't dock your current pay for those taxes. Furthermore, they are canceled after 5 years (a long time to hide under the sheets but actually not a bad alternative when you consider it).
Does any of this make sense to you?
-
Ocean, you are either at the java or the old scotch this a.m.!
Sheesh!!
By the way, when asking for the loan, is it rude to specify foreign currency?
-
Hey snowboard_freak!
Good question.
I presume you may be thinking about US involvement in Arab affairs? If so, I hate what the US is doing over there and even though foreign policy does not represent the sum totality of any nation's life, land or culture, if you really disagree with your country's way of doing something, that might be good motivation to think about living elsewhere.
PROBLEMS WITH THIS APPROACH:
There is this thing called "democracy" where people of opposing viewpionts who live in the same country can hash it out among themselves, so I am not supposed to leave just because I don't like the politics. I am supposed to do what I can to change things to the way that I like. If everyone had to agree with everything a country does before living there, nobody would live in any country. In fact, I hope a lot more people who disagree with the US will move here, don't you? It would help a lot. I thought this country was founded by some people who could no longer stand to live in places where everyone had to think alike. I hope you're not suggesting that all dissenters should on principle leave the US?
But it's worse than just US foreign affairs for me. I have a lot of long and bitter complaints about US domestic affairs too...
Could dissatisfaction with taxes, various laws, supreme arrogance + naivety, elephantine fast-food bodies, welfare abuse, intolerable health-care costs, petty self-serving politicians, jail/police human rights abuses, hunger in the ghettos, racism, the hypocritically wasteful "War on [some] Drugs", rotten cable TV programming and expensive so-called "broadband" Net services that only run around 600k be a reason to think about leaving?
PROBLEMS WITH THIS APPROACH:
I grew up here, have a US passport, my parents, brothers/sisters and their several new little kids all live here, it time for my new Japanese wife to finally learn to speak some English, and, as above, I have the power to try to make some changes and adjust my life to the way I like.
But none of this seems to explain to my satisfaction why I moved back here.
Now that I think about it, there are 3 main reasons I moved back here:
(a) After 8 years in Tokyo, time for a change;
(
Cheap living here in the bosom of my family; © Snowboarding monster scary runs at big US and Canadian resorts.
How's that?
-
Veronica, this post is meant to be both a moral tale and a practical guide, and each reader should take what they can from it.
A DOSE OF REALITY
I should have paid my taxes just like I should have driven exactly the speed limit and never parked overtime at a parking meter...
Would YOU voluntarily pay $6000 in taxes to a country you were leaving, just when you needed all your savings to relocate, buy a car, rent a house?
Erm I doubt it. And you wouldn't be extradited, you know.
I paid my Japanese income, health and retirement taxes, because those were deducted automatically from my paycheck.
However, the Ward Tax is collected differently: let me give you a practical example, as this will be educational for all.
HOW THE WARD TAX WORKS:
In 2001, you are registered in Shibuya Ward.
You get a monthly paycheck for your job at Sony.
Income tax, health tax and retirement tax are all taken out automatically.
If you remain officially registered in Shibuya Ward on January 1, 2002, then you owe Ward Tax to Shibuya Ward.
How much tax? It's a percentage of your 2001 income. When do the bills come? Quarterly, for 1/4 of the total amount.
If you DO NOT remain officially registered in Shibuya Ward as of January 1, 2002, then you DO NOT owe Ward Tax to Shibuya.
To whom do you owe it in such case?
If you have moved to another Ward and are officially registered there as of January 1, then you owe the Ward Tax to THAT Ward.
If you have left Japan completely, then you don't owe the Ward Tax to ANYBODY.
What happens if you DON'T PAY the Ward Tax?
It goes away after 5 years.
A PRACTICAL PRIMER
Can you begin to see the issues here?
One issue is the shock of getting a bill in April of 2002 based on your 2001 income. You may be UNEMPLOYED or POOR in 2002, and have no money to pay the tax...whereas in 2001 you had a great job and were, even then, unhappy to see so many yen withheld for income, health and retirement taxes.
Many foreigners avoid the Ward Tax by constantly moving to different Wards so the system has a hard time tracking them. They'll eventually leave Japan anyway, they figure, so who cares?
A lot of Japanese people don't pay it either, at least according to what I have heard from Japanese friends and relatives. The Wards can't garnish your income, they can't imprison you, they can't really do much of anything except keep sending you bills saying "let's pay our Ward Taxes!".
LET NOT HE WHO HAS DIRTY HANDS COME TO EQUITY
As for me, I knew the bill was coming, but I left my job in mid-2002 and was trying to save for my return to the US. I did not plan to pay the Ward Tax, but I feared that it might somehow be automatically deducted from my retirement tax refund.
The particular lesson I have learned here is that the people at the Ward office are holding up my retirement tax refund until I contact them or pay the Ward Tax.
I wasn't sure if they could do this, because the retirement tax is a Japanese national tax, whereas the Ward Tax is not; and both are nominally administered by totally different agencies.
It seems the two sets of people are in communication...the left hand does know what the right is doing.
To find out whether they can legally hold up my tax refund or not would cost more in lawyers' fees than the actual amount of the refund itself. And, as you point out, as long as I owe taxes to Shibuya Ward I have unclean hands.
MY PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY ON TAXES
Taxation is a form of theft whereby a private individual is forced by threat of confinement and government action to pay a portion of their income to the state.
It's like an obligatory tithe to the Lord of the Manor.
The total amount of tax that I pay here in the US, after you combine Federal and State income taxes, social security, Medicare, city and local taxes; plus the gasoline tax, liquor tax, luxury taxes, sales tax and other assorted taxes, approaches 50% of my gross income.
It just seems unreasonable to me to have to pay HALF my income out in taxes, especially when I see so much government waste and mismanagement, and when I disagree so strongly with much of what the American government does.
Non-payment of taxes is a "malum prohibitum" (a prohibited wrong, like parking overtime at a meter), as opposed to a "malum in se" (a moral wrong, like battery or theft).
If I can ever skip tax payment with little fear of consequences, I will do it every time.
I'd bet that 95% of the people in the world feel the same way. That's why they have to make sure you get in big trouble for non-payment of taxes...nobody would pay if they never got into big trouble.
I've always filed and paid my US tax returns most scrupulously, because the IRS can really screw you up if you don't.
But the Japanese Ward Tax? This is one of the wimpiest collection regimes around, and the country is loaded with folks--Japanese as well as foreign--who don't pay, because there is little downside for them.
CONCLUSION
I timed my Japan departure wrong. I could have avoided this tax entirely by simply not being registered in any Ward on January 1, 2002...
Well, I think I may call up the number they sent me to see what I can do. I'll keep the lot of you posted on the result, as I know each and every one of you may be thoroughly bored by this post but know that one day, when you leave Japan (if ever), you will be glad you printed this out and timed your official actions accordingly.
-
I left Japan last October, just as the bills for my Inhabitants' Tax (aka "ward tax" or "kuminzei") were starting to pile up. The total is some several thousand US$...
After returning to the US, I applied for a refund of my Kokumin-nenkin. The total is around US$7000.
I got a letter from the ward office in English, asking me to contact them about the unpaid ward tax.
No Kokumin-nenkin refund has appeared, even after all these months (this refund only took 4 weeks when I did it in 1999!).
Obviously, they are holding the Kokumin-nenkin refund until I contact them about the unpaid ward tax.
I doubt they are authorized under J law to automatically offset the two; the Kokumin-nenkin is a national tax, whereas the ward tax varies by ward, and is administered and collected by each ward separately.
Nevertheless, the people seem to be working together somehow!!
Damn. I didn't think it was so hard to be a tax cheat!!
-
Er...don't you mean, "the last album you downloaded/ripped"?
-
I thought the younger, long-haired Kimutaku was better looking.
My Japanese wife and I now reside in Walled Lake, Michigan. We rented the entire TV drama "Good Luck!" starring Kimutaku, and were watching an episode when some of my sisters and their friends came over.
They found Kimutaku to be very a plain, even rather ugly, scrawny, bad-skinned, bad-toothed, smoky loser.
In fact, they were astonished to find that not only is he famous in Japan for his "talents" (singing off-key and smoking a lot in TV dramas?), but also that many Japanese girls swoon over him.
There are tons of better-looking guys than Kimutaku in Japan.
And, girls in America are used to seeing plenty of tall, well-built, non-smoking Asian-American guys with perfect teeth and gym bodies.
Putting one of those guys up against Kimutaku is totally unfair. It's like, well...er...putting ME up against a Calvin Klein underwear model.
I guess that makes me a kind of Kimutaku without all the money.
Three final points:
1.
I've read a few times that Kimutaku is actually a rather selfish, stuck-up arrogant pr**k on the set of his shows.
2.
I looked at the page of Miss Japan contestants and was totally shocked. I used to see 100 women per hour better than them, just commuting to and from work in Tokyo.
3.
Norika-chan has a tubelike, sausage-torso with no "kubire" or "hourglass shape" to it. Her cosmetic nose surgery has unfortunately left her just short of a harelip--she has almost no upper lip. A very strange face! Whoever wants her, can have her. I wouldn't touch it!
Yes, it truly seems that whatever the country, the "celebs" and "beauties" are really just the McDonalds of people: Dumbed-down to the lowest common denominator, prettied-up in pics and ads and blared all over the place as the greatest thing, but really just a load of recycled, manufactured hokum.
-
My wife is from Okayama and she says that reikin and koshinryo are pretty rare there. She also said that shikikin is usually only 1 month's rent. Often there is no agent or only a low agent fee. Rents are a fraction of Tokyo's.
Compare that to Tokyo where the norm is 2 months' reikin, 2 months' shikikin, 1 month to the agent and of course, lest we forget, the first month's rent.
I guess the difference is paying almost $10,000 US just to get in the door of a modern 2BR apt. in Tokyo, vs. about $2000 to do the same in Okayama.
In both places I guess you need a "guarantor" to assume full legal and financial responsibility for YOU.
It's always amazed me how people are able to come up with the $7000 - $10,000 CASH and the hoshonin that it usually takes just to move into an apt. in Tokyo. I guess a lot of that cash must be fronted by companies.
Here in the US, you just buy a newspaper (35 cents), circle some interesting apts. in the classified ads, then call up and go see them right away. If you like a place, then you just sign the contract on the spot with a ballpoint pen and hand over a check for the first, last and security deposit. They give you the key right there...
If you want to, you can move in yourself by renting a 14-foot U-Haul truck for $19/day, unlimited mileage.
$10,000 cash, just to get into the door?
Sheesh!!
Right now, I am glad to be here in Walled Lake!!
-
Karaoke is probably the one thing that I hate most about Japan and some other Asian countries.
I absolutely loathe and actively despise everything about it.
I never wanted to sing to my friends, or listen to them sing to me.
Even if I did, it would have to be original compositions, not crappy Casio-tone beat J-pop garbage, or drunken slurring to some Queen or Sinatra song.
And what's with the ear-piercing volume, the whiskey on the rocks, the thick cigarette-smoke-in-a-box, the forced gaiety...
I hate the way, after a nomikai, when all are milling around near the cash register, someone always says "How about a nijikai?" and someone replies "Oh, what a great idea...um, what shall we do?"
There is a moment of silence while everyone is presumably racking their brains for some idea, any idea of what we could all possibly do for a nijikai.
Inevitably, the lightning strike of inspiration reveals itself and somebody says in inquisitive tones, "What about karaoke?"
"OH FANTASTIC, II IDEA DESU NE! KARAOKE! KARAOKE NI SHIYO!!"
Heads immediately begin nodding as the greatness of this original idea dawns on the assembled partygoers.
Karaoke!
What an excellent idea!
Forget about going home to read a book or exercise, forget about going to a bar or a dance club, forget about a walk in the park or going to bed early or just saying bye-bye to be with, oh, I don't know, your wife and kids? Your fiancee? Your girlfriend? Your REAL mates?
I hate the way almost all pop music in Japan is intentionally made so that it can be whined by even the most tone-deaf karaoke goers...in the horrifically stunted, programmed, marketed world of J-Pop you'll find hardly any trained voices, original-sounding voices, singers with good pitch (i.e., non tone-deaf), non-nasal voices, etc.
Even most J-Pop singers are just doing karaoke in front of a mike in the studio, or with faceless studio musicians told what to play by some producer.
I hate the piercing whiney refrain of strange, totally incorrect and irrelevant English oddly placed in the middle of a J-Pop song that you sometimes hear through the glass at a karaoke box.
I hate the idea of having to pay thousands of yen for this torture.
I hate the dread of going out with company people because it will always end in the bully-boy showdown of everyone kowtowing to the kachou or buchou or some liver-spotted twerp who suggests karaoke when almost everyone would rather just get out of there.
And, I hate the feigned surprise when I reply to the question "Don't you like karaoke?" with the truth, "No, I don't..."
I really, really, really, REALLY hate karaoke!!
-
Here's an amusing aside I got off the Net a few years ago.
"TAXI DRIVER WISDOM
New York cab drivers are the world's most accessible source of truth and wisdom. Where else can you have intimate discussions with someone from Bangladesh, Liberia, India, Zaire, Pakistan, Vietnam, Iran, Russia, Haiti, Lithuania, Poland and the Ivory Coast. Where else can you hear the wisdom of Taoism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Islam, Scientology, etc..
Maybe because people can only deal with limited-time intimacy, we get into a taxi and, suddenly (sometimes), we can reveal our souls. We can ask questions we've been afraid to ask.
A cab is a kind of confessional-mobile. Sealed off from the rest of the world, you slide open the glass divider and it's just you and your guru, sharing a few minutes of reflection and advice.
Here is some advice from the "Philosophers of real life":
- AS SOON AS YOU MEET SOMEONE, YOU KNOW THE REASONS WHY YOU WILL LEAVE THEM.
- NEW SHOES ALWAYS HURT.
- YOU ARE NOT ANY SAFER IN FIRST CLASS.
- IF SOMEONE STEALS YOUR CAB, THEN IT WASN'T YOUR CAB.
- PEOPLE LOOK SO MUCH BETTER ALONE.
- THE WORSE A TOWN'S ECONOMY IS, THE BETTER LOOKING THE GUYS WHO WORK AT THE LOCAL GAS STATIONS ARE.
- THE MOUTH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS PART OF A PERSON.
- YOU SAY WHAT YOU LIKE TO HEAR.
- IF YOU'RE A SMART PERSON, YOU CAN SEE WHAT'S SMART ABOUT THE NEXT GUY. IF YOU'RE SECRETLY AFRAID YOU'RE A MORON, OKAY, THEN TO YOU, EVERYBODY'S A MORON.
- IF A MAN KEEPS TELLING YOU HE LOVES YOU, OVER AND OVER, THEN SOMETHING IS WRONG.
- YOU HAVE NO ONE TO BLAME BUT YOURSELF AND EVERYONE HAS YOU TO BLAME, TOO.
- TO PREPARE YOURSELF FOR MARRIAGE, YOU MUST THINK: I AM GOING TO BURY THIS PERSON.
- IT'S ALWAYS BETTER TO BE BEHIND A POLICE CAR.
- DON'T LOOK AT WHAT HE IS NOT. LOOK AT WHAT HE IS.
- YOU SAY YOU ARE HAPPY, YOU ARE LYING.
- TRUST NOBODY. YOU HAVE TO GET EVERYTHING ON PAPER.
- SOME PEOPLE, THEY PREFER YOU WHEN YOU FAIL.
- WE DO EVERYTHING FOR OURSELVES.
- IF YOU ARE ALWAYS LATE, IT IS BECAUSE YOU ARE TRYING TO MAKE THINGS FASTER.
- DEMOCRACY IS ONLY BECAUSE EVERYONE WANTS OTHERS TO SHARE THE BLAME.
- WHOMEVER IS IN POWER IS NOT IN TROUBLE.
- THERE'S NO NEED TO STAND BEHIND ANYONE WHEN THERE'S SO MUCH ROOM TO WALK.
- IF YOUR DRIVER HAVE NOTHING INTERESTING TO SAY TO YOU, MAYBE BECAUSE YOU HAVE NOTHING INTERESTING TO SAY TO HIM.
These quotations have been taken from Risa Mickenberg's illustrated book "Taxi Driver Wisdom", published in 1996."
-
New York cabbies are a world unto themselves. Rude, smelly, often non-English speaking with little or no knowledge of streets, addresses and traffic laws...
I was on a business trip from Tokyo to New York a few years ago. We finished a dinner and I escaped the karaoke session on the excuse of "going back to the hotel to do some work" and went outside to hail a cab.
Scores and scores of empty cabs drove by, but not a one stopped.
I started walking toward the hotel (a LONG walk), and kept trying to hail a cab. Finally, one screeched to a stop.
I walked to the door and stood there for a couple of seconds, waiting for it to open automatically (they don't open automatically in New York, but I was used to Tokyo cabs...). After what was literally only 2-3 seconds, the cabbie rolled down the side window and yelled "HEY F*** YOU, YOU A**HOLE!!" and roared off at high speed.
It took me another 30 minutes to walk back to the hotel through some very scary streets, where I was accosted by a number of odd, unstable and disturbing characters.
At that point I would have been glad to take my chances on a Tokyo cabbie.
Mogs, I totally agree with your fare calculations. If these Roppongi-lurking taxi drivers cared to do it, they could do 10 local gaijin fares for around 1500 yen each, and that would be qucker and more profitable than one longer fare I would think.
I got better
in Snow talk, trip reports, Japan avalanche & backcountry
Posted
I know my limits and I will never be throwing big spins in the pipe or doing Big Airs. You'll never see me tricking on a rail or putting down a "sick" slopestyle line...
In fact that seems almost like circus performance to me--like the Chinese Acrobats or the guy who rides the motorcycle in the Cage of Death.
No offense to those who do it or aspire to--I'll watch till the cows come home and even buy you beers... but I'll never do it.
That leaves me steeps, powder, trees, moguls, high-speed carving, and backcountry. And cat/heli-skiing if I can get rich.
So I am all about improving my skill set in other ways...like how IM said he got good at reading precip maps and predicting the weather.
I don't see my skills having improved markedly this year. I don't see myself doing things I couldn't do before.
But I do go faster and more comfortably down the lines I choose, and, more than before, when I remember my runs of the day while lying in bed, I don't see the slope and my tracks. I see the trees, the broad slope and trees everywhere, sitting white and peaceful under a giant endless sky.
I like to think that Mogs and I are drawn to scary places because we need to improve our mental game. I think we already have all the skills needed to handle the places we go, but we just need to practice the mental part.
When you start out something new--a language, a new trick, a musical instrument--any small advance seems huge because you may be doubling your skills every week...but at some point you are working on mental stuff.
I think I got better at mental stuff this year.
Not smarter! Just another year of alarming, exciting, and variegated runs under my belt.
And I got the feeling I am not the only one, right guys?