I remain surprised by how finicky the weather is here. I generally expect summer to be a hot-all-day-for-weeks-on-end kind of thing, but that's just not how it's been here this summer. It'll be hot and humid for a couple days, like REALLY hot and humid, and then the next day there will be a cool breeze blowing. Then the next day the heat's torture will be back. The occasional cool day makes the hot days almost bearable. They're like sunny breaks in a week-long winter storm.

This morning I was moved to misty eyes as I rode through the streets of Daikanyama and Ebisu, grateful for the cool weather, for the many blessings God has given me, for the chance I have to be here at this point in my life. Do I miss my old life? Deeply. But I love being here for a time, too. Somehow riding my scooter on cool days in the summer makes the difficult times brighter.

I was chatting with the lovely B-Ruch and she suggested I describe my surroundings, so I took pictures and sent them to her. I thought some others might find it interesting, so I'm putting them here, too.

To my left is an empty space between Imai-san and me, and beyond that is the JBoss group. To my right is a window with a view of the Ebisu Garden Place.


In front of me is my laptop. Behind me is the Operations row, where Kitazawa-san and Miki, plus the whole Order Management team, sit.


This is me:

My right shoe is squeaking today. I should just throw this pair away, because as far as I can tell, they're ruined! Once I got a rock or something stuck inside the sole of one of my black Spanish shoes and it would roll around in there with every step I took. Needless to say I'm not wearing those shoes much (or ever) anymore.

I was scootering through Shibuya yesterday and saw Aaron Neville walking up the street. I just checked his official web site and he's here in Japan for Fuji Rock... plus his Twitter says he's in Japan... It was totally him!

Right after that I saw Jamie Macleod from my favorite band Anathallo. They were in Japan this week, but I was in Hiroshima and Singapore... I had debated either going to see them play in Shibuya or going to Hiroshima, and since I had just seem them the last time four months ago in North Carolina (and I've seen them five times now), I decided to skip the show and go with Pete and Josh to Hiroshima. Anyway, I saw him on the street (like 10 seconds after passing Aaron Neville) and decided I couldn't pass up the chance to talk to him, so I hit the brakes, pulled over, parked my scooter, and chased after him. He and I talked for about 20 or 30 minutes -- nice guy. I've now had conversations with three members of the band and they've all been extremely cool and cordial.

Remember last fall when I saw Elliot Yamin in the Cerulean Tower and talked to him for a while? What's the lesson here, people? Move to Japan and you'll meet/see famous people. It's that simple!

The Singapore trip went well. It was great to work with a bunch of our departments, and to see the fruits of much of the work I've been focusing on since I came to Japan. A good trip.

I'm off to Singapore for a few days. I'm sure I'll post while I'm there, but in case I don't, I'm giving the standard "talk to you in a few days if not before then" message.

We were done with the Peace Park and had finished dinner by 6, so we decided to see if the Carp had a game, and it turned out the Tokyo Yakult Swallows are in town. So we're here in Mazda Stadium enjoying a cool summer breeze and God's game... it's a great weekend for a holiday!

Unbelievable!

On one of the web forums that Mac and I participate in, he posted this picture and comment in a thread someone started about how rotten baby vomit smelled:

I assure you sir, that this bucket contained the worst smell ever known to mankind. To touch its handle was to bring on immediate and involuntary projectile my-valve-is-closing vomiting; it was useless to resist. I don't know what was in that bucket, but if we had opened, I have little doubt that all present would've died immediately. Tim puked moving it; I puked. We took turns puking and moving it down the street away from the house we were gutting. Thinking about it now makes me want to puke. Smearing Vicks Vap-o-Rub inside and below our nostrils did nothing. Nothing will EVER smell that bad again. EVER!

My response:

Remember how there was that smell of rotten ketchup in the air? For several months after that I couldn't smell ketchup without wanting to barf. The four worst smells of that week were as follows:

1. The bucket. I think it had beans in it.

2. The fridge. Like all fridges in NOLA (and like your freezer), the only thing we could do was duct tape the door shut and hope no one opened it. I was pushing it through the house on that dolly, then down that ramp, down the driveway, across the street, to that area that had tons of appliances waiting for the National Guard (or whoever it was) to pick them up. When I angled the dolly straight up, the fridge rocked back a bit on the ground, then as it rocked back toward me, the door opened about an inch and "breathed" a gust of rotten food smell in my face. While the bucket smell was worse, the fridge smell was the fastest my body has ever vomited. It's like the smell hit my face and my body immediately said, "NOPE!" and I literally vomited right then. There was none of the build-up that usually happens before vomiting. It was truly amazing to see the lengths the body will go to to keep unwanted smells, tastes, and liquids out of its system.

3. The tupperware bin thing with 4-week-old brackish water and a rotting wool blanket in it.

4. The cans of Ensure... the water had eaten through the cans and everything inside had gone bad. One touch and those things disintegrated in our hands.

The crazy thing is that so many of the horrendous smells in that house were caused by that woman's righteous desire to keep a year's supply of food storage.

When another person wrote that he wanted to know what was in that bucket, I responded:

Beans. Dried pinto beans. Somehow the lid had been opened and allowed the brackish water in, and then the lid had been closed tight somehow. We were going through the house and gutting it... I was doing the food storage area, and I came across this bucket. Since we were trying to salvage as much as was possible, I figured it'd be best to open it and see what was in there. From my view it looked like it was on there pretty tight! So I opened it innocently -- and unleashed the fury of 30 pounds of rotting pinto beans.

I tried to stamp the lid back shut as quickly as I could, but the smell kept coming out of it. So I grabbed the bucket and ran for the street. I made it to the middle, where I decided to switch the bucket from my right hand to my left hand. As the bucket moved laterally between my hands, the smell hit my nose, and my head wildly arced up and to the right while vomit flew out of my mouth. Seeing my vomit make a rainbow as it flew through the air made me laugh, though, and I stopped to laugh and breathe... in doing so, though, I accidentally caught another whiff of the bucket smell, and I puked again right there in the middle of the street. Finally I decided to run away from it, and wuapinmon came over and moved it the rest of the way, puking a couple of times in the process.

The best part was seeing the branch president go grab the hose and turn the water on, then go to the middle of the street to clean up my mess. The city was in tatters, there were troops in the streets, his home was destroyed, his possessions were lost, but damned if he was going to allow huge piles of vomit in front of his house!

As I posted there on that site, the week I spent in New Orleans after Katrina was one of the most difficult and rewarding experiences of my life. Amazing memories.

A friend posted a link to this amazing article by Joel Stein. He's such a brilliant writer -- there's such a power in the simplicity of his words.

Afterbirth: It's What's For Dinner

Now, this topic is indeed disgusting, as it aims to be, but I burst into laughter with the very first line:

There is so much you can't know about your spouse when you get married, like that one day she will want to eat her placenta.

Unbelievably unique, great writing, and funny. That's my recipe for Friday reading! Now... where did I put my David Sedaris books?

Mount Fuji,
o beacon of my dreams,
thou hast shown thyself
and made my life complete.

Thou art beautiful!
Thou art majestic!
Thou art MINE!!!!

I wrote this poem to signify my gratitude and, well, humble appreciation for the great Mt. Fuji, which, after a long and much-discussed sojourn behind the Kanto plain's hazy skies, peeked over the clouds today to say hello to us. And with that, just like it started, Fuji-watch is over. The Mt. Fuji Count-up will rest now at an enormous 82 days. That's 82 days that I've lived in Tokyo now without seeing Mt. Fuji. But all that is done! It's all in the past now. I've forgiven Mt. Fuji for its (ahem) *rude* absence (it's a shy mountain, especially in the summer during tourism season). You should forgive it, too.

On a related note, I've just spoken with Sakagami-san, our fantastic internal counsel here in Japan, and I've informed him that I wish to file suit against the government of Japan. The heat here is unbearable! Well, it's not just heat, it's humidity, too. It's unbearable. I don't know why I even bother showering in the morning -- a 10-minute scooter ride leaves me sweating like a prostitute in church (I got that one from my old roommate Oscar Arthur Pascal Devaux VII -- yes, that was his real name). Every time I come back from lunch I feel like I need a nap. I've learned that heat + humidity + Japanese noodles = nap time. It's only the cool, clear waters of the Crystal Geyser machine that bring me back to my usual self.

On an unrelated note, I filmed enough yesterday for Part III of my Sunday Afternoons in Tokyo series. I should note that after Part III I'm going to start including footage from other days besides Sunday. The idea of "Sunday Afternoons in Tokyo" is to show my explorations of Tokyo, regardless of what day they happen on. It just so happens that up to this point I've had most of my free time on Sunday afternoons. There are many other non-Sunday things worth filming, though, and I want to capture them as well.

There's no way this shouldn't make you laugh.

Today I learned that Japanese people laugh when you lick a stamp and put in on a document. Apparently they don't lick stamps here. Once the stamp was touching my tongue I realized that the attendant had been kindly directing me toward the wet sponge to my left, which I hadn't seen.

In a loosely-related note, I got my re-entry permit today during lunch. Whereas my Japan visa allowed me to enter Japan legally once, this re-entry permit is an additional seal in my passport that lets me enter Japan as many times as necessary during the duration of my visa period. This will allow me to pursue work-related and personal travel while I'm here in Japan.

This time I focused on Shibuya Station -- all of the shots here were taken in, around, or below the station. It should be noted that Shibuya Station is the fourth-busiest train station in the world with an average of 2.4 million passengers per day (numbers 1 and 2 -- Shinjuku and Ikebukuro -- are also in Tokyo, and number 3 is in Osaka). There are three subway lines and five commuter rail lines, plus the Narita Express airport train. It's an amazing station, and one can find lights and life and amazing people and beautiful sights and smells any time of day and any day of the week.

I'm so not used to rain in July. The weather stays cool after the clouds lift and it makes for some very enjoyable scooter rides. On other days, though, it's scorching hot, humid, and sweaty. Those days also make for enjoyable scooter rides. The point, really, is that pretty much any type of weather is conducive to enjoyable scooter rides. Except snow.

Subject change: The next episode of my Tokyo video series is currently encoding back at my apartment (it takes a couple hours), and I'll be posting it tonight.

Kudos to MLB for commemorating Lou Gehrig's speech today. In addition, ESPN.com has a special video and presentation of some of the letters he wrote as he suffered from the disease. His spirit in adversity was captivating and admirable.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/flash/gehrigletters

I've been a dedicated baseball fan for literally as long I can remember, and I can't say that I've ever once heard anyone share anything but respect for Lou Gehrig. He was a giant and a hero, both on the field and off. He's the kind of person that halls of fame are built for.

I wanted to send some attention to a couple of posts that Ian has written on his blog:

http://iamian.org/life/2009/06/free-choi/

http://iamian.org/life/2009/06/today-i-am-ashamed-to-call-myself-a-soldier/

I could share my own thoughts on both the Choi issue and Don't Ask Don't Tell in general, but Ian says what I would want to say better than I could, and he says it with the credibility reserved for soldiers who have seen its damaging effects in person. To quote:

You want to talk about moral and professional dereliction? I could pen *volumes* full of stories of shockingly immoral, unprofessional, illegal behavior I have witnessed, time and time again, in my service in the military. Somehow it’s OK to be a complete heathen as long as you’re heterosexual.

President Obama indicated a few months back that he would end Don't Ask Don't Tell, and I'm sure that fair-minded citizens all throughout the country will celebrate when it is finally abolished.