I had a four-day break from work last weekend, so I took a trip up to Hirosaki, a medium-sized city near the northern tip of Honshu, the main island of Japan.
To get there, I bought a special ticket called the seishun juuhachi kippu, which is only offered during periods that coincide with student holidays. For about US$100, the ticket gives you five nonconsecutive days of unlimited travel on local trains. Cheap, but slow. Travel between Nagano and Hirosaki took 15 hours each way. But I had time to spare, I love riding trains, and the scenery was great.
I rode on six different trains, taking me through many cities and towns along the way:
Nagano –> Arai
Arai –> Niigata
Niigata –> Murakami
Murakami –> Sakata
Sakata –> Akita
Akita –> Hirosaki
Much of the trip between Niigata and Akita was right along the coast of the Sea of Japan. The weather was spectacular and the views were great as the trains traveled through small coastal villages.
Through the mountains between Nagano and Arai, and then again between Akita and Hirosaki, there was still a lot of snow. In Hirosaki, banks of snow remained, but it was melting quickly in the warm, spring sunshine.
I visited Hirosaki because it’s where my great-grandfather lived in the last years of the 1800s. There is a museum in Hirosaki that contains family photos, letters, diaries and more. My grandmother visited the city in 1991 along with her four children for the dedication of the museum. I’ll be posting more about this part of my visit to Hirosaki soon.
I’ve added two photo albums of the trip:
Local trains to Hirosaki:
I love trains.
Nagano to Hirosaki:
Scenery as seen from many trains, and photos of Hirosaki.
I’ve also added nine video clips taken during the trip.
Month: March 2003
Who’s To Blame?
It’s surely not a good sign, especially so early in the war, for the generals and the secretary of defense to already be laying the groundwork for passing blame. Is there any better way to tell when a war is going badly?
First, anonymous Pentagon officials spread disparaging comments about Rumsfeld:
Report: Rumseld Ignored Pentagon Advice on Iraq
Reuters (via Yahoo! News)
“He thought he knew better. He was the decision-maker at every turn,” the article quoted an unidentified senior Pentagon planner as saying. “This is the mess Rummy put himself in because he didn’t want a heavy footprint on the ground.” It also said Rumsfeld had overruled advice from war commander Gen. Tommy Franks to delay the invasion until troops denied access through Turkey could be brought in by another route and miscalculated the level of Iraqi resistance.
Then, Rumsfeld drops a subtle comment during a news briefing, shifting responsibility for the war back onto General Tommy Franks.
Pentagon News Briefing Transcript
New York Times Online (reg. required)
Rumsfeld: “Well, we’re one week into this and it seems to me it’s a bit early for history to be written, one would think. The war plan is Tom Franks’ war plan. It was carefully prepared over many months.”
Ultimate responsibility, of course, lies with neither man, but with the commander-in-chief.
Copy Protected CDs In Japan
It seems that most of the new CDs here in Japan are being released with copy protection. I’m wondering whether Japanese consumers are complaining about this?
As far as I can decipher from the labels (the image here is a big sticker on the front of the CD; there’s more detailed usage information on the back), you cannot rip music from these CDs into a digital format of your choice. You can listen to the CD on a computer, but only if you’re using Windows and a media player with digital rights restrictions. You can’t listen to one of these CDs on your computer if you’re using a Macintosh. They also won’t work in DVD players (including Sony’s PlayStation).
At least they’re labeled well — you can’t miss that you’re about to buy music that limits listening options.
There have been several new releases that I’ve wanted to purchase, but I don’t even own a CD player. All of my listening is done on my Mac or with an MP3 player. That means no new CDs for me.
The strange thing about these copy protected CDs appearing in Japan is that there’s a huge market for renting CDs here. At any number of big rental stores, you can grab a CD along with the DVD you rent for the night. I thought I remembered reading once that the Japanese music industry never really complained about this because there was a tax built into either the rentals or the sale of blank CD-Rs, and that money went to compensate for any copying that occurred. Or maybe it was because widespread CD copying didn’t occur until just recently. Anyone know more about this than I do?
We all need to remember that unless consumers complain about these copy protected CDs, the recording industry is going to get away with restricting the lawful rights of fair use. You pay for the music — it’s yours to do with what you want (within the law). Listening to the music you purchased on the device of your choice is not breaking the law.
Stern Man
An extreme close-up of a photo I took of a politician speaking from his soundtruck near the station. Typically, Japanese politicians will stand on top of a large van — with huge speakers pointing in all directions — and disrupt the peace with campaign speeches that no one pays attention to.
The man in this photo is not the politician, but one of his entourage who saw me taking the picture and evidently didn’t like what he saw.
If The Internet Were A Giant Sewer
My web hosting company, DreamHost, has a way with words (though not with spell-checking). The following is an excerpt from their answer to the question, “What is bandwidth?”
If the Internet were a giant sewer, it would be composed of giant pipes and smaller pipes, forming a giant grid underneath the city. Those whose computers are connected with modems would be water faucets and kitchen sinks. Those with cable modems or ADSL would be about the same as a swimming pool. DreamHost (that’d be us!) is pretty much the equivelent [sic] of a nice large resevoir [sic] holding thousands of gallons of water, ready to be shipped to the sinks and pools of the city.
From the resevoir [sic] flows great amounts of water to the citizens of this great city of web pages and streaming audio. How does it get around? Pipes. Big pipes, small pipes. Lots of pipes.
They never do get around to explaining when and where a bunch of shit is added to the water.
Teaching The Kids About War
While flipping through the channels last Saturday night trying to pick up news on the war, I came across a show that was teaching kids about the conflict. It looks like the show (or segment) is called Kodomo Nyusu (Kid’s News). They were using toy props and cartoons to show a trio of very glum-looking kids what was happening in Iraq. It was too bizzare to pass up, so I grabbed my camera and started snapping photos.
Here’s my report…
Fox News Alert: Invading Ants
Mr. Odana at Trash Addict has keenly noticed that the future (the wrong one) has arrived.
My favourite scary news station is Fox News. It could have been invented by Ray Bradbury or George Orwell. The newscasters look like Real Dolls and there’s an air of mad dystopic future society-gone-wrong about it. The reporting is somewhat right-wing and fuzzy, and I keep expecting to hear reports about invading ants from Mars (Starship Troopers), or hearing that the president’s nose has been kidnapped (Sleeper).
Sunset Near Myoko
Had a great trip last weekend. I’ll be posting some words and pictures about my travels in the next couple days. In the meantime, here’s a photo I took from the train on my way back to Nagano on Monday. The sun is setting over the mountains between Arai and Myoko-Kogen, about an hour north of Nagano. This was taken while riding the Shinetsu Line (local), the last leg of my 12 hours on local trains. More soon.
The War Begins
I’d just gotten home from the gym about ten minutes ago when Ria called to say her boyfriend had called her from Florida to tell her President Bush was on television announcing the beginning of the war. I turned on the television and had just enough time to snap this poor picture of Bush before his short speech ended. I had NPR on simulateously via the internet so I could hear Bush, since the Japanese translation made it difficult to hear him on television.
Right now, all I can see are pictures of early morning in Iraq, with flashes of light that look like the beginning of a fireworks show.
KCRW has just broken away from NPR to go to a live CNN report from Iraq.
I have to be at work in 30 minutes, so I won’t be able to follow the live coverage.
Huh? Al Gore Becomes Apple Director
Apple Computer has announced that former Vice President Al Gore has joined the company’s board of directors.