Little House In Ise

Howdy,

I’ve totally missed my quota of weird Japanese news/stuff. So here goes …

Powertard: I have no idea whether this is a product name or feature. Since I’ve only noticed the Powartard label on busses my guess is that it is a company specializing in moving politicians from place to place. Common sense suggests against too much truth in advertising so my idea is mostly ruled out.

Curry Soda: Megumi had a buddy over for a late-night girl-talk session. I risked my health and intruded once I realized where all the snacks in the house had gone. They weren’t thrilled to see me but did take the opportunity to say, “Here, try this”. It may be obvious that I had been drinking else I would never have intruded much less taken them up on that sort of offer. It turns out that some genius (powertard?) had decided that the world needed curry soda. It will serve as a good reminder never to intrude on conversation like that again.

Samurai Teens: I was in Tokyo recently (WOOHOOO! Akasaka baby! Roppongi has, apparently, gone to hell — so sad) and I, ahem, just happened to bump into the crowd from Harajuku. When I was last there the style of the day was wedding gowns and prom type dresses for the girls and, well, I didn’t notice the guys, sorry. This last time the scene was nouveaux Samurai. Badly tied and improperly worn haori, hakama and not-quite-kimono all in clashing colors made for a nuclear fashion faux pas. Not laughing out loud took serious effort. I think I pulled a stomach muscle when I saw peroxide Barbie hair topping a purple haori, green kimono with maroon hakama and no clue as to tie ANY of the knots.

IT Bureaucracy: This was half my fault for not reading through the document but still it was a bit extreme. One of the Irish guys with whom I work needed to to get wireless networking running on his laptop. I warned him that he needed to fill out a form and get it stamped by two department heads before IT would allow it. He groaned and asked for help finding the file (no network search at ASI) so I helped dig out what, I thought, was the correct form. The Japanese title was in fact “Application for Wireless Access”. My buddy filled it in, printed it out and then got the requisite two department heads’ stamps. He took it to IT where he was told that typing in the correct password would take a few hours. A couple hours later (with no computer to work on that whole time) they called him in and told him that, yes, it was a wireless network application form but it was for the wrong office. Since it was for the wrong building they weren’t going to do it and sent him away with no changes to his machine. We looked over the form that he had turned in and the one that was supposed to be correct and noticed a one word difference in the text the name of the building. Grrrr ritual Darwination did not ensue but we both wanted to beat the IT bureaucrat with his laptop…

There is almost certainly more but I guess I’m getting used to the place again. Little old ladies firing off emails from their cell-phones and psychedelic seeming not-quite-English tee-shirts on old men no longer give me pause.