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valentines, funerals, and hot and creamy skiing - jan 30 - feb 15, 2002

first off, happy birthday to me, who is now f(y), where f(x)=d/dx[ x*2^x/ln(2) - 2^x/ln(2)^2 ], and y is the element of the single element set of all positive integers that are not even and are not odd, unless of course, that integer is 3, in which case it might be odd... years old. yes! i win! fear my sexy geekdom!

*****a tiny bout of self pity*****
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happy valentines day! what a horrible idea for a holiday. let's make a holiday so that happy people can eat chocolate and get laid and depressed and alone people can be reminded of how depressed and non-laid and alone they are. however, there are some nice warm and fuzzy feelings that come out of it i guess, like today's slashdot post where cmdrtaco proposed to the woman of his cyber life. so geeky and cute it all is.

anyway, valentine's day is funny here in japan. all the chocolate stands in the train stations, in the department stores, the convenience stores, everywhere. buy your chocolate here! in elementary school in the states, everyone always made these little valentine's day cards and sent them to everyone else, right? i can't remember, though, did the guys give valentines to other guys, too? well, i guess we now live in an age where there are kids that go to school with two dads who each take turns being mommy every other night... 'but tyrone, it was your turn last night...' so i can't imagine it strange or anything that guys give guys or girls give girls valentine presents. anyway, in japan, valentine's day is for all the _girls_ to send valentine's day gifts, i.e. chocolate, to the _guys_ in their life. this is very cute, but apparently it can be a difficult thing to do. i heard girls calling into the radio stations yesterday to ask advice from the all knowing, extremely annoying djs. 'i don't know if i should give him chocolate or not because my friend is also giving him chocolate, and how serious do you think our relationship will be if i do give him chocolate?' things like that. incidentally, the guys also worried and were calling in. 'i have never gotten any chocolate from girls on valentines day and i never really cared much really...but lately i've been wondering, what's wrong with me?! <sniff>'. thus, the guy with all the chocolate in school is always the coolest, considered the lady killer of sorts, and the guy with no chocolate at all is considered the loser. incidentally, i received no chocolate.

now, being the good little capitalists that they are, the japanese have realized how to cash in on tradition be it stupid or meaningful. the chocolate companies thought it would be a great idea to encourage women to give men chocolate gifts to show their love for them on valentine's day. my friend matsubayashi gave me an entirely too detailed description of the whole thing, including which companies did what, but i forgot most of what he said. anyway, since it is rather one-sided for the men to receive gifts and their good capitalists can never leave a good market open...the japanese candy companies decided that there's no reason not to encourage guys to do the same, to give back to the women in their lives, this time in the form of...candy. and what ever shall we call this day...white day, yes, that will work. brilliant suzuki! men will buy cookies, and candies and give them to their girlfriends. so in march everyone will be able to walk in any store they want and be able to buy their special "white day" chocolate and other merchendise to give back to the girls in their life. cute, no?

incidentally, this is now a wonderful time for me to tell everyone that as of this past weekend (which happens to be during the six day period between my birthday and valentine's day!-but i'm not bitter) after three long fun years, i am now once again single! yes! i still have not decided if this is good or bad. for those who know me well, they have seen that this has put a bit of a damper on my adventures as of late. but i assure you, your weekly steve will be up and running and as energetic as he ever was very soon. this, of course, will only happen after he has stopped actually paying attention to the lyrics of lame boys II men ballads...ha! i'm kidding, i'm haven't listened to boys II men in at least two weeks.

--more info about japanese valentine's day and white day:

[1] http://www.japan-guide.com/topic/0003.html graphical results of surveys. interesting.

****quick update****
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went on a business trip this past week. pretty standard: food, beer, drinking sake from a bowl of sashimi, eating said sashimi, snow, hotel, porn-O-matic, an hour of real work, and 12 hours of train travel. anyway, on the way home on the train i talked with kenichi about the whole funeral thing one more time. he mentioned some interesting things that happen after the whole funeral is over. as soon as word comes of a death in the family, the family starts getting a flood of pamphlets and solicitations in the mail from funeral companies. kinda like high school kids in the states after they take the SATs. 'we truly are sorry for your loss, and we wish to make this unfortunate time for you as easy as possible'. a scary parallel.

anyway, i mentioned last week that all the attendees of the funeral bring monetary gifts, called ¿¿ (kouden). now, these gifts cannot go un-repaid, so they look at the register of all the people that signed in, and how much money each person gave, and then it is the family's duty to send small presents (usually half of the value of the monetary gift) back to the attendees. however, this can become a huge pain in the ass, especially if you just lost a loved one and/or had a bunch of people at the funeral. so these funeral companies take it upon themselves to offer their services. they have all these catalogues of generic gifts with generic prices, and you go through and pick out who gets what. of course, you can choose special presents for special people, and let the company handle all the generic stuff for generic people. it was neat to see the gift-giving tradition continue on, though, receiving half of what you give. even though you get an ugly hand towel that you'll probably never use. kenichi said he'd give me godiva chocolate though. i like chocolate.

another interesting thing is that along with these presents they send little notes that say 'please do not send us a new year's card next year'. as you probably know, new year's and new year's cards ¿¿¿ (nengajou) are rather important in japan, but i had never heard of this part of the tradition before. sending new year's cards is all about congratulating your friends and aquaintances for all the good things that happened through the year, right? however, an interesting japanese thought on this is that it would be rude to congratulate someone on everything that happened during the year if in that year a loved one died or their girlfriend broke up with them on their birthday or something like that...[that's a joke. laugh!] so yeah, the funeral companies take care of everything for you. they send the "stop my new year's cards this year" notes, order, send, organize who gets what colored hand towels and/or appropriate gifts, and get rich in the process. yeah...but this is probably not entertaining in the least.

*****a squeaky morning. deja vu*****
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i went skiing two weekends ago with some friends at work. i was happy for i brought snow pants from home just in case i had such an opportunity, and i like snow pants. i borrowed some skis from my friend and a pair of boots that were 0.5 cm (=way) too small and met everyone out front of my apartment at 4:50am saturday morning. ten years ago, when the economy of japan was booming beyond belief and japan was considered the richest nation in the world, skiing was an extremely popular sport. everyone skied. the lifts began running at 4am. you had to be at the slopes by 2 in order to wait in line for two hours to finally get your lift pass to start skiing at 4. they were insane. things are a bit calmer now it seems, though the ski mania does not appear to have died out amongst the diehards themselves...

the car was dark and the roads were crowded. it was a minivan of sorts, a cool one with sliding doors on both sides and moveable chairs like chess pieces. it also sported a the necessary brandname (thule!) closed ski rack on the roof, a turbo engine, lots of leg room, and the standard japanese, epileptic-unfriendly, blinking lcd stereo face, filling the car with a pale blue hue from unnecessary equilizing animations. i was in the back trying to sleep, but the equilizing animations were bouncing to the most annoying piece of shit japanese pop music that i had ever heard. i am very tolerant about music, but this...this was insane. how can he, a 35 year old adult professional male, seriously listen to this?! it was a standard modern j-pop group that featured annoyingly progressive guitar riffs, and a i'm-trying-way-too-hard-to-sound-cute-hey-look-at-me-i'm-only-two, squeaky female lead singer who is probably hot and probably only 14, squeaking about boys, stuffed animals, the color pink, and random english words like basudei (birthday or bathday), happi(happy), labu (love), and ... egujotiku (exotic).

japanese guys over 35 love this stuff. he had only two cds in the cd changer, crap squeaky chick singer number one, and crap squeaky chick singer number two, but i think number one was much more bareable than number two. i couldn't ask him to turn it down or change it because...well...i felt rude. i was the little white guy that no one really knew but everyone had seen before [remember the hierarchy!] and i figured it'd keep the driver awake and us safe. he was up there on the right side, drinking something from a can and bopping his head to the squeak... plus, it amused me at first, quietly laughing to myself in the backseat. occasionally i would stop thinking and wonder what in the world is that smell? it smells like...nah, forget it. probably nothing.

the squeaky descant filled up the spacious leg room and beyond and i kept my eyes tiredly fixed on the oddly repetitive scene beyond the tinted glass. the dark road had turned into a brightly lit highway and it seemed that every car that i saw was the same. at first i thought it is the same car, the traffic was slow and dense, and i marveled that nobody was weaving. do not these people weave? and what is that smell?! hours seemed to pass, yet the deja vu didn't pass at all. we've been passing the same car! i thought, exasperated. i decided to wake up a bit and figure out what was going on.

****it's 6 am, what kind of SUV do you drive?****
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i have mentioned on occasion before that if you do something in japan, you don't just do it, you *do* it. meaning, you live, breathe, know, die, and *do* it. if you ski, and you do not have not researched the best equipment and why certain fabric for skipants is good, etc, etc, then you do not ski. even once you do know all this and you obviously *do* ski, and have been doing so quite excellently for some time, when someone asks you if you ski, you say, 'only a little'. see what's weird, though, is that even people who don't ski know this weird kind of trivia. i mentioned to a climber friend that i was going skiing. "do you have wear?", he asks. ('wear' basically means ski pants and ski jacket, but i think it's best translated as the 'right' ski pants, ski jacket, goggles and sunglasses (be prepared), lipbalm, waist/back brace, knee brace, undershirt, socks and/or glasses strap that will be 'wrong' next season.) "yeah, i brought ski pants from home." "oh really, what kind of material are they?" "uh...skipantsy....ish...?" "see, they used to use real slippery and soft material, good areodynamics they said...but now all the good ones are rough and stiff. they say the rough and stiff pants are better." "oh really....have you ever skied?" "me? oh, no... not me."

anyway, if you go skiing, you have to have all the right things. and apparently, cars were one of those things. every single car i saw had the standard rack, the standard skis, snowboards, the right colored windows, the right snow tires, the right make, and the same twenty to forty something japanese guy driving his car filled with at least two other people, all of course, wearing the right clothes. i couldn't believe how much of a fashion show it was. the highway turned into a catwalk of sorts. nearly every single automobile was full of *obvious* skiers *obviously* heading to the slopes. can't you see my shirt, i'm going skiing. it says "descente" on the collar. and still, that smell! what is that smell?!

thank god the traffic let up a bit and our driver decided to show me that you could actually drive in japan! he slammed his automatic SUV minivan supreme into automatic low gear and he weaved!!! i couldn't believe it, he weaved! he drank from his can and swerved. i was awake now, the elusive smell like soup...no like ... carrots? no....carpet?...no .... was still elusive. we wove in and out of traffic and swerved left and right, the race was on. to the slopes! he didn't stop driving this way even when we got to the very narrow and snowcovered mountain roads either. this man wanted to ski. we raced up the mountain, SUVs in front, behind, all racing, all appropriately clothed and prepared for sking, for skidding, we were almost there, the crap squeaky chick annoyingly squeaked about how happi her bathday was lalalalalala! equilizers bounced, we swerved left, right, skidding on ice, squeak i'm so pinku and egujotiku, an insane dynamic fashion show on the side of a japanese mountain and christ my snowpants are the wrong fabric, left, right, bounce, what is that smell?! corn?!! somebody please shut that bitch up!!!

and then silence. we were greeted by two young smiling girls in bright yellow jackets. our driver flashed his season pass; we were in. the air was cool and quiet and the lifts lazily crawled over the mountain. already tiny dots were zigzagging their way down the white carpet. i sat alone in the car, savoring the silence, both sliding doors open. everyone was changing into their 'wear'. the equalizers no longer bounced, the speakers no longer squeaked, and i no longer recognized the smell. i took a deep breath, smiled, and got ready to get out. then i noticed a small, yellow aluminum soda can in the driver side cup holder. what is that? no...it can't be...the smell...

and i read the label: "Hot and Creamy Corn Soup (with kernels)" !

****random news****
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