Janhoo's Blog

Telephone Numbers of Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau: "Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau was relocated to a new location (address: 5-5-30 Konan, Minato-ku, Tokyo) on February 1, 2003. However, some people still look at the phone number on an uncorrected old website, and make phone calls to our former phone number, which was effective two years ago when the regional bureau was in the second joint government office in Nishigaoka, Kita ward, Tokyo or Otemachi building. These wrong phone calls are bothering the new telephone subscribers who now use Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau's former telephone numbers."

It really makes me wonder why the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau does not simply update its old webpage?

Idiocracy

This is simply a great movie, I laughed really hard throughout the entire film. It makes me wonder why it was not widely released (check out the above article). The movie was directed by Mike Judge, the same guy who made "Office Space" and "Beavis and Butt-head". Mike Judge is apparently working on another movie now, "Extract". No idea what it'll be about, but I look forward to its release in 2009.

Olympic torch extinguished during Paris leg - CNN.com

It is somewhat politically correct these days to argue that politics and sports should not mix, thus one should not demonstrate against or boycott the Olympics. On the other hand, if one goes to the root of this argument, it would mean that it was wrong to boycott Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.

Basically, the argument about not mixing sports and politics does not hold water, particularly when China is turning the event into a self-glorifying Han Chinese event. The reason why every single country on the planet refuses to boycott the Olympics is that China is a tremendously important trading partner, and no one really cares too much about a Han Chinese dictatorship brutally suppressing a mainly Han Chinese population or China's role in Darfur, though we care a little bit about Tibet. If politicians could simply be honest and explain that a boycott of China potentially could have disastrous economic consequences, perhaps people would be less upset. Then again, if everyone tells the same lie at the same time, many people will eventually manage to fool themselves into believing their own folly.

On a related note, congrats to the French public for extinguishing the flame. I can't wait to see what will be the fall out of this event.

Norsk Cafe is an interesting small restaurant located nearby Toritsudaigaku Station in Meguro ward, Tokyo. While the name means Norwegian cafe, the food is basically a mix of Western and Japanese food, and I think the Norwegian name was chosen pretty much at random. Anyway, we met some friends there for lunch today, and the food was ok. The furniture inside is all of wood, however, thus I recommend going there just to see the interesting design. Also, we were advised to go back once for dinner as both the food and wine collection apparently is much better than at lunch.

In the evening, we went to Spa Libur in Yokohama, which is a Bali style Japanese onsen (hot spring). There are several floors, and Yuka and I enjoyed some Indonesian food after spending some time in the onsen. The only problem about Spa Libur is that it is kind of out of the way, and I did not like that one has to go to a different floor before entering the hot bath. The changing room is on one floor, and after getting dressed in a Japanese bathrobe, one has to walk up two floors in order to enter the hot spring. Anyway, for us it is more convenient than going to La Qua in Korakuen, though I prefer the latter.

I ate at RISTORANTE RUBY Sopraffino's branch in Kawasaki this evening. It was my second time there, but it also turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. The service is rather uninspired, and the food failed to amaze me. You should expect more when paying around $70 for a course meal.

I spent the weekend in Shanghai and hope to post some pictures from there shortly.

When you are worth $475 million, you can basically write whatever you want. This is a great article by Michael Lewis, who of course is just a good author and not really worth $475 million, though I have to read it once more to figure out exactly what his point is:

"It wasn't until one night, a couple of weeks ago, as I sat alone in my $17 million apartment, that it finally dawned on me: Ordinary people don't have a net worth of $475 million".

Sexual Politics Enlighten the Hedge-Fund Trader: Michael Lewis

Some pictures from Okinawa:

Jan Visits Okinawa - Naha & The Main Island

This weekend we went to the IKEA store nearby Yokohama, and it was crowded like no tomorrow. IKEA is lucky not to have a problem attracting customers, the problem is rather that they are attracting too many. With thousands of adults and children storming around the store like it was Disneyland, it is almost impossible to find anything to buy. The again, with only two stores in the Tokyo metropolitan area, there is a lot of demand to satisfy.

On a related note, this evening I tried going to my local gym. It was so crowded, I decided to go running outside instead. The only problem running outside is the number of homeless people sleeping in the streets, not to mention that it is cold. I usually run next to the Tamagawa river, and that is where the homeless people hang out. This evening, I virtually had to jump over someone's bed today as I was running. Tokyo certainly is a crowded place.

I left Europe on December 29. While I had a somewhat bad running nose, I did not think much about it. However, on my first flight, my ears really started hurting after departure. It seems like I came down with a condition known simply as airplane ear, which is a condition of discomfort associated with your middle ear. You will always experience this when taking a flight, in other words that there is some pain and that sounds are somewhat muffled.

However, if you fly with a cold, the pressure in your middle ear can't be equalized as something called the eustachian tube is blocked. Trust me, I looked this up searching Google. Anyway, after landing in Amsterdam, I was able to get my ears back to normal in about 30 minutes after landing. While I had bought special ear plugs, ate candy during landing, and used all the other available methods (including blowing air with my mouth and nose shut), the problem occurred again when I landed in Tokyo on December 30. This time around, it did not get better until the following morning, in other words 24 hours after landing.

Unfortunately, I was due to get on another flight on December 31, this time a relatively short domestic flight from Tokyo to Naha, Okinawa. After getting off the plane in Okinawa, I realized that the same problem had happenend again. This time around, the problem consisted for three days, and it was a bit of nightmare. I went to an ear doctor in Tokyo on December 30 and got some medicine against the cold, apparently there is not much they can do directly to fix a blocked eustachian tube. Anyway, now my ears have been back to normal for approximately 24 hours, and I am glad I will not have to get on another flight for another three days.

About my trip to Europe, I flew regular economy class to Europe with Air France. The food was surprisingly good, I actually enjoyed dinner and the cheese/wine was great. Going back to Japan, I flew business (using airline miles), but Air France business class really is not worth it if you have to pay the cash. While you obviously get a bigger personal TV screen in business class, the entertainment system is not on demand and worse than even the economy version on most Asian airlines. As normal on European airlines, there are no cute stewardesses. How come European and American airlines will not hire attractive women? There must be a conspiracy somewhere.

Yuka and I have mainly been visiting northern Okinawa during our stay. Today we went canoing, which was actually a very nice experience. We got to see some mangrove and other rather exotic plants (for someone living in Tokyo), and I have been surprised to find that most of northern Okinawa is rather empty. Anyway, I will try to write more about this later and hopefully also post some pictures from our stay. I am just glad that I do not have an airplane ear condition any longer, and hopefully the problem will not reoccur when I return to Tokyo later this week.

I recently had a couple of beers with Dear Leader President Kim Jong-il to discuss how I can best help him develop cool weapons. It all got pretty relaxed after a little while, and this picture reminds me what a great evening it was.