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News roundup
In “Sport ‘bought access to Olympics’” the BBC looks into the possibility that keirin cycle racing organizers in Japan splashed a bit of money around to get the sport admitted to the Olympic lineup. Shocking, shocking to see a gambling industry involved in shady financial deals. I will have to confront my friend at the Bicycle Promotion Association of Japan with this development and see what he has to say.
In other news . . . Well, not all that much in the way of news to post here. There have been big earthquakes up north recently but I’ve managed to sleep through them all. Went to Hokkaido for the G8 summit and came back alive. Tokyo is hot hot hot now, making me want to go back to the Rusutsu hills. Sakura is tall and slender and energetic. She likes bananas, which makes this news story a troubling one to read. In September we’re going to take her back to California for her first overseas trip, first flight at all, and first time to use her two passports. Anyone in the Bay Area want to meet up around then?
This post brought to you by the letter D, the number 8, and the desire not to see this blog wither and die on the vine in the summer heat.
No smoking
Kin’en Style is a site that lets you search for smoke-free restaurants. There’s an English section up as well, although its list contains zero establishments, making it somewhat less useful than the Japanese version.
(Time for the obligatory plug for Enchanté, my in-laws’ restaurant in Yotsuya San-chome. Lunch hours are smoke-free there as well.)
(Via Asiajin.)
Subways of the world
There’s an interesting page that shows the subway networks of the world’s major cities, all at the same scale. These are the ones I’ve been on. Tokyo’s network is overwhelmingly packed with people and convenient, so it has a sprawling feel, but compare it to BART and you get a sense for just how spread out the Bay Area is, and the surprising compactness of Japan’s capital.
Getting clean
Our washing machine was getting on in years, and tended to leave bits of black mold stuck to our clothes after a wash. Not good, especially with a baby in the house and load after load of baby-related things going through the cycle each day. So we went to the neighborhood Laox last weekend and dropped ¥150,000 or so on this thing: the National NA-VR1100R. (The “R” signifies that it opens with the door swinging out to the right, rather than the left like most front-loaders in this country.)
It’s got a dryer built in, which will be nice in the winter when we want that hot air blowing out into the apartment. It has a water heater, so we can do warm-water loads of whites (most Japanese homes only have a cold-water tap in the area where you install a washer, so having this onboard is good). It has a child lock function so we can keep inquisitive toddlers from crawling into the machine, like my brother no doubt would have tried as a youngster. It talks to us when we press the buttons, which is nice, because there sure are a lot of them. Good to have a sherpa here.
Climbing Shasta
An interesting read: In 1878 a man climbed Mt. Shasta and stayed at the summit for nine days. An early experiment in high altitude acclimatization. (Of course there were Tibetans living at higher altitudes than that, no doubt, but you know.) B. A. Colonna of the US Coast and Geodetic Survey writes:
On the 24th of July we left Sisson’s Hotel to make the ascent. The day was a delightful one, and we were all in fine spirits. The outfit which I proposed taking up weighed 750 pounds, and had to be packed from the snow line to the summit on the backs of 20 stout Indians. Besides the packers there was the usual number of squaws, papooses, and lean dogs — the indispensable impedimenta of Indian braves. If there is anything outside of these household chattels that a brave in this neighborhood prides himself on it is his linen duster and jaunty straw hat. The former, to be stylish, must reach to within 6 inches of the ground, and for the latter a broad blue or red band is most desirable. Nearly every one in the party was mounted, and it was a somewhat noisy company, in which the voices of the braves and squaws were mingled with the crying of papooses and the barking of dogs, so that no one sound was clearly distinguishable. Our route was over a beautiful smooth mountain trail, which at first wound about in splendid forests of sugar pine. . . .
While up above the treeline, the researchers found some red snow, colored by abundant “microscopic fungi”; they of course tasted some of it—for science!—and learned that it “had decidedly a fruity taste; but none of us agreed as to what it was like. Sisson thought it resembled the flavor of ripe pears, while to me it was watermelon.”
You know, one of the first things I do when I find strangely colored snow is stick it in my mouth. Oh wait, that’s not me, that’s my 6-month-old daughter. (At least I’m assuming that’s what she’ll do when she sees snow for the first time.)
The trip ends with a glissade down a snowfield where Colonna barely escapes with his backside intact:
Looking back, I could follow with my eyes the tract I had made in the snow, and away up toward the place where I had started I saw my gunny sack. In the keen enjoyment of my ride I had not missed it, but a preliminary examination satisfied me that I had lost not only the gunny sack, but the seat of my trousers, and I congratulated myself in having escaped so easily.
I enjoy reading about snowy adventures while stuck in the muggy heat of Tokyo.
(Photo courtesy Deb and Dave on Flickr)
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