The Little Things

This entry isn't about any one thing in particular. Just some of the weird stuff you come across.

• For my birthday, Pui and I (and her aunt and uncle) went to the Universal Theme Park in Osaka. Here is a video of Bert and Ernie 'Putting on the Ritz'. All the theme rides were dubbed in Japanese as well. I had a pretty craptastic burger at a Hollywood themed restaurant for $26. (this on top of the $100/person entrance fee). All that being said, it was pretty sweet. Pui got her picture taken with Popeye and I got the crap scarred out of me at Jurassic Park. What more could you ask for your 35th.



• At the lower end of the Sushi spectrum, it is very much the fast food of Japan. They have these restaurants everywhere that have a conveyor belt that is constantly running with Sushi. You don't actually order (although you can), you just wait until something comes along you like and you pick it off. For the tally, they just count up your plates. Pui and I can eat until I never want to see sushi again for about $15. Video here.



• The Japanese have got parking down to a science. I just wrote about a paragraph trying to describe it, but it's too hard to accurately tell you how cool it is. Easier to just check out the video here.



• This whole blog entry is probably just an excuse for me to talk more about Japanese toilets. How we haven't adopted these in the states yet I have no idea. First of all the seats are heated - and you control the temperature with a very sophisticated wall mounted control panel. When you are done going to the bathroom you press another button that pops out a lever that will shoot a warm jet of water so you pretty much don't have to do any wiping. In addition, you can control the jet of water ad infinitum: temperature, angle (both up or down and left or right), amount of water, pulse or constant flow, timer or manual shut down. There is a button on the wall to flush and when you hit it a compartment on the toilet rolls back revealing running water so you can wash your hands.



• Climbing Gyms: If you're not a climber, you can skip this one. We've been to 3 different gyms in Tokyo and everyone has the same weirdness. For starters, the holds on all of the sport routes have been painted. Normally gym's use tape to signify a route, here all the holds are just painted the same color. The result is that they are as smooth as glass, no friction. We asked our friend why in the hell they would do that and he said that there is a mentality that if you can climb on a 5.10 without friction, you can climb just about any 5.10 in the world. That to me is like forcing everyone in the gym to wear 10lb. ankle weights. The other weird/cool thing is that all of the bouldering problems are any feet. With the zillions of holds on the wall you would think that everything would be pretty doable. Not even close. I've never had my ass kicked so bad in a bouldering gym (and had so much fun at the same time).