Monday, December 01, 2003
Randomness
I'm so far behind on my daily (hah!) updates, so for now I'll just type up some random thoughts I've had that I haven't managed to convey yet. Real updates should be coming when I convince myself to write them up.
Random thoughts:
- Last week I learned that Sendai (or was it all of Miyagi Prefecture?) has some of the cheapest water in Japan. So cheap, in fact, that they only bill you every other month. The water is cheap, I've been told, because it is also some of the worst tasting water in Japan. Personally, I didn't think it was too bad. Not Madison quality by any stretch of the imagination, but still much better than Austin water. I mentioned this to my conversation partner, and he said that he thought Sendai water wasn't that bad. He said Tokyo is much worse, since that tastes like lead. Sendai water just tastes like chlorine.
- My TV works fairly well, but it has a few "interesting" idiosyncrasies. If you change channels with the remote, it skips over any video inputs you have connected. To get video input you have to change channels manually. If you change from Video by pushing the channel up button, it skips directly to channel 2 about 75% of the time. This is the only situation where pushing the buttons manually skips a channel. The channels are numbered 1-12, except that instead of having channel 11 I have a second channel 10. Switching up from 9 gets you 10, then 10, then 12. Going back does the opposite. Somehow, they screwed up the TV so that both channel 10 and 11 are named channel 10. It's easy to tell which one I'm watching, since there isn't actually anything on what should be channel 11.
- My TV has really good stereo speakers (compared to my laptop), so I like to use those to listen to music. Unfortunately, the TV won't play any sound if it's not getting a valid video signal. This is annoying, because this means that I have to have my laptop hooked up to the TV using my video out to get any sound at all. Furthermore, I've got my display set to turn off after 5 minutes, so when I forget to turn that setting off my music stops playing after 5 minutes.
- I was looking through a Japanese dictionary program I've got on my computer. This program will look up anything you double click on, so you can find some interesting things with it. I discovered that the Japanese have quite a few expressions about cats, so I looked up the character for cat, with some amusing results. It turns out that if you take the character for cat and put the character for leg after it, you form the word for "carved table leg." In the same way, if you put the character for car after the character for cat you get the word for "wheelbarrow." I also discovered that the word for "Orangutan" also means "heavy drinker."
- Christmas seems to be fairly popular in Japan now. Since there are very few Christians in Japan, it's basically a commercial holiday. Most of the stores are decorated for Christmas, and they all have special Christmas merchandise on sale. I've seen quite a few candy canes and Christmas trees. Many stores are playing Christmas songs (in English), which includes many Christmas Carols. Even the cafeteria on campus has been decorated. The cases outside the door which hold the plastic food (which you use as a menu) are filled with cotton balls, candy canes, mini Christmas trees, red stockings, Santa hats, etc. in addition to having the usual selection of plastic food.
Random thoughts:
- Last week I learned that Sendai (or was it all of Miyagi Prefecture?) has some of the cheapest water in Japan. So cheap, in fact, that they only bill you every other month. The water is cheap, I've been told, because it is also some of the worst tasting water in Japan. Personally, I didn't think it was too bad. Not Madison quality by any stretch of the imagination, but still much better than Austin water. I mentioned this to my conversation partner, and he said that he thought Sendai water wasn't that bad. He said Tokyo is much worse, since that tastes like lead. Sendai water just tastes like chlorine.
- My TV works fairly well, but it has a few "interesting" idiosyncrasies. If you change channels with the remote, it skips over any video inputs you have connected. To get video input you have to change channels manually. If you change from Video by pushing the channel up button, it skips directly to channel 2 about 75% of the time. This is the only situation where pushing the buttons manually skips a channel. The channels are numbered 1-12, except that instead of having channel 11 I have a second channel 10. Switching up from 9 gets you 10, then 10, then 12. Going back does the opposite. Somehow, they screwed up the TV so that both channel 10 and 11 are named channel 10. It's easy to tell which one I'm watching, since there isn't actually anything on what should be channel 11.
- My TV has really good stereo speakers (compared to my laptop), so I like to use those to listen to music. Unfortunately, the TV won't play any sound if it's not getting a valid video signal. This is annoying, because this means that I have to have my laptop hooked up to the TV using my video out to get any sound at all. Furthermore, I've got my display set to turn off after 5 minutes, so when I forget to turn that setting off my music stops playing after 5 minutes.
- I was looking through a Japanese dictionary program I've got on my computer. This program will look up anything you double click on, so you can find some interesting things with it. I discovered that the Japanese have quite a few expressions about cats, so I looked up the character for cat, with some amusing results. It turns out that if you take the character for cat and put the character for leg after it, you form the word for "carved table leg." In the same way, if you put the character for car after the character for cat you get the word for "wheelbarrow." I also discovered that the word for "Orangutan" also means "heavy drinker."
- Christmas seems to be fairly popular in Japan now. Since there are very few Christians in Japan, it's basically a commercial holiday. Most of the stores are decorated for Christmas, and they all have special Christmas merchandise on sale. I've seen quite a few candy canes and Christmas trees. Many stores are playing Christmas songs (in English), which includes many Christmas Carols. Even the cafeteria on campus has been decorated. The cases outside the door which hold the plastic food (which you use as a menu) are filled with cotton balls, candy canes, mini Christmas trees, red stockings, Santa hats, etc. in addition to having the usual selection of plastic food.
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