A month and a half later, an NTT technician in white hardhat and blue jumpsuit arrived to make the hook up. Installation was quick enough. The configuration was more confusing… but by the end of the day everything was basically online.

So, is it fast? My tests at speedtest.net typically show between 15 to 25 Mbps downstream and 4 to 10 Mbps upstream. Nowhere near “best effort” speed, but certainly faster than my old connection. Big downloads, like movie trailers, software updates, music — nice and quick. Daily web-surfing, though, doesn’t feel much different than before. Haven’t tried torrents much yet, but I’ve heard that my ISP likes to limit P2P traffic.

Notes:
- My ISP, Plala, had several “security” filters turned on by default. The filters can restrict such things as Skype and torrents. Finding out where to turn off the filters was a little tricky. And are there other filters that they don’t tell us about?
- Connecting to U.S. websites (basically all those that I visit) actually got slower at first, until i realized I needed to enter the DNS server addresses recommended by Plala into my system’s control panel.
- I used to point a domain name to the web server on my home computer using a dynamic DNS service. This doesn’t work anymore, apparently blocked by Plala or the router they provided.

From my recent photos, it might look like I’m out all the time, but actually, I’m almost always sitting at my desk. I know you are interested, so here’s an exhaustive catalog:

On top of the desk: tea/coffee pot, mug, Tiger thermos pump pot, grocery store sushi, Ikea lamp, pack of loose-leaf organic green tea, keyboard, JBL satellite speaker, iMac showing top secret website mockup, cotton finger cot (My ingenious solution to the problem of how to keep the little rollerball on my mouse clean. Talk about design flaws: The human finger, prone to greasiness and cell-shedding, has sadly not caught up with technology yet.), printout of (super-secret) logo mockups, wireless Mighty Mouse, USB cable, Wacom drawing tablet inherited from a dead dot-com, pile of papers and unread books.
Beneath the desk: Mari’s djembe drum from her crazy hippie days.

After we finished the delicious pot of vegetables, pork, noodles and broth, Tomi-san introduced us to two little friends — a Nintendo DS and, fresh from the store that morning, a Sony PlayStation Portable. We spent the next hour or so playing. For historical perspective, Shigeo-san brought out some Nintendo old-timers — an original GameBoy and a Super Famicom with add-on
battery-powered disk drive. I’ll leave more detailed reviews of the new units to others and just say that the DS was cute and fun and the PSP was sleek and sexy (and fun). I was left wanting a PSP, if only so I could show it off back in the U.S.

Thanks to Kitaoka-san, Shigeo-san and Tomi-san for their hospitality and for speaking English / teaching me Japanese. Next time, Filipino cooking + games + karaoke?

Take the Logitech (“Logicool,” in Japan) Z-5500 5.1 speaker system. THX-certification, 500 watts, 10-inch subwoofer. Does anyone need this when there are wars going on, people dying? Speakers with a dial that goes to 11? Who needs them? Don’t I have groceries to buy, family and friends to buy Christmas presents for?

OK, I know all of that. I know that, at $50 extra in Japan, they would cost me nearly one month’s rent. I know I will still have my own and the world’s problems to work on. I won’t pretend that the speakers will make me happy… so can I have them already?

Intended uses: Halo 2, DVD, iPod shuffle.

The Epson PM-G700 is a Japan-only model, so I can’t read the manual and wasn’t really sure what was going on when I installed the software. Luckily, having owned or set-up a half-dozen or so inkjets in my lifetime, I’ve done this sort of thing before. The included apps’ interfaces do not have English localization, but they are also pretty unnecessary anyway, and the printer driver options come up in English, so I don’t have to learn to read Kanji yet.

I had hoped that, this being Japan, I’d end up with technology 5-years ahead of the U.S. models, but apart from the case and documentation (and a slightly higher price-tag) everything seems basically the same. From the looks of things, this model might be roughly equivalent to the U.S.’s Photo R200.

Well, OK, let’s say tickets to have dinner with the Dalai Lama go on sale, and camping out in Osaka Friday night is the only option for getting them. I learned some things:
–Go earlier.
–The last train on the Hankyu line from Shijo-Kawaramachi to Umeda leaves at 11:30 PM.
–If you need to take the Mido-suji subway line from Umeda after midnight, you’ll be too late.
–Remember to bring some company and a comfortable mattress or reclining chair.
–Consider better ways you might spend that time and money. Helping the poor, for example

By the time I got to the Apple store around 1:30 in the morning, more than eight hours before opening, there were almost 400 people in line. I knew most of them would want a fukubukuro (the boxy black bags pictured above). Disappointment!

But there was still a small chance, and the trains had stopped running, so I stayed. Spent the night catching microsleeps and shifting from position to position — each uncomfortable in a different way. Communicated occassionally with the guy next to me, Hiroki, a friendly design student who would type English into his ketai and show me. Things like:
–Sorry about that drunk man. Not all Japanese people are as rude.
–Are you going to stay until the morning?
–If the line moves, it [I] carries your baggage. Do not worry about leaving the line.
Hiroki and I watched each other’s things while the other would leave the line to find a bathroom or food. Our greatest communication breakthrough was swapping iPods and letting our music speak for us.

Some awkwardness when I noticed a new person in line just behind me. Caucasian guy, maybe he spoke English? I could see that the Japanese guy next to him, whom I knew didn’t speak English, looked irritated but reluctant to say anything. So I spoke,
“Excuse me, but did you just get here this morning?”

I’m kicking myself for the conversation that followed, in which I made it clear that he was standing in the wrong place in line, yet was too chicken to politely demand that he move to the end. Worse, he was actually pretty friendly, and I made extended conversation with him, which must have seemed to the people behind us that I was cheerfully letting my American comrade cut into the line. It wrecked my mood and I stopped talking for awhile.

Finally, I turned around and said, “You know, you’re a nice guy and it was good talking to you, but in all fairness, you really should be at the end of the line. You’re standing with people who have been waiting here for almost nine hours. You can at least explain yourself to the folks right behind you.”
He then admitted, sincerely but weakly, “Yeah, I know. It is wrong of me. I just can’t make myself do the right thing this time.”

Arrgh! Should I have escalated to the American approach? “Dude, get the f*@# out before I kick your a#$!” I only said something like, “well the choice is clear.” Later he apologized to me. I guess I really gave him a guilt trip.

Speaking of guilt and karma: on my way to the Apple store, I passed at least five homeless men sleeping on the street. Today, in a delayed reaction, I remembered how unimportant my whole Apple store Shinsaibashi experience is the scheme of things. Sure, it’s important to have fun if you can, but shouldn’t I spend my free time contributing something more useful to the world?

But to finish the earlier story: Lucky bags ran out before I had a chance, the store is beautiful, folks were eating everything up, Apple employees were really friendly as usual, I impulsively bought Mari a gift that she judged (correctly) to be too expensive, so I’m going to listen to her reason and return it.

What was in the lucky bags, anyway? Elsewhere on the Web, Gary Allen reports.

I’m tempted to go. But they say I’d have to get in the line (which is already forming) by 5 or 6 AM at the latest. Let’s see, the first train leaves Kyoto around 6 AM, but the first bus to the station for that train leaves my neighborhood around 6:15 AM. So, I’d need to ride my bike to the station, but would have to park it there all day, which wouldn’t work. So, a taxi to the station? That’s about $30 right there. Besides, I’d get to Osaka around 7 AM, already too late.

Best bet is to join the overnighters. Take the last train to Osaka tonight, camp out on the sidewalk, and exchange Mac stories by the light of our laptop screens with my fellow geeks. Is that fun, crazy, sad? Am I willing to lose that much sleep? Why do I want a fukubukuro anyway?

I guess, like my brother who can’t stop buying high-end kayaking gear, I am in pursuit of cool. Getting my hands on one of those 250 lucky bags, the ones all the salivating Mac geeks back in the U.S. can only read about on the message boards, the ones with the Japanese labeling that is so exotic to any Western geek, the ones with the coveted iPod minis, the ones I will write about in my blog and videotape with my iSight, that is COOL. Because waiting in line for Star Wars tickets is not worth it anymore, and maybe this is. Because I’ve been totally taken by Apple’s lifestyle marketing strategies. Because I’ve been working at home all day all week and need some craziness.

Is this the devil or the angel talking? I can’t tell the difference here.