It's official. The wide angle bug didn't just bite me, it all out mauled me to pieces. What started out as an innocent enough trip to Kinokuniya to buy Stephen Shore's Uncommon Places turned into an hour long hike around Shinjuku Station trying to remember where Map Camera was. I remembered that it was behind either Bic or Yodobashi Camera and it didn't help that they're at every bloody exit.

The infection flared up on the 4th floor (used Nikon and Contax) and a once loved manual focus Ai-S 20mm f/2.8 was the cure, or at least a soothing ointment of sorts. Next on the Yahoo auction block, my Ai-S 50mm f/1.8. I haven't had a chance to really try out the 20mm aside from a few shots (above) on the end of yesterdays roll, but it would be safe to expect more wide angle stuff from now on.

While transferring between lines in Noborito this morning I came across a campaigning politician donning a large red sash and handing out pamphlets to commuters on the footpath between stations. This is in no way an uncommon occurrence here, but what surprised me was that my outreached hand actually scored a pamphlet, as this almost never happens. Most campaigning politicians that I've come across will hold back their flyers when I walk past. Who could blame them? How could someone with white skin possibly vote or even read Japanese for that matter. Of course this isn't always the case, just my own experience.

Another surprise was that the politician who handed me the flyer was Tsurunen Marutei, the first foreign-born member of the Diet (Japanese parliament). Born Martti Turunen in Finland he obtained Japanese citizenship in 1979. Tsurunen entered politics in 1992 when he was elected to the town assembly of Yugawara, Kanagawa and in 2002 when Ohashi Kyosen resigned Tsurunen took his seat in the Diet.

It's comforting to meet or read about people who share your addiction, no matter how odd your drug of choice may be. Seeing this in print somehow legitimizes my expensive habit and makes me feel almost -- normal. The Polysyllabic Spree is a collection of Nick Hornby's monthly column "Stuff I've Been Reading" from The Believer magazine. More specifically, Each chapter starts of with a list of BOOKS BOUGHT and BOOKS READ, some appended with (unfinished) or simply listed as Unnamed Work of Nonfiction (abandoned), as to not break the Spree's (the magazine's editors) golden rule of providing only "acid-free literary criticism". I love how Hornby describes his reading and book buying habits. He writes in the July 2004 footnotes how he, That goes for both of us Nick. Only wish I was getting paid to write about them in my own column.

Last night I read a small blurb about a book titled Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Not a favourable review mind you, but I was curious to learn the joke behind the book's name. As if by magic the answer popped up in my RSS reader a few minutes ago so I read it out to an Australian co-worker. Apparently they have a similar, yet dirtier version of the same joke in Australia about a koala that eats, roots and leaves.

And no I'm not being ironic with my punctuation.

I've got a few items that don't quite deserve dedicated entries so I'll try to sum them up in one posting.

Trying to listen to a badly ripped version of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States: Highlights from the 20th Century (read by Matt Damon) on the train was the tipping point in convincing me to search for replacements to the standard iPod ear buds. I settled on a pair of Sony MDR-EX71SL in-ear type earphones. They do a great job of blocking out noise on the train, as well as keeping bodily noises in, or rather amplify them in my head. On the way home from work last week I ran into a KFC between stations for a quick dinner, paused the music and removed one ear phone to place my order. As I ate my twister I kept the music paused, put the right earphone back in my ear (for symmetry) and was amazed by the how loud the crunching, gulping, swallowing and breathing sounds got in my head. It was like putting your ear to the abdomen of a pregnant dog.

I made a great vegetarian chili last night, then added ground beef. It's sad how my brain is trained to be suspicious of meatless dishes. I keep telling myself next time I'll leave the meat out. I don't know what's stopping me as the beef really doesn't add much to the dish in the way of flavour (tabasco, chilies, paprika and cayenne take care of that).

Developed my first roll in many months on Saturday. I haven't developed as much as I would like due to the fact that until now I've had to wait until Frankie has gone to bed before pulling out the chemicals. With better planing, quick and thorough cleaning as I went, I was able to finish one roll, from mixing chemicals and loading the tank to hanging the negatives to dry in less than 15 minutes, or the time it takes Frankie to watch her inai-inai-ba DVD.

I buy and read books in quick rapid spurts followed by droughts where I systematically forget about the books I've bought and start adding more to my wish-list. I received the latest shipment from Amazon in the mail yesterday and will post on one of them shortly.

I'm not an antisocial person by any means, though when I'm invited out to larger gatherings in the city I tend to shy away. My mind goes through all the possible scenarios; I drink too much and feel lousy the next day, I miss the train and have to pay 20,000 yen in cab fare to get home, I don't recognize any faces and everyone feels unapproachable and so forth. My new secret weapon is the camera. Now every-time I hear about a party I think of it as an excellent photography opportunity, where, for the most part, people don't mind getting their photo taken up close and most rather enjoy it.

Phone-cams get little respect, as do compact 35mm and digital cameras. Polaroids are fun but none of these seem to garnish respect like my Nikon SLR with Speedlite flash. And I love being able to move around the room and jump into conversations if the opportunity presents itself, or shoot a few frames and move along.

Here are a few more photos from Saturday I scanned late last night, and yes I'm still learning how to use the flash.

A cautionary (and utterly hilarious) tale about cloning Bill Cosby. The second episode's a little out there, that's if you don't consider a family of cloned Cosbys out there in the first place.

Update: Channel101 received a cease and desist from Bill Cosby's attorney. I have all four episodes, but out of fear of creating my own legal issues I won't be hosting them. BoingBoing is linking to a couple torrents.

I used to check my site statistics faithfully every morning, that was until all the referral spamming started to hit. Until there's a simple way to compare actual site referrals to domains matched in MT-Blacklist I'm not going to bother shuffling thought all the junk.

For a little stats fix today I've been playing with MyBlogLog which provides realtime tracking of all outgoing links. All you have to do is add one line of Javascript to your code and it's up and tracking where all your visitors are clicking. [via 43 Folders]

Listed in no particular order.

Yet another day of snow in Tokyo and I can honestly say the excitement level of a snow storm has not changed since I was five, plus it's Friday.

The view from my cube.

And another from the building roof. On a clear day Mt. Fuji can be viewed in this direction.

Discuss in the comments.

While reading up on the late Jef Raskin I came across this quote. Around here shoes seem to explode more on Mondays, but whatever. I'm not sure how long ago he said this but you could also add "or looking for alternatives." to the end of that quote.

I got a real kick, in a sort of painfully embarrassing kind of way, out of these vintage Canadian televison ads. There's really nothing funny about these ads, most are quite dull, but if you grew up in Canada during these years you might experience an odd feeling of nostalgia or nauseation, depending on your mood. Try to spot the NHL hall of famer! And no it's not our Swedish friend Ingemar. [via veer]

I couldn't really say if the Talby blows more than it sucks, but it certainly does bite. Sitting on my sofa the first night I had it the signal dropped from 3 bars to two, one, zero bars then I'd get a message usually reserved for elevators or certain sections of subway track when completely out of range. The signal would return after a few seconds only to die again minutes later. The next day in Akasaka (major Tokyo business district) it played signal tag with me again. After work that day I went directly to Yodobashi Camera to exchange it for another model, but apparently exchanging a mobile with a number programmed is like trying to return unpackaged underwear or a used breast milk pump. The best I could do was have our local AU shop test it for defects, and in the end they gave me a new talby, which of course I didn't want in the first place.

Marc Newson may be a famous designer, and they sure look cool but once you get past this (approximately 10-15 min.) you begin to realize this phone is absolute junk. Even after I had the defective model replaced I found the ear piece frustratingly quite at full volume, and the interface was equally painful. I've been spoiled by Sony Ericsson's English interface, jog-dial and build quality that usually goes into their products, so honestly I feel like kind of a moron for buying, or rather buying into talby's hype.

So, you want to buy it? Sold.

Just wanted to express my affection for Ta-Da lists. I try to write proper to-do lists every morning, but some how that little scrap of paper always gets misplaced or multiplies into two or three other notes by the end of the day. Things have gotten quite hectic lately, to-do items spread all over the place, so I gave Ta-Da Lists a try. Clarity. Create, share and keep track of to-do lists and it comes with an RSS feed or each or all of your lists smooshed together. I've also been using Basecamp (free version), which ta-da lists are a part of, to help keep track of another personal project I have going on right now.

Tada means free in Japanese. I wonder if they know this.