Protocol 7

It’s been quiet around here, and I only have World of Warcraft to blame. I still bathe on a regular basis and haven’t given up my day job (yet), but I forget to eat and am incredibly moody when the server is having problems (more often than not on Khaz’goroth).

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The West has always lagged behind Japan when it comes to technological innovation, especially in the realm of robots and heated toilet seats. Humanoid machines and warm bums are indeed exciting, but pale in comparison to the unsung combini (convience store), whose shopping experience Japan has elevated to an artform. And the Pièce de résistance? Canned oxygen.

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My limited edition set of web designer buttons has finally made it to my doorstep after taking a somewhat circuitous route via my mom’s house (thanks mom!). Khoi Vinh’s design originally triggered my buying impulse, but I must say that all the designs (and designers) are quite fetching. Now my sabo-kitty finally has some company.

The buttons, the buttons, the buttons.

Sabo-kitty doesn’t take shit from anyone.

Japanese-English, or Engrish, adorns every other physical object in Japan, from clothing to billboards to candy. It’s near impossible to avoid the omnipresent poetic flourishes painted on the side of pachinko parlours and gas stations, and has even inspired several websites dedicated to documenting the phenomenon, including an online store that sells various items emblazoned with reproduced Engrish phrases.

Westan toilets and soft dinks are not limited to the realm of printed text, but also find their home in spoken communications. A ‘biking lunch’ isn’t a midday meal on a bicycle, but an all-you-can-eat buffet (spelled Viking and derived from smorgasbord, go figure). Shorts are called ’short pants’, lest you get confused with something else that is short, and ‘expat’ is apparently something you shoot at (this one I still haven’t figured out). Whether the Engrish is spoken or printed, native speakers are enchanted with the new linguistic configurations that confront them day in and day out (or at least I am).

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Well, technically I’ve been legal for about a decade now, give or take, depending on what country you live in. But more importantly, as of Friday afternoon, I am playing World of Warcraft legally.

Whether poorly-hosted illegal servers are part of Blizzard’s overall marketing scheme or just a by-product of primordial internet chaos (you know, sans-regulations and all), my experience on the Outofdate Private server was enough to convince me that a) I really wanted to play the game and b) WoW is worth the monthly fee (for now, at least).

Not only was I running around in the most hideous green biker pants imaginable, I was running around in what appeared to be a beta-release of the WoW server at best. Which is tolerable when you are playing for free, but when you lose your character not once, not twice, but three times, you know that the old cliche is true; there really is no such thing as a free lunch.

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A couple of days ago I received an e-mail from my mom informing me that she had to put her dog Apollo, a white standard poodle, to sleep on Thursday. Since then she’s been sorting through old photographs, gathering a visual overview of Apollo’s time here and I thought I’d add a few memories to that compendium, as a small farewell.

Apollo was a special dog, and when I say special I mean that in every sense, every definition, that the word encompasses (except perhaps the mathematical one). It was because of his very unique specialness that he wound up at our house; born blind and with weakened back legs, aficionados of purebred poodle pups didn’t really want anything to do with him. And so it was that a very fluffy and cute white puppy, burdened with the weighty name of Apollo, joined our family.

When he was still small, small enough for me to carry, I liked to take him to Franklin Street (downtown Chapel Hill) and the University of North Carolina campus because that’s what people with dogs do. He was happy enough in the campus parks, but as soon as his feet touched concrete he froze… wouldn’t move a muscle. And so began the hallmark peculiarities that made Apollo a particularly lovable variation on a theme. I’m not fond of poodles or the pretension that surrounds their very existence, but Apollo was different with his endearing wobbliness and propensity to run into things, even though his breath was usually pretty stinky.

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I’ve never been a fan of shopping, unless it’s for electronics or the occasional thrift store foray, so you can imagine how happy I am that the three pairs of pants I brought to Japan are falling apart. Falling apart is an understatement - the hems are gone and the fabric is wearing thin - I carry around scissors and safety pins just in case of further impromptu degradation. I usually enjoy flipping through racks of thrifty threads if I’m in the right mood, but I *hate* shopping for pants about as much as I hate pretzles and elbows. To say that I possess a megaton of hate would not be an exaggeration. And shopping for pants in Japan effectively doubles, if not triples, my pants-shopping hateration.

It’s always been difficult for me to find pants that fit properly, and in the past I’ve generally stuck to wearing men’s suit pants. Occasionally I will find the odd pair of jeans that happen to fit, but in a world that loves low-riders and skinny jeans, they are few and far between. In Japan, the task of locating pants that can sustain my trunk’s junk is nigh impossible, and I’m a size six back in the States. In a country that boasts size 00 (yes, that’s double zero), a girl who usually doesn’t have body issues suddenly begins to plan her upcoming crash-course diet of seaweed and tofu (and beer, natch). After two hours of fitting-room devastation I found one pair that fit, but made me look incomprehensibly short, like I had been squished in a fun-house mirror. The next size up was in the plus-size section. Needless to say, I’m still sporting the same threadbare leggings I was last year.

Golden Week has come and gone (and gone), underscored by the incessant rain dismally signaling a return to work after seven blissful days of vacation. This is the exact same thing I said last year, except with perhaps a little less rain. Golden Week is a springtime blessing, a weeklong national holiday (more accurately, several individual holidays in series) that’s even better in Hamamatsu owing to the three-day revelry known as the Hamamatsu Matsuri (festival). Last year we had a lot of fun as spectators, but this year passively watching wasn’t enough; we participated.

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Hamamatsu is a fairly small city, the kind of city that is absent from guidebooks and is sometimes coupled with the pejorative “armpit” to descibe its more industrial aspects. It may not be the cultural hotbed that Tokyo is, lacking capsule hotels and panty vending machines, but there are a few places to visit should you find yourself in the area. If you happen to like bright colors, pollen, and screaming children, the Hamamatsu Flower Park is just your cup of tea. It’s also a great place to see the cherry blossoms.

Alex, the cactus picture is in fond memory of the time you fell into that prickly beast at the botanical gardens in Ann Arbor.

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