Public Address - OnPoint (Home)

The reasonably seedy underbelly | Oct 12, 2007 03:22

When I decided five years ago that I wanted to be able to work and travel at the same time, I hadn't envisaged myself working in a Tokyo porn parlour servicing clients while sexually frustrated Japanese salarymen... relaxed around me. No, I really didn't see it coming.

It's one of the strange little ironies of the tech age that the more prevalent a technology becomes, the more difficult it is to publicly access. In India, internet cafes and phone booths were all over the place and cost next to nothing. In Japan, making a 5 minute call to Hong Kong cost about $15. It's not that I was cheap (well, not *just* because I was cheap), but I had to put in coins so often that it might as well have had a hand-crank. Internet cafes have a status closer to cinemas - small ones don't exist, and you really have to go out of your way to find the big ones.

Then I found a "private internet/DVD booth" place that was actually a really good deal. For about $6/hr, you got your big-screen multimedia computing suite with internet access, a completely private booth, a wee bed, and, um, as much porn as you can stuff into a shopping basket (that's a lot). There were also four boxes of tissues, which I used liberally to wipe my chair.

You could also purchase underwear from a vending machine. Fresh, clean underwear, that is. Not the other kind.

I suppose that it's no seedier than any other adult entertainment establishments around the world. It's just like a Love Hotel. By yourself. It was, however, a strange place to conference call with clients. Clients who don't ask you what you are wearing, anyway.

The question that remains is obvious: Can I bill my client for this?

"Telecommunications cost, ￥1000, Porn Parlour."

I'm sure accounting will understand.

I also resided in a capsule hotel in Nagoya, featuring rooms large enough for four coffins, if you emptied their contents and cremated them.

I was giddy at the prospect, as I'd always just assumed that we'd all be living like this in the 21st century. The actual 'hotel' was a bank of about 80 of these, which were actually quite comfortable and no more claustrophobic than a bunk bed. The straw 'door' - rather than, say, an air-tight steel door with no handle on the inside - helped.

The hotel is built around its spa and sauna, where everyone is naked, so there's pretty much naked men going to and from every part of the hotel (and, for that reason, no women). That's just the norm. There's also a lounge full of reclining chairs where the more budget-conscious guests slept.

It's all been weird, but I do feel that I'm having an authentic Japanese experience: Working all day, emerging from a seedy hole-in-ground at odd hours, stumbling out to find that everything is close and resorting to yakitori pork and expired onigiri from the 7-Eleven. It's not a *real* salaryman's experience, but as a tourist-version, it's getting close.

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Random dinner report: Random dinner for tonight at a reputable soba restaurant in downtown Kyoto. The meal was an unusual combination of chili on salmon sashimi with soba and tea. Or that's what the picture looked like. Turns out, it was a spicy raw fish-egg sausage on udon with unidentified legume, and a side of grass soup. Classy, exotic, but nigh on inedible.

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Random robot report: Inside this plush robo-mansion, we met the model-M robot Hemming-San. Unfortunately, he declined to be interviewed.

And if you're feeling stressed this Friday, have a Japanese garden.

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Like the mule with a spinning wheel | Oct 10, 2007 02:04

Another monster surplus to slay, eh? God, those billions really are a blight on New Zealand. How will we possibly... okay, you get the point.

At least this time National is coming out and bluntly saying they want to raise debt levels - but that okay. It's a reasonable point - debt isn't necessarily a bad thing - but Bill English's framing of the issue is a bit disingenuous.

The key message he was trying to get across was that debt wasn't a bad thing and that investment in infrastructure is usually funded by debt. That's fine. But then he goes on to say:

So there is no debt problem and hoarding cash as if you did has become a pretty severely limiting factor in future investing,"

That would be the case if the government was trying to run a surplus instead of investing in infrastructure. But this is not the case. Where they have not funded infrastructure projects, it's been because the project is not cost-effective on its own merits, not because it doesn't want to take money out of the surplus.

In fact, the exact opposite has been true. In the last election, National pointed out that the government has been funding infrastructure out of cash so that it makes their surplus look smaller, accusing them of dodgy accounting. (FYI: They have been funding infrastructure out of cash. It is unusual, but whether it's dodgy is a question of public accounting.)

It means that whether infrastructure is funded from cash or from debt makes little difference (apart from interest) on the long-term debt, and the whole infrastructure argument is a big fat red herring. If there is underinvestment in infrastructure, it's because there's underinvestment in infrastructure, and neither the surplus nor the cash vs debt argument factor into it.

If National is serious about infrastructure, then they need to say where the problems are and commit to increasing spending on it. Until then, this sounds more like the first half of a line that goes:

1) More debt is fine,

2) Infrastructure should be paid for out of debt.

Therefore...

3) We can afford a bigger tax cut than what Labour will offer. (Surprise!)

Or a monorail.

I'm not against the idea of a tax cut, or even of spending the surplus, but I'm just sick of this compulsion to spend because it's there. Sure, there's money in the bank, but why spend it? What are we getting in return? What's the *value* of the spending, compared with decreasing debt?

The problem for National is that the value of a tax cut for the country as a whole is necessarily theoretical. You can't measure it's long-term effects on the economy and the people - but you can measure its value to individuals. So, the talking points cycle between the outright bribe, an intellectually-gutted talkback version of classical liberalism ("give us our money back"), and some well-flogged rhetoric about "more incentive for our best and brightest, stem the brain drain, etc."

There is a perfectly good case out there, explain why it's better for us to be spending the surplus on tax cuts or whatever rather than on paying off debt. I'm eagerly waiting for it.

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Fish | Oct 03, 2007 15:20

Last time I had raw fish for breakfast was in Oslo, and the raw herring pickled in vinegar did not go down well. Yesterday's, at Tokyo's Tsukiji Fish Market, was considerably better. We had mackerel and eel sushi, which were great, but the fatty tuna and the sea egg ones were awesome.

In the actual wholesale market nearby, you could get tubs of sea eggs, though presumably, it would be unwise to pig out on it in front of the telly.

They take their fish seriously, as you'd expect. Here is a buyer carefully studying cross-sections of tuna. A lot of poking, but no microscopes.

Fish, fish, everywhere - as well as soft-shelled crabs...

...octopus...

...and mud eels...

...which we had for lunch.

After two days in Tokyo, I have yet to be accosted by a robot. And my friends Michael and Mariko have even taken me to a park - with trees and stuff! All in all, it's far less Blade Runner than I'd expected it to be, though presumably, that's just because the Replicants running the city want to keep a low profile.

Except in Akihabara, otherwise known as the geek district. Grown from a specialist electronics area, it's turned into a full-blown geek-a-rama, and not really in a good way. One shop summed it all up with its inventory: Electronics equipment out front, semi-ornamental weapons (telescopic batons, ninja stars, semi-ornamental knives) in the middle, and finally, down the back, rubber vaginas. There was a natural synergy between the products.

The area was also famous for the "maid cafes", where all the waitresses are dressed like French maids. That's... um, yeah.

I've always thought that you can't get lost on the subway. I was so very wrong.

The problem isn't that these grids are massive and complex. The problem is that I don't even know which *segment* of the grid this is supposed to represent.

The plan is to travel west in Japan over the next two weeks, then ferry to China, then head west some more. A lot more. Through the length of China, then south, until I go back to India. My natural gravity towards calamity will also draw me towards Nepal during its first election since the prince when nuts and shot the royal family. I hope I'll like the Maoist insurgents as much as I like skinheads.

--

Meanwhile, here are two more NGA's for you:

Click here for more NGA.

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