Rich Seymour's stochastic statements.

Editing iptables config. That’s something I haven’t done in years. Yup.

Had an American style dinner last night. Pretty good. The French fries were pretty authentic. The pizza was tasty very little sauce and a good amount of cheese. We drank a fair amount. I played a Clark 8 song (never said) for the folks and they liked it. I think it would go over better if I played covers, but I really don’t commit other people’s songs to memory much.

Then speaking of covers, we went to the karaoke room of this compound… (if I ever have a compound it will have a karaoke room) and then true Japanese karaoke madness began. If you have Facebook you can see various pics of me singing Livin on a Prayer, some aerosmith, some Simon and Garfunkel. Japanese karaoke is usually done with two people, which kind of takes the pressure off a bit. I have done two singer karaoke in the US just far less often. Also the sound system was rad with a couple crazy clear plastic sphere speakers hanging from the ceiling, in addition to the big monitor size speakers.

So yeah, getting a good slice of Japanese culture here in this small town of Izu. Can’t wait to see Yokohama and Tokyo tho!

Also there is one analogy I would like to make:

coffee flavor:Japanese coffee::vermouth:dry martini

It’s strange to me. Japanese coffee kind of tastes like watered down and filtered Turkish coffee. Like the beans have been lightly roasted and ground into a powder and somehow in that process lose the oily tasty parts. Leaving a sort of afterimage of coffee, like a picture of coffee or a scratch n sniff coffee bubble sticker. You get what I’m saying?

That said there was that starbucks in the narita airport. I don’t know if I want to drink starbucks in Japan. If it tastes like American starbucks I will bemoan the Americanization of Japan, and if it tastes like crazy weak Japanese coffee I will be sad that I can’t get a real cup of joe. But then what is a good cup of coffee? I enjoy everything from Folgers crystals to sunset junction’s intelligentsia coffee to brooklyn’s gorilla coffee. Gorilla coffee would be my overall fave. Followed by LA’s groundwork and Urth Caffes.

I have time to pontificate on coffee because in spite of being here a few days, I still don’t understand Japanese.