Lost in Translation

Expo 2005 Aichi Japan

Heading to World EXPO 2005 in Japan? I wish I could. I have such great memories of Expo '88 when it was in my home town of Brisbane. I really wish I could could go to Japan again this year and get to the EXPO.

EXPO 2005 Tours & other Japan sightseeing tours

From April to August, EXPO 2005 in Aichi Japan is the place to be. "The wisdom and power of all people will be brought together and filled with passion, activity, enlightenment and energy". Day and extended touring from Tokyo, self guided or with English speaking guides. For EXPO (and all your other Japanese touring needs), book ahead of time so you don't miss out.

Maybe if the taxman is nice to me this year, I might be able to afford to go. (yes, Australians are very highly taxed, expecially when compared to the Japanese, no wonder we lose so much talent overseas.)

Hope I can catch you in Japan again this year, could be very busy travel year with the REBOL Developer conference 2005 also on this September in Italy (Milan). I'll have to grow wings :-)

Shedding a skin

Like a snake that needs to shed its skin, a seemingly painfull concept for human, so to is the thought of swapping OS or platform.

I remember the days when we weren't just choosing what OS to run, but what computer brand to buy, Amiga, Apple, Atari, Amstrad, MicroBee, Spectrum, Texas Instruments and many more. We had so much more choice, until we all fell for the myth of the perpetual upgradable machine. With changes in chip design & memory over time, obsoleting many of the parts you already invested in; it turns out to the "perpetual upgradable machine" no more real than the perpetual motion machine.

Lets face it, if obsolence isn't built into a product, then how will a company ensure a cash flow for all those shareholders? So many great machines have passed. But now hardware is just a commodity and a computer (regardless of hardware platform) is just another appliance, it is software & in particular the OS that is the deciding factor. But innovation is rare because of the huge task of keeping backward compatible. Well I'm sick of having a pathetic OS that is carrying the baggage of mistakes from the last 20 years. Time for a fresh start, shed a skin, take some pain, but it will be worth it.

So that brings me to the options. When MS Longhorn was announced, it sounded like an innovation, but now so much of the new ideas have been dropped & delayed, that it doesn't seem to be much more of a patch for XP, its not even a skin graft, no more than bandaid on an oozing sore. Linux to fragmented, some distributions suffer design by committe, too much choice.

(How can there be too much choice?... philosophers have argued that we fear free will & we fear choice, fear of making the wrong choice. Research on shopping behaviour is also showing that give someone 6 items to choose from and you will get more sales in total, than if you have 12 items for sale)

BEOS was cool and had some nice ideas but its company went belly up. So where is the current innovation, who is taking design & usability & beauty to new levels? Well its Apple. Currently riding high on the iPod, it seems to be finding the cash & time to push its G5 chips to their limit. Apple OSX Tiger appears to be what I've been missing since the days of the Amiga, and OS that realises it is there to get out the way & let you work, but help by making simple things simple.

Time to shed my skin...
I'm going to buy Mac at the end of this month (after Tiger OSX released on 29th) . The new OS is just so far ahead of anything MS is planning in the now gutted and delayed Longhorn. If I need windows, I'll run it in an emulator.

There is currently a groundswell of developers moving to the Mac (free high-quality dev tools). This reminds me of the start of the landslide when people starting shifting from Amiga to PC.
http://www.apple.com.au/macosx/features/dashboard/

And now REBOL is working on OSX port again... life will be simpler again and perhaps the joy of computing will return..

Peace Museum & Floating Roof Top

Today we visited the Peace Museum, near Osaka Castle, 3 exibit areas.
Exhibit A - Osaka's destruction by the US Airforce incendiary bombing raids, Exhibit B Japan's aggressor role and the attrocities it commited in the 15 year war, from Manchuria incident right through to the war in the pacific. Exhibit C is a collage of peace making moments in modern history, complete with doomdays clocks above each event e.g Cuban missile crisis, signing of end of war agreements etc.

Then we went off to Umeda to get a view from atop the floating rooftop viewing platform.

View from Rooftop Floating Garden 160m above Osaka

Looking up... escalators between the buildings

Escalators between the two towers from the roof top

Osaka - Umeda

View to the east

Shitennoji Temple Markets

Heading off to Shitennoji again because it is market day. A big flea market amongst the temples. If you are after a cheap Kimono this is the place to go, prices start as low as 300 yen. Lots of "Classic" collectables, robbie the robot, godzilla etc and more old 8mm cameras and projector than I have seen in a long time. As collectible as the old Japanese stuff was to us, old western clothing was popular with the young trendy Japanese girls. We only saw about 6 other gaigin at this market, which is good because it means the prices haven't gone sky high due yet to catch the tourist yen. The market is normally on the 21st of each month. I ate "dog".. a poorly translated hotdog, sausage on a stick. And some Tacoyachi (octupus balls.. or rather balls of octupus and other ingredients. Beware of sticking them straight in your mouth.. they can be very sticky masses of hot goo.). These bought ones were not as nice as the ones we learnt to make yesterday.

Market Stalls at Shitennoji

We also stopped at Mos Burger (again..), if you feel like a burger but don't want to eat at that horrid brand of American world burger dominance; I reccomend "Mos Burger", the burgers are fresh, lettuce is green and never soggy, and they are very tasty (Japanese mayonaise.. yum!) our faves are the Teryaki Burger and the MosBurger, so far

Here are a few pics from the apartment we are staying in.. gives a bit of an idea of the mixed nature of the building in the area. Nearby, but not in the photos is a 4 storey aparment complex, of which the entire bottom floor is a transit company.. trucks constantly moving in and out - we assume the workers live in the apparments above.

Note the Tori Gate garden and shrine on top of one of the buildings.

Looking towards the mountains, post office on left with the flags. Teller machines at this post office allow the use of Maestro & Cirrus cards, so we can use our debit cards. We found only 3 places in Osaka where we could use them.

Bike parking area for the appartments, more bike parking space than there is for cars. In Osaka you have to prove you have somewhere to park a car before you are allowed to purchase one.

View towards main road, can just spot the rail bridge running left to right amongst the larger appartment building.

Himeji

Took the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) from Osaka-Shin station to Homeji, just over 3000 yen each for non-reserve seating. (Carriages 1,2,3 are for non-reserved seat, 1 & 2 are non-smoking). We managed to find a seat and could see out the window, not much to see really as most of the way was tunnels, except for a break before and after Kobe station. Train is very smooth, almost like being in an aircraft, much of the time of the journey appears to be slowing down for the station.

Himeji Castle Map

Himeji Castle built early 17th century, registed on world heritage list in 1933 as the first cultural site in Japan. The castle is also known as White Heron Castle due to its white plaster and some resemblance(?) to a white bird flying off.

Himeji Castle - Main Keep
There are displays inside the castle of scrolls, paintings, armour, roof tiles, rifles etc. The stairs are extremely steep, best to call them ladders, the steps vary in width, some were only a third the size of my foot. You have to remove your shoes before entering (put in plastic bag & carry with you), and some slippers are provided.. for safety I suggest not using the slippers (they will slip off as you climb the stairs), but rather proceed in your socks. When you reach the top, there views from all sides, and there is a place to sit and contemplate why exactly did you climb those 5 levels? ;-)

View from Himeji Castle

Himeji Castle - Looking like a White Heron?

Mt. Shosha

Mt. Shosha - Engyoji Temple
From Himeji we took the #8 bus to Mt. Shosha, conveniently, the bus terminated at the bottom of the path leading to the Mt. Shosha Ropeway. This cable car takes you up into the mountain temple area.

Temples at Mt Shosha (above Himeji)

"Maniden is the main building constructed in 970AD. It is dedicated to the goddess of Mercy. The Main hall stands half-way up this rocky mountain and is built without a single nail, same as Kiyomizu temple in Kyoto. Unfortunately the orignal temple burnt down in 1921 and the construction of the present building was complected in 1932" - (taken from ropeway tourist leaflet)

As you can see from the above picture it is starting to rain. The became so heavy that we had to abandon the next 1-2km uphill trek to see the more buildings here. The path was getting too muddy, we noted on the way back down the mountain that there was a temple bus to take people up and down the dirt roads around the temple area, we assume that if we had arrived at the right time, we may have been able to ride on it.

The Glowing Green Tree. Don't know if there was something special about this tree, but it was covered in glowing green moss and was growing right beside the temple. I think it must have been a lucky tree, because each vending machine I used for the rest of the day, gave me too much change... I had a few free drinks thanks to the Goddess of Mercy & that tree.

Residence?

Water Dragon - Cleanse yourself at this well before entering the temple

Kyoto

Golden Pavilion

Tori gates form a tunnel

Kyoto - Foxes are the messengers of the gods.

Tori gates galore along bush path - a 40 km trek continues uphill from here.

Kobe

Kobe from Sky Rope (cable car)

Herb Garden Green Houses - above Kobe

Foreign heritage in Kobe