I bought a TiVo! And why other DVR's suck.

TiVo! To some people, it sounds like a throwback. Whenever I mention it to someone, I almost expect them to say "they're still around?"

Yes. Yes they are. And they still make the best DVR. In fact, in all this time, I'm frankly amazed at the fact that nobody else has even really tried to replicate what they do. It's like Apple with the iPod, which stood basically alone for years. The rest of the industry just didn't get it. "But my Rio plays MP3's, you just drag and drop them." Oh, but first you needed to buy a physical CD. Then you needed to rip it. Then you needed to put the files in your folder hierarchy. Then you needed to manually create a playlist. And that's assuming you had some way of finding new music in the first place - it's not like commercial radio's any help these days. If you want to do all that work every time you get new music, great - I have better things to do.

My last DVR was a Scientific Atlanta 8300HD from Cablevision, running SARA software. Holy crap, what a piece of junk. I'm amazed they can still call this current equipment in 2012. It still had a fully SD menu and guide - I mean it was even shown in a 4:3 box on a 16:9 TV.  When you clicked the guide, it would take about 3 seconds for it to come up, then about another 3 seconds to finish populating itself. That repeated every time you changed times or paged through channels. The fonts were ugly, the box was slow, and half the time it wouldn't register any button presses at all for about 2 minutes, then suddenly it would execute every command you'd been trying to send it during that time, all in a row.

And forget about actually helping you figure out what there was to watch. It was basically a channel listing with a record button, which is what most DVR's still are these days. It was a glorified VCR married to a standard cable box.

Frankly, this is still what passes for DVR's on most cable and satellite systems these days. There are a few boxes that try to do more (Moxi is one) but they're all either missing some major feature TiVo has or they cost a massive amount up front. There's also Windows Media Center, but I've tried that and honestly, it doesn't do half what TiVo does and it's not something that "just works" - it takes some doing to get it set up right so you can just come home, turn on your TV and plunk down on the couch like with a real DVR. (It's also not really cheap, once you buy all the stuff you need to make it work like a DVR.)

So what makes TiVo so awesome? It's a cliche, but the short story version is still that it changes the way you watch TV. Most DVR's work as described above. At best, if you're shall we say "fastidious", maybe you religiously check TV Guide every week and so have a mental (or even written) list of shows you want to watch, and you can search for those on your cable DVR and set up recordings for them. I am never that organized. I need a box that can do most of the work.

TiVo does that. TiVo puts everything in one centralized location, independent of its screening time or the service or channel that it's available on. You get a list of available shows and movies broken down into categories and genres, not a list of times and channels (though it has that too, it's just not the central feature of the box). Some of those may be available now (via some on-demand service, or even in your list of recordings), some you may have to wait a little bit for (until their next screening time), but the point is you start by choosing what you want to watch, not hunting around randomly by time on a channel guide or just looking through a small list of things you've previously recorded.

Here's a video I made mostly for current TiVo owners to show them the new 20.2 OS update, but non-TiVo owners might find it interesting as well to see some of how the box works (and this should be more up to date than most pro reviews out there, which are based on the 14.9 OS):

And TiVo is both a curated service and a box that learns your likes and dislikes. I've found many new things on TV that I would never have known about had TiVo not recommended them to me, either through one of its curated "collections" (that's just one of many above) or through its suggestion engine.

TiVo will just record stuff it thinks you might like until it runs out of space (you see it thinks I like science and nature documentaries, which I actually do). These suggested recordings just get deleted automatically if it needs space for shows you've asked to record.

Its show-centrism extends even further:

When you "explore" a show, you can see a list of all seasons and episodes and whether they're available - not just on TV, but also on Netflix, Blockbuster, Amazon or Hulu Plus. (You can turn any or all of these extra services off - I've chosen to ignore Hulu Plus.) I love this feature, because - and Fringe is a great example of this - demands on my and my wife's time mean we often fall behind on shows, stuff gets deleted and we lose our place. It's really annoying trying to figure out where we left off, and sometimes we stop watching shows entirely rather than bother trying to catch up. This helps me figure it out, and I can sometimes even just start off watching again right there - and if not, I at least know what episodes to get. (And - ahem - TiVo can play TV episodes downloaded to your PC. There are various tools to quickly transcode to TiVo, including one officially produced by TiVo themselves, though the official one is payware.)

This is actually my second TiVo - I had my first from 2001-2003, but had to ditch it for HD, which TiVo had no answer for for a little while (they needed to wait for the CableCARD thing to get sorted out).  Today's TiVo Premiere boxes are of course HD, and with CableCARD there is no recompression of the video anymore. In fact, both my wife and I are convinced that our picture quality has improved with TiVo. I think that old SA8300HD just didn't have the horsepower to even display HDTV properly, so the picture would break up during pans or otherwise get pixelated quite often. With TiVo, there is literally no pixelization. It could be our imagination, but we both commented on how smooth the picture became with TiVo. And it's not a softer picture, because on-screen text and graphics are razor sharp even up close, it's just smoother, less glitchy, and less harsh.

When you buy a TiVo, you're buying on the cell phone model - the box is subsidized, and you sign up for a year of service at $19.99. You can also get a lifetime subscription (that's the lifetime of the box) for a flat $499, which is basically like buying an unlocked cell phone - except you still need the TiVo service, it's just free. Some people are annoyed by this, but I don't get that - my far inferior Cablevision DVR was costing me $18 per month anyway ($10.95 for DVR service, $8 for a cable box), so I'm paying just $2 extra for the much better TiVo. The CableCARD also costs $2 per month, so my total's $4 more. I can live with that for what I'm getting. And I own the box, unlike with the cable company - a Premiere is $99, which I think is reasonable.  (The Premiere Elite, which has 4 tuners and a bigger hard drive, is $300.)

I actually can't believe I waited as long as I did to get TiVo again - I should have done it right when the first HD boxes were released. One reason I didn't was the horror stories I kept hearing about CableCARD rentals. See, the cable companies don't want you to rent these things (they want you to rent their own box that they make more money from), and they've done any underhanded thing they can think of to make it as difficult as possible.  Anything from forcing a "professional install" that costs extra money, often with appointments months out (it's literally just sticking a card in a slot), intentionally giving TiVo owners the wrong type of CableCARD and one that they know won't work, telling people there's a six month waiting list for CableCARDs, etc.  But the government's been clamping down lately and honestly, my experience with Cablevision was pretty pleasant - I walked into my local Optimum store, rented a card and was out of there in 2 minutes. I stuck the card in my TiVo, called Cablevision to activate it and was done. Total time investment: maybe 10 minutes. Total cost: $0 up front, and $2 per month.

Now all I need is an exercise bike to keep me from getting fat from all these extra hours in front of the TV.

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Christmas 2011

So, Christmas! In past years it seems I've written more about it. The truth is I think we're starting to really feel the economy now; our house is worth a lot less than we paid for it, our store is struggling, my wife's union almost just went on strike (and still might), and my freelance hours have been cut. So we're working as hard as we can to make as much money as we can, which means we don't have a lot of time left for anything like holiday decorations, or much money for presents. It's harder to get in the spirit of things...

We bought a tiny little 2 foot treetop a week before Christmas. And put a few little presents under it. That was the extent of our Christmas decorating.

We've gotten into this (bad) habit of buying our own presents and then putting the other person's name on it in the "from" field on the wrapping. I used to like it because it meant we always got what we wanted, and anyway, the money comes from the same place. Every couple has their own way of doing things. But now I miss the anticipation and mystery of not knowing exactly what's under that tree.

Anyway this is starting to sound depressing. Onto the presents! (One is late; I'll update this post when it gets here.)

You're gonna hear my voice on this one, some of you for the first time ever. I did a video review! My wife gave me a watch (I actually bought it, which is why I say that in the video review), to replace the ridiculous Casio digital watch that I bought because it was "retro" but really because it was cheap (you may remember that watch from such posts as this one). I now have a watch that's slightly less cheap but makes me look a little bit less like a hobo, even if it does have a "VII" where the "XII" should be:

"I" also "gave" my wife a watch, though her tastes are a little more mainstream than mine (and she wouldn't mind me saying that) - she chose a Victorinox Swiss Army watch. I believe it was this one. (And no, we don't always have to have the same gift! Just worked out that way this year.)

We do still pick out smaller gifts for each other. It's become tradition, apparently, that every year my wife has to give me a gag gift making fun of what she thinks are my nerdier interests.  This year, it was this:

I swear, she'd better be careful, because she's going to turn me into an actual fan one of these days. The more I'm exposed to AKB48, the less I dislike them. It's a dangerous game she's playing!

Or maybe the gag gift was actually this one:

Which is nerdier for an American guy, a Japanese all girl theatrical pop music act, or trains?

I do love old Amtrak stuff, though, and I had this book on my Amazon wish list (it's long out of print, which is why it's in this condition - I don't care). I started riding Amtrak when I was a kid in the 1970's, and despite the fact that it was a mess of a system, I really liked how riding the trains was like riding on a working museum of all the railroads that Amtrak had absorbed just previous to that point. Books like this one remind me of that time.

One of the things I love about my wife is the fact that she puts up with my nerddom, and actually indulges me in it.

I will say my last gift from my wife is both cool and nerdy at the same time - it's a new tremolo unit for my Jazzmaster. So, guitar: cool. Guitar part: kinda nerdy.

My brother's family and ours didn't really exchange gifts this year (because we're both poor-ish). My mother gave us $40 in cash, which is actually helpful. My stepmother gave us a $50 gift card and some Egyptian champagne flutes from Neiman Marcus.

That was pretty much my Christmas this year. Hopefully next year we can put a little more effort into it; we'll have more money to both buy things for each other and others around us, and more time to get in the spirit of things a little bit earlier.

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Moulin Rouge

Not everybody appreciates kitsch. And not every film director does it well, even when they're trying for it intentionally. (Some actually do it better unintentionally). Successful kitsch depends on participation by both the director and the viewer; the director has to get it right, and the viewer just has to get it.

Baz Luhrmann knows how to do kitsch. And Moulin Rouge is probably the best example of it there is.

I first saw Moulin Rouge in the theater, with my wife. We are not the kind of people who typically talk through movies, so she thought my constant snickering at the film meant I was not enjoying it, and was in fact making fun of it. She was wrong! Moulin Rouge is such a great film in part because it's so much fun, and I just felt like I was in on the joke. (I could tell not everybody in the theater was.) Every new and creative use of some pop song I'd grown up with in such a melodramatic context made me laugh out loud.  By the time Ewan MacGregor busted out KISS's forgotten 1980 disco hit "I Was Made For Lovin' You" while standing inside a giant elephant, I knew Baz Luhrmann had created something amazing.

But the genius of this movie is that it's campy and kitschy and earnest and beautiful. This film was a prototype for things like Glee, a combination of irony and seriousness that's almost impossible to pull off without the deftest of hands (as Glee has repeatedly proven). Baz Luhrmann's confidence in this style shows through in just how quickly he changes gears, as in this early scene:

And not to digress, but this scene features some of my favorite closeup shots of all time:

Nicole Kidman is more beautiful in this movie than she ever has been before or since. And Baz Luhrmann and his director of photography Donald McAlpine know how to film her. The closeup is a true art form in itself, as it's really the way that characters convey non-verbal emotion in film, and this one should be used to teach that art in film schools. You may not consciously appreciate a good closeup as I do, but their quality and use (or lack thereof) can make or break an entire film.

Luhrmann's known for his lavish sets and costumes, but he's really an actor's director, and he knows that's where the drama is. Without emotion and chemistry between the actors, there is no drama.

Since this film's release, my wife and I have watched it both together and separately probably 50 times through. I guess you could say it's "our movie". (Hey, every couple needs one.) Despite its sad ending, there are moments in it that always remind me of why we got together in the first place, and I feel like we're Christian and Satine. (I don't think I'm spoiling anything - this is a film that telegraphs its ending right at the beginning, and the fun and drama are in the journey getting there.) Especially whenever we're fighting, watching this scene will always start me blubbing uncontrollably:

I swear to God, every time I watch her sing "come back to me and FORGIVE EVERYTHING", I just freakin' lose it right there, and I'm gone for the rest of the scene. (I often have a second breakdown when she says "I love you" - I'm such a sap!) Sometimes, if I'm a little drunk as I am now, just thinking about it will get me misty-eyed.

I suppose posting the "finale" scene might be considered something of a spoiler, but first of all, this film is almost ten years old - hey, also? DARTH VADER IS LUKE'S FATHER. Anyway, this is not even really the end, although often I do stop the movie here because I can't watch the real ending.

The film has actually inspired me to take an interest in the real Moulin Rouge and in fact my wife and I are planning a trip there... soon. (The current show features topless dancers, btw... along with plenty of cheesy 80's-style Solid Gold-esque music and dance.) I actually didn't think the film was in any way close to reality but apparently it actually is - many of the photos from that era do look very similar to the film, and the main hall really was that big! (It seems smaller now.)

Why the hell am I writing about this film now? Well, because my wife and I just watched it through again, and I just picked up the Blu-Ray version. In all honesty, I've had a post on both Moulin Rouge and Rent sitting here in draft mode, unpublished, since 2007. So it's not like I'm just thinking of it now. (I'll get to talking about Rent eventually.)

This film is destined to be a cult classic, and if you can't appreciate it, I really don't think I want to be your friend. If you like it, though, it was practically made for high definition and Blu-Ray - pick it up. But the definitive version in terms of extras is still the Collector's Edition DVD, which also happens to have some of the nicest packaging of any DVD release I own - and it's cheap! Get them both if you're a fan.

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Japan is really good at plastic surgery

I like a lot of Japanese pop music, and my wife, being from there, likes even more of it than I do. And as anyone who's married knows, there's a lot of cross-pollination of tastes - you can't avoid it. After you've been exposed to enough J-pop, you start to realize something: almost every even semi-famous artist there has had work done. Most Americans who are into Japanese music, and even some Japanese themselves, don't realize this. It's far more prevalent than in America.

Please note that I'm not making a moral judgment on plastic surgery itself. What I am saying is that the Japanese are really good at it. They know how to make people look the same, but better. Whereas it seems like most westerners who go through major plastic surgery come out the other side looking like gargoyles (or at best like they've obviously had work done), in Japan it's usually very hard to tell unless you knew what the person looked like before. Even then, it's often not obvious what they've actually done. I've been following certain artists long enough to notice this. In some cases, the artist will eventually confirm the surgery; in other cases, they'll keep it a secret.

First, two really obvious and famous cases, both confirmed (you can click any image to make it a bit bigger):

Both Ayumi Hamasaki and Kumi Koda had obvious eye jobs at the very least (Kumi Koda also had an obvious nose job). The "roll" below the eye is removed, a more obvious crease is given to the upper eyelid and in general the appearance of the eye is enlarged and tightened up. It's kind of a myth among people who have heard about this that the goal is to try to look more "western"; if anything, it's the opposite. You can see here that it made these two artists have noticeably bigger and less tired-looking but definitely still Asian eyes. They almost look like anime characters. Regular people in Japan don't have eyes like Ayumi Hamasaki's - almost anyone you see with eyes like that had an eye job. That includes almost every "idol" and famous pop star. This is now an extremely common procedure; it's like getting Lasik.

This is Nozomi Tsuji, who I believe falls in the unconfirmed category, but it's a pretty obvious (and almost extreme) case if you ask me. She basically went right for the maximum eye size up to - but IMO, not beyond - the line that separates "cute" and "freak". If you get it right, you get maximum cuteness, but oh, how easy it is to step over that line. She looked like the "after" photo in the first photos after her maternity - so she had a bit of a break when nobody was taking pictures of her. In her case, she was actually popular before the eye job, so a lot of people did notice it when she came back.

Now a couple of "did she or didn't she?" cases:

That's Maki Goto both when she was in Morning Musume and now. She had a confirmed eye job before that first photo. But compare it with the next couple. Is it just age? Makeup? Lighting? You could make the case either way. The thing is, it's actually only been a few years, whereas to me the first and second photos, at least, look 20 years apart. When I saw these recent photos of her after not following her for several years, I didn't even recognize her. When I see them side by side with her old self, her facial features look basically the same, but I still feel like there's something different. I can't put my finger on what. People don't change that much in just a few years, once they're an adult (she was 18 in the "before" photo). She seems to have done something to tone up the sexiness and tone down the cuteness. Given her previous history, it wouldn't surprise me if she had more work done, even another eye job. (Though eyeliner can do amazing things.)

This is actually what inspired me to write this post. That's Haruna Ono of Scandal. I never realized how different she looked in their early stuff until I bought their "Video Action" BD, which has a couple of unreleased videos from their early years (professionally shot, just unreleased). The difference in the videos is actually a lot more pronounced than in these photos (this is just all I could find on the net). Check it out yourself - here's one of their very early videos, and here's a later one to compare it to. In the "before" photo above, that's her second from left. Something is different, isn't it? Her face used to be rounder and flatter. She's much more attractive now. If she did have work done, it was very early - she looked suddenly very different in their first "official" video for Doll, and has looked basically the same ever since. This video was shot only a few months after that first one I linked to above. It could just be styling or aging, but I have suspicions. She was already 20 in that "before" photo, and she's just 23 now - so her aging shouldn't make a big difference. I didn't find anything online that told me for sure one way or another.

It's not just girls that go under the knife:

That's Gackt, formerly of Malice Mizer and now of... himself, I guess. This is another case where it's hard to see exactly what was done but most Japanese generally agree that he's had some work. His eyes definitely look different, and his entire face is thinner and more defined (and no, he doesn't appear to have otherwise lost weight - he was always thin). Maybe some cheekbone and jaw work? I'm not sure if Gackt himself has ever confirmed it, but the guy is such a prankster and con artist that nobody takes anything he says seriously... meaning even if he said he'd done it outright, it'd probably convince more people of the opposite.

In all of these cases, most people I've seen agree that the artists in question look better than they did before, although the differences are so subtle that a lot of people don't seem to notice a difference until they look back at some old pictures or footage.  Then they have that "wait... what?" moment.

I'm sure you could find cases where the opposite is true and the work done was not an improvement, but certain procedures are so common in Japan now that they're almost pre-requisites for having a singing career. If you suddenly notice a famous person from there becoming a lot more attractive when you never noticed them before, you can almost be assured that it's not just makeup.

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Eero Saarinen's TWA Flight Center Open House - 10/16/2011

I've previously written about my fear of flying, but I love airports as long as I'm not going anywhere. I'll go to an airport just to hang out. One of the best buildings ever constructed at an airport is Eero Saarinen's iconic TWA Flight Center at JFK Airport in New York, built in 1962 and closed in 2001. The jet age equivalent to Grand Central Terminal, the TWA Flight Center is a modern, ethereal and delicate structure the likes of which we will never see built again. The interior looks like something from 1960's sci-fi.

The Flight Center was opened to the public for one day last weekend as part of Open House New York, and my wife and I went.  Here are my photos:

As a historic landmark, the TWA Flight Center still sits on the same spot it always did, only now the view of the tarmac and runways that you used to have out the back is instead a view of jetBlue's new Terminal 5. JetBlue had originally planned to use the TWA Flight Center as a gateway to the new T5 and maybe they still do - there is definite restoration work still going on.

I flew out of there once in 2000, and even at the time - as a terminal still in regular use, though by then known as (the original) Terminal 5 - I knew how special it was. It's kind of an odd feeling revisiting a building that you've used in a functional capacity that's now serving as what amounts to a museum to itself. Talk about feeling old!

But it was great to be able to visit such an amazing building, something not many have had the chance to do in the last decade. Hopefully that will change soon.

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New York Ramen: Misoya

Returning to a theme!

When I first started writing about Japanese ramen in New York, there wasn't a lot of choice. Real Japanese ramen was one of the final frontiers in authentic ethnic cuisine in New York, and Minca was basically it (and I feel a little bad about my harsh review of them now).

Today, ramen's everywhere in New York.  For a while I was actually keeping up and basically reviewing all the major ramen shops - nowadays, that's pretty much impossible.  Sorry about that, but you're on your own if you find something I haven't reviewed here.  (I never did review Setagaya, but here's a quick one: it's all right; nothing special, but not bad).  It's like playing whack-a-mole trying to visit all these new ramen restaurants popping up all over the place.

The good news is that this has caused everyone to really up their game - you just can't get away with mediocre ramen anymore and expect people to like it.  People are hopefully becoming a little more sophisticated and there is definitely more competition.  And the quality has gotten steadily better over the years as a result.

This week my wife and I happened on Misoya, a new ramen shop that apparently also has a shop in California (or so their t-shirts say).  They've been open for one month.  They do not have their own web site or I would link to them.

Misoya Ramen
129 Second Ave
Manhattan, NY 10003

The verdict: good!

As its name implies, Misoya specializes in (as in only serves) miso ramen.  This is a common thing in Japan; many ramen shops serve specific types of ramen.  If you want something other than miso ramen, go somewhere else.  I see this as the maturing of the New York ramen scene (is there a "ramen scene"??) - there are now enough ramen shops that we're starting to see specialization.  This is a good thing, because these specialty restaurants do their one thing really well, and there are plenty of ramen shops, so why do they all need to do the same thing?

I'm personally not a huge fan of miso in general so I was a little nervous, but first of all, just look at that bowl above!  It's a beautiful bowl of ramen.  The ingredients in the ramen I picked are a little different than what I'm used to, but they were very good, and you can always get more "traditional" ingredients.  I picked the one the waiter said was the most popular, sort of their house ramen.  They serve three different broths and then have several mixes of ingredients; I chose the standard broth, though you can get it heavier or lighter as well.

In the standard broth, the miso is not overpowering and you can still clearly taste pork marrow.  It's a rich and flavorful broth - very nice.  The noodles themselves were fabulous, just the right thickness and texture, and the pork!  The pork was some of the best I've had in New York, almost rivaling Yo! Tekoya in Tokyo. Melt in your mouth kind of stuff.  There is a lot of food in that bowl - I could not finish it, whereas I can finish the ramen at Rai Rai Ken and other ramen shops.  And it was not for lack of trying.

Misoya is a sit-down table restaurant, unlike Rai Rai Ken and pretty much any real ramen shop in Japan.  This actually drives me crazy about Rai Rai Ken these days - despite having some of the best ramen in the city, it's impossible to get a seat there because New Yorkers generally don't understand how to eat ramen at a place like that.  You eat fast and go.  You don't talk.  You slurp, you eat, you pay, you leave.  It's Japanese fast food.  Rai Rai Ken has become so popular that there are always people waiting outside because it's just a small counter shop and people sit there talking for 30 minutes after eating.  Well, Misoya's nod to American culture is that it's set up like a regular restaurant, and there is no rush.  So, take that for better or worse, though I imagine most New Yorkers will take it for better.

Sorry for not posting a pic of the storefront - we forgot to take one.  Maybe I'll update this post someday.  But it's easy to find with the address.

Even if you're not big on miso, give Misoya a chance.  They really make a tasty bowl of ramen.

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SCANDAL

How can you not like this? This is SCANDAL's newest single. I just got their latest album Baby Action, and can't stop listening to it.  Pop music in Japan!  This would just never happen here, somehow.

SCANDAL - LOVE SURVIVE.480p.HDTV from Mikotube Singles on Vimeo.

Incidentally, I linked to iTunes up there, but this is also available on Amazon. Both iTunes and Amazon are really working to bring Japanese music to their respective download sections. Support that! Buy this.

But this is not even my favorite. My favorite is still their first song from three years ago, DOLL.

Scandal - Doll (PV) from rice astoria on Vimeo.

They had kind of a Runaways type thing going on in those days. In a land of manufactured musical artists, they are a real band that formed organically and make their own music. I do like their look better now, though, from LOVE SURVIVE at the top. The Doc Martens and short skirts (actually skorts). This is their signature look now. 

SHOUJO S has everything - from their first album, I still love this. I'm a sucker for a girl band that does choreography - and apparently they do all of theirs themselves (they actually met in dance school; they're dancers).

[J-Music] SCANDAL - Shoujo S (PV) from Maneko on Vimeo.

They're playing on March 28 at Budokhan in Tokyo. (Yes, they are apparently that big now.)  I am actually planning to go.

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The Starbucks green tea frappuccino - and how to get one that actually tastes Japanese

Japanese matcha frappuccinos and a matcha and chocolate danish.

One of my favorite American/Japanese mashups is the Starbucks green tea Frappuccino. The funny thing is there are still regular Starbucks visitors in the US who don't know this exists! It's not on the menu at most Starbucks, and the other day at my local store, a girl saw the barista handing one to me and exclaimed in shocked disbelief, "a green tea... FRAPPUCCINO?!?" But yes, they make them, and they've made them for probably a decade now. I swear for a while it was on the actual menu, but it hasn't been for some time now anywhere I go - but that doesn't mean you can't still get one.

(According to the Starbucks web site, some locations do apparently list a Tazo Green Tea Frap on the menu, but none of the locations I frequent do, and anyway I'm not talking about the Tazo version, which is apparently "infused with tropical fruit flavors".)

The green tea Frappuccino did actually originate in Japan - it is not an American interpretation, I mean ignoring the fact that Starbucks is an American company and "Frappuccino" sounds like a perverted interpretation of a faux-Italian drink. But the green tea Frap was invented by Starbucks Japan, in Japan.

When they brought it over to the US, they originally put it on the menu as a "raspberry green tea Frappuccino", apparently thinking that plain old green tea was just too sophisticated for Americans, who have to slather everything in some kind of sugary syrup to kill with sweetness the actual taste of whatever they're actually drinking. But they found that so many people were ordering it without the raspberry syrup that they eventually relented and gave us the pure green tea Frap. (Hint: if you are in a location that offers the Tazo version, you can probably ask for it without the tropical fruit flavors!)

The Japanese version is still a little different, though. I like their version even better (what did you expect?) - it tastes more like real green tea. I'm not convinced it's possible to really get an American one to taste exactly the same because I think the Frap base itself is probably different, but if you want to approximate the taste of the Japanese version, you can come pretty close now that Starbucks lets you make Fraps any way you like. Here's how to order:

American green tea frappuccino made to approximate the taste of the Japanese version

If you can't read that, the important parts are "1/2 CL" and "X Macha". I confess I'm not up on the advanced Starbucks terminology, but I basically order half sweetness and extra matcha. Japanese green tea Fraps are stronger and less sweet than American ones. 1/2 sweetness is still plenty sweet! I'm thinking of trying unsweetened next time, which they actually offered me a while back, before I realized I could go halfway. I gave the barista a pretty incredulous look myself at being offered an unsweetened Frappuccino, but apparently there are people who order them that way.

(A minor update: on a subsequent visit, the barista asked me "how many scoops?" of matcha.  Apparently four is standard for a grande.  I've tried five and six scoops now.  I think six is closer to the Japanese taste, though be advised that it is pretty strong.)

Incidentally, if you're in Japan, you're actually looking for a "Matcha Frappuccino". Matcha is a particular type of powdered green tea (it is not a term interchangeable with green tea). I'm guessing they use the same powder here, which is why the barista wrote "X macha" on mine - but they actually put it on the menu that way in Japan. It's got a little more cachet than just calling it "green tea" there; "green tea" being a more generic catch-all term, like if Starbucks here were to just put "black coffee" on the menu, instead of listing the different roasts and bean varieties that they have.

Also!  Here's one more little thing I wish they'd bring over to the US:

Those are black sesame and matcha macarons.  (Not macarOOns... macarons).  Black sesame is kind of an acquired taste, but once you've acquired it, there is no better base for any sort of sweet food.  (I say "food" on purpose, not drink; I did have a black sesame bubble tea once and it was... how to put this... challenging.)  And it's the perfect little complement to a green tea Frap... unlike that matcha and chocolate danish I tried to make it through up in the pic at the top.  Green tea and chocolate... ugggghhhh!

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Is Tokyo radioactive?

So I brought my geiger counter with me to Japan last month, half serious about wanting to make sure nothing I ate or nowhere I went was going to kill me with radiation. By this time, though, I think most people's fears have justifiably waned a bit, but I do still see paranoid people in various Japan-themed forums I read that are stuck under their tinfoil hats and insisting that the government is lying and Tokyo is really just a glowing post-apocalyptic hellhole of nuclear fallout and radioactivity, and everyone there is facing a slow and painful burning, flesh-eating death.

So here's my informal little test. I think it pretty much speaks for itself.



By the way, background radiation normally induces one or two clicks per minute even in the United States, so the one click you saw at the end is totally, 100% normal. (Probably should have noted that tidbit in the video itself.)

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Riding in a Joban Line Green Car

I previously blogged about my experience in a shinkansen green car - basically the closest thing the Japanese have to "first class" on most trains.  But did you know they also have green cars on some commuter trains?  My wife's family lives on the Joban line, and luckily it's one such line.

She had never taken one before and every time we visit, we lug all of our luggage into a standard car and either leave it sitting in the middle of the car or have to stand with it for 45 minutes because the trains are so crowded.  I unfortunately have never taken a photo of a regular Joban line car but usually they look something like this:

(That photo's from urbanneighbourhood.com, but I'm sure it's a stock photo.)

You can imagine riding a train like that with three or four large suitcases in tow, for up to an hour.

This time I pretty much insisted that we take a green car both to and from Tokyo.  Well, the inbound leg didn't quite work out as planned - we ended up barely making a Hitachi Limited Express train instead, and we stood in the vestibule halfway to Ueno.  We did manage to make it to the "green car" at the first (and only intermediate) stop, but it was just like any other car on that train.  On the plus side, it was pretty empty, and the train was fast - about 20 minutes to Ueno instead of the usual 45.

Our "green car" on the way in to Tokyo - not bad for a Japanese commuter train, but we had to pay extra both for the express fare and the green car, and there was just nothing special about this alleged green car.

We finally made it into a proper green car on the way back out.

Just compare that with the photo at the top.  It's a completely different world.  The seats face forward (and recline!), there's plenty of legroom, and for some reason, almost nobody else uses these cars!  Forget about people standing in the aisles - through most of our trip, we had the entire end of the car to ourselves.  This was the real reason I wanted to ride in one - just to get out of the crowd.  I knew from previous experience that whenever I've seen a Joban line train pull into a station, the green cars are basically empty.  I can't believe they make any money off these cars.

The green cars on the Joban line are bi-level cars, but they do have single-level seats at the ends.  Since we had four heavy suitcases plus a bunch of paper bags full of stuff with us, we went for the single-level seats.  I don't know if I could even stand up in the bi-level section of the car - the cars aren't any taller than the regular single level cars.  Unlike in American bi-level commuter trains, the single-level section has a door, so you feel like you're in your own little room when you're in this area.

Here's where we sat from the outside:

The unexpected bonus: like on the shinkansen, car attendants come through the Joban line green cars with snacks and drinks!  Remember now, this is on a commuter train.  This is like getting at-seat snack service on the LIRR - imagine such a thing.  My wife didn't even expect this, and she lived in Japan for 28 years.  It was brutally hot outside and we were loaded up with stuff so I quenched my thirst with an iced green tea bought from the car attendant.

The cost for our green car seats?  Only 550 yen - about $6 extra over a standard ticket.

Totally worth it.  I would ride this way every day if I lived on this line, or at least a couple times a week.  It's a much more civilized way to travel.

You can get a green car ticket at any ticket machine - and you can buy it separately from the main ticket.  (In other words, if you aren't sure and decide to buy it later, you can do it even after buying your original ticket.)  On some platforms, there are machines just for buying green car tickets for those making last-minute decisions.

Look for this option on any JR train you happen to take in Japan.  Not all trains have it, but most commuter trains with a lengthy run do, as do the vast majority of shinkansen trains and most "express" trains.  As our experience on the Hitachi Express demonstrated, it's not always worth it, but two out of the three green cars I've ridden in so far have been 100%, totally worth the extra money.

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