Sam's blog

Doctor in Japan

This post is from 6 December 2008

Last week I was suffering from serious hay fever - I had only brought a few tablets with me and they were long gone. So, before going sightseeing for the day we tried to find a pharmacist near the hotel, with limited luck we could only find a doctor's surgery. I had forgotten my phone with the translation software so were were restricted to the Point and Speak book.

I managed to explain to the receptionists / nurses that I had an allergy and my nose was running (that part didn't really need explanation as I was a bit of a mess) and I was looking for a pharmacist. They really didn't want to talk to me in English, so there was lots of scurrying about and I filled in a long and complicated form with just my name and birthdate. After a bit of a wait their hastily elected representative (who could speak very good English when I was really not getting the Japanese) ushered me into another room to talk to a doctor. The elderly doctor was very nice and asked me a few questions in very formal textbook English, but they were all based around having a cold or flu - so I tried to explain that it was an allergy a few more times and just wanted to by antihistamines. In the end he prescribed me something for an upper respiratory tract infection that he promised would deal with the allergy too.

After paying for the consultation (¥3,000) I went next door to the attached mini-pharmacy that supposedly doesn't sell anything without a prescription with my scrip in hand and got the medicine (¥1,000). ¥4,000 isn't too bad for a doctor's visit and some medicine. It was certainly worth the money just for the interesting experience - but wasn't very effective at stopping me from sneezing!

Once I had the phone to translate "antihistamine" it was a simple case of finding a normal pharmacy and showing them the phone. He mimed sneezing or scratching, I confirmed sneezing and that I wanted pills to eat. He got me a cute little glass jar of pills to take - just ¥890 for 55 tablets.

New iMac

So, I caved. After Apple's press event on Tuesday I finally gave in and bought an iMac. I have had a MacBook since they were released, and ever since then I have been building a little collection of Apple products. An iPod Nano followed by an Apple TV.

24" iMac

Once I was completely converted to OS X from Debian Linux I started looking for an Apple computer that would meet my needs beyond a small (but not small enough) laptop. If I had fallen for OS X a couple of years ago I would have gone with a Mac Pro without hesitation, but I can't justify spending that much money on a toy that I really wouldn't make use of. No longer do I care about graphics card specs, or processor speeds...I couldn't even tell you what the best CPU available is without some serious research.

I would love to have been able to buy a mid-range tower and bought a Cinema/Dell display to go with it, but the best Apple could do was the Mac Mini. After a year without an update I certainly wasn't going to pay out for the little box that would undoubtedly be updated the day after it got delivered. But Steve Jobs did update the MacMini on Tuesday, so I was a little tempted - but after comparing the price of the Mini and a 23" Cinema display with the new 24" iMac I couldn't stomach the much lower specs for the chance to upgrade more easily.

So now, in a year or two, I will have a slightly (possibly a bit more than slightly) bigger monitor that I can connect to the next Mac I buy. I think I will enjoy being on the dull edge, as opposed to cutting or blunt, of Mac technology for a while - the screen is certainly the shiniest thing I have owned in a while!

Positives:

• Beautiful screen
• Three cables total - mouse to keyboard to screen to power
• Silent compared to my happily humming MacBook

Negatives:

• It can't be upgraded! I know it makes Apple a ton of cash, but please, please let me stick a new processor or hard drive in there...
• Maybe the screen is just too pretty, it makes the wall look dull
  

My ears! Kanye West murders robots and a child-god

How can someone take two of the best things in the world (Daft Punk and Akira) and make something as bad as this?! It is fair to say that I am not a fan of the Kanye West style of music in the first place - but this song is terrible. If you took his contribution away it might be an interesting remix of Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger. Although I do like when he says stronger, and it fits with the music behind - almost like being surprised by a raisin in a bag of rabbit droppings.

Daft Hands is so much better.

Facebook and Vox

I am not a fan of convergence applications, so prefer to do particular tasks with particular tools. An iPod for music, a phone for calling, a camera for taking pictures, Vox for blogging, Flickr for photo albums, and (for now at least) Facebook for whatever it is that it does...

While I want these to stay separate, I wouldn't mind if they tried just a little bit to play nicely with each other. Is there a way to integrate Vox and Facebook at least a little bit? Perhaps I am blind but I can't see a way get Vox posts to display with pictures in Facebook's notes section.

Saving Real Streams Using MPlayer

I just needed to save a streaming video and remembered that the last time I wanted to do it on a Windows box I ended up having to find a specific outdated application. This time I found a tip that lets you do it using MPlayer - which means you can use it on OS X, Linux and Windows...

I think the page I found is using an older version of the application, but in general you just tell MPlayer:

• /path/to/mplayer -dumpfile /path/to/local/file.rm -dumpstream rtsp://server.com/path/to/content.rm
  

and let it do its thing.

The actual code I used in terminal with the latest version of MPlayer was:

• /Applications/MPlayer\ OSX.app/Contents/Resources/External_Binaries/mplayer_intel.app/Contents/MacOS/mplayer -dumpfile ./test.rm -dumpstream rtsp://server.com/somefile.rm

Maybe it is useful for someone.

Japanese Hospitality

So it turns out that if a Japanese man asks you if there is anything that he can help you with, and you take him up on the offer, it really gets things done. We were invited for cocktails with the general manager of the Hyatt in Kyoto tonight (laa-di-dah!), so rather than avoiding the unknown we went down to see what would happen. The "reception" was for about 2 hours and we arrived about half an hour into it, but it seems that we were the first ones there. The waiter offered us a drink, "excellent, a free drink" we thought - and got long islands each. These were very good cocktails, none of this pre-mixed stuff - 5 solid shots per glass, and nicely made at that.

After a while Ken the general manager came to talk to us, and yes - we are now on first name terms. We discussed how great Kyoto, and Japan in general, is and what our plans are for the remaining couple of weeks. I got his card (I knew I should have got some name cards before coming here!) and he asked if there was anything he could do for us to make our stay complete. As you do we said that no, everything was perfect (and to be honest it pretty much is perfect here).

Another cocktail of two later (we figured how much can one cost? £10 - £15 maximum...), and the gift of a plate of assorted meats, we realised that Ken's offer to help could be used! Kyoto has a few lovely vegetarian restaurants, but it is still difficult to eat in an average Japanese place, and only one of the three restaurants in the hotel has anything suitable on the menu (pizza and pasta - tasty, but hardly the essence of Japan). We mentioned this to him and said that we would love it if the hotel could in some way accommodate us in the future. His response was that of course, it is no problem to do whatever we want, and which of the restaurants in particular would we prefer to try? Since the options are a grill theme (could get that any day at home) or a traditional Japanese (harder to come by in the West) we went for the more exciting one. "What time would you like to eat?", "Ummm, in half an hour?", "Of course", and off he went.

A few minutes later he came back to our table with a man in a chef's hat. As it turned out he was wearing a chef's hat because he was the executive (head) chef - fancy that! The poor man didn't speak English and was coming to terms with the fact that his boss's, boss's boss had just told him to prepare a vegetarian feast (not a common request in Japan). After they had gone a waitress came and told us it was last orders for the reception - the previous drinks had all been free! To celebrate we went with yet more long island.

The meal was simply outstanding, and I can't imagine how the chef cooked it up in such a short period of time. There were about 7 courses:

1. Sashimi-style tofu with wasabi.
2. Seaweed in vinegar, lime jelly with steamed Kyoto vegetables, miso coated tofu, slightly fried and battered vegetables.
3. Green jelly made from potato, miso and mustard dipping sauce, jellied seaweed crystal noodles.
4. White radish and kale.
5. Tempura vegetables with lemon and spicy salt.
6. Miso and soy vegetable soup with rice and pickles.
7. Soy bean jelly / custard desert, with a molasses syrup topping.

The waitress explained each course to us as we went along, and after it was all finished she brought the "executive" chef out to chat with us, translating for him. He was very happy that we appreciated his hard work - and concluded with a great deal of bowing. All this food, in a hotel I expected would bankrupt me - just ¥10,000 for two! And in the end the cocktails were only £6 each (not that we had to pay for them!)

All in all, a perfect end to an excellent day.