Tim’s Ramblings

So, I’ve realized a while ago that the only real TV shows on network TV that I DVR and watch are the ones that they show on the 777′s on Continental on the way to and from Japan. CSI, CSI:NY and CSI:Miami (though I don’t watch Miami…David Caruso annoys me…do you HAVE to be THAT dramatic, even if you’re just ordering ice cream????) and last year it was House but this year it’s Whithout a Trace.

Now…if that’s not conditioning enough, I’ve also realized over the past few months that the intro and outro music is also affecting me. Kinda like scents do. I’ve always had a strong sense of smell but I’m sure I’m not alone where, sometimes you might smell something…a perfume or food or even something totally random but it all of a sudden reminds you of your 3rd grade class room or a music teacher from a long time ago and such?

Well…when I hear the intro to, say, Without a Trace, I can almost SMELL the sterile airplane cabin or worse yet, the nasty economy class food…I kinda feel claustrophobic from the seats and it almost feels like the top of my butt is sore (happens when you sit in those nasty seats for 11 hours at a time).

Ugh.

I like the shows (or maybe that’s conditioning too??) but thank god I can skip the intro music with the DVR and just stop playback before the outro (that is what you call it right? I’ve heard it called that….or “ending theme” I guess).

Oh well… At least I don’t get to watch Japanese TV shows that I watch in the hotel room. Otherwise I might start feeling like the walls are closing in on me here….

I’m not weird…am I??

This is about as random as it can get. But it does have a Japan bent to it. I know posts have been a bit slow coming lately but don’t you worry…I’m off to Japan again on June 8th. Wooooho.

But in the meantime, this post will have 2 parts. One part is on theme restaurants gone horribly HORRIBLY HORRIBLY wrong. And another is just…funny. I mean…I’m laughing at another person’s expense but really, isn’t that the best? :)

Part one…what happens when overly romantic notions of princesses, vampires, and 19th century Europe goes unchecked and becomes commercialized.

Behold! Example #1. Princess Heart!

Feel free to click on it. It’ll take you to the website. What is it you ask? Well…I guess when people found out that the Maid Cafes were making so much money, they decided…well…why not Princess cafes then? This is one of the more well known ones. There are others though.

This one claims it’s a Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs themed restaurant but it can also treat you like Cinderella. The food looks really really good actually. But the theme restaurant scares me. There’s a “Princess Room”, a “Witches Woods”, “Cinderella Room”, and the bathroom is even called “The Witches Room”. …Oh…and I think this is only for women…the layout of the restaurant doesn’t seem to have a bathroom for men….

What scares me the most though is the very first sentence of the description of the rooms. Since most of you can’t read it, allow me to translate.

“You’ll be greeted by 7 dwarfs at the entrance.”

….you’re kidding me…. God I hope it’s shorter adults in costume like at Disney as opposed to the restaurant actually hiring 7 little people as greeters…

This restaurant company has other themed restaurants as well. We have Vampire Cafe for the goth/foodie combo in you, TWO Alice themed restaurant – one from Wonderland and the other based on Through the Looking Glass but modified to fit a more “Gothic Lolita” theme. And finally, no fantasy dining is complete without one based on The Phantom of the Opera.

Eeeeesh…

But I have to admit. Looking at some of the tiny little pictures, they seriously went all out in the decor of the place. I’m sure it’s a pretty small restaurant but the food looks really good too. I’m just curious who goes to these. I can see the Princess one being popular with younger women in their 20′s. But I have this horrible image of pasty faced vampire wannabe’s with bad skin from clogged up pores due to cheap makeup going to the Vampire themed one. Then again…this is Japan. Either they’ll go all out like the ones in Harajuku or it’ll just be a bunch of normal people. Maybe….

The Phantom of the Opera one looks kinda cool to me. At least the menu :)

Oh…and I’ll say this before anyone asks. *ahem* NO, I will NOT take you to the Princess one if you come to Japan.

(^_^)

Now, for part two.

It’s great.

I WANT to say “poor reporter!” but as soon as I saw it I immediately thought “chica…you’re an IDIOT!” :) Even a non-cat owner like me can tell that she should NOT be bouncing a cat in her arms when it’s making that sound. And she cries!!

Ahh…Fox News Cleveland…and here I thought that joke of a man, Carl Monday, and his “investigative reporting” were the only funny things about that show.

So I finally got around to watching the program that I DVR’d off the History Channel. It was…interesting to say the least.

This wasn’t just another Star Wars documentary. We’ve all seen those behind the scenes ones (ok…maybe not ALL of us but you know if I was referring to you). We know the background, the trivia, all that other stuff. This one was more of a dissection of the Star Wars story taking all 6 episodes into account.

First off, the people they got to interview were impressive. This is not the typical list that you would think of when talking about Star Wars on the History Channel. Sure, you had the professors of mythology and people that wrote books and studies on the Myth of Star Wars and such. But you also had people like:

Tom Brokaw (…who would have thought???)
Dan Rather (…wow)
Newt Gingritch (what the HELL??)
Stephen Colbert
Peter Jackson
Joss Whedon
Kevin Smith

And there were more too.

Now, the whole purpose of this show was, over 2 hours, dissect the Star Wars story into its various elements and present it as a Hero Myth. Not too far from the truth. But the thing is…there were times when I swear, they were reaching a bit. Mostly done by the academics on the show, I started to feel like how I felt back in HS when we would dissect every…little…nitpicking…detail about the book we are reading to the point where one time I raised my hand and asked my teacher, “Um…do you REALLY think the author put THAT much thought into writing that last half of that last sentence in this gigantic novel?? I mean…I won’t deny the literary significance of the book but…don’t you think we might be looking a bit too deep into this??”

To which I got the reply along the lines of, “Of course they did. Of course they labored over every word choice. Every sentence structure. Every nuance. And it is up to US to interpret it as they wanted us to!”

…yeah…

Thankfully, very early in the show, one of the academics actually says that she sometimes wonders of George Lucas really thought of all this or if they are looking a bit too deep into the movies. Thankfully.

As an example, they compare Luke Skywalker diving down into the Death Star as a mirror of Odysseus going down into the Underworld. Oh, and one lady states that the Death Star, this mighty battlestation, is actually hollow inside. And this is a physical representation of just how empty and hollow the Empire truly was. Luke and Leia were described at one point as representing Apollo and Artemis and references to Faust and Milton’s Paradise Lost were made as well.

Yeah…thinking too much.

Thankfully, that’s why they had the cast I listed above for color commentary. They really helped the show along. Especially Kevin Smith. He, I think, was the most “normal” of all of them gleefully talking about how, because of Jabba the Hut, we got to see Leia in the famed metal bikini (yes…thank you…thaaaaaankyou!!!!) and that, of course we find out that Anakin is a whiny teenager. If anyone even thought about Darth Vader’s youth, of COURSE he would have started out as an emo kid with issues (^_^)

There was ONE thing that one of the academics (I think) stated as fact that I would like you Star Wars fans to sound off on though. He claimed that the term “Jedi” comes from the Japanese term “Jidai” as in “Jidai Geki”. “Jidai Geki” is Japanese for “Period Play” like Westerns for the US and samurai movies for Japan and “Jidai” means “age” or “age past”.

…really??? I mean…ok. Sure. I know he modeled Star Wars after Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress but…Jedi is a play on the Japanese word “Jidai”??? I search online shows a few hits here and there stating almost word for word what the person on TV was saying. But I’ve honestly never heard this before. If it’s true it kinda diminishes the word for me… Kinda like how I found out Kobe Bryant got his name because his parents were at a Japanese restaurant and saw the word and liked it so they named their kid after it. …probably didn’t know that Kobe (pronounced Ko-be as in “ben” not Ko-bee like his name) was a prefecture in Japan and they were probably reading about Kobe Beef.

Hm…well, at least George changed the name from Jidai to Jedi. Otherwise, it would have sounded odd in Japan. …or maybe not. But the meaning would be different.

Anyway, back to the point of the post. I enjoyed the show. It was interesting to see all these guys talk about Star Wars. But I have to say…I have a feeling the professors and the academics were reading a bit too much into the movies and the characters and the story. But, at the same time, IF everything that they deduced after dissecting the bits and pieces of the series were true and George Lucas actually had all of those things in mind as he was making the movie? Well…in that case, he is a great figure in literary history in par with Ulysses and Shakespeare and Milton of the past.

Either that or it just goes to show that you can break down any well made story and start to make references until the cows come home (^_^)

So…I’m dog sitting at my sister’s and the show 1000 Places to See Before You Die and, as entertaining as it is in a way…in the intro you hear the wife say “People ask me how we can put our lives on hold and I respond back ‘How can you NOT?’”. Yeah…lady…we’d all do it too I think if the Travel Channel is paying our tab!!!!

*ahem*

Anyway this is not the topic of this post.

I know I’ve been away for a while. I will admit that I was pretty worn out… Orlando, and then 3 days home before a week in Japan, and then right after that, after just a day off, back to work… I know I’ve been doing this for a long long time but it still doesn’t make it any easier. I usually can deal with it pretty well but this time it kinda took me a bit longer to get back to normal.

But during this week it started to dawn on me that there really isn’t a nice easy location to see all of the photographs I’ve taken in the past few years. And I’ve taken A LOT. I did used to consolidate them on my web page but it was getting a bit difficult to do, especially if there’s a large volume of photographs. I, then, started to use the blog. And I will continue to use the blog because there’s something to be said about chronological posts and my typical wordy explanations. But I was looking for another way to consolidate just the pics all at once.

I remembered that my hosting service provided a “one click install” of an opensource software called Gallery. I tried it once and I had some issues. I tried it again yesterday and I continued to have issues. But things seems to be working today. Hopefully this is not because I’m at my sister’s and not at home or something ridiculous. Hoping it’s just a glitch.

So, with great fanfare, I present to you my current work in progress!!!

http://pics.timarai.com

There are root albums and there are sub-albums so remember to click through them! I turned off the “rating” option but you do get the comment option. I would really appreciate it if you guys can check it out and see if it works for you. Let me know if you have any suggestions or you think that something’s not working right or, hell, even if you think this is a dumb idea :)

This place will continue to be updated as I start to go through all of my past web pages and blog posts and start to migrate them onto here.

Hope you enjoy! (^_^)

I know I’m a bit late…I haven’t touched the Wii in a while. But I just beat Ninja Gaiden for the first time in many many years so, while I had the Wii up, I’d check that “Everyone Votes” channel.

(By the way…I say again…NG ROCKS!!!! But man…I had no idea people had so much problems with a particular level…even to the point of an entire FAQ devoted to it…it’s not THAT hard)

Anyway, typically the channel just has odd little things you vote on but a world wide poll a month or so back was “Which do you like the least?” for hot or cold. And the results came in 51.1% heat and 48.9% cold. Very very close.

But then I checked the results by country and that’s when I noticed something I thought was a bit interesting. The countries where most people chose that they hated heat more than cold was actually the hot countries!! #1 was Guatemala followed by Panama, Venequela, Mexico, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Australia. By the time you get the US, we’re about 50/50. But then it start to get to the colder countries and they hated cold the most. Sweden was #1 in the “I hate cold” list followed by Finland, Ireland, Denmark, Canada, and Norway.

This was surprising to me since I would have expected people used to living in cold climates would hate the heat more while people living in hot climates would hate the cold more. Am I the only one that thinks this is odd? Because honestly…I’ve never really heard anyone actually LIVING in the hot parts of the country bitching about the heat.

Huh.

Anyway….I should go to bed….

Yup. Got home last night safe and sound. The flight was relatively uneventful and I even got first class on the flight back from Houston so all was good.

Actually, the flight from Narita to Houston was on a newer Boeing 777 where the personal entertainment unit actually had movies on demand as opposed to the usual one where they play the entertainment selection every 2.5 hours. Nice! They even had over 250 full length unedited (aka all the swearing and everything) movies along with music (full albums) and TV shows. Pretty cool.

You’d think.

I soon however, found out that, the coolness comes at a price…. The system runs on Linux. How did I know this? Because the damn thing crashed 2 or 3 times. All of a sudden the screen will go blank and then everone saw the loading screen and then waited a good 5 to 10 minutes for the system to boot up again and then take another 5 to 15 minutes for everyone’s screen to come back on. Dammit… Of course, none of the flight crew is a Linux admin (^_^)

But in an 11 hour flight, I guess I can’t complain too much. They had a nice movie selection for current and classic flicks. I watched the first Matrix (the thing rebooted right after the lobby shootout), the original Jurassic Park (it died right before Samuel L. Jackson got eaten), and the Incredibles (died right before the bad guy gets sucked into the engine at the end) – see the trend?

I’m not saying if it was running Windows it would be any better mind you. But…eh…it was nice to see Linux being just as unstable (^_^)

Anyway, last night I got home and couldn’t sleep so I downloaded Ninja Gaiden on the Wii. Oh yes. I’m soo happy they got this. I LOVED this game. I used to be able to finish it in 40 to 45 minutes…no easy feat since this game is known for its ridiculous level of difficulty (which is mirrored in the newer X-box release and the soon to be release Ninja Gaiden Sigma on the PS3…too hard…the first boss took me 3 hours to kill for godsakes….). Now? Yeah…not so much. But I blame my tired mind for not being able to finish it. I got to the last act though and I still remember a lot of the timing and the jumps and the location fo the weapons and such. But my fingers just won’t move like they used to.

The game, for anyone who has not heard of it, was released in 1989 on the NES and was revolutionary for the time because it was one of the first to use cut scenes to drive the story. It was like a movie!! Nowadays it’s nothing new but back then, especially for a platform action title, cutscenes like this were really new. And the music rocked. Even before I downloaded it, I found myself humming some of the major themes in my head. Love that game.

Other than that, I got up a bit before 3pm today…oops. Putzed around, then went to buy bowling shoes, and then went bowling. I joined a league with a bunch of guys from work. It was fun. It was the first time I bowled in 3 years though…. Yow. But I found a good 12lbs. ball (I’m a lightweight) and did ok. The first game was the pits with a 75, but the second got better with an 110 and the third bame I was back to normal at 157. Yahooie :) Every Sunday night. Should be fun. Though the days I’m going to miss I have to prebowl. Alone. Booo. Oh well.

Anyway, tonight I’m going to watch some more stuff I DVR’d and then try to go to bed. Gonna be a loooong day tomorrow.

(^_^)

It was a long long trip this time… It was only a week but man…I was busy. It’s like a week is too short but 2 weeks is too long. Bah.

But anyway, today I had some time after work so I got to go and do some shopping for some of you (I didn’t get everything…but I got some stuff). While browsing though, what do I find but AC in a can!!! Yes. AC in a can. Wooooo!

I first saw it featured on Tokyomango (http://www.tokyomango.com/tokyo_mango/2007/05/portable_air_co.html) and I’ve been dying to try it out. It came in 3 scents so…well…I bought all 3 (^_^). I tried out one of them (it came in marine, lavender, and green….not sure what green is but…yeah…green) and though the scent was nice and light it wasn’t as cool as it said it was supposed to get. It says it goes down to -40 (which, interestingly -40C is -40F) but I don’t think it was that cool. Ah well. In the extreme heat and humidity of a Tokyo summer and walking around in a suit, I can guarantee you it’s going to feel frickin’ cool.

Then, because there was some time before going to grab some dinner, I wandered into one of those game centers and, while walking around, what do I see but a stuffed bloody Gloomy Bear (see icon) in one of those crane games!!! YES!!! As soon as I saw it, the gambler in me went “I can GET that!!” and reached for my wallet when, in the back of my mind, a more reasonable voice went “…and how are you going to carry that back home along with all the other crap??? And really…what the hell are you going to do with it anyway??”.

But let’s be honest. In the past 31.5 years, I’ve learned to ignore that reasonable voice pretty well so, after a slight moment of hesitation, off I went to get some change. And lo and behold, after only 2 tries (400yen total or about $3.41), the bear was MINE!!! MINE I TELL YOU!!! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! *ahem* I should note that it was ridiculously easy if you know what to do. See…the crane only has 2 arms so it’s almost impossible to grab the bear, especially one that big. It also has no easy loop to hook it in so there was only one thing you can do. Since the crane is open when going down, you aim it so the arm will be slighly behind the head. Then, when the arm closes and starts to rise, it will push the head forward and you can knock it down. Simple!

When I got it, it was like a high…you know…the whole feeling that all gambling addicts live for (I am not one of them…I swear…). But then when I pulled it out, I have to admit, the reasonable voice went “…I told you so…it’s not that small is it???”. Ah well…I’ll manage. There was a moment where I went “ahh…I love Japan” though when, as soon as I got the bear and I bent down to grab it, a girl came out of nowhere yelling “CONGRATULATIONS!!!” (or “OMEDETOUGOZAIMASU!!!!!”) and giving me a big heavy plastic bag with a shoulder strap for me to take it home in. Nice :)

Anyway…I’ll figure out how to pack everything tonight as tomorrow morning I’m off to the airport. But in the meantime, behold…my souvenirs!! (^_^)

I’m realizing that I can’t really take that thing into work…it’s a bit too big and I already have a buttload of figures and such cluttering my desk as it is. But at the same time, no one ever comes to my apartment since it’s usually a messy…well…mess…due to my traveling and not being home often and such. So, unless you’re really really good friends of mine that occasionally might stop by my apartment (and I think of all you readers there is…2…and one is my sister…) this is the only time you’ll see my big Gloomy Bear. Enjoy (^_^)

Not much of an update tonight. One of my friends that came with me to Florida 2 weeks ago gave me her pictures on CD so I decided to pop one more up.

That’s basically Chip (or Dale…can’t tell the difference….does it really matter?) forcing me to get into a picture after I took one with him and T. He’s, I believe, going for some sort of kung fu stance while dragging me into the pic. Have I told you I don’t like being in pictures let alone with a Disney character? Yeah… But somehow she managed to catch me while I was smiling as opposed to trying to break away from him without being too rude (there were kids around after all).

Ah well.

Oh, and the woman behind us? I have no idea who she is but she managed to get herself into the pic perfectly. Amazing…

–

Anyway, like I said, not much going on today. However, I managed to double book a meeting by accident for the first time in over a year and a half that I’ve been doing this. Ack. I knew that we had a conference call planned for 8am Wednesday morning…but then I naturally went “ok” at a request to go to a customer site to try to setup a single sign on solution at 9am Wednesday morning. Yeah…oops. The problem is, the customer site is a good 1 hour away by train (3 trains actually) and a decent walk from the station as well…so there’s no way I can make the conference call…

*sigh*

That’s why I’m going to be calling the office around 10pm Japan time to try to do damage control. Thankfully, at least the guy over here was sympathetic and understanding. Hopefully things will work out.

Other than that? Today was a morning conference call and then I worked at the partner’s office for most of the day on the presentation I have to give (once in person and once on a teleconference…fun times…) tomorrow afternoon. GOnna be a long day tomorrow.

Tonight though, I met up with T (the person who gave me the pictures) after she got out of work and we took a quick trip to Yokohama’s Sakuragicho area for dinner. It was nice. A date spot actually due to the sites. The skyline is beautiful!!! I’ll have to take a picture next time. We ate at a restaurant inside of a warehouse that Commodore Perry built after he opened up Japan’s port to trade (everyone remember their history?? No??) that’s since been converted into a shopping mall.

The restaurant was…interesting. Guys in dreadlocks working there which made me think it’s more of a rasta/hippie place…but then the music was sort of a jungle beat/reggae fusion….but the food was neo Japanese….and the decor was a bit odd with small tables but with a very big bed on one wall where you can take your shoes off and sit on the mattress eating and drinking. The bed part looked interesting but I would think without back support or anything it’ll get a bit tiring so we got ourselves a little table by the window.

It was nice. For a change I had dinner with someone and we didn’t talk about work. Something very rare when I’m in Japan (^_^) Oh, and the food was good too!

Anyway, time to get some stuff ready for the call.

So…on many many occasions I have written how much of a pain it is to get around Tokyo on foot. The maps are less than informative and there are no street names and the streets are far from being in a nice grid pattern.

Well…now I’m here to prove it. Dammit.

First, some background. Last post I talked about how I had to go find an office building in Tokyo based on a pretty vague map. I was worried and rightfully so. In the end, I DID find it but…it took a while. I’m very very glad I gave myself well over an hour to find the place…I needed it. Here is the reason why I had such a problem. This is the map from the company’s web page. The only thing I did was blank out the company name.

I had to go to the pink block…. Please note the utter LACK of street names. The other blue blocks are all “landmarks”. These so called landmarks include a 7-11 (I’m not kidding…), a women’s college, and a few other random shops and building names. Even the pink block basically had for a description the name of the building (not the address as an address is utterly meaningless) and the floor number… Great….

Oh, and to add just one more bit of “screw you!”, the building was under construction and the entire building was covered in tarp so you had to hunt for the name of the building… Yay…

To further add to the confusion, the subway station that I got off of is the yellow circle on the upper right. Looks simple right? Yeah… No… The subway has, in fact, about 6 to 8 different exits. It’s not a single point but in fact a giant area and if you come out from the wrong exit, you can be going in a totally different direction.

Also, it LOOKS like the first light to the left of the subway exit (assuming you find the right one) is close by. Yeah. Um…no. It’s a good 5 to 7 minute walk from the exit I had to come out from to the first light. Oh, and there actually IS a light in the first intersection you see there….even though it doesn’t exist on this so called “map”. Oh, and there’s a giant park to the left going west from the yellow dot…a really really big one that is obviously…well…not on the map…

AAAAAAAAAAAA.

I had to ask a guy at the station which exit to get out of. But then from there I was on my own. And of course, I screwed up. I went down the first street as opposed to the second. But since there are no landmarks there, I had no idea that I was going down the wrong street. Not only that but it’s hard to judge distance since nothing is to scale… So I walked and walked and walked….probably close to half a mile actually….and notice how there are no cross streets after the first one if you follow the map right? Yeah. There are. It’s just not on the map. So I was basically tricked into thinking that it’s the right street….that is until I noticed that, to my right, there was a really big gated compound.

I kept walking…and realized that the fence had razor wire. Hmmm…

Then I saw a giant gate with guards out front and a bus parked on the street. Odd… As I walked past the bus I noticed that all the windows were reinforced with steel mesh and the drivers both were wearing bullet proof vests…what the hell??? That’s when I realized the compound was actually the British Embassy. Eeeesh…what’s with the flak jackets??? Scary…

That’s pretty much when I realized I was totally screwed….

Did I mention it’s hilly and it was a bit warm and I’m in my black suit?? Yeah… Fun….

I basically went alllll the way back up to the top again and tried again. Thankfully I managed to find it this time. Then I was so tired, even though there was enough time for lunch, I went back up to the green block up there which is the Yasukuni Shrine and I found a nice bench in the shrine area in a shade and, after buying a bottle of cold wheat tea (mugicha), sat my tired butt down and relaxed for a good 30+ minutes before heading out to the office for real.

Fun eh?

I should show you the map to Mandarake sometimes. That was a joke…. An inverted A with a circle for about 3 stores…but when you get there you’re greeted by like 5 different streets in various diagonals and it’s NOTHING like the map.

Gotta love Tokyo….

And no…this is not a title of some horrible horrible movie like “Hercules in New York” (which should be banned from ever being seen by anyone…ever…though listening to Arnold’s voice being dubbed is funny as is watching him wrestle a “bear”…).

(on a totally different note…I’m writing this while watching TV and they are showing clips from America’s Funniest Home Videos here and oddly enough, they don’t censor here so you get to hear all of the “oh shit!” and such…kinda jarring…anyway, back to the post…)

Anyway, this is concerning the exhibit currently on display at the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno called The Mind of Leonardo – The Universal Genius at Work. I wanted to see this last time I was here but I never got the chance. So today, I dragged my lazy butt out of bed early and, still a bit jet lagged, headed out to Ueno in the morning HOPING to avoid the weekend crowd….

HA!

I made a tactical mistake….

The museum opens at 9:30am so I hoped that if I got there around 9ish, it would be good. Oh no. Noooo. There were probably about 300 people in line just to buy tickets let alone the 200 or so already there who bought advance tickets. Eeeeeeeeesh…

What I SHOULD have done was gotten there around 11 or 12 where most of the early birds have seen the exhibit already and the rest of the big crowd at Ueno park were there with little kids to go to the zoo. Ooops…oh well…live and learn.

But too late now so, what the hell. I bravely got in line and, once the ticket window opened, we moved through very quickly. Gotta love the Japanese efficiency. They had people working the ticket booth as well as vending machines and I quickly got tickets and then got in line for the exhibit.

The exhibit was in two different buildings. Though it’s a da Vinci exhibit, there was only ONE original piece here. But what a piece!

First…the crowd to see this one single painting…

Please note, this is after some time in line and a few hundred are in front of me and a few hundred behind me…

And what painting were we all in line to see? Granted this may not be the most famous of his works (it ain’t the Mona Lisa) but it’s still pretty well known. Many of you may have heard of it before.

The Annunciation. Representing the scene where the angel Gabriel informs the Virgin Mary that she will carry God’s child.

The web page for the museum in English is here.

It’s a beautiful piece and bigger than I expected. Unfortunately the conditions were not so great for viewing. At all…. If you can imagine, maybe about 100 or so people at a time crammed into this tiny room where you zig zag down towards the painting and no one is moving and we’re all jostling for position and it’s humid from all the body heat. Yeah…not the best conditions. I kinda wished it was a slow moving platform or something. At least that way, we’ll all get the same viewing time and the poor guard that couldn’t have been older than 21 didn’t have to stand there in the throng of people shouting at all of us to move along.

But I digress. The piece is amazing. Drawn in his 20′s, the detail is simply astounding. From the flowing robes to the hair to the background. I just wish I had more than a few minutes to view it. Ah well. Still, personally, it was worth it. At least for me :)

From there I moved on to the 2nd bulding where the main exhibit was on display. This focused on more of da Vinci’s ideas and thought processes based on his notes and other research. I even splurged (ok…it was only 500yen) on one of those headphones too.

I really enjoyed this part. They showed replicas of his codex but they also took ideas and drawings from his notes (codex and otherwise) and actually made them to show what it would look like in real life. They showed the standard stuff like his flying machine and such, but they also had replicas of his architectural studies as well as some of his anatomical sketches. Also, thankfully, all of the explanations and such were in both Japanese and English so it helped me out immensely. Sure, I can read it but reading English is easier, though the headset helped too :) It was a good size exhibit and even at a normal pace, I spent a good hour and a half or a bit longer checking it all out.

I had a real good time. It got a bit crowded near the end but I was able to enjoy the exhibit at my own pace and it was a rare opportunity to really see many of da Vinci’s works upclose and just see how ahead of his time he really was.

Of course, let’s be honest…the movie probably helped bring this type of exhibit here as well but for me, it was a rare opportunity to see an actual work by da Vinci and also see the exhibit as well. It was a good time.

In the afternoon I headed out to see the parents for a bit and then headed back to the hotel where I am now. The week starts tomorrow right off the bat with a meeting at an office that I have no idea where it is…. I have a very vague map (all maps in Tokyo are vague…) of where it is… By pure luck it’s about a 10 minute walk from the subway by the Yasukuni-jinja where I was at with my dad the last trip but still…it’s a big place. We’ll see if I can actually find it. God I hope I can find it…. Wish me luck!