It's HERE!

I got my NEW CAR yesterday! But couldn't drive it because
I still need to get my license.

So I made this page instead.
Check it out here!

Tokyo Driving View

Mount a video camera on a car and drive it at breakneck speed through Tokyo's Shuto Expressway and you have a really cool DVD. There is no sound track, just the noise of the highway in 5.1 surround sound. There are five routes and you can choose any starting point from a map menu. The expressway episodes are speeded up 3 times but normal speed on the regular road routes. Apparently, this was filmed on New Year's day so there are few cars on the Shuto. Usually, the expressway is bumper to bumper, hardly what you would call an expressway. Since I've just started driving in Tokyo, this is a great DVD to prepare for one of the most precarious inner city freeways in the world. There are places where the acceleration lane is only a few metres long!

I love Tokyo and this DVD reveals a side on the city that few visitors will ever have a chance of experiencing. I had some friends over the other night and put it on for them. They all thought I was nuts to buy a DVD like this, but after awhile I noticed that everyone was hypnotically absorbed. I highly recommend this one.

CD's for the soul

Recently, I found some CD's by Steven Halpern and bought a whole bunch of them. This guy is apparently a famous new age musician whose music has been used for relaxation, yoga, therapy etc. I've always had problems getting to sleep and one of his CDs "Sound Sleep" caught my eye. There are many unbelievable titles like "Stop Smoking", "Recovering from Alcoholism","Overcoming Substance Abuse","Achieving Your Ideal Weight " etc. How can music help you lose weight? The explanation says to play the CD while you are eating and it's supposed to get you to chew slower. Amazing. What great marketing.

You can listen to some sound clips on the website. They more or less sound the same. Anyway, I figured any kind of relaxing new age music is OK. Kind of worried that there may be subliminal messages in the music, you know like to get you to buy more of the CDs.

Driving Test Questions

There is a conspiracy to stop foreigners from driving in Japan, I'm sure. This weekend, I'll be taking the written test to get my learner's permit for a Japanese driver's license. In Japan, you can take the written test in many language, English, Chinese, Korean etc. The test is comprised of 100 true/false question translated from Japanes. I've been taking practice tests at Koyama and was at first surprised to see how uncomprehensible the questions on the practice tests were. When I complained that the questions made no sense and it would be illogical to answer them as either True or False. The instructor reassured me that they knew the questions didn't make sense but since they were like that on the official test they didn't change them for the practice.

The advice I received was don't think too much just memorize them. The test is obviously not testing our logically reasoning but how well we can guess what the question is trying to test our knowledge of.

Here are some examples:

Question:
"Even in a road where you can drive over the center of the road, you should drive on the left-hand side of the road, except for driving on a one-way road"
Answer:
True, I have no idea why or what this means.

Question:
"I rode a moped at 40 km/h on a road where the maximum speed is 50 km/h"
Answer:
False. Who is this person and how do we know he/she didn't ride his/her moped at 40km/h?

Question:
"The consumption of even a small amount of an alcoholic beverage violates the law."
Answer:
True. What? Is this America during prohibition? If this were really true then eveyone on the streets Friday night are breaking the law!

Question:
"On a steep downhill road, even if there is no "Slow down" sign, but still you must slow down."
Answer:
True. Is this a question?

And so on...wish me luck on the test.