Australian Embassy Attacked

Poor Indonesia, like she needs another terrorist attack. This secular country, widely thought of to be an Islamic nation, suffers another blow just eleven days before its upcoming election on September 20. A friend of my cousin's had just passed the area when he heard the explosion behind him; he was all right. Another cousin thought that a mighty lightning had just struck because of the sudden blinding flash. Details are coming out as I write this.

BBC: Massive Blast at Jakarta Embassy
CNN: JI Claims Jakarta Car Bombing
MSNBC: Islamist Group Appears to Claim Jakarta Blast

The accompanying photograph was lifted from the Wikipedia.org website

Bloompy in Indonesia

I will be away from Tokyo but hope to report back soon. Destination: Indonesia. I hope the weather in Tokyo will be much cooler by the time I return.

I'd Like a Champagne with that Popcorn, Please.

All cinemas in Tokyo offer a ¥1000 admission price on the first day of the month. Without this discount, a ticket could be close to ¥2000 (bearing in mind US$1 roughly equals JP¥109). For the first time since my arrival I took advantage of this deal. Mind you, there is not much of a choice here with regard to the movies because of my language limitation. My European languages ability cannot carry me through an entire movie on one viewing only. American –mainly Hollywood– movies are indeed available, but they do not play at about the same time the American cinemas are playing them. According to a Japanese friend of mine, the theatres in Tokyo wait until a big holiday to launch a première for select American movies to ensure a big turn out and a sizable box office gain. Some movies play six months after its American première; but hey, a good movie is a good movie no matter when it is viewed.

The AMC theatres' reclining seats in the U.S. are so darned comfortable that I could fall asleep in that plush seating in a dark and cool auditorium; not necessarily so in Tokyo, at least not in the two cinemas I have attended thus far. The Shinjuku Takashimaya’s seats are stiff, making me think that the backing and the seat part are made of wood covered with felt: it has a plushy appearance but the feel of an old style school bench. The good thing is that this kind of seating will keep you awake to see the movie for which you had paid a lot of money. The rows are so narrow that basically your shin can tell you whether the person seated in front of you uses gel, mousse, foam or a hairspray to keep that funky hair-do.

The Virgin Cinemas at the new Roppongi Hills complex fares a little better in this department: plush seats and ample amount of leg space, but the theatre imposes a seat assignment when you buy the ticket. This reminds me of the cinemas in Indonesia in the olden days up until the late 80s, when you had to specify which seats you wish to take unless the ticket seller already assigned one for you. Like the ones in Indonesia, this Virgin Cinemas ticket seller showed me the map of my auditorium and offered me a few available seat assignments.

Once when I was in New York watching a matinée, I smiled as I saw the offering in the concession stand: alongside of the regular movie junk food like popcorn, nachos and the plastic cheese, gummy bears, there were baked goods, such as: carrot cake, blueberry pie and apple pie. These were not packaged pie or ready-to-go cake wrapped in cellophane. The server had to cut a slice from an entire cake. It was served in a mini paper plate (with a doily, no less!), a plastic knife and a paper napkin. I thought at the time that it was a novel, yet quaint, idea, until I saw what the Virgin Cinemas (and possibly in other Tokyo cinemas) listed the following in their concession offerings: beer, wine (red or white), or Champagne. Yes, maybe in other theatres, on any day these mood-altering drinks will definitely help us forget how much we had spent on the theatre to see a movie in a very cramped space.

Pointo Cardo, Anyone?

Customer loyalty is very important to any company. I know this. I have been a frequent flyer member since my university days back in the mid 80s; then came the other ones, like Ben & Jerry's ice cream; the AMC Theatres; a Sausalito T-shirt design store; Macy's (they calculate the amount you ever spend in the store card, and one day when you least expect it, they send you a gift.) But no city has ever inundated me with so many loyalty programs as Tokyo has. In the short time that I had lived here since February 2004, I had accumulated many more of these cards than I ever had while living for almost two decades in the United States. It is unbelievable the amount of cards that had taken residence inside my wallet. Anybody remember George Costanza's wallet (from the Seinfeld sitcom)? Mine is about to wrest the thickness record away from George’s wallet.

Sumimasen, koko de, pointo cardo ga arimasu ka? Excuse me; is point card available here? I have begun to recite that question every time I go to a new store (or any store I in which have never shopped before.) Mind you, retailers already make so much money from me, the least I could do is trying to get as much back from them. Sure, I am being their faithful dog, letting them have my address so that they can spam me and tracking my shopping habit. I don’t care; just give me back my bone! Arf arf!

Let me see what point cards this dog has dragged so far:
2 major department stores (not their credit card, but point card; there is a distinction here)
1 electronic store
1 pharmacy & sundry store
1 grocery store
1 coffee shop at the Century Hyatt Hotel
1 toy store (this will cease to exist once my nieces and nephews grow older)
1 noodle joint
1 ice cream parlor
2 soup places
1 crêpes stand (I am telling you, this is a street vendor giving out point card; what if it no longer vends the item at the same location?)
1 drycleaner
1 HMV (music) store, except that the iTunes music store causes slow growth in the point accrual in this card
1 art store
1 Roppongi Hills community card
1 Virgin Cinemas card

Some cards have an expiration date, and others impose a small fee to own them:
The toy store card – you will have to shop three times there before finally getting a point card.
The art store card – it costs ¥500, and subsequently, any transaction will have to be in cash, but you do get a whopping 24% discount (this one is actually the most direct in giving the discount, and a big discount at that).
The dry cleaning card - ¥500, and if you will receive a 10% discount, plus if you pick up the item(s) on the appointed day, then an additional discount of 5%.
The Virgin Cinemas card-¥500

Sometimes, these cards actually work against the vendors. One time, my partner and I were strolling in the adjacent neighborhood when suddenly he suggested grabbing something quick at the soup café. I welcomed the idea until I realized that I had forgotten to bring that particular card. When I was adamant not to lose a single point, he responded that the card had betrayed the café; it lost two sales that night because I had forgotten to bring the card. He said, get another card, then the next time, bring both and consolidate them into one. Ha! Did he not think that I had tried that before at a different store? Most of the stores would not bend the rules: in some, they actually stated it in the Terms and Agreement (not even in fine prints) that they would not consolidate two cards into one. Curses! Somebody must have told ‘em about me.

Lost and Found

It has been a while since I had any "Lost and Found" item; not just any item at home, but losing something in public and going somewhere to retrieve it. In Indonesia, 99.9% of the time if I lost it, I would never find it again. In the U.S., the percentage was slightly lower; I really had to depend on a Good Samaritan to submit that lost item to the Lost and Found department somewhere. Well, recently, yours truly, in his excited state of having swum in the clearest indoor pool water and best visibility pool ever, left the area without bringing his goggles. I realized it much later at home when I could not find the item in my gym bag. Two days later, I decided to go out and get a new set of goggles to bring to the pool, just in case I could not find the lost one.

An article in the New York Times few months ago mentioned the honesty of the Japanese people. A photo accompanying the article showed what seemed to be thousands of umbrellas in a warehouse. Turned out that those umbrellas that were found were usually submitted to the police station, where they stayed until the owners reclaimed them. Wallets with money showed up as well, and the rule was that if the owner did not reclaim the item within six months, then the person who had submitted it could claim the item.

I decided to see if I could retrieve my pair of goggles at the pool first. After I described the item, the staff looked at their logbook of lost items. In my poor Japanese I mentioned that I had lost it the previous Friday. Then two staff members said what seemed to be the Japanese "a-ha!" and informed me that the item had been sent elsewhere. Of course this was all explained to me in Japanese, but as usual, when I started learning a language, I found it easier to say things than to understand what others were saying. I looked at their hand gestures, retrieved all the recognizable nouns and adjectives, and deduced that the item had been sent to a glass-topped office next to the swimming pool building. That building seemed to house the administrative office that governed both the pool and the gym next-door.

I pursued it further by going to the adjacent building after my swim with the new goggles (I was, after all, inquiring about the loss already in my swimming briefs). First, a stop at the front desk, where the staff told me to go to the office around the corner; then, as I was about to leave, I saw her pick up the phone (maybe alerting the office that an absent-minded foreigner -me- was approaching). By the time I reached the office and entered it, I saw the welcoming staff hang up the phone; she was indeed informed about me by the other one.

This second staff had me fill in a form of what I had lost, the description of the item, my name, address and phone number. Then she took me a few feet away to another counter, by where she asked me to sit down. She then approached a much older colleague, a man in his 50s. They had a friendly chat, and then they parted. She went back to her desk, and the old man disappeared into a room in the back. Not too long thereafter, he came back with a clear plastic bag with the goggles. Before he even took them out, I saw already that they were mine. Still, I had a closer look at it, and with a beaming smile, I thanked him, and on my way out I thanked her.

I think I was more excited that the system had worked than actually finding the goggles themselves. Well, at least this time, it has indeed worked. We shall see if they will be able to find it when I finally lose my mind.