I went Salzburg Austria, birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and the setting for the musical "The Sound of Music". It was Mozart's 250th birthday and they had really overdone it. It was like Mozart had thrown up all over the town. The house he was born in was a museum, the house his family lived in was a museum, and the house he lived in as an adult was a museum. Amazing how many of his and his family’s personal affects they had preserved. Locks of hair, clothes, childhood toys, furniture, dirty diapers, OK now I am exaggerating but not by much.

There is a Sound of Music tour that takes you to the house that was used as the Von Trapp’s home, the convent, the cemetery, and then they let you put on Heidi dress and run around the hills with a guitar case singing the theme to the Sound of Music, OK that parts a lie but it would have made a great picture. Actually it is kind of cheesy but very popular with Americans who make the pilgrimage to Salzburg to experience what was such a happy memory from their childhood. The funny thing is that most Austrians have never seen “The Sound of Music” so they have no idea what the big deal is. Actually they don’t really like the fact that most Americans have formed their view of Austria and its people from a Disney movie.

Now don’t get me wrong, the Austrian men are real quick to jump into a pair of Lederhosen and chug down copious amounts of beer, which is no myth. But most Austrians have never heard the song Edelweiss which I found odd. Based on the movie, I thought it was their national anthem but I found out that it was composed specifically for the movie so most Austrians have no clue what it is. There was a real Von Trapp Family and they did a lot of the things that were portrayed in the movie but according to the Austrians, only us Americans would think to make a musical out of it. The real Maria Von Trapp said that most of the movie was accurate except the part where they are hiking over the hills to escape the Nazi’s at the end of the movie. She said there was not much to sing about and no one was real happy. The Austrian's seem to be coming to grips with their culpability in cooperating with the Nazi regime and Maria is right, it is nothing to sing about.

Now if you ask an Austrian about Mozart’s piano concerto in C, then you are definitely in his or her sweet spot. It may be a bit over commercialized but the man wrote his first concerto at age 4, and you got to give him his props. He was quite amazing and Austria will never let you forget it. They even have a candy named after him, the MozartKuglen which is a ball of marzipan covered with nougat and dark chocolate, quite tasty but probably weighing in at about 1000 calories per piece.

I think the most impressive thing in Salzburg is the Hohensalzburg Fortress that sits high on the cliffs overlooking the city. The massive fortress was started around 1077 and had been added onto over the next 400 years. It is considered to be the mightiest fortress in all of central Europe and it is massive. The considerable climb up the road leading to castle is daunting enough too make anyone say "if you have seen one European castle, you have seen them all" but that didn't deter me because I had not seen this one. Only after I had gotten to the top with conisderable effort and raised my hands in a Rocky like display of sweaty accomplishment did I see the group of senior citizens getting off the tram that runs up the other side of the mountain. “Weaklings, girlie men” I yelled “a real man would have taken that hill” I screamed “Those tennis balls on the bottom of your walker look pretty new, you would have made it easy you wussies” I teased “Geez, those oxygen canisters are on wheels how much easier can they make it for you” but alas I was left to celebrate my accomplishment in solitude especially after they all turned off their hearing aids, how rude.

The UCI World Cycling Championships happened to be in Salzburg that weekend unbeknownst to me. It should have been a clue that it took me nearly four hours to find a hotel room and according to the reservation clerk when I made my reservation, I got the last room in town. So I am thinking hmmm must be a small town. I think the first clue that something was going on was when I got off the train and there were about 10 million bicyclists pedaling around all dressed up like bicycle racers. What is up with that? I mean I‘m a football fan and although some fans (not me) will wear their favorite players jerseys, you never see them put on an entire football players uniform complete with pads and the black crap under their eyes and walk around town. I don’t know much about who is or is not famous in bicycling other than Lance Armstrong but if you were in Salzburg that weekend you would have thought that the entire town was in the race. They all even walk with a certain swagger which can be attributed to arrogance, saddle sores, or those funny little shoes that clip into their pedals.

I would have brought my bike too if I had known, of course I would have taken the playing cards out of my spokes first, dead giveaway that you may not be a professional. So hundreds of thousands of people line the racecourse and wait for the riders to pass by. If you are lucky enough to be near the official start/finish line the announcer will warn you they are coming. If not and you happen to bend down to tie your shoes the racers from the lead group will zoom by you in about a nanosecond. If you bend down to tie the other shoe, the peloton or main body of racers chasing the leaders will pass by you as well. Then you are left to cheer on the poor schmucks bringing up the rear. Which isn’t so bad because these guys need all the positive re-enforcement that they can get. Then you wait around for an hour or so for the racers to circle the course again and do it all over again just don’t tie your shoes, blink, or sneeze or god only knows what you might miss. Definitely a made for TV sport. Show me the beginning, any major crashes or lead changes and the finish and I am good.

All in all Salzburg is a great city with much history and a proud heritage but there is one thing that I never found while I was there, The Salisbury Steak. I am beginning to think that this was something made up by the Swansons TV dinner people. Actually it was invented by American physician J.H. Salisbury in 1897 and was called salisbury steak during World War I to replace "hamburger steak" as a political euphemism.

While in the Costa Blanca region of Spain we heard that the small town of Pego was having one of its many traditional fiestas’s that weekend. It seemed like a wonderful opportunity to experience the local culture and we felt like the first foreigners to explore this little town. After walking around for a couple of hours we attempted get a drink at a local bar. Feeling somewhat apprehensive we entered and with my very limited Spanish I attempted to order two beers above the din of the festive crowd.

“Dos cerveza por favor” I said exhausting most of my Spanish vocabulary

“Cerveza?” the bartender asked above the noise of the crowd”

“Si” I responded

“Dos Cerveza?” She asked quizzically while holding up two fingers. Now I am having grave doubts about my ability with even the simplest Spanish phrases and having exhausted my vocabulary I switch to English
“I would like two beers please” I enunciated slowly

Well, why didn’t you say so” she said with an obvious British accent
“Oh, you speak English” I said.

“Yes, my husband and I own this place but I have only been here a very short time so I speak very little Spanish.

She was just as apprehensive about speaking Spanish as I was. To make things more embarrassing as we became more acclimated to the bar, we quickly realized that everyone else in the bar was speaking English. Seems we had stumbled into a local haunt for foreigners living in Spain.

Just a Little One

Well we had another earthquake yesterday, this one was only 5.1 on the Ritcher scale, a mere baby by Japanese eartquake standards but a long rolling one this time not that big jolt like the last one. The experts say that there is a 70% chance that a big one will hit Tokyo in the next 30 years. Those are not the greatest odds in the world and they know that their will be huge casualities when it does happen.

I think eartquake predictions are done by the same people who work the Psychic hotline, not a very exact science. A big earthquake happens, they go and look at all the new data and then comb through the historical data only to find out that there in no discernible trend. So they just say another big one will hit within the next 30 years and wait. Like when my Psychic told me that someone close to me would die within the next 50 years, amazing, how does she do that? You know what they say, even a broken clock will be right twice a day unless of course it is digital.

I am really glad that this last one wasn' the big one becasue I happened to be sitting on the toilet at the time. Not a convenient time for me to duck and roll or is that duck and cover, either way it wasn't happening, so I just rode that puppy out on the porcelain pony, yeehaw

I am back

I spent the month of June in America and it was nice to be home for a while. I came back to Japan and it was like walking into a very hot wet sauna, I had forgotten what June was like in Japan, now that I remember, I will never complain about those chilly summers in San Francisco again.

Actually the last week before I came back to Japan I was in San Antonio Texas where my two oldest daughters competed in the US National Junior Olympic Championships. Shelby who is 12 got a silver medal in forms and a bronze medal in sparring. Kaylee who is 11 got a bronze medal in sparring.

Last year at Nationals

Anyway, the one thing that I noticed about San Antonio other than the fact that it was extremely hot and somewhat humid, was that a lot of people wore clothes that were completely inappropriate for that type of whether. We're talking long pants, long sleeve shirts and some women even wore sweaters. They also wore a lot of dark colors which absorb heat.

Seeing a guy walking down the street in 100 degree heat wearing black jeans and a turlteneck was painful but he seemed to be oblivious to the heat. I wonder if they have air conditioned underwear????

A Tale fo Two Cities

So I am back in San Francisco for a month and one of the things that immediately struck me was the contrast between BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) our local train system and the JR system in Japan. The contrast was so striking because I took the train to Narita airport and then BART home from SFO after I got off the plane.

The Japanese trains are clean, well maintained with plastic seats, a whole lot of standing room and advertisements covering every square inch of the interior of the train. BART trains on the other hand are filthy with cloth covered seats that smell as bad as a homeless people who seem to live on the them. They make you feel dirty just sitting on them and the thought of BART wanting to raise ticket prices again for an antiquated system that breaks down all the time and is filthy dirty just makes me ill.

But if you look at a BART Train, there are very few advertisements on the trains. There are 8 places on the trains for advertisements to be placed. On a Japanese train there are no fewer than 50 advertisements of various kinds in each car. You don't even have to buy a newspaper, you could spend the entire time reading the advertisements and stilll not finish by the end of your ride

I for one would gladly put up with more advertisements on BART in exchange for a system that ran on schedule and was clean and didn’t break down all the time.

And take those clothes seats out and just put plastic ones in. They will be cleaner and you can at least see if the guy sitting there before you peed on it before you sit down.

A Little Accent Please

So I was talking to a friend in Japanese the other day and I was telling the story of how funny it was during the time I was growing up whenever my mother would butcher the English language.

I am not exactly sure why I thought a Japanese person would find this funny but I did. Given how hard it is for most people to learn English I guess I thought they could somehow relate.

So there I was, a native English speaker speaking Japanese in Japan with my American accent, trying to imitate someone who is a native Japanese speaker trying to speak English in America with a Japanese accent.

I am truly confused

It actually helps me out more than you would ever know. When I can’t express what I am trying to say in Japanese, I will switch to English but using my mother’s accent that I grew up hearing. When I do this, it is much easier for the Japanese to understand me. It really has little to do with the accent and more to do with me switching the English over to something that can be pronounced in Japanese.

If that doesn’t work, I go heavy into the Marcel Marceau pantomime routine and if that doesn’t work then I am resigned to only eating in restaurants that have plastic replicas of the food in the front window.

The Unit

A thick band of smoke hangs in the air five feet off the ground. With no windows or ventilation in the Ready Room there is no where for it to go, so it sits there, thick and still as if some sort of representation of the high level of tension and anxiety in the room. The grizzled old veterans lean back calmly in their chairs smoking; they have been on more of these operations than they care to remember and to them this is a just another night like any other night. They watch over the nervous rookies who can’t sit still. They try to maintain a certain air of indifference, like a big brother looking out for a little brother while trying to act like he really doesn’t care. The virgins are a bundle of uncontrolled energy, every fiber in their body taut, every nerve ending on alert waiting those last few minutes for the night to begin. This will be their first time in the field and even though they are aware of the danger, not one of them is willing to admit they’re afraid.

Operation Clean Sweep will take place under the cover of darkness; each member of the elite unit wears a distinctive arm band so they can be easily identified in the field. Speed is of the essence and in the heat of battle; you have to seconds to decide, friend or foe.

The clock seems to hang on its last minute as if it will never let go, the second hand finally makes that almost imperceptible move backward and it seems everyone is on their feet and moving by the time it finally jumps forward to land on 12.

The whole unit moves with military precision, and the many hours of drills and practice are clearly evident. As they spill out into to the street, people passing by have to believe that the entire police force of Hachioji is being mobilized. They move with steely determination, they have their objective; each man knows his role and can do it in his sleep. Anyone on the wrong side of the law upon seeing this massive show of force has to be shaking in their boots.

Tonight the objective is one of the most insidious scourges ever to hit the nation of Japan. No one in Hachioji is immune and no one is above suspicion, housewives, students, doctors, lawyers, politicians; it knows no socio-economic boundaries.

Yes, we are talking about illegally parked bicycles.

If left unchecked, illegally parked bicycles would soon clog all major pedestrian arteries. They are like weeds that seem to pop up over night. A street can be completely free of bicycles and in the course of a day if left unchecked hundreds of bicycles will just magically show up with no apparent owners in site. The police at times feel like they are chasing a phantom but still they go out in force to try and fight a battle that they know they cannot possibly win.

If someone really cared to count, you might find out that there may be more bicycles in Japan than people. Many commuters have two bicycles one at each end of their daily train commute.

So four times a month like clockwork, the troops head out to tag and bag those illegally parked bicycles hoping to maintain some sense of control over an uncontrollable situation. The captain leads the way shouting orders and changing street assignments on the fly. He is a leader of men and moves with the confidence that his troops they will follow him anywhere. Trains stations, grocery stores, and pachinko parlors are perennial hotspots and he assigns the grizzled veterans who have been fighting this battle for years and know the ins and outs of the game. They are not easily fooled by the little old ladies who say that they will only be in the store for just a second. They have heard every excuse and every sob story in the book.

"Mam, is this your bicycle"

"Oh, I don't think officer, there are so many bicycles and they all look alike and you know my eyes are not as good as they used to be"

"Mam, If it is not yours then I am going to have it towed"

"Ohhh, wait a second that might be mine but you know with my memory loss from old age, it is just so hard to remember things any more."

"No problem Mam, take your time"

"Officer, can you wait just a second, I just have to run in and get my poor bedridden husbands heart medicine and try to bring him back from deaths door."

"No Mam, this bicycle is in violation of Penal code 443-12-982126 and as it is my duty to uphold the law, if you enter that establishment I will have to consider this illegally parked two wheeled method of conveyance abandoned and have it towed."

"asshole"

"What did you say Mam"

"I said, Is that so"

"Yes Mam , that is so"

"Officer, see, look here for yourself, this is his prescription that I have to get filled, it's a matter of life and death"

"Mam, I am not a Doctor but this looks to be a prescription for generic Sildenafil Citrate more commonly known on the street as Viagra, although I doubt that it will bring him back from deaths door, he will at least go out with some wind in his sails. That was police humor Mam, feel free to engage in laughter anytime after you have MOVED YOUR BICYCLE. "

"Is that so"

"Excuse me Mam"

"I said Asshole"

"Just doing my job Mam"

So remember the next time you decide to illegally park your bicycle in front of the train station, the men in blue are out there somewhere fighting the good fight, putting their lives on line, upholding their oath "To Protect & Serve" and to rid Hachioji of illegally parked bicycles.

I want to be a Dog in Japan

I want to be a dog in Japan. Japan has gone dog crazy and I don’t mean from a culinary standpoint. There are dogs everywhere and from what I hear the trend will continue to grow. There is a natural affinity towards smaller dogs here and Chihuahuas and Dachshunds are very popular and fit oh so nicely into those little tiny apartments.

There are stores in some of the ritziest shopping districts that sell nothing but doggy clothes. No dog food, no collars unless they are diamond studded, no flea dip, just clothes.

I actually think they will soon have a doggy department at Takashimaya and you can bet it will be bigger than the men's department. They will have five floors of women's fashions and two floors dedicated to doggy fashions and then one floor for the men but they throw in another half a floor of golf equipment which is enough to keep the men entertained while the women and dogs shop.

You see dogs and owners in matching outfits, dogs in strollers, dogs in baskets and purses, and sometimes you even see them on the end of a leash. Although I would not want to be the mini Chihuahua I saw in Shibuya the other day. That poor dog was being dragged along on a leash by some idiot teenager who was chatting mindlessly on her cell phone. He must have felt like a soccer ball by the time he got home and he was lucky he didn't get squished by all the people walking by. The girl didn’t look down once to see what was going on with her dog who, if he gained a little weight might have had a fighting chance against a guinea pig. Whenever there was resistance because the dog was wrapped around the ankles of people walking by, she would just yank on the leash until some thing dislodged. I didn’t stick around to see the final result but I can’t imagine the dog coming out on the winning end of that one.

I guess I can see why people carry their dogs around a lot, in a country as crowded as Japan, walking your dog is easier said than done.

“Honey, I am taking the dog out for walk”

“OK, don’t forget his stroller and take his coat and hat too, it looks like it might be getting cold. And don’t keep him out too long, you know how he is if he doesn’t get his afternoon nap”

“Jeez honey, it’s not like I haven’t done this before”

“Please you men are all the same, one whiff of a poopy diaper and you become totally useless. By the way, did you pack the diaper bag?”

“Diaper bag, hat, coat, and some snacks to keep him occupied, check, check and double check, can I go now”

“Omigod, he is so cute in his hat and coat, let me just take one picture real quick”

“Can’t a man and his dog go out for a simple walk like man and dog have done for thousands of years”?