The Expedient Distribution Of Soup

Scott of Tokyo Calling, and Christopher of Finding Japan came to the Tokyo 2600 meeting. Christopher brought his girlfriend along. Her name escapes me, but I do remember her being American. The four of us discussed many topics, including, but not limited to, assassination, steam tunnel exploration, nanotechnology, risk management, voting machine insecurity, side channel attacks, clock skew and TCP timestamps,
quantum cryptography and soup distribution.

Although it was the most successful meeting by far of Tokyo 2600, there was something lacking.

Pad Thai

Ate at a nearby Thai restaurant called Pad Thai. I ordered Pad Thai. It was ok.

On Learning Japanese

For about the 50th time, I've started to put more time and effort into learning Japanese, with a view to improving my comprehension and also passing the level 2 Japanese Language Proficiency Exam in December.

It would seem that all over Japan free(or very cheap) Japanese lessons are provided for non-Japanese. When I lived in Japan previously, I attended lessons run by the local government. The lessons were very bad, but at least I didn't have to pay.

Anyone learning beginner's Japanese should watch the anime series "Ocha Ken". Each episode if 3.5 mins long, and 26 were made. Ocha Ken means "tea dog". All episodes can be downloaded here: www.teapuppies.com/episodes/download/

The Dead And The Dying

I gave in to the 'flu this morning. Basically I took some medicine, sat in a chair and waited for time to pass. Although I was doing almost nothing, the time passed quite quickly. After a few hours I got bored of watching my life go by so I watched a talk given by Kathy Wang on the HoneyClient project. Later I watched a talk on hardware reversing given by Bunnie Huang.

Documentaries

Watched a bunch of hacker documentaries:
Hippies From Hell
New York City Hackers
Unauthorised Access

Some videos can be found at www.phreakvids.com others can be found at video.google.com

Circuit Training Is Amazing

Did a little bit of circuit training this morning. Felt great all day. I've been greatly inspired by Crossfit and Parkour and shall be working towards regular training in both disciplines. My current aim is to be able to run a marathon in the summer. I have a LONG way to go, but I know Crossfit is the only way I'll get there.

Going To Ginza

Attended the Apple User's Group meeting in Ginza. There was a talk on podcasting again. It was pretty good although the guy got carried away a bit. There was also a great talk on basic network hacking which I enjoyed greatly.

After the Apple meeting I hung out with Scott Lockman, which is always time well spent.

The Quake Is Coming

Friends came over for a meal. It was my first chance to do some real cooking. The food turned out well, and the conversation was fantastic. You know the company is good when the topic of conversation moves effortlessly from high protein diets to marathon running to earthquakes to offshore bank accounts to gold.

It's strange to think that one day Tokyo will be completely destroyed by an earthquake, which will cause the collapse of capitalism. It's not a case of if, but when. The big quake is 30 years late already...

Tokyo 2600

This evening I attended the first meeting of the new Tokyo 2600 group. In attendance were myself and one other person. We talked for several hours on topics ranging from hacking to cracking. Not a great start, but not a complete failure.

Trout Mask Replica

A large desk arrived for the reception area of the language school. The delivery guys were clueless. They gave the impression that they had never dealt with large furniture before.

I received a copy of "Trout Mask Replica" by Captain Beefheart for Christmas. I'm sure that when I get used to it I'll love it. Until that time, it's a rather challenging album to listen to.

Watched the Woody Allen film "Bananas". Definitely one of his best.

England, Nineteen Eighty-Four

I stumbled upon this while reading news.bbc.co.uk:

Policeman's rape charge dropped
A police officer accused of rape has had the charge dropped.

Court proceedings against Sgt Carl Woodall were discontinued following advice from the Crown Prosecution Service, Sussex Police said.

The 45-year-old officer had been on conditional bail ahead of a scheduled court hearing on 13 December.

Sgt Woodall was suspended from his post in Eastbourne pending the outcome of his case, but he is now believed to have been reinstated.

What the fuck does it mean?

Meeting The Lock man

Tomorrow I shall be meeting podcasting celebrity Scott Lockman. Scott's podcast, "Tokyo Calling", is one of the few podcasts I regularly listen to, and is probably my favourite. Listen to it now at www.TokyoCalling.org

As Scott is an American, I feel I must be on my best behaviour. Americans don't swear in normal conversation, and don't usually use sarcasm. Scientists believe that up to 95 % of what I say and write is sarcastic, and almost 1 in 3 words I utter are considered obscene by a typical member of society...

Bicycle Mark Interview

The second episode of the Karamoon podcast is finally here. It's much better than episode one as it consists almost entirely of someone else talking. Enjoy:
karamoon_episode002.mp3

Bicycle Mark's blog and podcast are here: www.CitizenReporter.org

More info on the Chaos Computer Club can be found here: http://events.ccc.de

Dengue Fever's website is here: www.denguefevermusic.com

Please comment on the podcast. Suggestions for future podcasts would be most welcome.

On My Hands And Knees

I spent a good chunk of the day on my hands and knees, scrubbing the floor of what will become my language school. The only scrubbing brush available was one designed for cleaning pots and pans. Such is the life of the entrepreneur...

Unsurprisingly, I have very little money and lots that must be bought. Somehow I have to obtain 6 ceiling-mounted spotlights, 17 folding chairs, six folding tables, a wireless intercom system, 3 desks, 2 sets of bookshelves and a filing cabinet in the next two weeks.

I am, of course, confident that by the end of the year the language school will be making enough money to pay for the printing of the first few issues of Tokyo Robotnik magazine, as well as pay my new hobby: the collection, cataloging and preservation of false moustaches.

Pulp Fiction

This morning I started reading the novel "Pompey" by Jonathan Meades. It quickly became clear that I am in no fit state to read such a mighty tome, so I read Patchwork Girl by Larry Niven instead. When I had finished that I started reading Pebble In The Sky by Isacc Asimov. I believe it was the great Bard himself who once wrote "There are many a reason to read sci-fi, all of them crap".

Hirsute You Sir!

The night bus arrived early, just before 6 am. It was amazing to walk around Shinjuku in the early hours of the morning. Shinjuku is the central business district of Tokyo, and its train station is the busiest in the world. At 6am it was a ghost town, and I was tempted to write my blog address in 12-foot letters on one of the buildings. I didn't, due to a lack of the requisite materials. Had I had a ladder, some paint and a paint brush, a better thing to write would have been:

"Yields falsehood when proceeded by its quotation" yields falsehood when proceeded by its quotation.

In the afternoon I got my hair cut for 980 Yen, which is jolly cheap indeed. Just over 4 quid, in fact. When I lived in Japan before I would always get my hair cut at a chain of barbers called QB-House. I think QB stands for "Quick Barber". It cost 1000 Yen and took 10 minutes. When the hair cut was finished the hairdresser would vacuum your head. It's the future, and resistance is futile.

Beached In Kochi

After weighing up many pros and cons, and several hours of debate, we decided to stay another night in Kochi. [Surely you just couldn't be arsed to leave... -Ed]

Kochi castle is similar to all the other castles in Japan, of which there are 400. Only 12 of the castles in Japan are original, most of the others were built in the 1960s. Coming from the UK, I find it very hard to get my head round the fact that almost nothing here is over 100 years old. Japanese castles were built of wood, so they often got burnt down several times before finally being built from concrete in the sixties. In the UK, however, we still have stone castles, stone houses, stone computers and even stone people. Everything is built to last, except for stuff you actually want, which tends to break after a few days.

In the afternoon we took the bus to Katsura-Hama beach. Like most beaches in Japan, it sucked. The beaches in Japan are pebble, not sand, and it's usually unwise to swim, either because of dangerous undercurrents, as is the case with Katsura-Hama, or because of pollution. We managed to catch a bit of the sunset, and we saw a Japanese girl practising the tuba, which was fucking hilarious so, in the end, going to the beach was time well spent.

We had an hour to kill before we could get the bus back to Kochi so we bought some Japanese chocolate from a tiny convenience store. Like most chocolate in Japan, it sucked.

The Ryugado Caves

Visited a large cave called Ryugado, near the city of Kochi. I doubt the name means anything special, probably something like "sponsored by Disney", or "no dry-cleaning facilities available here". The part that is open to the public is about 1 km long. I've been to hundreds of caves all over Europe, but Ryugado was still very impressive. The only bad thing about the cave was that every 10 metres or so you would come to a Japanese woman sitting on a stool who would shout a bunch of crap in Japanese. This was utterly pointless because everything they said about that particular part of the cave was written in the leaflet anyway.

The cave was discovered about 70 years ago. The people who discovered it decided to leave a vase under a stalactite to see if, over a period of many years, it would become completely covered with limestone. The rather obvious answer to this question is yes, things do get covered in limestone if you leave them for 70 years under a stream of dissolved limestone. Fuckwits.

Hiroshima-bound

Decided to take the night bus to Hiroshima. The journey is 12 hours and likely to be very uncomfortable. The ticket is only about 40 quid and at least the passengers of the night bus a young, unlike the high speed Shinkansen train which tends to be full of old people, the kind I hate...

I've never been to Hiroshima, and am looking forward to it as my good friend Megumi lives there. On the other hand, I don't like the idea of being irradiated; I have seen no mention of Hiroshima's background radiation levels in any guidebook etc., presumably the radiation level is still higher than average.

Very Brief Update On Karamoon

1. I've arrived safely in Japan.
2. I've got Internet access at my house.
3. I'm going to be traveling for the next 3 or 4 weeks, and won't have much Internet access on the road.
4. Blog updates will appear as and when, as will podcasts...
5. In October look out for an interview I did with Bicycle Mark at the CCC camp.
6. In the meantime, check out Bicycle Mark's great podcast: www.CitizenRepoter.org
7. Please comment if you are reading this!