blog-LyleInTokyo: 2015

Thursday, December 31, 2015

"Time"

(2015/12/31) Proceeding ahead in life, it becomes increasingly apparent that a lack of enough time for planned activities/projects/etc. is HUGE. You get ideas for doing something; you put it on a back burner, and sometimes you even get to it and complete it, but back burner projects grow in number and complexity.

Just the way it is I suppose, but sitting here in Tokyo on December 31st, 2015, the time thing hits me more strongly than it ever has before. The combination of a backlog of things to do and a growing realization that no one is immortal.... Nothing for it but to push ahead I guess, still... the quest to tie most of it together continues.
In an attempt to make myself feel better, I've thought back on things that I wanted to do (in my life) and did - particularly the things that were a risk at the time, pursuing photography, jumping the Pacific Ocean with only enough money for one week, pushing ahead with the early nineties video project in what was a financially reckless way (more concerned with getting needed image & sound recording equipment than with paying the rent), etc.
"Just more of the same!" I'm tempted to say, but the difference now is a distinct feeling/realization that time, my time, time... time... is running out. So much to do, so little time to do it in.....

Happy New Year!

Lyle H Saxon
Tokyo

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

"5:30 a.m. - 6:30 a.m. Tokyo Rush"

(2015/12/08) - I look around at the others in this early morning coffee shop. While ages seem to range from people in their twenties up to late fifties (possibly a person here or there past the sixty barrier), the majority seem to be in their late forties and into the full spectrum of fifties. Speculation mainly (not purely - there is evidence), but just about everyone is here - before 7:00 a.m. - because they came into town early to escape the purgatory of the peak crush-rush commute via the steel rails.

It was different when flex-time was fairly common, but when the banksters trashed the world economy in 2007-08, many (most?) large companies (and small?) canceled flex-time and reverted to requiring that employees be at their desks by 9:00 a.m. And so people who had gotten used to a less intense morning commute had only one method of escape; taking earlier trains. But there are so many people doing this, that even the 5:30-6:30 trains are now quite crowded. When I ride the Yamanote Line around 6:30 a.m., I always kind of shake my head at the sight of it being packed not far below the infamous "manin" (満員) level of density. I look around the interior of the packed train, and then down at my watch, "Yup, there it is... it really is 6:30 a.m...", and back at the people around me, "... and all these people!".

And then I see a portion of them killing time in a train station coffee shop - waiting for their buildings to open so they can get to their desks. It seems very clear why they're here - certainly it's why I'm here....

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
http://youtube.com/lylehsaxon
http://lylehsaxon.blogspot.jp/
http://lookback1997.blogspot.jp/
http://tokyoht.blogspot.jp/

Discussing English in Japanese....

(2015/12/01) - I just overheard a conversation between an English teacher and one of his students. The student had some questions about an assignment and the teacher was helping him. Okay - sounds like a scene of pure normality... except the five minute discussion was 99% in Japanese (discussing grammatical details).

This is a key problem with learning a radically different language (and English and Japanese are pretty radically different). A low level student expects things to be explained in their native language, which is understandable enough, but in this case, the student - as a second year high school student - has been studying English for at least four and a half years now. If you don't *use* a language, then you never remember it, and discussing a foreign language in your own language certainly isn't using the foreign language.

I hasten to add here that learning a radically different foreign language is a very difficult thing to do. As for teaching it; ideally it should be one-on-one (one teacher and one student), but the logistics of mass education dictate that one teacher teach a large group of students, so how is that best done? There are no easy answers, but any student of a foreign language should keep in mind that *use* is what gets you to remember a language.

Not especially useful advice for a student studying for exams I suppose, but there it is nonetheless....

LHS

Wednesday, December 09, 2015

2015年12月の吉祥寺散策散歩 Kichijoji Walkabout

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
http://youtube.com/lylehsaxon
http://lylehsaxon.blogspot.jp/
http://lookback1997.blogspot.jp/
http://tokyoht.blogspot.jp/

Wednesday, December 02, 2015

Open Letter to the BBC - Podcasts, Compression Rates, Soft Power...

Update (2016/12/23)

Dear BCC - I just discovered today when I downloaded a Global News podcast that (suddenly) there's a choice of quality - between 64k and 128k. Bravo!!! This is great! In an age of everything (seemingly) getting worse, nice to see something get better!

Thank you!

- LHS

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Dear BBC, (2015/12/02)

I love BBC podcasts and deeply appreciate the service - particularly news and documentary podcasts.

I have one concern however - the switch to a very low bitrate (low sampling rate) makes them uncomfortable to listen to.

Please restore the previous bitrate! The current very poor sound quality is disturbing to listen to, and since I want to avoid the headaches the current poor sound quality generates, I have largely stopped listening.

Austerity rules? It shouldn't. Please understand that "soft power" (of which the BBC is a major component) is not something that even austerity fetishists really want to destroy.

Best regards,

Lyle H Saxon
Tokyo, Japan

PS - I attempted to e-mail this to you via your invitation to comment to globalpodcast@bbc.co.uk, but it bounced with this error message:

Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups:
joanna.mills@bbc.co.uk
The recipient's mailbox is full and can't accept messages now. Please try resending this message later, or contact the recipient directly.

So I - in accordance with the: "... or contact the recipient directly" part of the message, tried sending it to: joanna.mills@bbc.co.uk

- which also bounced, with a long error message, full of this type of thing:

"...mailbox full..., ...Quota Exceeded..., ...Failed to process message due to a permanent exception with message Cannot open mailbox..."

Seeing no way of contacting you via e-mail, I have resorted to this open letter.

と言う事で、下らない行動をやめて、明るい将来へ進みましょう！

以上

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Walking Around in Evening/Nighttime Hachioji Station Area (八王子駅辺り)

I did an evening walkabout in Hachioji last week and just posted a blog entry of about 50 of the pictures with text talking about Hachioji and also my C-2020Z camera.

I put the pictures on a blog with a black background, here:
夜の八王子駅辺り散策散歩（写真）東町と小門町 - 2015年 Hachioji Night Walkabout (Photographs) North Side
http://tokyoht.blogspot.jp/2015/11/2015-hachioji-night-walkabout.html

These are pictures from the same evening, but ones not in the other blog post. As I write in the main post - it was an interesting/fun experience walking around in Hachioji.

八王子 / Hachioji

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
http://youtube.com/lylehsaxon
http://lylehsaxon.blogspot.jp/
http://lookback1997.blogspot.jp/
http://tokyoht.blogspot.jp/

Sunday, November 01, 2015

2010年展示会最中 / 2010 Video Exhibition

Several scenes from my 2010 video exhibition Tokyo-1990 / 20年前の東京 - of the exhibition itself, taken when I wasn't busy (for obvious reasons) - and also some scenes of Tokyo while I was in transit to and from Ginza.