Too Many Words, no Pictures

Several things I like about this hotel. It has slide under drape tracks. That is, where the drapes meet in the middle of the window, one slides directly under the other so no evil light can pour through. This is an idea that all hotels should use. So says I! Also, the tap water is drinkable here. Not that I’ve had anything but beer, but still, should the need arise I will be prepared. Finally, they have the best TV thing ever.. the TV is bilingual. It has, I think, three languages and you just pick the language on the remote control and you have Japanes, English, and whatever the other one was. On the bad side, in this hotel, at least, no crazy porno channel.

I woke up to discover that I had missed the early bus to downtown Tokyo. Narita is like an hour out in the boonies. When I came back down to catch the second bus, I saw the alarming sight of two KLM pilots sitting out on the bench drinking. One was drinking one of the petite Heinekens they have around here, but the other was drinking wine straight from a bottle! His eyes were massively bloodshot, his skin pale, and his hair was matted. I tried to snap a picture with my cellphone, but I’m not sure it came out.

On the positive side, I met some Australian guy who apparently makes his living wandering around giving presentations on something or the other, and as he had been to Japan some years earlier, he knew how to navigate the trainlines and made my journey to Seisen quite easy. We chatted politics on the bus on the way over.

Tokyo (and so far all of Japan – the view out my hotel window was of rice-fields and hovels) looks a lot like Seoul, except I had no idea it was so laced through with waterways. I will say that the general level of English ability here is miles above Seoul. Not just at the hotels (to be fair I never stay at Western hotels in Korea) but on the transit system. Everyone seems to have good English and I’m going to be interested to see if this holds up. I paid my 20 bucks(!) for conference registration fees and now I’m sitting ig a typical classroom waiting for my presentation to begin. I’m scheduled for 50 minutes, which seems a bit excessive, but we’ll see what happens.

I don’t want to write too much here, cause I might need the computer for the presentation and though the outlets here are 110 volts, they are of the two-pronged variety (I had to unplug the Ethernet box at the hotel to free up an “end” outlet on an extension cord there. The extension cord was hidden in the box that held all the internet wiring and if the help had come in while I was casually moving refrigerators, desks, and pulling cables from their internet setup, I’m sure I would have been evicted.). Perhaps I should go in search of a three-pronged one.


The presentation went off without a hitch, if anything I was over-prepared. The conference was pretty much what I expected, the program was printed on 11x17 paper which couldn’t be folded in any way that made the conference start on the outside of the result and also go in the right time-order. The kid at the registration desk slept most of the time. The campus was an interesting mix of Harvard and Dumbledore and the crows in Tokyo were in fine form.

I only went to one other presentation, but the guy was relaxed right to the point of lost sphincter control, waved some handouts in the air, mentioned a few websites and then said, “well, I’ve finished early. Good, because there are some other presentations in this time slot that I’d like to see.” With that said, the guy did give me a couple good ideas for my listening classes. Anyway, I had a good audience that asked some good questions, and I also had a chance to talk a bit about the listening glass I’m creating for the Big Pink Business School (which, now that I think about it, has not one jot of pink anywhere in its decoration – probably a conscious effort at distancing the Business School from the reputation of the College/Uni).

Getting out was a bit more complicated as Seoul Station is under serious reconstruction and everything inside is covered in white plastic so you real do feel like a rat moving through an undifferentiated maze. You can’t get around the outside as it is blocked by tracks, so I spent some time wandering back and forth until I saw the sign the pointed the way. I had, of course, just missed a bus, so I had about an hour wait.

At night, Tokyo really comes alive and on the way back out I did notice that it seems to have a more relaxed and varied (modern) architectural style than Seoul. Seoul seems to hop from the Soviet to the funky, with little in between, and Tokyo definitely had more looks. And the water lacing through the place is a really nice touch as you drive through. Also, no one spits! I did not know that the Japanese rode on the “wrong” side of the road and thus that their driver’s side is our passenger side. Not a major thing, but it took a second or so before I assimilated it.

The ride back was cool, the town was lit up, and I almost got away with having an empty seat, but at the last minute two.. well, I’d call em ajummas in Korea, came in and snagged the seat next to me and the one in front of that. My white-guy repulso-powers were overcome by the power of companionship. I cursed the gods, since I could see there was one more empty seat in the bus and God rewarded me by, with literally seconds to go, filling it with an old lady who slumped back and kept rolling onto the kid she was sitting next to. Seeing the kid’s pain made me feel better, and I just watched the excellent scenery float by and soon enough I was back at the Radisson.

When I got back I was broke and this hotel has no ATM and no way to change cash, so I had to go to the restaurant for dinner as it is the only place that accepts credit cards. Bummer. ;-)

I hope to get back down to central Tokyo tomorrow, but it really depends on how much work I can get done on the WCTA paper – The rest of my stay could turn into some really expensive Hotel Medicine.

Nothing wrong with that, of course.

I hope some of my cellphone pictures come out and I also hope I can figure out how to email them to myself.

Cause I’m a retard, that’s why!