mcsnee

Photos from this weekend in Macau.

This place is amazing.

I'm in Tokyo!

On Monday morning at around 2 a.m., I nuzzled Ajax and Pandora goodbye, and Mom drove me to the bus station in Portland. I slept on the bus to Logan. On the first leg, I ended up sitting next to a guy who just finished 1L at GW. We swapped stories about classes and the write-on competition (theirs was during spring break; ours was after finals).

The second leg was a direct flight from DC to Tokyo on All Nippon. We were on a 777, and I think it had about 3 different gradations of business class. First class was behind me when I got on, and I didn't get to peek at it, but then we were in a section with electronically-adjustible seats, and then there was a section with big, comfy-looking seats, and then there was a section with slightly less big, slightly less comfy looking seats, and I figured that was us, and I was like, "Sweet!" But then the seats got much, much smaller. The flight attendants were all wearing surgical masks but were very friendly and helpful. I was sitting in the middle section, on the aisle. There was a Japanese girl in the middle seat heading home from a year abroad in New York, and an American guy who taught ESL on the other side of her. We chatted, and then I tried to sleep. I think I managed to doze for about four of the 14 hours we were on the plane. We arrived a little ahead of our scheduled 3:30 p.m. time.

I was in a state of pretty high anxiety by the time we landed—I was busy being nervous about getting through customs, what I was going to do if my luggage didn't arrive, getting to the rental office for my room, getting to my room itself on the crowded trains, etc. And then the quarantine officers came on board and started checking all our health questionnaires. The (idiot) woman in the seat in front of me, who apparently had allergies, had marked that she had a cough on the sheet. They put a little red sticker on her seat, put her in a mask, and escorted her off the plane. And then, without telling us what it meant, they started putting red stickers on all the seats around hers... first in a cone in front of her seat, then in the two rows behind and around hers. By this time, I was certain that I was going to be a guest of the Japanese health ministry for the next three to five days. Everybody was getting a little tense, and they dragged the suspense out for half an hour, but then they handed out yellow sheets saying we'd passed quarantine, and they let us all off the plane.

(I am happy to report that, 3 days later, I am showing zero symptoms of swine flu.)

The gate was apparently about four miles away from the customs area of the airport, judging by the number of corridors and moving walkways they shunted us through. I went through the whole process and thought I was done, when the guy doing my passport check summoned over somebody else, pointed to my visa, and asked a question in Japanese. The other guy pulled me out of the main area, took my passport, and told me to wait on a bench. Again, I had no idea what was happening, but apparently this was standard operating procedure for the kind of visa I have, so five very tense minutes later, he came back, handed me my passport with a special page attached, and pointed me to the exit.

My luggage arrived safely.

I took a bus from Narita to Shinjuku Station, which is near the leasing office. I'm pretty sure I was grinning like an idiot the whole time, looking out the window at the people in their right-hand-drive cars, and all the passing scenery. We got to Shinjuku right around rush hour, and it was mobbed with people. Fighting through them with a heavy backpack and a suitcase was not the most fun I've ever had, but I found the leasing office, signed about 90 pieces of paper, and was on my way to the apartment pretty quickly. The train wasn't crowded, and I was able to sit the whole way.

My apartment is actually a bit bigger than I had expected it to be. It's got a little kitchenette and the most efficiently organized bathroom ever designed by the hand of man. I got inside, unpacked and hung up my suits, and went straight to bed. It felt incredibly good to lie down.

The next morning was my first day at work. I managed to get to the office without incident. The commute is not bad at all--it's about a five minute walk to the station from here. I ride the Tozai line for two stops, then transfer to the Ginza line, and ride it for four more stops, and get off at Toranomon. The metro was the part of the trip I had been having nightmares about for months, ever since seeing people being wedged onto the train by people-pushers on numerous YouTube videos. I am pretty claustrophobic, and the idea of being crushed into a train overfilled with people was enough to make me break out in a cold sweat just thinking about it. But I have now survived two relatively crowded rides, and it hasn't killed me. As long as I'm near the door, I'm okay.

Work was yet another thing to be nervous about, but it's been pretty laid back so far. I easily hit my first two deadlines (though the projects were not the most challenging things ever). I've got a bigger project that is potentially going to be pretty interesting that I'll be starting on Monday.

Tokyo is incredible. There are vending machines full of weird beverages everywhere. I'm living in a neighborhood full of pachinko parlors.

It's very humbling to be completely illiterate (though I did spend some time today learning the first 20 hiragana characters, and I hope to get through the rest of them during the weekend, and then do the katakana next week), as I discovered when I tried to buy some laundry detergent tonight at the grocery store near my apartment. I found the detergent aisle, but wasn't able to tell whether the bottles I was picking up were detergent or fabric softener or straight bleach. I ended up leaving empty handed.

I visited a bookstore a little later, and that was an even more bizarre experience. Less than 1% of the books had any English at all on the spines. Reading is such an integral part of my life and what I do and who I am; it's hard to describe what it's like to be in a place where I just can't do it at all. I'd been hoping to find a Japanese/English phrasebook (because who knows when you'll need to say "My nipples explode with delight"), which I should have bought before I got here, but no such luck.

I think that's about all for now. More soon, no doubt.

Casenote completed. Passport and visa acquired (after three trips to Washington, DC in seven days).

Nap now.

From my Criminal Law casebook:

The ferry Herald of Free Enterprise, lacking an adequate system to signal when its doors were properly shut* suddenly sank as it left port, trapping dozens of passengers inside.

* That problem and related safety failures were attributed to "tough competition" and "the reluctance of the ferry operators ... to incur extra costs."

Dear My Internet Friends:

I don't ask you to do things very often. But you should do this.

dustyskinandall is releasing a new double album. If you preorder it, you will get it for nine bucks. NINE. That's ninety-nine American cents cheaper than your average iTunes album. And like eight or nine bucks cheaper than your standard iTunes double album.

It's also three bucks cheaper than you'll have to pay if you wait and buy this AFTER it comes out. Which, let's face it, you were going to do.

Those of you who know me know that I have exquisite taste in music--like, the best ever. And I have had her first album, How To Take The Fall (which you should also buy on iTunes or at your store of choice) in heavy rotation on my iPod for the last couple of years.

You will be 1) getting great music for cheap, and 2) helping the musician in question defray the costs of recording an awesome album that you will love.

So, seriously... just do it, okay? You've got nine bucks' worth of change in your couch.

Love,
mcsnee

Dear Obama Vetting Team:

Any time you want to start asking your nominees about taxes before putting their names in the pool, that'd be fine.

Annoyedly yours,
mcsnee

Why, yes, I do miss Denver.

Stephen King, from Bag of Bones:

There's something oddly comforting about talking to a legal guy once the billable-hours clock has started running; you have passed the magical point at which a lawyer becomes your lawyer. Your lawyer is warm, your lawyer is sympathetic, your lawyer makes notes on a yellow pad and nods in all the right places. Most of the questions your lawyer asks are questions you can answer. And if you can't, your lawyer will help you find a way to do so, by God. Your lawyer is always on your side. Your enemies are his enemies. To him, you are never shit but always Shinola.

This is, I think, the most important finding from yesterday's poll:

100% of people who like Loudtwitter don't like to check boxes.

There's a dissertation in there somewhere.

Dear users of Loudtwitter:

I love you guys. I do. You're on my friends list because I like reading what you have to say. I suspect, though, that you don't realize the effect Loudtwitter has on your readers. Just out of curiosity, I looked back through a representative sample of Loudtwitter entries on my friends' journals. I could not find one with a single comment. I suspect this means that your other friends skip those entries like I do.

And, hey, it's your journal. If you want to post from Loudtwitter, I'm not gonna get in your way. I'd just like to suggest that maybe it's not the most effective or productive way to communicate with your audience.

But, then again, maybe I'm completely outside the norm on this one. So here's an unscientific poll:

Poll #1354149 FOR LOUDTWITTER SCIENCE!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

I...

Jesus, Ben Folds is a really, really good songwriter.

I like how he writes, but the fact that Joss Whedon is letting Fox handle another of his series does not exactly increase my estimation of his intelligence.

... I wonder how long it's going to be before I stop having moments of "Holy crap! I can't believe Obama's actually our President!"

Well, I must say... this catches me COMPLETELY by surprise. It's not like the company rolled out an expensive operating system that people are ignoring in droves, and then spent hundreds of millions on a failed and insulting ad campaign to get people to take another look at it. And I hear the Zune is flying off the shelves.

Wall Street was apparently shocked--SHOCKED!--that Microsoft wasn't going to make its numbers. I think that, right there, explains a good part of why we're in such an economic hole right now. Wall Street folks appear to be completely divorced from reality.

There was a note across the bottom of the screen that said "President Bush left President Obama a note in the Oval Office." I'm glad to see that this tradition has continued, although Bush put his own spin on it--this was the first time the note had been written in yellow crayon, and Bush is the first one to have misspelled both the word "President" and his successor's name.

And they call John McCain a maverick!

Today, I am so proud of our country, and proud to be an American.

... and wondering how both President Obama and Chief Justice Roberts managed to mess up that oath.