Innovative way to woo customers. But is it worth the effort ?

This happened during the first weekend of February, when I was shopping for a camera. As usual, the first place to visit is 'Yodobashi Camera' in Shinjuku, one of the big electronic stores

in the area. Another option is 'Bic Camera', also in the vicinity of Shinjuku station.

Yodobashi Camera can be best described as a cross between BestBuy (or CircuitCity) and the pavement shops in Indian cities. :-) The similarity to BestBuy is because of the huge range of products that both stores stock. And the connection with pavement shops in India is due to

the noise in and around the shop. It is so noisy with the hundreds of Yodobashi sales people welcoming you in or just shouting out deals of the day and what not.

Anyday, I would take the calm shopping experience of a BestBuy or CircuitCity. As I have mentioned here before, one of the best things about the US is the incredible shopping

experience it provides. Anyway, I check out all the digicam options at Yodobashi, note down

the ones that suit my need best and decide to get back to the hotel to get more info about

these shorlisted models online.

As I walk out of the store, I feel like I heard a language alien to the place. It sounded like

Hindi and it was playing over the microphone. Naah, thats not possible. Why would there

be Hindi in Japan, of all places ?

But no. The lines are repeated and this time I catch them clearly. It says, "Yodobashi camera mein aapka swaagat hai", which translates as "Yodobashi Camera welcomes you". And then, it goes on to say more about the store, the products it stocks etc etc.

Nice marketing gimmick to attract some Indian customers, though not all of them. Because

even though Hindi is the national language of India, not all Indians know/use it. At last count,

we had some 29 states in India and most of them have their own language, with its own script.

Also, unlike the US, where you could practically be tripping over Indians, I have not seen

many Indians in Japan. In the more than 2 months I spent there (over 3 visits), I would have maybe seen some 20 Indian faces. Not much of a customer base to spend such effort on.

And if I know Indians, more than being wooed in their language, they would prefer a nice deal anyday. No wonder I saw most of the 20 Indians at Akhihabara Electric Town, which is an

area full of electronic stores with the lowest pricing you can get anywhere in Japan.

For those familiar with Chennai, just imagine Ritchie Street, but like some 10 times more

bigger and infinite times cleaner and orderly. That's Akhihabara for you.

Paying to cook your food yourselves + some history along with the food

In India, people usually go out to restaurants either for a change from the normal home food
or to eat some stuff that is difficult to make at home or to try out some exotic cuisines from
other countries / states or because they are just plain lazy to cook.

In short, I am sure that no one goes out to a restaurant, expecting to cook their food themselves. But then that is just us Indians. In Japan, there are quite some restaurants, where the patrons are expected to do the cooking. I was fortunate to try two such restaurants.

My very first experience of cook-your-own-food (a new concept to me) was the Shaabu-Shaabu, which I was introduced to, by my American colleagues in Aug2007. I had planned to do a post on this then, but somehow it did not happen, even though I took detailed snaps of the whole process.

During my trip last week, we visited a lamb barbeque at Tono. The restaurant was named Jingisukan - more on this later. The lamb in this part of Northern Japan is quite renowned, which is surprising given that it is not local to Japan - it is imported from Australia.

Anyway, this is the restaurant.


And a close-up of the name and logo.


The seating is a cross between the western table-chair setting and the typical Japanese low-seating, and looks like this.


Notice the big hole in the centre of the table ? It is actually a gas-fired stove with a perforated pan on it for you to cook your food. :-)

The waiter then brings you all the food items you need to cook your meal. Butter, sliced onions & other leafy vegetables that you need to saute, and ofcourse the lamb, which is very thinly sliced.


Each person also gets a tray having some rice, some sauce to go with the cooked meat, some soup, some pickle-kind-of-stuff and ofcourse chopsticks.


You drop the cubes of butter on to the pan and as they melt, you add the leafy stuff and then
drop in the lamb slices. My Japanese colleagues and an Indian colleague starting the cooking.
And yes, they give you these paper aprons to keep any stains off your clothes.

Each of you takes turns to turn the lamb and vegetables around, so that they get cooked evenly. And after a few minutes, your dinner is ready. Once you run out of lamb in the pan, you keep adding more.



The lamb almost ready to eat. Looks yummy ain't it ?


It did taste good. More so, when the temperature is like -10 deg C outside and food is always welcome in cold weather. After we were done, I was discussing with my Japanese colleagues, about the origin of this type of cuisine. Especially because the main ingredient was something
that is not local to the place.

He mentioned that this was something that came in from Mongolia. A practice adopted from
the Mongolian tribes and with some connection to Genghis Khan, the legendary Mongolian warrior and conqueror. And that is when the origin of the name of the restaurant struck me.
Jingisukan is just a Japanese-version of Genghis Khan. :-)

In school history classes, I have read about Genghis Khan, his army, their conquests etc.
One thing I still remember is that when they would run short of food, they would cut a vein
on their horse's body, sip some blood to quench their hunger and close the vein. Which would
be opened repeatedly for satiating their hunger, till they got to other sources of food.

Though I never knew they had pioneered a come-pay-cook-eat system also, which is still in vogue. :-)

Note : Actually, come to think of it, Shaabu-Shaabu is also very similar to this, with the main difference that it involves beef and sea-food, instead of lamb.

Too much of anything .....

It is snowing again in Tokyo since late evening today. I was feeling so fortunate to have
another chance of getting to see nature in such splendid form. So, I grab the camera and
get down to the ground floor of the Hilton.

But since it is dark, I am not sure the videos came out as good as they came out during the
last snowfall at Tono during daytime. Anyway, I take some snaps and videos and get back
to the cozy comfort of my room.

I am all excited about getting back home tomorrow. The flight is at 10:30AM and I have
booked a seat in the airport limousine bus that leaves the Hilton at 7:10AM. While Japan
is definitely a great place and I love snow and all, but there is no place like home, inspite
of its many shortcomings.

I see that somebody has left me a message on the phone and when I call back, it is the
airport limousine company. They say that if the roads are freezed over tomorrow morning,
then they might cancel the bus service. And if that is the case, they will inform me tomorrow
morning.

Great !!! This was the last thing I needed, just before getting back home. Taxi is not an option because it is a long way away and could cost quite a packet. And anyway, if the roads are not good enough for a bus, how is it going to be good for a car ?

Well, this is Japan and as long as the railway tracks are not iced up, it should not be an issue
at all. So, it would be the Narita express tomorrow, which in any case is atleast 30 mins faster
than the airport limousine.

Too much of anything (even if it is pristine white snow) is no good .........

Beautiful Tono - a photo-post

Finally downloaded all photos from the Sony H7 to my laptop and here come some of the
snaps I took at the beautiful town of Tono in North Japan.

Snowing in Tono - a video post.

There is surely something special to snowing that is missing with raining.

Maybe it is about the flakes floating around leisurely, instead of the impatience
seen in raindrops to hit the ground. Or maybe it is the pristine white color.

With you, through thick and thin, health and illness ...

In all metro train compartments here in Japan, some seats are marked "Courtesy seats".

These are intended for the elderly, physically challenged, women with kids and pregnant
women. These seats have the following sign above them, with a pictorial description of
who is eligible to sit there.



One of my colleagues took a photo of this sticker and showed it to his wife, telling her that he
has been with her while she went through all the 4 stages depicted in the sticker. He was by
her side when she broke a leg, stood by her when she was pregant, and then when she was
with baby and finally now when she is getting old. :-)

I am sure she (like any other woman) would'nt have found the 'getting old' part very amusing.
More so, because she is only in the early thirties, which is not really what you would call old.

But then, I am sure he was just kidding.

And as expected I dozed off.

I was supposed to wake up a bit early on Wednesday (6-Feb) to take in the beauty of nature
around Hotel Aeria Tohno, where we stayed for the last 4 days. But, as expected, I switched
off the alarm clock when it rang at 7AM and dozed off again only to wake up late (yet again).

Since we were checking-out on Thursday, I was determined not to miss what could be my
last and only chance at Tono, though another visit to Tono cannot be entirely ruled out.
I had to stay up till like 2AM at night for some discussions with my Indian & American
colleagues and so, chances of my waking up early, looked bleak.

But, I willed myself out of bed at 7AM, got ready, finished breakfast and went out of the
hotel. Man, it was bone-chilling cold. But the beauty of the place more than made up for
the weather. I ventured out and started taking pictures of the whole place. But after
sometime, I could not even feel my own finger, due to the cold.

So, when I was thinking that I am zooming in, nothing would happen on the viewfinder,
because my fingers were so numb from the cold, that I could not even press the zoom
button. I did have leather gloves with me, but handling a camera with gloves on, is not easy.
So, after taking some real nice snaps, I had to rush back to the warm comfort of the hotel.

I am yet to download the snaps to my laptop. Will do that tonight and post here.

Tono is such a beautiful place guarded by mountains on all four sides and I guess the snow
adds to the beauty. Now, if only it were not so cold here, it would have been just perfect. :-)

More than Tono town itself, nature's beauty is much more evident during the drive from
Tono to Shin Hanamaki station. It is a 45 km drive (takes an hour) on roads cut through mountains and the view on either side is to kill for. Unfortunately clicking snaps from the
car was not giving good results.

Also I had colleagues with me, who just wanted to get back home (Tokyo) and thus would
not have liked to stop the car every now and then, for me to admire nature's beauty and
to take pictures. But if there is a next time, I will surely go for it, colleagues be damned.

A room with a view.

It was quite late (around 8:30PM) when we checked into the hotel yesterday night.
So, when I moved the curtains and looked out, all I could see was darkness. But today
morning when I looked out, it was such an amazing view. See the pic below.



We grab some breakfast at the hotel and leave for work around 8:30AM. It is cold outside,
but we are doing OK thanks to the car's heater. As we drive out of the hotel, I see that there
is a small stream flowing just in front of the hotel, with a couple of quaint little bridges over
them. A really beautiful sight. Especially due to the white snowy landscape all over.

If I was alone, I would have stopped to take in the sight and even snapped pictures. But I
am with 2 colleagues, both of whom have been to this place earlier and don't see any novelty
in the surroundings.

So, looks like I will have to wait till tomorrow morning and hope that I am able to wake a little earlier than usual to check it out. Not an easy task, given how difficult it is for me to wake early.

Far from the madding crowd.

I am far, far away from the madding crowd that Tokyo is. I am at Tono, a quaint little town
in the extreme north of Japan, which takes a 2.5 hour ride by the Shinkansen. If it was not
for the white landscape all around (thanks to the snow), the biting cold and the mountains nearby, I would have thought I am at one of the towns back home in Kerala.

Like in any Kerala town, a little after sunset, there is almost no human presence outdoors
here. Ofcourse, in the case of Tono, the weather plays a big role in keeping people indoors.
I was told that it was like -9 degC today morning and when I went out of the customer's
office for a very brief coffee break in the evening, it was like -6 deg C. Unless you are out
of your mind, you would not want to venture out in such weather. More so, if you are from
a place which rarely sees even temperatures below 25 deg C.

Our train (which resembled the TGV of Europe) left on the dot (like anything else in Japan)
at 9:16AM from Tokyo and after some 6-7 stations, we found ourselves at the railhead
closest to Tono (Shin hanamaki station), at exactly 11:47AM. Now, that is punctuality.

The train ride was fast and smooth, though with the closed windows and all, you could not
really feel the speed. The view from the windows was to die for - mostly white & more white
and ofcourse the mountain ranges. Clicking photos was not easy, though no one can blame
me for not trying.

We get off the train and leaving the bags there, I run to the front of the train to get a snap.
I make it just in time, before the Hayate shinkansen could resume its journey to the final
destination (Morioka), which is a famous skiing spot. Will post the snap later as I have not
yet got around to installing the s/w for the new camera to download snaps to the laptop.

We go down the escalator to the ground level and then we hear thunder above us. It was
another Shinkansen that zoomed past at amazing speed and before we could even say
"What the hell", it was gone. I mentioned to my friend that we could wait and try to get a
video of one of these trains from the moment it approaches the station, till it literally flies
past.

He said that it was not easy because these hi-speed trains don't give much of an indication
of their arrival and before you could hit 'Record' on your handycam, they are gone. Still, I
would like to give it a try one time.

Anyway, we rent a car and drive some 45kms to the customer's place. All around us it is
just white snow. While the roads have been cleared of the snow, at some places, there still
remains traces and you can feel the tyres sort of slip over without gripping. I am not even
thinking of how it would be to go out of control in a car over snowed roads at even not too
high speeds.

We decide to wind up for the day at around 7:30 PM, which is kinda early for us. But then shops/restaurants close very early here and if you dont make it before they do, you might
end up sleeping on an empty stomach.

We pick up some sandwiches at the local Lawson store and hit the warm comfort of the hotel
room, where inspite of the thermostat set at 26 deg C, it feels cold. And as soon as I am done
with this blog-post and checked upon on emails, I am looking forward to a nice sleep.

Back home, it is the feast of St.Sebastian, the patron of our parish and today is the penultimate
day, when the whole parish goes out in a huge procession and all homes are decked up. I had
planned some two months in advance to be there for this feast, which I did not have a chance
to attend for many years. But then, that was not to be. Maybe next year.

Snow in Tokyo - a photo blog-post.

My latest acquisition - a Sony H7 Digicam.

I have lost count of the many cameras (and camcorders) that I have bought over the years,
since my first overseas travel in 1998. So much, that when I return back from a foreign trip,
one of the first things I am asked by friends/colleagues back home is, "How many cameras
did you buy this time ? :-)

Many of them were bought as gifts for family, while I chose to retain only the first camcorder
(a Samsung Hi8) and the first digicam (a FujiFilm 3MP 3x zoom point-and-shoot). Over the
years, these served me faithfully, though I lost interest in the HandyCam due to its bulk and
also because I became more interested in still photography than in video.

I would have retained my Fuji cam for years, since 3 MegaPixels was more than enough for
my needs, while I could do with a little more zoom. However, I was forced to think of a new camera because of two issues with the camera, which I could not overcome.

The main problem was insufficient memory in the cam. It had come with a 16MB xD card
and since at the time of buying the camera, I was a little short of cash, I decided to postpone buying more memory for sometime later. But, when I did get around to buying memory, I
found that the camera had got too friendly with the 16MB chip. Meaning, it would not accept
any higher capacity cards.

I tried different brands of memory cards, with the same results (error writing to flash) each
time and finally gave up. This meant that I had to make do with just 16MB memory, which in
the highest resolution of 3MP, would enable me to take just 20 snaps. I got over this problem
by either lugging along my laptop on all trips (a real pain) or by lowering the resolution to be
able to take more snaps.

This worked well for many months till the up-down button on the camera gave way. Now, the
button works fine when you go up the menu, but would not come down. I opened the camera
and found a broken connection to be the culprit. This meant, that if I had set the resolution
at the highest (3MP), I would not be able to come down any more (since the down action is
not working).

One workaround was to open up the camera (held together by some 6 real tiny screws) and
manually move the button down. I used the camera this way for some more months, but at
times, I would have to change the setting to 3MP to get some good photos and then to go back
to the low-resolution setting, I would have to open up the camera again. Not very funny.

That is when I decided to get a new camera. Was toying with the idea of a Nikon D40 (DSLR)
for sometime, but decided that I was not that much of a professional to need an SLR camera
and I did not even have the faintest idea about lenses, filters etc. Also, I carry my camera
always with me - the rationale being that you never know when you come across something
interesting. So, a bulky camera was the last thing I wanted.

Looked at the point-and-shoot varieties, which were easy to have in your pocket, but most of
them came with standard 3x or 4x zoom. Over years of using digicams, I have come to know
that more than MegaPixels, what really matters is the zoom, though the manufacturers would
like us to believe otherwise. All that you need to get some real nice photographs is a minimum
of 3MP, with which you can have nice prints even upto 8 inch by 12 inch blow-ups (without
any pixelisation).

But you could never have enough of zoom though - the more the better. So, my camera hunt
came to somewhere between normal point-and-shoot cameras and the SLRs. These cameras
come with decent resolutions ( > 7MP), but the zoom is to die for (10x to as high as 18x). I
identified a FujiFilm (8MP, 18x zoom) and a Sony H7 (8MP, 15x zoom) and really struggled
to choose between them.

The extra zoom in the Fuji and the lower price were an attraction, but gave up just because
they did not come with English manuals (though you could set the GUI to English). Also, I
somehow had this feeling that the Sony was a tad better when it came to photo quality.
Anyway, got the Sony yesterday. Cost me 44000Yen (440$), which is higher than the price
I would have paid in the U.S., but much lower than Indian prices.

Anyway, I am happy with the product after having shot some photos today morning - of the
snow in Tokyo ofcourse. Hopefully, this camera would be the last one I buy for years to come.

A photo of the new photo-capturer (my new Sony H7)



Note : All references to zoom are of the optical variety ie real lenses. The digital zoom is just
a sham. So, while choosing a camera, ignore the digital zoom part and look for optical zoom.

Yaaaay, it is snowing in Tokyo :-)

I wake up today morning (well, at 11AM, but then it is a Sunday) and what do I see at the window ? Snowflakes dancing around. I rub my eyes in disbelief, jump out of bed and go to the window to take a closer look. Yes, it is snowing. Yippeeeee.

Actually it must have been snowing for many hours now, because already the whole landscape
is a pure white color, with roof-tops, cars etc covered with about few cms of snow. From the
day I landed here, I was hoping that it would snow here, but the weather was slowly changing from real cold to a little sunny over the last week. So, it was a surprise to see snow today.

While a trip to Japan is something that is always looked forward to, this one was supposed to
be a little more special due to two reasons. Firstly, I was supposed to go to a customer location
which is in the extreme north of Japan and where it is snowing right now. Secondly, the mode
of travel to that place would not be your usual flight, but the Shinkansen.

The last time I saw snow was in '98 in Europe. Had been to Belgium on work and one weekend, me and a Belgian friend 'Jo' decided to drive down to Germany. The idea was to spend the weekend at Germany and if possible also drop in at my aunt's home in Dusseldorf. We reach
the border only to see the whole place snowed up, with cars buried under snow. We knew that
it would not be wise to go further and decide to drown our disappointment in some nice Belgian beer (the best variety of beer in the world) and some fine venison.

I run around the whole place clicking pictures (normal film cameras then) mainly because it
was my first snow sighting. However, never got to see even one of them because before I
could develop the snaps, one stupid friend of mine opened up the camera exposing the full
roll of film. :-(

Coming to the Shinkansen, this is what the rest of the world knows as the Bullet Train.
Running at close to 300kms per hour, these trains would naturally be of extreme interest to someone like me, for whom the fastest trains in India do maybe 100-120 kms per hour. Ofcourse, I have also had the pleasure of travelling in the TGV (Europe's equivalent of the
Shinkansen) from Brussels to Paris, though I do not remember the speeds of the TGV.

Ofcourse, there are different Shinkansens plying on different routes and the one we are taking
tomorrow is unfortunately not the fastest. The fastest is the Nozumi Shinkansen, which I think
plies between Tokyo and Kyoto. BTW, I just noticed that the two places are perfect anagrams. Just googled for it and see it already listed on Wikipedia. So much for my thinking that I was
the first to chance upon this. :-)

So, what next ? Maybe get out in the snow to feel it, instead of just watching it from inside
the hotel room. Will post pictures in my next post.