free Internet! (with $12 sandwich)

I'm posting this from the iGooogle Art Cafe in Roppongi Hills, a fancy-schmany mall in Tokyo. What's the art cafe? Well, as I posted on Facebook, I'm not entirely sure. It appeared overnight --a little cafe in the Mori Tower with glass display cases and a tiny laptop on each table. It seems like it would have taken a lot of time and money to set up -- but it's only here for two weeks.

I guess it's an art exhibit of sorts -- the name gave it away, and there's a list of famous Japanese artists outside. But when Sarah and I tried to look at the art yesterday, we were told we couldn't just walk around looking at it. The only thing we could do was order food and use the Internet. Apparently the art is just supposed to be ignored.

You know where you won't find any info on this cafe? On Google.

(Also? The default search engine is MSN Live, which cracks me up. You'd think if Google spent all the money to plaster its name and logo all over this place, not to mention creating sodas, an entree and a dessert based on its colors, they'd take the extra 30 seconds to set up Google as the search engine, no?)

So I came back today, and ordered a ham sandwich and tea so I could check e-mail on the seven-inch-wide keyboard and ignore the art, which is what all the Japanese patrons are doing. (I can report there is a giant orange Converse sneaker that appears to be made of plush in one of the display cases.)

This place is SO Japanese. Allow me to elaborate:

1) No fooling, a ham sandwich and a cup of tea cost 1,200 yen. (I'm overlooking that in favor of the exciting news that I ordered the food in Japanese, and even asked and understood what kind of cheese was on it.)

2) Like all electronics in this country, the laptops are miniature. They're about the size of a sheet of copier paper. I've made an estimated 600,000 typos while writing this due to the teensy keys.

3) The staff is super-over-helpful-genki-OK! I was hoping to maybe watch Top Chef on YouTube, but five IT guys and four waitresses are hovering around the customers, in case we somehow need help checking e-mail or are incapable of pouring our own tea, so it seems like that might be frowned upon.

4) Just, in general, WTF? Why does it even exist? Like a lot of things in Tokyo, I enjoy it and use it, but I can't say I understand it.

i'm starting to understand why mothra seems plausible

In addition to the giant crows that terrorize Tokyo, this city has the biggest earthworms I've ever seen. For serious, they're a foot long! That ain't right.

i swear the post office is toying with me

One of the perks of my job is having an APO address, which pretty much functions just like a stateside address, except for the odd Web site that can't handle military addresses (why do you hate America, Paypal?). The only downside is that the military postal system can be wildly unpredictable. Mail can take three days to arrive from the States, or it can take four months. You just never know.

That makes subscribing to weekly magazines a bit dicey, but I can pretty much count on Entertainment Weekly showing up every Tuesday to feed my pop-culture cravings.

Which issue of EW will show up is more of a crapshoot.

I almost always get a magazine, but they arrive in no apparent order. This week I got the March 21 issue, on the heels of the April 11 issue. The week before that, Feb. 15. But March 28 showed up right on time.

I'm convinced someone in the MPS is hoarding the magazines, and doling out one a week, at random. There's no other logical explanation. Not that that's a logical explanation, but knowing DOD, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

Getting the magazines late hammers home the lightning-swift pace of American pop culture. The copy I got this week is only three weeks old, but it's already as out-of-date as a 1996 copy of Time in a dentist's waiting room.

It's also a reminder that with every passing week, I slip a little bit further behind the cultural curve. This weekend I watched "There Will Be Blood" and "Enchanted" -- movies I would have seen on their opening weekends back home. I finally understand the finer points of using "I drink your milkshake!" as a catchphrase, but I also know it's long since passe. (Thanks to Ken-Jen for cluing me in to that.)

Pop culture -- especially TV -- is one of the things I truly feel deprived of here. On the flip side, not having to keep up with 20 shows has freed up a lot of spare time that I now spend doing things like "studying Japanese" (I'm finally learning some verbs! Hooray for complete sentences!) and "interacting with other humans."

i hear that all the time

Last night, I was standing in the "vinegar" section of the super-expensive Meidi-ya supermarket, wondering why they had blueberry and raspberry vinegar but not the balsamic vinegar I wanted, and whether it was in fact right in front of me and I couldn't read it, when a Japanese woman approached me and said, in careful English:

"Excuse me, do you speak Laotian?"

I do not, so a typical Japanese Apology Standoff ensued, in which I apologized profusely for not speaking an obscure Asian language and she apologized profusely for having bothered me, for asking me a question, and for asking a question to which the answer was 'no.' This part took place in Japanese, and then she moved into a conversation in Japanese, so I had to backtrack and explain that I speak only a little Japanese. So she moved her apology back into her careful English, and explained:

"All gaijin kind of look the same to me."