ETC
We drove up to Kobe on the the national toll road system, the Japanese equivalent to the U.S. Interstate system. Tolls are wildly expensive. My wife mentioned that Japanese toll roads cost 23 times as much to build as their American counterparts. There are miles of mountains to bore through and monumental bridges were required to span the Seito Inland Sea and Tokyo Bay. The Japanese language trip calculator informs me that the four hour trip to Kobe covers 271.41 kilometers and costs 8350 yen, or about $71.00. One way to reduce the cost is to buy a pre-paid highway card. The lower priced cards don't save you much money, but the 50,000 yen card ($426) buys you 58,000 yen ($494) worth of tolls. Unfortunately the highway system stopped selling the 50,000 and 30,000 yen cards last Friday. We tried to snap up a final 50,000 yen card, but trips to a shopping center and a convenience store and a few phone calls revealed that the cards had long ago sold out.
Sales of these cards were halted because of a problem with counterfeits and because the Japan Highway Public Corporation (JH) wanted to push people to use the ETC system. For years I've been driving past empty ETC toll booths thinking that ETC stood for etcetera, in this case, exotic cars that did not fit the criteria of normal toll booths. Surprise--ETC stands for Electronic Toll Collection. A machine in your car broadcasts your highway usage to a machine in the toll booth and the money is automatically deducted from your bank account or charged to a credit card. This system not only does away with the necessity of stopping at toll booths, it lets drivers buy the electronic equivalents of the discontinued 50,000 and 30,000 yen pre-paid highway cards. So far the ETC system has been as popular as taking a salary cut, or raising the national sales tax. First use of the system requires that you plunk down 15,000 to 20,000 yen ($128 to $170) for the transmitter that goes in your car. Secondly there re no transmitter available for motorcycles and a lot of people seem to feel that, "If you can't use it on bikes, I don't want any part of it."
Tuesday, March 04, 2003
In Kobe
Just got back from Kobe, using my semiannual eye checkup for an excuse to indulge in some urban ambiance for a couple of days. I was actually awake enough on my commute to the hospital to notice that they now have women-only cars during the rush hour periods. This is because so many women were being groped on crowded trains. On some trains the glass on the windows turns opaque when you shoot through a residential district, presumably to protect the privacy of apartment dwellers. Are we being too considerate here? As usual the Japanese were in orderly lines, 20 deep, waiting to file into the train when it stopped. This now seems normal to me, but It suddenly hit me that people in other countries probably don't do this. Suspended in a crowd of suits, headphones and paperbacks, I wondered how the masses were going to shoehorn onto the train. We stopped; the first 10 people boarded the; the rest waited patiently for the next train, which granted, would be along in about 3 minutes. I know that commuting everyday would be a nightmare, but this is the kind of stuff I miss living in the country. Along with American coffee: I spotted a Tully's across the pedestrian mall from the hotel. There was also a Starbucks nearby.
Just got back from Kobe, using my semiannual eye checkup for an excuse to indulge in some urban ambiance for a couple of days. I was actually awake enough on my commute to the hospital to notice that they now have women-only cars during the rush hour periods. This is because so many women were being groped on crowded trains. On some trains the glass on the windows turns opaque when you shoot through a residential district, presumably to protect the privacy of apartment dwellers. Are we being too considerate here? As usual the Japanese were in orderly lines, 20 deep, waiting to file into the train when it stopped. This now seems normal to me, but It suddenly hit me that people in other countries probably don't do this. Suspended in a crowd of suits, headphones and paperbacks, I wondered how the masses were going to shoehorn onto the train. We stopped; the first 10 people boarded the; the rest waited patiently for the next train, which granted, would be along in about 3 minutes. I know that commuting everyday would be a nightmare, but this is the kind of stuff I miss living in the country. Along with American coffee: I spotted a Tully's across the pedestrian mall from the hotel. There was also a Starbucks nearby.
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
New House
We moved up to the ridge of foothills behind the city last May. We're only 15 minutes from town and 20 minutes from work, but we're living at a 1000 ft. elevation instead of sea level. The weather is a little different up here. There's little need for an air conditioner in the summer, but the winter has teeth. I never thought I'd buy a house in Japan for reasons obvious to most residents of the Estados Unidos. Land is expensive, sold by the tsubo, a unit of measurement equal to 2 tatami mats. Then there's what you don't get: no yard, no central heating and no increase in the value of the house as time goes by. Contrary to what you expect in the good old USA, houses steadily depreciate in value and are torn down and replaced by new ones as time progresses. But, a funny thing happens when you leave the city and climb through the groves of cedar and bamboo, home prices start to decrease rapidly as lot sizes begin to expand.
We moved up to the ridge of foothills behind the city last May. We're only 15 minutes from town and 20 minutes from work, but we're living at a 1000 ft. elevation instead of sea level. The weather is a little different up here. There's little need for an air conditioner in the summer, but the winter has teeth. I never thought I'd buy a house in Japan for reasons obvious to most residents of the Estados Unidos. Land is expensive, sold by the tsubo, a unit of measurement equal to 2 tatami mats. Then there's what you don't get: no yard, no central heating and no increase in the value of the house as time goes by. Contrary to what you expect in the good old USA, houses steadily depreciate in value and are torn down and replaced by new ones as time progresses. But, a funny thing happens when you leave the city and climb through the groves of cedar and bamboo, home prices start to decrease rapidly as lot sizes begin to expand.
Meetings
Another slow and malingering meeting at work. Due to decreasing student enrollment, the school has stopped replacing teachers when they retire. One perceptive faculty member noted that the number of committees now exceeds the number of faculty and proposed that we scrap all committees and hold general faculty meetings on a weekly basis to wrangle out all school business. The school president chuckled and opined that he understood the speaker's frustration, but thought the proposal too strong. He concluded that milder measures would suffice and made a counter proposal to keep all committees but add a second monthly faculty meeting to promote discussion and information flow. Great, an attempt to streamline the meeting process adds an additional meeting to the workload. Have I mentioned that in Japan teachers actually run the schools? I've been on committees that have drafted regulations for the student parking lot, solicited estimates for copiers and computers, written regulations for the Student Association, and wrestled with the thorny problem of students smokin' in the restrooms and wearing street shoes, instead of slippers, inside the school.
Back at home my son and I walked down to the park. Plum trees and daffodils are blooming; spring should be here big time soon.
Also found that Mouse Computer sells a Shuttle SN41G2 PC that doesn't cost much more than it would take to build one yourself.
Another slow and malingering meeting at work. Due to decreasing student enrollment, the school has stopped replacing teachers when they retire. One perceptive faculty member noted that the number of committees now exceeds the number of faculty and proposed that we scrap all committees and hold general faculty meetings on a weekly basis to wrangle out all school business. The school president chuckled and opined that he understood the speaker's frustration, but thought the proposal too strong. He concluded that milder measures would suffice and made a counter proposal to keep all committees but add a second monthly faculty meeting to promote discussion and information flow. Great, an attempt to streamline the meeting process adds an additional meeting to the workload. Have I mentioned that in Japan teachers actually run the schools? I've been on committees that have drafted regulations for the student parking lot, solicited estimates for copiers and computers, written regulations for the Student Association, and wrestled with the thorny problem of students smokin' in the restrooms and wearing street shoes, instead of slippers, inside the school.
Back at home my son and I walked down to the park. Plum trees and daffodils are blooming; spring should be here big time soon.
Also found that Mouse Computer sells a Shuttle SN41G2 PC that doesn't cost much more than it would take to build one yourself.
Monday, February 24, 2003
Job
The school year is over in Japan, but meetings remain. I work at a junior college and right now higher education in Nihon is between a rock and a hard place. The cause of this is a birthrate that has been falling like the Nasdaq; there are too many colleges and not enough students to go around. Japan used to pump out 2 million high school graduates a year. That figure is now down to 1.5 million and will dwindle to 1.2 million in the future. Now it's easy to get into a 4-year college. Other students choose what are called specialty schools that prepare students for specific jobs such as healthcare workers or computer programmers. Junior colleges bottomfeed and must have a high job placement rate to keep afloat. This school has had a job placement percentage in the high nineties, but the slumping economy could knock the stuffing out of it this year.
Well, a sure way to get your mind off problems at work is to think about building a new computer. I'm intrigued by the Shuttle SN41G2 . It's a small, quiet motherboard-in-a-cube that is about the size of a small toaster. Plus it has onboard sound and video and plenty of USB and 1394 ports. Now I have an overclocked Athlon in mammoth case I've crammed underneath a table. The fans raise a racket and are powerful enough to cool an Arizona subdivision. What I want is something doesn't impair the MP3 listening experience and that I can put on top of the table where my 2 year-old son can't get to it.
The school year is over in Japan, but meetings remain. I work at a junior college and right now higher education in Nihon is between a rock and a hard place. The cause of this is a birthrate that has been falling like the Nasdaq; there are too many colleges and not enough students to go around. Japan used to pump out 2 million high school graduates a year. That figure is now down to 1.5 million and will dwindle to 1.2 million in the future. Now it's easy to get into a 4-year college. Other students choose what are called specialty schools that prepare students for specific jobs such as healthcare workers or computer programmers. Junior colleges bottomfeed and must have a high job placement rate to keep afloat. This school has had a job placement percentage in the high nineties, but the slumping economy could knock the stuffing out of it this year.
Well, a sure way to get your mind off problems at work is to think about building a new computer. I'm intrigued by the Shuttle SN41G2 . It's a small, quiet motherboard-in-a-cube that is about the size of a small toaster. Plus it has onboard sound and video and plenty of USB and 1394 ports. Now I have an overclocked Athlon in mammoth case I've crammed underneath a table. The fans raise a racket and are powerful enough to cool an Arizona subdivision. What I want is something doesn't impair the MP3 listening experience and that I can put on top of the table where my 2 year-old son can't get to it.
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