I like your YouTube commentary series, though I must admit I'm a bit baffled about what the kid is busy doing -- is it some sort of self-improvement effort, or does he really just have that much time on his hands? Whatever the case, you've given me some good laughs. I quite enjoyed the DDR episode.:)
The Palm device crashed regularly (both with third party software, and cleaned of everything) and then when it rebooted would reboot with the radio off (so I would miss calls when it crashed while I wasn't watching). I have had a few iPhone crashes, and it reboots with the radio on, so I don't have that issue.
This one totally puzzles me as to why someone thought this was a sensible default behaviour. I don't suppose you have any insight? As you note, it means inevitable lost calls, which don't even show up as missed calls in the logs.
There were a long list of issues with the UI and basic problems with the way the OS used the radio, like every time it transitioned back onto the network it would freeze for 5-10 seconds... when you are in the subway and are going in-and-out of coverage this translated into a mostly-frozen device that is burning through its battery fast.
Another mystery -- every time it switches cells, it sits there for 15-20 seconds (maybe my model is just slower than yours?) completely frozen, with the screen and keyboard backlights turned on. Why is this useful? Who could have possibly thought this was a good idea?
So thanks for confirming that it's not just my one particular phone. On the other hand, what you describe means I'll probably need to pony up for an iPhone if I want a reliable smartphone... and I'm not sure yet if my needs justify the iPhone's not-inconsiderable price...
Ah, not an Utsunomiyan -- it's actually Futaara*san*.:) And I think I went skiing once up there in Nasushiobara, or at least somewhere nearby. I certainly passed through a good number of times on my way further north (old host-family up in Iwate-ken).
My wife and I were there in 1998-2000. We found more uneasiness about gaijin off the main drag, along some of the narrower shopping streets (Orion-dôri, among others). I once even had an old lady go out of her way on the otherwise-empty sidewalk half a block from the Tôbu rail station to theatrically almost run into me while yelling "jama, jama!" There were also uyoku buses, the big white jobs with the dark-tinted windows so you can never tell if anyone but the driver is in them, that would drive around town blaring WWII military tunes, with posters proclaiming "Sonnô Jôi" -- the famous "Revere the Emperor, kick out the barbarian" slogan. They'd crank the volume as they went by if they saw you on the sidewalk. And on one of the crowning days, I got to see a naked man lying in the fetal position in the middle of the asphalt of a four-lane road, screaming "onegai, tasukete kure!" while all the pedestrians and other drivers pretended to see nothing, while the guy then got kicked by a bunch of yaks, and then loaded into the trunk of the Japanese version of a Buick, which then slowly drove away. This was right around noon, on a cloudless Friday in the fall...
Things might have gotten better by now. I certainly hope so.
Back to prices, I did notice that dry cleaning seems to be dirt cheap there -- getting things done here stateside in VA, CA, and now WA has been surprisingly expensive, with one of my wife's skirt suits getting charged over $30 here while in Japan (Utsunomiya and Tokyo both) it cost somewhere close to $7, if memory serves. But as you note, different demand patterns in other cultures lead to different price structures, and folks in Japan do get a lot more things dry-cleaned on a regular basis.
Though I suppose it would depend on what part of town you were in and who you said it to -- Shinjuku 2-chôme at, say, 8 or 9 PM. I'd almost buy tickets to see that happen. Just for the look on the American's face...:)
*Very* interesting. And sensible -- the internet is, anymore, a basic fundamental part of modern life, on the same order of importance as garbage pickup and telephone service. I'm envious, it seems you Finns have held onto all the smart people in government.:) Meanwhile, we usians are lucky if our government simply doesn't embarrass us or inconvenience us too badly.:( Canadia is looking better and better. (yes, that spelling is a joke)
That strikes me as dodgy in the extreme -- were either of these companies implicated in the shady ownership transfer deal with Broadweave? To have a kick-ass service like that, for what you're saying is a very reasonable price, and *not* to be crowing about it from the rooftops to bring in business, suggests that something else was going on. Sure, fine, incompetence vs conspiracy and all that, but for companies to sit on their assets and not make a buck when it's there for the taking, that looks more than a little not right...
Dude, that horse you're on is looking mighty tall. Have a look-see here regarding Japanese taxes -- you might be surprised to hear that taxes for individuals are actually higher in the US. And I can back that article up with anecdotal evidence from my own life living in Japan, filing taxes there, and talking with my Japanese colleagues. Oo, look, the Izumi Garden Tower -- I used to work there (follow link to view).
Another important factor in why the internet services market in Japan is so different has to do with ownership -- NTT owns the lines, and umpteen other companies compete to offer ISP services over those lines. This is in contrast to the situation in the US, where one company owns the lines (often AT&T for the phone lines, and Comcast for the cable lines), and *that same company offers ISP services via those lines*. Can I get Bob's Friendly Neighborhood ISP via Comcast's lines? Nope. This leads to all sorts of fun conflicts of interest, which I'll leave to the reader to think about. Fun, fun. Even more so when those same line-owning, ISP-monopolizing companies start buying up the content creators. These conflicts of interest are the order of the day in the US market, but are notably absent in Japan. Different rules there, encouraging more competition, and inhibiting the kind of monopolies that seem rife in the US.
Dude, that horse you're on is looking mighty tall. Have a look-see here about Japanese taxes -- you might be surprised to hear that they are generally lower for the individual than they are in the US. And I can back that article up with anecdotal evidence from my own experience living there, filing in Japan, and from talking to Japanese colleagues. Oh, look, the Izumi Garden Tower -- I used to work there (follow the link to view).
Another vital part of why the ISP sector has evolved so differently in Japan in particular has to do with ownership -- NTT owns the lines, and umpteen other companies compete to offer ISP services over those lines. In the US, one company owns the lines (often AT&T for the phone lines, Comcast for the cable lines), and *that very same company offers ISP services*. This leads to all kinds of fun conflicts of interest, which I'll leave to the readers to think about. Fun, fun. Even more so once those same line-owning, ISP-operating companies start also buying up the content creators as well -- even more conflicts of interest. These conflicts happen in the US internet services market, but notably *not* in Japan.
So once again, it takes a city government to build in what the telcos can't be bothered to implement. And then it takes the telcos to "buy" it underhandedly and jack the prices up.
Gotta love it. What was someone else saying about "leave it up to the free market"? The ironies...
Where *are* you? I assumed that the Silicon Valley area would have the best internet accessibility, but it seems I was sorely mistaken. The best I ever heard about when I was living in San Carlos, smack-dab between SF and SJ along 101, was 10Mbps, and that wasn't even available in my neighborhood. My only two choices were DSL (5Mbps) or cable (6Mbps, but more expensive). Where are you that they're running fiber like that?
Part of it is a basic underlying market structure that differs dramatically from the US -- Generally speaking, NTT owns the physical lines, and someone else provides the packets, meaning you get freewheeling competition to provide ISP services. In the US, the company that owns the lines typically also has the final say on who you get to use as your ISP -- surprise surprise, it's almost always the same company that owns the lines. And in a disturbing trend, what with consolidations and mergers, these same companies are owning more and more of the content end of things as well.
So in the US, you get a trifecta of conflicting interests, where one company owns the lines, the rights to use those lines (and decide how much service to provide), and the media sites whose data is sent along those lines. This combines to lead to exactly the kind of monopolistic, high-priced bad service, complete with fact-bending and underhanded competing (denying packets the ISP doesn't like, c.f. BitTorrent and various other snafus, site and IP address blocking, and the dire implications of deep packet inspection and on-the-fly replacement of online content, so you're never sure if what you see in your browser is actually what the server sent you, or if it's something your ISP "edited" for you).
I agree with you, the population density excuse is a lame duck that needs to be shot and hung up in some Chinese butcher shop. As others and I have both noted in other posts in this thread, population density cannot explain why the very dense US northeast has such crappy speeds, nor why extremely sparse Finland boasts a median download speed of almost 9x the US (21Mbps vs 2.4Mbps). It all seems to come down to greed, lack of competition, and congress being up for sale.
Thanks for answering my question above posed to the AC, as to why FiOS is relevant here. I didn't know they were offering up to 20Mbps down; the best I've heard of before your post was 10Mbps, and I couldn't even get that where I was living in San Carlos (very far from the sticks, on the north end of Silicon Valley, think smack-dab between SF and SJ, only a few miles up 101 from Google HQ). 10Mbps is also the best available here on the San Juan Islands -- but not in my neighborhood, not for another year or two. Apparently the telco laid the cable this summer, but hasn't gotten around to upgrading the switches at the local junction box, and won't for a while yet, leaving me stuck with 1.5Mbps.
Interesting about Santa Clara. 16Mbps is still lower than the median 21Mbps listed in TFA for Finland, but much better than the 5Mbps I was getting in San Carlos, just a bit further north up the peninsula. I wonder when the telcos will get around to offering higher speeds throughout the SF Bay area?
Sure, I've heard of it. Doesn't exist in the neighborhood where I live now (San Juan Islands, WA). Wasn't available where I lived a month ago (San Carlos, CA). And while it *was* available even back in 2002 when I moved to Tokyo, when I called about it, I was told they'd have to wire the whole building, with only those tenants signing up having to share the full installation cost, and we'd need landlord approval. I was the only interested tenant (at least to start), but couldn't afford the installation -- which was moot anyway, as the landlord didn't want it.
When I moved from Tokyo to the SF Bay area, I was crushed by how much *more* expensive things were in CA. The one thing that was cheaper was housing by the square foot -- but then again, housing by apartment was more expensive (i.e. a 1BR in San Carlos, smack dab between SF and SJ, cost more than a 1BR in Nakano-ku, but is generally somewhat larger).
I also once worked out price comparisons for services, and found that my cell phone bill in CA was about twice what it was in Tokyo -- for worse service. Sound quality was worse, and calls dropped more frequently, or sometimes just never came through. Our apartment was a bit north of Google HQ at Moffett Field, and my wife worked a bit south. Driving along 101, though, calls would often drop unexpectedly, and reverbs, echoes, and static were not uncommon. Meanwhile, riding the Ôedo line, the Tokyo subway line deepest underground, call quality was generally close to regular POTS, and they didn't seem to drop as often.
DSL was also cheaper and better in Tokyo, with a 12Mbps line going for $35/mo. It was upgraded (at no cost to me) a couple years after I signed up to 18Mbps. Meanwhile, despite being in Silicon Valley and so close to Google HQ, the best consumer line I could get in CA was 5Mbps, for $65/mo. WTF? More money, for less. Whee.
Incidentally, where were you in Tochigi? Nikkô, perhaps? I spent two years living in Utsunomiya. Tough town -- all the local gaijin called it "Utsunomiya-da". I once had an almost-argument with a JR ticket booth operator in Kyoto about buying return tickets to Utsunomiya. Imagine a gruff, balding 50-something fellow behind the window:
Me: Utsunomiya made ni mai onegaishimasu. Tix: Ômiya? Me: Utsunomiya. Tix: Oyama? Me: Iya, U tsu no mi ya desu. Tix: Naze sou iu tokoro ni ikimasu ka? Me: Achira ni sunde imasu kara. Tix: Ki no doku...
From his expression and body language, it was clear that he was baffled why any gaijin would go there, and then baffled why any gaijin would live there. Given that the mob ran (still runs?) the city government, and given their and the local townspeople's notable unfriendliness to gaijin, it's not too surprising.
I mostly agree with your point, given places like the Chinese hinterlands and Mongolia, but South Korea has even higher speeds and higher broadband market penetration than Japan.
So how come, even in Silicon Valley, I can't get a consumer connection faster than 5Mbps? In 2008? Yet, when I moved to Japan in 2002, the *slowest* most *basic* package I could get (excepting dial-up, which was being phased out) was 12Mbps.
Fine, we get it, the US is huge. That's no excuse. The simple fact of the matter is that the telcos are much happier to sit there and overcharge for crappy service, as they have no compelling reason to upgrade. If population density and geography alone were the only limiting factors, US residents would still be able to get decent high-speed connections in the urban areas. But they don't exist. I mean, jebus, FINLAND has better download speeds, by a factor of almost 9x (2.4Mbps US vs 21Mbps Finland), despite a population density of about half the US (31/sq km US vs 16/sq km Finland).
So quit the hyperbole, and look at the basic facts -- we're getting shafted in the name of telco profits.
So how com places like Finland, FFS, have better broadband? From Wikipedia (pop density) and TFA (download speeds):
US: 31 people per sq km -- median download speed of 2.4Mbps US population density for the whole country, but this is a red herring anyway, as we *still* can't get decent speeds even in extremely dense and high-tech areas like Silicon Valley...
Japan: 337 people per sq km -- median download speed of 63 mbps
Finland: 16 people per sq km -- median download speed of 21 mbps
I'll give you a hint -- US broadband sucks not because of different population densities. Instead, it's all about the profit margins.
I lived in Japan for three years, and when I got there in 2002, the *basic* package offered by Yahoo! Japan was 12Mbps DSL for an intro rate of ¥2000 a month (about US $20), bumping up to ¥3500 a month later on. By the time I left in 2005, the *basic* package cost the same, but the *lowest* speed available was 18Mbps -- something that still doesn't even *exist* at the consumer level anywhere in the US (that I'm aware of) in 2008.
The US broadband market is suffocating under the rank hypocrisy and greed of the telcos, and the bald corruption and bribeability of the congress. Somehow the Japanese broadband market has a heck of a lot more internal competition, yet the companies there can still make a profit offering much higher speeds for relatively lower rates.
I think you might be a bit confused about how tofu is made. Fermentation has never, to my knowledge, been part of the production process, and it certainly isn't how tofu is generally made in Japan today.
I lived down the street from a tofu shop for close on three years, and had occasion to see the whole process from dried bean to tofu block, which this fellow did every morning. Basically, he'd start with a lot of dried soybeans, cook them, mash them, add lots more water, and then boil the bejebus out of them. At some point when the resulting milky mixture looked right to him, he'd add a special sort of salt called nigari or "bitters", which would cause the proteins in the soy milk to coagulate -- much like adding lemon to simmering dairy milk when making paneer. He'd then remove from the heat, and when cool enough, use cheesecloth (though for him I guess it's really tofu-cloth) to press the curds together. He had wooden block molds for giving the tofu a shape, and then it was just a matter of sticking them in the fridge until it was time to cut off a chunk for the day's customers.
The stuff called yuba in Japanese is basically the skin that forms on top of the boiling soy mash, and is essentially the same phenomenon as the skin that forms over simmering or boiling dairy milk. Some places in Japan even specialize in yuba, in particular one restaurant right across the river from the Tôshôgun in Nikkô, on the second story of the building on your left as you cross the bridge to leave the Tôshôgun and head back down to the train stations.
Looking it up over at Wikipedia, I find that the nigari salt is usually magnesium or calcium chloride, derived from seawater. I also find mention of some fermented tofu varieties, but these seem to be specialty products created from regular unfermented tofu, and also appear to be Chinese. I never saw nor heard of them in Japan, FWIW.
(As an aside, what is up with this ancient slashcode not correctly displaying the full range of Unicode? I can't even get macrons to show up properly in simple Latin Extended-A, let alone non-Latin charsets. Growl...)
Any citations for the following? I'm not being snarky, I'm genuinely interested in reading up on this. I lived in Japan for years, and thinking back, I don't think I remember seeing *any* soy-based food product that had not been fermented -- or boiled and salt-treated (a.k.a. tofu and yuba). From what you're saying, though, tofu and yuba would also be bad?
Sometimes, like with soy (phytates and phytoestrogens/isoflavones), cooking isn't good enough, and you need fermentation or another process to eliminate the toxins before they're safe to eat. Too bad most soy-food processing doesn't do that, so the defensive toxins end up in most of the processed crap made from soy protein and soy oil on the supermarket shelves. Soy sauce, miso, tempeh, and natto are safe. Most other soy-based foods are not.
Slashdot Mirror
I like your YouTube commentary series, though I must admit I'm a bit baffled about what the kid is busy doing -- is it some sort of self-improvement effort, or does he really just have that much time on his hands? Whatever the case, you've given me some good laughs. I quite enjoyed the DDR episode. :)
Cheers,
Thank goodness it's not just me:
This one totally puzzles me as to why someone thought this was a sensible default behaviour. I don't suppose you have any insight? As you note, it means inevitable lost calls, which don't even show up as missed calls in the logs.
Another mystery -- every time it switches cells, it sits there for 15-20 seconds (maybe my model is just slower than yours?) completely frozen, with the screen and keyboard backlights turned on. Why is this useful? Who could have possibly thought this was a good idea?
So thanks for confirming that it's not just my one particular phone. On the other hand, what you describe means I'll probably need to pony up for an iPhone if I want a reliable smartphone... and I'm not sure yet if my needs justify the iPhone's not-inconsiderable price...
Cheers,
Ah, not an Utsunomiyan -- it's actually Futaara*san*. :) And I think I went skiing once up there in Nasushiobara, or at least somewhere nearby. I certainly passed through a good number of times on my way further north (old host-family up in Iwate-ken).
My wife and I were there in 1998-2000. We found more uneasiness about gaijin off the main drag, along some of the narrower shopping streets (Orion-dôri, among others). I once even had an old lady go out of her way on the otherwise-empty sidewalk half a block from the Tôbu rail station to theatrically almost run into me while yelling "jama, jama!" There were also uyoku buses, the big white jobs with the dark-tinted windows so you can never tell if anyone but the driver is in them, that would drive around town blaring WWII military tunes, with posters proclaiming "Sonnô Jôi" -- the famous "Revere the Emperor, kick out the barbarian" slogan. They'd crank the volume as they went by if they saw you on the sidewalk. And on one of the crowning days, I got to see a naked man lying in the fetal position in the middle of the asphalt of a four-lane road, screaming "onegai, tasukete kure!" while all the pedestrians and other drivers pretended to see nothing, while the guy then got kicked by a bunch of yaks, and then loaded into the trunk of the Japanese version of a Buick, which then slowly drove away. This was right around noon, on a cloudless Friday in the fall...
Things might have gotten better by now. I certainly hope so.
Back to prices, I did notice that dry cleaning seems to be dirt cheap there -- getting things done here stateside in VA, CA, and now WA has been surprisingly expensive, with one of my wife's skirt suits getting charged over $30 here while in Japan (Utsunomiya and Tokyo both) it cost somewhere close to $7, if memory serves. But as you note, different demand patterns in other cultures lead to different price structures, and folks in Japan do get a lot more things dry-cleaned on a regular basis.
Cheers,
Though I suppose it would depend on what part of town you were in and who you said it to -- Shinjuku 2-chôme at, say, 8 or 9 PM. I'd almost buy tickets to see that happen. Just for the look on the American's face... :)
Oh dear, indeed!
Cheers,
*Very* interesting. And sensible -- the internet is, anymore, a basic fundamental part of modern life, on the same order of importance as garbage pickup and telephone service. I'm envious, it seems you Finns have held onto all the smart people in government. :) Meanwhile, we usians are lucky if our government simply doesn't embarrass us or inconvenience us too badly. :( Canadia is looking better and better. (yes, that spelling is a joke)
Cheers,
That strikes me as dodgy in the extreme -- were either of these companies implicated in the shady ownership transfer deal with Broadweave? To have a kick-ass service like that, for what you're saying is a very reasonable price, and *not* to be crowing about it from the rooftops to bring in business, suggests that something else was going on. Sure, fine, incompetence vs conspiracy and all that, but for companies to sit on their assets and not make a buck when it's there for the taking, that looks more than a little not right...
Cheers,
Dude, that horse you're on is looking mighty tall. Have a look-see here regarding Japanese taxes -- you might be surprised to hear that taxes for individuals are actually higher in the US. And I can back that article up with anecdotal evidence from my own life living in Japan, filing taxes there, and talking with my Japanese colleagues. Oo, look, the Izumi Garden Tower -- I used to work there (follow link to view).
Another important factor in why the internet services market in Japan is so different has to do with ownership -- NTT owns the lines, and umpteen other companies compete to offer ISP services over those lines. This is in contrast to the situation in the US, where one company owns the lines (often AT&T for the phone lines, and Comcast for the cable lines), and *that same company offers ISP services via those lines*. Can I get Bob's Friendly Neighborhood ISP via Comcast's lines? Nope. This leads to all sorts of fun conflicts of interest, which I'll leave to the reader to think about. Fun, fun. Even more so when those same line-owning, ISP-monopolizing companies start buying up the content creators. These conflicts of interest are the order of the day in the US market, but are notably absent in Japan. Different rules there, encouraging more competition, and inhibiting the kind of monopolies that seem rife in the US.
Cheers,
Dude, that horse you're on is looking mighty tall. Have a look-see here about Japanese taxes -- you might be surprised to hear that they are generally lower for the individual than they are in the US. And I can back that article up with anecdotal evidence from my own experience living there, filing in Japan, and from talking to Japanese colleagues. Oh, look, the Izumi Garden Tower -- I used to work there (follow the link to view).
Another vital part of why the ISP sector has evolved so differently in Japan in particular has to do with ownership -- NTT owns the lines, and umpteen other companies compete to offer ISP services over those lines. In the US, one company owns the lines (often AT&T for the phone lines, Comcast for the cable lines), and *that very same company offers ISP services*. This leads to all kinds of fun conflicts of interest, which I'll leave to the readers to think about. Fun, fun. Even more so once those same line-owning, ISP-operating companies start also buying up the content creators as well -- even more conflicts of interest. These conflicts happen in the US internet services market, but notably *not* in Japan.
Cheers,
Fascinating -- what was the legal basis for preventing them from advertising? That, in itself, strikes me as the shadiest part of the whole deal.
Curious,
So once again, it takes a city government to build in what the telcos can't be bothered to implement. And then it takes the telcos to "buy" it underhandedly and jack the prices up.
Gotta love it. What was someone else saying about "leave it up to the free market"? The ironies...
Cheers,
Where *are* you? I assumed that the Silicon Valley area would have the best internet accessibility, but it seems I was sorely mistaken. The best I ever heard about when I was living in San Carlos, smack-dab between SF and SJ along 101, was 10Mbps, and that wasn't even available in my neighborhood. My only two choices were DSL (5Mbps) or cable (6Mbps, but more expensive). Where are you that they're running fiber like that?
Cheers,
Part of it is a basic underlying market structure that differs dramatically from the US -- Generally speaking, NTT owns the physical lines, and someone else provides the packets, meaning you get freewheeling competition to provide ISP services. In the US, the company that owns the lines typically also has the final say on who you get to use as your ISP -- surprise surprise, it's almost always the same company that owns the lines. And in a disturbing trend, what with consolidations and mergers, these same companies are owning more and more of the content end of things as well.
So in the US, you get a trifecta of conflicting interests, where one company owns the lines, the rights to use those lines (and decide how much service to provide), and the media sites whose data is sent along those lines. This combines to lead to exactly the kind of monopolistic, high-priced bad service, complete with fact-bending and underhanded competing (denying packets the ISP doesn't like, c.f. BitTorrent and various other snafus, site and IP address blocking, and the dire implications of deep packet inspection and on-the-fly replacement of online content, so you're never sure if what you see in your browser is actually what the server sent you, or if it's something your ISP "edited" for you).
Hope that helps explain things a bit.
Cheers,
I agree with you, the population density excuse is a lame duck that needs to be shot and hung up in some Chinese butcher shop. As others and I have both noted in other posts in this thread, population density cannot explain why the very dense US northeast has such crappy speeds, nor why extremely sparse Finland boasts a median download speed of almost 9x the US (21Mbps vs 2.4Mbps). It all seems to come down to greed, lack of competition, and congress being up for sale.
Cheers,
Thanks for answering my question above posed to the AC, as to why FiOS is relevant here. I didn't know they were offering up to 20Mbps down; the best I've heard of before your post was 10Mbps, and I couldn't even get that where I was living in San Carlos (very far from the sticks, on the north end of Silicon Valley, think smack-dab between SF and SJ, only a few miles up 101 from Google HQ). 10Mbps is also the best available here on the San Juan Islands -- but not in my neighborhood, not for another year or two. Apparently the telco laid the cable this summer, but hasn't gotten around to upgrading the switches at the local junction box, and won't for a while yet, leaving me stuck with 1.5Mbps.
Anyway, thanks for the update. :)
Cheers,
Interesting about Santa Clara. 16Mbps is still lower than the median 21Mbps listed in TFA for Finland, but much better than the 5Mbps I was getting in San Carlos, just a bit further north up the peninsula. I wonder when the telcos will get around to offering higher speeds throughout the SF Bay area?
Cheers,
Sure, I've heard of it. Doesn't exist in the neighborhood where I live now (San Juan Islands, WA). Wasn't available where I lived a month ago (San Carlos, CA). And while it *was* available even back in 2002 when I moved to Tokyo, when I called about it, I was told they'd have to wire the whole building, with only those tenants signing up having to share the full installation cost, and we'd need landlord approval. I was the only interested tenant (at least to start), but couldn't afford the installation -- which was moot anyway, as the landlord didn't want it.
Why is fios relevant to this particular thread?
Cheers,
This is definitely a YMMV kind of deal. :)
When I moved from Tokyo to the SF Bay area, I was crushed by how much *more* expensive things were in CA. The one thing that was cheaper was housing by the square foot -- but then again, housing by apartment was more expensive (i.e. a 1BR in San Carlos, smack dab between SF and SJ, cost more than a 1BR in Nakano-ku, but is generally somewhat larger).
I also once worked out price comparisons for services, and found that my cell phone bill in CA was about twice what it was in Tokyo -- for worse service. Sound quality was worse, and calls dropped more frequently, or sometimes just never came through. Our apartment was a bit north of Google HQ at Moffett Field, and my wife worked a bit south. Driving along 101, though, calls would often drop unexpectedly, and reverbs, echoes, and static were not uncommon. Meanwhile, riding the Ôedo line, the Tokyo subway line deepest underground, call quality was generally close to regular POTS, and they didn't seem to drop as often.
DSL was also cheaper and better in Tokyo, with a 12Mbps line going for $35/mo. It was upgraded (at no cost to me) a couple years after I signed up to 18Mbps. Meanwhile, despite being in Silicon Valley and so close to Google HQ, the best consumer line I could get in CA was 5Mbps, for $65/mo. WTF? More money, for less. Whee.
Incidentally, where were you in Tochigi? Nikkô, perhaps? I spent two years living in Utsunomiya. Tough town -- all the local gaijin called it "Utsunomiya-da". I once had an almost-argument with a JR ticket booth operator in Kyoto about buying return tickets to Utsunomiya. Imagine a gruff, balding 50-something fellow behind the window:
Me: Utsunomiya made ni mai onegaishimasu.
Tix: Ômiya?
Me: Utsunomiya.
Tix: Oyama?
Me: Iya, U tsu no mi ya desu.
Tix: Naze sou iu tokoro ni ikimasu ka?
Me: Achira ni sunde imasu kara.
Tix: Ki no doku...
From his expression and body language, it was clear that he was baffled why any gaijin would go there, and then baffled why any gaijin would live there. Given that the mob ran (still runs?) the city government, and given their and the local townspeople's notable unfriendliness to gaijin, it's not too surprising.
Gotta feel the love...
Cheers,
I mostly agree with your point, given places like the Chinese hinterlands and Mongolia, but South Korea has even higher speeds and higher broadband market penetration than Japan.
Cheers,
So how come, even in Silicon Valley, I can't get a consumer connection faster than 5Mbps? In 2008? Yet, when I moved to Japan in 2002, the *slowest* most *basic* package I could get (excepting dial-up, which was being phased out) was 12Mbps.
Fine, we get it, the US is huge. That's no excuse. The simple fact of the matter is that the telcos are much happier to sit there and overcharge for crappy service, as they have no compelling reason to upgrade. If population density and geography alone were the only limiting factors, US residents would still be able to get decent high-speed connections in the urban areas. But they don't exist. I mean, jebus, FINLAND has better download speeds, by a factor of almost 9x (2.4Mbps US vs 21Mbps Finland), despite a population density of about half the US (31/sq km US vs 16/sq km Finland).
So quit the hyperbole, and look at the basic facts -- we're getting shafted in the name of telco profits.
So how com places like Finland, FFS, have better broadband? From Wikipedia (pop density) and TFA (download speeds):
31 people per sq km -- median download speed of 2.4Mbps
US population density for the whole country, but this is a red herring anyway, as we *still* can't get decent speeds even in extremely dense and high-tech areas like Silicon Valley...
337 people per sq km -- median download speed of 63 mbps
16 people per sq km -- median download speed of 21 mbps
I'll give you a hint -- US broadband sucks not because of different population densities. Instead, it's all about the profit margins.
Cheers,
I lived in Japan for three years, and when I got there in 2002, the *basic* package offered by Yahoo! Japan was 12Mbps DSL for an intro rate of ¥2000 a month (about US $20), bumping up to ¥3500 a month later on. By the time I left in 2005, the *basic* package cost the same, but the *lowest* speed available was 18Mbps -- something that still doesn't even *exist* at the consumer level anywhere in the US (that I'm aware of) in 2008.
The US broadband market is suffocating under the rank hypocrisy and greed of the telcos, and the bald corruption and bribeability of the congress. Somehow the Japanese broadband market has a heck of a lot more internal competition, yet the companies there can still make a profit offering much higher speeds for relatively lower rates.
Frustratedly,
I think you might be a bit confused about how tofu is made. Fermentation has never, to my knowledge, been part of the production process, and it certainly isn't how tofu is generally made in Japan today.
I lived down the street from a tofu shop for close on three years, and had occasion to see the whole process from dried bean to tofu block, which this fellow did every morning. Basically, he'd start with a lot of dried soybeans, cook them, mash them, add lots more water, and then boil the bejebus out of them. At some point when the resulting milky mixture looked right to him, he'd add a special sort of salt called nigari or "bitters", which would cause the proteins in the soy milk to coagulate -- much like adding lemon to simmering dairy milk when making paneer. He'd then remove from the heat, and when cool enough, use cheesecloth (though for him I guess it's really tofu-cloth) to press the curds together. He had wooden block molds for giving the tofu a shape, and then it was just a matter of sticking them in the fridge until it was time to cut off a chunk for the day's customers.
The stuff called yuba in Japanese is basically the skin that forms on top of the boiling soy mash, and is essentially the same phenomenon as the skin that forms over simmering or boiling dairy milk. Some places in Japan even specialize in yuba, in particular one restaurant right across the river from the Tôshôgun in Nikkô, on the second story of the building on your left as you cross the bridge to leave the Tôshôgun and head back down to the train stations.
Looking it up over at Wikipedia, I find that the nigari salt is usually magnesium or calcium chloride, derived from seawater. I also find mention of some fermented tofu varieties, but these seem to be specialty products created from regular unfermented tofu, and also appear to be Chinese. I never saw nor heard of them in Japan, FWIW.
(As an aside, what is up with this ancient slashcode not correctly displaying the full range of Unicode? I can't even get macrons to show up properly in simple Latin Extended-A, let alone non-Latin charsets. Growl...)
Cheers,
Tenant is someone who rents housing or office space. Tenet is a point of view, doctrine, or belief. I rather think you mean the latter of the two.
(doffs Grammar Nazi cap and goes back outside to work in the garden)
Cheers,
Any citations for the following? I'm not being snarky, I'm genuinely interested in reading up on this. I lived in Japan for years, and thinking back, I don't think I remember seeing *any* soy-based food product that had not been fermented -- or boiled and salt-treated (a.k.a. tofu and yuba). From what you're saying, though, tofu and yuba would also be bad?
Cheers,
Seriously. Things are bad enough.