Lotusblog

I got back to Osaka yesterday after a long, tiring and sleepless flight. With the worst breakfast ever served by a human being. If any Lufthansa people are reading this, then take note. What the hell are you people serving? I know I am only in cattle class, but still, I ain’t actually cattle.

Anyway, the last couple of pictures. The first is our departure from Frankfurt- it started snowing the morning we left, and the second is what your chin would see (if it had eyes) as you drink a wheat beer. Damn, those beers were good.

Well, I had better start getting efficient. There are hundreds of people wanting my attention, thousands of emails awaiting a reply, and millions of tasks on my executable actions list.

Here we go.

Bye Frankfurt

Hello beer!

So… I am somewhere in the sky over Moscow at the moment. Flying at 981 km/h. Seven hours and fifty-five minutes remaining until I can breathe Osaka air. Somehow, flying home always seems so much easier. So much more bearable. At least I have the seat next to me as a repository for my collection of newspapers and magazines. And a bit of extra elbow-room.

I can’t believe it is all over. We came, we saw, we took pictures, we wrote articles, we ate sausages and we left. Arriving in Geneva (on Monday, which was only 6 days ago) seems like an eternity. The Mazda MX-5 launch party, chocolate eclairs, roast duck, icy winds, Turkish kebabs… Geneva had it all.

What Geneva also had was stupidly high prices. Kazuya and I, whilst searching for a place for dinner in downtown Geneva, came across some fast food burger joints. Burger King had their Whopper set available for just under 11 Swiss Francs. McDonald’s, which was right next door, had their Big Mac set available for 11.95 ChF, Now just pause for a moment… a Big Mac set, which in Japan is about 600 JpY, (or about 5.80 USD) costs 1040 JpY or just over 10 USD. Incredible. By the way, we ended up eating Turkish that night.

More later. I am a bit sleepy. It’s now 16:45 Saturday (in Germany) or 00:45 Sunday in Japan. Might be worth having a nap soon.

B’ bye.

I am now in slightly ridiculously cheerful hotel room in Frankfurt. What I mean is, the curtains are a loud mix of yellow, blue and red swirls, the “wood” trim (and furniture) is in a fake varnished oak (makes you feel like you are sitting in cheap car) and the bedding is a rather disturbing lemon colour. All a little overwhelming. The most important room, the bathroom, is however the antithesis of what we see here. Simple, large, white-washed; a power-shower, an intelligent washbasin, an enormous radiator. All the elements that make a good bathroom.

Frankfurt is an amazing city. It’s cool. It’s a bit edgy. It has great food. Even better drinks. The people are most affable and accommodating. The only area where it falls down (and I suspect this is a Europe-wide problem) is internet access. Let me dedicate only a few words to this topic as it is a sore point at the moment. Let me just say it sucks. Don’t these Europeans understand the society-transforming power of a de-regulated, always-on, fat-pipe info super-highway?

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures taken over the last couple of days.

The old and the beautiful

40 years on, and still, it remains one of the most beautiful cars ever made.

Afternoon elegance

Geneva in the afternoon. A very elegant city.

Plenty of yachts and ducks

Yachts. Geneva is that kind of city.

That smile is fake

The smile was frozen onto my face. It took several hours before I could move my mouth again.

The Boss

Kazuya’s neck remained in the “turned 50 degrees to the left” position for many hours. It made crossing roads a perilous endeavor.

Swiss train station ticket machines. Ahh, you gotta love 'em.

Early Tuesday morning- off to the motor show.

Frankfurt. Big, bold and blue. The three B's.

They don't call them frankfurters for nothing.

Kazuya in ecstasy.

These hotdogs were washed down with the best hot wine I have ever had.

I am in Geneva.

What a great city. It’s like Japan; safe, clean, kind people. It’s also like Europe; quaint, cultured and elegant.

I like it.

Unfortunately though, we leave the hotel in the early morning before any shops are open. We finish late when only bars are open. So from where I am standing, it’s a pretty dead city. I am sure it must be bustling during the day.

Anyway, I took a few pictures today with my new phone. I am surprised at how good the quality is. Anyway, take a look for yourself. The pictures are of one of the more peculiar cars on exhibit today. The Toyota “Aygo”. A car that Toyota are aggressively pushing to “young urban hipsters”. Their bean-counters must have calculated that this was where the money is. Anyway, good luck to them. The car below is (of course) a concept. But it’s interesting to see that Toyota think that putting a DJ booth into a car makes it hip. But first, a picture of the inside of the motor show:

The Geneva Motorshow

And here is the Toyota Aygo;

The extendible Aygo

Not much room for humans

Always on standby for a party

It’s been a week of high drama, high stress and high hopes. Way too much to write in this puny blog. I have only 2 days left before I head to Geneva for the Motor Show. I desperately need to get out of Osaka for a few days- so in that sense I am really looking forward to it. I just wish international motor shows weren’t held in places like Detroit and Geneva; why can’t they be held in the Caribbean, South-Western Australia or Hawaii? Detroit, being the default birthplace of the modern motorcar I can understand. But Geneva? Does Switzerland even produce car parts? (let alone cars)
Something to ponder on my long flight.

My long, iPod-less flight. However am I going to survive? Am I doomed to listening to crappy inflight radio, reading the Economist, Time, Business Week, The IHT, and then falling asleep after 2 beers? Maybe I should take a novel. It’s about time I read the latest Nicholson Baker novel, “Checkpoint” again.

Anyway, I have another 3 sleeps to get through before I can start thinking about relaxing on aeroplanes.

I am sitting in a cramped, stuff Honda wagon, speeding towards Tokyo with 5 colleagues. Well, speeding is not technically correct given the state of Japan’s highways, but to be honest the traffic isn’t too bad. We’re almost half way. But we still have a good 4 or 5 hours to go. My iBook’s battery has only 2 hours remaining. This is a worrying development.

I will be in Tokyo as we’re launching a new series of products; audio components, furniture and tableware. And we’re having a party.

I will be in Tokyo Thursday, then half of Friday. I have to be back in Osaka for Friday night for another party- the opening reception for an exhibition at our gallery. If any of my Tokyo friends are reading this, I am sorry but I am not going to be able to meet you. It’s just too tight a schedule. Breakfast is about the best I can do. Call me if you’re interested.

And then, when I get back to Osaka, I have a weekend off! At last! I am so relieved that I don’t have to fly to London on Saturday- for those of you who haven’t heard directly from me, this has been postponed until March. I still have to go to Geneva at the end of the month though, but, heck, that’s still more than 10 days away. 10 days in my life is an incomprehensibly long time during which countless inconceivable events will undoubtedly manifest themselves.

I think we have finally outrun the rain. Will post this later when I have network access.

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a week later: for some reason this post was never uploaded. Perhaps it will now. Perhaps.

What a weekend. The last 4 days were absolutely insane. At last I am thankful for this sunny Monday afternoon. I never knew Mondays could feel this good.

They feel a thousand per cent better if you listen to Jimmy Scott singing “Sycamore Trees” from the Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me soundtrack. What an incredible song.

I can’t quite remember what part of the movie that song appears in, but as I tried to remember, dislocated images of David Bowie as a special agent, television static, screams, splashes of blood and a feeling of utter despair and loneliness came over me. That movie (actually, I should really be calling it a film!) was so powerful. It was one of the most chilling pieces of cinema I have ever seen.

How does David Lynch do that?

I’ve always thought of myself as more of a future person than a past person. But looking over the entries in my blog, I seem to spend an awful lot of time reminiscing about the past; especially past music and past movies. I am not entirely sure I am comfortable with this.

I was hit the other day with a particularly nasty outbreak of nostalgia when Simon, whilst (quite rightfully) gushing about his iPod Shuffle, and the joys of mobile music, mentioned the record label Creation.

Oh, Creation!

All those amazing early nineties Creation bands!
The memories!
Lost love, missed opportunities, shoe-gazing parties!

I left some albums scattered around my home town with various friends and family. The next time I am homeward bound I’ll rip ’em. I should have an iPod by then.

Swiss popsters Yello have their moments. Of course, everyone knows “Oh Yeah”, the song made (in)famous by the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”.

But they offer so much more. Sure, being a product of the eighties, there’s a lot of nonsense in there too, but amongst the chaff, you’ll not only find wheat, you’ll find sparkling gemstones.

Otto di Catania is a perfectly cut example. One of the most beautiful pieces of music produced in the last 30 years.

Now, two questions:

1. What do the lyrics mean?
2. What are Yello doing now?

Over the last year or so Mixi has become an unbelievable underground phenomenon. It’s Blog 2.0. It takes blogging to an entirely new level.

It would be wrong to just call it a call blog, for it’s a viral social networking mechanism that takes on a life of it’s own. If you look at my page you’ll see there’s an introduction of who I am, a picture, and then a pictures of (and links to) the people with whom I am connected. They’re my friends in the Mixi-sphere. There’s also a list of the communities of which I am a member and by cross-referencing all of this information you find yourself with a tool that connects you to hundreds of thousands of people all over Japan (and even the world) with amazing precision. Say I want to meet (in either the virtual or real sense) a fellow early-thirties, MTB freak who likes jazz and who is either blood type A or type O and female (or any combination of factors) then this can be accomplished in seconds. This is how the communities are built in Mixi-land.

“Do you Mixi?” has entered the vernacular and is as common and innocent as “What’s your email address?”.

Mixi also has built in diaries (but it integrates well with RSS-based blogs) a message-system, and so much more. And it’s all free.

If you can understand Japanese then you definitely owe it to yourself to sign up, and be part of the revolution.

Information wants to be free.