Last year I bought Beth a bike for Christmas–a Surly Long Haul Trucker (in green). Why did buy Beth that? It was because she wants to go on rides and tours with me, so I figured it would be prudent to start getting her set up and used to riding.

But there was also a secondary reason… I wanted that bike for myself. This don’t mean I was buying it in her name but going to gank it later; what it means is that I wanted to buy a bike but my current bike at the time, a Trek 7.3 FX was working relatively well and I couldn’t justify buying a new bike for myself, but I could certainly justify buying it for Beth.

Fast forward a few months and my desire to get a LHT increased to the point where I made an agreement with myself that I would buy it but only after selling my Trek. Fortunately for me, a week or two later I had found a buyer and had the cash in my pocket.

Buying the complete version of the Long Haul Trucker (versus buying the frame and selecting components yourself) costs $1,095 if you buy it in the USA or you can buy it in Japan for the equivalent of $1,600 US. I wasn’t a fan of that $500 extra for buying the bike from a store here, so I just ordered it online from the States and accepted the $250 in shipping.

Two weeks later it was sitting in many pieces in my living room and a few days later I had it fully assembled in time to take it on its inaugural voyage to Takizakura (lit. “Waterfall Cherry Tree”), a 1,000+ year-old cherry tree about 60 km southeast of Fukushima city.

Takizakura is the tree on the right. Ignore the people.

Though really, it felt more like I was going to see a huge crowd of people that a tree happened to get in the way of. The line of cars to get to the tree was at least 5 km long from the direction I came from, though luckily being on a bike allows you to ignore all of that and pass the gridlocked cars quite easily.

And that’s the story of getting a brand new bike and taking its first trip to see a tree that’s been around since… well, from a European standpoint, since the middle of the Middle Ages.

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For a few months now I’ve been taking a pannier with me to the grocery store, as using the store’s disposable plastic bags is extremely wasteful. At the checkout lane there are little cards that you put in your basket that say you’ll be using your own bag so that the checkout lady (yes, always a lady) doesn’t give you any bags. I really only see about 5% of the people in the store with their own bags.

About 2/3rds of the time, the checkout lady would take the card out of my basket, scan my items, then give me bags, which I would then give back. Using the cards ended up being a pretty futile gesture. Some of this I can chalk up to her just forgetting, but sometimes it… wasn’t. For example, the best conversation I had went like this:

Lady: *puts bags in my basket after taking the ‘no bag’ card out of my basket*
Me: “It’s ok, I don’t need those. I put the ‘no bag’ card in my basket.”
Lady: “But that’s for people who have their own bag.”
Me: “I don’t need the bags. I have my own.”
Lady: ……
Me: *points to bag hanging from my shoulder* “I’m going to put them in this bag.”
Lady: …… *takes back bags*

So today I was happy to see that as of today the new prefecture-wide policy of having supermarkets charge three yen (about three cents) per bag has gone into effect. Now that previous number of 5% of people bringing their own bags suddenly flipped to about 95%. Apparently that three yen makes a huge, even surprising, difference in how much it’s worth for people to use their own bags.

Even better, where the old ‘no bag’ cards used to be, new ‘please give me a bag, I’ll pay for it’ cards are in their place. There shall be no more bags given when I explicitly ask for none!

Yeah, it’s not very exciting, but my life is made up of these small little victories, and other (hopefully) small little defeats.

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My original plan for Golden Week this year was to take my bike on a bus up north to Aormori, ride a loop Lake Towada then head back to Fukushima. That would have been 550 km over five days.

Unfortunately, while out cycling on Wednesday my right knee got a sudden sharp pain that flares up whenever I start to do any sort of serious cycling. No worries though, I decided to modify my plan and shorten my trip down to about 120 km, but instead of cycling I’ll be walking.

The new plan has me going from the station about 30 km southwest of the lake, walking to the lake and doing an almost loop, then heading to a different city’s train station about 40 km to the southeast of the lake.

I’ll see how this goes.

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Here’s some information on the days of the week that those with a cursory knowledge of Japanese may find interesting.

Now, these are the days of the week in Japanese (literal translation of kanji in parenthesis):
月曜日 (Day of the Moon) = Monday
火曜日 (Day of Fire) = Tuesday
水曜日 (Day of Water) = Wednesday
木曜日 (Day of Wood) = Thursday
金曜日 (Day of Gold) = Friday
土曜日 (Day of Dirt) = Saturday
日曜日 (Day of the Sun) = Sunday

Long after I learned the days of the week, I learned the names of the planets in the Solar System (literal translation of the kanji in parenthesis):
水星 (Water Planet) = Mercury
金星 (Gold Planet) = Venus
地球 = Earth
火星 (Fire Planet) = Mars
木星 (Wood Planet) = Jupiter
土星 (Dirt Planet) = Saturn
天王星 (Heavenly King Planet) = Uranus
海王星 (Water King Planet) = Neptune

This means that if you take the English names of the days and match them up with their planetary origins, you’ll have the Japanese names of the days.
Monday = Moon Day = 月曜日
Tuesday = Mars day = 火曜日
Wednesday = Mercury Day = 水曜日
Thursday = Jupiter Day = 木曜日
Friday = Venus Day = 金曜日
Saturday = Saturn Day = 土曜日
Sunday = Sun Day = 日曜日

Once I realized that the days’ names in English and their Japanese counterparts have the same root meaning, it created an, “Oooooohhh!” kind of moment.

Anyway, there’s quite a bit of history behind all of this. If you feel so compelled as to read about it, here’s a section on Wikipedia I came across that’s a good start for further reading.

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FYI, the title and content of this post will make more sense for people who’ve studied Japanese for at least a week.

The title of this post is the current advertising slogan for Calpis. Long ago I came to terms with the amusing connotation of the beverage’s name in English, however this new slogan made me chuckle all over again.

Before I explain, here’s the commercial in question:

For those who still don’t get why I find this funny, the slogan is the aforementioned, 「カラダにピース」.
My native-English brain interprets this as either, “There’s piss on my body,” or “I’m going to piss on my body.”

That’s obviously not what they’re going for, but whatever… Clapis still tastes good whether there’s piss on my body or not.

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You’re not going to see post YouTube stuff here that I didn’t have a hand in somehow, but this video is too amazingly awesome to not post.

Last year I went to a sumo tournament at the Ryogoku Kokugikan. After that and watching sumo on TV quite a bit makes this that much more awesome.

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For the purposes of modern television sets, TV networks in Japan broadcast via four systems. Two are terrestrial (analog and digital), and two are via satellite (BS and CS, both digital). If you happen to be interested in how Japan’s ISDB standard differs from the North American digital standards of ATSC, there are the Wikipedia articles for you.

When I first moved here, my TV, terrestrial antenna and satellite were all set up, so I didn’t really put too much thought into how everything worked. It took me some time to get used to having to switch between the terrestrial digital band and the BS band to look through all of the channels of note. On the other hand, it didn’t really take me long to realize that virtually all of the channels in the CS band are used for infomercials or pay-per-view movies.

Now, to view said pay-per-view movies it gave a phone number to call so you could pay for them. What I didn’t quite understand at the time was how the TV actually knew that it was authorized to show that program. After all, while I’m hooked up to an antenna and a satellite, I couldn’t really think of a good way for the TV to communicate with that station OR a way for the station to authorize my specific TV to play the program. It didn’t really bother me too much, so I put it out of my mind.

Many months later I remembered my previous wondering as to how everything on the TV works. After looking carefully through the menus followed by looking over the TV itself, I noticed two main things: a LAN port and a slot on the side that contained what’s called a B-CAS card. When I removed the card the TV stopped working. Interesting, but first I wanted to check out what the TV does with the LAN.

I fished out a LAN cable and plugged it in. I soon found that with the LAN cable plugged in, you can access news, weather, horoscopes, etc through the TV. Relatively boring stuff, really. Apparently it also adds support to interface with a harddrive addon so you can watch movies on-demand. Alright, I’ll admit that I like that idea. Unfortunately for me, though, I don’t have the special addon and don’t really want to purchase it. I moved on to the B-CAS card.

From messing around and searching about the B-CAS (BS-Conditional Access Systems) card I came to realize that each card has a unique code. This code gives the TV permission to decode and display the signal. You need this card for ALL digital signals, regardless of if it’s a free terrestrial broadcast or if it’s a pay-per-view movie.

Where I’m going with this is that TV here isn’t actually free, as NHK, much like the BBC in the UK, is supposed to collect fees from all people who own TVs. They do this by sending a guy door-to-door and collecting money. Not surprisingly, many people don’t answer the door or lie or do something to get out of paying. With me, I’ve luckily never been home when he comes. Yup, I’ve been here for nearly two years and I’ve never seen the NHK guy.

Moving on to the ACTUAL subject of this post, since I moved here I’ve had an annoying box that takes up the bottom-left quarter of the screen if I were to ever want to watch the NHK BS channels. I saw it when I first arrived, figured it was just a thing asking me to pay, and I ignored it and didn’t really watch those channels.

But I’m now vastly better at Japanese in general, especially kanji, than I was when I first arrived. Earlier today I happened to check what was on those channels and actually read the message. It said to hold the blue button on my remote (newer remotes have many ’special’ buttons here). I did so, and it took me to a special menu. In the menu it listed a website to register at to get rid of the damn message: https://pid.nhk.or.jp/bcas/.

I went to the website, only to realize that it is completely free to get rid of the message. All they want is for you to register with your name, address, and phone number.　I made up a name which apparently belongs to some singer, an address and a phone number and pressed submit…

A few seconds later…

The message on my TV that has annoyed me for so long…

Automagically disappeared.

Wow. It really was that easy.

This makes me assume that the satellite sends out a signal addressed to my specific card to tell it to STFU. This amuses me because I didn’t really expect much out of what looks to be little more than a glorified credit card.

And there you have it–a little explanation of the Japanese digital television system and how simple it really is to get rid of that annoying message.

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