Shack Attack

Saturday Market

Saturday market is a wonderful mashup of food, music, and art, more chaotic than Pike Place in Seattle, and larger than the street fairs in San Francisco. The Setagaya street fair in Tokyo was a kind of similar idea, but it didn't have the raw festivity of the Market. I really missed this thing, and Alia and I thought it would be a great way to toss the Japanese exchange students right into the thick of PDX culture.

All sorts of stuff happening by the Skidmore fountain.

Hot sauce heaven.

This stuff was ridiculous. A tiny bit on the head of a toothpick, and my mouth was on fire for the next twenty minutes.

This stuff is 1.5 million Scovilles. Police pepper spray is about 2 million. The guy selling it had a blister from leaving a drop on his hands too long.

This is a stupid form of transportation. The guy that bought it is a stupid man. The marketing department that got him to buy it is kind of ballsy and awesome.

Priceless slogans, $20 price tag. Didn't buy any this time, but "Just Jew It" was crying out to me.

He said this was a leopard. Looks like a cat to me.

New House

No student deserves a house this nice. It was a long, giri-giri, drama-filled journey to get here, but we've arrived, and life is good. Apologies for the bragging, but I'm stoked.

We're about 300 yards from the dining hall, closer than the farthest dorm on campus.

Shannon (left) and Alia (right), two of my three roomies. Alia came to Waseda with me.

Living Room. Nice hardwood floors begging for a dance party.

Kitchen. The owner was nice enough to leave those chairs with us, and since we don't have any tables, we've been using it as a dining room too.

They've got some funky split-levels going inside. My bedroom is below the main level, two more are a half-flight up, and the gigantic master suite basically takes up the whole second floor.

There's a carpeted dining room and living room behind the kitchen, but it's way more space than we can furnish, let alone use. I think we need to get our hands on some Japanese floor cushions to make it a more inviting place to sit.

Backyard, perfect for BBQ's before the rain starts. Not shown: ancient, creepy bomb shelter extending out under the lawn.

My room. It's not huge, but at 12x12 it's way livable, and it's got two nicely divided closets and another outside for hangars, so storage isn't an issue. I'm not planning on trying to fit a desk in there- I'm trying to keep work an on-campus thing, and maintain the house as a place for friends, relaxation, goofing off, and sleep.

I must have done something right to land in a place this nice. I'm very conscious of the fact that this is probably the most luxurious house I will ever inhabit in my lifetime, so I'm going to savor it all I can. Thesis might make this semester kind of tight, but that should make Spring all the sweeter.

Before Summersonic

Right before I left Japan, I got a chance to do a little promo with Naked Communications at Summersonic, a huge music festival right outside Tokyo. One of the perks (other than the free tickets and hanging out in the artists' lounge) was getting to walk around the convention center before the crowds, and take in the sheer scale of this event.

Jewish Grandparents and Shiny Electronics

I'm down in San Diego dropping my sister off at school and visiting my awesome super-Jewish grandmother. We showed her an iPhone and an iPod, and besides disparaging our playlists, I think she really got a kick out of them.

 

Awesome Cheap Headphones

Got some new headphones for my iPhone, the NuForce NE-7M (why don't they give these things cooler names? If I made headphones, I'd sell them as the "head-pounding beat ninjas"). They're made by a secret collective of hardcore audio geeks that make really well-engineered stuff at surprisingly reasonable prices. They retail for $50, but could easily sell for five times that- they're warm, bassy, and have lower sibilance and a tighter sound than stuff by Shure, Etymotics, Bose, etc in the $150-$200 range. They also come with a 30-day refund period and pretty responsive support guys, so you can try them out risk-free.

I found them via this really geeky audiophile thread. The NuForce NE-8M cost $30 more, supposedly don't fit as well, and don't have a microphone. Odd.

Protip: the phones come with three silicone tips and one foam one. Both fit me fine, but if you have issues word on the streets (I am harcore) is that Comply or Shure tips take the noise isolation and bass to another level.

Tangentially, terms I would like to see used more by audiophiles:

• Bootylicious soundstage

• Seal-clubbing bass

• Nippletastic highs

• Pretty-sounding