The invisible hand of Amazon can’t reach in and change or destroy your books. You can lend them, sell them, or give them away. They smell good. If you happen to misplace one, you didn’t lose a $200 piece of equipment. A lot of people want to steal your e-reader, but nobody wants to steal your book. Books do not need batteries, electricity, or any other hallmarks of civilization. Books will survive the next fall of civilization. You can borrow books from a public library, and it does not cost money.

When you read a book you are an icon of literacy, intelligence, and introspection; but holding an e-reader makes you look like a self-indulgent bandwagon-hopper. My grandparents read books, my parents read books, and I will read books.

Read, and be informed:

Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

Some Perspective On The Japan Earthquake

*Planning is a stage BEFORE the tragedy actually happens. Contrast with politicians, who react.

Power and water is still unavailable in a majority of eastern Tohoku. I’ve been able to reach a few friends in Sendai, one in Kami, and one in Furukawa, and they’re all OK. A friend with parents in Fukushima city says they’re OK, if a bit shaken. As for the coastal areas, those have not fared well. Kesennuma area seemed to take the brunt of it, but the farmland areas to the east and south of Sendai including Natori are underwater. I’ve seen images of boats capsized over land as far north as Hachinohe in Aomori prefecture, and as far south as Soma in Fukushima prefecture. Parts of Ishinomaki are flooded, a good chunk of Kesennuma is smoldering or flooded (or both), and I did see a picture of a derailed train in Matsushima. I’ve been to all these places. It really breaks my heart. And the nice little village of Shizugawa I used to ride through on my motorcycle after getting a cup of coffee? It’s gone.

Some news sources are quoting a few ignorant, self-righteous twats comparing the Fukushima reactor crisis with Chernobyl. The anti-nuclear lobby is full of shit, enough to fertilize all the currently submerged farmland and have some left over. If anything, it has more in common with Three Mile Island, but as of now the government has evacuated a much larger area than is necessary, and primary containment is holding. I won’t get into the details of how an RBMK is different from modern BWR designs, but all the affected reactors in Japan are subcritical, even the forty year old Fukushima #1. Yes, all the backup diesel electric generators failed; that tends to happen when you dump a metric fuckton of seawater into them. Yes, small amounts of radioactive Cs137 and I131 have been released. Yes, the top of a secondary containment area blew off. Yes, Tepco has a very shady track record, and if I had to guess they’re probably trying to cover up some bad decisions again. But there will be no nuclear explosion.

And really, there are bigger problems to be addressed at the moment, like how to house and feed tens of thousands of displaced people in winter. Shame on you, AP and Reuters, for publishing the word of sensationalist doomsday idiots instead of something factual. Shame on you for lazy and uninformative reporting, like not telling us the extent of damage in specific towns and cities (no, Sendai does not encompass the entirety of northern Honshu), or how people can help out from overseas.

But despite all the crap people put up with, the Japanese as a whole are being quite pragmatic about the whole thing. This picture sums up the general attitude. This is a photo of the Yamanote line, one of the main train lines in Tokyo, the morning after the quake. All the trains shut down after the quake for safety reasons, and many people had to spend the night at offices. Despite this, nobody tries to push and shove; everyone lines up in an orderly fashion.

I decided when I moved in that I wouldn’t waste my money on that stuff. I want some actual real furniture, made out of solid pieces of wood and not sawdust superglued together. So over the past few months I’ve been slowly accumulating things that don’t make my house look like a dormitory. The bed set was one. A couple of decent sofas was another. And a few days ago I finally bought a real writing desk. Not something to put my computer on, but something used to hold papers and pencils. This is a desk from when they actually knew how to make desks. No idiotic sliding tray to bang and scrape your knees on, no stupid plastic-covered hole in the middle. Genuine stained and finished mahogany, dings and scratches and all. This thing has character, it has panache. Someone was probably writing on this thing when you were in diapers. Damn, son, but that’s a real desk.

I have internet. Finally. Problems with the way the cable was originally run meant that the tech wasn’t even able to pull the raw cable out of wherever it was stapled to the inside of the wall. (Normally, when houses are built by intelligent species, about a foot of coax cable is looped inside the junction box We destroyed the junction box and a good chunk of drywall trying to get enough slack to splice in a connector. Why the hell didn’t they just put the connector in when they built the house? Not my problem, though, since it’s still under warranty and someone will fix it.

I bought a table from a church thrift store in the war zone (which the locals were more than happy to help me move into my garage) and a nice office chair to go with it. My computer is finally put together, and the whole setup is chucked next to the wall closest to the cable jack. It works. Don’t knock it.

Went on a hike today, on the La Luz Trail. Google it. I’ll wait.

So yeah, the trailhead starts at 7000 feet (2150 m). From there, it goes up. And up. And up. Six miles later it’s at 10,000 feet, and then clings to a cliff face for another two miles before stopping at the top of the world’s longest tramway. It’s one of the tougher hikes in the area, and originally our group of four had planned on a shorter hike. But for some reason we went on this hellraiser instead. I think they call it “La Luz” because it’s like the light you supposedly see at the end of a tunnel right before you die from exhaustion. But the views from up top are certainly beautiful.

My camera is still in storage, so no photos for you yet. Give it a few more weeks.

Right now I’m sitting in Satellite Coffee by the university. Not as bad as I’d originally thought. Before that I parked on a nearby street and asked the owner of a small bookshop whether they checked the meters after 6. She replied that no, they didn’t, and on a whim I went inside. “The Book Case,” as it’s called, is one of those beautifully, chaotically cramped used bookstores which is impossible to navigate while carrying a backpack or other bag, which I suppose is one way to cut down on incidental theft. I think the name may be based on “basket case” or “nut case”. It’s fantastic.

Then went to a cute little place called “Frontier Restaurant.” Apparently a staple of local college students, it serves anything from green chile burritos to cheeseburgers cafeteria style.

Still looking for furniture for my new place. I did get a very nice bed set at a consignment store; the seller told me it was “mission style.” I told her I wasn’t interested in the Kama Sutra, but that I’d buy the furniture anyway. There were some other interesting pieces at some other shops, but most are quite a bit more expensive than I’d expected. Even a basic sofa and loveseat set is over a thousand bucks. Looks like I’ll be blowing my first few paychecks on getting this place furnished. But I did find an artisan carpenter who makes some fantastic handcrafted wood furniture. The guy really knows what he’s doing, and some of his stuff is actually cheaper than the mass-produced crap in all the stores. Problem is that it takes him several weeks to make things. There are a few things in his warehouse, but since they’re made to order I’d have to buy an existing style of table or chair if I want anything now.

Seeing as how Comcast still sucks quite hard, they won’t even be around to think about looking at whether or not I can even GET cable at my place until the end of this week. I’ll likely be incommunicado for at least two weeks. Almost everything is still in plastic totes stacked in my living room. I bought a bed/endtable/dresser set, which should arrive tomorrow so that I don’t have to sleep on the mattresses on the floor. But I have no other furniture. No couch, no table, no chairs. No computer desk. No real office at work. No clue what I’m doing yet. But at least I have found a good cup of coffee.

There was the fantastic trip to the San Francisco area to visit Joey and Monica. We went to this distillery called Hangar One for a tasting. By far my favorite was their spiced pear vodka, but they also have raspberry liqueurs and weird citrus or kaffir lime hard liquor. Monica drove Joey and me up to Sonoma where we sampled the local wines and chocolates. We even got a chance to hit up a concert, and I got to see Monica’s laboratory with the subterranean-industrial-evil-genius plasma whatsit. Very chic, I’ll have to put one of those in my underground lair someday.

I got a girlfriend. She was having lunch with a friend in this kinda hippie cafe place where I was reading a book and having some coffee. She got up, I started talking to her friend, and then wound up spending the afternoon with them at the local street fair. It turns out she went to my high school, and her older sister and I were in the band together for all 4 years. Since then I was invited to the older sister’s wedding. Fun, interesting, and yet very bizarre.

The end of the semester brought quite a bit of chaos as everyone threw parties for everyone else, and because my undirected graph of friends is well-connected, there were n squared parties in the span of a week. This in concert with the unexpected 40 hours per week expected time in for my summer research job had worn my sanity rather thin. Meanwhile my girlfriend had been wondering why I’m so goddamn busy. So we decided to just eschew work for a bit and go camping. That was its own adventure.

Meanwhile I’ve written a paper with lots of help from my professor and submitted it to a conference. If it gets accepted, I might have a chance to go to Europe and present it.

That’s all I can remember for now. I’m going to drag my camera a couple places and hope to get inspired. My lenses and equipment are fine, I just need to take them out of the bag and take some photos with them.

Most days I feel as if I’m in the right place, but every once in awhile, like today, I’ll look back at things and it seems as if my soul is in a thousand pieces, scattered to the four winds. I took a swig of liquid courage and made a phone call back to the board of education to take care of some paperwork, and chatting with native speakers brought me right back to that point in my life… minus a few forgotten words here and there. I didn’t stutter too much. But days like this make me wonder if there are two people fighting inside my skull for control of my life. One wants to follow the logical path of my strengths as an engineer, while the other says I should give that up and go do something, anything in Japan. I’m in my element here, I’m in my element there. The real world says I have to pick one or the other. Maybe I need a door number three.

Even though I don’t read tons of comics, I’m still a colossal nerd. Or at least, I thought I was… but really I’ve got nothin’ on these folks. It nearly brought a tear to my eye to see my fellow geeks dressed as various comic book characters, mostly Japanese. *sniff* It definitely brought tears to my eyes to walk behind one or two rather pungent individuals who NEED SHOWERS BADLY. But it was all fun, mostly because I enjoy people watching in all its forms. These folks weren’t just dressed up, they were literally clad in glee. You couldn’t help but get the vibe that these people were coming together for an almost spiritual communion of sorts, a temporary graphic-novel Mecca.

I tagged along with Diana and her cast of characters to various panels and exhibits. Some of them were artists or writers talking about their work, which was interesting to listen to even if you hadn’t seen or heard their work (and yeah I was probably the only one… but I did buy the first book in a series that came highly recommended by everyone in the party and got it signed). Others were a little bit more interesting, like the body art seminar labeled ominously “18 and older”, which involved watching an artist apply paint to two very attractive women each wearing nothing but a thong. I’ll never think of the phrase “airbrushed models” the same way again.

Of course there was cool swag, like the Star Trek posters they were giving out, and the free DVD of “Death Race” I somehow acquired. And it was cool to go say hello to Wil Wheaton and thank him for his promotion of Child’s Play (he’s well-known for his role as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, but of course moved on to other things like books and voice acting by now). He’s become this sort of cornerstone geek icon recently, mainly by just being a normal guy with geekish interests like games and comics, who amazingly hasn’t tried to overplay his celebrity or let it go to his head. That’s pretty commendable I think.

I should post about my new RA position, but I’ll let it wait until I actually go in to see the lab on Wednesday.