As many of you know, I didn't bring my Mac with me when I moved to Tokyo. My reasoning was simple: I spent too much time surfing the Internet and doodling in Photoshop back when I lived in S.F., and I didn't want to bring my bad habits with me when I came here. This was a tough decision for me, as I've had a Mac by my side every day of my life since I was 19. Let's take a trip down memory lane, shall we?

My first Macintosh was the "pizza box," a pre-PowerPC LCII which boasted 4MB of RAM and a whopping 75-meg hard drive. My second was the 8500, Apple's first PCI machine, and the only one with A/V-in ports, allowing it to serve as an extremely primitive video-editing machine. Thanks to numerous hardware upgrades, the 8500 lasted an impressive five years, from the beginning of my CalArts period in 1995 through the end of my Novo period in 2000. I had great fun keeping the rickety thing going, but after MacOS X came out I knew I'd need a new machine. One eBay impulse-buy later, and I was the proud owner of a G4 Cube—later upgraded to 1Ghz:#151;which I'd still be using today if I hadn't moved to Japan. Thus, these last two months of Maclessness have been a unique experiment for me.

Well, the experiment is over. Last week, in frustration over not being able to use the Japanese language-learning software I brought with me, I marched down to Akihabara and bought a used iBook. It's the tiny white kind, so I have the option of installing an Airport card and MacOS X should the need arise. For now, though, it's just a three-year-old laptop running a Japanese-language MacOS 9.1, so I'm not all that concerned that I'll sink back into carpal-tunnel-land.

In the last week, I have indeed been using my newest Mac to study Japanese, so mission accomplished, as far as I'm concerned.

Wednesday was Follow-Up Training 2 day, also known as FUT-2. I'd had FUT-1 several weeks earlier, which is where I first encountered Kurt, a spirited young I.T. guy from Vancouver. He and I hit it off well, trading Nova gossip during the break and just generally being wiseasses during the otherwise zombifying four-hour training session. So when we ran into each other at FUT-2, we decided to head out for drinks afterwards. (My longstanding drinking policy remains unchanged, if anyone's wondering.)

Kurt took me to Mickey's House, a gaijin bar that specializes in language exchange—all native English speakers get in free; Japanese patrons pay a cover charge to hang out with foreigners. Kurt, who's been to Japan twice before, sees the whole gaijin-bar scene as a pretty straightforward meat market, but after my first trip to one, I can see it either way. The Japanese really do love clumsy small-talk with foreigners, no doubt about it.

The bar itself was, well, kinda sad. The word "dingy" probably sums it up best—just a handful of tables and chairs, populated by ordinary Japanese folks and vaguely creepy-looking white guys, although any white guy looks creepy when he's chatting up a table of giggling college girls. Don't get me wrong; everyone was in good spirits, it's just that the whole place had a small-town fraternity feel to it that I didn't really cotton to.

Anyway, the bartender/owner ushered Kurt and me over to the college girls' table, where I immediately humiliated myself by trying to speak Japanese, something I must never, ever do again. It wasn't necessary anyway, it never is—in this country, even toddlers can speak English better than I can speak Japanese. The conversation was the same as it always is: how long have you been in Japan; have you been to Kyoto; do you like Japanese food; how old are you; etc.

Under normal circumstances, having a trio of 18-year-olds Asian girls fawning over me in a bar would be fun (though how would I know?), but mainly the only thought going through my head was, "Finally, a decent blog entry." Kurt and I both had early shifts the next morning, and I don't have a phone anyway, so we excused ourselves politely around 9:30 and made our way back to the train station.

It wasn't an unpleasant experience or anything, and I'd be happy to give it another shot sometime, when my Japanese is better and I don't have to go to work the next morning.

Getting a phone might be a good idea, too.

(From left to right: girl whose name I forgot, creepy guy, girl whose name I forgot, girl whose name I forgot, Kurt.)

Yeah, I know. Long time between updates. Trust me, though—you wouldn't have wanted a blow-by-blow of the last two weeks anyway.

The problem, as it turned out, was those damn Japanese lessons. Don't get me wrong, they're great and I plan to keep taking them. But the school's way on the other side of the city, and my one-hour class ends up requiring a total of three hours of travel time. So after going a bit nuts and signing up for three classes a week, my work-o-meter went from "hectic" to "kill me now." Most days, I was crawling out of bed at 7:30am and stumbling back home at 10:00pm, with only a 39-minute lunch break as my free time. And that's about when the entries stopped coming.

Simply put, I had no energy to write anything, no time in which to write, and nothing to write about, assuming you all weren't interested in reading "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" over and over.

But life goes on, and so must this blog. I actually managed to pack a remarkable amount of excitement into my last two days off, and if I hadn't just gotten home at 11:00pm, I'd tell you all about it. Alas, I have an early shift tomorrow, so this entry's all I can manage for now. I think I figured out a way to upload photos, though, so stay tuned, 'kay?

I'm typing these words into my Clié while riding the Yamanote, the looping train line that encircles downtown Tokyo. I'm on my way back from my very first Japanese class, racing to make my 1:20pm late shift at Nova. By my calculations, I should arrive with about five minutes to spare.

Signing up with Amica was the Right Thing To Do. It's great that I'm going to try to prod my atrocious Japanese skills into shape, but more significant, I think, is the fact that I'll now have to travel into the heart of the metropolis twice a week. Not as a tourist, you understand, but as just another harried guy in a suit, trying to squeeze a few more activities into his day. There's no better way to suck all the indimidation out of a place, if you ask me. Even a place like Tokyo.

Well, this is my stop. Gotta go.

Over the last six weeks, a few of you have asked if there was anything I needed mailed to me. So far I've been reluctant to make requests, since even the tiniest packages cost exorbitant amounts to send to Japan.

Well, today I'm happy to announce the creation of music.luckbat.com, a repository I've created for uploading MP3s. Yes, there is something you can send me: music! I didn't bring any with me to Japan, so now's the perfect time to impose your musical tastes on me. Got any tracks you think I'd like? Just bought a new album that you're dying to share? Well now you've got 360 megs of space in which to show off your great taste in tunes.

Here's how it works: using your favorite FTP client, log into ftp://luckbat.com/music/ (Windows users can use their browser to do this) with username guestbat and password luckmp3 . And you're in! From this point you can upload whatever files you like, though obviously I'm hoping for MP3s. Note that you have full access privileges in this directory, so be careful not to erase other people's stuff.

At my end, I can simply download the files and then delete them from the server to free up the space. Pretty nifty, huh? Over time I'd like to add some bells and whistles, like a request engine or rankings of music tracks, but for now music.luckbat.com is simply an empty directory for you to fill with whatever music you think I should be listening to.

Thanks, and happy uploading!

P.S. My Clié's music player can only read MP3 files, so you Apple Music Store lovers will have to convert to MP3 if you want to share. (If you have Quicktime Pro, though, this is a simple one-step export.)

Okay, last chance to try to solve the mystery of The Passport That Wasn't There. Click into the entry below, read it, and when you're ready, come back and read the rest of this one. I'll wait.

So. Some of the clues you might've picked up on:

• [...] Every morning, on my way out the door, I'd pick up all three items and route them to their appropriate pockets. It was a decent system, and it hadn't failed me yet.

• [...] On Friday morning, the wallet and keys were right where they were supposed to be. The passport was not.

• [...] Frankly, I couldn't even remember getting dressed yesterday at all. The whole morning had been a frantic blur.

• [...] According to my sense-memory, my passport should be in my suit pocket, which it just... wasn't. Only logic could offer an explanation.

• [...] I yanked open the company armoire and shoved my way through a forest of indistinguishable black suit jackets, scanning the floor for a passport I knew I wouldn't find.

• [...] "Lost my passport last week," I said. "Today's the first day I've been able to do anything about it."
  

The Passport That Wasn't There, Part II

"Hey Mike," Darren said, as he passed by. Due to our schedules, I only saw Darren once a week, though today was, as I mentioned, my day off. "Carl mentioned you were looking for your passport?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Well, I haven't been able to find find my suit jacket. I figure someone must've taken it last week. When I was looking through the closet for it, I noticed that one of the jackets had a passport in the pocket."

"Well that can't be mine," I said. "I would've noticed if I'd been walking around in someone else's suit all week."

"Just thought I'd mention it."

"Well, Is your suit black, Italian-made, with four buttons?"

"It's black," he said. "I dunno how many buttons it has."

"Uh... I think I'd better make a phone call."

You can guess the rest. Darren's suit was an Italian four-button design. In my sleep-deprived state, I had grabbed the wrong jacket on my way out the door and had somehow managed to wear it twice (and to search through it a dozen times) without noticing the difference. Ten minutes later, I was on the train to the Narimasu office to pick up my precious passport from the closet where it had been sitting, nonchalantly, for the past week. In my suit jacket pocket. Right where it was supposed to be.