The US has just deployed a new weapon against those evil foreigners who hate our freedoms so much. Now we’re going to keep all you terrorists out by making it too annoying to enter the country.
Enter the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA). In a nutshell, almost all non-US citizens from visa-waiver countries (including Japan) have to register online before entering the US. You can read all about the details elsewhere.
I took a look at the Japanese version of the website and noticed some very large holes in the implementation.
The translation is confusing and broken in parts. There were sentences that just cut off halfway through.
Due to the details of Japanese text input on computers, you have to specifically tell users to enter single-byte characters in text forms, and actually enforce the this requirement with proper input validation because many people don’t really understand the difference. This is unless, of course, you’re prepared to handle double-byte alphanumerics on the back end. (Example: ABC123 is single-byte, ＡＢＣ１２３ is double-byte. More info on Wikipedia.)
Anyway, the form tells you to enter your info in the Latin alphabet (rōmaji), but nowhere does it specify single-byte. I wanted to test the form to see how well it coped with double-byte characters, but I didn’t want the DHS knocking down my door in the middle of the night.
The website is not designed with mobile access in mind (or so I assume; I couldn’t even connect to the site on my AU phone). Many, many Japanese people don’t have PCs, and do all their internet activities on their mobile phones with very limited browsers.
The website does no geo sniffing and ignores preferred language settings, defaulting to English and throwing up a giant legalese JavaScript popup. Talk about unfriendly.
Ultimately I suspect that people will end up leaving all this bullshit to travel agents, and very few people will personally deal with the system on any level (unless that’s not allowed for some reason).
Even if they fix the above problems, I think that this is yet another highly unnecessary act of security theater that will accomplish nothing but to annoy people, waste tax dollars, and serve as another potential vector for personal information to be lost or stolen.
It’s been quite a while since my last substantive update, so I’ll keep this brief.
I ran my first half marathon. It was just a practice run for an upcoming competition, but it was great. Unfortunately I soon afterward hurt my foot and had to sit out the actual race.
The last ekiden (relay race) of the season was yesterday. I managed to run 5k in 19:59, which is probably the fastest I’ve ever run.
I’m thinking I want to go to China to study Mandarin for 6 months or so, but I’m having a hard time choosing a school. Any recommendations?
This weekend I’ll be biking across the Shimanami Sea Route (link fixed), a series of bridges connecting small islands in the Inland Sea between Shikoku and Hiroshima. I took the above-right picture last November from atop a mountain in Onomichi on the other end of the route. Onomichi is the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. In the future when I’m independently wealthy and have villas and vacation homes all over the world, the first place I’m going is Onomichi.
…on film! Some random person caught me and M in a shot of the local train station. Weird.
M and I at JR Yawatahama
In other news, the copious photos of mountains and coastline that I’ve taken here in Ikata are finally up in Google Earth. Check it out. Most of the photos in the area are mine
The town of Nomura (actually now part of the city of Seiyo) loves sumo. They love it so much that the annual tournament is pretty much the biggest event of the year. Some friends and I took the day off, got up early as hell, splurged on floor seats, and took in more sumo in one day than most doctors would recommend in a year.
They had everyone from elementary school kids to high schoolers, college students, and even some amateur sumo enthusiasts from around the country. The local schools all had the day off, and every single kid was there to cheer on their school’s players.
The little kids were fun to watch. Some of them were just really cute. Some of them were comically mismatched, with a tiny little runt paired up with the class butterball or some kid who obviously got his growth spurt a little early. When you get to the high school students it’s just scary, though, as they each looked like they could take down an elephant with nothing but their hands and their sumo thongs.
The best part was when one of the visiting pros, Tamakasuga, went up against some of the little kids in a series of cute exhibition matches. I shot this on my cell phone, so make sure to squint and press your face into your monitor as hard as you can.
This post is dedicated to K, who may not make it through tomorrow without my help entertaining her.
I’m trying to find pumpkins so my elementary school kids can make jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. Through an acquaintance I managed to get my hands on a few pumpkins from a contest in Nomura, the closest place where they actually grow non-citrus produce. I managed to get out of work to go pick the pumpkins up with some people.
We took a bit of a detour. A long, narrow, winding road led us up a mountain, all the way into the grounds of a castle. This castle isn’t left over from ancient times or anything. It was built by some weirdo with money he skimmed from his own company rather than let it get taken as taxes.
It used to be a hotel and restaurant, and also a retreat for company parties and whatnot. Then the guy got old and donated it to the city, but the city doesn’t take care of it because it’s in the middle of nowhere and never really got any business.
Now it’s just home to the biggest insects I’ve ever seen outside a zoo in my life.
Then I had an amazing dinner, came home, got tired, gave up on the idea of studying, blogged, and now I’m going to rot my brain with TV until I go to bed. Sorry my life isn’t more interesting.
It’s a chore to get off my peninsula and onto the mainland. After wheezing my way up a mountain and through a tunnel, I found this view of the nearby town of Honai.
Honai is actually now a part of Yawatahama. They merged to save on administrative costs, just like practically every small town in Japan. This makes JET placements quite deceiving—you may be placed in “Yawatahama City,” but if that part of the city happens to be the former Honai, then you’re not really in the city at all; at best it’s a nearby suburb with all of the associated difficulties in transportation but without the yuppie feel.
I’m going to rant about TV for a bit now. I’ve complained about TV before on my blog, so let’s get the overlapping content out of the way: News shows.
Yesterday everyone was worried that typhoon 10 was going to hit the area; as a result, my plans to see the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie were canceled. It ended up being a bunch of nothing, as the typhoon swerved west into Kyūshū instead.
This morning I was watching the news when they switched to a weather update on the typhoon. You’d think they’d have some fancy on-screen graphics with nice, colorful icons and animations showing a map of Japan with an overlay of the typhoon and its course. Or, failing that, large, bright, crisp LCD displays showing the same. What did they show? Some guy’s PC monitor with Internet Explorer displaying an ugly version of weatherchannel.com. To illustrate his description of the weather, he clicked around, going from page to page. You are on TV telling us about the weather. We can assume, therefore, that you are a weather professional. At the very least, please maintain such an appearance.
Other things that enraged me: A news report about the recent popularity of completely unnecessary cosmetic surgery for kids. They didn’t say it in so many words, but basically 90% of the kids are forced into it by their idiotic, self-serving parents. They did mention that a strong trend in this is divorcees who want to make their child look less like their former spouse. I wanted to vomit, then throw the vomit in the face of the woman they interviewed who forced her perfectly acceptable-looking son to get a ridiculous operation to make his eyes look more Western.
There was something else too, but I forgot it.
My job is looking up—One of my superiors actually seems interested in having me translate the town website, so I’m slowly plodding through that. I’ve discovered that most of the people in my office are quite skilled in just looking busy, and any excuse I can find to talk to them is welcomed by a half hour of chitchat. Oh, the joys of government bureaucracy.
I got some good comments on the last article, so I’ll give you another in English.
Yesterday the ALT living below me took me to a Bon festival dance practice session. The Bon festival is a big summer deal in Japan, originally having to do with ancestors and filial piety and all that jazz. In reality it’s more of an excuse for everyone to get rowdy and drunk early in the morning.
Like so much of Japanese life, the festival demands clearly defined gender roles. Women dance and cook. Men get drunk and pretend to enjoy carrying heavy decorative floats. That’s the way it always has been and always will be; the natural state of the things, the circle of life, the nitrogen cycle, or the maybe even the Carnot engine. You know, one of those touchy-feely things that involve the placenta.
I pulled a gender bender last night, going to practice traditional Bon dances with the local troupe of quinquagenarian housewives. We pranced around in a circle, them moving with the grace and fluidity of decades of experience, me helplessly flailing my limbs in a poor attempt to mimic them. Needless to say, I had a monopoly on Y chromosomes in the room.
Earlier in the day I played hookey after lunch and got my friend to take me to buy a cell phone. I felt naked without a phone, but once I got it I realized I don’t really have anyone to talk to on it. It does have a pretty good camera built-in (3 megapixels), so as soon as I figure out how to transfer the photos to my POS work computer, you can all partake in the eyecandy.
In other good news, I got confirmation that my internet will be ready to go next Saturday. Despite this being the middle of nowhere, it will actually be faster than my parents’ connection in Minneapolis.
After work I’m going with my ALT friend to the nearby town of Uwa for some kaiten zushi. You may recall my previous pontifications on that particular piece of popular prandial perfection. Suffice it to say that kaiten zushi is without a doubt the best food on earth, and I would literally strangle any number of babies if it meant I would get a chance to eat it.
Finally the day was Sunday, the day of the event I had come all this way to see: J’s wedding. I had to abandon my plan of wearing one of those t-shirts with a picture of a tux on it at the behest of the bride. Instead, I dusted off my fancy business suit for the occassion, yet again forgetting to bring dress socks. Luckily this was a wedding (with open bar), not a job interview.
Sunday
9:00 AM
Wake up at R’s house. Use the shower, vainly attempting to navigate the veritable labyrinth of body- and hair-care products.
10:00 AM
Breakfast of cereal and fruit. The first decent breakfast I had since leaving Minneapolis.
11:00 AM
Demonstrate the magic that is Google Earth while fending off the attacks of little children.
12:00 PM
Lunch on cod roe (たらこ tarako) spaghetti, making the third full meal I mooched from R and family （本当にすみませんでした！）
1:20 PM
Tearful goodbyes as I left for the wedding.
1:30 PM
Park in paid lot. Will this be the end of my penny-pinching streak?! Read on to find out…
2:00 PM
Wander the halls of Memorial Union searching for the groom’s party.
2:30 PM
Interminable picture taking.
3:00 PM
Ceremony begins and ends with great efficiency. True physicists at heart, they had a judge instead of a priest.
3:30 PM
Open bar begins.
4:00 PM
Food served. This was my fifth free meal for the trip.
5:30 PM
Drafted into the role of “cameraman’s apprentice” for a whole damn hour. I held his infrared-sensing portable flash thingy that didn’t actually go off most of the time.
6:30 PM
Danced like an idiot for hours to the likes of “Jump Around,” “Without Me,” and the wedding-essential “Apache.”
Monday
12:00 AM
Hauled presents to cars, then stumbled back to my car. Noticed cops standing around the parking lot entrance, probably enforcing the after-hours unmanned payment system. I decide to leave the car where it is and take a nap.
4:00 AM
Wake up, leave unattended lot without paying (ha! Take that, Wisconsin!). Drive to Eagle Heights, park in a residential lot and go back to sleep.
9:00 AM
Wake up, drive to the SERF. Pay $0.40 for metered parking. Shower.
9:30 AM
Raw ramen for breakfast. Clip my nails on the sidewalk.
10:00 AM
Leave Madison for Red Wing, MN, where I have a sister city meeting to attend in the evening. I only vaguely remember how to get there, and my computer’s battery is dead so I can’t look it up. I decide to trust my instincts.
12:30 PM
I correctly choose I90 West over I94, but can’t recall the next turn off. I stop at some random god forsaken village’s McDonalds and find that I’m probably only 40 or so miles from the Minnesota border. Having earlier calculated a fuel efficiency of 32 MPG for my car, I figure I’ll have just enough gas to make it to Minnesota.
1:00 PM
I cross the border with the fuel indicator on “E.” There’s gotta be another town with gas soon after La Crosse, right…?
1:15 PM
Wrong. I take the next turn off and find nothing but farmhouses and a Bobcat dealership. I ask the only people around where the nearest gas station is, but it turns out they’re clueless tourists from New York. With my fuel indicator now pointing below “E” I suppress my sense of impending doom and get back on the highway…
1:30 PM
…but it’s the wrong highway. By the time I realize it, I figure it’s too late to turn back. I have to push on and find gas, with the indicator somehow indicating a negative amount, but billboards tell me the closest sign of civilization is 12 miles away. Do I have 3/8 of a gallon left?
1:45 PM
I do! I make it to Wabasha, MN, home of the movie “Grumpy Old Men,” and buy $10 worth of gas. at $2.96 per gallon, that should be enough to get me another 90 miles, which should easily take me to Red Wing. Luckily enough, the gas station attendant says I’m on the right highway, and all I have to do is follow it north for a while. Huzzah!
2:30 PM
Arrive safely in Red Wing. Try to get suit dry cleaned for meeting, but they don’t have same-day service. Damn.
3:00 PM
Find free parking and public library. Revive computer and blog.
5:15 PM
Attend Red Wing Sister City Commission meeting. Pretend to get jokes told by boisterous old man.
6:30 PM
Drive back to Minneapolis through rolling hills and fields of corn.
7:45 PM
Arrive in Minneapolis.
So I made it back home having spent only $2.76 within the state of Wisconsin, and with overall expenditures less than $30. Pretty good, I’d say.
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