I had an enjoyable day at Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) today. It’s a great lab — and part of the reason I’m so psyched to work for Microsoft. It really is a global company with global resources.

Coincidentally, Nick Craswell, from MSR - Cambridge (MSRC), and Josh Goodman from MSR were also visiting MSRA. So that night, some of the senior folks at the lab treated us to a dinner at South Beauty, which from the URL is probably really pronounced qiao jiang nan.. We were treated to a number of specialties… no, not fresh-killed snake (which apparently is quite the dish), but a couple other interesting plates. The weirdest name was literally translated as “husband wife lung slice” — which is named after a husband & wife restaurant owner who made the dish up. Essentially, it’s thinly slices ox tongue in a spicy broth, and surprisingly good. There was also a fish dish (and the live fish was brought out for us to see) that was amazing, and a host of others that I can’t at all remember. Oh, and we had South Beauty Stout — mmmm…. dark beer! The restaurant was also gorgeous to see… a koi pond indoors and lotsof greenery (fake, but still looked cool). Good stuff.

Jin and I got up a bit late this morning… as I said, lots of sake. We then made a quick (heh) trip to the Tsukiji Market, which is the world’s largest fish market. Most of the sushi in Japan goes through there, apparently. Anyway, we went as I recall there being a good knife store there from the Nenox Japanese web site, www.nenohi.co.jp.

We got there about 1 PM, and the place was pretty dead. Apparently things are hopping from 6 AM to about 10 AM, and then the day is done. We found a stall with the knives we wanted, but they only took cash and I didn’t have enough. However, they had a main store down the street, and there was a post office (which is the only place Plus or Cirrus works) nearby. So we headed over, got some cash, and went to the store. I eventually found Sean a nice Japanese vegatable knife (usuba), which is a a squared blade. You can see the style here: http://www.japanesechefsknife.com/HonKasumiGyokuseikou.html. Anyway, this knife was plenty sharp, but after I bought it, the owner of the store promptly took the knife to a sharpening block and put a razor edge on it! Man, this thing is sharp now! I’ll tell you later how Sean enjoys it.

We then headed back and Jin got me off on the Narita Express to Narita, where I hopped a flight to Beijing. The flight was fine — the only mistake I made was I exchanged 10,305 yen for 700 RMB… horrible exchange rate. I should have exchanged money at the Beijing Airport, where the stalls are open 24 hours and the rate is set by law at 8.24% — so they don’t completely rip you off. Ah well, live and learn. And expense. The cab ride to my hotel, the Shangri-La Beijing, was just under 90 RMBs, or about $12. Took 45 minutes. Wow Beijing is cheap….

Jin and I met with MSKK, aka Microsoft Japan, today. They’re an outstanding bunch. We talked shop for a bit, then they took us to a lovely dinner of oden, which is another shared-soup thing like chanko (or chiyanko, depending on how you want to spell ちやんこ. It was also quite yummy! We then went to a local sake bar and had a lot of sake.. we had to try all the local varieties. Imagine going to a local wine bar in Paris with some locals, or the local pub in Munich or even Seattle with locals who know the beer. Same thing. We had a lot of amazing, cold sake. Sadly, I don’t recall any of the names… I’ll have to send some mail and ask ‘em, and see if i can’t get them at Uwajimaya or something.

Today, Jin, Sachio, Matt, and I went to Day 8 of the May Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo! I have always wanted to see sumo, and had a blast watching it today!

We started off having ちやんこ, or chiyanko. Chiyanko is a community pot of boiling water, where you toss in veggies and random meats. It’s also what you typically eat if you’re training for sumo. And the broth is wonderful after it’s cooked a bunch of meat and veggies! Anyway, after chiyanko, we headed off to sumo!

Sumo is an interesting sport. First off, it’s one of the few where a whole lot of fat, coupled with a whole lot of weight, wins. Most sports just want muscle, but sumo gives hope to guys like me. The second is that there’s a lot more ritual around each match — although it’s a lot more casual than I expected. The crowd is also a lot more mellow than I expected… not nearly as organized as the folks at the baseball game.

The ritual is simple… for the most part, the rikishi (wrestlers) get into a stance to wrestle, stand up, then toss some salt into the dohyo. After the third time, they get into the stance once more, and try to toss one another out or two the ground.

We saw a number of matches… we got there just before 4 PM, when the makuuchi rikishi (the majors) came in to wrestle. Each wrestler has one bout per day. The tournament is 15 matches, and the best win-loss record wins. There’s one yokozuna, Asashoryu, a Mongolian — the third non-Japanese yokozuna (the other was a Samoan, and the first was Akebono, the Hawaiian), and three ozeki (champions), although only two were wrestling. The third dropped out due to injury. Asashoryu won the match we saw… we found out later that he went 15-0 and won the competition. He’s dominated the past tournaments, and he’s only 24! Pretty impressive guy.

i’ll put up some pics… i need to go through them, as i was using a telephoto on a Nikon D70, but the light conditions required a steadier hand than I had, so many are blury. Alas.

I spent a lot of time Saturday wandering around the local area to get a
feel for it. It was surprisingly quiet, but then again it’s Saturday in
a business district, so it’s to be expected. The hotel I’m at is across
the street from the Tokyo Metropolitan Building, which is the tallest
building in the area and has a nice observation deck at the top (45th
floor, although the floors here must be bigger than the floors in the
triangle tube building we were in yesterday as I was looking down at
that building). I got a number of decent shots of the city… it’s the
density of New York, coupled with the sprawl of Los Angeles. It’s just
something you have to see.

Somewhere along the line, I manage to accidentally put my finger on the
new telephoto lens… d’oh! So now I need to pick up a lens cleaner…
OK, time to see how much I retain from 20 weeks of Japanese class! The
way to ask “Where is ” in Japanese is “ dochira desu ka?”
/Dochira/ is the polite form of “where,” /desu/ is “is,” and /ka/ is the
Japanese question mark. Also, /desu ka/ is pronounced des-ka, the u is
silent. Now the tough part was what the translation is for lens cleaning
paper. I knew that “lens” was simply “rensu” — in Japanese, “l” and
“r” are the same (well, the true pronunciation is a bit in between, and
actually sounds a bit like a “d” to me). Trailing “s” is always “su”
where the “u” is silent. So, I took a guess with paper — peipaa, which
is the phonetic translation. So, I found a nice uniformed Yodabashi
sales clerk, went up, and asked: ”すみません、レンスペイパーどちらです
か？” — “/Sumimasen, rensu peipaa dochira desu ka?/” He brought me
over to a different section with binoculars. I asked someone the same
question here, and the gentleman said “yon-kai” — fourth floor! Up I
went (this place is huge… I think it’s 5 floors of camera stuff), and
on the 4th floor I found tripods and, yes, lens cleaning paper (chamois,
actually). Spent a bit of time figuring out what would be good, bought
it, and we’re done! Yay!

I know, it’s a mindless, trivial thing to buy some lens paper. But
y’know, in a foreign language as alien as Japanese, this was a huge step!

Well, the conference ended today without much fanfare… mostly as most
people (myself included) took off before the last session. The
highlight today was Rob Glaser’s keynote. Rob is the
Founder & CEO of RealNetworks, where I spent about 2.5 years and MK a
year before me. I was hoping for a good talk… and it was OK, if pretty
devoid of content. The problem with it, and frankly with lots of
keynotes, is that they lack one of the four required (IMHO) components
for a useful keynote. They are:

1. A real problem. The speaker should describe what problem is being
talked about here.

2. Issues with solving the problem. Presumably, if the problem is worth
talking about, there are some issues with solving it.

3. Relevant technology. Presumably, the relevant technology at the
conference is helping in some way. How?

4. Call to action. Finally, the audience should be able to understand
what they can do, if they so choose, to help solve the issues being faced.

Rob’s speech was a classic Industry Product Line speech. He describe a
bunch of products and why they were interesting, but didn’t touch on why
technology being developed within the WWW community was helpful, nor did
he present any avenues for people at the conference to do some work in
the area. Granted, he’s probably used to pitching to businesses to work
together vs a research audience, but still.

Anyway, at least he gave a decent talk and said RealNetworks would
rejoin the W3C after lapsing their membership… although I wonder if
somebody will get around to filling out the form by next year.

Jin, Frank McSherry and I trucked into Shinjuku after the conference. The
rough part was hauling my luggage through the Shinjuku station… the
place is huge! And I thought wandering through the Tokyo station at
night on Wednesday was bad. Basically, from where we got off the train
at Shinjuku to the hotel, it’s one subway stop on one of the lines —
so it’s a bit. What is surprising is how much is underground or built
over. Anyway, we walked for maybe 30 minutes, and then had to go up a
couple decent flights of stairs with the baggage. That’s the only thing
that really sucked. Jin and I then went over to Yodabashi Camera - a
huge electronics outfit - to get a zoom lens for the camera. After the
baseball game, I figured I’d need a telephoto for any kind of
interesting shots at sumo on Sunday. This was relatively painless, but
it’s nice to have someone who speaks the language!

Frank & I then had some OK sushi at a place next door. The building was
a triangular tube — down the middle, it was open. We ate on the 50th
floor, so it was somewhat interesting looking down at a 50 story drop on
the inside! But it was all glass covered, so no way to accidentally fall
in. Still, it’s a bit weird to have random restaurants and such on the
upper floors of a building… I’m too used to having them either on the
top floor or bottom floor!

It turns out the conference location, Makuhari Messe, is walking
distance to the Chiba Stadium. As it happens, while we were there the
local team, the Chiba Marines of the Pacific Division, were playing
Japanese inter-league play for the first time ever - against the Hanshin
Tigers of the Central Division (there are only two divisions in Japanese
Baseball). The box lunches we had at the conference were pretty sketchy,
so a few of us decided to blow off the banquet for some baseball. This
was a huge win. We got some decent seats for the game andjust
experienced the atmostphere. So, there are a couple different things
about Japanese Baseball. The biggest is that the outfield is divided,
with the right field side being where the home team organized cheering
section is, and left field holding the away team cheering section. Each
section does an organized cheer when one of their batters comes up —
either a song, or they chant the guys name, or something. There’s also a
guy with a big drum and a trumpet player somewhere in there. This is
just fun.

In celebration for interleague play, they had fireworks at the fifth
inning. Very cool. They also have cheerleaders in bright neon blue
outfits acting very cute. Also, as it turns out most (95%?) of the
people selling beer were these young women with a pony keg on their
back… they must have some huge leg muscles after working the stands
for a bit. Yow! And alas, no sketchy guy tossing peanuts into the crowd.

The biggest difference is the 7th inning. Instead of the seventh inning
stretch, you have Lucky 7. At the top and middle, the away and home team
fans respectively blow up these long balloons with a little bulb at the
top — kinda like a giant bean sprout. Then, they release all these
balloons into the air — and it makes quite a show! Also, the winning
team does this again at the end up the game… in this case, it was the
Tigers.

Some things don’t change… there was a play at first that was very
close, and the umpire called the runner safe. Well, out ran the coach of
the Marines to scream at the ump —- Bobby Valentine! Yes, Bobby V is
coaching the Marines, and doing a good job of it — the Marines are (or
were) in first place in the Pacific Division, whereas they’re normally
one of the lesser teams of the league. Anyway, Bobby runs out with his
interpreter, yells at the ump, and then the interpreter yells at the
ump. He didn’t get tossed, but it was fun to watch. Apparently though
most Japanese aren’t into the big tirade by the manager. Ah well.

Oh, and yes, I had some yummy curry udon noodles at the game. Mmmm….
noodles and baseball! Woot!

And that banquet we blew off? Apparently just finger food, and not much
of it, and some Japanese No dancing, which not even locals really get.
We totally made the right call!

On Wednesday night, we headed into Tokyo near Waseda to meet up with
Jin’s brother Ken, who lived near there. The plan was to find a good,
local sushi joint and have a nice dinner. Well, wow, did we ever find
one. The place is called Ohzushi (translated, Big Sushi), or 大寿司,
owned and operated by Mr. 深谷大三郎, or Daisaburo Fukaya. This was an
experience. To start, we got a ton of amazing sushi, most of which I’d
never heard of. A couple of my favorites were kotsu - at least that’s
what I think it is. Mr. Fukaya kept pronouncing it “kotz” — it’s a
white fish, really yummy, and apparently seasonal for May. Wasn’t able
to find it anywhere else. We also had some kujira…. we at first
thought it was tuna, as it looked a lot like ahi — very red and lean.
Oops, not quite right on the translation — it’s minke whale! Hmmm…
not sure how I feel about that, but it was really yummy.

We also sampled a number of sakes… apparently, you have room
temperature sake, warm sake, and cold sake. All that stuff you learned
about sake being served at 98° F is just for export, apparently. And the
cold stuff was amazing… we had one which I can’t quite remember that
apparently has a 5-month waiting period to get. Wow was it smooth. We
did get some brand recommendations for others which hopefully we can
find at Uwajimaya back in Seattle, or perhaps just order online. I’ll
update this post later when I find the card I wrote them down on.

We also discovered that for sushi, there are a couple different soy
sauces, and they aren’t called soy sauces, as they’re just for sushi.
You get sweeter ones and drier ones for red fish or white fish. You also
don’t typically put wasabi in the soy sauce… there should be wasabi
between the fish and the rice. Finally, we discovered the proper way to
eat sushi. You don’t just grab the sushi with your chopsticks on either
side of the rice, and dip the rice into the sauce. Instead, you turn the
sushi on its side, and hold the sushi with one chopstick on top of the
fish and another on the bottom of the rice. You then invert the sushi
and dip the fish in the sauce — this way, you get the right taste of
sauce on fish, and you don’t get soy-coated rice all in your soy sauce
dish. Huh…. I gotta try that in Seattle.

Anyway, for your dining pleasure if you’re ever in the Tokyo area:

Address: Ale Plaza B1, 1-1-5 Toyama, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan, 162-0052.
Directions: Go to the Wakamatsu Kawada station on the Oedo Line. Take
the only exit from the station. Make a right, then another right at the
corner by the Tully’s (yes, apparently like Starbucks Tully’s are now
everywhere in Tokyo). Go down the alley all the way, make a right on the
main road. Ohzushi will be on the left, in the basement of a building.

We had the first day of the WWW conference today. As always, there’s a
lot more time spent catching up with people that you haven’t seen in a
while early on, which is always great. Saw lots of folks from various
walks at Microsoft, a couple UW folks, some Google folks, and even a
couple people from InfoSpace. All in all a good crowd.

The talks were good today… decent amount of interesting things.

After a ~9 hour flight, I’m in Japan! It feels weird, but I seem to have
adjusted to the time OK. Left at 2 PM, arrived 4 PM Japan time. It was
warm and sunny, so I didn’t notice it was like 2 AM PST. Got to the
hotel OK… my partner in spam Janine was with me, as well as Sue Dumais
from MSR. I found out later that Matt, another colleague, managed to
check in 59 minutes before the flight, and it didn’t let him — so he
missed it! D’oh! Looks like that hour is required. Still a bit dickish
for 1 minute… ah well.

Anyway, a bunch of the other MSR folks are here… Marc najork and Mark
Manasse from SVC, and there should be a bunch of MSRA folks here as
well. Wei-Ying should be on a panel in a day or so, and our own Gary
Flake will be at a panel as well. All in all, looking good so far!