Viraj's Weblog

Yeh, that's right, my bike was stolen over the holiday. I had it locked to a pillar next to my car in my carport. They broke the lock and took the bike . There were even other bikes in the carport, but they decided to take mine probably because it was the most expensive.

So over the holiday I bought myself another bike, a Schwinn World Avenue. It was a recommended bike on a commuter bike review site. I like it a lot, and does much better on the road than my previous one. Let's just hope it doesn't get stolen as well. Sigh..

For the past few months I've been learning to play Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven on my guitar. I have newfound respect for Jimmy Page, that guy is just amazing. Right now I'm playing it at about half the tempo. I have just finished figuring out all of the notes of the guitar solo, which has got to be the most awesome solo ever.

A friend got me started and taught me the first part of the song. Even that I mess up a lot but I at least know the notes. Then came the solo. I could never have figured it out at normal tempo. I used Audacity to time shift the solo -40% and set it on a loop. Then I spent hours looping tiny bits and trying to get the notes down. Audacity is just amazing for this. I think I spent all day on it today, but I think I got all the notes down. Playing them is the hard part .

This song has got to be the best song for guitar practice ever as it makes use of so many techniques. I'll post some samples once I can do it consistently. Otherwise you'd just hear all my mistakes. I'm using Garage Band for recording. It's pretty simplistic, but seems to get the job done (and I am in no way at a professional level). A friend let me borrow a Digitech RP20 effects processor and I'm having a lot of fun with it. The effects make me sound a lot better than I actually am .

I've been on some long flights and just finished reading Toppamono. I had actually heard about this book after reading Yakuza Moon, which is a biography of a daughter of a yakuza in Japan. Yakuza is basically the Japanese mafia.

Toppamono is a biography of a son of a yakuza. Here are some quotes from the book about the word toppamono:

The word suggests "bulldozing one's way through," so a toppamono is someone with a devil-may-care attitude who pushes ahead regardless.

...

Toppa means being single-minded and bullheaded once you've decided your course of action, and as such it has both a positive and negative side. It's negative if the person is too single-minded to recognize that his actions are having an adverse effect. But it's positive if he holds his own and stays the course. At any event, toppa describes a man who charges forward without actually knowing where he is going. Given family considerations and social conventions, it's very hard to be toppa. But a small number stubbornly succeed, and while their reckless behavior is regarded with disdain, it also earns them a certain respect.

In general I liked the book but it was rather tiring in just how many street hustle stories there were. The author also spent a large part of the book covering his revolutionary activism during college, which generally consisted of lots of violent student organization clashes. It did however give a very good history of the the Japanese underground and gets the reader sympathetic towards such criminals.

After college the author starts working for the press. I thought this was an interesting quote about the press that very much relates to things in the U.S. as well:

Take the police beat, for example. There was a time when reporters used to be allowed into interrogation rooms to get their stories. Now one just sighs wistfully for the freedom and latitude of the past, when in any case journalists tended to go about their work more aggressively. These days, by relying primarily on official announcements, the main newspapers provide surprisingly uniform news coverage and are only able to differentiate themselves in the small details. In such an environment, reporters gradually equate reporting with receiving news supplied by the government. So prevalent is this attitude, and so many bad habits have developed as a consequence, you could say that freedom of the press has effectively been given a pain-free death.

Many other areas of the Japanese underworld were covered. Here is an interesting quote regarding geisha and their danna (patron). It shows what is at work underneath the pretty kimonos:

Once a young woman had snared her patron, the old ladies shifted their attention to seeing how much money she could get out of him before making a clean break. It never entered their heads that the girl might find long-term happiness as a second wife or mistress. There was a shrewd Asian realism at work that saw the young women as merchandisable commodities whose earnings would make it possible for the whole family to lead a better life - and as relatives, the old ladies wanted to get the highest price they could. It was a hopeless world, really. But everyone involved was quite straightforward about what they were doing and carried on matter-of-factly. Of course, girls did develop feelings for their patrons, but mercenary motives ruled in the end. In that sense, it was a world of uncompromising professionalism.

This history of Japan's real-estate bubble is also telling of similar times here:

... Speculation bred more speculation, resulting in a swelling balloon of false creditworthiness. It is interesting how money reveals its true nature as an abstract entity at times like this, when huge sums come into play. Its nihilistic character, usually unnoticed, is magnified for all to see.

When a move was made on a piece of land in the early days of the bubble, for example, the landowner would receive his sale price and the tenants forced to leave would be compensated. In other words, the movement of money was strictly tied to actual movements of land and people.

But at the peak of the bubble, money moved around irrespective of whether land or people did. No longer anchored in reality, money became an abstraction that behaved according to its own logic, entirely related to numbers. The world that seemed to be represented by money was illusory, a false one in which the intrinsic distinction between a genuine banknote and a counterfeit bill no longer existed; and one in which money did not reflect the effort individuals put in to earn it over a long period, or the suffering and hardships they endured to make a living. All around me, people rushed wildly about in search of these false rewards.

If you are interested in Japan's post-war underworld history, both Yakuza Moon and Toppamono are good books. The former is more personal and emotional, and the latter more historical.