The three things in the topic are completely unrelated.. other than the fact that all more or less happened in the same day to me 8P
Thursday night I went with a friend (Sergio) to watch Paul van Dyk performing. He’s currently the number 1 DJ in the World and I think that the deserves it. Surely more than Tiesto, which doesn’t seem like he’s released much in a while (and has been no.1 for a few years already). Compared to Armin van Buuren, PVD’s performance was definitely better. Armin is great with his weekly A State of Trance Internet radio program, but during the performance, he tended to fill in spaces with a bit too much techno for my taste (boom boom boom boom).. while clearly the cool thing about trance is the good mix of melody and ambient-like-whatever-feeling.
Curiously Mr.Van Dyk had friday scheduled to perform in China. Spending the night out wasn’t much of a problem for me (still in vacation), but my friend had to work the next day. Actually I was also to wake up early the next day, so we both left relatively early (3-3:30 AM).
I wanted to take pictures, but my digital camera is kind of big (not an ultra-compact) and my cell-phone camera half-broken. So, I decided to go forward and buy a new cell-phone ! I went a shop near my home.. that took courage, because I had to switch service, and generally talk to the clerk/owner in Japanese. It all went smoothly, the owner was really kind, however, because I didn’t go a a specific big DoCoMo (the carrier) center, it turned out that I could only pick up the phone the next day 8(
I ended up going to the club with the old (and facking big) cell-phone.. I tried to take a few pics, but the camera quality worsened to an unusable level. What a shame.

Back home, slept, and woke up today (Friday). Early, because I had to go to the Italian embassy (a bit of a mission to find the location, since the web-site recently moved). I didn’t mind to wake up early as it was yet another sunny day. At the embassy.. I felt a bit of Italy again. The clerk was smoking a cigarette all the time, although, as far as I know, even in Italy now that isn’t allowed.
It takes a bit of effort to adapt from the super-polite Japanese manners to the less sophisticated Italian ones. But one can’t really complain.. as long as the clerk uses a polite language and smiles at you at the end, one can’t really complain about the general feeling.. although form my point of view, people that work with the public should strive for maximum politeness !

Done at the embassy, I spent some time shopping. I went to GAP in Shibuya and also checked the new Apple store right in front of GAP (I really don’t like the feeling of entering an Apple store though !). Then I went to the Segafredo cafe (where the only voice one could her was one of some AMERICAN GUY, THEY GENERALLY SEEM TO TALK VERY LOUD FOR NO SPECIAL REASOOOONNN !!! ..There was also an Italian guy giving language lessons in the same cafe. He was was not as loud, but I could still distinctly hear him).

Then, finally, in the evening I went to pick up my cell-phone. And… it’s great !! (English and official site, and some extra shots, mine is white). First of all it’s a lot smaller than the brick I had before. The old one has some nice design, but was a weird result. Quickly rushed out in the market with an hires (320×240) display but low-res fonts. The new one is smaller, lighter, using some sort of 3G. Much faster with the Internet, I can finally send and receive attached pictures with no major problems (hoping to be able to exchange pics with family in Italy). The screen is large, 400×240, the interface is simpler, it has 2 cameras, a frontal one mostly for video-chat (dunno if I’ll ever use that) and the one on the back that has auto-focus and can take shots up to 3.9 MPixel ! Also comes with an Acrobat Reader.. !!! Great, but, seems rather limited as it coudln’t display the first 3D research paper I tried 8(
Still, I’m quite happy, if anything because now I have a decent camera, and it’s easy to use. I’m just not sure how much my bandwidth bill is going to turn out.
Tomorrow I’ll have to buy a memory card to store more pics and possibly MP3s and videos (but will I really need that ?).

And… no coding today !! Errands, write a (simple) diary in Japanese, then write here.. time flies. Sad.

Posted by Davide Pasca in Society, Diary, Japan