Tea Leaves

I bought a new disk drive to use with my shiny new iMac, specifically for use with Time Machine. Picking out the right drive to buy was itself educational.

There’s a tendency in geek circles to succumb to what I call measurebation, which more or less means to compare products solely by their feature lists. You pick the product at your price point that has bigger numbers on it, and you’re done. The problem is that this approach often ignores the tangibles.

Yes, tangibles. Some commentators like to refer to attributes such as industrial design or build quality as “intangibles.” That is because they are stupid. Build quality is no less tangible than, say, CPU speed. It’s just harder to put on a box.

When selecting my backup drive, I had two specific tangible qualities, apart from price, in mind:

(1) It had to store “enough” data. How much data is “enough” was negotiable.
(2) It had to be perfectly quiet. This was not negotiable.

The sweet spot in external hard-disk based storage right now, if you’re only looking at price and capacity, is a terabyte. Nearly every manufacturer makes a terabyte unit at what can only be described as an astonishingly low price. You can walk into your local Best Buy and walk out with more storage than we ever dreamed of in 1990.

The problem with these terabyte units is that most of them are really little RAID arrays of 2 500 Gb disks. 2 disks in one assembly means they put out more heat. That means they require more active cooling systems, such as fans. That means they are all, as near as I can tell, too loud for my purposes.

I eventually settled on a Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750Gb drive. Manly men feel offended by this drive’s creative industrial design, decorative orange light, and trying-a-bit-too-hard “friendliness.” All I know is: it is dirt cheap, physically small and elegant, it worked out of the box with a minimum of fuss, and it is absolutely, beautifully, perfectly quiet.

If I wasn’t worried about getting saliva on my data, I would kiss it.

Amusingly, now that my monster video editing station is set up and configured, my camcorder has finally died the death. So it will be a little while before I can pick up a replacement and start making booze videos again. Sic transit gloria Canon.

The Steelers beat up the Bengals.

The Patriots completely crushed the Redskins.

Finally, the Red Sox finished off the Rockies to win the World Series again. Who would have thought.

I was trying to record the new PBS series The War in HD on my shiny new HD Tivo. The first few episodes came in fine, but the most recent repeat only recorded in SD even though the program guide said it was on the HD version of WQED. So I tried setting up a single recording by hand, and after it finished, I looked at it and it was a completely different program than was listed in the Guide. Some cooking show. No Ken Burns.

So tonight I am flipping around, and I compare what is on the TV with what is listed in the guide, and I realized that my Tivo is showing the programming listed for WQEDDT (200) on channel 220, which is WQEDDT2. Meanwhile, channel 200 is showing what should be on 220, or maybe the regular analog channel 13. I can’t really tell. In any case, this renders the Tivo service completely useless since you can’t actually record anything that is listed, you get the wrong channel.

I want to know who I should kill for this.

We were in Seattle for a long weekend this past week. This is the first time I’ve been back since a trip about ten years ago. As before, Seattle is a great food town, especially for seafood. And, in the last ten years they have finally learned how to make a cappuccino. Here are a few places to try.

Coffee

First things first. Seattle has this reputation for bringing “good coffee” to the rest of us barbarians in the rest of the country. I don’t know about that but I do know that the last time I was there you couldn’t get a good cappuccino. All you could get are what I will call “Seattle” cappuccinos all of which involved some super hot coffee at the bottom of a foot tall column of milk foam.

Happily, this has all changed. Just toddle your way over to Victrola Coffee Roasters and get one of these:

Not only do they have some espresso blends that are as good as I’ve ever had, they also know how to make a cappuccino. They do have the arrogant temerity to call it a “traditional” cappuccino instead of a “canonically correct as God himself intended it” cappuccino, but I will forgive them this for the quality of their coffee. They have nice mugs too.

The Uptown still has better girl/boy watching though.

Ramen

After your coffee breakfast, you should head over to the International district via the REI store and go directly to Samurai Noodle. All you need to know is this: at this place you can get a bowl of pork broth filled with noodles. That by itself would be perfect, but then you can top it with pork slices and green onion, then some extra pork slices, and on the side, pickles, an egg, rice, and more shredded pork. If there is a better definition of heaven I don’t know what it is.

They have some other stuff too, but I was too mesmerized by the pork to notice what it is.

Cameras

Full of ramen, you can hop a bus over to Glazer’s Camera shop. Here you can play with all the hardware that you can only look at pictures of on the web. You can see if that EOS 5-d will fit in the Domke 803 bag comfortably (answer: yes). You can go through all of the Gitzo carbon tripods and open and close the legs to see how they feel (answer: sticky). Finally, you can fondle the Leica M8 and think about what it costs (answer: as much as an EOS-5d outfit plus a custom road bike).

I also looked at the new Canon G9 point and shoot. This thing handles nicely, although the time between “point” and “shoot” is still a bit high. The more exciting thing about the camera is that somehow Canon have figured out how to get decent high ISO performance out of the shitty small sensor. Or at least I think they have, from the limited number of sample images I tried.

Tea

Tired from camera browsing, you can hop a bus back to the Ballard area and sit down at Floating Leaves for an hour or so and linger over a couple of pots of tea. This place has a wide assortment of great Chinese tea and others that aren’t as good (OK, I’m kidding. OK, really I’m not kidding). I like the House Oolong a lot. It’s a green oolong and is fragrant and velvety smooth. Yum.

Oysters

After tea, you can head back over to Happy Hour at Elliot’s Oyster bar. This is something of a tourist place, being on the waterfront and all. But it’s a bar with about two dozen different kinds of oysters plus a big and foofy drink menu. We got a couple dozen oysters and chatted up the shucker for a few more free samples. Go go gadget Baywater Sweet. I also got a sickly sweet girly drink that they call a “rum sidecar” which Pete informs me is really a “daiquiri” in the same way that I sometimes sneer at him and inform him that jesus, the running is in Madden 2006 is much easier than Madden 2004.

I can’t say whether the drink was any good, but it was sweet enough for Karen to drink some and not spit it out. I suspect it was too girly.

Pike Market

There is not much to say about Pike Market except that if you like food you have to walk around this area. There is food everywhere. There are Russian meat pies at Piroshky Piroshky. There are French pastries at Le Panier. There is the lovingly crafted cheese and such at Beecher’s. There is Uli’s sausage, the fresh salmon, the smoked salmon, the crabs, the fresh donuts at Daily Dozen, the oyster omelet for breakfast at Lowell’s, and finally, surprise of all surprises, real Chinese pot stickers at Mee Sum Pastry just outside the market. I could go on all night.

The best time we have in Seattle is taking advantage of the East Coast jet lag to walk around the market as it gets set up. As the sky turns from dark maroon to blue, the Chinese women put out flower arrangements and bok choy, fish go out on ice, rounds of cheese are stacked in tight columns, the guy at the Chukar Cherry stand puts out the samples and the grills and fryers start to fill the hall with the odors that will tease and tempt the throngs of tourists and locals in a few hours. You can watch it all unfold for a while and soak it all in, then head over to Lowell’s for their homemade corned beef hash and go into a carb coma. No better way to start the day.

I’ve been wanting to do this recipe as a video blog, but due to an uncharacteristic bout of responsibility, I sent Sony back their loaner HD camcorder and I just haven’t been able to work up the enthusiasm to use my somewhat dilapidated Canon. So this is a story I will have to tell in words.

Earlier this spring, in my article Rehabilitating Vermouth I extolled the virtues of vermouth, particularly sweet vermouth. Too many people who should know better refuse to give vermouth its due. The proper martini is as much about good vermouth as it is about good gin, and if you believe otherwise you are a visigoth.

The problem, of course, is in finding good vermouth. Cinzano is serviceable on the sweet side, but not really transcendant, and Noilly Prat is the standard great dry vermouth. But can’t we do better than that?

Ingredients

It turns out we can. I’m happy to report that, at least as far as sweet vermouth goes, the solution is to buy American. Quady winery’s Vya sweet vermouth is a revelation. Redolent of cinnamon, herbs, and properly balancing sweet and bitter, it brings a much needed freshness to this oft-neglected class of drink.

The Vya is a bit expensive ($17.99 for a 750 ml bottle at my local liquor store), but if you taste it side by side with one of the European brands you will agree that it’s worth it. It stands up on its own over ice (as always, I suggest a glass of vermouth and a small plate of anchovies and good green olives to really open your eyes.) But it works well as a mixer, too, and the classic drink we think of when talking about sweet vermouth is the Manhattan.

The Manhattan, like the Martini, has suffered from spirits inflation over the years. Perhaps because the vermouth on most people’s shelves is stale and syrupy, the typical Manhattan you’ll find in a bar is really a big glass of bourbon with a few drops of vermouth and a disgusting maraschino cherry. We can do better than that. Here’s my contribution.

Manhattan

Peterb’s Manhattan

• 1 shot Rye Whiskey. I’m using Old Overholt for this at the moment. I use rye simply because I prefer the bitter edge to that of bourbon.
• 1 shot Vya sweet vermouth.
• 2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Stir with ice. Serve (optionally, strain after stirring into a glass without ice, and garnish according to your preference).

There’s a school of thought that thinks a manhattan should be served with an orange slice. I’ve never liked this. It’s inappropriate and utterly beside the point; I can only imagine that the person that came up with this also dreamed up the idea that one should put a sprig of parsley on a steak. If you think you would miss the orange, however, let me suggest an alternative: add to the finished drink the merest splash — just a drop or two — of Cointreau.

Enjoy!

The American conception of Italian masculinity is somewhat out of step with reality. 30 years of Italian-American gangster movies have firmly ensconced the idea of Italian men as sort of irrationally hyper-macho. The truth is a little more prosaic. Any native Italian woman will tell you: Italian men are mama’s boys.

I say this without rancor or intent to insult. It’s not inherently negative, it’s just the simple truth, to the point where the Italian government offers tax breaks to men to move out of their mothers’ houses already.

You see the effect of this in many ways, great and small. One of the most obvious is in the Italian attitude towards sport. In Italy, winning by cheating isn’t just considered acceptable, it’s pretty much par for the course. This gives observers with more British notions of fair play conniption fits. To be perfectly clear, let’s zero in on the difference: the British cheat just as much as the Italians, but they pretend to feel bad when they’re caught. That Italian sports figures don’t bother to do this drives the British newspapers completely insane.

But it makes perfect sense if you put it in context: these are men whose entire strategy for dealing with reality is “make Mom deal with it.” In the sports context, that means “convince the ref.” And if someone other than the ref doesn’t like it, too bad.

Just last week, A.C. Milan goalkeeper Dida took an embarassingly transparent dive, for which he was suspended for two games. Milan, shamelessly, has appealed the suspension. Uffa, mamma!.

Today, Kimi Räikkönen won the Formula 1 drivers’ championship. The constructor’s championship was already gifted to Ferrari earlier this season, by an FIA management that follows a “Ferrari wins at any cost” refereeing policy. Two teams were, apparently, playing fast and loose with the rules, but the stewards decided to not penalize them. McLaren is appealing that decision while claiming to accept that they were beaten, but the point is made: What would have happened if the situation had been reversed?

If those cars needed to be disqualified to ensure a Ferrari win, no one anywhere on the entire planet doubts for a moment that they would have been disqualified.

Thanks, mom.

You will recall that last week my wife and I called Microsoft to get a shipping box for my dead Xbox. That converstation lasted 45 minutes and included no less than six corrections to the shipping address as read back by the woman on the other side of the phone who apparently did not really speak english at all.

Well, the box arrived that the beginning of this week. The only problem: it arrived at the wrong address.

We found this out when the poor person who received the box called left a message for us at home in the middle of the work day. Sad to say, we didn’t get back to them her in time, and she mailed the box back to Microsoft before we could get in touch with her again.

But my intrepid wife called them back, being the only one I know who is both brave and stupid enough to navigate those waters again. Incredibly, she got someone who speaks English and had them read back the shipping address that was in their system.

Let’s say the correct address was something like this:

Peter Blogger
Google Hall, room 475
3500 Forest Street
Pittsburgh PA

Here is what would have been in their system:

Peter Boggler
Newline Google Hall
350 Fords Street -475
Pittsburgh PA

Brilliant. She spent 10 more minutes giving him the correct address, and with any luck my service box will be here next week.

Assuming they fix it, I’m not really sure what I’ll do with the Xbox when I get it back. Part of me wants to fire up TF2 and Portal to see what the fuss is about (no, I don’t have a PC, and no, I’m not using Steam). But, part of me is ready to just cancel Live and put the box on Ebay. I can probably live without TF2 or Mass Effect, and it seems to me that if Microsoft doesn’t give two shits about me, I really shouldn’t care about them either. I mean, first they don’t care enough about their hardware to actually make it work. Then when they acknowledge that it’s broken, Microsoft doesn’t even care enough about the quality of the customer service experience to hire English speaking phone support people to service their English-speaking territories. My pent up dork anger makes me want to tell Microsoft to go to hell. But, my overly realistic pragmatist side says that they’ve already gotten their attach rate out of me, so what’s the difference.

I guess all of this rumination of premature anyway, since I still don’t actually have the service box yet. More later on this channel.

My hands are still a bit chopped up from this weekend, and I’m still in a bit of pain, so pardon me in advance as I prepare to overstate my case.

When I moved into my house, one of the things I liked about it was the cute little brick walk leading up to the front porch. It’s a bunch of concave bricks tiled next to each other, with no mortar or anything holding them in place. Very natural looking, very nice.

But, as I believe I have mentioned before, I’m not quite so good at maintaining my yard. In fact, I suck. In my neighborhood, I’m “that neighbor.” Oh, my neighbors don’t actually hate me, they’re all way too nice for that. But let’s just say I’m sure they would all love it if something really nice happened to me, like say I got a very lucrative job far away, forcing me to sell the house to someone who actually knows the first thing about maintaining his yard.

So now, several years after moving in, my nice brick walk is full of weeds and grass. And unlike the rest of my wild-grown yard, this particular thing sort of bugs me.

It’s been this way for a few years, although not as bad. I’ve made halfhearted attempts to fix the problem, but none of them have proven to be long term solutions. A while ago, walking through the neighborhood, I noticed a local couple removing all the bricks on their walk; it was the same type of walk as I had. “Hi, can I ask what you’re doing?” “Sure,” they replied. “We have trouble with weeds growing in the cracks here. You see, when these walks were first put in, the bricks were laid on a sort of barrier. Well, over time, that barrier degraded and broke down. So we’re taking them out and lining the underlayer with this awesome material, then we put the brick back. So no more weeds.”

I walked away impressed at the perspicacity of these fine people, the ants to my lazy grasshopper. “If only I had that sort of motivation,” I thought to myself, “my house would look so much nicer.” The next spring, I walked past their house with the newly lined walk. Weeds had sprouted all through their newly lined walk. My step lightened by the spring of schadenfreude, I returned home relieved that I hadn’t slaved over putting a new liner in.

The core problem is that there is nothing in between the bricks except air. This means that, over time, dirt will flow in with the rains, and then once you have dirt seeds will sprout. So a lining underneath the bricks won’t help. There is only one permanent solution to this problem, and it is called “concrete.”

I’m not ready to pour concrete yet — that’s just as much work as weeding, really — so today I went out and weeded a goodly portion of the walk. Pulling the grass and weeds isn’t really an option. The only way to do the job is to lift out the bricks in a row, clear out the grass and dirt that has grown in between, scrape out the dirt that fell onto the bottom so the bricks don’t stick up, put the bricks back, and then optionally put dirt or sand back in the gaps so it looks nice.

There are people who thrive on this sort of thing. They write 6,000 word articles for the New York Times Magazine talking breathlessly about the thrill of getting their hands dirty, of the feel of the terroir and the resonance of childhood summers spent on the coast of Maine. They speak of life lessons learned that they hope to pass on to their innumerable children — inevitably named Tyler or Cody or Dylan. They speak of the satisfaction of building something with their own two hands, and of the raw physicality of manual labor. They speak, above all, of the Good Earth.

I am here to reply to these people. On behalf of the geeks, introverts, technophiles, naturephobes, and all of those who don’t enjoy these sorts of activities, I am willing to stand up proudly and say: Fuck the Earth. The Earth is home to all sorts of stinging ants, filthy soil, germs, and children named Dylan.

There are those who say that what we need more of is science. I respectfully disagree. What we need more of is paving.

I’ve used many keyboards in my time on this Earth. I think the very first one I used was attached to an old manual typewriter that I used to use to type up certain homework assignments in junior high. The first one that I used that was connected to a computer was the collection of square calculator keys that Commodore called a keyboard on the PET 2001. After that, there were the TRS-80s, the Apple II, the VT-100 in the high school, the Adm-3a, Tektronix, and some horrific unified APL terminals at Umass, and who can forget the Concept 100s at CMU.

And all these before I ever owned a computer of my own.

Over the years I’ve had some favorite keyboards. I think that the original IBM RT workstations had the best keyboard that I used while in college. The Sun keyboards were also a favorite because for a long time they held out against the evil of the “business” keybaord layout which moved the CTRL key down into a hard to reach corner rather than placing it above the left shift key where God Himself intended it to go. Over time, I have come to peace with this mutilation of the perfect layout, but only after I trained myself to stop using Emacs for everything.

Later on, after a few bouts with wrist tendonitis I went through a phase where the only keyboard I would use was made by a company called Adesso and had a track pad stuck into the wrist wrest so that I didn’t have to use a mouse. At the time, the buttons on most mice were on the stiff side and aggravated my hands. This was also my “split layout” phase. Eventually I concluded that split keyboards just make it harder to commit the crimes against touch typing that are my normal mode of working, so I stopped using them.

I have always liked wireless keybords, and used nothing else for a couple of years starting in 1998. I stopped using them around the time Bluetooth was foisted on the world and could never make myself happy with all that pairing and unpairing. I started using laptops almost exlusively for several years. The Dells at the time had nice keyboards. There were always the ThinkPad enthusiasts, but I never liked the exaggerated depth of those keyboards, not to mention the stupid pointing stick.

During my latest Mac phase, I’ve had to put up with generally inferior keyboards. I used a couple of Ti Powerbooks as my only computing machines for a couple of years and eventually got used to the square mushy keys, but I never really liked them. The Aluminum Powerbooks and Macbook Pros were an improvement, and the cute little semi-chicklet keyboard on the Macbook is also pleasing. The Apple desktop keyboards have traditionally been abysmal. I have several complaints about them, some of which are specific to the Apple product and some of which apply to desktop keyboards in general:

1. They are too wide. I never use anything on my keyboard to the right of the right shift key. As far as I’m concerned that whole area and just be chopped off. I’ve always hated desktop keyboards because they put my mouse too far away, and I like using my mouse. Laptops made me happy for a long time partly because I like trackpads and partly because when you use a mouse it’s not too far away.

2. The key feel is mushy. I’m not sure what kind of membrane switch they use, but I could never get used to it when typing fast.

3. They have this clear enclosure underneath the main keyboard assembly that does nothing but collect dirt, hair, and other gross bodily detritus. It’s really disturbing.

What I always wanted in a keyboard was something that used a laptop layout, so it wasn’t too wide, and which had light but positive action so it’s easy to type on without tiring out old fingers. I tried the Happy Hacking keyboard for a while, but didn’t like it. The key action is unpredictable and the keyboard doesn’t have the function keys, which I don’t like. For the last few years, I’ve been compromising with the Matias mechanical switch keyboard. This thing has the stupid too-wide desktop layout, but it makes up for it with the best key action that I’ve ever experienced. The keys take almost no pressure at all to activate, and when you hit bottom there is a reassuring mechanical <click>. Unfortunately, I work in a fairly open office, which means that everyone on my side of the bulding can hear me type. I decided that these problems were worth the great key action, and I stopped looking at keyboards for a long time.

Imagine my surprise and delight when Apple, of all companies, revamped their Bluetooth keyboard and made it nearly perfect. The keyboard uses switches that feel like the ones in the current Macbook laptops (not the Macbook Pro). I like the key tops and the switches, but others might not like their semi-chicklet nature. For me, the action is light enough to not tire my hands, and even if the tactile feedback is not as sure as the Matias, it’s good enough. What is finally perfect about this keyboard is the size. Finally, the useless keypad boat anchor on the right side of the keyboard is gone, replaced by what feels like ten inches of reclaimed desk space. Better yet, the huge clunky transparent enclosure is gone. The body of the keyboard is about as thick as two or three credit cards and is covered in that new shiny Apple metal skin. Finally, the battery tube on the back tilts the thing at just the right angle and in a final design flourish, there is a hidden green LED that tells you when the keyboard is on and when it is doing the dreaded Bluetooth pairing dance.

So far, I only have two minor complaints:

1. The “media” keys are not laid out the same way as on the laptops. Oh well. At least the fn-key row is there, so I don’t have to lose my precious Exposé key, even if it is on F3 rather than F9.

2. The square CTRL key is hard to hit. I have this problem sometimes on the Macbook too, but it’s not too bad.

Overall, I think this keyboard is a design triumph for the small-handed keypad hating users of the world. The thing is shiny, small, thin and superbly functional. The Consumer Rule dictates that to hedge against the future, I should purchase five of these, once I make sure that the keys break in well.

The two Petes collaborated on this article. If you can guess who it is written in the style of, you win nothing, but may feel either proud or ashamed, at your discretion.

It was in a karaoke bar in Saitama that I first met Kobayashi Hikaru-san. This was not your high-end bar, like you’d find in Shibuya, or Harajuku, or any of the other hip spots. This was a thoroughly middle-class establishment. That didn’t stop us from proceeding to get very, very drunk along with a couple of his friends. I spent most of the night ignoring the interview and getting hit on by two very cute girls who gave me their keitei numbers.

It turned out that one of the cute Japanese girls had recognized me from the publicity photos for my band. I had started the band with a few buddies who noticed me jamming absentmindedly in the hallway of my apartment building in Harajuku. I was playing on the old guitar that I had left over from my punk-rock days. I had brought the instrument over here on a lark having felt pangs of nostalgia for my high school days and simpler times as I packed my suitcases to make the trip across the sea. So now, here in Japan, I have a cool band and this makes cute girls recognize me and hit on me even in dumpy karaoke bars. This is one of the reasons that I am so lucky. I live in Tokyo and relate the highlights of my wonderful life to you back in the States.

I hummed the first few bars of the victory theme to Dragon Quest III in Kobayashi san’s ear, and he smiled knowingly. “Yes,” he said. “This is why Microsoft will never succeed in our market. They just don’t understand us.” I smiled knowingly and sipped my vodka and Pocari Sweat. It’s a good piece of music; not as good as if it were sung by Nomiya Maki, formerly of The Pizzicato Five, but serviceable. It always made me feel somewhat sad, a little wistful. In the midst of the victory theme there is an element of sadness, sadness like I experienced when I was back in Illinois and I got into that fight with Billy Connor over whether Tekken or Virtua Fighter was the more realistic fighting experience. Bill punched me in the nose, and I ran home bleeding, vowing to escape Illinois and all that it represents. He’s probably selling used cars in Skokie, while I spend my afternoons playing pachinko in Akihabara. Yeah. Even if bittersweet, it’s still a victory.

“We will be playing golf next Wednesday and would be honoured if you would join us,” said Kobayashi san. “What is your handicap?” This would be delicate. While I have nothing but respect for Mr Kobayashi, lead designer of Jack the Giant Killer, I had already committed to direct a cosplay drama depicting the redemption of Bowser. “I’m a 72,” I said. “But only on Congo Canopy.” There was a long silence, and he sipped his scotch. “Congo Canopy, I see. Perhaps another time.” Kobayashi san was letting me off easy. Sometimes what is left unspoken has a power stronger than a thousand shouted words. His game, seemingly just a cheap Donkey Kong knock off, shows this wisdom. The first level, where Jack climbs the entangled vines, at first seems baroque and labyrinthine, but that is just on the surface. Beneath the Aubrey Beardsley veneer (”the curves intuitively know / Which aspects of nouveau to save”) is a sparseness and a power that, in the end, are nothing less than a metaphor for the world in which we move: the birds and snails nipping at our heels, trying to make those of us who are trying to ascend plummet to our failure. Hikaru Kobayashi understands the fear of failure. So do we all.

Feeling full from the drinks, I excused myself. In the bathroom, I sidled up to a urinal and voided my bladder, thinking about Mr. Kobayashi and our conversation. Suddenly the full weight of it hit me: I had insulted him. Jack the Giant Killer had always been viewed as a knock-off of Donkey Kong, and this always overshadowed its brilliance. He thought that my thoughtless mention of Congo Canopy was cruel mocking. I shook, washed my hands, and rushed back to the bar, but Kobayashi-san was gone. His friend with the bleached hair, the one who looked a bit like Vaan from the brilliant (and completely unacknowledged in its brilliance) Final Fantasy XII shrugged and gestured vaguely toward the door, then walked through it. I wandered out into the chill autumn Saitama night.

In the second level of Jack the Giant Killer, Jack wanders through the clouds trying to cross the bridge to reach the castle, but lions and birds get in his way. Boorish schoolgirls in seifuku block my path. I gently nudge them out of my way without even a gomen. Did they understand what I had done? No. Completely ignorant of their own culture, they had probably never even played Dragon Quest III, had never once visited Baharata or Portoga on a quest to defeat the Baramos. Being rude wounded me, but I had need of haste, as much haste as I needed when Zoma opened the pit to the Dark World. Pushing my self-consciousness down, I squared my shoulders and ran.

As I pushed my way through the throng, a soft rain began to fall. It was a mist at first, but as I was able to gain speed, the cold drops pelted my face, each a painful reminder of my earlier insolence. I leaned my head forward and gained a measure of relief from the onslaught of cold dampness. I ran for perhaps two or three minutes this way, and the rain grew only more insistant. Then, as I looked up, I realized that the bleach haired marker that had been my beacon was gone, having melted into the crowd like Solid Snake in the shadows. I stopped and tried to regain my bearings, my gaze darting back and forth across the street, but in vain. Kobayashi-san and his companion were lost to me, and with them any chance I had at redemption. How long I stood there I can’t say, but later, chilled to my bones, I turned around and shuffled slowly back to the bar, hoping to drown my sorrow in drink and the false merriment of karaoke.

The last time I met Mr. Hikaru Kobayashi was at this year’s Tokyo Game Show, a fractured morass of gift bags and courtesy hostesses wearing corporate logos on their metallic underwear. Apropos of the atmosphere, we spoke of nothing but empty courtesies, brief platitudes on the high quality of his company’s releases, and commiserated over how hot it was, “Atsui, kyo mo atsui desu, neh?”

When at last a break in the crowds left us, mercifully, alone for a moment, I quickly leaned over and looked him in the eyes. “Mr. Kobayashi, I just want you to know that I have always greatly enjoyed your games. They are as dear to me as Dragon Quest III.”

He smiled, murmured a polite thank you and protested that I was too kind, and then turned and walked away.