Every good story has to have its epilogue
Nagoya, Japan -- At least that's the excuse I used when I pleaded with my bosses to let me return to Japan this week, a scant four months after a memorable first visit to the land of fearsome samurai, robot dogs and fearsome robot samurai dogs.
No, seriously, you should see what Sony is doing with those Aibo things now. If they start developing girl robots as sophisticated as their dog robots, our species is doomed.
The paper's head cheeses wavered, until I added that I left my watch in Tokyo. Fifteen thousand kilometres seems a reasonable distance to go to retrieve a $50 watch, doesn't it? But instead of being on a pilgrimage to seek out naughty schoolgirl magazines and the mythical artifact known as the beer vending machine, I was to be the guest of the Japan National Tourist Organization and Japan Airlines. Who, oddly enough, did not have adult comics and beer dispensers on the agenda.
"Come see Nagoya!'' they said.
"Awesome!'' I replied. "By the way, what's a Nagoya? It's some kind of giant snake with a human head, right? I remember them from D&D! This will be so cool!''
As it turns out, that's a Naga. Nagoya is where they're holding Expo 2005, in the prefecture of Aichi, which borders on the neighbouring prefecture of Scratchi. There's actually quite a lot to do in Nagoya, as evidenced by the fact our benevolent but merciless organizers had our little group of naive journalists on the go 12 hours a day. On second thought, can I go to Naga instead? They only do two-eight damage per attack, right?
But it's proven an excellent and eye-opening counterpart to my first voyage across the Pacific last October.
For starters, the flight here was in Japan Airlines' business class, which I can sum up like this: imagine you're sitting in your favourite La-Z-Boy at home, except instead of your significant-o' nagging at you to shovel the driveway, beautiful Japanese girls in cherry blossom-coloured uniforms are tittering politely at your bad jokes while serving you unlimited amounts of fine wine, bottomless beer and a menu that consists of your choice of grilled fillet of beef with Madeira sauce or poached sea bass with saffron ginger cream sauce. And I don't even know what Madeira means! Or saffron! Or poached! Being stupid is hard, you know.
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Edmonton/Steve_Tilley/2005/02/26/942935.html
