Day 205 : Hair Salon

Today, my daughter went to a hair salon for the first time.


The left above is "before" and right above is "after". :)

The before picture was taken about a week ago.
Looking at the "before" hair style, a colleague of my wife called her, "Ochi-Musha(落武者, おちむしゃ)" which roughly means a samurai who lost and on his way around.
You can find sample pictures of Ochi-Musha here.

Now, she looks like a boy, I think. :o

L'attentat

L'attentat
Yasmina Khadra
ISBN978-4-15-208805-5 (Japanese translation)

No salvation.
That's what I and my wife felt when we finished the book.

But, I don't think the situation described there is not rare in the world.
The world is full of tragedies, and we have to see them directly.
Especially, peace-addicted people in this country.

Catcher in the Rye

Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
ISBN 0-14-023749-6

Finally finished.
Now I'm feeling that I should have read it by Japanese translation. :(

Bought on February 4, 2007.
Finished on April 24, 2008.

Kadoman : A Violent Soba Restaurant

Perhaps, the title might not be correct.
I mean a soba restaurant which offers violent soba. :o

Here, soba is a sort of Japanese noodle, and usually its noodle is thin.
But, as you can see in the picture below, it's like Udon. :o



Violent! Isn't it? :o
You can enjoy that at Kadoman (角萬 station of Tokyo Metro ) which is located along Kokusai-dori avenue near IriyaHibiya Line. It's worth trying once. :)

BTW, noodle freaks in Japan would bring Ramen Jiro to mind easily looking at the picture.
I found an interesting article (in Japanese), and actually some people say Kadoman's soba
"Kadoman is Ramen Jiro in the Soba world." :o

Thanks Tokuda-san for letting me know the violence at lunch time. :o)

Itakimodo

Today, I saw an interesting clinic on my way to lunch.

Here is the photo.


Well, Seitai (整体) is a kind of Japanese traditional chiropractic, and their general image is very good for backache or so but veeeeery painful. :o

The point is its name, Ita-Kimo-Do(いたきも堂).
Of course, it a Japanese phrase, and it's difficult to explain the nuance in English.
But, anyway it has double meanings in a sense.
First of all, "Ita" comes from "itai" which means painful.
Second. "Kimo" comes from "kimochi-ii" which means feeling good.
The last "Do" is a typical suffix of names of shops and clinics and so on.

One more thing is the clinic is close to Yoshiwara area in Tokyo which was famous for a lot of brothels about 100 years ago. In the picture above, on the right side of "いたきも堂", there is "女整体師" which means "a woman bone-cracker." I'm not sure why they want to emphasize "woman." :o

Anyway, Yoshiwara is an interesting area.

Day 198 : Aya Bauer?

Recently, I and my wife often say, "Again, it's Aya Bauer!"

Well, of course it comes from Ina Bauer, and the below is a sample photo. :o

A Simple Periodical File Content Recorder

At work, I often want to record content of some special files of operating system (e.g., '/proc/stat') without calling system provided utilities such as 'sar' because they often cook information too much.

Of course, it's easy doing so by writing a simple shell script which calls 'cat', 'date', etc.
But, under high loaded situations, shell scripts are often delayed, and I wanted to do so as atomic as I can.

Thus, I wrote a small stupid program again. :o

It's available here at this moment and will be moved to this sourceforge project soon.

Hey Mori-san, you can replace your(?) /proc/meminfo and /proc/vmstat sampler by this small utility, 'pfr'. :)

A Beautiful Math

A Beautiful Math

Tom Siegfried
ISBN 978-4-16-370010-6 (Japanese Translation)

This book reminded me of what I thought when I wrote about "The Selfish Gene".

About 2 years ago, there was a discussion on a mailing list. There a
guy asked if people in open source communities can challenge Windows
dominance by cooperating each other or not. What was impressive for me
was that another guy insisted on strongly that altruism is against the
theory of evolution in response to a phrase "collective optimization
of the society" which the first guy said.

I felt something wrong at that time on the second guy's argument.
The point of my thought was about the choice between selfish strategy
or cooperative one.

Genes drive organisms selfishly, but human behavior in their various societies
is not simple. In other word, a society is not a simple prisoners' dilemma
game, but an iterated one at least. Also, participants there can
communicate/negotiate/intrigue... and be tied with each other.
Thus, the best optimum strategy is usually mixed strategy.

Reading Dawkins' book in those days, I thought "Meme" could be the key
to explain my feeling of wrongness. I mean what the first guy should
have have bean a meme not a gene.
But, after all, it's simply because the discussion was just too primitive.

Siegfried's book reviews progresses in game theory focusing on
interdisciplinary aspects of them including even quantum mechanics!
As an old physics student, it's a fun to see that what I studied those days
got various new aspects to work with other areas of science,
network theory, evolution theory, economics and even sociology etc.

BTW, more more reason why I like Siegfried's work is that he is familiar with
Sci-Fi. When I was a child, I pored over Isac Asimov's works, and it was
beyond my expectation seeing the name of Hari Seldon. :)

Bought on March 6, 2008.

Finished on April 20, 2008.

Day 187 : An Armadillo?

Recently, she began to bend her body like the above.
She's like an Armadillo, hahaha... :o

BTW, the above armadillo is not this one. :o

Guin Saga 120

Guin Saga 120 : A Devotional Dame
Kaoru Kurimoto
ISBN 978-15-030919-0

It's 120th volume of the Guin Saga, and I'm wondering how many volumes Kuromoto is going to write to finish the saga.

BTW, one of key themes in this volume is Miroku, an imaginary religion which is monotheistic different from other religions appear in the story line. In the next several volumes, the religion and involved people could play important role in development of the history.
Anyway, I have to wait two more months (again). :o

Veronika Decide Morrer

Veronika Decide Morrer (Japanese Translation)
Paulo Coelho
ISBN 4-04-275005-2

It's another book by the author of Alchemist, and that's why I chose it. :)
The story is about a young woman who committed suicide. But, she failed and was taken to an asylum. Besides, her heart was damaged badly, so there were only 7 days left before her death.

In a sense, the story can be said as a (strange) love story, but anyway Coelho asks us, "What is normal, and what is abnormal?" throughout the story.

Day 181 : A Gapper?

Today, we went to Kokubunji and bought clothes for our daughter.
There is a GAP shop in Kokubunji Marui, and looking at her one of the staff said, "Oh, she is a Gapper!"

I'm not sure if there is a word, "Gapper" or not. But, anyway today my daughter was full of GAP things. :o

Day 180 : Sitting Up

I didn't know that we can say "sitting up" below. :o



To tell the truth, I knew she could do that since last week, and it's a great pity that her grand parents stayed at our house several days recently didn't see the scene. :(

True Evil

True Evil
Greg Iles
ISBN 978-1-4165-2453-3

Finally, done.
This story is based on a very much deep medical idea. So, it was a bit hard to understand medical words and took more time to finish. :(
But, anyway I enjoyed. :)

Delivered on 2008/01/08.
Done on 2008/04/03.

Day 177 : Rolling Over

It was a memorial day of my daughter today.
She rolled over for the first time in her life. :)

Of course, I took video after getting back home. But, I couldn't find out how to take a snapshot from the MPG file. :(
Anyway, stay tuned.

Notes on April 3, 2008.
Here is the one. :)