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During the day The Bake House in Nagoya is a pretty normal cafe. At night however, it turns into The Lazy House – a dining experience turned on its head. In direct conflict with highly etiquette oriented Japan, The Lazy House (Instagram) is filled with cranky and petulant staff dishing out insults while tossing dinner plates.

It reminds me of the retro diner Ed Debevic’s in Chicago where the staff can be snarky as well as put on a song and dance every now and again.

How is the restaurant fairing in Japan? It immediately started selling out for weeks in advance. It has slowed a bit since Dec 2023 but is still selling out on weekends.

<Watson reading newspaper to Sherlock Holmes>
Watson: Lady Radford reports… Oh, her emerald bracelet has disappeared!
Holmes: Insurance swindle. Lord Radford likes fast woman and slow ponies.

Sherlock Holmes (2009 movie -with Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law)

I love old games – be they video games or physical games. The inventiveness of those early days was astounding.

One of the fun little rabbit holes I got into was the strange world of physical horse racing gambling games. No, these are not the big race tracks with real thoroughbreds, mint julips, and women wearing outrageous summer hats. These races happen happen on a large tabletop with horses that are less than 6 inches tall.

My first introduction to this kind of game was at Anata no Warehouse in Kawasaki Japan. On one of the upper floors, I saw this magnificent machine: GI-Horsepark Judgement by Konami. It featured miniature horse figures that physically raced around the track.

The GI series of numerous game models (GI-Horsepack Judgement, GI-World Classic, GI-Victory Road, GI-GranDesire) consisted of grand seasons with lots of races – and appears to have run from 1995 until 2011. Many of the machines lost the physical miniature horses and went to digital video races.

Modern versions of these racing games still exist today in Las Vegas – such as Konami’s Fortune Cup:

Here it is in action:

But before that, these electro-mechanical wonders existed as far back as 1985. Sigma Derby was created by a Japanese company Sigma Entertainment. Currently, there is only one remaining functional machine in the D Casino in Las Vegas – but what a treat that it’s been kept working.

Airbnb has brought Edna’s mansion to life to celebrate the 20th anniversary of one of my favorite movies: The Incredibles (definitely a favorite movie of mine).

Check out the cool experience:

Links:

• https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1148460255180339481?source_impression_id=p3_1717689119_P33rARGENbataSl3

Dynomight wrote down some great ‘obvious’ travel advice that I loved. I lumped some of them together because I think they express the same things:

2. Who you go with matters more than where you go.

4. There’s not much point in packing light unless everyone is packing light.

3. After seeing each other for a few months, many new couples take a short trip, which often ends in an apocalyptic, relationship-destroying fight. My theory is that’s the trip working as designed—couples do these trips out of an instinctual desire to stress-test their relationships.

These are great. I would also add these (which are the same if you go hiking too!):

• You’ll usually only do as many things as the least adventuresome/slowest person in the group
  
• Each day only starts based on who is the last person to get up and their morning routine
  
• Traveling and expecting everyone to do all the same things together is a recipe for frustration and conflict.

I think the number one reason that many new couples/friends end up in a huge fight during/after travel is because of mismatched expectations. A lot can be avoided by having a very honest talk with potential travel partners about expectations before you decide to travel together.

What are your ‘must dos’/’won’t dos’ for this trip? Do you have physical, dietary, or emotional limitations others need to know about or accommodate? What parts of the trip are important to you? What does an average travel day look like for you? How much together/alone time do you want or need? How much can you physically do (walking/hiking/swimming/kayaking/etc) in a day?

Talk about your ideal travel day with the other(s). Share different wish lists of activities or downtime you each would like. Make sure you mesh. As you get older, you learn to ask these questions and gravitate towards travel partners that travel like you do. Mature couples know what things they can do together and which you can send them off to do while you enjoy your activity.

If this sounds like the same kinds of questions you should have before dating/marrying – you’d be right. Life is just a 60 year journey/travel through life together after all.

Anyway, here’s more:

1. Mindset matters more than where you go.

6. Cultures vary in lots of arbitrary ways—how loud to talk, how (or if) to wait in line, how close to stand to other people, how to behave when you walk into a shop, how to smell, when you can blow your nose, etc. It’s good to be aware of these both as a producer of behavior (not offending others) and a consumer of behavior (not being offended when you’re not “supposed” to be).

7. Different places have different “rules” like if you’re supposed to order drinks before or after food, when you can drink which kinds of coffee, or if you’re allowed (or encouraged) to slurp when eating noodles. After seeing all these variations, it’s hard not to see them as silly, but life is short and I suggest you mostly just conform.

22. If you spend a ton of money and stay in very expensive hotels and whatever, you can eliminate almost all of the frustration and uncertainty of travel. But it also feels like you never leave the global monoculture

If the point of travel is to experience something new; then insulating yourself from that newness defeats the purpose. One of travel’s number one lessons is that you learn there are whole countries of people that do things differently and they don’t collapse overnight. Rick Steves reminds people that you don’t have to pack everything – you can buy almost anything you need in other countries. Millions of people survive just fine on what they find in their local stores – so can you if you’re willing to try a new kind of toothpaste or wear local made socks.

This teaches you that not everything has to happen as you want and that flexibility is a muscle you can build. It’s fun watching 20-somethings travel overseas. After those first trips, they come back and LOVE to loudly tell everyone that country X does things so much better. After my years of travel, it’s more the truth that different ways of doing things are not always ‘better’ or ‘worse’, but instead have balanced different different pros and cons. Every way of doing things has pros and cons. The question is, what does that way maximize and what are you sacrificing for that goal?

11. You can wash clothes in the sink. I think basically everyone does this but doesn’t talk about it?

12. Clothes dry much faster with body heat.

I definitely hand wash and stain treat things in my sink when needed; but I have also discovered the joys of getting your clothes locally laundered. Many hotels/hostels have laundromats for some local coins, but you might also ask your hostel/hotel if there is a nearby laundry service. I still remember the little hole in the wall laundry place in Rome with an old lady that did my entire backpack of clothes for 1/3 of what it would have cost in the hostel basement. And they were SO clean and folded in a way I have never seen things folded. There’s nothing like putting on a fresh pair of laundered socks and underwear when traveling.

10. Some places sell “travel” clothes, e.g. “travel” pants made of quick-drying nylon with zippers so the pants can convert to shorts. While I maintain you should fly your flag high, I also really, really, really think you might be more comfortable if you weren’t wearing these.

Nothing screams ‘American tourist’ more than those nylon pants with zipper off legs. Like it or not, you’ll be treated as a tourist. Instead, what I now do is watch some YouTube videos of the places I’m going and bring clothes that would blend in with the local garb. I have succeeded when I travel to another country and a local will start speaking to me in the local language first before realizing I’m a tourist. Or even better, buy some local clothes. There was nothing like getting fitted for some dress shirts in a fancy store in Rome (ps: I’m not cut like a skinny Italian guy anymore :D)

23. Despite being only 0.3% of the world’s population, Australians seem to make up 10% of overseas visitors everywhere on the planet. Do not be disturbed by this well-known optical illusion.

I laughed because this is so true. I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere in the world I didn’t run into a traveling Australian. Doubly true if you do any hosteling.

Definitely read the rest, because they’re really good.

I love listening to other cultures impressions of what English sounds like. I’ve written about it before. This video from Japan had me rolling. It’s pretty spot on for imitating the younger US tourist crowd that often goes to Japan – which is likely who these Japanese folks run into most of the time.

Things I noticed about their impressions:

1. Immediately start speaking 50% louder
2. Heavily annunciate/separate syllables
3. It’s US English (vs British English)
4. Throw in a lot of body movement and body language – hip-hop style/Italian style

Here’s a 12 hour time lapse of American, Delta, and United during the outage. Possibly the biggest IT outage in human history. Definitely worse than Y2K ever was.

It’s a reminder that this all happened by accident from people trying to prevent issues. Shows you how fragile modern infrastructure really is.

It doesn’t get more American than this. 😀