Tag: Soundseeing

Purely Pachinko

Rich Pav 8 Comments

Some caveats:

  • This is 40 minutes long. That’s how long it took for me to lose 1000 yen. Some will love it being that long, some won’t.
  • I completly disown the part where I said, “Yeah Baby! Keep puttin’ out!” It didn’t sound as funny as I thought it would. In fact, I sound quite pathetic. I apologize.
  • It sounds boring on speakers, but absolutely amazing on earbuds. In fact, it sounds like you’re sitting right in front of the machine playing.
  • I have no idea how the pachinko machine knew my name and kept calling it out

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I’s CUBE: Remember, you heard them here first.

Rich Pav 12 Comments

Right now, for the first time I’m listening to the title song from the CD I bought from them earlier tonight. Holy shit. If I’s CUBE doesn’t end up making it really really big here, then either there’s something seriously wrong with collective musical taste of this country, or there are hordes of incredibly talented Japanese female vocalists that I don’t know about yet, and Ai Ujita is just a drop in the bucket.

And to think that not just me, but all of us were less than a minute away from totally missing their performance. It’s funny how fate works sometimes, isn’t it?

I's CUBE

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A Fruitless Visit to the Apple Store

Rich Pav 11 Comments

Why yes, in fact I did spend hours thinking up that title, thank you very much. This one ran just a little too long for my tastes. If others think so too, I’ll cut out some of the dead air next time.

It amazes me how not in tune I am with what works or doesn’t work in my own podcasts. It almost seems as if the more uncomfortable I am with something–the content, the delivery, or the editing–the more it resonates with listeners.

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Soundseeing in Akasaka

Rich Pav 8 Comments

Warning: This episode is neither work safe nor podsafe. It will corrupt your children and jeopardize your career. And if that weren’t bad enough, it’ll probably hurt your eardrums too.

Last night I had fish & chips with cider at an English pub in Akasaka, took a stroll, talked with a few kyakubiki (customer pullers), and finished up the evening with karaoke. Recently I showed off some photos of me when I was younger, and a friend told me I looked like Freddy Mercury when I was in college, so I chose a song from Queen to sing.


Rich “Freddy Mercury” Pav

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Back Behind The Wheel

Rich Pav 7 Comments

This will either be interesting or it will be the podcasting equivalent of sitting through a slide show of vacation photos. We’ll see. I’m still figuring this stuff out.

Someone mentioned that my podcast reminded them of the weekly public radio program This American Life, so I decided to check it out. For the past two weeks I’ve been listening to it eight hours a day at work. So for this episode I decided to try to take a lesson from them. No way is it anywhere near as good as This American Life, but then again they have a team of 10 professional producers working full-time on every episode. And there’s no background music in mine. Too much trouble.

Update: I fixed the broken link to the MP3 file.
Update: The last minute or so of the file didn’t get uploaded. That’s been fixed too.

Show notes:

  • There are accompanying photos in the gallery.
  • Calpis (Not “cow piss”)

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The HairCutCast

Rich Pav 11 Comments

Wow, youse guys are so lucky! Two and a half podcasts flom Japan in one weekend! Oh how I envy you.

There are photos in the gallery. The truth is they’ve been there for quite a while.

Some of the topics of discussion I had with the woman who cut my hair:

  • I am a podcaster. That’s why I took all those photos while I was waiting, and it’s also why I have microphones in my ears.
  • She never heard of podcasting, but she knows about MP3 players.
  • She said, “So this is kind of like watching a video clip filmed while riding a roller coaster and feeling like you’re there, eh?”
  • She’s still using Windows 98. Needs to upgrade but not looking forward to the pain of transferring all her programs to a new computer. The other day she cut a guy’s hair who said he has three PCs that are still running Windows 95. I said he must really like it.
  • Until 8 years ago, it was illegal to run a shop like QB House because of strict sanitary regulations. Also, the minimum price for a haircut was regulated. ($30-$40 minimum) In fact, the association for hair cutters still requires members to fix their prices. QB House isn’t a member.
  • The 300th QB House in Japan will open soon. There are stores in other countries too. She mentioned Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
  • You get to keep the comb.

QB House links:

  • Business is booming. The number of customers is in orange, the number of stores in blue
  • The “service unit.” Nice and sterile sounding, eh? You can hold your mouse over areas of the image to see explanations most of you won’t be able to read. But it’s cool because it’s in Japanese, right?
  • The next generation cutting station will include a video monitor to bombard customers with advertisements deliver various information to customers.
  • Employment info. Full time employees make about US $22-45,000 a year. Part-timers make $10/hr and up, which means the company is really raking in money, but keep in mind that rent and electricity here are quite expensive.

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