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I was just on the way from work to language school yesterday (on the street or in an elevator - scary, come to think of it), when the earthquake hit. It must have been a big one: The teachers were all worked up about it, when I came back to office a German magazine website had it as front page news (centered around Sendai, magnitude 7) and even today some trains remain stopped. I did not notice a thing. I get my share of earthquakes here, but somehow always miss the important ones (last time was on a boat - smooth sailing - while some friends got their train kicked off the tracks). Must be a special talent.

What does it mean that in a book they talk about Reservoir Dogs, while in the movie made from same book the scene has been changed to discuss Evil Dead II? Could there be commercial interests of the production company involved? And why do I always get so excited about details no one else seems to notice?

Top five reasons for me to read this book:

• I cannot read science fiction all the time.
• I have heard of the author before.
• I liked the movie (and the book is just as funny).
• A chapter about the semantics of not having seen Reservoir Dogs yet.
• Great top five lists.

Almost three years after it was issued in July 2000, I finally own a 2000 yen bank note. I have seen it a few times before, but I never held one. The note is not really circulated a lot and cannot be used in most vending machines. It was created by the late former Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi to commemorate both the year 2000 and the Okinawa G8 summit. It depicts the Shureimon Gate in Naha, an Okinawan national symbol, on the front, and a scene from the 11th century novel Tale of Genji on the back, making it a beautiful bill. The first note issued is retained by the Japanese central bank for its currency museum, the second one was given to the Okinawa prefectural government, the third one to the family of Obuchi, who unfortunately did not live to see its birth. I now have numbers CA334535K and NA587462A.

I have decided I need to apply some of the more recent web technologies to this site. Cascading Style Sheets are widely supported now and as a first step I rewrote the layout to make use of them. The result should look almost identical as before (except for the dark blue background of the navigation bar not rendering all the way down). No more HTML tables to position elements !

Larry Niven is one of the big names in hard science fiction, a genre always concerned with getting the astrophysics right. N-Space is a collection of short stories, novel excerpts, essays and other material from all stages of his career, with comments by Niven and many forewords by his friends. I was worried at first that I would not like space exploration stories intended for what I feared would be an audience of nit-picking physics students, but all the stories (which are quite different from each other) turned out to be great reads. Like Tom Clancy says in his introduction, Niven creates all these perfectly modeled worlds, but he also populates them with interesting characters.

All arriving passengers at Narita Airport have to walk past a thermoscopic camera which measures their body temperatures. A nice, hassle-free security measure to spot feverish SARS victims (or maybe vampires).

I knew that 60% of South Korean households have broadband Internet access and that online games are really popular here. But it was quite a surprise to turn on the TV and tune into a video gaming channel. Apparently, there is a professional video gamers league, complete with television coverage, the players giving interviews, screaming girl fans, live broadcasts of the league games, commented by analysts. Would have liked to see Juventus beat Real instead.

As any hitchhiker to the galaxy knows, one should always carry a towel. This holds especially true in Japan, where everyone does carry a small towel. Those towels come in handy after the ritual hand-washing at shrines (where they never hand you a towel) or in public bathrooms (where paper towels or hand driers are rare). Accordingly, there is a wide variety of hand towels to buy and you can choose your favorite motive or pattern. A free alternative are paper tissues (carrying some advertisement message) which are handed out by the handfuls in shopping streets. I usually don't leave the house without half a dozen packs of those, or if I do, I come back carrying half a dozen new ones.

Ever since contracting that nasty virus infection when swimming in a waterfall in Malaysia, my right eye is very sensitive and easily inflamed. For example right now. It becomes red and painful, but seems not to permanently affect my vision. The eye doctor knows me by now and with proper medication all is well again after two days, but it is a hassle.

Speaking of recurring ailments, hay fever appears not be a problem for me in Japan, which is a good thing because the spells of severe acute respiratory problems I suffer in a German spring could cause quite a scare in Asia these days.

Yes! Someone made a port of the Commodore C64 emulator Frodo for the Gamepark GP32. It works great (much easier to install and use than on my iBook for that matter), with sound and emulated joysticks, floppy, tape drive and even keyboard. Nostalgia almost made me cry when the Great Giana Sisters and Boulder Dash came up. There is a website (www.c64.com) which has hundreds of games for download. I hope it is legal, but apparently it is, considering that this site has not been shut down.

On a related note, the Doom port has been updated to support sound (yes!), saving games, Doom 2 and Ultimate Doom. Next plans seem to be brightness control and Heretic. I also came across the demo version of a new commercial game, Pinball Dreams, which is a lot of fun, too.

In the 1956 FA Cup Final, Manchester City goalkeeper Bert Trautmann broke his neck, but, unaware of the full extent of the injury, carried on playing until the end of the match. In the 1970 World Cup semi-final Germany versus Italy, Franz Beckenbauer played the second half and overtime with a broken collarbone and a dislocated shoulder. Yesterday, I took part in the company soccer tournament, running, tackling, shooting across a field almost a sixth of the official FIFA size under a burning sun for full three hours.

Today, I can feel every bone and muscle in my body and sport an unfashionably reddened face. I should probably stick to bowling, especially since I suck at soccer: no orientation, no ball handling skills, poor shooting and passing. I did two nice headers, though.