Herro Flom Japan

These earbuds are by far the best-sounding pair I've ever owned, and that seems to be the opinion of other owners too. It's as if they're pumping the music directly into the sound processing center of your brain, and they do a great job of blocking out external noise. They hold their own against earbuds that cost far more money. Amazon offers them for much less that what I paid for them at the Apple Store in Shibuya.

The mics I'm using are these from Giant Squid Audio Labs. My set has a locking off/on switch, disconnectable mics and a Neutrik Right Angled Gold Plug. If I were to order them again, I'd request shorter cables.

If you want to do a good binaural recording, you have to be listening to exactly what's being recorded. Here's what I'm using:

You can fit over 18hrs. of audio in 1GB, so a model with less memory would be fine. The only things I don't like about the iRiver is that it doesn't have an audio level meter and the highest quality it can record to MP3 is 96 kbps at 44 kHz. Perhaps it's just a number, but I'd like to record at 128 or 192 kbps since I occasionally record street musicians.

The video camera I use is a Sony HDR-HC1, one of the last MiniDV models they put out before switching to internal hard drives. I was very lucky to have found a used model in excellent condition for $600 less than a year after it hit the market with a retail price of $2000. Until hard drives come down in price a bit more, it's a lot cheaper to archive years and years of footage on magnetic tapes. When a multi-tetrabyte drive because affordable, I'll probably back up all the tapes to it. I would recommend the same model to others, although all the menus and submenus can be confusing, so be prepared for a learning curve if you want to get the most out of it. Another feature of this camera I consider mandatory is that accepts an external microphone. Unless you only plan to ever make home movies, I strongly advise staying away from video cameras that don't have one. A good video with horrible sound is a horrible video.

I also use a Raynox DVR-5000 super wide angle conversion lens. It's the epitome of a crappy and very close to worthless lens. They don't get much worse that this piece of junk, and even Raynox says so, but not in those exact words. At roughly $70 it's all I can afford, and when you compress video down to 320 x 240 the chromatic aberration around bright sources of light and the blurriness of the edges of the frame isn't too noticeable. If you have the funds, invest in a better wide-angle lens. I find one to be absolutely necessary whether shooting indoors or out. The extra viewing angle also makes the image seem more steady when you're filming and walking at the same time, drastically cutting down on the number of people in your audience who will get motion sick from watching your videos.

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OK, here's what I've learned so far from this exercise.

• Before hitting the record button, I need to blow my nose so I don't punctuate every sentence with a sniffle.
• When the record light goes on, my brain passes gas. Just call me Rich Pavlov, why don'cha.
• My inner chickenshit weasel wishes I had said "five" instead of "fifty."

I think the highlight of this show was the Adam Curry Moment^TM when I wasted about 500 man minutes of our collective time by rummaging though my pockets for my subway pass.

I talked about quitting smoking by associating the thought of lighting up with other really disturbing acts you could just as easily do. It's probably mild compared to other podcasts, but I hope I don't traumatize anyone unnecessarily.

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Here's episode two of our recently launched babble-a-thon. A couple of months ago I made a huge mistake at work. The worst I've ever made on the job. Funny thing is, it was caused by a very minor error. And I can't elaborate. But recently, someone else in Japan made just as small of an error that had enormous repercussions.

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Show notes, photos and links later. I'm goin' to bed.

Now, I know someone out there is going to be tempted to post something negative about them because they didn't sing and play every single note perfectly. The way I see it, they're simply amateurs enjoying themselves–just like me.

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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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