TOKYO, Japan – As you know, I come to this city once in two years. That has been my routine since 1993. It’s almost become a pilgrimage. No, not just the sushi and sashimi, although this twin Japanese delicacy has been a major factor to the trip.For, where else can you genuinely savor this salivating knockout pair from the Japanese cuisine but in this wealthiest of cities in Asia?
Tokyo has remained the most expensive city on Earth that you need to shell out at least three hundred pesos for a can of Kirin beer. A bar of the littlest of chocolates is a hundred and fifty pesos. A cup of coffee can be had at four hundred pesos. A boiled egg for two hundred fifty pesos. All of that – at the train station in Shinjuku.
What more if you were inside a hotel in Tokyo, or a restaurant maybe? I went to The Cavern, a Beatles bar at Roppongi (my favorite because I am a Beatlemaniac, in case you have forgotten), and it had cost me a little fortune. The entrance fee alone is almost two thousand pesos! And, as I said, because I dig the Beatles since my high school days, I went there twice! Over there, you can just imagine the prize of Kirin beer per can – let alone a shot of Remy Martin or Hennessy. And I had a double each of the two times I strayed into the place, where only Beatles music are played nightly, from Monday to Sunday, by Japanese bands.
You are a fanatic, you swear by nothing but your heart. Forget about the wallet. Anyway, I flew here upon the invite, once more, of Toyota Motor Philippines. The 41st Tokyo Motor Show is on up to November 4.
This is one of the world’s Top 5 Motor Shows where only the latest models in car technology are on display to the public. Also paraded here are the newest motorcycles in the world, from Harleys to Hondas to BMWs. Also featured, as usual, are concept cars. They are the vehicles that aren’t yet sold in the market; they are mere concoctions for possible mass production in the future.
Most look like fancy cars. Funny even. But on the whole, they are the foundations of future cars that we will all drive someday.
For example, take the Toyota Prius. I saw its first test-run in Tokyo during the 1995 Tokyo Motor Show. The Prius was then a mere concept car. Its birth was revolutionary since it’s the first vehicle to run on electric motor, battery and fossil fuel.
Indeed, a combination of three. When you stop before a traffic light, the engine automatically shuts off. When the green light flashes, just step on the gas and the Prius will move on.
During acceleration, power comes from both the electric motor and gasoline. When cruising, it runs practically on battery and electric motor. That’s why it’s the world’s most economical car.The third-generation Prius can cover 37 kilometers in one liter! When Prius, the first hybrid car to hit America in 1997, was unwrapped in the 1995 Tokyo Motor Show, even the cynics dubbed it “the miracle car of the future.”
It is, indeed.
I first drove it in 1997 in Tokyo. At first, I was nervous. But then, after about five minutes of driving it around Tokyo’s busy streets, I was settled down. Why, it drives just like the average car in front of you. Only, it hums. Not roars. But there’s not much difference at all, though. As my idol, Kuya Leonie Galvez of Los Angeles, loves to say it, “The difference is the same.”
With the Prius, you could hardly feel its engine running. That’s because the engine stops most of the time even if your car is in motion – the reason you don’t consume that much gasoline while you are driving the Prius. The electric motor comes into play most of the time, making you run practically gas-less most of the time.
Today, Prius is in the Philippines. Just like the rest of the cars from Toyota’s rivals. The only difference is, the Prius, because it was the first in the market of its kind, is the only hybrid car being sold in the Philippines right now. What will be the surprise car this time in the ongoing Tokyo Motor Show at Makuhari Messe?
There are lots to choose from – Toyota to Subaru, from Mitsubishi to Honda, from Nissan to Daihatsu. Fun and thrill, excitement as usual, rent the air daily at the Makuhari Messe. But a pall of gloom somewhat envelopes the Motor Show as only two foreign car companies are present – the Alpina and Volkswagen of Germany – a result of the global financial meltdown that began last year.
Still, there is optimism the car industry would rebound sooner than expected.
Japan, the world’s No. 2 economy, has only recently registered a 0.4 percent growth – a robust indication that all’s well as the year winds down.
Beep! Beep!
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I’m serious. Make Prez dam Boss
AND now on the latest twin calamities that struck the Philippines just very recently.
For sheer damage alone – not to mention the hundreds of lives lost due to typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng – the cost to crops and properties destroyed has now breached P70 billion!
Dams had been fingered as the major culprits in the most destructive storms to ever hit us in memory. Well, we all know that dams kill, destroy.
But why do we leave them to the care of some managers not maybe steeped on the rules of life preservation, if not the moral side of things?
It’s downright scary, I tell you.
Someone during the recent Senate hearings on the dam issue even seemed to buy the line that what happened in the recent massive flooding was “a judgment call.”
My God, so cold-blooded!
Hundreds had died, you besterd!
Billions of pesos had sunk into the rampaging waters as a result of hundreds of hectares of crops ravaged.
Do we just dismiss the whole caboodle as merely “a judgment call,” as in a referee’s whistle during a basketball game?
You mean, the guy who released water from the San Roque Dam in San Manuel, Pangasinan had done it on pure hunch, if not instinct? Never mind that, perhaps, he was still sleepy, if not drunk, when he pulled the trigger?
How gross! Heartless!
Abominable, to say the least!
Morbid even!
We are talking of life here, precious life.
The life of a human being.
Even the life of a dog, a cat, a pig, a rabbit, a cow, a chicken, any pet, even a spider – every breathing creature is as precious as the life of a person. We have yet to predict an earthquake but not typhoons. As I said, we get hit by typhoons – some really deadly like Ondoy and Pepeng – at least 20 times a year.
In short, we now know in advance when a killer storm is coming. Ondoy and Pepeng taught us a cruel lesson here – a lesson that should have been learned and memorized from way back: Precautions and disaster-preparedness. Turned out we only know about disasters brought on by typhoons, never being prepared when we finally get battered by calamitous typhoons.
But to be sure, there is need to release water when the dam’s on its spillage level. We don’t release water, and the dam will collapse, causing more untold devastation.
So, the question: When is the best time to release water? Common sense tells us it should begin hours before a typhoon headed towards us hits land. It could even be a day before landfall.
In America and many parts of the world, a siren is activated many hours before a twister strikes, whether it is strong or not.
A class suit is now being mulled over – egged on, quite strangely, by, among others, Chiz Escudero – against dam officials.
Sadly, it will all be an exercise in futility. Irreversibly, it will all redound to all sound, no fury.
My thesis has always been that the President of the Philippines must have the final say on when to release waters from a dam.
I am serious, Chiz.
It’s like the principle of needing the President’s OK for a convict to die by electrocution. Without the Chief Executive’s yes, a convict lives. Since dams kill, too, every dam should have a hot line to the President.
In an instant, finger-pointing gets done away with. The buck stops here – at the Palace by the Pasig.
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Pacman to win in 6, if not 3
I AM glad that Manny Pacquiao has flown safely to Los Angeles, where he will train for a little two more weeks for his fight with Miguel Cotto on Nov. 14 in Las Vegas, Nevada. We all know that Cotto is way ahead of Pacquiao in terms of the length of training. But that is no real advantage, though.
Pacquiao has trained one a half months in most of his fights. And he wasn’t bothered at all in any one of those encounters. In fact, in his last 10 fights, each bout saw Pacquiao train less than two months. (Cotto’s target for the Nov. 14 fight was three months of training.)
In those 10 fights prior to his date with Cotto, Pacquiao won them all.
So, who’s bothered? Not Pacquiao. Not even Freddie Roach, Pacquiao’s brilliant American trainer.
Since they shacked up together in 2001, only once did Pacquiao lose – against Eric Morales in 2005 via a close 12-round decision. But in their next two fights, Pacquiao more than avenged his points defeats as he knocked out Morales twice in succession, both victories coming in 2006.
Even before Pacquiao plunged into serious training in September, he was installed by Las Vegas bookies as the heavy favorite to uncrown Cotto, the welterweight (147 lbs) champ from Puerto Rico.
With a win, Pacquiao will become the first to capture world boxing titles in seven weight divisions. If that isn’t an incentive huge enough to make Pacquiao hunger for Cotto’s scalp, I don’t know what is.
I’m not sure if I could go cover the fight in Las Vegas. If the bosses (and that include Mon D, Rey F and Mario P, he-he) say I should, why not? The last Pacman fight I covered was the third Pacquiao-Morales bout in November 2006 in Las Vegas. Pacquiao knocked out Morales in the third.
Lightning-speed hands. Feet that shuffle like Ali. And fists that resemble the power of Duran’s “Hands of Stone,” if not Foreman’s and Tyson’s killer blows.
Cotto will have no answer for those triple-killer arsenal of Pacquiao. Cotto’s too slow for the piston-like machine that is Pacquiao that barely after he had tied the last knot in his gloves, Pacman would be all over him like a swarm of bees.
Thus, I believe Pacquiao will also knock out Cotto, the way Pacman destroyed Hatton on May 2 this year. If not inside six rounds, three rounds.
Care for a couple of beers for my fearless forecast? I’ll take care of the peanuts.
Isang platitong mani lang naman.
