Back from Hokkaido

iPod morning commute music: Bruce Springsteen, Devils and Dust (2005)

Another one of Springsteen's quiet, acoustic albums, like Nebraska and Ghost of Tom Joad, not as good as the former, but I like it much better than the latter. It's not one of his albums that I play often. For me, the Springsteen of Rosalita is the one I like to listen to, when his music was fun. That said, I own everything he's done in one form or another, and all of it is interesting. Devils and Dust is, for the most part, somber stuff, but coming into school for the first time in a week had me in a pretty somber mood. Very good music.

Hokkaido came off without a problem. As I think I wrote earlier, I always have a better time once I'm on the trip than I imagine I will. The oddest thing that happened to me was on the last day, in the seaside city of Otaru. Everyone had 3 hours of free time to sightsee, shop and eat lunch before taking the busses to the airport to fly home. Each teacher was assigned an area of the town to go to at 2:30 to make sure the students got back to the busses on time. I had to search out students at a huge music box museum/store. I got there early, and was looking at their collection of antique music boxes (of which I knew absolutely nothing about), when I ran across one manufactured by the Regina Music Box Company out of Rahway, N.J., which was a city quite near to where I lived before moving west at the age of 12. My family always caught the train into New York City from Rahway. Anyway, I was shocked to see anything from N.J. in this museum, and I wrote down the name of the company to check it out on the Internet when I got home. It turns out it was (still is, though they went out of business years and years ago) a very famous company, with its music boxes still selling on eBay for thousands of dollars apiece. I also learned a bit about the history of music boxes along the way. Actually, it is a much more interesting topic than I ever expected.