Mystic journeys

No pain no gain

2007-02-13T13:51:00.000+02:00

Again back from the US of A. For once my terrorist grading has gone down, I wasn't picked for the 'random' security screening (*whee*). Returned to Japan on Saturday, went bicycling/play Go on Sunday, and hiking on Monday. Took bunch of pictures (check my picture album for details if you care, two random favourites here):

2007-01-31T08:23:00.000+02:00

Last Thursday, went to Scissor Sisters' concert (one of those "hum.. what do I. random choice. ok, here!"). The music was better than I expected, although the live concert's audio mechanics were rather droll compared to your average CDs - the vocals are difficult to hear and some instruments dominate too much. I found their CD after the concert from the internet and then was like "oh.. so that's what those songs were all about.". Fairly unremarkable concert, went too early there, ate as-much-as-you-can-eat shabu shabu afterwards.

Went also bouldering twice last week (Wednesday and Friday), and doing it alone is definitely tricky. Usually when doing it with friends it is easy to remember to keep pauses, but when alone you mostly get the feeling of "I'm in bad condition" due to lack of pauses unless you remind to keep them. On Saturday, didn't do anything except book skiing trip to Gala Yuzawa for Sunday (bullet train ride from Tokyo station, about 2 hours from home door to the skiing slopes). Unfortunately, the wind wasn't co-operating and due to strong wind gondola lifts at Gala were not operational so I got to some other resort instead (NAPSA). It wasn't as fun, supposedly, and considerably smaller..

Despite not having gone downhill skiing for over year, still did mostly recently - did expert-grade course 3 times and fell all over the place (with DSLR in my pocket to boot). The intermediate-level courses weren't challenging at all though, so I guess I'm somewhere in the middle I guess. Returning, I committed major faux pas at a local bus when I was returning from dinner to home; in Tokyo buses there's separate money exchange slot and "exact fee" slot where you pay the driver, and of course I put too much money to the wrong one.. after that, I got 200 yen back from the next customer's payment (apparently driver could not access the contents of the moneybox), and finally didn't get last 100 yen because when I was leaving, the driver offered me the rest in 10 en coins and I was said that I didn't really need them. After that I laughed my way home, as this wasn't first time I had amusing experience on a bus recently - when going hiking two weeks ago, I changed money in the money change slot and assumed that the fee had been deducted from the remaining money, but apparently not, so the driver wasn't happy when I tried to leave without paying ;-)

Monday, hated the idea of going to the US so much that I had great difficulty actually packing, so I think I did lots of irrelevant stuff with my toys and finished the packing effort like 3 am. Tuesday (today) found out that going to US is even more painful nowadays than it used to be.

Airport quality experience:
- Go to United Airlines counter - after some queueing, some nice lady handles checkin and only result is "go to ANA counter" (damned codesharing)
- At ANA counter, there was insanely slowly moving queue for the people going to the US; I understood the reason when I got to the counter, as either I had completely clueless clerk or regulations are somewhat strange these days. She first wanted to see all my documents (e-ticket, passport, mileage card) which is mostly normal. Then she asked about my visa which isn't, and then she returned the passport to me and fiddled with computer many minutes. During that I filled in the assorted imigration/customs forms needed for leaving Japan / entering US, and she muttered something about passport online check or something. Then she wanted my passport AGAIN and after minute or two of deliberation I actually got it and boarding pass(!). I think this took almost 10 minutes or something..
- Of course, there was normal security screening where they wanted me to get my laptop out of the bag (normal, but tedious)
- Then there was 'special' America-only section of the airport (few gates) where everyone got ALL of their hand luggage hand-searched; I was seriously tempted to answer "no" when the lady asked me if it was ok for her to go through my bag.
- And THEN another tedious new thing; apparently, the US of A wants MORE than one paper about where people are staying; in addition to normal visa waiver paper, they wanted some blue sheet which supposedly airline will provide to the US govt about where the customer in question is staying.

I'm starting to consider NOT going to the united states of dystopia any longer, as this is starting to get ridiculous.. Of course, it remains to be seen how long I will work in my current job, or in Japan, or both; my new work project's considerably more boring than my old one, my old boss that I liked is being replaced in two months, and additionally even our office's possibly moving further off (to Roppongi, ugh.)

.. later.. .. on the positive note, immigration guy in SFO was (for a change) nice guy and didn't cause trouble.

Finland - the return/visit

2006-12-16T21:23:00.000+02:00

After spending quality time of roughly 22 hours (home at Shinjuku - train to Narita - plane to Wien - plane to Helsinki), I almost got the final grace by the Finnish customs. Luckily, they asked first where I was from and I wasn't suspected visitor from Amsterdam (plane from there had landed at same time), they waved me off.. *phew* Luckily they were apparently only after drugs I guess, and Vienna (and especially Japan?) doesn't feature high on the list.

In home, I for the first time notice how much more quiet / environment controlled the Finnish housing is; I can hear my Macbook's hard drive for the first time! And almost nowhere does it feel too hot or cold.. bliss. None of that 'insulation is for wimps, get your ass next to air conditioner!' here. Of course, toilet seat, as well as the floor of the bathroom, was cold as hell; seat because I wasn't in Japan, and floor because the heating hadn't been turned on yet.

Japan clearly has some upsides, but also clearly some downsides. I keep wondering why I am still interested..

A day of shopping and nerding away..

2006-12-09T15:54:00.000+02:00

For once, not a single sports-oriented event planned for the whole weekend. Saturday's forecast was lousy, and the flu continues, so I need to do assorted Christmas-related shopping excursions on Saturday and find something interesting to do on Sunday - most likely, it revolves around playing too much Go and too little else.

Recently I haven't done much else than play Go on my days off, which is unfortunate. While in Japan, studying the language might be sensible way to go, but unfortunately I think I have learned already as much as I can reasonably expect to learn without significant effort, and these days me + effort = no go.. Or so does it seem.

Computer stuff is also wellspring of trouble; finally, the Mac is stable - I guess either Parallels or fancontrol daemon was unstable, and I wound up using fancontrol daemon in the first place due to bugs in the Kotoeri (Japanese input method).. oh well. Haven't found a reason for Parallels, as it does not support USB2 and therefore I cannot use my TV tuner with it, but perhaps I will make a local BootCamp-based installation for TV watching, one of these days. Unfortunately, with the Mac stabilizing, Zaurus did the reverse - the new installation's kanji key did not work, so I needed to do multiple reinstalls and it still did not work.. stupid Cacko ROM (http://cacko.biz). Guess I will have to switch to original Sharp ROM, but for that I need working SD card reader (mine gave up the ghost suddenly sometime last month)..

So shopping today:
- getting ticket to Finland
- SD card reader
- christmas gifts to various people
- something to read (I have been reading manga called "Death Note" recently, maybe more of that..)

And of course, my usual Metropolis magazine, which while free, is inconvenient to get on Fridays so guess I will grab it during the grand shopping tour. It remains to be seen if I ever go to any events mentioned there anymore though, because the last time I went somewhere was in mid-September or something. It seems most of my activities are nowadays daily ritual.

It turns out that the ticket was to be picked up at the airport, so my trip to Shibuya was a waste except for a book and Metropolis I picked up there. Then, I spent few hours shopping in Akihabara for assorted geeky christmas gifts. Pending shopping: kid stuff for people of young persuasion (hi, Ken). I also accidentally bought a new Mac-compatible TV tuner and SD card reader from Akihabara, and I HOPE they will work without issues once I get home. Otherwise life will be somewhat painful (that is, I need to buy either more SD or CF cards of small size to get my Zaurus re-installed, sigh)..

I spent 17-23 nerding away, getting my TV setup back working (The EyeTV2 software for Mac was considerable improvement from the shit MagicTV for Windows), and Zaurus back up and running. It seems that my IT issues are finally(?) solved; things mostly work like they should now (with the exception of the Mac forgetting some settings when it is rebooted suddenly, but I guess I cannot blame it entirely for that..)

Finally initial picture sorting done..

2006-12-04T19:28:00.000+02:00

More pictures available.. by the ton! About 790 pictures dumped to my picture album, as I was too lazy to sort out good from the bad. Featured trips:

- October North Carolina (3 days)

- October New York week

- November San Diego

- November hiking at Mitake and Takao

Disclaimer: Some of them definitely need some postprocessing, but just categorizing/deleting really bad ones/filtering inappropriate ones took enough work so that I will work on the postprocessing angle for a bit, and get back to it. Here's my favourite so far, though..

2006-11-28T17:51:00.000+02:00

Attacking my picture collection finally. About 700 pictures to sort, but the pictures from North Carolina+New York, and San Diego trips should be coming up sometime this week (if I have the time). Happened since last update:

My Linux mania lasted all of 3 weeks. I survived the IETF trip to San Diego with it, but that is the most I can say about the time - in general, although I normally use only my picture management application and few other select applications, my favourite, that is, movie playing did not quite work with Linux and it was a deal-killer. Therefore I went ahead and bought a new laptop ( MacBook ). After that, spent last week and half getting it up and running, porting the software I ran on Linux and Windows before that to it and so forth. Now it's working fairly well though.

Last week forgot my Sharp Zaurus to some train, so had to buy new one last Sunday.. I really don't like how much money I've spent this month, but oh well. (Bought also plane ticket finally to Finland yesterday.)

Anyway, significant chunk of pictures coming up in few days, hopefully. Scary to think that I have only bit over 2 weeks in Japan ntil my vacation in the cold, cold Finland..

Maybe quiet for awhile..?

2006-10-22T08:03:00.000+03:00

I have had series of not-so-happy events during the last 24 hours: to start off, I had pleasant 14.5 hour flight from NYC to Narita, starting with a security check (.. surprise ..). The flight ended relatively happily (half-full plane, so I had 2 seats to myself, luxury!), although I forgot my pen somewhere on the airplane. Similarly, I forgot my pen case AND pens on the flight from Narita to Chicago bit over week ago, so I guess it is a trend.. I hate the idea of shopping for replacements, sigh.

That was not a big hurdle though, and I got off the airport (relatively) happy. Of course, I missed the train home by 3 minutes and needed to wait another half an hour. Then, I got home and learned that our most recent hunting dog (Tupu) had died (driven over by a car) during the week. I wasn't too happy after that.

Then, I went to bed too early (7pm), and woke up 1am and could not sleep. Again, not a huge obstacle. Then the fun began.. I started playing with my laptop, trying to backup files from the trip, and suddenly all sorts of strange error messages started showing up. Not deterred, I played with it few more hours, but in the end even the adminstrator's profile got corrupted and I got depressed and decided to debug things later on after trying to copy what I could to safe place in safe mode.

On further examination, I guessed problem to be either memory or CPU - the machine booted randomly, or programs crashed, depending on phase of the moon or something. After fiddling with memory sticks, USB devices, and the CPU's thermal paste, I ran memtest86 - and lo and behold, the internal memory was partially broken. (few bits on 168mb (out of 256mb internal memory) point did not work correctly)

So to conclude, it seems that my pimped Panasonic R3 laptop is dying, sigh.. 3 months after the hard drive upgrade, to boot. I see only two real alternatives - move to a Linux-only environment at home (because Linux can be told that the few kb of memory are dead), or alternatively have the laptop repaired/replaced. I guess I will inquire Panasonic if they do memory chip replacements (somewhat unlikely, as it's somewhat tedious thing to do), and if not, I suppose I have a Linux-only laptop - and nasty decision whether to buy a new one for Windows use or not.

So, the NYC pictures will show up once I salvage them off my laptop's HD (one way or another), and until the time I get laptop up and running I don't think I will be reachable via Skype or MSN either. I'm safely in the land of the more free though, so all is well, relatively speaking - potential financial expense of replacing the laptop is not appealing.

(Although, the repairs of my camera were fairly cheap here, so maybe laptop repair is cheap too - we shall see.)

Ode to shopping

2006-10-19T02:54:00.000+03:00

To alleviate my 30s crisis, I set myself interesting policy for New York trip - no budget whatsoever. Of course, the hotel I picked wasn't 5 star one (pictures to follow, once I get home), but for everyday food I've eaten everything from 2 dollar hot dog to 62 dollar lunch in a 5-star french restaurant. Most of the stuff I've shopped have been cheap (new bag for my laptop, climbing shoes, bunch of books) but it does add up.

Most annoying thing about tourism in NY nowadays is that every damn attraction has it's own security checks to deter terrorism, with various levels of strictness and efficiency. So far my laptop+camera backpack's been prodded by at least 5 security checkpoints, and at Liberty Island ferry (to the Statue of Liberty) they actually wanted to open it+check it was really a laptop+etc just like as if I was boarding a plane. sigh. Some stores also have wanted bags checked in, but luckily all except one accepted "sorry, I have camera+laptop here, are you insured for this?" question and let me keep it. The exception was a bag store, of all things, which I promptly left once they insisted on having my backpack (and considering my backpack contained, among other things, electronic keys to our corporate network, I chose not to leave it at the counter).

Food's been mostly terrible, only few good restaurants I randomly picked being the exception. In general, compared to Japan, there's too much food but unfortunately of inferior quality. The Metropolitan museum was ok, but much advertised Museum of Modern Art was a bore - I spent 20$ to get in and in the end was interested enough to stay inside for all of 90 minutes or so. Weather's been excellent, though, and I've gotten HUGE(tm) pile of pictures that I will dump this weekend (most likely) to somewhere accessible.

Internet access has sucked in general too. *sigh* Typing this from seats in theater of Spamalot musical, waiting for it to start - refreshingly enough, they had free wlan access, third one I've found so far. Of course, I paid $112 for the seat to the musical so maybe it's not exactly free.

I suppose that's it, most likely next one and more comprehensive NY report coming up weekend or early next week, once I am back in Japan and settled (for some definition of settled, of course).

Welcome (cough) to the Land the 'Free'

2006-10-14T20:11:00.000+03:00

For a change, not going to post any pictures as I am writing this from w-lan spot in downton Manhattan, while waiting for lunch. So far the trip to the States have been fairly boring, 3 days in Durham(/Raleigh), during which I only worked and had one evening free to go sightseeing.

Much to my surprise, for the first time ever, I wasn't classified for a "random" security check at the airport when changing planes in Chicago. In hindsight, I figured out why - I got the boarding cards to Durham (Narita-Chicago, Chicago-Durham) from Tokyo, and they put the "S" markers (that are something along the lines of "suspicious", "security check needed", "spy" or something else) only when doing check-in in the States. Therefore, the way up to Durham wasn't actually too unpleasant.

Of course, for the Durham-New York leg of my trip, "Sir, you have been chosen for random security check." (...), and the plane was delayed. Despite thinking of swearing off US travel for awhile when I heard that, not to mention the fact that plane was delayed one hour, I got to see a rare sight when arriving at NY - shortly after sunset, we flew over downtown Manhattan to the La Guardia airport without a cloud in sight. Now _that_ was one impressive sight! (Unfortunately, at that point we were already in the 'landing mode', so couldn't take pictures). After that, the trip from the airport to the hotel was fairly uneventful, although I put my airport shuttle reservation to my big suitcase and forgot about it (I had woken up around midnight that day, as I was still terribly jetlagged despite having been in the States for 3 days by then). Luckily, I got to the hotel anyway (which incidentally is "the dump", but the price is right so I don't think I'll complain), and even tipped the shuttle taxi driver excessively (13$ fee, I paid 20$ and said something about "forget about the change, I want to sleep.").

Today, been walking around, the weather's excellent and the number of pictures taken so far is also excessive (in the region of 200-300). I doubt I'll keep many of them, but at least there's something to choose from. The weather forecast for the weekend is excellent, but after that it will get cloudy, and from Wednesday onward it supposedly rains until I leave on Friday. So, I decided to do my sightseeing walks today and tomorrow, and go for the indoor sightseeing/museum/concert/theater/shopping angle next week.

Funnily enough, one small plane crashing to a condo on Manhattan has led to prevention of private plane traffic on the rivers - good old-fashioned "terrorists might do that!?!?!" argument again.

2006-10-09T18:15:00.000+03:00

Week went by fairly fast. Didn't have quite the time I could've wished for, but finally in the /album/ (for those who know where), there's some new picture sets. Didn't have time for much postprocession/selection of pictures, however :p

Been bouldering a bit (see picture below for idea about the indoor gym we go to), but my arms are still way too weak. Last week was mostly rain up to Friday, but Saturday-to-current-Monday was brilliant weather. Hardly a cloud in sight. See the Fuji images below for idea :-)

Now all I need is lot of luck that I will survive the good old "land of the free" and their terrorist profiling, considering I think I've been pulled aside last two times out of two visits done recently.

Bouldering gym

Fuji from Western Tokyo (90km?), with bit over 100mm-equivalent lens.

Fuji from Shinjuku (120km?), with 640mm-equivalent lens.

Also finally took a picture of the moon. I guess I need bigger lens if I want better picture than this: (click link to see original)

Full moon with 640mm-equivalent lens.

Another month, another post?

2006-10-04T17:30:00.000+03:00

Unfortunately, my picture management program turned out to be bit faulty and I spent next few weeks fiddling with it. So no pictures to show here, yet..

Due to knee pain, finally decided to see a doctor few weeks ago. My Japanese hospital experience was mostly positive; the initial diagnosis of my knee cost ~20 euros, MRI scan of it 50? euros and the final telling of the diagnosis about 10? euros. Something or other in the knee was ruptured apparently, but it should heal on it's own, and I got some assorted medicines to help with the pain (if any). That's the impression I got anyway, as the doctor wasn't incredibly keen on speaking in English and my Japanese wasn't quite efficient enough. Still, considerably more fun experience than in Finland, as 3 trips total cost 80? euros, and I waited maybe total of 15 minutes..

Not much else to note; bought new camera lens (Canon EF 24-105mm f4L), ordered trip to Finland (15th of December - 8th of January), and apparently will be spending the next two weeks in good old US of A. Still debating if I should buy a cheaper camera to drag around the seedier parts of NY, as SLR makes me look too touristy/robbable? Hmm. Panasonic Lumix DMC LX-2 looks promising, as it is capable of taking RAW pictures, has manual settings, image stabilization and fairly compact size.

Pictures coming up before the next week's US trip, really!

What else..

- 23th of September - Tokyo Game Show - was quite fun
- New hobby: bouldering (climbing up walls with hand/footholds and no equipment)

Dead blog zone coming up? :)

2006-09-11T18:02:00.000+03:00

Pushing the no-write record even further. Main problem lies with my laziness in sorting my photos; I like to post the images around the same time I post something here, but unfortunately I haven't sorted any pictures since middle of July.

However!

In the secret web site (hah hah), there are some pictures for select few. The only one I want to advertise publicly is the www.address.org/~my-username/events/2006-08-12-tokyo-bay-fireworks/ - replace the address with the website name, and my-username with my username if you know them!

I'll try to post few pictures here in day or two once I have sorted through the 700 pictures I have in my "to sort" pile.

Happened recently:

- Late July / Early August went to 3 different fireworks (Sumidagawa, Iidabashi, Tokyo bay)
- Been finally evaluating some Japanese language schools, and finally chose J's language school, but the bureaucracy is still in progress (the company hopefully pays most of the fees)
- Experienced Japanese bicycling culture at it's finest. When doing about 10km circuit around a lake, saw the lake total of 4 times (the rest of the time fence/woods blocked the sight). Also, bicycle paths in Japan SUCK - in 6 km of one, there was total of about 20 places where you almost had to stop to pass through (explanatory picture coming in later)
- Went to movies for first time in Japan - saw Ged, Mi:3, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and United 93(?). The Mi:3 was crappiest of the movies, but in digital theater unbelievably pretty (8 megapixel display!)
- One death march to the mountains bit over 2 weeks ago, knee didn't seem too good then
- Some shopping at Ikea - bedcovers, towel, and assorted swedish gourmet delicacies ;)
- Last Saturday bicycled to base of mount Takao and back (93km), and naturally ran to the top from the bottom as well. Not as tiring as it could be.
- Last Sunday, went to wander around Tokyo with camera, as the day looked nice. Walked down to Harajuku from home via Yoyogi park (see the spider picture), took some pictures of the girls showing off there, and then went to burger place called Arms west of Yoyogi for a burger. Finally, walked home.

Greenery in Yoyogi park on Sunday.

Paper lanterns when wandering home from Yoyogi park on Sunday.

Lightning storm last night (about 3am? :p)

Month without writeup? Must be a record.

2006-08-01T16:35:00.000+03:00

I was quite busy in the week leading up to the combined Montreal+San Jose trip, so hardly had time to write. Then I had two weeks there, and now have spent week back in Tokyo.

The amount of trauma going/leaving US nowadays involves is just incredible. It seems to be more fascist place than China of all things nowadays, with too "empowered" border guards keen to keep people in and out that have been ALREADY let to country 10+ times. Sigh. I had two quality discussions at immigration, and two "bonus" security checks after some attitude problems; it is lovely that EVERYONE at immigration is fingerprinted and photographed nowadays, feels more like entering a jail than "home of the free" (parentheses really needed these days).

Anyway. Montreal was fun, 500+ pictures taken in 8 days. San Jose was not, 2 pictures taken within 6 days (and few more at the airport just to annoy the security after they had given me the bonus security check).

Palais de Congress, the place of the meeting.

Downtown Montreal, from top of Mount Royal.

The end of the International Jazz Festival I got to enjoy two days.. Quite interesting event.

And then, I returned back to Tokyo. The first thing I did was my long-postponed laptop hard drive upgrade (40GB harddrive is so old-fashioned, and additionally warranty just ran out in May); therefore, excellent time for some hardware deassembly!

I landed in Japan on Saturday afternoon, and I spent the next day in Akihabara, shopping the needed parts. 160GB notebook-size HD, as well as 320GB desktop HD (for backups) later, I was home doing the installation. Or, hoping to do the installation. It turns out that backing 40GB of data took quite a while, and I actually fell asleep waiting for it to complete early in the evening.

So, jet-lagged, 2am, I woke up and started the project:

Laptop deassembly done - 20+ screws and assorted parts!

Much to my surprise, the deassembly+assembly went without a hitch, and around 4am Monday morning I started restoring my backup to the new, improved HD. And the system has worked ever since (*knock on the wood*) for all of 8 days..

Week passed without much to speak of, until the weekend. On Saturday, the Sumida river fireworks festival (the largest amount of explosives on numerical terms) in Tokyo was held. I went on-site over 3 hours earlier, and didn't even manage to get a good place to set up my tripod.. sigh. Anyway, after waiting 3 hours, enjoyed 70 minutes of fireworks and about 1.5 hours of getting out (LOTS of people).

Random picture of the fireworks.

On Sunday I went to some meet-the-people event, and actually won some free movie tickets.. The irony, considering I haven't yet even bothered to go to a movie in Japan.

To rectify this, I actually went today to see one movie; however, as it was based on one of my favourite book series, it didn't have much of a chance; I was slightly disappointed, but as far as tales go, the Earthsea movie was ok. It did not follow plot of the books at all though (mix of book 3, 4, and "new stuff" in random order).

Depressing week..

2006-07-02T18:40:00.000+03:00

Although waiting for the Canada+US trip that start week is fun enough, this week was not exactly fun one. The weekdays were, for most part; went bicycling on Monday, and on Wednesday I went to see Mashcomics House, fairly interesting temporary exhibition (A small house in the suburbs of Aoyama, with constantly changing drawings).

Then, when eagerly waiting for the weekend, went bicycling on Friday. Funnily enough, I managed to "get on top of" my first Japanese woman - some elderly lady stepped from the sidewalk to the pavement right in front of me. When I noticed her, she was maybe 2-3 meters away, and when you are moving 8-9 meters per second not much to be done at that point.. End result:

Luckily she survived it without more than bruises too. I was somewhat pessimistic as she fell after I hit her with the bicycle and she and I fell down on the road.

That effectively ruined the weekend though, as the knees are slightly painful as the scabs heal, so I hardly left the apartment during the Saturday and Sunday.. sigh.

Time between posts approaching infinity gradually..

2006-06-26T18:45:00.000+03:00

3 weeks, without much to speak of happening really. Two major non-boring events that I really want to mention, taking off Wednesday soon 2 weeks ago to go on long-distance bicycling trip to Kamakura and Enoshima (134km daytrip), and last Sunday's climb. No climb pictures here though, the climb pictures are available .. elsewhere.

At any rate, things have mostly settled down by now, I even got my fridge today. It seems that I am constantly struck by the oddness of Japan sometimes though; namely, three recent examples:

The "yes, customer, right away" training in local restaurant that they conduct before opening (see picture below), where they at very loud voice shout about all the customer service phrases so they are "fluent" with them.

Second example is another instance of insane customer service; I went dining last Saturday in Shibuya, and because customer service was somewhat slow I just left 2000 yen money with them (150 yen too much) and left. 5-10? minutes later, waiter caught up to me on the street offering the money, and I pointed out "no thank you, it was meant for you".

Finally, the number of all sorts of vending machines can be downright scary (see below for example picture). Today, I was in semi-tedious situation as I had only few 10000 yen bills, but none of the food-ticket vending machines you use in cheap restaurants actually accept that high bills. So I wound up wandering around for like hour looking for place to eat, all either "hmm, too expensive" or ".. this looks good.. oh no, vending machine!". Finally, settled for food from local convenience store.

The picture assortment this time, consists of random assortment of pictures from my bicycle trip to Enoshima, followed by some day-by-day impressions. (Hiking pictures elsewhere.)

Yes, customer is always right-training at local restaurant shortly before opening.

Funnily enough, I saw these guys shouting at loud noise phrases like "certainly, right away!" etc in an empty restaurant. Apparently practice for use on the live customers. Still, extremely funny for me ;)

Bumch of vending machines (in Kamakura).

The feeling of being almost alone on Tokyo underground..

Shibya by night and rain..

Shinjuku by day.

Death march part 3

2006-06-05T17:06:00.000+03:00

Last Saturday, we went for a quick-n-dirty rent-a-car + mountain hike trip. Turns out, the trip was not exactly extensive (14.7km of walking, 1750 meters of climbing), but for the first time my legs were actually feeling not-so-good after the trip.

Yesterday my right knee especially hurt like hell, but I did not feel like wasting a day so went to visit Ikea at 南船橋. The length of the queues was simply excessive.

Today left leg hurting, so no bicycling but instead sorting my photo collection (as usual). Two random examples:

Scenery from mountains (see private album for more pictures from last weekend)

Shinjuku Mitsui building (workplace)

Lens shopping, interesting hobby

2006-06-02T18:32:00.000+03:00

Nothing particularly fascinating for last week and half; last weekend weather was lousy, so went only shopping and walking around in rain on Saturday, and went to play Go and for a little bit of bicycling on Sunday. Shopped new Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens, and found out I don't like primes that much (coworker beer pictures only taken with the lens, and those not shared here, sorry).

Tomorrow, the weather forecast looks LOUSY but we decided to go hiking anyway; interesting to see how it turns out. I bought today another lens (sigh, dangerous hobby), Tokina 12-24mm f/4 one. It was inspired by my lack of liking of the earlier Canon lens - I decided to stick to zooms from now on.

Sample or two from the new wide-angle lens:

Few taxis near Shibuya.

Random crowds at Shibuya.

I am looking forward to how the lens turns out on the tomorrow's hike - hopefully the weather will be reasonable.

Another weekend of hiking near Tanzawa

2006-05-22T19:29:00.000+03:00

Hmmh. More recent update, *gasp*. Saturday, weather forecast looked horrible so bicycled around the town (went to Koganei park and back, about 40km), and then 15 minutes after reaching home horrible rain started. Good timing :)

Sunday, climbed once more on peaks of Tanzawa mountain. Visited the remaining three bigger ones (including the tallest, Hirugatake). Pictures about that coming up sooner or later.. It was quite relaxing hike, as shown from the data below:

Today's picture theme is: beauty in the city ;)

Cityscape of Shinjuku close to sunset about month ago

Girl posing for fellow photographer (not me) in Harajuku park 3 weeks? ago

Delays keep getting longer and longer ;)

2006-05-18T14:34:00.000+03:00

Strangely enough, I actually seem to have bunch of pictures to post, but haven't felt very motivated to do the conversion to good web format (I shoot RAW with my camera, and it takes some time to get presentable results). Today I bought Pixmantec's RawShooter Premium license, though, so maybe things will improve.

What happened in last two weeks?

Went bicycling 5.5., but was bit tired so not long trip. The end of golden week (6.5.-7.5.) was spent moping indoors, due to very bad weather (it rained quite a lot then). Did some small-scale shopping.

Last week, worked relatively hard from Monday to Thursday (played Go one evening, besides that mostly just work) so took that Friday off and bicycled to Ome and back (about 100km round trip). It was quite fun project, although I did not for some reason feel motivated to drive very rapidly, so the speed score sucked, so to speak. Last weekend continued with idle on Saturday, and then finally, mountain climbing expedition on Sunday with my boss.

Climbed to second highest peak of Tanazawa mountain (about 1560 meters from sea level), and considering we started from sea level or fairly close to it (200-300m or so), it was fairly rough :)

Got bunch of interesting pictures from that too though, and here's two just to prove the point (A lot more coming up once I get up to speed with the RawShooter - I have already bit over 400 pictures from this trip to Japan, so should have enough material to post for a while).

Random view from top of one of the summits.

Deer on top of one of the lower peaks of Tanazawa mountain.

Random pictures

2006-05-04T17:59:00.000+03:00

I don't know why I post pictures after the main text, but I do.. here we go: (from now on probably posting image or two every few days even if not motivated, I have quite large backlog)

Latest setup (Company IBM laptop on the left, Eizo 24" + my small laptop by the window).

Acer AL2416WD - nice design, very bad electronics. I had to drag it home twice and finally gave up.

This beats even my GPS+Polar heart rate monitor handlebar!

Finally end to spending?

2006-05-04T16:45:00.000+03:00

Again 1.5 weeks since last entry. What happened since the previous, roughly.

Shopping:
- got table, few chairs, and some other interior decorations (standing lamp, curtains)
- decided to buy cheap Acer 24" TFT display, none in stock
- got it week afterward
- it was broken, dragged it back to store
- got new one, it broke after two days, dragged it back to store
- got frustrated, bought Eizo S2410W-R (= about state-of-the-art as far as 24" displays go)
- went shopping for speakers with 100-240v power (so I can use them back home too). very, very frustrating experience, finally the only model one very friendly salesguy at Yodobashi Camera found for me was "Harman & Kardon Soundsticks 2", which supposedly was 100-240v according to webpage. I was quite frustrated to note that on the box it said '100v japan only model', but when the salesguy opened the box, the power supply was 100-240v. Life IS strange sometimes.

What else:
- Last Friday, 28.4. (day off, first day of the golden week 4 holiday set), was day when EVERYTHING went wrong - starting from breaking both valves on my Cannondale's tubes, going through asphalt jungle bicycle tour, and finally the 2x Acer-swapping noted above

- Last Saturday, went to Sony's Leonardi Da Vinci exhibition (free), quite interesting - also tried to find used camera stores in Ginza, less successfully. Then I shopped some bicycling gear (standing pump, few inner tubes) and went home to repair the tubes on the bicycle. After that, I got bored and actually went to bar called Xanadu in Shibuya(!), mostly to remember the times I went to same bar with some colleagues (hi, Ville! ;>). Although I had interesting discussion with locals, I found it rather dull overall and not to my liking (I guess going to bars alone is not really productive), so after massive 2(!) beers I wandered back home to Shinjuku. Had some noodles in a street stall, quite interesting experience in middle of skyscrapers.

- Last Sunday, did my first longer bicycle trip, which was surprisingly enjoyable; bicycled 42km, maybe 3-4km of it in parks, 5km on little used roads and the rest on basic 4-lane highway with low speed limit (50km/h). After that, went to eat and shop in Harajuku, and actually finally found something to eat. However, forgot to shop due to photography opportunities afforded by the locals, so went shopping only after sundown. Met interesting guy, who had been photographing the people there for 20 years, and after suitable "wow, your camera is nice.." "so is yours.." I got to see bunch of his quite good pictures, and watch him at work. He was quite familiar with the girls he took pictures of. Well after sundown, I wandered to Shibuya (by walking from Harajuku), and shopped for bicycle bag, bicycle carrying bag and some other stuff (GPS mount at least).

Monday and Tuesday I worked, little to speak of except getting the Eizo+speakers on Tuesday evening and finally being happy with my little IT hardware set back home.

Wednesday was my major bicycling exhibition, ironically enough it took for me to get to the place where I started bicycling about 3 hours (bicycle to train station, pack bicycle, 2 hours on train, unpack bicycle) and only about 5 hours to return by bicycle. In the end, the distance travelled was 92.2km with average moving speed of about 25km/h (I had break or two, and of course bunch of traffic lights).

Today was my day of rest - just went to play Go in Nihon Ki-in, and after that went to look for books - Blue Parrot store in Takadanobaba was bit of a disappointment (fiction and science fiction mixed, could not be bothered to go through all of them), but I found some more Hikaru no Go mangas in Book-off near home.

Today's most impolite experience by far was in a random upscale restaurant I went to - the waiter asked how many people, I said one, and the waiter said 'sorry, no one-man tables'. *GNNN*

Sometimes being indecisive helps..

2006-04-22T16:54:00.000+03:00

Today was another of those 'why did this day have to end?' days. Finally bought a bicycle, spending too much money (Cannondale Bad Boy Disc), and had only little time to play with it before it got dark (about 18:20 or so).

Marked feature of the day: decision paralysis. First I spent 3 hours wondering if I should buy the bicycle (obviously, yes - my body cannot otherwise most likely stay in shape here anyway), and then having finally bought it, I bicycled back home and had a long nice bath. After the bath (which took bit over 1 hour), I read a book a bit and then walked to the shopping neighbourhood to buy some towels. After that, second instance of decision paralysis - I spent maybe one hour walking around, looking for restaurant that fit my criteria (undefined), and that looked a) reasonably priced and b) interesting.

After the first one month of ramen mania (maybe 20-30 cups of different noodles eaten in the shops nearby), I went through Indian food stage (quite many nice Indian restaurants both in Shinjuku and Shibuya), but despite the temptation of Indian restaurants, I had already eaten Indian twice this week.

So, I wandered on. Finally in the (ill-reputed) Kabukichou district of Shinjuku, I found reasonable-looking set menu in yakiniku (korean-ish barbeque) place. So, wondering about the quality of the food I went there.

And, much to my surprise, the food was good _and_ there was more than enough of it. Contents of the set I ate (roughly)

- kimchi (korean vegetable dish)
- some salad
- onions, mushrooms and some other vegetables fried over the fire
- some pieces of chicken (not quite sure which)
- pork ribs (nice chunks too, maybe 200-300g)
- some you-do-not-really-want-to-know bits of ox/cow
- french fries
- bowl of rice
- nice soup
- ice-cream dessert

- glass of orange juice.. and lots of water..

When the course was nearing it's end, I really wondered if I had understood the scheme correctly - was this really all for one person? (I could barely eat it all)

In the end, yes,　it was.. and grand total cost was 3037 yen (about 22 euros). Talk about cheap 2-hour quality dining experience!

Tired, I wandered home and now proceed with the anime-watching maraton - although I am already looking forward to getting my desk on monday so I can finally buy a larger monitor than my laptop's 10.8" screen :)

Now featuring: Huge(tm) apartment in Shinjuku ;)

2006-04-20T18:15:00.000+03:00

View of the western Shinjuku scyscrapers from my balcony door:

Contents of the huge(tm) apartment, in 4 pictures (contains about everything except wardrobe ,)).

Amenities, such as they are.

Settled down?

2006-04-20T16:24:00.000+03:00

Haven't been writing much recently as not much to tell; the setting up of my apartment is almost complete - table, chairs, curtains coming next Monday and I'm going to shop for monitor on Monday - the new Acer 24" widescreen is very cheap here, 750 euros or so. Fridge I am still missing, but not a huge priority right now. Washing machine arrived today, microwave oven I'm unlikely to buy as I don't see much I'd care to heat in the stores anyway.

Then only thing I _really_ lack is network access (I have wireless network access that costs all of 4 euros/month but it's bit unreliable and works only from near window of my apartment :->), my fiber-based 100mbps line is coming in week or two.. *sigh*

I have had all sorts of interesting episodes in the last 10 days, but nothing particularly dramatic - few quite long walks, lots of anime-watching/manga-reading, some Go in local Go place (Shinjuku) as well as the main Ichigaya place, interesting encounters with local bureaucracy - the number of times I have filled in my details for foreigner registration, various bank accounts and credit cards [3 so far, at least one more pending], rental contract, two different kinds of network address, water, electricity, gas, and so forth - is downright amazing. At least I can write the address fairly fluently now :-)

On positive note though, the money transfer from Finland to Japan took only 3 days, which was impressive. So now I have enough $ to fund the rest of my shopping needs - I spent today hour or two drooling at bicycles (buying one on Saturday or Sunday).

Interestingly enough, almost _every_ conversation with Japanese people goes something along these lines: japanese guy/gal, with pained expression, not really looking forward to speaking english, gets surprised by me being able to speak some japanese. Then, they almost always ask how long I have lived here, and when I answer 'one month', they're like 'ooo...'.. and then I spoil the moment by telling that this is my 8th time visiting Japan :-)

Some pictures coming up fairly soon again.

No longer homeless

2006-04-09T11:40:00.000+03:00

Moved in on Wednesday, after getting 'sorry, you have to change room if you want to stay' signal in hotel. Unfortunately, my ordered Muji bed was still three days off (Saturday), so I had really only two options. Buy camping gear + sleep on floor (*ouch*), or move to different room/hotel.

The first option was cheaper and left me with tangible stuff - super lightweight sleeping bag + camping mat. Sleeping on the floor for 3 days wasn't excessively fun (mostly due to forgetting to turn on airconditioning first night -> woke up with 5-10 degrees in the room, and shivering in the cold. the other nights were ok, except airconditioning was bit noisy.

Another bitter disappointment were utilities; I expected I needed only water and electricity (who in their sane mind would want to mess with gas?), but it turns out shower + bath water was warmed by the gas (as well as the oven/plates), so I had to order gas, but it would come only on Saturday => 3 days without shower.

Yesterday finally got the bed (very efficient service), as well as gas, and celebrated the gas with long soak in the bath, and went to enjoy myself in city after that. Shopped for a bicycle (Cannondale Bad Boy Disc or Ultra, not sure which), but couldn't find it in the stores I found then; also, shopped 100mbps (uplink and downlink) fiber-based network connection for my home. 3-week delivery time is a bummer, but 30 euros/month is reasonable I think (FLET's + OCN + NTT providing assorted bits of the service I believe).

Today went for hanami (watching the cherry trees) with 3 other coworkers after finding local supermarket and garbage disposal place; had quite fun, maybe might even post pictures at some point. Interestingly enough, only the women actually drank alcohol, men tea :-)