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 :-)

... You took how many pictures..?

2006-04-03T15:04:00.000+03:00

Saturday's all-day walk session (11am - 11pm) involved about 3.9gb of pictures (roughly 400), and the final result was only about 100 that I bothered to keep. Here's two sakura-related pictures.

And one semirandom example from the Tokyo International Anime Fair.

Finally.. an apartment?

2006-04-03T14:45:00.000+03:00

The apartment saga is fairly interesting (and long) one. Today, I finally got an invoice to pay for the apartment I was interested in. Fees in random order:

- 2 months rent (april, may)
- 1 month's thank-you-for-the-opportunity money to the landlord
- 1 month's fee to the real estate agent
- 2 month's guarantee (of which most likely 1 month goes to cleaning once I leave)

.. and scale the 6 months involved with the 113k yen/month (about 800 eur?) and you realize that moving to places in japan is not exactly cheap.

My next problem was, how to get the money. Alternatives: visa (no go, some sort of stupid 3k eur / week limit on cash withdrawals, even assuming I had the limit to do it). International money transfer? Went to the receiving bank, and they told me that I could get the exact information only from the branch office where the target account was, and I needed to call them. At this stage, I was starting to get REALLY pissed off, as both the delays involved and additional bureaucracy did not appeal to me very much. I was NOT very happy.

Luckily my boss had extra cash on his bank account and graciously loaned me the 5k-ish eur I needed until I can get local bank account of my own. :-) I will most likely get the keys tomorrow, barring something unforeseen (duh). Would be nice, considering I get tossed out of the hotel day after tomorrow as someone has reserved this same room from that point onward (and I'd rather not move).

What happened since last post otherwise? Hmm. Mon-Fri apartment hunting pretty much, Saturday I walked around Tokyo a lot (maybe 30km, at least my feet were killing me afterwards after pounding tarmac so long), going to see the sakura in Asakusa (Sumida park), Ueno (Ueno park), and finally Chidorifuchi near Kudanshita station (north of the emperor's palace), all of that just walking from Asakusa. I crowned the day by walking home from there too.

Not good idea really, was too tired to do much on Sunday except play Go (10 games at Nihon Ki-in, half wins, half losses), and play with computer.. Anime addiction picking up again :)

Some pictures coming up too I suppose, soon.

Soon homeless? :p

2006-03-26T13:13:00.000+03:00

Just one week of company-paid hotel left, and the next place to stay in is still not clearly known. What happened this week? Hmm.

- Monday: Initial day at work.

- Tuesday: Day off (spring equinox day), spent mostly wondering about apartment, and
went to have a nice walk in Mogusaen park watching plum blossoms (not quite at full bloom yet). After that, wandered around town.

- Wed-Fri: Work. Not much to tell. One fairly nasty TV program though, quiz where contestant needed to guess answers to quiz when running on a mat, with constantly faster and faster speed, and if too slow -> drop to pool, and _3_ slow-motion replays of the same 'noooo.. splash!'. I watched it about 15min, all contestants wound up in the pool. :p

- Sat: Amusing TV program in the morning: 4 'idiotic' Finnish sports, only one of which did not exist, and contestants needed to figure out which one it was. Much to my surprise they DID guess it correctly. Anyway, spent Saturday looking through the apartment alternatives, both locally (speaking in japanese with a local agent) as well as on the internet (various sites) as well as bit remotely (went to see foreigner-oriented rental agency in shin-nakano). Still no luck, although visited interesting-looking new building with fairly high rent.

- Sun: In the morning went again to local agent, and found out that the 'cheap' apartment in the new building was taken, but some more expensive ones (=higher up the highrise building) were still available. I said 'ok, lets do this.' After that, I spent afternoon in Tokyo Anime Fair, which was incredibly fun (and tiring). The rental agent attempted to contact me 3 times, I called her only once and resolved (more or less) that issue. Still, the last call I left unanswered as it _is_ my day off after all. I hope I still have the apartment available tomorrow..

Oh well. Time to head to hotel, some evening snack and then off to bed :)

Return to Japan

2006-03-21T04:03:00.000+02:00

To put it briefly, after returning home I had wonderful summer vacation and then I spent the autumn and winter studying at Helsinki School of Economics (www.hse.fi). I never did manage to make a collection of the 'best' photos of 2005 Japan trip, but oh well.

Last Saturday, I boarded plane again to Tokyo. This time, I was to be employed (for a first time) by a japanese company (or well, subsidiary of an american company at any rate). I had quite mixed feelings about this as well as many other things, but things turned out well for most part.

On Sunday, I was EXTREMELY tired due to not having slept on the plane, and very little the night before. I wandered around like zombie dragging 27kg suitcase as well as two backpacks (probably 10kg each). Luckily, Narita Express went directly to Shinjuku station, so I needed just to walk about kilometer dragging the luggage up and down stairs against VERY strong wind. Sometimes, using a taxi might be good idea. Anyway, after that, I got to hotel and noticed, much to my dismay, that I had forgotten ALL work-related documents to Finland! I did not even have any idea where to report for work the next day! All I had were the work visa related things, which were in hindsight the important ones.

After FURIOUS two hours of digging around the two external hard drives, I found encrypted backup of my home system (good, I thought), very old set of PGP encryption keys (not so good as it turned out, they were not correct), and finally the correct GPG encryption keys I had used. So my laptop spent next two hours decrypting few gigabytes of data to encrypted partition on one of my external drives. Much to my relief, there was an e-mail which contained map and location where to go Monday among the backup files.

Then.. another not so good idea; I slept two hours. This in and of itself does not sound like great deal, but unfortunately it turned out to be. I spent the evening strolling around Shibuya, going for my traditional 'eat something and go for ice-cream' evening program that I do about every time I arrive to Tokyo.

I got to bed maybe 11pm, and woke up.. 4am. Not good. Slightly tired, but still could not sleep. After that, I spent few hours playing with various gizmos, and then watching television. Around 7am, I decided to clean up and start to prepare to head for some sort of breakfast. It turns out that I had also forgotten my shaver back home, so I needed to use disposable razor provided by the hotel.

BAD IDEA! While technically I can use one, I had few small cuts on my face before too long, and one fairly nasty one in my lip that bled for over half an hour before finally stopping. I had by then already researched from the dictionary all the relevant terminology to explain to the front desk of the hotel in case I needed to go to see a doctor about it. Luckily, it was not neccessary.

9am I reported for work, and had fairly eventful workday (starting with apologizing for missing documents, and in the end of the day in possession of everything that I needed - my own cubicle, IBM T42P laptop, Eizo external monitor, and .. drumroll.. Sony Ericsson phone! The last part was bit of a letdown, as it turned out NOT to be one of the most technically advanced ones available in Japan. Oh well, guess I will deal. The laptop is quite nice, I guess it has 17" screen, 2GB of RAM and 80GB? of HD. I spent maybe one hour doing overtime, and then headed home. As Tuesday is national holiday in Japan (spring equinox day), the office was mostly empty as people were taking the day off to get more vacation time.

In recurring way, I was very tired in the early evening when I got to my hotel (7pm) and I slept maybe four hors (until 11pm). After that, I woke up and .. could not sleep. No matter what I did. So I watched TV quite a bit, and then went for a stroll around night-time Shinjuku between 1am and 2am (measuring the walking distances to workplace from different subway and train stations while at it), and then went home, and after shopping some food tried to get some sleep. No luck. After 5am? I started playing with the i-Mode on my new phone, and damn it is nowadays very different from the beast I knew in 2000 when I last time worked in Japan. Color, fast, and very, very much information. The amount of English sites on the i-Mode is not particularly great (maybe hundred?), but the Japanese side contains almost EVERYTHING one could ever need.

During my quick browse through the available stuff, I found
- phone charge program (not special idea in and of itself, but it produces graphs about the amount of money used, and automatically gets billing data from company.. very nice)
- animate site, which contains (among other things) the list of Anime being currently shown on TV, organized both by show name and showing time (I think I will use this site A LOT!)
- funny graphical weather forecasts (strange-looking bear-cat hybrid blowing clouds at sun today, with 14.7 degree temperature estimate, 0mm of water and 2m/s wind estimated for west Shinjuku where I am currently)

I think i-Mode is still quite fun, unlike the services offered by the operators back home; at home, the 2G network was slow, and the available services totally useless compared to the stuff I find here.

I guess I am off now, having actually had IM conversation with my boss (on my day off, at the office), and having completed quite a number of tasks I needed to do. The rest of the day is 'fun', tomorrow I guess I will contact one apartment company I found intriguing.

Back home

2005-05-26T08:05:00.000+03:00

As suspected I did not have time for public blog entries during my travel mode. Returned to Finland yesterday.

I have ton of pictures though, and will post a link here to my finished photo gallery when I have organized them (4500 pictures taken during the 10 weeks I was in Japan; about 3000 left after initial bad file deletion).

Fade to black

2005-05-11T17:51:00.000+03:00

This blog is probably finished now, unless I find free network access that I can actually legally use for the rest of my trip. I will react to emails, but MSN/Skype are no longer options.

What happened up to Wednesday:

- Monday: studying record attempt, not quite there (5 hours of classwork and 3 hours of private lessons, and 3 hours of study home on top of that)
- Tuesday: cleaning up, packing, some studying, bird stalking (swan)
- Wednesday: bird stalking in the morning (I like the ton of pictures I got of crane that happened to be in the right spot at the right time), study, final cleanup today

Plan for future (for a change, I have actually booked hotel rooms so I actually will follow this plan, roughly at least):

Thursday: Some study, graduation ceremony, 850km on Shinkansen to Hakata where I arrive late in the evening.
Fri-Mon: Something in Kyuushu (not quite sure what yet; will read guidebook on the train and decide then :)
Tue: Travel Hakata->Tokyo (1175km, will take 6 hours or bit over due to change of trains; uncertain what to do with the leftover time)
Wed: Wandering around Tokyo
Thu: Heading to Kyoto, bit of wandering there if there is time (515km, 2.5 hours or so)
Fri: World expo (I'm really looking forward to seeing the 580km/h Shinkansen prototype)
Sat: Return to Tokyo in the afternoon

..and lurk there until the happy end when I head back to cooler climes. Japan is too hot in May, the temperature has been mostly in the 25-ish range for the last month or so during day when not cloudy; even on rainy days, 20-ish degrees.

2005-05-11T17:50:00.000+03:00

Oh no, it's the crazy foreigner with big camera!

2005-05-11T17:49:00.000+03:00

Crane and crow.

2005-05-11T17:47:00.000+03:00

Swan swimming in the pond near student apartment.

Life goes on

2005-05-08T19:05:00.000+03:00

Friday - wet shopping (As noted in the daily entry).
Saturday - excellent weather, I am still uncertain what I did (went out and took pictures of birds/flowers, but just one sample here.. Definitely need the zoom extender for birds though).
Sunday - Nagoya Go Festival.. Went there only for the afternoon, but had lots of fun. Pretended to be shodan and won 2 games out of 3. (First one I lost by one "that corner dies.. oh. it does not.") Lots of pros out there (including Yumezawa Yukari 5? dan from HNG and sunday Go TV program in Japan).

After that, walked around and took lots of semirandom pictures, and went to Sakae's Sunshine City for dinner. Nice day, unfortunately what I SHOULD have been doing is studying, not playing with my new camera or sightseeing. Oh well. Maybe I will study some more during the night (I have still at least hour's pending kanji homework, I should wake up in 8 hours, AND I should reply to assorted emails.. *sigh*)

2005-05-08T18:05:00.000+03:00

Random view, I liked the colors (Nagoya tower in background).

2005-05-08T18:04:00.002+03:00

Random view, for some reason pleasing to my eyes.

2005-05-08T18:04:00.001+03:00

Prams are cheap in Japan.

2005-05-08T18:04:00.000+03:00

Yumezawa Yukari giving autographs. I have picture of her with me too now!

2005-05-08T18:03:00.000+03:00

Hahaha, he's trying to speak in Japanese! (seriously though, these kids saw my camera and tried to run.. no luck.)

2005-05-08T18:02:00.001+03:00

Second impression - army of organizers.

2005-05-08T18:02:00.000+03:00

First impression - this is big (1/2 of tables shown).

2005-05-08T18:01:00.000+03:00

Japanese roof decoration (playing with the telezoom).

The ode to shopping, part N

2005-05-06T18:53:00.000+03:00

As seen from pictures, I have moved to stalker-mode remote photography approach. Right now only 9x equivalent zoom (no extender yet), but I'll upgrade when I feel the need for more toys (probably before leaving Tokyo anyway - no sense leaving points lying around on my point card!). Oh well. Spent hour of quality time photographing freaks at Nagoya station, with only limited success.

The 70-200mm lens is nice, although heavy. The shopping was painful experience, I was considering two alternatives (cheap one and the one I bought) for almost two hours. Finally decided that going with more expensive is seldom regretted, and spent too much money ;) The amount I spent was enough for them to want to call Luottokunta back home if it was ok to sell it; the last big Visa purchase only required local authorization, but guess this one was bit bigger.. Nasty part was, I waited like 15-20min for the authorization to be processed.

Here's to hoping that I won't purchase any more expensive stuff this trip, already 3k eur over budget and still almost 3 EXPENSIVE weeks until I return home (not living in student dorm for 2 weeks -> hotel costs are high, sigh)..

2005-05-06T18:40:00.000+03:00

Smoke (or actually, water vapor) by evening.

2005-05-06T18:39:00.001+03:00

Nagoya wildlife at it's strangest by night.

2005-05-06T18:39:00.000+03:00

On a break (1/10 second, 325mm film equivalent zoom in the night).

And I have had question of "why" few times

2005-05-05T19:50:00.000+03:00

Reasons (in random order):

- because I wanted it :) (considered buying the similar model last year in Japan too, and now had weak moment and could not resist the temptation)

- night shots (G2 is clunky and has bad results more often than I would like, see below for one example. Optically, it's impossible to get equally good pictures with such small lens, but the lack of focus is disappointing).

- focus (see above; the automatics have caused me to lose quite some pictures over the last 3 years, and the manual focus in G2 is a joke. also, automatic focus in the 350D is better)

- startup time (G2 'boots' 3 seconds, which drains battery during the boot+shutdown, AND makes taking pictures rapidly after seeing something difficult)

- flexibility (I wanted basically to try some lenses / things, something for which G2 offers very limited alternatives. I'm right now thinking of getting EF x1.4 extender and 70-200mm IS L USM glass in addition to current Sigma - the combination will provide 156mm-448mm 35mm film equivalent, or 5-13x zoom in layman terms WITH image stabilization. I figure this is nice if I ever start photographing people or animals. Up close people are usually bit on the shy side, and so are animals!)

Oh well. As a friend said, some people waste money in cars, so I need an outlet for excess cash too (this camera project is bit below 3k euros by the time I have all I want). Additionally, with all the time I have spent taking photos, this isn't insanely huge investment (unless some of the equipment breaks early on, and obviously I hope it won't).

2005-05-05T19:48:00.000+03:00

Comparison shot with old camera.

Shopping, a recipe for happiness?

2005-05-05T19:33:00.000+03:00

I was quite bored again on tuesday, which is typically a very bad thing. After school ended for the week, I went home and was bit bored again. Tuesday is fuzzy, I think I only thought about cameras or something (.. again..).

Finally on the wednesday, the things moved, and not very positively (For my wallet). Called Visa back home 'hey, I'll spend bit more money this month' and bought Canon 350D (Kiss Digital N here, Rebel XT in States) as well as Sigma's EX-class 18-50mm 2.8f lens after re-reading reviews for HOURS in front of Bic Camera (thankfully wireless, as always, is free). I had done the same thing at home too, but instead of Tamron 28-75mm 2.8f I went for the Sigma as I figured I wanted the wide-angle.

So far results are mixed; 4.0f+ pictures are crystal clear, at 2.8f there is some blur on edges (not bad), but more annoyingly, the bright lights seem to cause fairly often blue chromatic aberrations (see the picture). Optically the lens is decent, but I was expecting bit more for 500+ euro lens. Oh well, Canon didn't have anything comparable, so I just have to deal (closest was 16-35mm which costs arm and leg and weighs twice as much as the Sigma).

Today (Thursday) I almost went to Nagoya to shop for more camera goods.The day was too hot to be outside much, but I shipped 24kg of books (manga, few japanese books, some study materials) home using ground-mail. In late afternoon, instead of Nagoya, went for a walk from Daijuji-temple (home temple of Tokugawa Ieyasu) to my apartment (about 7km as birds fly). Was quite fun, took from 5pm to 10pm or so, although I stopped on the way frequently as I took maybe 200 pictures or so to test the new camera. My favourite picture of the lot was the random nameless temple picture by night, too bad about the two lights shining in the area, otherwise it'd be as close to what I wanted as it could be.

Friday involves rain, so I suspect the order of the day is shopping. And I have nasty feeling it will be expensive shopping as well (tele zoom lens for the Canon as well as camera bag, maybe battery grip, remote trigger and whatever.. *sigh*).

I should find the motivation to study a bit, haven't done anything yesterday (camera fever) and today only bit less than one hour.

2005-05-05T19:32:00.000+03:00

Random temple at night. Scary thing is, exposure is 20 seconds and the woman in middle is fairly crisp - she stood there praying for minutes during middle of night.

2005-05-05T19:31:00.000+03:00

Okazaki is like America, except smaller. Small houses, small cars (but lots of them, more than people).

2005-05-05T19:30:00.001+03:00

Now's my chance - grab a train and run?

2005-05-05T19:30:00.000+03:00

In Japan, everything needs a mascot (And I mean EVERYTHING, I have hundred pictures to prove this if you want proof ;>). This one's delivery service like UPS. (Main competitor is black cat if I recall correctly).

2005-05-05T19:29:00.000+03:00

Fitness club bus with blooming whatevers.

Dead neighbour is the best neighbour

2005-05-02T20:30:00.000+03:00

I am not insanely happy with my neighbours right now. One seems to like banging something at walls in middle of night, and the nastier one speaks (in chinese) on VOIP or something during night. I think neighbour hunting season starts soon, although I will have a chat with the VOIP guy first (the random wallbanger is not frequent enough to prevent sleep, but loud speaking from the room next door is).

That said, the weekend was mostly interesting. On Saturday I went to Okazaki castle again, and saw fuji (wisteria in English I think) and some other assorted flowers blooming. Quite nice. On Sunday the forecast was bad, so I planned on playing Go at local Go club, but unfortunately they were on vacation or something and I went to Nagoya's Go club instead. It rained a lot the whole day :p.

Monday involved just furious studying, as I had 8 hours of it with people (5 in class, 2 private lessons and one hour of unmoderated talking) and some private activity on top of that. The day's first not-so-pleasant surprise was lack of open restaurants - it is Golden Week now in Japan, which means that most people are vacationing, so all reasonable lunch restaurants nearby were closed. So we ate boxed lunch, *sigh*. I assume that's on the menu for much of the rest of the week too, unless I'm luckier than I think.

This week there is a Go tournament in Nagoya on Sunday, and I intend to head there for fun. The days after Tuesday involve no school, but as all Japanese are vacationing I do not feel like being in middle of crowds -> I probably just study or do something else equally boring.

Next week school ends on Thursday, and I am still debating when to actually leave Yamasa - I have paid my rent only up to Tuesday, but I think I will pay one or more nights more. The infrequent picture flooding will most probably stop when I am in in travel mode, as I will depend on the unsecure wlan points for access and doing excessive file transfers is not good idea.

Rough plan for next week and start of the one after:
- 12.5. Thursday (at the latest) to Hakata　１５２8→２０２０ or so
- Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Monday:
Hakata/Nagasaki/nature/onsen-project (not yet decided)
- Tuesday morning I head to Tokyo (or maybe Monday afternoon, not decided yet). Scary how it takes just 6h 12min (with 'slow' hikari class shinkansen) to go the whole 1170 km of Hakata-Tokyo.. of course plane would be faster, but this is cheap with JR rail pass.
- 17.5. Tuesday lurking around Tokyo
- 18.5. Wednesday -> Kyoto
- 19.5. Thursday Expo
- 21.5. Shinkansen-> XXX -> Tokyo
- 25.5. Return to 'real life' (*sniff*)

2005-05-02T19:19:00.000+03:00

Path in Okazaki park by night.

2005-05-02T19:18:00.002+03:00

Fuji in Okazaki park by night.

2005-05-02T19:18:00.001+03:00

Random Nagoya-by-night shot.

2005-05-02T19:18:00.000+03:00

Everything has mascot in Japan (Nagoya TV station).

Wandering around Nagoya

2005-04-29T17:15:00.000+03:00

I got into one of my more solitary moods and ditched fellow students on Friday afternoon and went on extended walk around Nagoya on my own. Ate boxed lunch on train, and then headed out to the excessively warm (27 degrees according to forecast) midday sun.

I was looking for the local oddity-shop called Geestore, but the plan unfortunately did not quite work out as I had planned. First of all, I forgot to take the map along when I left Okazaki. This I circumvented by finding random unprotected wlan and getting the map from their website (I've claimed that you do not need to walk more than 100 meters to find network connectivity in any big japanese city - assertion which I proved wrong later this day).

After walking about kilometer or so in the blistering sun, I found the store. Or what I thought was the store. The logo was there. But very little else was, besides kanji-infested sign which basically said "we have moved - our new address is 名古屋市中区大須３－１１－３４" (except all in japanese obviously).

I did not appreciate this very much, but as Osu was close by (less than 3km), I decided to walk there. The Osu area is few square kilometers across, so I needed to decrypt the 3-11-34 part. Mapion is excellent just for that. However, to use it I needed network connectivity again.

The place where I found the last wlan access was half a kilometer away (the wrong way) so I figured I might as well head for Osu and find another wlan point. Unfortunately, this was not as simple as I hoped and in the end my arm got very tired from holding the laptop, and my previous record (100 meters to find wlan access) was beat handily. I think I walked almost kilometer before I found unsecure wlan and checked the address on the map in Mapion.

After almost hour of wandering around (Osu has interesting museums, I checked from outside what special exhibitions they had - unfortunately nothing noteworthy) and checking out Osu Kannon (the most famous buddhist temple in the district), I headed to shopping area.

And damn, the shopping zone in Osu is a lot more impressive than Sakae or other parts of Nagoya I have been to so far. I found the Geestore, which was disappointing as far as what I was looking for (gatchapon, cheap "random result" toys you get), but had tons of other interesting stuff. As usual, I window shopped hour or two, went to few other stores, and finally walked to nearby Book-Off where I found few more books of 吸血鬼美夕　- bought 2 more for 210 yen (1.7? euros for 2 secondhand a5+ size books, not bad). Finally wandered home after doing some photography of random things nearby (results posted later on if I get inspired).

Summary of Book-Off visits so far:

Okazaki middle (north of Aeon building): maybe 10 times
Okazaki south: maybe 6 times
Okazaki north (far away, 7km or so, by train)
Atsuda (BIG - southern Nagoya)
Kurogawa (BIG - northern Nagoya)
Osu (central Nagoya): 2 times

As the books are secondhand, the selection varies by time too, so I've been checking the closest one every few days for changes in inventory :) Funnily enough, my visits to Nagoya seem to involve sightseeing, shopping (mostly the bookstores of various kinds) and very little else..

And finally rant about Japanese toys.. who in their right mind would pay 5+ euros for random figurine out of 7 possible, when you want only one? Apparently many Japanese, or they want them all, as almost all fan stuff seems to be of 'random one out of N alternatives'. Gatchapon (kinder-egg-like-but-larger-and-no-chocolate) are reasonably priced (100-300 yen), but there are also figurines that are in 700+ yen range with similar selling scheme. And I really wanted the 'rare' Chii-with-bad-hair-day too *sigh*. Oh well, American anime-fanboy left me a bunch of his loot that he didn't want to carry home, beyond that haven't shopped much beyond books myself. Maybe I will indulge myself when I go to Tokyo in two weeks or so. My sole toy so far is gatchapon - luckily out of 6 Evangelion figurines I got the one I wanted.

And now playing..

2005-04-26T17:14:00.000+03:00

Nth rerun of Fruits Basket is on TV every day 2030+, I've been watching that when I have the time.. but mostly on the computer, antisocially enough.

Anime series 'Air' seems to be very big here nowadays judging by the insane amount of fanstuff, and I can understand why. It's typical N-way relationship soap opera drama, except it's very well done. Too bad the series is already finished, time to hope for next season. I've so far watched 6 out of 13 episodes and quitting watching seems difficult. Motto of the day: 飛べない翼に意味があるんでしょうか - 'Is there a reason for wings that cannot fly?'。 (and no, nobody really has wings that I've seen so far).

I've gotten into nasty habit of watching anime without subtitles (I understand most of it it seems), as well as reading manga without furigana (likewise, although the occassional dictionary lookup hurts). We shall see where THIS dark path leads ;) Too bad the inhuman working hours, lack of real bread (see previous rant), and excessive amount of people make sure that I'm unlikely to ever stay long here in future either.

Speaking of bread, the Yakitate! Japan was on the other day, there's apparently already 27 episodes of anime that is solely about baking bread. I bought one book of the manga for laughs, haven't yet looked at it (found also 2 books of manga that was about making ramen.. hrr).

Shopping - fun for the whole family

2005-04-26T16:31:00.000+03:00

Wasted most of weekend, just went to Nagoya for shopping expedition (Fri) to Book-Off near 黒川駅。It was fairly big one, but didn't find anything of use as I was leading 2 other students on the expedition and couldn't quite idle there all day (others were not as interested in books as I was). Additionally, visited the most famous temple in Nagoya called Atsuda-jingu (originally 3rd century).

Saturday I lurked in Okazaki (Book-Off x2 ;>), as well as Sunday. Dreamed of digital SLR camera, but I think I'm still too cheapskate to buy one. Monday I finally skipped class for most of monday (went only to my private lesson in the afternoon, as well as free-form chat with future teachers).

In terms of food, I'm missing real bread terribly - here, everything is practically dessert/pastry-type, unfortunately *sigh*. On the positive side, I had the most positive customer service experience in ages - nut in my new sunglasses had fallen off, and I got replacement (installed) without any cost.

On completely unrelated front, I've been playing Go with fellow German student - so far 3 wins 1 loss ;). See pictures below for street decoration of Okazaki / what have I been shopping so far (I got the question of "what exactly HAVE you bought" last week).

2005-04-26T16:17:00.001+03:00

Loot so far (+computer+rewritable DVD+mouse+sunglasses).

2005-04-26T16:17:00.000+03:00

Funny decoration in Okazaki.

2005-04-24T07:06:00.001+03:00

Okazaki by night 2

2005-04-24T07:06:00.000+03:00

Okazaki by night 1

2005-04-24T06:57:00.000+03:00

Dark clouds atop Nagoya City Hall (nice roof).

2005-04-24T06:56:00.000+03:00

Nagoya has some strange buildings.

And to those who wish to contact me..

2005-04-19T17:47:00.000+03:00

you should know the email address. Last week (thursday I think) I typoed one command on my Linux box in Finland, and that effectively screwed it up, and the local attempts to revive it were not successful -> I will not be on IRC until I return to Finland, and only sometimes on MSN.

Lot of people have expressed interest in the weather. Here is weather forecast for Nagoya. Typically weather has been in 20-25 celsius range recently, and that's already bit hot for me (as I use long-sleeved coat most of time to avoid the use of suntan lotion). Tomorrow looks rainy according to forecast though, we shall see.

2005-04-19T16:19:00.000+03:00

Meiji-Mura.

Weekly summary

2005-04-19T15:40:00.000+03:00

Up to last week, the group of students at Yamasa in my class has been limited (mostly only one classmate, during first week 3 classmates). That changed last friday, and not really for the better. Now I have 5 classmates, and some of them are struggling to keep up => teaching is slow => I am very bored in class. I have gotten into a habit of dragging my laptop to class to study with it when it seems I have spare time (so far, quite lot of it, really, unfortunately).

Friday afternoon: Osaka castle with fellow student (castle itself was boring, but the park was nice; maybe not worth the 1000 yen entrance fee). After that, we went to Sakae (shopping district), browsed through two stores, found wireless LAN access, and located nearest Book-Off. Went there, and got home after 22, quite tired.

Saturday: Went sightseeing with the same guy. Inuyama castle (oldest surviving in Japan) was quite impressive, as well as Meiji-Mura (lots of 100-year-give-or-take-some old buildings in a nice garden with museums and stuff). In afternoon went to a famous teahouse for a quick walk - their garden was also quite nice. When sun went down, returned to Nagoya. In Nagoya, assorted shopping (laptop memory, new ipod headphones (lousy ones, as it turns out), some anime/manga fan stuff). After dinner, we used same method as the previous day to locate larger Book-Off store, and went there. Bought some 40-ish manga books or so for 3000 yen (24 eur?) - now I need to figure how to ship them home. Got back to apartment around midnight, very tired (having walked from the morning, and dragged tons of stuff half of the day too).

Sunday I mostly rested and studied a bit. Had a nasty fight with the laptop's extra memory, turns out it was overheating due to sticker on it. Oh well, now it works (and I have 768MB RAM).

Monday I did my studying record; 0900-1430 in class (40 minute food break in middle), 1440-1530 private lesson, 1630-1800 talking session with teachers-in-training, 1830-2230 homework+kanji study at home.

Therefore I did not feel very motivated to study so hard today so I'm semi-idling through the late evening, sorting photos and so forth (although I have studied few hours today too).

2005-04-19T15:39:00.000+03:00

Bamboo forest near a famous teahouse.

2005-04-19T15:38:00.002+03:00

Inuyama castle.

2005-04-19T15:38:00.001+03:00

Nagoya evening view.

2005-04-19T15:38:00.000+03:00

Some parts of Nagoya are .. strange.

New day, new toy

2005-04-13T13:32:00.000+03:00

Bought a small, wireless (radio-based) optical mouse. Very cool toy, about half the size of my wireless mouse back home, AND the USB plug fits inside the mouse so it's tiny when being carried along too! (Weighs only 2x as much as the batteries do ;>). In addition to that, just study, more study, study.. sigh. On the weekend, I plan on some interesting sightseeing nearby, and also obviously bit more studying (repetitive, isn't this?).

Weekly update

2005-04-12T11:00:00.000+03:00

As can be seen, I've been traveling a bit. On friday, we had Yamasa's SILAC classes common hanami (cherry-tree-watching) party - started 6 pm, and finished 9 pm. Shared some food/drink under the sakura, not bad experience.

On saturday I went for extended walk (2pm-9pm) and accidentally bought a new computer (Panasonic R3) as it was on 15% discount. Had lots of fun, first walked among the sakura by day, then went to Okazaki castle, enjoyed the sakura festivities (did some western-style archery, ate lots of strange food such as milk ice cream.. really!), and finally walked home in the dark. The lit sakura were unforgettable, I have ton of pictures (but only 3 here).

Sunday, I went to Kyoto. The imperial palace had it's one of rare open-for-public moments, so it was must-see. After that,　I wandered around and during wandering lost my expensive sunglasses, gnnh. Kiyomizu-temple, some maiko wandering around (probably not real ones?), some book store shopping and so on, and I was well cooked (very hot day - 25 degrees or so) and ready to head home.

Missed first train, got home very late, and borrowed classmate's bicycle to get to the store in time to get my new computer (I had reserved it on saturday but it was being fitted until sunday morning). Lots of funny rapid bicycling in dark later, I had long discussion with shop clerks about why they would not sell it tax-free (Sigh), bought the computer+DVD-drive and headed home.

Since that have been mostly fighting urge not to play with the new computer too much, but have failed for most part - little sleep, studies suffering. Oh well. Picture total so far? About 400 pictures on this trip, over 200 of them within last week.

Except for the lost sunglasses (grr, 120 euros wasted or so) best week so far. Studies had also some interesting bits, but I'll leave them to my diary :)

2005-04-10T10:56:00.000+03:00

Wonder where it is going..

2005-04-10T10:55:00.002+03:00

Sakura in Kyoto (drooping kind seems rare, this one is probably old).

2005-04-10T10:55:00.001+03:00

Some maiko (or more likely, girls dressed as maiko) in Kyoto

2005-04-10T10:55:00.000+03:00

I was not alone going to the imperial palace..

2005-04-10T10:54:00.000+03:00

Imperial garden in Kyoto's imperial palace.

2005-04-09T10:54:00.000+03:00

More sakura by night.

2005-04-09T10:53:00.002+03:00

Sakura and swans.

2005-04-09T10:53:00.001+03:00

Sakura by night.

2005-04-09T10:53:00.000+03:00

Nature, or as close as it gets here.

2005-04-09T10:52:00.000+03:00

Saint Catherine campus (yes, really). Girl-only highschool + kindergarten, reminds me of maria-sama-ga-miteru.

2005-04-08T10:51:00.000+03:00

Hanami party (yes, in dark, don't ask me why)

2005-04-08T10:48:00.000+03:00

Hanami party preparations (Yamasas smaller hall in background)

Weekly summary

2005-04-05T13:16:00.000+03:00

Friday: Anjo Corona, Howl's moving castle (Miyazaki's latest anime) - wasn't THAT impressed.
Saturday: Study, study, study.
Sunday: Using cheap rapid trains (shin kaisoku), went to Osaka and back for Comic City 53 + assorted sightseeing + shopping. Didn't buy a thing, but had lots of fun and was VERY tired when I got back - one way, the trip is about 3 hours 15 minutes or so, I left home 6:40 in the morning and returned 21:30 in the evening.

Weekdays I mostly study, unfortunately(?). Interestingly enough, even as the japanese claim to have garbage problem, they use INSANE amount of packing material needlessly in my opinion. No matter what you buy in a shop, you get a plastic bag. Many things are seperately packed, like today I bought icecream+chocolate balls, and EACH of them was in their own small (1cm across or so) plastic bag. Insane :-)

Also did some hotel reservations, which was funny practise of japanese - we had done something similar in the class earlier (calling random tourist attraction and asking about various things politely, listening to results and relaying them to teacher; that was apart from the Toyota factory tour my favourite exercise so far ^_^). Too bad one can't take pictures in interesting places (Comic City, Toyota car factory)..

2005-04-04T15:56:00.000+03:00

In Japan, Santa Claus does love hotels! And for the uninformed, love hotels in Japan provide brief 'rest' for money, or longer 'sleep' for night's worth of privacy.. and no, prostitution isn't typically involved.

2005-04-04T15:55:00.000+03:00

Waiting with tens of thousands of kids inside the convention center waiting to get to see some art (2x Pasila's convention center size, more or less).

2005-04-04T15:54:00.000+03:00

Few other people wanted to go to Comic City 53 too.

2005-04-04T15:53:00.001+03:00

Comic City 53 hall seen from FAR away (it's big).

2005-04-04T15:53:00.000+03:00

Even in Osaka, sakura are not yet fully blooming.

2005-04-04T15:52:00.000+03:00

Genuine American-style mall. Anjo Corona - had movie theater where I went to see Miyazaki's latest, as well as restaurants, gaming parlors, and shop or two.

2005-04-04T15:51:00.001+03:00

Stickiness to your daily life (Engrish part 2)

2005-04-04T15:51:00.000+03:00

Hair to heart (Engrish part 1)

13km walk..

2005-03-30T16:04:00.000+03:00

Went for an .. extended.. walk, looking for discount ticket shops. Unfortunately, one shop was closed and another didn't have the discount JR Seishun 18 Kippu I was looking for. At least asking for directions was quite fun in Japanese ;-)

Hopefully I find shop that sells it tomorrow, or things get depressing (I have to pay bit more). Oh well. Studying seems still fun enough, we'll see if it's still fun 6 weeks from now.

I found today 中上級　日本語 (Chuujoukyuu Nihongo) book too, which I'll be using for my private lessons' grammar stuff, and I still use Intermediate Kanji Book 2 + G55 for the assorted kanji study. Another fun observation - I have yet to see queue in shops with more than 2 people - typically other salespeople man empty posts if more than 2 people are in row (compared to my home, where average is like 5 minutes.. :p)

Mystic journeys

No pain no gain

Finland - the return/visit

A day of shopping and nerding away..

Finally initial picture sorting done..

Maybe quiet for awhile..?

Ode to shopping

Welcome (*cough*) to the Land the 'Free'

Another month, another post?

Dead blog zone coming up? :)

Month without writeup? Must be a record.

Depressing week..

Time between posts approaching infinity gradually..

Death march part 3

Lens shopping, interesting hobby

Another weekend of hiking near Tanzawa

Delays keep getting longer and longer ;)

Random pictures

Finally end to spending?

Sometimes being indecisive helps..

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

Settled down?

No longer homeless

... You took how many pictures..?

Finally.. an apartment?

Soon homeless? :p

Return to Japan

Back home

Fade to black

Life goes on

The ode to shopping, part N

And I have had question of "why" few times

Shopping, a recipe for happiness?

Dead neighbour is the best neighbour

Wandering around Nagoya

And now playing..

Shopping - fun for the whole family

And to those who wish to contact me..

Weekly summary

New day, new toy

Weekly update

Weekly summary

13km walk..

Welcome (cough) to the Land the 'Free'