Category Archives: Life and Stuff

I Can See Clearly Now, More Or Less

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At long last I got a chance to the go to the eyeglasses store and get a proper pair of reading glasses. I’ll go back tomorrow and see if I can get the lenses modified.

Given my eye doctor’s darkened lair, I was surprised to have the initial tests done in a brightly lit mall in a store with modern equipment. (I do, however, miss the doll hanging by its neck from the ceiling.)

The sticking point was in trying to explain the actual distance needed for the reading glasses. I keep my home computer monitor about one arm’s length and a hand away my eyes. Unfortunately, my brain read that as a lot closer when I explained the distance to the lady putting the optical trial frame on my eyes. (For the record, I would totally wear a pair of glasses that looked like the trial frame. I’d wear them to school.)

She Who Must Be Obeyed went along to approve the final design and to help with any difficult Japanese. Oddly, we agreed on the design and then took the glasses home (after side trips to do some shopping).

Once I got the glasses home, though, I realized that although they are great for reading, I have to move the monitor close to use them with my computer. They also never tested my right eye with as much fervor as they tested my left. Because of this, I find the glasses work best with my left eye but not as well with my right.

I’m not too worried as I chose the shop because it has an adjustment policy that lets me go back twice in six months to get new lenses. I also may ask them for bifocals, which will cost more but which will solve a lot of problems (i.e. carrying two pairs of glasses).

Even in their current form, the glasses are excellent for reading. They may inspire me to read more, at least until I can get back to the shop.

 

 

You are Shaken but I am not Stirred

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There was an earthquake today. Everyone in the house felt it except me. In my defense, I was on my to the, um, the “reading room”.

Without getting into too many details, I got up from my desk to “go to the reading room” and She Who Must Be Obeyed started saying “Earthquake? Is that an earthquake?”

All I could say was “Hey, I’m not that heavy” and,after I realized she was serious, “I don’t feel it.” I studied our usual indicators: hanging laundry, the pull cords on our ceiling lights and any drinks sitting around. Normally, in a quake these things start moving by themselves. Unfortunately, there were no drinks out and, because of the time of year, we have fans and the air conditioner on which messes up the cords and the laundry.

It took the official alert on television to confirm that, yes, there was an earthquake. (For the record: I never doubted her; I just didn’t feel it.)

This, oddly, is a normal occurrence during an earthquake. Although SWMBO is much more experienced with, and sensitive to earthquakes than I am, we are about 50-50 in feeling them when the other doesn’t.

I find that I don’t feel them if I’m moving around. Several weeks ago a big earthquake hit as I was walking to the train station from work. It shut down the trains while the safety people checked the tracks. Later, I heard about it on the news and everyone asked me if I’d felt it. I said I only saw its consequences; I didn’t feel it.

I also tend not to wake up during earthquakes that hit when I’m sleeping. On several occasions I’ve woken up after them, with a vague sense that something happened, but usually when I was quizzed about the previous night’s earthquake I could only say “I didn’t feel it.” or “I slept right through it”. One colleague pointed out that my wife and children could have been suffering and dying and I wouldn’t have known and I was like “why would I want to be awake for that?”

That said, I should probably start using the alert system that sends an alarm to your phone and gives you a few seconds to get to a safer position. However, knowing me, if it hit at night, I’d probably just hit “SNOOZE” and go back to sleep.

The International Bank of Dad is Run by a Jerk

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My oldest is not happy with the International Bank of Dad. This is because, to her mind, the IBD president is rather unreasonably insisting she spend her own money.

She doesn’t realize things are about to get worse.

Because yesterday was brass band performance day, today was a day off. Our oldest therefore decided to meet up with her friend and go to karaoke at a place one station away from ours.

She first, however, tried to a get a no-strings attached grant from the IBD. The grant was refused and the shockingly handsome president of the IBD instead extracted money from her account and told her she could spend that.  He also, rather kindly, exchanged the loose coins for an actual note. This earned a huff and an eye roll but little argument.

(He also carefully explained the difference between “being home by 6:00” and “calling at 6:00 to say you’ll be home soon” and the consequences involved with the latter.)

Our oldest arrived home with fifteen minutes to spare and immediately began demanding money for tomorrow’s outing. Tomorrow she’ll be serving as an assistant at another battle of the bands. This involves moving chairs and serving as an usher. It also means she’ll need money to get to the performance hall.

Once again, she tried to get a no-strings attached grant.

The dashing president of the IBD told her she shouldn’t have spent her money today if she knew she’d need it tomorrow and tried to explain the concept of “planning ahead” but then remembered he was talking to teenager who’s concept of money seemed to involve , well, teenager logic.

The charming, yet humble president of the IBD then told her he’d advance her allowance to cover the expenses. This was met with a reply that reached an “Occupy Dad Street” level of outrage and obnoxiousness. Our oldest didn’t understand why she had to spend her own money on something that was volunteer. (In her defense, the distinguished president of the IBD didn’t understand why he had to spend his money on something that was volunteer either.)

In the end, the issue was left unresolved. There will, however, be a deal made. The IBD will front the money in exchange for two-and-half hours of labor (laundry, dishes, cleaning the kitchen, etc.) This is how long our oldest would have to work to earn the money the hauntingly good-looking president of the IBD plans to lend her.

She won’t be happy, but the alternative is doing the laundry, dishes and kitchen cleaning for free as a punishment.

 

The Day Before the Not My Fault

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The best thing about tomorrow is that if anything goes wrong, it’s not my fault. Mind you, this doesn’t mean I won’t be blamed for it, but it still won’t be my fault.

Well, there’s one thing that might be my fault but it has nothing to do with the thing that won’t be my fault.

Tomorrow junior high bands from all over the area will arrive for a giant battle of the bands. Our oldest’s band qualified for the championship and has been practicing more than usual. We occasionally see our oldest and try to remember her name. She will be playing the piccolo which is exactly why we bought her a new flute. (More or less.)

Tomorrow, each band will dress up in their school uniforms and will have several minutes to perform their song (or maybe it’s songs, I don’t actually know, but it doesn’t matter because if anything goes wrong it won’t be my fault).

We are trying to decide if we want to stay for the awards ceremony. I’m happy to stay, even though it means another couple hours listening to other bands. I did point out, though, that we won’t actually be able to get near our oldest after the ceremony in the event she needs comfort or lots of high fives.

I have, of course, been trying to get our oldest to heckle the other bands by booing them or shouting “you suck!” or “booooorrrrrriiiiiinnnng”. If she won’t heckle, I recommended she flash a laser pointer in the eyes of the other flute players.

I fear she won’t do any of this, which is not my fault. I tried.

The most interesting part is that we won’t be able to film during the contest. I’m not sure why this is, but it might actually be televised, in which case I’ll do my best to avoid any cameras. Because we can’t film anything, there will be no camera disasters to blame on me.

The only thing that might be my fault is that technically I am working tomorrow and the company I work for won’t let me submit my work early. If I forget to send it, well, that will be my fault.

Nothing else will be my fault, though.

The Best Laid Plains Get a Lay Over

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Every now and then I know what I should do, but something inside my head tries to stop me from doing it. Unfortunately, this usually applies to smart things and not to stupid things.

The stupidest thing, though, is usually the planning.

I spent the day kind of, sort of planning a bunch of things I’ve been meaning to do, especially now that I have lots of time and no real excuses, and I found myself encountering an odd resistance. One of the things I’ve been meaning to do is to set up my portable studio and take a lot of pictures of stuff I want to sell.

This one got pushed aside by a couple projects I’ve been putting off for longer.

First, this site needs some organizing and labeling, but as I pass 527 posts, the thought of going back through seems overwhelming as is the the thought of changing the permalinks for all the posts, which will require more work to make sure the links from other sites, including Facebook, aren’t broken.

That project then got pushed aside by the need to update my older website (which hasn’t been touched in a few years) and bring into the modern mobile age and thus leave behind the era of impressions in mud and smoke-signals.

For this one I tapped the vein of ideas I’ve already had for it and that created a rush of something that actually felt like panic. I couldn’t even decide, for a minute, which notebook to use. Normally, in these situations I click on a game and try to forget, but this time I tried to focus on what was causing the panic. Or, more specifically, the feeling itself, which reminded me a lot of how I feel whilst watching daredevils/fools casually prance around high places. (Warning not safe for, well, just not safe.)

I did manage to sketch out a few ideas and do a little research, but it’s mostly the kind of running in place I’ve done before. Lots of energy, but I still end up exactly where I started.

In the end, I realize I’m just planning to make plans and not actually accomplishing anything.

I might as well have just played the game.

 

 

Walking, Some Shopping, Too Much Food

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Gluttony may have saved my pocket book today.

That said, I managed to avoid one form of gluttony, but succumbed to another.

I headed down to Shinjuku in Tokyo today to visit with old friend and former photography teacher Andy Barker. (That interview is old, but worth a read. I also highly recommend you buy his photo book Kamakura.)

We were supposed to meet at Sizzler (more on that later) but before that I took a couple side trips.

The first was to the Seikaido main store. Seikaido is an art supply store and the main store has six floors of art supplies. I was looking for one item in particular (a notebook) but they didn’t have it. Still, Seikaido is the kind of store where once you see an item, you decide you can’t live without it. Luckily I didn’t see anything I couldn’t live without. Although I did look around a bit.

I found those things, though, at my second stop, Kingdom Note. Kingdom note is a small pen shop located on the sixth floor of a narrow building on the opposite side of the station from Seikaido. It is in an especially dangerous location as it’s located near Yodobashi Camera, which has several floors of camera and computer equipment, and above Map Camera, a used camera shop and the former home of my Canon Powershot G9. There, I found some notebooks and some pen cleaning materials I’d gotten a chance to try at the ISOT.

They turned out to be cheaper than I was expecting, so I couldn’t resist buying a couple. But only a couple. I resisted the racks of pens and ink. Although I did look around a bit.

Notebooks and pen cleaning paper from Kingdom Note. I'll review them some day.

Notebooks and pen cleaning paper from Kingdom Note. I’ll review them some day.

Then I met Andy at Sizzler and proceeded to stuff myself for the second day in a row. (I skipped breakfast today, which I do not recommend on a hot Tokyo day.) Sizzler’s attraction is an all-you-can-eat salad bar that comes complete with pasta, soup, tacos and nachos. It has has a full desert bar with chocolate and vanilla soft serve ice cream, apple crisp and bread pudding (minus whisky sauce, though). For a little more they’ll bring you a couple Sliders. For Tokyo, it’s a surprisingly good deal.

It was fun to see Andy, who I haven’t seen in a couple years. We had a long chat and it ended with him taking a couple photos of nearby buildings. Luckily, after we finished the meal, I was too full to go to Yodobashi Camera and look around. Instead I went home and prevented a possible worse from of gluttony.

 

 

The Start of the Tween Years

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I spent the day walking and eating.

I was walking and eating because today is our youngest’s birthday and because I am trapped at home, I took the opportunity to have a daddy-daughter morning and take our youngest to buy her birthday present.

Why so serious? or I'm going to make a mess that's really REALLY big.

Age 5: Why so serious? or I’m not gonna kill ya; I’m gonna make a mess that’s really REALLY big.

We walked to Ito-Yokado which is a chain store owned by Seven & I Holdings which owns 7-11 (which is all I actually understand about how that works. I’m not even sure the store is still called Ito-Yokado). The walk wasn’t so bad, even though the relative humidity is hovering somewhere around “liquid” and when we got to the store, our youngest started playing her favorite game.

The game, PriPara involves cards and fashion and actual gaming but is way too cute for me to be too interested in.

Our youngest plays PriPara. It involves fashion and timing.

Our youngest plays PriPara. It involves fashion and timing. Yes, I think her skirt is too short.

After a few rounds of the game I bought her present (a carrying case for all the cards involved in the game) and had lunch at McDonalds. We then ate way too much Baskin-Robbins ice cream. (Three scoops for the price of two. Resistance is futile.)

After that we returned home and prepared for She Who Must Be Obeyed’s return and, following a few hours recovery, went to dinner Hamburger Factory (Hamburger Koubou) which had surprisingly good hamburger steaks and, in the biggest surprise of all, actual steak.

Our youngest put down all but three bites of a large sirloin and then had room for bread and ice cream (yes, more ice cream). We all stuffed ourselves, especially as they also had something resembling assemble-it-yourself tacos on the salad bar.

Our youngest in the early stages of the sirloin. She ordered it well done. I have failed as a father.

Our youngest, now age 10, in the early stages of the sirloin. She ordered it well done. I have failed as a father.

Now, we are all in that “What have I done?” phase of the meal when all those bad, yet tasty decisions come back to haunt you.

I now live in a house with a tween and teen. Talk about being haunted.

 

Neither Comfort nor Sympathy

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My job, since this morning has been both to comfort and to prevent a break out.

Our youngest is doing an overnight stay at an elementary school with a random group of people and She Who Must Be Obeyed is trying to think of 1) the various ways our youngest can and will hurt herself and 2) ways she can escape my surveillance and security system to go check on our youngest.

The overnight stay is an annual community center event for young kids where they get a chance to leave the nest a bit and the parents get to practice having the young kids leave the nest. Part of the event involves a uniquely Japanese haunted house scavenger hunt. This amounts to the kids having to got get stamps in darkened rooms from various people in scary costumes. When I’ve seen this done before the students were given flashlights and then handed cards that told them where to go. When they got all the stamps they got some sort of prize.

She Who Must Be Obeyed has, since dropping our youngest off,  tried to think of excuses to get near the school. She’s been trying to think of things our youngest forgot that must be delivered immediately. At one point SWMBO wanted to go help make and/or eat the curry and rice the students were eating for supper.

My job has been to express a modicum of sympathy whilst slapping down all the excuses.

SWMBO: What if she gets sick?
Me:  They will call us.
SWMBO: What if she gets injured?
Me: They will call us and take her to a hospital.
SWMBO: What if there’s an earthquake?
Me: We’ll learn about it at the same time she does.
SWMBO: What if the school burns down?
Me: We’ll hear about it on the news.
SWMBO: What if a meteor crashes into the school?
Me: That would be kind of cool so I’ll go take pictures of it.

I realize that none of these are, perhaps, the most comforting but as the dad in this situation my job is not to comfort or to be sympathetic but rather to express sympathy whilst hiding the car keys and She Who Must Be Obeyed’s shoes.

I’ve not yet tried restraints to keep SWMBO in the house, but we’ll see, especially because it’s bed time and I have to work tomorrow.

Some Things are Sentimental; Some Things are Just Junk

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I have four watches, but only two work. The two that don’t work, though, have strong sentimental value and that’s a problem.

Despite my ever changing collections of stuff, I’ve never been big on watches and usually have only had one at a time. I still remember getting a Mickey Mouse several hundred years ago when I was little and a digital watch sometime in the late ’70s.

I also liked them as gadgets and went through a phase of Casio digital watches. I had a watch a lot like this one, with a built in touch screen calculator. (Note: this means to me the Apple Watch is kind of retro/old-fashioned.) I also remember, at one point, having a watch that combined both an analog dial and a digital readout (it looked vaguely like this).

Then, after my grandfather died in the early 1990’s I inherited his retirement watch, which was a Seiko 17 Jewel Automatic he got in 1979. His retirement date is engraved on the back.

I inherited it because I used to terrorize the company he worked for with my big wheel, er, I used to race around the factory floor on my Big Wheel. I’m sure that would violate at least 17 different federal workplace safety laws now and my parents would go to jail for allowing me to have access to “motorized” transportation. (Note: it probably violated 17 different federal workplace safety laws back then, too.)

The watch is self-winding and has the odd quirk, for an automatic watch at least, of actually gaining time each day rather than losing it. In fact, it gains about a minute a day and by the end of the week, if I don’t reset it, all I know is that it isn’t that time yet. This means I’m always early to places when I wear it.

I wore the Seiko until a couple years ago when I cracked the crystal and took it in to be repaired and overhauled. I then discovered it was so old it was on a Do Not Repair list. The repairman proved this by showing me the book with the watch’s serial number in a small square on one of the pages. I replaced it with a more modern Seiko 5 SNKE63k1 Automatic (that loses time each day so I have to be careful) and dirt cheap Timex Weekender for the season in which it rains.

Then, when my father died, I inherited the Omega Seamaster 120m Calypso he’d inherited from my grandfather when he died (which is kind of odd, since my dad actually gave my grandfather the watch so technically it was a repossession). The watch doesn’t work and the repair price would be large enough that it’s cheaper to buy a working version of the watch rather than have it repaired.

The Omega Seamaster on the left and the Seiko on the right. You can see the big crack in it.

The Omega Seamaster on the left and the Seiko on the right. You can see the big crack in it.

I hang on to the old watches mostly because it’s extremely hard to get rid of sentimental things, even when they are junk. I also have a couple pocket knives like that (more on those in the future).

The other problem is how to get rid of them. Someone in the family might want the retirement watch but the band on the Omega is probably the only thing useful on that watch. Still, it’s connected to two important men in my life and I can’t just throw it away.

Or at least I tell myself that. In the end I’ll probably just give them away to some tinkerer who wants to play with them and might be able to make them work. That seems a better end than the trash bin, but that might just be an excuse to keep them around a little longer.

The new watches: the Timex Weekender on the left and the Seiko 5 on the right.

The new watches: the Timex Weekender on the left and the Seiko 5 (SNKE63k1)  on the right.

 

 

You Can’t Always Get What You Need

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Note: this one my not be comfortable for the squeamish and/or those afraid of needles.

Well, the good news is the typhoon is slow and what rain there was hit Tokyo and not us. The bad news is I don’t have glasses. Sort of.

At long last, I headed off to the eye doctor’s today which meant braving the heat and humidity and then sweating on the paperwork I had to fill out. Because it was technical Japanese, I broke out my smartphone and used Google’s surprisingly handy Translate App which let me translate text by taking pictures of it.

I was a little annoyed as I’ve been to this doctor a few times before for eye checks and to have needles stuck in my right eyeball  to drain blood when I got a subconjunctival hemorrhage after karate. (Note: link not safe for lunch.) I’d even remembered my information card which should have made most of the form irrelevant.

 

I then got to wait half an hour for five other people to finish.  When it was my turn I kept trying to explain to the doctor that I’m pretty sure I need real glasses as I’m pretty sure my eyes aren’t evenly farsighted. The doctor sat me down and put me through a series of tests in his darkened laboratory.

Note: this is an old building with lots of older looking equipment including a couple boxes with light beams that remind me of the “Voight-Kampff” Empathy test. There’s also a doll hung by the neck from the ceiling that you’re supposed to look at when he does one of his tests. (Remember, this man once stuck needles in my right eyeball.)

The determinations were: 1) I’ve got a small cataract in one eye that’s normal for my age; 2) I’ve got presbyopia, which sounds more impressive than “trying to see as old men do” vision which is more poetic than “Old Man’s Eyes”; and 3) I should get some real eyeglasses and not just the over-the-counter reading glasses I’ve been using. I repeated that getting real eyeglasses was my goal for visiting the office and he sent me out to the waiting room to, well, wait.

A few minutes later, the cute receptionist gave my my bill, my change and a friendly “have a nice day”. What she didn’t give me was a prescription for eyeglasses or any information that would help me get them.

I returned home and told She Who Must Be Obeyed about what had happened (leaving out the part about the receptionist being cute, of course because nothing positive could be gained by mentioning it–also remember, I’m not seeing clearly). SWMBO called the clinic for clarification and was told something along the lines of I didn’t get a prescription because the doctor somehow used the store under his office (his office is on the second floor USA; first floor UK) and that they were expensive.

So, if I’m understanding this, the doctor didn’t take a chance for a kickback because, well, I’m still not sure and that’s more important than me getting a prescription for glasses. (Something like that.)

Now, I’ll try going to an eyeglasses store and see if they can fix me up. If they can’t, I’ll have to get a second opinion.