Taking our apartment from summer mode to winter mode involves a surprising amount of excavation and spelunking.
The transition begins with notice from She Who Must Be Obeyed that it’s time to put the fans away and get our large blanket out of the closet. This is followed by me thinking of every excuse I can to do something else. Luckily, once the decision is made, She Who Must Be Obeyed usually gets distracted by some other task.
When we are finally both ready, we move the “variety pile” from in front of the “variety closet”. (Why the variety pile is not in the variety closet is a long story.) Once the path is cleared, I don a silly hat with a flashlight attached, open the closet door–the closet actually has two doors but one is blocked by the variety shelves–and begin exploring.
Luckily, after the big cleaning I did this past spring there are fewer boxes taking up space and I was quickly able to retrieve our kerosene heaters and our winter blanket. We also only had to find space for one fan as the other one had begun to show its age (its 14) and has been “retired” (i.e. dismantled by me and put in a trash bag for future disposal). Next summer we’ll just buy a new fan.
I also decided we should go ahead and dig out the electric carpet put it in the living room so that we won’t have to get back in to the “variety closet” until the spring. Placing the electric carpet involves moving the piano but not much more than that.
Although we won’t be needing them for a while, and don’t even have any kerosene, we’ve already decided to retire our oldest space heater as it has become temperamental and has a tendency to take random rest breaks. If those issues continue, it might not make it to spring.
Now the at we’re ready for the cold, I suspect it will be warm the next few days.
Today I took our youngest out on a Daddy/Daughter Date (whilst our oldest stayed home and “studied” for her mid-term exams tomorrow). By request, we saw the movie Bakuman, which is based on the manga of the same name.
I was struck by three things in the movie: 1) how reliant it was on sound even though it was a movie about visual images; 2) how it may be the most effective example of native advertising I’ve ever seen; and 3) how much of a pen nerd I am to try and figure out what pens and pencils were being used.
Bakuman is the story of two high school students who come together to create a manga worthy of being included in Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine. The movie tracks their trials and tribulations and although you’ve probably seen this movie before in other forms and know what’s going to happen, the way it happens is often done surprisingly well.
For the uninitiated, Jump and its publisher Shueisha are the grandfathers/grandmasters of all manga magazines in Japan (and probably the world). Jump‘s history includes Mazinger-Z (which came to the USA as Tranzor Z and spawned the Shogun Warriors toys), City Hunter, Dragon Ball, Hunter x Hunter, Yu-Gi-Oh, Naruto, One Piece and Death Note, and those are just the ones people in the West might know.
(Note: If you recognize none of these you are either completely normal and/or don’t have young kids or relatives.)
Jump‘s earlier incarnation also spawned MahaGoGoGo, which came to the USA as Speed Racer, and one of its affiliates spawned All You Need is Kill, which begat the Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow. (At one point, in the closing credits, the camera spends two minutes scanning over a bookshelf full of Weekly Shōnen Jump titles.)
Jump and its offices are major stars in the movie, but the other stars are the pens they use. After the protagonists have decided to collaborate on the manga, Mashiro Moritaka, played by Takeru Satoh, picks up a dip pen that used to belong to his manga artist uncle–the uncle’s death years before is a major plot point in the movie–and begins to draw with it. He’s immediately impressed by how much more expressive it is than a ball-point pen or a pencil. (The pen geek in me was going “damn straight, brother, damn straight” and trying to figure out a way to bring She Who Must Be Obeyed to the movie, if only for that part.)
The best part about that scene is the excellent sound design as the pen scratches across the paper. It was enough to bring chills to the spine of this pen addict. In fact, one of the movie’s best accomplishments is the different sounds of the different pens and pencils on paper. At one point, the scratch of the nib serves as the snare drum part in a music video sequence where the anime they are drawing is projection-mapped onto the paper and the room around them. (You can see bits of it in the trailer here. Note: it’s all in Japanese.)
Of course, the whole time any pens were on screen I was doing a Rainman monologue: “I think it’s a Copic, I don’t think it’s a Pigma Micron. I think it’s a Copic. It’s definitely not an Ohto. I think it’s a Copic.” Given that there were no complaints from other viewers, including our youngest, I’m pretty sure I kept that internal monologue internal.
The movie’s weakness is that it relies too much on its Sakanaction soundtrack. The music is excellent, but it’s often overwhelming as if the director were saying “Listen! This is awesome!” as it stops moving forward for a short (with one exception) music video.
It also suffers from a noticeable lack of women. Weekly Shōnen Jump is apparently staffed completely by men and the only woman to get a speaking part disappears early. Nana Komatsu plays Miho Azuki, Moritaka’s love interest and muse. In the few scene’s she’s actually around, Komatsu does a good job, but she’s mostly there to smile and look radiantly beautiful. As such, she is always shot in glowing, angelic soft focus (which you can even notice in the trailer). There were comic moments where she is in angelic soft focus and the person she is talking to is shot in regular light. At first I thought she might be imaginary, but she was apparently real.
The rest of the actors are well cast. However, because they are based off a manga, they walk the line between wacky and good. One manga artist has a brass knuckles phone case and gets his accurate fight depictions by having his friends take pictures of him being kicked and punched. However, when his work is accepted by Jump, he giddily announces his acceptance over the pachinko parlor loudspeaker. Another strips down to work while another drinks lots of sake and acts depressed.
For no particular reason other than soundtrack filler, there is a manga style fight between Moritaka and his collaborator Akito Takagi (played by Ryunosuke Kamiki) and their rival Eiji Niizuma, played by Shota Sometani. They fight with ink and pens to excellent music and at first it’s kind of funny, but it goes on way too long.
The most impressive acting happens near the end when Niizuma and Moritaka come together over the latter’s drawing table. I won’t spoil it too much, so let’s just ask “what would you do if your rival was scribbling on your true love’s face?” Satoh’s reaction is brilliant–and proves he can act–and it was not even close what I was fearing was about to happen.
I was glad our youngest dragged me to it and I would happily take our oldest and/or She Who Must Be Obeyed to see it. I think it’s also worth seeing, even if you don’t like manga. (Also, pen and stationery addicts should definitely stay for the closing credits. There’s a taste at the end of the trailer.)
We talked about booze tonight with our youngest, and our oldest had, at least officially as far as her parents know, her first taste of beer. It ended badly. Which is kind of good.
I’ve mentioned before about how I had my first taste of bourbon at the age of 10 and about how my parents would give us watered down wine with either Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner. It turns out there’s also a tradition like that here in Japan, but we haven’t really acted on it until today.
At supper, our youngest asked She Who Must Be Obeyed about the beer we were drinking. Our youngest seemed to know from reading and/or television, that beer is made with hops which makes it bitter and it’s the bitterness that makes it beer. (Something like that; she seems to know more about it than I do so ask her for clarification.) SWMBO tried to explain it and then gave up and offered her a taste instead.
Our youngest was surprised and didn’t act interested, even when we assured her one sip wouldn’t make her drunk. Now that I think about it, though, that’s probably not the best way to get her try it. She ended up refusing.
Our oldest seemed more interested and finally agreed to try a sip. Keep in mind, we were drinking Yebisu All Malt Beer, which is one of my favorite beers in Japan. In fact, it was the first beer I drank after I moved to Japan which also means it’s a sentimental favorite. It is, however, more bitter than most national beers which is part of what I like about it. It isn’t alcohol infused soda water, it’s got flavor.
Our oldest, though, was unimpressed. She took one sip. Made a face that was one part “you tricked me” and one part “bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntu onnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!” and ran to the sink to spit the beer out and flush her mouth with water.
One part of me was pleased she’d had that reaction. Another part, though, was thinking “Don’t waste the beer you little idiot! Don’t waste the beer! You’re no daughter of mine!”
The next step, I suspect, will be a taste of sake with New Year’s breakfast. I need to find some bad sake for that event, though. Just in case.
Given that I didn’t move far from my office chair, and played a game, and watched other people play games, I actually had a reasonably productive day. More or less.
After six days in a row of work, I decided to go full lazy today–and you should never go full lazy–but then I ended up tinkering in a notebook.
As I prepare to start National Novel Writing Month again, I’ve found myself, against my better judgement, scribbling out ideas for a science fiction novel. My goal this time is to start from scratch which, in all fairness, is the intent of the event. The two times I’ve done NaNoWriMo before I tried finishing works in progress: the first one I didn’t finish; the second I did finish, but it nearly broke what’s left of my sanity.
There are a few problems. As I’m world building, I’m also scribbling random bits of dialogue and scenes which may cause me to write sections I can’t, technically use as part of my 50,000 words. (I vow here and now not to use them unless I’m really desperate to finish.)
I also find myself becoming more interested in world-building related research than the actual characters. This is a form of procrastination that gives the appearance of working without actually requiring work; kind of like cleaning your desk and checking your email before you write.
The last problem is that this blog has remained a daily project despite my intent to make it a few times a week project. Unfortunately the daily habit has set in strongly enough that I find myself trying to think of topics after supper and, for some reason, avoiding the list of topics I made a long time ago. Also unfortunately, it hasn’t set in enough for me to do any prep before supper to make the writing easier.
My goal is to start the NaNoWriMo process on Monday. I will, but first I have some research to do.
I ought to do a commercial, in the spirit of this one, to sell televisions right now. I can imagine me saying “my hair is brown, my eyes are blue and my skin is well tanned.”
The problem is my hair is turning white, my eyes change between green, blue and gray depending on what I’m wearing and right now my hands are blue and my fingertips are orange and black. (If that doesn’t send people running for higher definition televisions, then nothing will. I could also wear a green shirt and say it’s blue, although that wouldn’t work in Japan. (More on that in another post.)
This technicolor finger painting happened today when I was refilling a couple fountain pens and, well, things got weird.
I had no problems with the black ink at first, but then managed to grab a piece of blotter paper in the wrong way and blackened my finger tips.
The same thing happened with the dark blue ink I used for the second pen.
Then, I refilled a third pen with a more turquoise shade of blue. In this case, I tested the wetness and dryness of a spot on my cleaning towel and discovered it was, in fact wet, and my fingers were suddenly blue.
At that point I decided to wash the towel and, by default, my hands. This involves running it under warm water and squeezing out the ink.
Unfortunately, the ink, despite being water-logged, was still persistent enough to make my hands an interesting shade of blue.
This is one of the risks of using, not only fountain pens, but fountain pens with bottled ink. If you’re not careful, you end up wearing your hobby. You can also end up wearing colors that you weren’t using. The orange comes from an ink I wiped on the towel yesterday.
Now I’m faced with a dilemma: do I wash dishes to help clean off my hands, or do I just go to bed and the let tomorrow morning’s shower take care of the ink.
Because I have a couple new pens on the way, and despite the fact I won’t see them for a couple months, I find myself beginning the slow process of culling my herd of pens to make way for (and pay for) the new ones. This sounds like an easy process but it isn’t as easy as it sounds.
First, i have to look over each pen and decide that it needs to go and why it needs to go: it’s too old, I never use it, there are others I like better, the nib isn’t as good as I thought it would be. I’ve got three others just like it, this one is broken. This results in a list of “this pen must go” candidates.
That part of the process is followed by the hours of justification for why I should keep each pen on the list. These justifications usually start with:
The Sentimental Reasons
It was my first internet pen; it was my first Kickstarter pen; it was my first fountain pen; it was my first Massdrop pen; it looks like a pen that was a gift from my father; my ex-girlfriend gave me a pen by the same manufacturer.
After the sentimental reasons fail, the economic arguments kick in:
The Economic Reasons Sunk Cost Fallacies: It’s still new; I haven’t had it long enough for me to truly know it; I spent a lot for it and need to get my money’s worth out of it; it still has a lot of life; if I just clean it up a bit it will work perfectly and I will like it better.
You Haven’t Sunk Enough Costs Into It Fallacies: If I just spend some money to get it cleaned and tuned it will be better; if I get this fixed up, I could sell it for more. I haven’t reviewed it on my blog yet.
After those fail, the next step is the denial arguments:
The Bitter Denial Reasons
It’s too much work to take pictures of it and post it and that’s totally the sunk cost fallacy. Look at all these flaws; no one will buy this anyway because it’s crap so I should keep it. Cleaning all these will be real pain in the butt, do I really want to do that when they might not sell? What if something goes wrong in the shipping and I have to waste a lot time dealing with it? What if I’m not charging enough and I’m ripping myself off? There are already thousands of these out there so I won’t get much money for it. I should do more research about how much to charge.
After that is all resolved, the next step involves taking and posting the pictures and figuring out how to collect the payments.
But should I post the pictures on a forum or make a page on my blog to sell them? I’ll have to think about that a while. Until I figure it out, I’ll just play with some pens.
Today proved that our oldest hates insects maybe more than my mother does.
As I’ve written before, my mother has only two classifications for insects: bad bugs (those still living) and good bugs (those smashed on a hard surface). My mother even has a soft cackle in her voice after she kills a bug and declares it a “good bug”. You only hear the cackle if you listen closely–and let’s face it, who listens to their mother?– but it’s there.
Every now and then we get a small infestation of gnats in our apartment. This is especially true now as the weather is changing and the gnats are attempting to get “refugee” status in our house.
Our oldest seems to get especially annoyed by the gnats as they seem to hang out near her desk. This has led to a couple angry outbursts and noisy desk slaps. I sympathize with this as I’ve snapped and felt a rush of blood lust whilst killing insects but I’ve never felt the visceral hatred my mother had.
Our oldest seems to have inherited that hatred, but my mother doesn’t have the look in her eyes that I saw our youngest give today.
As we sat down to eat, our oldest suddenly tracked some movement and the look of hatred in her eyes was one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen. The look was what a hunting dog would give if it had not only spotted a duck, but also hated the duck with a passion. This wasn’t just “there it is” this was “I want to watch you bleed.”
Once I drew attention to the look, by crossing myself and saying several Our Fathers and Hail Marys, the look went away and I almost threw more bugs at her just to see the look happen again.
I also hope she learns to deploy that look at annoying boys.
I’ve mentioned before how, when I was in Albania, I ended up getting sick and losing a lot of weight. Recently, I’ve volunteered to lose weight have been doing my best not to get sick.
The impetus for this was a discount on a guided weight loss course run by former US Army soldier Vic Magary. I don’t remember how I heard about him, but I remember seeing some of his videos a few years ago and getting some of his diet books and thinking, well, yeah, some day. I like his common sense attitude and the fact he doesn’t try to sell a bunch of equipment or play up his service in the “I was totally Special Forces and please don’t look up my DD 214 and prove I wasn’t” kind of way. (Note: he was in infantry, not Special Forces.)
Then, when the 30 day course went on sale (it was the last time he was offering the course as he is starting a new project.) I decided to try it. I knew there would be resistance from She Who Must Be Obeyed and I also had a trip to the in-laws that would complicate things (hint: beer, beer and more beer and lots of food), but for the most part I’ve stuck to the plan.
Vic required participants to keep a food and exercise journal (daily exercise is part of the plan) and promised to send us angry emails if we didn’t keep our journal updated. He gave us daily feedback on our food journals and also gave us access to different sources of advice.
I found, and still find, the food journal to be the most useful part of the plan. Twenty four days after the official program ended I’m still keeping it. The idea is you enter what you ate, when you ate it and about how much you ate and that can be kind of terrifying in a “do I really drink that much bourbon?” kind of way. You also weigh yourself once a week. If you have a bad week you can review what you ate and never do that again. If you have a good week, you have a plan you can use again.
I went with much lower carbohydrates, meaning I eat a lot less pizza than I usually eat (luckily we don’t order it that often) and I have to go easy on pasta, rice and potatoes. I have to find a way to include vegetables with every meal, including breakfast. I also eliminated a lot of in-between meal snacks and changed the snacks I do eat.
My goal was for this to be a lifestyle change and not just a “I need to get into this suit for one night” plan. I also didn’t want to starve myself. She Who Must Be Obeyed is slowly coming around, although she refuses to join the plan. (She doesn’t need to.)
The results have been pretty good. I started out at 98 kilograms (216 pounds) and as of today’s unofficial weigh-in I’m at 89.5 kilograms (197.3 pounds). I’ve been inconsistent with the daily exercise, but mostly on work days when I do a lot walking (3.1 miles/5 kilometers each work day).
My goal is 84 or 85 kilograms (185 or 187.4 pounds) Then I can moderate things a bit.
Me at 152 pounds a couple days before I was medevaced. This is what I’m trying to avoid.
A colleague of mine is standing at the edge of the rabbit hole and I find myself with a moral dilemma. Do I do what’s right and hope for the best which is good for my colleague, or do I do what’s wrong and hope for the worst because that’s the best for me?
This colleague, seeing my extensive collection of pens and fountain pens, has decided to stick a toe in the ink, so to speak, of fountain pens. She also implied that I was going to be her adviser in all this.
This is where my moral dilemma enters the situation: do I use Jedi mind tricks (which I totally have) to persuade her to buy a more expensive starter pen in the hope that if she doesn’t like fountain pens, I can pick up the pen on the cheap for myself?
Unfortunately, once she made the decision to try fountain pens and before I could advise her, she did a shocking amount of research in a short amount of time and settled on a Platinum Preppy which was actually a very good choice (for her). It writes well and has a smooth nib. It also comes in fun colors, which is often important to people just starting out with fountain pens. It lets her try fountain pens without spending a small fortune.
She said she’d considered a Pilot Cocoon for a while but had opted against it as it was a bit pricey for a starter pen. I started waving my hand saying “this is totally the pen you’re looking for, this is totally the pen you’re looking for” but she went with the cheaper pen. (My Jedi mind tricks must be a bit rusty.)
The problem with the Preppy is that of the three I’ve owned (in two different nib sizes) I’ve had two caps split lengthwise rendering the caps and the pens useless. (I did convert one in to an ink cartridge holder but more on that in another post.)
I’m now kind of hoping she likes pens as I don’t want another Preppy. Also, if she likes them, it will be nice to have fellow pen addict, especially one who likes to do research.
A couple weeks ago our internet started taking small vacations. I was annoyed, our oldest was panicked because “NO TWITTER!” (ah, the humanity).
I contacted our service provider and they were like “not our problem, dude, call NTT”. I called NTT and they sent a guy out to check out our internet. The NTT guy blamed everything in our house that runs on electricity and an old phone cord for the problem.
I was skeptical, but I bought a new cord when I was out the other day and then spent today undoing what I’d done and doing something else.
Most older Japanese apartments have two fatal flaws: 1) they have only one electrical outlet in each room and 2) there’s only one phone jack in the entire apartment. In order to hide my desk in the variety room and connect my computer to the internet, I had to stretch a 10 meter long phone cord from behind the hutch in the kitchen to the far corner of the variety room. This involved running the cord along the baseboards, around corners, through the entry way and around more baseboard. I attached the original cord with U shaped nails that had plastic insulation along the curves (at least most of them did before I started hammering away on them).
The NTT guy gave a long list of why that set up was a bad idea but couldn’t explain why it worked until it didn’t. Just in case I tore it all out and replaced it with plastic hooks that stuck on the wall. To do this I had to wear a silly hat with a flashlight attached and had to clean up a shocking amount of dust.
The plan for the next part of the day was to set up a Kobo Touch eReader I bought recently. (It was used and $20 so I couldn’t resist.) Setting up such things usually involves copious amounts of swearing, but after an initial failure, the only swearing happened when I tried to read the f@#king manual which consisted of 1) a “congratulations you bought this device” pamphlet and 2) vague online instructions.
Luckily, the internet and Calibre saved the precious ears of my precious girls and gave me a portable device with several books and a dictionary on it but no blinding back light and no quickly dying batteries.
I would have started reading right away, except that now that the internet is working better I have more distractions.
