Category Archives: Random

Family Travel Fun Time With Nagging Navigation

1 Reply

Anyone who’s ever traveled long distances with my family quickly discovers three things: our kids travel pretty well; She Who Must Be Obeyed is learning to drive the proper way; and our brand new navigation system is an annoying bitch.

The girls play computer games, watch scenery and sleep. They don’t battle for territory and wonder if we’re there yet. I’ve never had to threaten to “go back there” or threaten to have SWMBO “turn this car around” (Note: I have had to do the latter on short trips to restaurants.)

She Who Must Be Obeyed has learned to drive much faster and more aggressively than before and this has led her to complain about other drivers. Most of the time the complaints are of the polite “can you believe that person?” style. I’m happy with her progress but want to work on her language. She needs more profanity and more contempt for other drivers. “Can you believe this person?” is a good start but I’m trying to get her to the “Wake up, Moron” phase which will eventually lead to the black belt level of “Move, asshole, move, move, move.” and other more appropriate phrases.

(Note: I don’t have a Japanese driver’s license yet because it’s a complicated process and I am lazy. Also, it’s probably best our girls don’t yet learn the phrases I’d use while driving.)

I bought the navigation system because, at the time, She Must Be Obeyed but was afraid to drive by herself. My helpful advice “follow the expressway until you hit Nagaoka then turn left” was not perceived as being helpful. Because she wouldn’t go without me as the navigation system, she either stayed home or spent several hundred dollars to take the train.

I thought the navigation system would be a step up from the days when I worked as the navigation system. (Let’s just say swearing and tossed maps was involved.) The Navi, however, has her own quirks. Her voice is polite but loud and she feels compelled to announce certain things, even helpful ones, with extra noises and a loud voice.

–digital trumpet fanfare—There’s an on-ramp ahead. Get in the right lane for your convenience.
–digital trumpet fanfare—There’s a service center on your left.
–digital trumpet fanfare—Turn left, moron.

That latter one is a bit of an exaggeration but after a couple hours of that even She Who Must Be Obeyed was saying “Yes, Mom” and “Okay, Mom” to the navigation system.

Also, if you don’t follow the navigation system’s advice she can be stubborn. “I won’t be ignored, Dwayne” (as if it’s my fault even though I’m not driving) and she’ll send us half way around town to get us back where she told us she wanted us.

Eventually, we got to the in-laws. The navigation system kept saying “Don’t I get a thank you? For all I do for you I don’t even get a thank you?”

I said “No” and unplugged her. We’ll see how angry she gets next time.

Finishing up Work Well After Work is Finished

1 Reply

Today I finally finished work and can enjoy the summer. The problem with this is that I no longer have an excuse to accomplish nothing  this summer.

Starting tomorrow, I enter a phase of paid holidays that are my choice and a second series of “planned” paid holidays that are my company’s choice. (Long story that.)

After a short trip to the in-laws I will find myself with lots of time and nothing to do but what I want to do (with the caveat that I will be babysitting at least three days a week).  In other words, I’ve suddenly got a “round tuit” and nothing messes up your denial than suddenly getting a round tuit.

The problem is that my plans tend to fade when faced with the actual time to do them. For example, several times in the past I’ve planned outings to Tokyo to visit Place A or Place B (not real places) and do Action A and Action B (not real actions) and in the end ended up staying home and doing nothing.

The same happens when I make plans. The planning takes a lot of energy and leaves a sense of accomplishment but then I need a break and will “just quickly” check my email or play one round of game A or game B (not real games). A few hours later I think “Hmmm, I should eat something”. A few hours after that I think “I have to do something that won’t easily fit in a bottle; I should get up and go to the toilet.” A few hours after that it’s time for bed.

But first I have to write an entry for this blog.

This summer I’ve been playing around with different schedules and have had moderate success. The main thing throwing me off schedule is the bad habit of putting of these posts until right before bed. This means I don’t get as much sleep as I’d like which throws off my energy the next day.

But at least that gives me something to write about. If I actually started writing during the day, I might have nothing to write about.

I’ll think about that later, though. It’s time for bed.

 

 

Shiny and Hip but Neither Warm nor Cool

Leave a reply
Man lives in the sunlit world of what he believes to be reality.
But…there is, unseen by most, an underworld, a place that is just as real,
but not as brightly lit… a darkside.
The darkside is always there, waiting for us to enter – waiting to enter us.Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight. —Tales from the Darkside opening and closing voice overs

Any writer will tell you that it is possible to improve something and still manage to ruin it. I’m afraid one of my favorite stores just did exactly that.

After the Ginza Blade Show, because I was in Ginza, I decided to stop by Itoya and check out its brand new building. I was disappointed that they went with a glass front building. That style is trendy in Ginza now and I thought it looked too much like several of the large clothing stores nearby.

The red paper clip in front of G Ito-Ya, the main store.

The red paperclip in front of G Ito-Ya, the main store. Very modern and very boring. The paperclip is cool.

That was a mild disappointment, but it was inside that really ruined it for me. The old Itoya was badly organized and to find something you had to explore the narrow passages between the stacks of different goods. It was dark and kind of creepy, kind of like an old bookstore where you’re always afraid the top shelf is going to give way causing you to die in a cascading failure of books.

(Note: Yeah, I understand the safety aspects of the design especially in an earthquake prone country. I just don’t care.)

The new Itoya is minimalist and brightly lit. On some of the floors I thought they weren’t finished moving things until I realized there was a method to minimalist madness. It’s an art gallery for a few select goods that are carefully displayed around the edges and at little islands in the center. The old store was the warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant is being hidden.

The best thing about the store, in all fairness, was the notebook level. They’ve installed a kind of “bar” where you can mix up your own notebook and have it made by the clerk working the counter. (I believe they’ve copied this from another store.) They also have a table where you can sit and mark up dozens of sample notebooks and test the paper with your own pens. At some of the displays they’ve placed other samples you are free to mark up.

I took the opportunity to test the fountain pen friendliness of several notebook brands (more on that in a future post).

Behind the main store, across the alley, is K. Itoya which still houses the fountain pens and ink. I went there for a few minutes to look around. It, too, is laid out more like a museum than a store.

I bought a notebook but otherwise didn’t stay very long. I’ll go back another day when I’m in a better mood and feel like exploring all twelve floors a little more.

Note: I did not realize wine would be served later in the day. If I had I might have liked it more. 

A shaky panorama of the entire front. Impressive, but too brightly lit.

A shaky panorama of the entire front. Impressive, but too brightly lit.

Sharp But Not That Sharp

2 Replies

I headed down to Tokyo for the annual Ginza Blade Show and this may be the first time I was underwhelmed. Mind you, it didn’t stop me from being tempted by a couple items.

Luckily, although the humidity approached liquid, today wasn’t mercilessly hot which meant I still had some energy by the time I reached the venue. I got there right before opening time and, because I’ve been to enough shows that I may now officially be a mascot, I was able to walk in as if I belonged there. This gave me a chance to survey the room before it started filling up.

The usual suspects were there and although I was tempted to buy a knife from one of them, that was part of the problem. All the same faces with all the same knives and all the same prices.

The most interesting knife had a handle made from old computer mother boards and acrylic but the rest weren’t that interesting.

This knife is really cool and only six-hundred dollars.

This knife is really cool and only $600. The handle shape makes it easy to grip, but I’ll bet it’s slippery when wet.

That said, there were a few interesting new trends.

First, a lot of the tables seemed to have discovered carbon fiber. Two of my favorite knife makers had knives with carbon fiber handles that looked great and were surprisingly light. I had a nice–albeit short–chat with Toshiyuki Miyamae who survived the Atlanta Blade Show this year.

(Note to the uninitiated: The Atlanta Blade Show or “Blade” is roughly the equivalent of Mecca to a knife knut, er, nut. Everyone must go once.)

Miyamae had a double bladed slip joint folder with heat anodized titanium bolsters and hand carved liners that probably cost well over two-thousand dollars. I’m still surprised he let me touch it. (He also let me take a picture of it that didn’t turn out very well. Sigh.)

The second new trend was accessories and knives made from interesting materials. There were sheath makers and a leather worker who also made leather bags and leather covered guitars.

The final new trend was women. This show had a lot more women than usual as it appears a lot of men brought their wives. I do not think this was an attempt to convince the women to buy and enjoy knives. Rather, I think it was an attempt to connect human faces to the knives. “Honey, if I don’t buy this expensive knife, that nice friendly man who just gave you some butterscotch will starve to death and die.” (Something like that.)

I’ll have to ask about that before the next show in October. If it worked, I might have to plan a day trip for She Who Must Be Obeyed.

This is early in the show, right as it started to get busy.

This is early in the show, before the women arrived and it started to get busy.

 

Resting at Peace by Surprise

Leave a reply

I actually got to enjoy a lazy day today and don’t feel guilty about it all.

I woke up with a slight headache that I suspect was a result of the “guerrilla” storm we got last night. (We didn’t get the official rainfall, but on radar it looked like a bomb going off over our town.) The sudden change in air pressure sometimes messes with my head.

I slept in once I realized I had the headache and then took my time going through my morning routine. She Who Must Be Obeyed went to work and our Oldest got to hang the laundry as part of her “part time job agreement” with the International Bank of Dad to earn some money she wanted for today. After that she got a haircut and went to club. (Long story.) Our youngest practiced piano and did her summer homework.

I spent the day doing very little and liking it. I played some games until I realized the headache wasn’t going to help me win then watched other people play games as part of a marathon gaming session to help raise money for Operation Supply Drop.

I managed to do a little work, but not much. Then I made dirty rice for me and our youngest . After that things got awesome.

 

Our oldest returned from club and then went to a local festival with some of her friends. She Who Must Be Obeyed returned home from work and then took our youngest to the festival. (For the record: she was not spying on our oldest.)

SWMBO invited me along but I declined and just like that, without any warning whatsoever, I was alone.

I fully enjoyed the time alone. Mind you, I didn’t do anything productive. I didn’t do any writing or any work. All I did was eat some pretzels and enjoy the time alone.

Tomorrow I’ll be off on an outing and will be around lots of people. Lots of knives will be present, too.

I Can See Clearly Now, More Or Less

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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 Day Before the Not My Fault

Leave a reply

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.

Boring Myself Silly With My Own Work

Leave a reply

This post is 18 posts too early–I’d planned to do it at the thirty month anniversary–but this blog dominated a good portion of my day.

My head hurts because of this.

I spent part of the day sorting the posts on this blog. It took longer than I thought and I only got through about twenty percent of them. (The whole time I was asking myself “why didn’t you do this as you went along?) (Answer: because.)

The sorting involved going back through all 529 posts, starting with the earliest, and assigning each a category or two. This seems simple, but it’s a time consuming process that often involves rereading a portion of the post. In a couple cases, I assigned a category based on the title and the lede. Then, just in case, I reread the post only to discover it was in the wrong category.

I also kept having to add categories, including a category (random) that is more a cop out than an actual category. (I might as well have stayed with “unassigned” the default category.)

The goal is to sort out the Japan related posts so that I can start cross-posting them at my once and future old website and to assemble the best ones as a book to give away when I relaunch the old website.

I’ve also taken the opportunity to edit a couple typos and clarify a few bits.

Along the way I’ve discovered a couple moments where I sort of, almost repeated sections (I think of those “call backs” and not as mistakes or self-plagiarism) and I also found a few passages that I didn’t remember writing. Luckily I enjoyed them.

 

One of the problems with looking back at your old work is there are only a few possible reactions:

1) Man, I really sucked at this but I’m getting better.
2) Man, I used to be good at this but now I suck.
3) Man, I really suck at this.
4) Remind me again: why am I doing this?

Mostly I’ve noticed the way the tone has changed. I’ve had recurring jokes that I eventually dropped (something like that) and jokes that changed (“something like that” started as in-line text and then became parenthetical). There were also themes that seemed to dominate the blog for a while and then disappeared.

I still have a stack of possible topics that I’ve been putting off and a list of photos I plan to take “some day” in order to add them to reviews. First I need to sort the posts. After that, the goal is to modernize the other site.

The problem then becomes do I do two posts each day or recruit guest bloggers for the other site?

Knowing me, I’ll fret about that so long I won’t actually update the old site. Problem solved, except for the worry.

 

Walking, Some Shopping, Too Much Food

Leave a reply

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.