While I was back in Vancouver I had a bit of time to spare to touch base with friends. One of them is a former co-worker who shares an interest with me in anime and military topics related to the model kits each of us enjoys building. I met up with him at a Denny's restaurant in Vancouver. The primary reason for the selection is that it's a convenient location for the two of us. The secondary reason was so that I take photos of what I ordered. The photos would be used to tease and torture an expat American co-worker.
At our little get together, my friend very graciously gave me two volumes of a work documenting WWII German naval camouflage. The books are extremely well researched and a joy to look at.
As luck would have it, upon my return to Japan, I happened upon two relatively rare 1/700 scale kits of German WWII era torpedo boats. The boats in question are listed in the books my friend gave me. The kits were featured on a Japanese online auction site. Needless to say I placed bids on of them.
I was going to attend a concert the night the auctions closed off so I set my smartphone up so that I was logged on to the auction site. Then I slipped my phone into my pocket and went off to enjoy Yamada Koshi in concert.
After the concert ended I checked my smartphone and the auction website. I had a notifier advising me I had been outbid. I checked the auction, saw there was a minute left, and quickly placed a counter bid. A second later, a little red message indicator went on. I had placed the winning bid. I had somewhat precipitously placed my winning bid with a literal second to spare. I was certainly pleased about my good fortune but I'm quite sure there is someone else out there who doesn't share my opinion.
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The cab driver who took me home after I had returned to town mistakenly took the wrong route. I'm not sure why but I guess he was on some sort of auto-pilot mode. Aside from that slip up, he mentioned that even though it is "tsuyu", the rainy season, we hadn't had much rain. It would be another two weeks before we would get any rain.
As such, when it rained it poured. Over a period of four days we experienced three sudden late afternoon thundershowers. The last one was quite spectacular as it dumped 110mm of rain in Fukushima prefecture as it made its way through the mid Tohoku region.
My experience with that thunderstorm was a bit more quaint: I had done a load of laundry, hung out it out to dry, washed my car, and then headed off to go shopping. As I returned to my car after finishing shopping, the first raindrops came down. That rainfall soon turned into a torrential downpour accompanied by thunder and lightning. I then recalled that my laundry was hanging outside...soaking up water. I guess I had tempted fate by doing both my wash and washing my car.....
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