Short Items

Earlier this month I made my way back to Vancouver to visit an ailing relative.  Not exactly the best of circumstances but it was the best thing to do.

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.....

Spring? What Spring? & Game Log #1

A friend was in Tokyo yesterday.  She's over to Japan for a short visit from Vancouver.  Of course, she sent a photo of cherry blossoms along with her query on when I'd be free for lunch on the weekend.  This is after I had received a photo from my sister of cherry trees in full bloom in Washington state.  I mentioned those cherry blossoms and then added I had seen a few snowflakes drifting down today.  It's early evening now and they're still drifting down but there's a bit of rain too.  As for dinner this evening, it's a meal that would do Yozan-san proud; a modest piece of fish with some string beans.  I ordered an "oo-mori" (extra size) dish of cream mentaiko pasta for lunch so I think I got my day's requirement of carbs there.

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As I now have a desktop computer, I've revisited a few games which ran on my Macbook Pro but tended to send the fans into overdrive.  They don't cause the same issues on the iMac, which has less memory and a slightly older (and slower) CPU than the portable machine, but one has the peculiar habit of crashing.

The one which doesn't crash is the slightly old title, Civilization V.  I don't so much play the game as much as I just fiddle around with it in multiplayer hot seat mode.  It's a fun little time waster but only recently did I notice an odd feature; the Great Wall of China is not a stationary.  The following screen shots demonstrate its every changing shape.

Here it is in one game while in its construction phase;

Here it is a number of turns after its completion.  Note that it has expanded to grab more territory;

And here it is a few hundred years later in game time;

I'm not sure if this is the way it's supposed to work or if it's a strange form of commentary on the real world...

Winter is more or less over...

The continuation being "...depending on where in the northern hemisphere you are".  My sister sent me a photo a few days ago of cherry trees in full bloom in Washington state.  Where I am, that's something we'll see somewhere around the end of April.

This past winter was short and brutish.  We hardly had any snow during the Christmas holidays.  Actually, there was next to none.  Temperatures were cold but not much precipitation.  Then came mid-January.  By the time of the Snow Lantern Festival in early February there was enough to ensure that snow didn't have to be trucked down from the mountains.  Needless to say, I spent many winter nights cuddled up next to my kotatsu.

So what's with the title of this little blog post?  Well it has to do with the following photograph.  I had just paid my March installment on my city taxes and thought I'd take the little path through the back of Nishijo Tenmangu Park...until I was confronted with the fact the path was mostly buried under a meter or so of snow.  To add insult to injury, the snow had melted off the part of the path which goes over a bridge.  I had seen the clear bridge first and had thought to myself, "I'll just take this shortcut", when I noticed there was no easy way of getting to the bridge.  Such is life....

A Short Visit to Akihabara

Note: I had originally posted this elsewhere but I suspect that site deletes blog posts after they're a year old.  Thus I've reposted it here...

I usually don't go to Akihabara when I'm in Tokyo.  Shinjuku, Shibuya, Odaiba, a whole pile of other places...and wherever I end up drinking with friends take precedence over Akihabara.  I think the last time I was there was back in 2005.

For starters...one doesn't go to Akihabara for food.  I paid ¥800 for a less than happy meal of katsu-curry.  The curry was basically reheated stuff scooped out of what looked to be 5kg plastic bags.  The rice was passable but the tonkatsu was pretty thin by my standards.  For the same price I got a much more interesting meal (duck on rice with salad, soup, and mango juice) in Ikebukuro at a Thai restaurant named Pirabukao which is housed in a hut.

The other thing is that I kind of took the long way around to getting there.  I took a JR train from Shin Nihonbashi station to Tokyo station and then the Yamanote line to Akihabara.  I could've walked to Tokyo station.

As for Akihabara itself...it's there.  Big deal, eh?  I cruised through a number of stores just to see if anything caught my eye.  I really had only two things on my mind: one, visit the two Volks shops, and two, find a drugstore.  Yes, finding a drugstore in Akiba can be a bit of challenge.  The Volks hobby shop was what it was but their doll showroom was a touch more interesting than their showroom in Sendai.

Given that I had no real plan of attack, I managed to get myself comfortably disorientated but not lost.  I passed through the areas with plenty of little electronics shops, the obligatory pachinko and slot shops; the maid cafes, the Gundam Cafe which is next to the AKB48 Cafe, and the big name chain stores.

My haul...hardly anything.  Figures...zero.  Goods...three folders.  Memories...well, at least I now know which part of Akihabara is a bit of a menagerie.  It's the block where one will find the hedgehog, cat, and owl cafes!  (^o^)

Fun in auction land

A short while ago I mentioned my initial reactions to the online auction site I've been spending a fair bit of time on.  Recently I came across this gem:

Yes, you're looking at a blurry picutre of a clothing item.  If I recall correctly, the auction title was 服 (fuku), "clothing" in English.  Yes, the auction's starting bid amount was ¥99,999,999.  I'm not quite sure what the purpose of this auction was.  Perhaps the seller was trying to see if they could break the site.  Or perhaps they were waiting to see if the apparent lack of common sense would earn them a sharp reprimand from the powers that be.  Either that or it was some weird money laundering scheme....

This year can't end soon enough...

I was planning to wake up on Tuesday and phone home to wish my mother a happy birthday.  Around midnight I was alerted to an e-mail.  I checked it and read it to find out that a relative had passed away earlier in the day.  Aye...I most definitely won't be sending out "nengajo" (New Year's greeting cards) this year....

Nonetheless, I did make the phone call...after sussing out that I hadn't really reactivated my Skype credit when I had called a North American toll-free number back in September!  😆 

Oh...so where did November go?

It seems to have gone past rather quickly.   I intended to put up a post per month but it appears that November got away before I could peg anything on it....

Anyways, here I am at the start of December.  In a short while we'll be heading into the year-end party season, followed by New Years, and then the New Years party season.  Oh yeah, there's a friend's birthday in there somewhere too.

Last weekend was proceeded by a holiday on Thursday.  So I booked Friday and Saturday off and headed down to Tokyo.  The original goal was to take in a concert on Thursday night and then hook up with friends.  Things changed when I was asked if I'd like to attend a concert on Friday night.  So I ended up spending a bit more than I had expected to.  I'll go into details in a later post...if I get around to writing one up.

Upon my return home on Sunday evening, I dropped my stuff off at home,  took a nap, and then went out for dinner.  The next night I headed down to the local AEON Cinema to take in a movie.  The movie in question being "Chef".  It's a few years old and it was being screened as part of the company's "Past Works" program.

When I arrived at the ticket counter of the theatre I was greeted by a radically different sight.  The ticket counter is no more.  It has been replaced by several machines.  So the movie going experience in Japan is finally catching up to that in North America.  Or perhaps I should rephrase that as "the movie going experience in rural Japan".  I found it a touch ironic that the machine required a bit of coaxing to make it through a ticket purchase process.  It probably took as long as it took when one was dealing with a person.

Anyways, the movie was a good one.  I enjoyed the music and the story.  I didn't spend a lot of time worrying about trying to remember who the actors were.  Which is a bit of a contrast to one of the movies whose trailer was screened, the latest version of "Murder on the Orient Express".....