The Week #293
by
James
- 👵 My mom has come to visit us for a week and a bit. She flew in to Narita, which meant I had to go to Narita for the first time in about 3 years. It's so far away. This time I tried taking the SkyLiner (changing at Ueno) as Jorudan told me it's about ¥1,500 cheaper than taking the Narita Express (NEX). There were soo many tourists in Ueno (makes sense, line direct from the airport to a world class city terminates there). The train itself was fine, but, maybe because its popularity, I saw private security folk walking down the aisles on the train – it almost didn't feel like Japan.
Having ridden both I think I prefer the Narita Express, especially as I do not need to transfer. On the way back we took the Narita Express and I saw a group of skiers do a walk of shame from the first class towards the back of the train with a conductor following them.
Train antics aside, it's been really good to just hang out and take things easy with my mom. It's not her first time to Japan so the pressure to play tour guide is off. And that's good because.... - 🤒 Leo developed a fever the day before Mom arrived and it only got worse the next day. We kept Leo back on Monday and he slept for about 20 hours. He got what was going around the school as there have been class closures and this time it was his class' turn – closed through Thursday. So if he goes to school this week it would just be Friday.
- ❄️ We got proper snow in Kanto! I...didn't take any photos or I'd share them. Snow is great as a kid, but as an adult, once a year is more than enough for me.
- 🧑💻 I made my first PR into Tanzawa in <checks notes> more than a year. It was a small optimization to the /runs/ page to help an N+1 query I put in there. I had some ideas of using Claude to help me upgrade dependencies and do some maintenance work, but stopped when it started asking for subscription plans and such like – not about the actual cost, but extra decisions that didn't want to make. Let's hope the next PR isn't in another year.