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The Week #265
by James- 🇬🇧 We escaped the summer heat in Japan and went on holiday in London. It's fantastic – exactly as you'd expect summer in London to be. The highs are lower than the lows in Japan. I'm loving it. As is the family.
- 🛝 Taking advantage of being able to exist outside past 8am we've been visiting all the parks and playgrounds. The Diana Memorial Playground was a real treat with its pirate ship in the middle. Leo had been looking forward to visiting it for months and I'm glad he could. He climbed up to the crow's nest and made it down again. He's slowly learning to be more assertive on the playground.
While he's playing at the park he's starting to pick up more English from the kids. Afterwards he'll start mimicking them "Oh my goodness". - 🦍 We visited the London Zoo. We took the tube to Baker street and then the bus to get the rest of the way. This is my fourth time to London and my first time riding the bus. We got to ride up top in the very front.
Meaning while at the zoo, the gorillas were my favorite, especially the baby. Both the lions and the tigers were taking their morning naps when we walked past, though perhaps that's expected as cats do sleep a lot. - 🧬 We visited the science museum. The permanent exhibitions at the museum weren't enough to capture Leo's attention and he complained a lot. Which is a shame as I wanted to read about the different engines and such.
Zelda 64
The visit seemed like a total failure until at the very back we saw Power Up, which had 50 years of gaming history, full of consoles you could play. Everything from Atari 2600's through to the Switch 2. That worked out swimmingly as Leo had said that morning during breakfast how he wants to touch a Switch 2 (and I had zero idea about the gaming exhibition at the science museum). We played the new Mario Kart, various generations of Smash Brothers, Zelda 64, Crazy Taxi and more. Well worth the price of admission. Now I'm tempted to pick up a Dreamcast on Mercari or something...
- 🇬🇧 We escaped the summer heat in Japan and went on holiday in London. It's fantastic – exactly as you'd expect summer in London to be. The highs are lower than the lows in Japan. I'm loving it. As is the family.
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Checkin to Science Museum
5 decades of gaming. 160 consoles. Game on! -
Checkin to WatchHouse Bermondsey
Flat white 😋 -
Checkin to ZSL London Zoo
Visiting the animals -
Checkin to Caffè Nero
Rest before heading to the hotel for the night. -
Checkin to Tate Modern
Leo’s first art museum. Semi-successful -
Checkin to St James' Park Playground
Huge fan of playing in parks in summer and not risking heat stroke. -
Checkin to Hamleys
Leo’s living the dream -
Checkin to London Heathrow Airport (LHR)
Escaping Japanese Summer -
The Week #264
by James- 🌊 Monday was Marine Day, where I celebrated by not going anywhere near the ocean because it's 34 degrees and as humid as it can be. Thankfully a break (for me (sorry not sorry y'all)) is coming quite soon. I wonder, is it actually that much cooler in Karuizawa? One way I'll have to go and see.
- 🇯🇵 There was an upper house election at a fringe rightwing party picked up a number of seats. I won't repeat the news, but they're a party that got their start via social media (YouTube and TikTok mainly?), which means they're targeting low-information voters and outrage. I am very much not a fan of their anti-foreigner talk. Especially that bit where if they had their way they'd strip purchased property from foreigners. Apologists claim they're only talking about Chinese or such, but that's how it always starts. I hope this trend does not continue. And thankfully I didn't see any supporter signs plastered on people's houses nearby.
- 🕹️ Getting ready for a long flight with kids, the thing I worry about the most, besides making it to the gate on time, is keeping Leo from having a melt down about 7 hours in. We've downloaded some shows on to his iPad and the Switch is fully charged. The new entrant is that USB SNES controller I bought 8 years ago and thought didn't work on my M2 Macbook. Turns out does work and now we've got a nice catalogue of games to keep us entertained and I get to relive my childhood playing classics like Boogerman: A Pick and Flick Adventure.
