• For the first time since I moved into my neighborhood, the neighborhood association had a festival. It usually a yearly thing and they canceled it during the pandemic. They held it on the grounds of our neighborhood elementary school and it was a lot of fun.
  
  We went with some neighborhood friends/pre-school friends who live in the neighborhood. Boys dressed in jimbei (me included) and girls in yukata. There were some stalls with yaki-soba, corn dogs, shaved ice, beer, and more. In the center was a large stand with a taiko and people would take turns drumming it. While there Leo ran into other friends from pre-school and he ran around heaps (good thing for the running as his dinner was a croquette and a giant shaved ice).
  

  

• My father-in-law turned 81, which boggles my mind. He doesn't look like he's in his 80's in the slightest. I think the secret is to be active everyday, especially as we age. The moment you stop moving you start losing it. We went over to his house and brought ice cream (Leo's request) and unagi and sushi for dinner.
• I've been making good progress on Ultra-Processed People on my kindle. So far it's been enlightening. The two ideas that are standing out to me immediately are: the struggle for life takes place within us and food seems not to be the just the sum of its elements, how it's processed affects health.
  
  Inside our bodies is a unique and complex microbiome of bacteria that help us digest and extract nutrients. There's also a balance at place – bacteria in your gut are different from those in your large intestine and on. They've evolved with us over the millennia to digesting certain kinds of foods, which helps keeps them in balance and us healthy.
  
  Over the past 50 years there's been a large percentage of the population that overweight. It seems like it's mostly caused by eating industrialized food-like substances (ultra-processed foods). You'll find the same basic ingredients in UPF that when made traditionally, would have entirely different ingredients lists. Indeed in clinical studies they've found that people will eat more UFP (500 calories/day) and enjoy it less. Industrialized food is a lie.
  
  Highly recommend giving this book a read.
• My headphones right channel stopped broke producing sound. The cables don't look damaged at all, which is odd. I've had these headphones (Sony studio monitors) for about 11 years so I'm a bit sad that it seems they've reached their EOL. I don't particularly want to buy a new pair of headphones right now, but at the same time, losing the wire would remove a weekly stress as inevitability my headphone cable tangles with my keyboard cable...🤔 

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• My results came in from the dermatologist and as I expected, it's a basal cell. We're going to try this chemo creme for 4 weeks and see how it reacts. 3-days a week after I shower before bed I put the creme on the spot / surrounding area, and as it's quite strong, I wash it off in the morning. I've only used it one night, but it looks like it's already clearing it up.
• An electrician came out to quote for installing an plug outside to charge our new car. While the Sakura "supports" 6kw charging, it won't ever charge faster than 3kw. Rather than "future proofing" the house with a bigger (and more expensive) setup than I can use,  I decided to go with a regular 200V port outside.
• In more household electricity news my solar panels hit their 3rd mwh (3,000 kwh) of generation 🎉.
• Beau Miles released a new video on YouTube, "Renovating a canoe while running a marathon". I really like his approach to life (as portrayed in his work) as it always inspire me to do more things than sit on my computer.
• Since Amazon closed down an English bookseller they bought (I forget the name...but they sold through Amazon), getting English books in a timely manner at reasonable prices has proven to be a bit more difficult. The cheap yen isn't helping matters in those regards either. Then I remembered ebooks are a thing that I've used / enjoyed in the past. I started looking at kindles (the paperwhite looks quite nice)...and while I'm tempted to buy some new shiny electronics a friend reminded me I already own a kindle. Instead I charged my 10-year old kindle and started using it. Immediately I picked up some books that I left off reading a few years ago. And since it syncs automatically, I can pickup on my phone / computer / kindle. It's great.
  
  Then I bough a new book and remembered why I stopped using it. I've got 2 Amazon accounts: US and Japan. My kindle is associated with my US account as I bought it when I lived in the US and my regular shopping occurs from Japan. Naturally you can't merge libraries across accounts because DRM nor can you do household sharing (it doesn't exist in Amazon Japan).
  
  My solution is to stop buying ebooks from Amazon. I returned the book unread and instead started purchasing them from Rakuten (Kobo). As is, just buying them from kobo leaves me in no better position, as their books are DRMed and I'd need a kobo reader to read them (or a non-kindle). With a bit of finagling I was able to remove the DRM so I can read kobo epub ebooks on my kindle. The purchase experience isn't as seamless as it would be if I was in a pure Kindle camp (and I would be if I didn't need to share across accounts). Totally against the license for using the books. But also totally fair use as I'm just trying to read them on an existing reader. Hooray for re-using things we already own and generating less e-waste.

• Each year at Leo's pre-school (and it seems most pre-schools in Japan) once summer vacation starts, they have one night where the oldest kids get to spend the night. This week included that night. What do they do at school? They gave us a link to an unlisted YouTube video (that I've archived) that shows us exactly what they were up to.
  
  Each class made their own dinner together. They all peeled carrots, potatoes, and slice onions for curry. The kids started the fire that they cooked over as well. Leo managed to peel part of his fingernail off 😖. Beyond making dinner on a bbq, they also went hunting for bugs in a nearby forest. When the sun went down they had a campfire, sang, and roasted marshmallows. For bath time (not included in the video) all the kids took a dip in this big pool. They looked like they had a great time and I'm happy Leo could participate.
• Without Leo at the house Yumi and I were able to go out for dinner and coffee like the old days and it was a lot of fun. Most importantly we didn't need to worry about how long we were taking because family was watching Leo...we could just go with the flow. I don't know how long it's been since we've been able to do that, but it's been a long time.
• This week has been hot. Everyday in Kanto has had a slow of 25 - 26 (79F) and a high of around 37 (99F). Combined with the humidity and the best thing you can do is hide inside the house until the sun goes down.
  
  Having solar certainly makes it easier for me keep cool without thinking about it...but even with these long summer days, I'm not sure if it's the heat, the angle of the sun, or a combination of both, but my generation is actually lower than it was in April. On these bright sunny days I generate about 16 kWh a day, while there were times before where I was generating 18kWh+. I've noticed too that my panels almost never get up to 2.6kWh like they did during spring, instead topping out 2kWh...
• Tokyo Gas was representing Tokyo-to in the inner-city baseball tournament. Work offered tickets for everybody, so a bunch of us went to watch some baseball and root for home team. I took Leo with me as well so he could see his first baseball game.
  
  The game was at Tokyo Dome from 10am and we had to be there by 9:30am. It takes about an hour and a half for us to get there and we left early so we didn't need to rush. Whenever I ride into Tokyo with Leo when it's just the two of us we usually take the green-car. This time we enjoyed breakfast during the trip.
  
  As for the actual game - it could have been more exciting. The first 9-innings were completely shutout, 0-0. After that they did a *hybrid* sudden-death where the team at bat starts with a player on 1st and 2nd base, so it's easier to score. We ultimately lost in the 11th or 12th inning with JR Shikoku got run.
  
  When we got back to our station I asked Leo if he had a fun and he simply said "No", which makes sense, shutout baseball isn't very exciting, no matter how many dancing pacchos there are on the dugout.

• I sold my car to Big Motor. Emptying it before I drove it made me realize just how big it was and how that lead to the bad habit of just storing stuff in it that we use "sometimes when we go park".  I was extra cautious when driving it to the dealer for the last time. I really didn't want to get into an accident and then be unable to sell it / sell it for the agreed upon price.
  
  Actually walking away from it without the keys for the last time I had a bit of mixed emotions. On one hand, it's too big and we never drive it because of that ( 7k km over 3 years), so it's better than someone else who can really appreciate it use it. On the other hand, it helped us keep sane during the pandemic as we could use it to visit larger parks, Saitama, and a friend's house in Atami...I felt a bit sad about just leaving it there...like I was abandoning a family member. The good news is that only lasted about 20 - 30 minutes.
• Most days for the past month or so, I've been making Leo's bento. Most days we put a Japanese omelette (tamago-yaki) in it. Tamago-yaki are square, so they're usually made in a specialty pans. The one we had, a cheap aluminum non-stick has been starting to stick, which has made making his lunch a little stressful. A non-stick pan starting to stick makes you think, "Where'd that non-stick coating go", and the only logical answer is "into my food and into me". To reduce stress and the amount of questionable coatings I ingest I decided to go back to my roots: cast iron. I've used it 3 times so far and it's great. Long live non-non-stick pans.
• I bought an issue of Tarzan as the cover caught my eye. I used to buy Japanese books/magazines quite often in my 20's, but recently I rarely do. (Maybe as I had more time to sit down and concentrate uninterrupted then?) . The theme of this issue is "how to lose weight in your 40's". I'm not 40, but it's not too far off. The gist is that more than exercise it's diet that matters more as you get older. In the issue they create profiles for a few different personality types (gourmet man, busy man, go with the flow man) and how they typically think of food/diet/meals and ways to change your habits to make them healthier and match your current place in life. 
  
  Some of the advice is common sense e.g. No more sneaky midnight Chinese (sorry Derek)  or pick a salad instead fries when you get a burger...and no cheese on said burger (😭). The timing of me finding this magazine lined up perfectly with some other thinking I've been doing recently around food and diet, especially around ultra-processed foods...but that thinking needs to be distilled into a proper blog post.
• Tanzawa's weight graph feature got a minor upgrade: rather than showing the last 10 points only, it now has a dropdown that lets you select from a few different durations. I posted a small video on the pull request on GitHub if you're curious. Related/unrelated, I'm also down 3kg from my high after coming back from America.
• We got some blueberries off the blueberry bush! There were alright! I think we're going to have heaps that turn blue in the next week. Our goya plant that I've mostly abandoned in the back has spread out massively and has 3 goya in process and they're starting to become a decent size.
• Speaking of garden updates, I was excited to see that Casey ( @tbeanpod@famichiki.jp ) followed me and started posting on Mastodon. Really enjoying seeing his photos of Beanpodville without the bird-site. Welcome to the fediverse!