• The Week #164

    by
    • Immediately after building the Strava to Blog feature into Tanzawa, I promptly stopped running. This week, after a conversation with a co-worker about not putting work before your health, I went running 3 times in the last 7 days. It's been great and I hope I can continue, despite it being hot and humid.
    • I biked with Leo to and from the co-op twice. He's getting stronger and made it further up the hill. Another week or two and he should have it down. Riding bikes together like this reminds me of riding bikes with my dad along the beach growing up in California. I'd love to do this with Leo, too. But our new car (heck, even our old car) wouldn't fit either of my bikes and his bike. Maybe this is the excuse I need to buy a Brompton folding bike..and start training for the world championships.
    • Immediately after writing that last sentence I went down the YouTube rabbit hole of Bromptons and wow. Before I was also thinking "A Dahon would probably be fine, too", but they're large enough (because of the larger wheels) that I feel like it would decrease me actually taking it places via the train. But again, not buying a Brompton, just want to enjoy riding bikes with my kid where we won't get hit by cars and we're not climbing hills in every direction. ( Which really makes it sound like I'm buying a Brompton because *gestures everywhere* hills ( I'm not...this year. Really.))
    • Over the past...at least since I moved to Japan, it's been difficult to keep in contact with my Dad. I have a US Skype number, but I don't keep Skype open nor does it make my phone ring..so I don't notice someone calls me until months after the fact. We've tried using LINE, but again, it doesn't make my phone ring and then my dad has to remember to check it. Email works for sending photos, but it doesn't really work for video, plus it feels a bit formal, what with needing a subject and all.

      Last week I got an iPad for my dad and this week I helped him a router with WiFi over the phone so he could use said iPad on it. Now we can use iMessage to send photos, videos, and texts to keep in contact easier. We did a test FaceTime call with it and the camera is so good...I can actually see my dad. Hopefully this will make it easier to keep in touch and for me to share photos and videosΒ  of his grandson.

  • The Week #163

    by
    • ⛰️ Friday was mountain day in Japan. We went and saw an evening showing ofΒ  Elemental. I highly recommend it. It was perhaps a bit too long for Leo, as towards the end he said he wanted it to hurry up and end...but he sat through all of it.

      I haven't seen a movie at night in a very long time, but I think they're so much better than the day. Mostly because you don't come home from being out all day just to have to cook dinner and wash dishes...

      After the movie we had coffee and a cookie at Starbucks. The weather was perfect outside as well, increasing my enjoyment. Before Leo we used to go to the cafe at night on a regular basis and it was really good to do that again.
    • πŸ“Έ I had a good conversation with an old internet buddy (since I was in junior high / high school?), Brad. We were both into j-rock/j-dramas. Our chat got me reminiscing about the old sites and online communities we used to be a part of.

      Ones like lomo.box.sk, bulletin board with news and user blogs, focused on photography with the lomo cameras. For the uninitiated, the lomos are small film cameras with minimal settings and no zoom. Their marketed as an artsy and fun camera. You "shoot from the hip". And for interesting effects you don't use photoshop or some digital filter, you use colored flashes or cross-process your film.

      One of the main contributors to the site was based in Tokyo,Β  so there always good photos of Shibuya at night. I spent many a night in the suburbs in Texas thinking about how lucky he was to live in Japan and be able to walk outside and have something interesting to shoot.

      Part of me misses photography, not that I was ever good or serious. I should try to carve out some time one evening/early morning to go out and shoot. Here's a couple of photos from the early 2000's I took with lomo and cross-processed. People that have followed me online for a while will have seen these before.
      Yours truly (~18-ish years ago). Yellow color splash and cross-processed.

      Galveston, Texas at night. Cross-processed.
    • 🐘 Leo and I finally be the Divine Beast Vah Ruta, one of the first big quests. I feel a bit embarrassed that I didn't realize I could use regular arrows or Cryonis (the ability to turn water into ice and also break said ice) to destroy the ice cubes he throws at you for well over a month. As such I had been tried using nothing but shock arrows, which are rarer.
    • πŸ₯” We've got potatoes and onion overflowing in the house, so I made some roasted potatoes with a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, and garam masala. Standard flavors / spices (at least for me). I'm happy to report that Leo a) requested to eat them and b) asked that I make them again tomorrow. Yessir 🫑. The highest praise from this picky eater.
    • 🚲 Leo and I rode our bikes together to the grocery store for the first and second time. This was our first time riding bikes together that wasn't in front of the house. The entire time Leo kept repeating "This is so much fun!" (but in Japanese) and indeed it is a lot of fun to ride bikes together. I'm looking forward to when his legs are a bit stronger and he can climb the small hill on the way back from co-op and stronger still so we can go to the local Starbucks.Β 
    • 🎢 I have two albums of the week this week. First is Black & White by Casey Bean. I really like Play it Cool, which he performed on a recent episode of The Beanpod, a podcast about life in Japan. The other is an album that I've probably recommended on here before... Original Pirate Material by The Streets. This one is recommended because I was in a bit of a funk...and had the lyrics to Who Got the Funk come to my head while walking the dog...and went for a run to get rid of it...lest I become a geezer.

  • The Week #162

    by
    • We went to the Odawara Hilton hotel with the big pool that we went to last year. It was a lot of fun though was muuch busier this time around what with covid restrictions being a thing of the past and the borders open again.I booked using my family discount, so it was a bit cheaper for the room...but then I realized it didn't include dinner or breakfast. And since it's a "resort", there's not anything across the street or even nearby. So we had to reserve when we checked in...which resulted in dinner at 7:30, which is a bit later for us than usual.

      Thanks to that though, we got the kill some time spending money at places we usually wouldn't in the hotel – namely the "amusement center", which includes 8 lanes of bowling, air hockey, and some arcade games.

      I love bowling. I took 2-semesters in college as my sport. So I was happy to be able to play a couple of games with Leo (bumpers down). He loved it. In his second game, he event managed to knock all the pins down. I'm greatly looking forward to going bowling again.

      As for the main attraction at the hotel, the pool, it was as good as always. Leo's swimming has really improved. His front crawl is on point. We went both as soon as we arrived and for an hour in the morning before checkout. I think visiting the Hilton Odawara Spa and Resort may become an annual trip for our family.

      Looking down at Nebukawa station tracks.

      Nebukawa station doesn't have any station staff

      Watching the sun rise from our room
    • Until relatively recently, sun umbrellas were used almost exclusively by women. I've thought this was ridiculous for a while, but the only sun umbrellas they sold were all frilly, something I'd be embarrassed to carry by myself.

      Recently though, they've been making more "mens" / unisex umbrellas. i.e. simple black or or gray ones (thank god men's version == camouflage patternsΒ  isn't a thing here). And as such there's been a growing number of men carrying the umbrellas – enough for a dedicated word, ζ—₯ε‚˜η”·ε­ (higasa-danshi) or "sun umbrella guy".Β  I've become a ζ—₯ε‚˜η”·ε­.

      My particular umbrella is collapsible. The top is gray and the inside is black, which is what allows it to block 100% of UV. The handle has a slight curve so it can hang on things. The stem is made a cheap alumni that feels like it will (and indeed it did) bend with a good gust of wind. It can be used in the rain as well.

      As for the experience, it's so much cooler, like walking in the shade the entire time you're outdoors, even when there is none. I felt a bit sad for salarymen walking under the oppressive august sun without one. No sunglasses...no UV umbrellas...do theyΒ  not teach about the sun in school?
      Where I trialed my UV umbrella. A toasty 34 degrees out.

  • The Week #161

    by
    • 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).
      Summer Festa 2023
    • 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...πŸ€”Β 

  • The Week #160

    by
    • 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,Β  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 πŸŽ‰.
    • 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.

  • The Week #159

    by
    • 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 πŸ˜–. 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.

  • The Week #157

    by
    • 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".Β  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.Β 

      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!

  • The Week #158

    by
    • This week I have a couple of stitches in my face...thankfully hidden by glasses. Let me explain. For the past few months I've been monitoring a small spot on my face about 0.5cm from the location where I had a basal cell removed over a decade ago. The new spot hasn't been getting better on its own and is exhibiting the exact same characteristics as my first basal cell. I've heard horror stories of people going to the dermatologist (or any doctor in Japan, really) and the doctor ignoring what patients are telling them...so I kept putting it off (Though sometimes I wonder if the stories are partially as people are not proficient enough explain the situation?)Β 

      Either way, I couldn't deny it any longer and went to the dermatologist to get it checked out and...she listened to me , took me seriously, and did a biopsy. I'll have the results in 2 weeks, but I'm fairly confident it is a basal cell. Last time I had surgery to remove it and a plastic surgeon to sew me back up... this time I may go for a chemotherapy cream and see if it clears up before taking another knife the face.
    • Which is to say, I'm really happy that the kids as Leo's school noticed that Leo's not getting super dark like everyone else is, despite them both playing outside. This is because we're ensuring he wears his sunblock everyday and re-apply when we're out for extended periods of time. If there's any takeaway from the first two points this week it's please be sun smart: wear your sunblock and keep covered.
    • I built out support for backfeeding my runs from Strava into Tanzawa. I put this off for a long time because I couldn't decide how I'd make the actual post in the db. Do I make a new "activity" type and try to microformat that and...ugh. That's when I decided to just make them a note/status post, relate the run to it, and have the template look for extra information (photos, run paths etc...).
      Admin view

      The results turned out ok, so far. This will allow me to save time from making blog posts with the same photos I just posted to Strava and then manually tooting about it. There are some limitations. Strava only makes the primary photo available in their API and there doesn't seem to be a way for me to backfeed likes / comments as webmentions.
    • Leo and I took Sophie for a walk after dinner on Sunday, after it started cool down.Β  I've been looking forward to being able to walk Sophie with Leo for...since he was born. He's got enough endurance where he doesn't walk half a block and get tired / ride my shoulders.Β  Walks are also great, if not the best, time to talk about life and communicate.

      On this week's walk, forever obsessed with Zelda, we were pretending we were walking through Hyrule. As we're walking past creeks there's those little water blobs that throw rocks at you, which we were able to get with an imaginary bow and arrow. As we come along a straight stretch in the road Leo turns to me and says "Oh shit, rock guys!", and dutifully threw a bomb to take care of them. I look forward to our next walk around Hyrule.

  • The Week #156

    by
    • This is post #156 of The Week, which means it's the 3rd year of posting this series! I'm happy that I haven't missed a week or been off schedule once during these 3 years, though there has been a couple of point where I questioned if I should continue. This series is the one thing that's kept me blogging regularly, I think. Each bullet point in a The Week post doesn't feel like enough to warrant a post, but combined they do. If you're wanting to blog / blog more, I highly recommend starting with this approach. Here's to the next 3 years 🍻.
    • I bought the Nissan Sakura. We picked blue and it's similar enough to our current blue that bystanders passing our house may think we've accidentally put our car in the wash and it shrunk. We won't get it August or early September. That said, I'm really excited to get a smaller, electric, car. If it weren't electric, I don't think we'd be switching. I tooted about it, but negotiations when buying a car is the part of the car buying process I hate the most. Especially when the car isn't having problems selling, because they give less ground.Β 

      In the end I managed to get Β₯75,000 off the top and take part in a campaign that doesn't start until next month. In the campaign you get 4 different things: Β₯5,000 in Yokosuka city voucher, a Β₯5,000 yen gift from a catalog, Β₯20,000 if gift cards, and pair tickets to a "famous amusement park" (probably Disneyland)...so probably around Β₯50,000 in value. Unrelated to negotiations there's also Β₯550,000 cashback from the government (will take a couple months after receiving the car for them to deposit) and Β₯80,000 from Nissan to support installing a car charging port on my house. After selling my car Β₯1,800,000 and including all incentives I'm only paying about Β₯1,000,000 for the car ($6,959.02 with today's horrible exchange rate).
    • As part of selling my car, I have to prepare a couple of documents for selling / buying my car. Theoretically I can do this now from the big copiers at 7-11, but I wasn't sure if I could get my stamp registration certificate or not, so I went to city hall. Either it's years of experience or city hall digitizing their systems or a combination of both, but it was completely painless. No long lines or anything. I was in and out in probably 10 minutes.
    • I've been noticing more and more EVs on the roads lately, which makes me happy for air quality, noise, and climate reasons. Naturally since I've been looking at Sakuras, I've realized just how popular they've become (over 40k sold in a year). There's also more EV postal vans and postal bikes. The one category of transport I haven't yet seen electrified in Japan is the trucks that visit each combini multiple times a day to deliver fresh goods. I swear you can see the particulates in the air when these things pass. I hadn't seen one until this week when walking to the office and it made me really happy.
      An EV delivery truck

  • The Week #155

    by
    • We went to the Nissan dealer so Yumi (and Leo) could see the car and we could test drive it as a family. The main reason we're even changing cars is so that Yumi can drive and not be dependent on me. She tried the automatic parking in the big box electronics store next to the dealership. Driving around it seems like the right size car for us. We've decided to buy it (in blue) and next week I'll go to negotiate a price.

      We also made a contract to sell our current car and our last day with it will be the 30th. When we were car shopping originally, the Freed, while nice, it always felt a little too big. But we wanted something with sliding doors that didn't look like a shoe and that was the option. There were also talks of being able to take everyone out, but those never really happened. We did use the seating capacity once or two to shuttle my sister-in-law and her family down from Tokyo to the family home during the pandemic...but really we had a 7 seater for 3 people + 1 dog.

      Kei's are definitely easier to drive around these narrow streets. With an EV there isn't this feeling of betraying my beliefs each time I use it – especially in the middle of the ever hotter summers.
    • I joined Leo on his last "Oya-ko Ensoku", or Parent-child field trip of his kindergarten years. This time we went to Tatara-hama beach in Yokosuka.
      Having fun at the beach

      At the beach kids can play in the water, but mostly go hunting in the rocks for crabs, fish, and jellyfish. We captured a jellyfish that fit perfectly into his little bucket, saw some crabs, and even a baby shark. Unfortunately the baby shark got up into the rocks, I guess at high tide, and couldn't get out before the water receded and died.

      After playing at the beach for a couple of hours, everyone ate our bentos on the beach, then we had 30 minutes to pack up and visit the museum next to beach. The museum had a lot of information about the local environment and the fish. And for some reason a section with a lot of Godzillas.
      Godzilla over the years

      On the bus ride back to the kindergarten the bus driver played some Tom & Jerry onΒ  entertainment system in the bus to keep the kids entertained.
    • Our blueberries are starting to turn blue! Not too much longer and I'll have at least a 50 dollars worth of berries from this plant. Yum πŸ˜‹
      Blueberries turning blue
Previous 10 of 26 Next