• The Week #94

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    • I finished my time isolating and for the rest of the time I only went out in the morning for walks with Sophie. So very fortunate that my life didn't really change through the whole ordeal.
    • So Friday comes and I'm excited to go out, maybe work from the local Starbucks for a couple hours in the morning...and rain. So I decided to stay home instead. It's fine though, I like my proper keyboard and monitor setup at home more.
    • Leo was back at swimming. They're slowly teaching him different techniques. It was fun watching him trying to float on his back and not having any of it. I'm sure a couple more times and he'll be floating like duck...but on his back.
    • After swimming I was finally able to go out and buy a new pair of jeans. I've had a pair of jeans from Muji I've worn a hole in above the back pocket. I patched it once and bought another couple months out of them, but decided to just buy another pair.

      One thing I like about buying jeans in the Japan is that you can get them cut to length at the store. Part of this may be an inventory thing: it's cheaper to offer fewer longer sizes and tailor them, than it is to have a zillion pairs to get every combination of length, color, and fit. This time I was smart and bought 2 pairs and made a memo of the length, so I can buy them online next time.
    • On Sunday we went and rode the Monorail for a partial loop (we skipped the Enoden on the way back, thankfully). We got to ride the Ojico monorail, which has a fun wrap and when we arrived we could actually walk and checkout the shops and even walked to the island. Leo carried his water in his backpack and walked almost the entire time 🙌🏻.

      Ojico monorail


      On the way back we even went buy Kuwaina for a burger to go (it was too early for dinner). I didn't particularly want one, but Leo did and he'd spent the past 16-ish days inside, so we went with it.
    • I finished the first pass at layerizing Tanzawa and already it's making adding new features much easier. There might be a tad more code than before layerizing, but it's now super clear where the different bits of code need to go and exactly what their role should be, so overall it's much quicker.

      The new feature that I developed is the ability to add a "Comment by email" link to all posts in your RSS feed. This way people are invited to comment, even if it's not in a public manner. What's fun about this feature is that it's also a plugin. So now there's hooks for anybody to add whatever they want before or after a post in their feeds on a blog.

      I may extend it a bit further and have it add those same links to the meta section(?) of a post. Thanks to Ru for opening an issue.

  • The Week #93

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    • After Leo got Covid last week, I knew my turn wasn't far behind, sure enough, we all tested positive. While Leo is technically out of quarantine as of Sunday, since he's 4 and can't go anywhere, he's still quarantining until we're finished on Wednesday and Thursday this week.
    • Thankfully, because we were freshly boosted the effects have been minimal. I had a sore throat for a couple of days and a small cough. The day I posted positive, I felt a bit short of breath making my coffee, but by the time it brewed got some coffee in my system, it sorted itself out. And the pulse oximeter that arrived later that day confirmed it.
    • Which is to say we've all been mostly indoors since March 30th and, besides not running / making regular trips to the store, I'm surprised just how little my day-to-day has changed. Perhaps because we were already in a permanent state of social distancing.
    • Catching Covid, as much as it sucks, has also been a relief. The past 2+ years I've been second guessing  myself, worrying "what if" most every time I went out...and now I don't need to do that. I'll still do my part and mask up and so forth, but that background thread is getting bumped down the priority queue quite a bit.
    • My first batch of compost has been finished for a couple of weeks but I'd been delaying using it...and since I'm stuck at home, I decided to finally use it by replanting our rosemary plant. I think batch-1 needed to be mixed a bit better as there were still some onion skins remaining intact..but other than that it was mostly soil. My second batch got a small dose of starter and the next day when I mixed it, it was hot...the team is loving it and really breaking everything down.
    • The Linda Lindas' Growing Up album finally came out and it's great.

  • The Week #92

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    • It was bound to happen. After 2 and a half years of dodging covid like Frogger, it finally made it into the house. Leo caught it at his pre-school and is part of a cluster of people (15 and counting) who all got it. He was exposed on Monday or Tuesday.

      On Wednesday during the day, he was out getting visiting city hall to get documents/getting photos taken for his Japanese passport. He didn't have much appetite for at dinner time, but we assumed it was because he had a big snack around 4pm and was just tired out and about all day. Then we got notification about his potential exposure. Oops...

      That night he had bad (fever?) dreams and indeed when he woke up he was super hot. Checked his temp and he was running high 38. Took a test and he was positive. By Friday evening his fever started to drop and his appetite started to return. By Saturday he fully recovered.
    • Thus far, knock on wood, Yumi and I have both been able to dodge it within the house or our boosters are doing their job. I'm super grateful that it's come into the house right as our antibodies are at their post-boost peak. If we don't feel any symptoms, the city has asked that we isolate for 7 days, or until the 7th as close contacts. Leo is to isolate for 10 days. If we do feel symptoms, they want us to tack another 7 days on top of that as close contacts...I think.
    • We're isolating as much possible, but not entirely. The dog still gets walked (always masked before, still masked now). And we still need to eat, so I had to do some minimal grocery shopping after we were contacted by his school. I checked my temp before hand and was double masked. But that will be the extent to our "going out" for the next week.
    • Which is to say that we had to cancel our trip to Disney. With how light his experience had been i.e. he's fully recovered for 3 days and neither of us showing signs (knock on wood) of having breakthrough cases, I'm most disappointed about this. 

      We could reschedule the tickets for another day without issue. But as it was within 7 days, canceling the hotel still cost is about 200 bucks. With our trip to Atami this summer and now this stay being canceled last minute, I'm tired of donating money to the hotel industry without actually getting to stay anywhere. I think I'll always book last minute as a matter of policy from here on out...
    • I started listening to X Japan for the first time in ages and I forgot how much they rock. It's a shame the selection for them on  Apple Music isn't great. It doesn't have Rusty Nail, one of my favorite songs by them. The linked video is from, "The Last Live", their last concert, which I first saw in high school after downloading it off of Hotline and highly recommend.

  • The Week #91

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    • Cherry blossoms are blooming everywhere. Though it's my favorite time of year, I can't remember the last time I went (ever?) to a proper hanami (picnic under the blossoms...with booze!).  I had an opportunity once when I was exchange student, but it happened to coincide with the famous fertility festival in Kawasaki...and a college student can't not go and see the spectacle of large male genitalia being paraded around the street...especially as it wasn't well documented online at the time. I've got a great photo of me in front of a pink one as tall as I am...but I'm not quite sure I want to post that here...yet.
    • We signed a contract to get some solar panels and a battery installed on the house. After thinking and talking with different companies since October, I'm happy to have settled on a system / installer. We still don't know when the installation date is going to be, but it's a step in getting off gas. My wife has also expressed interest in maybe going all electric, so moving off gas for our cooktop and water heater...which I love...and consider another week.
    • It rained last Tuesday and I got to use my cycling poncho. This was my 3rd time using and I'm getting the hang of it. The trick is, instead of putting the thumb loops around your thumbs, as the name suggests, you put them on your handlebars. I'm almost looking forward to cycling in the rain more.
    • My grandma sent me a package with a bunch of photos of my grandpa (who passed almost 2 years ago), my mom when she was younger, my uncles...it's great. She also gave me permission in the card to toss anything I don't want, which is sweet and I love the explicit permission...not that I will.
    • I started using my double-edge razor again when shaving. Yumi got it for me 6+ years ago with a nice brush for putting on shaving cream etc...I used it not as much as I should have and fell back into the 5+ blade razor trap. Recently, each time I went to buy new razors I'd get annoyed at the price.

      Shaving is just a faff, even in the best of times. This time around with me DE razor I'm skipping the brush for shaving creams and just using the regular gel type I was using before. My hope is that if I lower the faff around using my DE razor I can continue using it and in the end throw away much less plastic, save a bunch of cash, and use nicer things (that I already own!).
    • I had a realization about why I post to Twitter more than my blog. Part of it is the reach of twitter vs my blog (probably for the better, that one). The other part is the simple form is 1 tap away on the home page.

      My goal is to make it as easy to blog as it is to tweet and I think I'm getting close with my "mobile blogging" page. It has a few different defaults that make it closer to twitter than a blog, too. Posts are defaulted as published and visible to everyone instead of draft, and you can only post statuses – no articles or bookmarks with this interface.

      Mobile blogging with Tanzawa


      Important though is the trip dropdown, which will allow me to travel blog in real time, which has been a long term goal / vision for my blog.

  • The Week #90

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    • After a few months delay I went and got my annual health check. I was able to go to the same center as last time, too. I'm always amazed at the efficientcy of these places as each person is directed from station to station and the nurses/technicians do their thing.

      Despite my best efforts I gained a couple of kilos and my blood pressure was slightly up (with the state of the world how could it not 😅). It's time to cut out that snacking habit I've gotten into as of late and cut down portions at dinner.
    • As Leo had a "forced" Tuesday off last week, since he wasn't sick, rather than be stressed at the house all day we went out and did our usual Monorail-Enoshima-Aquarium-Burger loop. He played the crane game with his own money once, but he didn't win anything, but he seemed satisfied.

      While we were walking to the Enoden after lunch, Leo decided he wanted some sweets from the coffee shop, so we dropped by Tully's as well. There's a great word in Japanese for exactly this situation, where you have room for dessert despite being full: betsu-bara. Betsu means separate/different and bara being stomach. It's the first time he's had dessert stomach that I can remember.
    • There was a big earthquake last week around 11:30pm. It was certainly the biggest and longest quake I've felt in a while. Thankfully there wasn't any damage around here and it was mostly an annoyance because it kicks off your adrenaline, which is not helpful when you're trying to get back to sleep.
    • I bought tickets for Disney next month during Leo's spring break. I've never been to Tokyo Disneyland, but I've been to Disney Sea twice.

      As a kid, we lived close enough that when we went to Disney it was just for the day, never staying at the hotels. And being honest, they were probably also out of budget, even if it wasn't so close. While we're still close enough here in Yokohama for a day-trip to Disney (trains rule), we're going to stay one night. I'm excited about it, not just because it's a surprise for Leo, but because I can do those family things I couldn't do myself growing up.
    • Unrelated to health check results, but after skipping a week of running not on purpose I got back out and ran 5km. I always feel so much better after running, no matter how long I go out. I need to remind myself when the main obstacle is me changing clothes. Sometimes I can't run in the morning or don't want a tight lunch run. With the days starting to get longer, I wonder if I could do short post-work runs every now and again...

  • The Week #89

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    • I got boosted. This time I was able to get my shot through my job. Tokyo Gas is trying to get all employees and employees of related companies, Kraken Tech/Octopus Energy being related, boosted.

      The mass vaccination site was in Shinjuku and very well run. There weren't any lines, but there was fairly constant stream of people. I was in and out in about 20 minutes, including the 15 minute waiting time. 

      Getting boosted in Japan is much easier than the initial shots were. I'm not sure if it's supply has caught up with demand or what. Even the clinic we used during summer had plenty of openings for getting boosted. Those first shots you 500 reservations would be gone in minutes.

      I can't find the link, but Japan, despite getting a late start has now boosted over 30% of the population, which surpasses the US.
    • While the booster rate is going up and the infection numbers are going down, Leo's school was closed all last week. He started back on Monday for the last full week until spring break to fantastic 23 degree weather. Unfortunately he was wearing a sweater and began to overheat around lunch time, which the school saw as him having fever, and was sent home.

      I understand being cautious about Covid, especially as all of the kids can't be vaccinated yet. At the same time, I'm annoyed that Leo was overheating and they didn't even have him take off his sweater to cool him down and went straight for the "must be covid" line of thought.

      As soon as I saw him, I took off his sweater and he started feeling better, but rules are rules.
    • Speaking of rules, I did my taxes in Japanese for the first time. Usually Yumi's handled the leg work for me in the past. But this time I was able to file them all by myself without issue, including dividends from my accounts in the US. I have a feeling I may have forgotten something, but I imagine if there's an issue they'll contact me and I can sort it then.

      I really like that I could file everything via the Japanese tax authority's website / webapp. It might be a bit clunky, but how I wish I could do the same in US instead of paying a fee and dealing with dark patterns to scare me into upgrading Turbo Tax like I do with my US taxes. It even has some great integrations like being able to use your MyNumber card to automatically import doctor visit deductions.
    • We've decided on a solar system to move forward with.  The solar guys came to measure the roof and decide on placement for the power conditioner etc... We're still waiting for the final layout, but it sounds like the chip shortage is hitting them too, with installs being 6+ months after contract 😞.
    • Leo was adamant about going to IKEA because he wanted some more of the Bygglek lego boxes. He even said he'd use his own money! So while mom was recovering from her booster, we decided to head out there together. We rode the IKEA bus (his first time) and ate lunch.

      Leo's first ride on the IKEA bus

      He proudly carried his shopping in the store (part of the way, at least) and when it was time to pay he handed the cashier his money.

      Walking and carrying his shopping!
    • I watched 1917 on Netflix while recovering from my booster. I really enjoyed it. With everything going on the world, it was hard not to imagine similar scenes playing out these days as well, however. War is dumb.
    • I started playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild and it's really good. I haven't played a Zelda game since perhaps the N64 (and even then that was just bits of pieces, never all the way through). It's a great escape.

  • The Week #88

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    • We made it through an entire week without any closures or Leo's school! 🎉  We were also notified on Saturday that it will be closed all next week 🙃. You win some you lose some, I guess. Most schools in our area aren't as cautious / having nearly as many closures as Leo's. You can complain, but it's probably the right thing to do, even if it is inconvenient. 
    • I did the legwork to proper organized al of my trades/dividends of my US accounts using the exchange rate of the day so I can report them the city and not be committing tax fraud. Getting it all organized into excel sheets has been a huge relief. For a while now I've know that I need to collect the data, but I never could what format or exactly what information would be required, so I just put it off.

      Thankfully there were some helpful posts on /r/JapanFinance that had a screenshot of a header of the document that they use to organize their trades, which was enough to get me over the hump. Now that I have the format decided upon, it should be much easier to update each year.

      As a bonus, because it's less than ¥200,000 (roughly 2k usd), I shouldn't need fuss with updating/finalizing my national return  and my "End of year adjustment" is enough. Probably. Will confirm when I visit the city tax department.
    • We celebrated baba's 78th(!) birthday! I can't imagine what it will be like to be 78, but I do hope it will be in the same manner as baba's birthday: with delicious sushi and all of the kids/grandkids.
    • At work I managed to get the second of two big PRs across the line for review. Two big features that will (eventually) be used worldwide. I felt a bit bad throwing not one, but two 1,000k+ line pull requests over the wall. But there's one critical difference that makes it possible: each commit matters and each commit in the PR is expected to tell part of the story of that PR.

      This means no commits like "fixed bugs" or "fixed bugs, for real this time". But rather you're expected to squash those bug fixes into the appropriate commit before asking for review. It makes for such a cleaner history.

      Sometimes you mess up and you commit things together that shouldn't be. And you have to rebase and split them apart. And it's a pain for a couple of a minutes. But thinking about your PR at that lower level helps you create higher quality code because you're forced to ask yourself "does this change make sense in isolation and how does this bit of fit into the grander scheme of this PR". And cleaning up your commits can also be incredibility therapeutic. That level of fit and finish that only the craftsperson sees and knows about.

  • The Week #87

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    • We made it through an entire week without school closing due to Covid 🎉. And indeed we are officially peaked as cases have been on the downward trend for what feels like a couple of weeks now (but you know how time is a lie in covid).
    • There was an event at Leo's pre-school where has on display some of the things they've made this year. It's fun to look at the work of students just a year or two older and see how much more capable they become.

      The coolest part was in the hall where the oldest students (due to become elementary school students in April) build interactive toys? games? with cardboard boxes collected by the families. Things I've never imagine making like castles, 3 washing machine boxes high, or a roller coaster, or a climbing wall. The biggest hit though was the hot springs, with water made of torn up newspaper. Why was it the biggest hit? Because you could take the newspaper and toss it at the teacher (and vice-versa!).
    • At Leo's birthday celebration earlier this month at school, when asked what he wanted to become when he's big he said "Shinji" (from Evagelion). When he got his haircut this week we asked the stylist to cut his hair, as requested, like Shinjis. He did a great job. They might start mistaking him for the real deal at school.
    • I signed up for the Vox Meat/Less newsletter course. I've been learning a lot and hope to start implementing the advice soon. "Vegan before 6pm" sounds doable most of the time.
    • We ran out of storage on our 200GB iCloud account. It's mostly photos. Upgrading to the next tier (2TB) would increase storage to $10/month. Since I got my AirpodPros a few months ago, I've been on a 6 month trial for Apple Music. While it annoys me sometimes, it's much better for music than cheapskating with YouTube. So I'd been mentally preparing myself for the 10/month cost to start paying for it.

      But adding on Apple Music to my current AppleTV+ /(presumably upgraded) iCloud storage would bring my total monthly cost to $25/month, for just me. For an extra $5 / month, I could get Apple One Premier, which will  allow our entire family to access everything: AppleTV+, Apple Music, News+ (just as I had been thinking of subscribing to the New Yorker – it's on there!) and Fitness+. 

      Writing this all out has made me feel a bit better about signing up, but it's a big jump from $8/month total to almost 4x as much. I guess you don't become a trillion dollar company by giving this away for free.

  • The Week #86

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    • I watched Inside Out with Leo and it is a great movie. The main characters are the personified emotions inside people ( Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger) inside Riley, an 11 year old girl. They look through her eyes and take turns directing her reactions. Lewis Black plays Anger, which it fits his schtick perfectly. I highly recommend it.
    • Leo's school was closed all last week except Friday due to Covid. With the wave seemingly peaked and heading downwards, let's hope we can make it through an entire week without closing and everyone stays healthy. That said Kanagawa stopped releasing data after hitting 100% positivity. Lest you worry, it is/was mostly a math issue of not being able to count all of the tests taken everywhere but getting all of the positive results.
    • My compost bag is officially full, so I've started on the 3 week process of watering it a couple times a week and giving it a stir. After that I should have some great compost to grow stuff with. I ordered a second bag so I'll still be able to compost while the other finishes processing. It won't come until my scheduled delivery of  the starter next month, so in the mean time I'm back to food trash in the bin. It's the worst.
    • I ran 7km, my longest run in a while. A couple of months ago, when I was just getting back into the habit of running again, I was thinking about how I just wanted to be able to run 5km a few times a week without it feeling so hard. Keeping up the runs at least twice a week has allowed me to build some base cardio and slowing way down has made it much more enjoyable. 5km seems like it's the "base" run now.

  • The Week #85

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    • Last week's getting locked out of the house caused some hassle this week, not with the locks or door, but with the car. We were waiting in the car while the locksmith did his work and as it was dark out, we turned on the interior lights (you can see guess this is going).  In the rush of finally being able to get inside / on with our evening, we forgot to turn them off.

      The next time we went to use the car (Friday?) the automatic sliding doors didn't work...immediately I figured the battery was dead. Thankfully I carry a pair of jumper cables in my car (though usually I'm the one giving the jump). 

      Thankfully my neighbor across the road was home and let me connect my my cables and give me a jump.
    • I fiddled around with Minecraft on my switch for a few minutes to figure out how it works. I can see how people sink hours and hours into this game building cool stuff. Leo also wanted to play. The controls are pretty complex, with one control stick being movement and the other being looking around,  so I have to help him frequently while he masters it.
    • Leo turned 4. For his birthday he got two small Lego sets: a 4+ helicopter and since he's taken to Minecraft, a little Minecraft set. We went and picked out a cake together. He picked a simple cream / strawberry cake (though he skips the strawberries).

      We shared cake and pizza at the grandparent's house. While I enjoy celebrating with the family, I am looking forward for Leo having a proper birthday party with friends someday.
    • As I mentioned, Tanzawa got it's first non-me user! Exciting and illuminating of all of the little issues that exist in the back of my head as a "someday" or have just learned to work around. 😅
    • The covid numbers seem to be starting a downwards trend. Most recently we've had 3 days with fewer cases (by the hundreds or thousands) of the same day the previous week. With this trend and constant public pressure, it seems like Japan will finally start letting non-tourists into Japan again. I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch, but hopefully we'll stay open "for good" or at least long enough for the rest of our team to move to Japan. They've been waiting for over a year now.
    • I ordered two books that I'm really looking forward to reading: Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in our Lives and Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. The first I suspect may just be preaching to the choir for me, but I know I'll learn something from it. The second, I read the sample chapters a month or two ago and I really enjoyed it. I got both of them in print, rather than e-books, as per usual. (I was quite tempted for the Kindle versions, and they're easy to read that way, but I want to spend less time looking at my phone).
      Love the covers!
    • I discovered The Linda Lindas, an all girl punk band from L.A. (the YouTube offers a good suggestion for a change). Really good music. My favorite so far is Missing You, about being stuck in the house during the pandemic. And the line about wanting to eat at grandma's place is punk as f.
    • As part of my reconsidering solar / batteries for the house, I did some searching. And in that search I discovered that a) I can get a Tesla Powerwall in Japan and b) Despite being double the capacity (13.5 kWh), they seem to be cheaper than domestic counterparts (6.5 kWh).

      I've asked a local installer for a quote for a system and I'm patiently awaiting it. My theory is that it will cost a bit more than the all Sharp system I was quoted before, but who knows.
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