• The Week #223

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    • 🐶 Sophie is getting old and has started developing a number of what could be balls of fat or could be something more serious. One in particular was worrying because it was on her stomach had gotten rather large. Left untreated it could result in her intestine going places it shouldn't. This week she went in to the doctor for surgery to confirm if these blobs were fat or cancer (and remove them). Good news is, it wasn't cancer. Sophie will be wearing a cone while she recovers. To a long and healthy life!

      On the "Japanese is hard, even for the natives" front, Yumi told one of her Japanese archery friends about the results "it was only a shibou (fat)" and her friend overacted because she understood shibou with its other meaning, "death" 🤣.
    • 🚲 I went and picked up my matcha green Brompton. I had visions of a sunny New Bike Day which would enable me to ride around Minatomirai and take sweet photos of it to share. Unfortunately it was raining, so it went into my bike bag and I carried it around.

      The Brompton was fine to carry around, but after a while it got to be a bit heavy. Which makes sense, it's a bike. It's meant to be ridden and carried from the gates of a station and into a train. It's not meant to be lugged around for an hour.

      Matcha green Brompton folded up


      The next day I rode it to our local Ito Yokado with Leo. The small wheels and the riding position make it feel like it's an extension of your legs. What I mean by that is it seems like the perfect bike for last mile transport, which makes sense as that's what it was designed for.
      "Sitting" Brompton
    • 🏊‍♂️ Technically last week, but Leo passed his test at swim class! For one reason or another he's failed or not taken the test for the past...what feels like 6 months. He's excited he passed and I think having this opportunity to have to work to overcome and succeed is good for his overall character development.  Even better is he's resumed taking the bus to swim class by himself, letting him build up his independence. 
    • 🏃‍♂️ I maintained my run debt with 2 runs this week. The cooler weather is fantastic and I think I'm close to getting back to the mental state to bring my runs back to 3x a week, enabling me to get fully out of run debt. I'll make that my goal for October: get out of run debt.

  • The Week #222

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    • 🎂 I made another revolution around the earth. For my birthday Yumi and I went out for lunch. Initially we tried to go to a French bakery I went to years ago in Fujisawa that had some amazing sandwiches. Unfortunately, we were too late and they were sold out. No bread for me. Instead we went to this really good Vietnamese place. Still a win in my book.

      For dinner we had tacos and chocolate cake from Canard over at the in-laws. Leo's cousins also came down for the festivities. I have yet to decide what my "major goal" should be for this revolution.
    • 🏃‍♂️ For a variety of reasons (mostly commuting more and having work events at night?) I only ran once this week. This is the first time since April or May-ish that I've increased my run debt, rather than keeping even or paying the piper. This week I'll do my best to get back on the wagon.
    • ⛩️ I could have run the day after my birthday, but I went for a hike instead. Like last year, I dropped by Verve in Kita-Kamakura to buy some beans (which comes with a free drink) and a sandwich. I spent some time reading and thinking. Then I hiked over to Kamakura station. My intent was to also visit this hippy bakery that has sourdough, but I ran out of time. Despite the influx of tourists, Kamakura really has the correct vibes.
      A tunnel along my hike to Kamakura station
    • 🚲 I got a call on my birthday that my Brommie had arrived. Unfortunately it wouldn't be ready by the next day, so I've got to wait another week to pick it up. Just as well, there's a typhoon coming our general direction anyways. I still need to think of a proper name for it. I find myself getting annoyed riding the Ginza line as of late because I'm getting off and people just do. not. move. Hopefully a thing of the past in a week's time.
    • 🖥️ The spinning disk in my MacMini (2012) has officially bitten the dust. The machine still boots, but it takes ages and is unable to login. I don't want to just replace the hard drive (as the CPU already struggles to keep up decoding some video). I also just bought a Brompton so buying a new Mac that is going to be (realistically) mostly idle is not happening. I've replaced it with our old 2014 MacBook Air that Leo used sometimes and hope the battery doesn't decide to swell on me.
    • 🤓 I downloaded the app that Apple makes for learning Swift on to Leo's iPad as he says he wants to learn programming. The app is pretty good, but too advanced for him (mostly from a reading English perspective). The 3D part where you move the character around is the most engaging part for him (naturally), but it does seem to crash on a semi-regular basis. I reckon the app doesn't get much developer focus.

      But I can see him...not getting into flow (yet)...but really concentrating and it reminds me a lot of myself when I was learning to program. I'm thinking we may revert back to Scratch and Scratch Jr. for a bit, but I may make some props to help him think about boolean logic and looping and simplifying instruction count (probably too tall of an order when I write it out like that, but we shall see).

  • The Week #221

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    • 🍁 Autumn 👏 Finally 👏 Came 👏. This year it waited until the very last moment, the autumn equinox, to make its arrival.  Not a moment too soon. This week we had a day with an overnight low of 28c. And now, 3 days later we have overnight lows around 19c. Finally.
    • 🚲 Leo wanted to ride his bike. It was getting a bit late, but I caved. The reason why I caved  was because he said "I want to climb hills". How can I say no to this? I put my light on his bike and we made a reason to ride our bikes to the local coop. Sometimes I get the sense that he's gonna be the kid that's in the local road bike clubs, not baseball. But maybe I'm reading too much into it.
    • 🚲 I bought the bike. I went for a C line 6 speed in matcha green. Unfortunately it's in Kobe at another shop so I had to pay for shipping + wait a week. Super excited for it. If I wanted one day-of I would have had to picked black and that's boring.  On second thought though, perhaps it's better I didn't get it today as I didn't have a bike bag to take it on the train and would of had to buy whatever they stock.

      For lights, I went with a CatEye 300 lumens that charges via micro-usb. I also got the mount so it is fixed below the block, so any bag won't block it and I won't need to take it off each time I fold it. The rear light will replace the rear reflector. There isn't a rack on the bike, but I reckon I won't need one immediately (though the extra stability would be nice (from what I hear)).

      Leo went with me to buy it (and make some Lego people afterwards if he was a good boy and was patient). Before going in to the store we had a picnic lunch of Onigiri and fried chicken on a stick. My chicken was in a tomyom sweet and spicy Korean sauce. With the cool weather, some shade provided by a tree, and the view pictured below, life is pretty good.
      Minatomirai Yokohama
    • 🎳 We went bowling. It was crowded and so we had to wait an hour. I was not on point and got my but whooped. Leo had a meltdown (🫠) because he didn't get any strikes and wasn't naturally good. Kids...
    • 🏮 The neighborhood festival happened after we went bowling and I was in no mood to have fun and be merry after the meltdowns. That said, Leo got his cotton candy, something he's been talking about since he first had it a year ago. The main occurrence this year was a vendor that was selling bb-guns and airsoft guns...at a freakin' neighborhood festival. Kids milling about the park taking them, pointing them at each other, their own heads, and pulling the trigger. I get it, they're "toys" and this isn't America, but Christ. This is how tragedy occurs and kids loose sight in an eye. I plan to bring it up with the neighborhood association.

  • The Week #220

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    • 🍝 I tried my hand at making pasta for the first time. I don't have a pasta machine so I had to cut the noddles by hand. It's difficult to cut them all the same exact size, but man was it good. I think I may try making pasta the next time I make lasagna.
    • 🚲 Leo and I rode bikes to the 100 store for the first time. This is closer than our usual Ito Yokado ride, but it requires him to climb a hill and navigate with more cars about. He only pushed his bike partially up the hill and did a good job following me in the streets. On the way back we swung by the Onigiri shop. I've discovered that if you go early they have a much wider variety.
    • 🎡 We went to Minatomirai. I've had a mixed relationship with minatomirai. I love going and walking about. The water and shopping, it's so nice. But since having Leo it always ends in conflict and a meltdown. Two articles from the NY Times this week (gift links) inspired me to give it a try again: Parents Should Ignore Their Children More Often (Opinion) and Today's Parents: Exhausted, Burned Out and Perpetually Behind. The first one is ignore in the sense of it's fine if your gets get bored, you don't need to always keep their brains active. The second, I just feel it and am sharing in solidarity.

      The experiment this time was we're gonna let Leo get bored on the train. And he's gonna walk by himself. And we also made it clear that the reason why we're going is for me to check out a bike (more on that later), and that each person has a turn to do the thing that they want to do, then see what happens.

      While out and about we visited the Lego Store (the Zelda set is really cool!) and the Harry Potter store (even cooler!). For lunch we went to Bubby's, which used to be good about 15 years ago. This time it was disappointing. I don't think we'll be back 😔.

      Leo rode one of the roller coasters at Cosmo World. We also played this near AR game where you have a cellphone that has a gun attached to it and you shoot at ghosts in a room. It was a lot of fun. While in World Porter, we walked passed a zillion capsule toys and different areas that would have usually been a meltdown each.

      But this time, he walked right past them. Didn't even ask. We went out without a meltdown?! Are we getting close to the point where it's more than just exhausting to go out...where it's...dare I say... fun? Good job, boyo!
    • 🚲 So I said we'd talk about bikes. The reason we went to minatomirai was for me to check out the Bromptons. I've seen them before in passing, but never really up close to touch and fiddle with. I know roughly the size of the bike but photos, but my main concern was the weight. I picked up a P-line, it's not bad. The C-line 6 speed (the one I'm looking at) also felt really light? I can tell it will take a little practice to get the folding and unfolding down to second nature... 

      Colors. Based on photos online, the colors I like the most are: black lacquer, black, green, and unsure about macha green. But the match green looks really nice in person. I had this idea in my head (perhaps from smaller stores in videos taken a few years ago) that you basically had to pick a color in stock or wait months. Turns out it's just a 7 - 10 days. Post-pandemic? Larger store? Combination of both?

      On the subway ride back my wife asked a valid question: "Do you really need 3-bikes?*. The answer to that is "yes". They all serve a different purpose. The electric mama-chari is for trips when I need to take Leo with me. The cross-bike is for when I'm going fast and or long distances. And the brommie is for everything else. Leo will only be able to ride on the back of my mama-chari (legally) for another 6 or so months. And if push came to shove, I could get rid of the cross-bike (though I bought it used for 3-man 4 years ago or so, so I suspect it's not worth selling). Point is, yes.

  • The Week #219

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    • ☀️ I've had an Apple watch for about 5 years. The entire time I've run with the default watch face. You know the one, it has the weather, phase of the moon, temperature and rings. It suddenly occurred to me that I could customize the complications to something more useful and meaningful to me than the phase of the moon: UV index. Knowing at a glance what the UX index is at wherever I'm at is super handy for knowing how much I should avoid being outside with appropriate protection.
    • 🏃‍♂️ I ran three times this week, bringing my total to 69 runs this year so far. 2 more (extra) runs and I will be out of "run debt". Run debt being 100 runs in 1 year is about 2 runs per week, and I didn't run for a few months earlier, so I'm making up the difference.
    • 🚲 The binge of information about Bromptons continues. I've probably watched every video about them in Japanese and a bunch from VeloWorks on YouTube. I think his shop was on an episode of ProbablyRiding recently. I've settled in a C Explore. 6 gears seems more important here in Yokohama than it would in Tokyo because there's heaps of hills in every direction. While the flat S-bars are tempting, I reckon the M-bars best fit the type of riding I intend to do. I've looked around on Yahoo Auctions and Mercari and while there seem like there's deals to be had...after watching Second Hand Brompton Tips, there's so many things to check for that can't be easily checked online...I shall think a bit more.
    • 🎮 Leo's been on a Mario kick this past couple of weeks. We've picked up Mario 64 after (what feels like) a year long break. After playing more modern Marios for so long, the limited camera control really ups the difficulty. Noteworthy point is we finally got 30 stars, enabling us to go to the second boss. This is the furthest I've ever been in the game.
    • 🔨  Every boy goes through a stage where he wants a secret hideout. Leo is no different. For weeks he's been going on about wanting to build a secret hide out in the house. He's taken over a closest. Built a fort. Put a sun-shade up in front of nook in my office area. But the quote all homeowners love to hear is, "It's easy. We'll take a hammer and take down the wall." 😬 Completely unrelated, I've relocated my hammer to be out of reach of children. 
    • 🎶 Music recommendation this week is FlavourTrip. Especially this mix in Greece. Sidebar: nomad DJ sounds like a pretty sweet gig for a season of life.

  • The Week #218

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    • 🌀 Last week we had a typhoon that looked as if it was going to come quickly to the kanto area. But the path shifted further and further west to land in Kyushu and then basically go up the Japan landmass. It was perhaps the slowest moving storm, moving at around 4kmh at times. It moved so slow it never fully made it up to Kanto before giving up the gusto.
    • 🚲 I rode bikes with Leo over to the local Ito Yokado again – he only needed a 2 short breaks going, and that's even with riding up hill. Riding bikes is perhaps the one sport/physical activity he has confidence in himself to do well (that he's said himself).
    • 🚴‍♂️ Which gets me thinking: I want to encourage this. To do this, I want to ride longer distances with him on the bicycle paths along the river, not just in the neighborhood. Along the river is flatter, zero cars, and there's fun way points along the way (ice cream!).  Problem is, while I might be able to squeeze Leo's bike into my car (with a seat down), there's no way my bicycle is fitting in there.

      Solution: get the folding bicycle I've been thinking about for a while. Problem is, the one that folds the smallest and is the best, is also quite expensive. Quality bicycles cost real money, no matter if they fold or not. But hmmm. To tide me over for a bit, I bought a Brompton Field Guide.

      Long-term, a folding bike fits into what I'd like to do personally and with the family. I'd like to take start rinkou (traveling with bicycles). With a folding bike like the Brompton, the barrier to entry is much lower. They're easy to transport. No disassembly to get it on the train and reassembly when you get back off. It feels like a more approachable way into the activity. And I could even fit 3 in the back of our tiny kei-car.
    • 🚗 Speaking of cars, while driving back from the in-laws along our usual route someone ran a stop sign nearly causing us to get into an collision. Thankfully I was able to stop in time (with just a bit of tire screeching). Rather than lay on the horn (as I imagine most drivers in Japan would), I just looked at them and wave them on in front of me. Laying on the horn solves nothing and maybe they'll pay it forward. Letting them continue ahead of me also makes it so they can't (almost) run into me again.

  • The Week #217

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    • 🥸 I bought a new pair of glasses. There's nothing particularly wrong with my current pair, other than I've had them for 7 or 8 years and wanted to change things up a bit. Since I've been in Japan I always bought glasses at Zoff or Jins because they're inexpensive and near the stations. They're inexpensive because all of their glasses are the house brand. I wanted to get a pair of Ray Ban's again, so they were off the table. Thankfully there's a regular glasses shop a short cycle away that had just the pair I was looking for. I will pick them up next week. For the first time I opted to get the blue-light coating, which is supposed to make it easier on your eyes when you use computers all day. We shall see....
    • 🚲 After getting glasses, I rode my bike down to Totsuka for lunch with Yumi. It's definitely starting to cool off a bit, as I was able to make it all the way there without being drenched in sweat. After lunch we checked out the bookstore for anything interesting. I found a few books that looked interesting, but not enough to buy. Of note, the English book section seems to have shrunk from 2.5 - 3 columns to roughly 1. They didn't even have non-fiction books in English, which was disappointing. Back in the day, this bookstore was my lifeline for interesting things to read.
    • 🛍️ A new shopping mall opened a few stations away called Soratos. We finally have a movie theather nearby. Along with a second Starbucks, a Tully's and a giant area designed to drain your wallet – 50+ crane games, including one large enough that a human attendant sits inside help (and costs ¥500 a play).

      On the roof of Soratos is a really nice play area – the kind with the squish ground. Since it's the tallest building around it has some nice views on the top. Once it cools off a bit more, I can see us spending many an hour up there with Leo.

      On the way out we swung by the Tsutaya bookstore to see what it was like..and like Barnes and Nobles in the US, there's a significant "definitely not books" at the bookstore. We found a plush of Link from Breath of the Wild! Leo was, as readers of this blog can probably guess, incredibly excited to find it and there was precisely zero chance of me leaving the store without it. Truth is though I wanted it as well.
    • 🎵  I've been trying to introduce more aloha in my life to keep me relaxed and positive. This week's recommendation is Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's Facing Future (Apple Music).

  • The Week #216

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    • 📺 I started watching What Did You Eat Yesterday Season 2 (Netflix). You can guess from the title that the show is largely about food as the main character cooks at home and explains what he's doing while he's doing it (to himself, not like a cooking show) and my explanation isn't doing it any justice. The sub-plot is that the main characters are gay men and it portrays a realistic look at what life is like in Japan as a gay man. Just watch an episode and I promise you'll be hooked.
    • 🫓 The emoji is of pita, but it's the closest I could get to cheese naan. Sorry. Inspired by episode 2 of season 2 of What Did You Eat Yesterday where he cooks a butter chicken curry and cheese naan (official recipe from TV Tokyo), I had a go at making some and it turned out ok. Technically it may have been a cheese roti as I ran out of white flour and used whole wheat for the remainder. Either way, I will give it a go. Did I also make the buttery chicken curry you ask? No, I did not. Why? Because somehow I ran out of curry powder and garam masala and basically everything but cumin (I never run out of that). What is the world coming to...
    • ☀️ It feels like the temperatures for the summer have peaked or just about peaked in Kanto. It could be that the sun isn't fully up by 4:30am making the difference, but the heat is less oppressive in the morning.
    • 🏃‍♂️ Related to the oppressive heat, after having a reprieve from the temps in the US a couple weeks ago, returning to the heat is difficult mentally. It's just zapped my motivation to do...anything (perhaps you can tell as the top item for the week is about watching a TV show 😆). Still I got in 2 runs last week, not my goal of 3 but my "minimum number of runs".

  • The Week #215

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    • 🏃‍♂️ I hit a major running milestone, running a 5k in 30 minutes. I've been close-ish in the past, but have never been able to sustain a 6 min km for the duration. 100% I was able to do it because I've been running regularly for the past few months and it was cooler. I feel like even like slow runs in the Japanese heat still helped me to run faster in the cooler weather.  
    • 🍦 One day we went to a nice big central park so Leo could play on a jungle gym for a bit, burn off some energy, and be around some other kids. While we were playing I heard the siren-song of the ice cream man! The ice cream man isn't a thing in Japan, so I told Leo to run and I got him a sponge bob squarepants ice cream for $4(!). Quadruple the price I paid as a kid in the 90's.
      Ice cream... mini van?!
       
    • 🏪 On our way to the airport we dropped by Pike Place market for a couple of hours. I could spend all morning there – all of the vendors and the food look so good. As we got there around noon, it was packed. The line to the original Starbucks was probably an hour long (despite the menu being the exact same).
      Carrots in multiple colors 😋

      Finding gyros is a challenge in my part of Yokohama, so I opted to get a lamb gyro for lunch. It did not disappoint, except for at the very end where it started leaking on to my jeans. 😂
      Walking with Leo in the market

      Next time I visit Pike Place, I want to go early when the vendors are just getting setup and there's less traffic.
    • ✈️ We stayed at a hotel near the airport because our flight was scheduled to leave at 8:45am. Hawaiian Airlines is so good. One of our bags was a bit over the limit and they didn't care or charge us. But even better was, because they heard TSA had long lines, she stamped our boarding passes for priority security checks, meaning we got to skip the wait.

      Ultimately though, our flight was delayed by about an hour as they had to fix something while fueling the airplane. This delay meant our 2-hour layover in Hawaii, where we could stretch our legs and relax a bit turned into a mad dash from Terminal A to Terminal C (thankfully we caught the Wiki Trolly (bus)) just in time, so we could catch our flight.

      There must not be enough bridges as or something at Haneda, as we had to deplane on to a bus that took us to immigration.
      Our ride to Japan

      When we got home I noticed that my bag that I had previously fixed in Hawaii was broken for good now. The plastic latch used to lock the suitcase, which is usually flush on the outside, somehow opened and snapped off transit. Always use a belt on your suitcases. Sad to see it go as it served we well since my first trip to Japan as a college student.
    • 🎥 On the flight from Hawaii and Haneda I watched two films: The American President and Mr. Nice Guy. Watching the first one film and I felt like it was almost a precursor to The West Wing. Probably because Martin Sheen was in it and the movie was written by Aaron Sorkin (who also wrote The West Wing). The sad point of the movie was that they were talking about global warming and trying to pass legislation for it in it...in 1995.

      Mr. Nice Guy on the other hand was the first Jackie Chan movie I have watched in ages and I forgot just how much fun they are. It's basically non-stop martial arts and stunts. Really good entertainment.
    • 🗾  America was fun and, compared to our last trip, Leo did so much better this time. It wasn't exhausting. Part of that is learning from experience and partly him being older. But man is it good to be back home in Japan 🥰.

  • The Week #214

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    • 🇺🇸 We flew to the US. First to Hawaii and then to Seattle. When we landed in Hawaii, we were immediately escorted to immigration for 2 hours. Turns out we were supposed to file some paperwork and or apply for certain visas as my wife's green card had expired. We thought going in under esta was the right thing to do (as it's what we did last time) and turns out it wasn't. Turns out immigration in Houston is just much more lax than Honolulu. A stressful couple of hours and $675 dollars later and we made it in. The coming months will require us to think about the feasibility of maintaining PR or not...and then filing the appropriate paperwork and or maybe start planning regular long-ish trips back to the US.
    • 🌴 After the ordeal of actually getting into the country, we got to the good part  – hanging in Waikiki. Hawaii is beautiful. I finally understand the hype. A day in and I was trying to figure out the timezone math for me to be able to meet with both Europe and APAC so longer-term stays could be viable.

      We didn't go with any agenda on our trip – we just wanted to relax. We stayed at the Royal Hawaiian and it was great. Our water pressure could have been better, but being directly on the beach and the environment of the space was really great. That said, pries in the US are high and prices in Hawaii are even higher. I wasn't expecting it to cost $100 for 3 (amazing!) burgers, an order of (amazing!) fries and a lemonade.
      Looking at Waikiki while on a run

      Duke Kahanamoku statue
    • 🌲 After a few days 3 nights in Hawaii we took a flight to Seattle. Seattle is also so beautiful. But the weather... the weather is exactly what I was after – 30 degree highs (where it doesn't hit the high until 2pm instead of 8am) and lows around 14 (a bit chilly!).

      While in Seattle we've gone out and rode horses in Mt. Vernon and rode a historic train. The train ride was a lot of fun, but it was like an oven because not all of the windows could open.
      Views from the train

      On the drive out there we went through some really cute towns. Washingtonians are a fairly active folk, so we also so plenty of people taking advantage of the excellent summer weather and gravel biking along trails. And for the second time I couldn't help but imagine another possible life (though more realistic this time). Living in Seattle, driving out to the mountains to enjoy the small towns, hiking and cycling, wearing socks with my Birkenstocks. How great would that be? But then I think about the required driving and the political division and the guns and think maybe it's just the relief of escaping Japanese summer speaking to me. Maybe I should plan how to do that every year.
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