• The Week #173

    by
    • 🚙 We took the car to Tokyo to my sister-in-law's house. On the highway I can use the automatic driving features (pro pilot), so it keeps the lane and adjusts speed based on the distance of the car in front of me and so forth. It feels like it's slightly easier to turn on than my old car.

      We left with 90% charge and by the time we go home we had 50% charge remaining, which is about what I was expecting.
    • 🌳 In Tokyo we went to Kinuta park and it was a lot of fun. I really do enjoy that park because not only is it huge with a lot of trees and paths through said trees, but it also has some little shops that sell fried rice / noodles, ice cream, frisbees, and coffee. Just don't get the ice coffee, it was pretty bad.

      At the park we played some badminton. I thought I was bad at badminton because it was difficult to see the white birdy flying through the sky, so we bought some pink ones that would be easier to see and nope, didn't make a difference. I've come to accept that I'm just not a naturally gifted badminton player.

      Mostly at the park I was in charge of watching the kids, which meant following them about, helping them keep balance on the balance beams and so forth. I also took my camera with me, and I should have started doing this 5 years ago when I bought the thing.
      Kinuta park
    • 💦 They're making progress turning the field next to my house into housing. They've dug some big holes in the ground and laid some concrete. They also hooked up the water mains to that area, which meant they had to cut into some of my land to connect the pipes.

      When I bought my house, the road directly in front of my house was too narrow to meet current code for safety for having a houses on both sides of the street. So my parcel if land is split into two chunks: the large chunk where I live and I can do whatever I want that is zoned for 2-story residential...and the 20 - 30cm strip that is an offset that is zoned as common(?) use. i.e. I own it...but I can't really do anything with it as it's an extension of the road. Visually, it looks like a normal divide in the concrete.

      They're running the water pipes directly in front of that land, but to connect to the pipe meant they had to dig into that common concrete...and now there's a nice square of asphalt in my otherwise uniform concrete offset. 
    • 🍂 It's been getting quite cool overnight / in the morning. Recently it's been about 12C in the morning. As the afternoons have been a lovely 23 - 24, you've really got to dress in removable layers to keep comfortable. The humidity of summer is completely gone as well.

  • The Week #172

    by
    • 🚑 One for last week, I have no idea how I forgot to document this. While driving back from the station we saw an old lady walking slowly along the left side of the road...suddenly collapse. We stopped the car and checked on her. She banged her head up against the wall and was bleeding. A couple minutes later her neighbor walked by and noticed the situation and ran to get her grand-daughter...I think she'll be ok. Not sure why she suddenly collapsed or slipped, perhaps it was because she was using an umbrella as a cane...
    • 🍔 Two weeks in a row I've got to Mos burger...but this time I got the Yasai burger (which is basically a burger with lettuce / tomato / a sauce that's probably thousand island dressing). Thanks for the tip, Michael! Burgers with thousand island dressing remind me of my youth in California where it seems that most burger joints served burgers with thousand island. I can forsee many Yasai burgers (with a salad) in my future.
    • 🍕 On a whim I made pizza for lunch over the weekend. Usually I try to make it with an overnight dough to get a bit extra flavor in the dough. This time I just went with a quick pizza dough recipe. One of the pizzas was round and baked in one of our t-falls (on top of some oven paper). The other, I took the wooden handle off my cast iron tamago-yaki skillet, put some olive oil in the bottom, and baked it. It turned out sooo good. With the quick dough recipe,  it's almost as easy as delivery...and certainly better for you (though I wouldn't go as far to call it health food). 
    • ⛰️ I hacked a bit on Tanzawa. Since upgrading my Macbook I've been plagued by a local-dev incompatibility between versions of the Geo-libraries and Django...or something...this is the bug ticket. But it so I can't run database migrations. Running into these issues really hampers my motivation to work on Tanzawa. Even with these issues, I managed to make it so the svgs on my runs page are no longer generated dynamically and held in ram, but generated once and stored in the db. This should hopefully fix the out of memory server crashes I've been getting sporadically. 
    • 🤧 I got a cold or something. I haven't been sick in forever. Thankfully just a bit of a sore throat and a sinus headache. But it ate up my entire weekend as it spread to all members of the household. Thankfully now as I write this (Tuesday 5:30am-ish) I feel 99% recovered.
    • ☀️ It's been exactly 1 year since we got solar installed. I haven't run all of the numbers but we generated almost 4 megawatt hours (4007kWh)! We sold 1 megawatt in total over the past year. In total this past year solar saved us about 10-man, which is about what I was expecting.

  • The Week #171

    by
    • 🏃 This week had a 3-day weekend, thanks to Sports Day. That means we also had field day at Leo's pre-school.  Like last year I helped hang the paintings that the kids painted above the field like flags. Blue badges had two blue-badge only events: a coordinated dance without the teachers also dancing to lead and a relay race.

      Leo's been practicing the dance about once a day for the past while and he nailed it during the actual performance. For his lap around field during the relay he held his own and maintained his team's position. His team held on to the lead until the very last straight away where they got passed at the last second.

      Looking back over the years of field day it's clear to see his growth as a little human. His first time running during the 30 yard dash (or whatever the length was) and he stopped running as soon as he knew he wasn't going to win and walked nonchalantly. This time, he ran his hardest the entire way, though he didn't win.

      During the tug-of-war his class came in second place. And I could really see him putting in all of his strength and effort into the matches. I'm a proud papa.
    • 🧑‍🍳 With the 3-day weekend we spent a lot of time at the in-laws house as the cousins in Tokyo came to visit. When everybody's in town, I like to cook for the family because I enjoy cooking (just hate the cleanup), and cooking for 8 people is a lot of work in addition to watching kids. I made lasanga for dinner one night and potofu soup with ham & cheese melts for lunch the next day.
    • 🛶 I watched the latest Beau video, a real treat about the making of the episode of How Other Dads Dad that Beau was on. Watching Beau take his kid out for adventures like that makes me want to take Leo out on more adventures. It also made me think about how often I fail to plug-in at Leo's level and just embrace being curious about the world because we got places to be or things that need doing. Both the video and the podcast are worth your time.
    • 💍 Speaking of watching things, Leo watched the final Lord of the Rings movie...by himself! I would have liked to watch it with him (as well as finish the 2nd!)....I'm almost certain he fast forwarded through all of the "boring" parts so he could get to the fighting and final scenes. 

  • The Week #170

    by
    • 💍 I watched Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring with Leo over two sittings. Perhaps not the wisest parenting decision, as there is a fair bit of violence, but no worse than him playing Zelda, I reckon. I figured he'd get bored sooner than he did, but as it reminded him of Zelda, he was able to get stuck in. The last time I watched this was during the pandemic when I needed a bit of an escape. It still holds up all these years later.
    • 📚 Looking to read a book that isn't non-fiction, I bought the the Fellowship of the Ring book, so I can read it on my kindle. It was less than ¥1,000 on Kobo, so why not? I'm horrible at reading fiction, so we'll see if I can get through it.
    • 🎂 I mentioned it in other posts this week, but I turned 38. I took the day off work, which was my first one in far too long. They're usually a "day off" (day off in quotes because they're usually me taking the day so I can watch Leo because pre-school is closed, which is far more work than actually working). 

      For my birthday dinner, I made some fajitas, some killer guacamole, and some pico de gallo. Cake-wise, we've taken to getting 3 individual slices of cake rather than a whole small cake as most people do. That way we can can all get the flavor that we want and there's no left overs tempting you. I went with chocolate mouse, Leo with the usual strawberry short cake, where he eats the cake and I eat the strawberries, and Yumi got a pumpkin tart.
    • 👮‍♀️ During the day on my birthday I went th to the police station to renew my license. Before submitting my application, I went to the building next door and got my photo taken and paid for the renewal. Upon submitting my application with the fresh photo, the police officer look at my photo and asked me twice when I took it as it looked nearly identical to my previous one. We both had a good laugh. He says that sometimes people have a nice photo that they try to re-use, but I'm no so vain. Though I did make an effort to shave that morning.
    • ☕️ After that I went to Kita-Kamakura and went to Verve Coffee Roasters for coffee and lunch. I ate a hummus and eggplant pressed-sandwich which was killer. It reminded me that I need more hummus in my life. While there I made up and wrote my ode to overnight oats. 
    • 🫓 Speaking of hummus, on Sunday I didn't eat any meat, which I'd like to do more of. Breakfast was (you guessed it) overnight oats. For lunch I whipped up some couscous, a ratatouille-like dish with eggplant (including the last one from the garden), red/green bell pepper, onion, and garlic, some pita and a quick hummus. Dinner was rice, miso soup, salad, and atsu-age (fried tofu). I need more days like this. It makes me feel better.

  • The Week #169

    by
    • 🍂 Autumn suddenly arrived this week. One day the low was 25 and the high was 33. The next day the low was 19 and the high was 27. This summer was very long and we didn't have but one typhoon to bring some relief from the heat. Very very glad it's over.
    • 🏄‍♂️ We visited the Enoshima area for the first time since...March. Leo and I splashed a bit in the still warm water. Afterwards we all went to the aquarium to check out the sharks. Despite us visiting on a regular basis over the years, I don't think we've ever looked slowly at the entire aquarium...it's always a bit of a rush.
    • 🚟 As we walked to ride the monorail home we saw a homeless person. Leo didn't see him. But as we got close, he said "kusai" (stinking/smelly) aloud. After we crossed the street, Leo got small talking to about learning to think things without saying them and that not everyone has a home to go home to each night and not everyone can take a bath every day. He seemed like he understood.
    • 🏮 Our local shrine took out the mikoshi for the first time in since 2019. The last time they did it was actually the day we moved in to our house. Along the road leading to the shrine is a small festival with games and food.
      Vendors selling food on the road leading to the shrine

      We bought some yaki-soba (stir fried noodles), tako-yaki (octopus balls), and some cotton candy. Leo's wanted to try cotton candy for a while so he was very excited to try it. A surprise to no one, he's a fan.
      Father and son making tako-yaki
    • 🎶 I made a great batch of Mexican style pinto beans and found a new favorite YouTuber, ArnieTex. His channel focuses a lot on cooking the food I used to eat in Texas. Why the music note emoji, you ask? I  taught Leo a song that every kid should know about beans*. You know the one, it goes something like:

      Beans, beans the magical fruit.
      The more you eat, the more you toot.
      The more you toot, the better you feel.
      That's why we eat beans at every meal.

      And I'm quite happy / proud to say that he's memorized it and sings it too me a couple of times a day. His small grammatical mistakes are also cute. I kinda like his version "The more you toot, the better the feel".

      * I also learned there's a version where first two lines are "Beans, beans, they're good for your heart. The more you eat, the more you fart" from a co-worker. They'd never heard the magical fruit version and I'd never heard the heart version.

  • The Week #168

    by
    • 🌴 We had a 3 day weekend this week, with Monday being respect for the elderly day. We took full advantage of it doing small outings each day.
    • 🚦 Saturday we took the car down to terrace mall in Tsujido. Usually when we go there by car we take back streets. It probably takes a bit longer than the more direct Route-1, but we're not in a rush and I'd rather drive roads I'm used to.

      This time I decided to try Route-1 as "it's faster"...and...never again. There was an accident on along the way which backed up traffic quite a bit. It took us about 90 minutes to get there...which is ridiculous as it's only 12km. I could've run it faster...Even the traffic-free timing of 30 minutes feels like a bit much...alas, driving in Japan isn't always (usually?) time efficient.
    • 🛝 The main reason we went to the mall was so that Leo could go to to BørneLund and burn some energy. I could have sworn this company was from Denmark that general area...but in researching it now, turns out they're Japanese. TIL. Anywho, bouncing together is always a blast.
    • ✂️ On Sunday we mostly stayed around the house, except when we took Sophie to get a hair cut. After Sophie gets a haircut, the groomer always takes a seasonal photo. This time it's halloween and Sophie is Kiki, from Kiki's delivery service!
      Sophie dressed up as Kiki after a haircut
    • 🌳 We went to Yamato Yutori no Mori...which despite it's name is not a forest (mori == forest). It's a large park next to a Japanese self-defense force base with a couple of large playscapes and those white bouncy hills like they have in Chigasaki.

      We brought our pop-up tent, some sandwiches for lunch, and a cooler full of ice and sports drink. Some people in the family thought the 3 bottles in the fridge would be enough, but with the humidity, my Spidey-sense was going off about that not being enough...so I bought a couple liter and a couple kg of ice...which turned into ice water to wet towels that we could put around our necks (Texas coolers is what we called them growing up...I'm sure everyone has a different name for them).

      As the park is next to an airbase, we got to see a bunch of different airplanes take off, including an Osprey, which was really cool. I've never seen one of them outside of videos online or on the news. And turns out there's only 2 in Japan!
      Half of the Japanese Osprey fleet r taking off

      Some military aircraft going somewhere

      In the end, we stayed from 9:30am until 1pm and it was 33 degrees the entire time...
    • 🥵 Speaking of it being 33 degrees - it's been over 30 degrees for the past 3 months.  I'm completely over it. It looks like we might start getting some relief in one more week where the high will be 27...which is pretty damn close to our regular low.

  • The Week #167

    by
    • We moved offices from Ningyocho to Roppongi. The new office is great – better location, fantastic views from every side, plenty of areas to meet, large kitchen with better coffee. But I'll also miss the old office because it's an end of an era for us in Japan...we're past the startup phase and running full speed ahead. Pour one out for Ningyocho. I'm looking forward to many years in Ark Hills Towers South.
      The Kitchen

      Kraken's side of the office

      Presentation area and Kraken Flex area

      Tokyo Tower from the office
    • I watched this video on Akiya, or abandoned houses in Japan. You've probably read about Akiya before, those "free" houses in Japan. If you have the patience or skills to renovate them, you can get some stunning results for not a whole lot of money. I really like that guys backyard in Ibaraki...though perhaps on second thought, I just like the idea of BBQing without a second thought of my neighbors laundry.
    •  I'm amazed at the amount of paperwork and things we need to maintain for Leo's school. In addition to all his lunch box, cup, and utensils we also need to maintain multiple (homemade) cloth bags / containers for each (incase we can't wash them everyday). Even keeping all of this folded and put away on a shelf in baskets, it still looks like a bunch of clutter. 

      We took the Sakura for a spin to Ikea to pickup some cabinets. We decided on a couple of Eket cabinets to store his school stuff, as well as lot of other items to reduce the sense of clutter in the house. Building the Eket was a challenge and my tip is, should you ever find yourself putting one together, use a hammer with a thick towel to smack it into place if you need to.
    • The trip to Ikea was my first time riding the highway with the Sakura. It was a breeze – the instant torque from the EV motor makes merging a non-issue. I also like that since we've got a smaller car, the tolls are less as well.

  • The Week #166

    by
    • We got our Nissan Sakura. I won't give a full review, as I'm not a automotive expert, but it's everything I'd hoped it would be. It's quiet. The automatic parking works great – even parallel parking in front of my house. Kei's really do fit Japanese streets much better than regular sized cars.

      Mainly though, I don't feel like the Onceler polluting the air (and exasperating climate change)  everywhere I go. For a full review, check out the Fully Charged Show's review of the Sakura.
    • Speaking of Nissan, I watched the documentary series on Carlos Ghoson (former CEO of Nissan/Renault) on AppleTV. It was interesting to see and hear how he escaped from Japan in a box. Before the documentary, I was on team "they're (Nissan) probably overreacting because they want him out"...and now I'm not so sure. Even with that, I still think his treatment was unfair...but that's the Japanese justice system generally. Well worth a watch.
    • A small milestone for Leo, but he's showering by himself now. I haven't had to wash his hair or bum in over a week. He's been capable of doing it for a while now I reckon, but I just asked him to do it one day...and he got the taste of being a big kid and it seems there's no going back.
    • In work related news, Octopus Energy is buying Shell's household energy business. This will result in about 2 million accounts for Octopus Energy UK and Germany. Exciting times!
    • jwz (founder of Netscape) owns a club DNA Lounge in SF. They're having (had?) a Cyberdelia event with a Hackers (1995) screening and music. It looks like it would be a lot of fun. I won't attending, so why am I mentioning it? Because they made a hypercard zine(!!) for it, which runs on the internet archive's hypercard/system 7 emulator. So good.
    • I found out that a favorite restaurant of ours closed down - not for a lack of business, but because the chef was retiring and there wasn't anyone to take it over. Lunch was always 3 different set menus, A, B, or C. I forget what they were exactly, but A was my favorite. It was a butter-jyouyuu (butter-soy sauce) spaghetti with a hamburger patty and fat slice of simmer daikon on top, served with rice, salad, and coffee. The chef always gave us a cup of crab-miso soup on the house. Ajisai, you will be missed.

  • The Week #165

    by
    • I finally got a call that my car will be ready next week. Initially it was going to be ready on Sunday, because that's when the coatings will be finished, but due to scheduling conflicts with my sales guy, we'll pick it up Saturday, and I'll bring it in for a couple of hours for them to do the coating.

      The final thing I've been researching are the "charge cards", which are cards that allow you to use rapid chargers.The thing is, they all require a monthly fee to maintain as well as charge for the time using the charger. This means the pricing is set around what larger vehicles will consume in 30 minutes (the standard charging time), so people with smaller batteries that will consume a theoretical maximum of 15kWh, end up paying around ¥200 kWh...which is very expensive. Thankfully all chargers also allow you to charge as a visitor and the rates are more reasonable.  I wish Octopus Energy had a charge card that just put it on my bill like I consumed it at home (I'm speaking purely as a customer. I am not aware of any plans or details to do anything EV in Japan, other than our EV tariff, which is public...and I'll likely be changing to).
    • Planning to live a  charge card free EV life, I've also started installing the various "e-money" cards for the big shopping centers like waon (for Aeon malls) and Nanaco (for anything 7-11). Why? These large malls often have EV charger points that let you charge for much cheaper rates. Aeon in particular has 30 minutes for ¥300, but you've got to use their waon card for payment. For large EVs with big batteries, they're pretty much selling wholesale or using it as a loss-leader...for smaller EVs like mine, it's roughly what I'd pay per kWh during "EV time".
    • I don't talk about work too much on this blog, but we're hiring for a Senior Product Manager at work. I've been doing this along with leading the tech team for the part of Kraken that I work on... and while it worked when the team was smaller, the team and product have grown to the point where it can't be a part-time job.
    • We've gotten a break from the summer heat. Most days are still above 30, but it's not reaching the highs that it was and it's not 30+ degrees 7am any longer. I think this reprieve  from the heat has made it easier to get out and start running again.
    • Speaking of running, I've started a free trial for paid Strava. Clicking about, I really like the route planner / suggestion feature. As I start going for longer more regular runs, I think letting the computer suggest routes for me will take out some of the rut and help me explore even more.

  • 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 videos  of his grandson.
Previous 9 of 26 Next