Freetime on Nanikore

CT-125 in the rain ASMR

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 14:18:20 +0000

I was testing my Osmo Action 4 mounted on the engine guard rail on the Hunter Cub (CT-125) to see what the view was like as I went up one of my favourite roads, the Tsubaki line in western Kanagawa. Watching it back, between the 123cc single cylinder engine and the rain, I thought it might make an acceptable ASMR video!

So here it is, something a little different.

https://youtu.be/Zh0QcMtKmL4?feature=shared

Choosing The DJI Osmo Action 4 Camera

Sat, 25 Nov 2023 05:59:00 +0000

After a long time with GoPro 2, a 5, and the most recent was a 7 Black which lasted 5 years before succumbing to a broken power button and a small water leak through a seal whilst on an epic water slide in Thailand.

So the 7 was effectively dead, but at least I was able to get those last minutes of family footage off the SD card! So what next?

Generally I don’t follow many markets unless I’m actually looking to buy, and action cams are no exception. When I went to look recently there was a lot of choice, and it seemed to have shifted back upmarket - when I got the 7 Black, GoPro were pretty much the only premium player and there was something of a race to the bottom. Now there are offerings from GoPro, Insta360 and DJI at the top, and plenty of cameras OEM’d out of China at the cheaper end. There was also the very real choice between the classic brick action cam, or 360 cameras, and even small magnetic cameras. Wow!

I spent quite a bit of time reading and watching reviews, checking long term reviews to see how the longevity for these things were, and seeing what the reliability was like. Yes, when I’m putting down what I consider to be a fair amount of money, I put the time in.

My Usage Cases

I use my action cams in these main scenarios:

On my motorbike, helmet and bike/case mounted.
On the handlebars and other bicycle mounting points.
On my snowboard and snowboard helmet.
On (selfie) sticks for the above scenarios and in the sea.
Room recording some indoor/comedy events.

GoPro Mk.12

I’ve liked GoPro for a long time, which is why I’ve had 3 of their cameras, but I wasn’t sure about GoPro in 2023. My 7Black has captured some true memories for me, but I haven’t forgotton that for the first 4 months it would crash a lot, though one of the early workarounds did significantly mitigate that issue for my usage (orientation lock, since the change in orientation seemed to be a lot of the problem). Also, audio would sometimes just not be there.

Build quality was good, but wasn’t as nice as the 5 or 2 in my opinion. It would seem the firmware and some design decisions marred the 8 and 9 gens too. Also, GoPro seem to have really begun targetting the vlogger / social media audience, which I completely understand - it’s a massive market, but it isn’t me.

So in 2023, GoPro unveiled the 12. It has a lot of great features, ongoing great image quality, and many things which didnt exist 5 years ago, like the horizon stablizing features, log recording, a slightly larger sensor, new UI, built in feet, a whole raft of ’new’ things.

There were rumours the 12 would sport a 1" sensor, and people were disappointed when it didn’t. That was just a rumour though, so no negatives to GoPro for not having that.

The 12 did have Bluetooth mic support, which seemed like something I might use now and then, but the audio quality in reviews did not sound good.

It was clearly just an iteration over the 11, and maybe that was GoPro trying to nail down reliability. They removed GPS, but that’s in line with other action cams now, and it likely helped save on some heat and power.

For me, it was a little larger (and a small amount heavier than the DJI), and the main benefit was the 8:7 sensor. I know I just don’t do enough social media format videos to want a camera that can record for both landscape and portrait as a priority over having a larger landscape only sensor.

The GoPro Quik app had always been fine for me, and seems that’s still a decent piece of software.

GoPro also has quite a few fun modes - the TimeWarp hyperlapse functionality still seems to be smoother than anyone elses, and they’d added light trails and some others along the way.

DJI Osmo Action 4

Of course I’d heard of DJI and a quite friends have their drones. The only experience I’ve had with DJI was the Tello, a tiny indoor (mostly) drone they did some of the guts of, and which was sold by Ryze. I actually liked it - did what it said, very reliable, well built, and parts were cheap and plentiful, so I had a decent image of DJI.

I looked at the v4 of their Osmo action cam, and I liked its more sparse feel, the ’larger’ sensor, the utilitarian nature of it, the UI seemed fast, and DJI had a reputation for firmware improvements and reliable performance.

I also liked the lack of things I didn’t use e.g. HDMI slots, just a USB C connector. The DJI to me felt more like it was done by engineers and outdoors people, whereas GoPro felt more influencer designed, and that’s completely fine. Buy what you need.

The front touch screen is nice, since I have at least two usage scenarios for exactly that. Of course, coming from the GP7Black, any front video screen is a bonus.

Then there’s the mount connector. No more ‘fingers’ like the GoPro, the Osmo Action 4 uses a magnet and clip system which is so much quicker when switching mounts, such as when I take the camera off my snow/motorcycle helmet and put it on a stick. No unscrewing etc., which is never quick with gloves on. That’s a good feature.

Of course, most mounts in the world are GoPro style, so the DJI mounts do tend to end in fingers on the other end, so you need a few magnet mounts!

Like the GP12, it also promised more cold resistance - a real weakness on my old GP7, which had seemed less resilient than the 5 or even HD Hero 2! I’m confident from reviews this is indeed the case.

On the downside? The connecting app for updates etc. has to be sideloaded on Android. Why? Is there something it does which fails Android’s standards? It is reliable though, if a little slow.

osmo4-2.jpg" alt=“DJI Osmo Action 4 Helmet Mount” caption=“DJI Osmo Action 4 Helmet Mount” >}}

Insta 360

Insta 360, famous for their…360 cameras … also released the Ace and Ace Pro cameras very recently, very much in the GoPro format. I did look at them, and whilst they’re going to be serious contenders in the future, these versions didn’t have anything I’d need to mitigate their lack of field testing at the moment.

The Pro’s main trick is its ‘AI chip’, which can do interesting replacements and effects, but that seems to be mostly in post production with their app. It also has some smart shooting modes to use hand gestures and follow subject tricks - that’s nice.

It also has that flip up screen like so many ’normal’ cameras. This could be another big design direction for action cams, depending on how reliable that hinge is. Only time will tell. It’s also a little heavy and pricey, and with the Ace standard not having enough beyond the hinge, this time around it’s not the winner for me.

I don’t remember well, but I think 360 cameras were still quite niche 5 years ago, whereas they’re very normal in 2023. I think they’re great and I looked at the Insta 360 X2 & X3, and there’s clearly a place for them, but there was a few things which (this time at least) took them out of the running:

Not quite rugged enough.
I’m not sure I’d put in the post production time to orient the video etc.. It’s great it’s always there but in reality, I suspect that’s more unwatched footage on the server.
Requires a pole really and on my motorbike, unlike many vloggers, I’m not sure I want a pole sticking out.

Ask me again in a few more years though!

osmo4-1.jpg" alt=“DJI Osmo Action 4” caption=“DJI Osmo Action 4” >}}

So Why the DJI Osmo Action 4?

As I’ve suggested above, I have a decent idea of how I use action cameras, and of course everything is a trade off in priorities. In the end, it came down to the DJI being more robust in hardware and software, the larger sensor and just a focus on the type of stuff I do - landcape HD and 4K video, some stills and hyperlapse, and I want better low light if I can get it since I’m often out around dawn and dusk. I’m not a huge fan of the HDR look in some videos, so not having that wasn’t a problem.

If I want portrait video, the magnet/clip system makes re-orientating the camera quick n simple. It’s not as quick as just recording the whole 8:7 sensor like the GoPro, but again, I know I won’t use it that much.

That magnet clip system is a nice idea for sure, and having played with it, it does have an effect on ease of use.

The front touch screen is great for me too - I sometimes want to check the camera status and the easiest way is on the wing mirror of my bike - the front touch screen means I can check and alter something quickly. Nice.

I got the adventure pack which comes with 2 extra batteries in a charging case, and this is where I’d like to mention some engineering attention to details - you can charge the 3 batteries in it using a USB C based power source, but you can use that same cable to connect to another device like a smartphone and charge it from the batteries in the case. It’s a small but well thought out feature. The case also holds spare SD cards, which is nice too.

The unit feels solid, the interface is fast and is mostly intuitive. I’d like to be able to rename the presets, but that’s not a huge issue. It doesn’t have as many fun modes as some of the other cameras, like light trails, but it has a few timelapse presets for sunsets etc., and I might use that. Slow motion should also be solid.

The real deciders for me were the focus on a small, fairly light unit, the larger sensor (with lower pixel count) for good 4K recording. Stabilisation etc. is somewhat a given now, and horizon levelling is great. It doesn’t level at 4K through 360 degrees, but I can’t think of a time I’d need that? (If I was doing a 360, I’d want people to know it! The DJI does do that in 2.7K).

So there we are, 5 years on from the GoPro Hero 7 Black, I’ve bought a DJI Osmo Action 4!

I’ll do a review / update after a few months of actually using it.

p.s. On the Subject of Action Cam Reviews

Just a quick note here.

I don’t generally buy on specifications alone and not on ‘brand loyalty’ but on the whole package of a device, bike, app etc., so I like reviews who use things in the way I might.

In the case of action cams, what I noticed this time is that the people reviewing them often don’t seem to be ‘action’ people, but often general camera reviewers, social media vloggers etc., and that’s fine, but it doesn’t tell me how easy it is to use the camera with gloves, or in the water. Lots of channels talked about over-heating - very few talked about low temperature performance.

I’m not some uber X sports bro either, but I do stuff outdoors so I need a rugged camera I can use in those environments.

At least Kai Wong admitted he’s not an action man and still did a decent comparison. I did find some reviews from bikers and surfers, but I really had to look for them this time. A sign of the times.

osmo4-2.jpg" alt=“DJI Osmo Action 4 Helmet Mount” caption=“DJI Osmo Action 4 Helmet Mount” >}}

Rose Gardens and Biker's Paradise

Sun, 05 Jan 2020 04:32:29 +0000

A few months back I happened to have a day off on the same day as my partner - what luck, it’s as if we planned it - so we headed out on the bike to do a beach-side run down to the Akao herb and rose garden to a relatively new café, before heading back home.

The beach road run out was as nice as ever though we were planning to stop off at the Seisho Bypass west bound service area and take in the ocean view, but since there’s a typhoon incoming and the swell was already kicking up with waves almost reaching the road, it seemed they’d decided to close the service area (I found out later the whole place is being refitted anyway), so off we went straight to the Akao Rose Gardens.

First off, I should say it wasn’t what I expected. I expected some small, over-priced little garden exploiting drivers and riders on the coastal road desperate for a stop and some distraction.

Actually what we got for our 1,000en each, was a shuttle bus up the mountain side to the top of the gardens, and from which you can amble back down through probably a couple of kilometres of gardens back to the entrance.

At the top then, perceptions changed - it is a modern, beautifully set garden, starting with a large and beautiful manicured Japanese style trees set amongst the raked stones of a traditional garden ( karesansui). There’s also a glass and natural wood cafe, co-designed by Kuma-san, well known for his work on the new Olympic Stadium in Tokyo.

One thing this place completely understands is the Instagram visitor, with several areas explicitly pointing out that would work great on the Insta, especially the great ocean views.

From that top area, the gardens become more European, with some spaces distinctly English and then into further terraces with more French influence for example. I was surprised just how big it was and even though we were somewhat out of season, also how many people were working there, and how much there still to see.

The initial bus to the top makes sense, and the walk down through what is a kind of natural valley is actually quite relaxing, and we arrived back at the bottom ready for a flask of tea back at the bike. There’s also an Italian restaurant and cafe there too if that’s what you’re in the mood for.

View Larger Map

From the Gardens we took a few nice mountain roads including the Yugawara Parkway, up to the Hakone area and a café which had opened a few months earlier, around May 2019, called Biker ’s Paradise South Hakone [Google map link]. They took an old and closed down restaurant, and revamped it into a very stylish bikers café, rental and event space, with plenty of bike focussed parking.

Inside it’s gotten a very nice atmosphere - sofas, benches, natural wood tables, brass bar fittings, it all looks and feels really good. There’s a vinyl music system at the back (not fired up when we were there), a small gear shop, magazines and a selection of Suzuki Katana bikes around. Even the toilets are very stylish.

Two things to note: the drinks and food prices are not cheap. Also, whilst parking is sort of free, you pay 500yen for a coupon which gets you 500yen off next time (?). They have English speaking staff, and we tried it in both English and Japanese and the reasoning behind it isn’t very clear, but you end up paying 500yen to be there, which you sort of get back next visit. If something needs explaining each time someone arrives, chances are it’s not a good idea.

As the café is owned by rental819, or one of the numerous other great roads up there.

Overall I liked the café; it’s a great place to meet up with people and hang out in a stylish environment, with more scope to meet people than other local cafes in the area. I would think its local competition would be the Anest Skylounge, just a few minutes down the road, which is potentially better known and has a good view of Mt. Fuji, but has had multiple owners who have done little to update it, and yet it remains highly frequented by car and bike enthusiast groups.

As an addendum on this post, we went before some of the heavy typhoons which swept the region in 2019, and at one point the main road which the cafe is on was closed on one side, and we rode through road-wide water on one occasion to get there. Fun, but you should be aware!

One Second a Day - July 2019

Wed, 31 Jul 2019 13:35:39 +0000

It’s been exactly five years since I last did a ‘one second a day’ challenge, which I first saw on Vimeo, so I thought it was high time I did another. First off, it’s actually somewhere between fun and interesting, especially if like me you pretty much commute the same route during the week, to find something different every day.

A mistake I made (again) is that it often works better to have something consistant between shots, be it panning direction, colour, light etc. I’ll give it a go in September perhaps.

Empty Beach in Golden Week

Tue, 25 Jun 2019 12:07:14 +0000

During Golden Week I thought I’d stop off and get some photos of people sea fishing off the beach and some of the jetties where the Hayakawa meets the Pacific Coast, so I packed up my cameras on to the bike, a flask of tea, and off I went.

(Golden Week is a collection of national holidays here in Japan, and is usually ~ 3days, but this year, with the new Emperor, we ended up with a metric pile of them.)

Unfortunately I had missed the memo which must have said that all the people I often see on that beach had to take the day off. Still, it was an interesting bit of coastline to take a look at, despite the emptiness, so lets see how much I can squeeze out of it!

I got off the main toll road which runs down and above the coast, and rode through some local streets, trying to find a road which looked like it would end appropriately near the beach itself. I found one by essentially following the dog walkers, re-enforcing one of those things about life - dog walkers always seem to know the best places. This particular road ended with a ramp and some steps down to the sand under the aforementioned toll road overhead, near some quite reasonably designed toilets and a barrier I expect is deployed in the busier summer months to stop people just driving on through to the ocean.

No, I did not take the Tracer down onto the sand. Therein lies disaster and tears.

View Larger Map

So this was when I realised that the place was pretty much empty. I’d been hoping to watch the beach fishermen and women, and get some kind of insight into the hobby of beach fishing, but there was just a solitary enthusiast on the end of a pier, and he looked like he was ready to take a break anyway. He was perhaps disheartened that he too didn’t get the memo either.

Tetrapods

This particular stretch of beach had a couple of types of coastlines defence too - tetrapods or similar. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but there are a lot of them around the place, but then Japan is an archipelago on the side of a vast ocean so defending the coastline is likely high on the agenda. It also creates construction jobs, and I’m sure friends of the government have liked that too.

I expect there is something oddly satisfying about these huge concrete blocks and the regularity of their shapes which appeals to your average bureaucrat.

Empty Beach .. but Always Someone

If there’s one thing I know from nearly a decade near this ocean, it is that there is always someone around the beach. There was the solitary fisherman, but then a trickle of people, some walking dogs, some seemingly just come to look at the ocean for a few minutes to take in the sights, sounds and smell and then head back to whatever they were doing. One older gent in his jogging outfit walked down the peer, drank his can of chuuhai (rice wine and in this case, lemon), and continued walking down the beach.

Wall Art

One thing I did get to see, amongst the damaged warning signs, mild amounts of rubbish (both washed up and dropped), was some interesting wall art. Along one wall we had some grafitti, and on another was a mural seemingly painted by a local school in the Summer of 2011, just months after the massive tsunami which devastated a large section of the north east coast of Honshu island. It seems odd it’s in the area under the road, rather that in the sea-facing side, but it is there, half hidden behind tetrapods.

More About The Waves

Another nod towards the waves which lap the coastline is a mural near the pier warning about high waves complete with a rendition of Hokusai’s ‘The Great Wave off Kanagawa’, just to get the point across. Whilst the surf was relatively quiet whilst I was there, it’s easy to imagine the odd rogue wave coming in, potentially knocking people in who weren’t paying attention.

Not a Life Boat

Whilst I was wandering, and drinking my tea, I noticed there was actually another ramp which I’d missed, and at the top was a small boat. For a moment I thought this was some kind of life-saving launch, a bit like the coast guard or RNLI we have in the UK, but when I got to the top it was obvious this was some kind of damaged and abandoned boat, which is a shame as it looked like it’d be a good size for the bay, and that ramp looked like there was some run rolling potential, but alas no. I do wonder if it was intended to launch from there at some point.

Maybe Another Day

I have to believe come the summer proper, this place will be much busier as it has those big ramps and a fair sized toilet facility, so maybe in a few months I’ll come back and bring my bikini. Having often seen people here before, I think I just picked the wrong day in the midst of the 10 days of national holidays to celebrate Golden Week and Reiwa, and reminds me that sometimes you’re just not in the right place at the right time!

Out and About - A Small Harbour

Wed, 30 Jan 2019 14:30:19 +0000

In early January I went for a quick run down the coast, but jumped off the stunning route 135 road, down to a small harbour on Sagami Bay called Enanaura, and watched some of the keen fishermen who as you would expect, looked like they’d been there for a while when I arrived at 6.30am, and were all set up with their kit on the tetrapods. As well as angling, there were some small inshore fishing boats, and a store of ropes and nets. It was a nice place to pass some time watching the early morning ocean activity and having a cup of tea. It is accessed by a tiny single lane road which is hidden a little and it’s easy to miss the turn if you don’t know it’s there, which is a shame.

As well as some photos, I also did a quick ’timewarp’ video on the GoPro 7 Black for a bit of variety, as I left the harbour and headed further down the coast.

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Nanikore's Recommended Podcasts - Motorcycling

Sat, 12 Aug 2017 00:56:23 +0000

I have a bit of a commute for my job, so I’ve tried to find different ways to make use of the time in a more constructive manner, and one of those ways is to listen to podcasts. As I have quite a few on my list right now, I thought I’d break this up into two posts - ‘Motorcycles’ and ‘The Rest’. As an aside, I’m currently running a cheaper Android phone (a Lenovo Moto G5+) and the DoggCatcher and 2011; a few I still listen to, some have gone away.) Anyway, on with the list:

Adventure Rider Radio RAW - Out of Canada, this is a monthly panel show, usually running 90-120 mins. of experienced overlanders discussing situations, kit, their books etc.. I’ve not done anywhere near the travelling they have, but it’s often interesting for tips and funny anecdotes, as well as differing perspectives on how to travel for long periods. The same production team also make the weekly Adventure Rider Radio, but this can be hit and miss as there can be a lot of native advertising in some episodes - probably worth a try though.

Front End Chatter - Two motorcycle journalists from the UK discuss street bikes as well as some racing content and usually runs for 60-90mins every two weeks. There’s a lot of light banter and some very decent Q&A in most episodes.

Two Enthusiasts - Two American chaps, based out of the Pacific north west of the US discuss bikes, with a slant to technology and the motorcycle industry itself. This is an extension of the usually decent news website Asphalt and Rubber, and each episode goes for between 60-90 minutes.

Moterrific - Two American ladies this time make this podcast on a semi-regular monthly schedule, with each episode running around 60-80mins. They discuss areas to ride, gear, and dip in to some of the challenges women face in the hobby from perception, to decent gear, to bike height.

Tabibike Ladies Bike - A Japanese podcast which doubles up as both motorbike podcast and Japanese study for me, where the two hosts discuss bikes as well as bike culture, all the way into food and happenings during rides. This podcast is a little shorter at around 40 minutes per episode.

So those are the ones I’m currently listening to, but feel free to recommend others.

Bike Tour: Shouganai Dam

Wed, 02 Sep 2015 02:23:07 +0000

Imagine if there was a place called ‘such is life’. Well, potentially in Japan, there is, and it’s a huge dam. The Shouganai dam. I say potentially, as it’s a bit of a kanji joke - the name - Ogouchi - is written in kanji as 小河内, which with a liberal interpretation, could phonetically be read as ‘shouganai’, which is the Japanese equivalent of ‘such is life’. Yes, puns in Japanese can be many layered.

Anyway, getting past all that, when I found the Shouganai Dam on the map, I knew I had to go and take a look - partly for the name, partly because dams are usually impressive, but mainly because the twisty roads through the mountains to it were just so enticing to a biker such as myself.

View Larger Map

Route Planning
I planned my route similar to my previous Tanzawa / Yabitsu Touge route, because it’s accessible but fun, coming in from the south on route 246, keeping on the back roads and those mountain routes pretty much all the way up, but then planned to come out to the east through the rural roads, and then get on the Ken O expressway to come back [map at the end of the post].

On the Road
I was out of my house by seven am sharp, and the weather was fantastic - dry, sunshine, mid 20s degC., not too humid, and made my way up to the Route 246 in fairly light traffic. Some people may have seen Route 246 as a course on Gran Tourismo. In real life, on a bad day, it’s far worse, especially in mid Kanagawa, where is it one of the main free roads west. Fortunately for me, Saturday morning wasn’t too busy and I could make good time, and not have to stop at every single traffic light, every 100metres, which is sometimes the case.

A few Km down and it was time for the interesting right turn onto Route 70. Interesting for a couple of reasons, mainly the convenience store after the right, which I usually stop off at for a breakfast snack, and partly for the petrol station on the opposite corner - a great place to fuel up, but between the crossroads and the various entrances/exits for these two businesses, you have to be a little careful on two wheels.

Whenever I have to use franchised outlets for things, I prefer to at least try something new, and this time, at that 7-11 on the corner, they had a new onigiri (rice ball) - dry curry - which they even heated up for me. It was nice. It was very nice. I would recommend it. You can also chat to the many cyclists and bikers who often use the place as a meet up spot, as it effectively marks the beginning for people starting a run on the Yabitsu pass.

Route70 is a pleasure to ride - starting off with gentle curves, a steady incline, not many traffic lights, and lightly used roads. As you get up to the pass roper (as delineated by a larger bus stop, a gate, and a small bridge), the road narrows and widens, the bends are sharper, compensated for by fantastic views off one side - just beware cyclists coming the other way at speed down! I think I did a whole post on the Yabitsu Pass, or Yabitsu Touge as it’s known.

At the end of the pass there are a few ways to go, but this time, as I was heading further north, I took a left I’d not taken before, and since I was getting a little thirsty, I was looking for somewhere to stop. Then, just a few hundred metres from the junction, there was this nice Sunkus with some patio tables outside, so I bought a lettuce sandwich and an ice coffee, and watched all the various two wheeled vehicles come and go for a while, before setting off again, and regretting I hadn’t brought my CamelBak water-bottle on what was turning into a nice hot day.

Off again, from Route 64 to 518, twisting higher up into the next group of mountains, then a few junctions and up to Route 76, and over into Fujino. I wasn’t planning to, but I actually got off to take a few photos there - it’s a small almost-town where two rivers meet. It’d be very picturesque if it weren’t for the factory perched up on one mountainside. I’m going to say it’s a concrete factory, but I can’t back that up.

More uphill turns which were plenty of fun, and just great cornering out of and above Fujino, and keeping an eye out for a petrol station, since I’d hit the half tank point and I like full tanks. I missed one, a nice, small, local one which I kind of regret as there was a small group chatting on the forecourt, and so I ended up a few kilometres later on at a Cosmo - nice people though. Then I was through Uenohara, which seemed like a tranquil town save for its very congested main road, then up again into the countryside up to the dam. I came in from the south, weaving along the narrow road, but always with fantastic views, until I came to a small car park on one corner, overlooking the lake.

Actually, that lay-by had a camera club or something there, all with nice looking cameras with large zoom lenses all adorned with camouflage for some reason - I mean, they’re sat next to silver cars in a stopping area, chatting, so they’re not exactly blending in to the wilderness but I’d guess there is some bird watching to be done. One chap was also flying his drone out over the valley - I should have asked him where he uploaded to. I should have asked what birds they were hoping to spot too.

More twisties and we’re down to the level of the rivers and the lake behind the dam, and some nice small bridges. The lake is called Okutama, after the local area, and the small nearby town. I stopped to have a drink at one of a couple of restaurants nearby - both looked a little worn, but the staff were friendly, and the drinks were cold, and on a hot day like it had become, that was enough in itself.

Then it was on to the dam itself, which is a huge wall of concrete as one might expect. There’s a visitors centre, and a generous carpark too, which is free. On this day, it was pretty much empty, but given the coach spaces and the visitors centre having a lot of child friendly areas, I suspect it gets a lot of school visits.

I decided to take a walk across the top of the dam, despite the heat, and even though it is what it is, it’s still impressive to see a 100m plus drop on one side, and water on the other. I also went up one of the viewing towers, which have some basic models in them and don’t add much beyond some welcome air conditioning.

There’s not much on the other side of the dam - a shrine for the areas drowned, and presumably those who died in its construction, and a hiking route, which I followed for a couple of kilometres, but biker gear is not the best wear to go mountain hiking in this kind of heat! I’d be interested in coming back and doing it though, as it looks like a nice route.

It’s a very tranquil place all told, and I spent a couple of hours sitting and walking around it, talking a little with the staff in the towers and visitors centre, so it was a good destination, even though I was more interested in the way of getting up there.

Leaving the dam was simple enough though there are a couple of road signage oddities which clearly sent some people the wrong way, but I headed out from the east, through tunnels which varied in age from bubble era 1980s concrete ones, to ones which dripped water from their ceilings, and which I imagined had been blasted out in the early 1900s. The road out isn’t as twisty to the east and you soon get on roads which are more frequently punctuated by villages, but it’s still a nice run.

I’d taken a little longer than I planned up to the dam and at it, so I was thinking of ending the day with some expressway riding, and make use of the extension to the Ken O to Ebina and Chigasaki. It was a nice fast run, but there aren’t any services on it, so make sure you take a toilet break or have a drink before you get on! As a new road of course - and not busy when I got to it - the asphalt was beautifully smooth, and it was nice to watch houses and rice fields fly past (at the legal speed limit of course).

All in all, another great day out, and I’d go back to Ogouchi to be honest - great runs, friendly people to chat with on the way, and plenty of small places to stop and check out.

Here’s a few more pictures, which include the obligatory bike shot:

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Darryl — 2015-09-02

Looked like an awesome day out in the mountains. A well-written and enjoyable article to read, too.

gurahamu — 2015-09-02

Thanks Darryl. I definitely recommend giving it a run, but again, watch out for hikers in Yabitsu in season.

NaNoWriMo 2014: Week 1

Sun, 09 Nov 2014 09:15:41 +0000

So I’ve completed day 8 of NaNoWriMo 2014, and the best way to describe it thus far is ’not bad’. I came into this year’s event completely unprepared - I just didn’t do much beyond decide a concept for the story. This was certainly no master stroke, it was a combination of being busy with personal commitments and really struggling with enthusiasm to be honest. A bit of a departure from my first & last attempt in 2011, but my story idea this year also didn’t delve so much into any particular history or other real factual stance.

That said, here I am. After 8 days, I’ve done about 9,000 words - that’s fewer than the run rate of 13,333, but similar my last attempt, where it wasn’t until day 16 that I hit the run rate, which was lucky as I knew I had to finish 2 days early due to a business trip, whereas this month I should have until the 30th.

Enough of that, let’s talk about what I have done. The story is unfolding fairly well I think - I’ve established a morally ambiguous protagonist, and since this person reincarnates, I’ve already got female and male ‘versions’ on the go. There is also the mysterious and obligatory megacorp out to do bad things. Or are they? One thing I’m trying to do this time is make the morality of the various parties a little less clean cut.

So far almost all of the writing has been done on my Lenovo laptop in the beta version of Scrivener for Linux, on Mint 17 though I did do a few hundred words in the ‘real’ Scrivener on the MacMini also. So where have I been writing? Here’s a sample:

- The dining table - away from other distractions, and with a bit more space.
- The coffee table - sat on the floor, with a different view.
- The computer desk - I only did this once, at the Mac Mini, it just doesn’t seem to work for me.
- In the Kua Aina Burger Emporium - they have wide tables, and acceptable tea and coffee. Burgers are a bit expensive though so I haven’t actually been eating them.
- JR Tokaido Green Car train - this actually went quite well, but it’s too pricey to make a habit of.

As far as a soundtrack, or playlist goes, I’ve been listening to the Rathole Radio podcast a little lately, and trying tracks from that - mainly Creative Commons licensed works - specifically Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys with their “Soft Time Traveler” album.

As for a story title, I have a few in mind, which is amazing for me - I’m terrible with coming up with story titles. I’ll wait till next week to mention any, and see which ones are still with me. Right, back to the story.

Bike Trip to Tanzawa

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 23:52:39 +0000

I was looking for somewhere different to go on the bike for a few hours, and using a tried, trusted and very scientific method, I looked at my map to see where there were very few roads, thinking fewer roads meant a generally quieter area. It didn’t take more than a minute to see the Tanzawa area in central Kanagawa. With all the research I needed done, I got a fresh flask of tea, the camera, hopped on the bike and off I went.

There’s a rough route here on Google Maps (I hope this works - it’s been a bit hit and miss lately):

There are actually several ways to get to where I needed to go, but I thought I’d get some faster roads in to warm up, and avoid some traffic, so I took the quick Fujisawa bypass down to the coast, did a little on the 134 before cutting north on the 61 up to Isehara. Isehara is a notable place for me since it’s where I lived for two years on my first tour in Japan, teaching English in schools on the JET programme. It seems not much has changed, a few new places, more car parks, but it still seems as nice a small town as it was.

Contrast that with Route 246 which is as comically evil road out here in Kanagawa as it is in central Tokyo. It’s not a fun road on two wheels, but fortunately on this day, it wasn’t too bad, and most of the drivers were relatively sane.

It was route 70 I really wanted though, and the climb into the mountains aiming for the Yabitsu pass, so just before Hadano I made the right and began the ascent though increasingly relaxed housing, more fields and a great view of the mountains.

I’ll be honest, I somehow managed to take a wrong turn, for which I blame my being easily distracted by small and interesting looking roads. I realised my error when I… ran out of road. This was to be something of a theme for the day.

I soon got back on track, and onto the important job of loving the road and the scenery, it’s just a great little area to go and look it. It also seemed popular with cyclists.

There are a number of things to see along the way, some small shrines, which aren’t really notable, and a few viewing points, which give great vistas of the towns below.

There’s a small service area at the beginning of the Yabitsu Pass. OK, there are some vending machines and a toilet at the start of the Yabitsu Pass to be honest, but don’t worry about that, it’s fairly secluded, and offers just kilometre after kilometre of beautiful twisty roads, shaded tree cover, mountains, and small rivers running down these small valleys.

On the day I went there were also quite a few hikers which is great, but I noted many walked on the left, and not (per international convention I thought) facing oncoming traffic, which would be their right, so be careful on real hairpins, since not only could there be someone walking on the road, but they may well have their backs to you. I think this was a bit of an issue for the cyclists a few times.

I love twisties, have I ever mentioned that? I don’t ride a bike for speed, I just like seeing what’s out there, meeting people at stops, and winding, winding roads, and this area is great for that.

There also seem to be a lot of camp sites around the area, so I’ve pencilled them in for next year.

As you come out from the Pass, you start to skirt Lake Miyagase, which looks stunning, and is actually a man made lake supplying water for much of east Kanagawa and Tokyo, so if you look carefully you can see dead trees just below and protruding through the water line.

The colour of the rocks, the water and the treeline just looks so different to many of Japan’s lakes, and is quite a contrast to the very green feel of the place.

The lake has several smaller rivers feeding it, so I chose a road that followed one which the map suggested ended closest to mount Tanzawa, and headed up. More twisties! There were some small collections of houses, presumably for farmers, and the required white kei vans, coming and going, and more and more, signs were for hikers, pointing out hiking routes and estimated walking times. The roads started to get narrower, and there were more pieces of rocks and leaves in the middle.

Along the way I came across and angling farm, if that’s what they’re called, so I pulled over to have a look. At a turn in the river, a makeshift gravel carpark (and BBQ spot I suspect) had been created and several pools with weirs of rock built for fishermen to fish their own spot.

It looked like a lot of fun if that’s your thing, and each pond was well stocked. It looked a bit rigged if you know what I mean, but everyone seemed to be enjoying it. Yes, I know nothing about angling.

Further on, I made another wrong turn and hit another dead end, retraced my steps, and got back on route, and saw some beautiful waterfalls, but it was increasingly obvious that the road was not well travelled at this time of year - branches on the road, a rock slide, a stream flowing across it, and even a snake at one point. Some bent barriers also suggested a few drivers had been a little over enthusiastic on the corners.

I pushed on, taking care between the rocks, and trying to avoid branches in case they also turned out to be snakes, whilst at the same time trying to enjoy the view as the road was now quite high above the small river below.

Finally though, as all good things must come to an end, this did in the shape of two large steel barriers across the road, which didn’t entirely come as a surprise since the 50m of road up to them was basically a rock track.

That then I decided was the end of the run, and I headed back the way I came, stopping to take some photos of the lake, waving to a few bikers as they passed, and felt a little sad that this place was so close and yet I’d never ventured up here. I am planning to come back as part of a group next time, and perhaps we can try some other roads.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Benjamin Moore — 2014-11-04

That ride up Yabitsu to Miyagase is my go-to run for when I have limited time but need some twisties–within easy range of the metropolis but feels like inaka. Nice write-up.

gurahamu — 2014-11-04

Thanks Ben. It really is a great area which I really just hadn’t looked at, and there seems to be a lot of small roads to explore up there, and quicker to get to than Hakone or Izu, which is nice. Just avoid the hikers!

NaNoWriMo 2014

Fri, 24 Oct 2014 12:17:32 +0000

It has been three years since my first (and last) attempt at National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in 2011, and though I enjoyed it, and was successful, I just didn’t get to do it in either 2012 or 2013. However, that was then, and this is now, and I’m ready to do it again. I even have a story in mind, and potentially, just potentially, a title. I’m terrible at coming up with story titles. Also, I use too many commas.

If you have no idea what NaNoWriMo is, check out their FAQ, and by all means give it a try - it doesn’t start till November 1st., so there still the option to create an account.

This year again, I’ll be using Scrivener (also a sponsor of the event) but this time, it’ll be mostly written on my GNU Linux based laptop in the beta version of Scrivener.

1 Second a Day - July 2014

Mon, 18 Aug 2014 03:58:08 +0000

Another quick 1 second a day video. More of Tokyo and the suburbs, and a couple of days in Okinawa. I think I got a little more variety, but there’s still some similar shots which means I need to plan a little more! It’s surprising how addictive and helpful these short shot collages are.

One of the key things I need to do is add some commonality or flow to the the video, such as better colour links between data, or a consistent pan to make it less jarring.

By Nanikore on Vimeo. This one isn’t on YouTube yet, but I’ll update the link whenever I get around to sorting that out.

That Old Skyline Again

Tue, 06 May 2014 01:43:07 +0000

Whenever I get a half day to take a run out on the bike, there’s always the decision to be made about whether I should go somewhere new, take some random turns, get off the beaten track, or go somewhere I know, tried and tested. Not always, if ever, an easy decision.

Earlier this week then, when I got that time, I went conservative and decided to do a run I know I can get through in about 6 hours, even with some vital stops for tea: down the Pacific coastal route 134, then up to the Dammtrax Cafe near Hakone in the mountains, then down the toll based Izu Skyline. Then back pretty much the same way.

I’ve written about this route before simply because I really like it - I even did a video for it over a year ago:

A Quick Run to Izu in the morning from Nanikore on Vimeo.

For me it kicks off with some nice straight and fast roads down towards the beach with great head-on views of Mt. Fuji in the morning mist, then out along route 134.

At 7am, there’s not usually much traffic, but since they’re widening the whole thing right now, there were some road works, but those of us on two wheels can usually get down the sides without too many problems - it’s worth noting that the vast majority of Japanese car drivers are quite happy to stay away from that left hand curb and give riders some space. Unless you’re being really obnoxious anyway.

It’s a mix of toll roads - none of them too expensive - until this point, but I usually take them over the free local routes to get that nice elevation above the beach and ocean. You can ride along, see the early morning fishermen on the piers and the beach, the waves coming up the beach - it’s very relaxing. Along this section there’s a service area often used as a meeting point for bikers, so if you’re looking for a quick drink and a chat with like minded individuals, it’s great. I remember stopping in early one February, the kind of morning where ice was forming on the front of bikes - chilly. Unlike on those spring and summer days when the place is packed, there were just three of us, all out on our own, clutching hot drinks next to the bikes, generally not understanding those who don’t ride year round, and also realising it was likely us that were a bit nuts

That beach section, like most roads here, is in good condition, but as it’s been assembled in concrete sections, you get that rhythmic bounce at each join, like a train on it’s tracks.

There are a few routes into the mountains, but the two I usually choose between are the Toyo Tires Turnpike, and the Hakone Pass. The latter is free, but the Turnpike takes you straight to the cafe, and I think is a more entertaining ride up.

Either way, from here on out, it’s twisties, twisties and more twisties.

The Dammtrax cafe is a part of a general service area - it would like to be the smaller sibling of the famous Ace Cafe near London - and has a lot of photos and memorabilia from that place, but it’s not, it’s a corner of a food hall which also offers ice cream and ramen. That’s not to say it doesn’t have the idea - the staff are great, you can buy random biker items, and on most days, you’ll be sat with a bunch of bikers. The car park is huge though, and in the spring and summer months, owners clubs, manufacturers and other motor vehicle related vendors set stands up to sell their products and often have giveaways. In peak season you could probably spend a couple of hours just looking around at all the cars, bikes and talking to the people.

From here though, it’s a short run down route 20 to the upper entrance to the Skyline, and from there, it’s just over 40Km of fun. There are places to stop along the way, and at the halfway mark there’s a service area which sell the usual Japanese selection of gift foods and vegetables and food.

One odd thing along the route, a few kilometres from the beginning is an abandoned building, claiming to be an Energy and Environment Building, if you’re into abandoned building (’ haikyo’) then this one might want to go on your list. I didn’t go inside, just walked the perimeter; I like the design, and that there’s a drive in ramp (though not I suspect for vehicles really). I’ve ridden past it so many times, but never stopped. Next time I’m up there I might take a closer look at the ramp.

The Skyline is a great road though, good surface, plenty of slopes, turns and enough straights that you can escape slow cars and buses if you get unlucky enough to be behind one. Don'

There’s also a lot of places to pull over for photos, since the road gets you great views of Fuji on one side, and the ocean coast on the other. If you keep your eyes open (so to speak) you’ll also see the odd farm track leading off the road - I’ve followed a couple of these, and they are a lot of fun. This time I rode up one for a few kilometres, and it was great to see a camp site I didn’t know existed, and a really nice stream and some waterfalls- a good place for a cup of tea from the flask.

The end of the Skyline is always a bit of a let down - there’s nothing there after the toll booth - just a long closed down restaurant place. A weird anticlimax, it’s also not very photogenic, though like the Energy Museum, I should probably look into it’s history.

Kiroro Snow Trip 2014

Sat, 01 Feb 2014 03:48:55 +0000

As a country with a spine of mountains and volcanoes, Japan not only gets a lot of snow, it gets a lot of good snow, and has built some great snow resorts up around them, which is possibly another reason why the country has hosted the Winter Olympics a couple of times (1972 & 1998). It’s also the reason why one of the first things I did when I moved here was to take up snowboarding.

This year for our family snow trip, we went up to Kiroro in Hokkaido. As far as I know, Kiroro has not held an Olympic event, but represents another type of Japanese snow resort - the bubble resort. It was built during the height of Japan’s economic bubble in the 1980’s and has well appointed hotels and facilities, which are wearing a little bit, and the place has the feel of something a little over done, but still shows how Japan likes to do things. This is the first time we’ve been back in 6 years ( 2008, 2006.

There are two main hotels there with not much else around, as it was a purpose built resort. We stayed at the Mountain Hotel, which is closer to the main slopes, but a few minutes by free shuttle bus down the road is The Piano Hotel which has a large souvenir shopping area, and some more bars.

The are a good selection of courses, though there aren’t that many truly difficult runs, so it’s a relaxing venue, and it’s a resort which likes to leave a fair amount of powder around, especially on the edges of the pistes, which means you can play on the more groomed central areas, then branch off into powder and light trees.

By the time we went in early January, a small ramp of snow had formed at the edges of the pistes, meaning you could get some speed up and ramp into deep powder and between some trees. The powder was so light it was more like surfing at times, pushing down on that back leg and lifting the front up to stop from face planting or just plain stopping due to a lack of traction. Mine is an old 2000 Nitro board which doesn’t flex much, so by the end of a few powder intensive runs, that back leg was getting a little tired. Also, I will admit I had to paddle out a few times from waist deep powder when enthusiasm got the better of me. It was snowing so much that tracks were covered by your next run, and some people were struggling to keep going on the flatter areas.

The nighter course is pretty good too, well lit, and has a good covered 4 person lift up. Regarding the nighter, they have an ‘evening’ pass, and a ‘nighter’ pass - the former is about 1000 yen more and gets you an extra hour.

Thankfully, a day lift pass gets you the nighter included, which is nice, because I know some resorts which charge extra for that. I also didn’t see a ‘first run’ fee, which is another bolt-on extra some resorts started doing a while ago.

I also spent a day on my skis and really enjoyed it - likely because they have some gentler slopes for that, and skis are still not something I’m competent on, but I do enjoy them, and it means I can ski with my eldest, though she outpaces me nowadays. Wait till next year and we’re both on boards!

If you have a family, it’s good for the children’s ski school and activity centre which isn’t too expensive in comparison to some resorts, and they’ve gotten the kit rental for kids well integrated. As ever in Japan nowadays, the quality of the rental kit was excellent, the teachers were good and if you need it, a few spoke some English. There’s a large section of the area in front of the hotel dedicated to a family lift, a children’s play area and a sledging area, all of which is kept separate from the main ski areas.

The weekdays were very quiet which was great for us, and even at the weekend, it never got crowded. Also at the weekend, they had a DJ booth in the hotel snow centre, run by the local radio station, Air G FM in Hokkaido, who drive the music for the resort, take some requests and hold competitions, which actually added quite a bit of energy to the whole resort (snowboarding to old Wham songs was a bit odd).

The only downside to Kiroro is the cost, specifically of evening meals. The breakfast buffet is often included with the hotel price, and it had a decent selection. Lunch either on the mountain or in the hotel restaurant was also reasonable for a snow resort, such as ramen running from 980 - 1,300yen a bowl. However, you should be aware of the evening meal prices - they range from 4,200 - over 8,000yen per person - even a child’s meal in some restaurants cost over 2,000yen though we found one in the Piano hotel for 500yen but it was basically some soup and rice, and the adult meals were still over 4,200.

If you’re not on a package deal, be aware there aren’t any real supermarkets or restaurants outside of the hotels, so your only alternative is cup ramen and instant yakisoba from the snack shops in both hotels. We took this latter option as it was so much cheaper with 2 children, but also because it took us back to our roots on snow trips which we did things as cheaply as possible. There is a bus to Niseko which apparently takes an hour each way, but we didn’t explore that option.

The area doesn’t have the natural onsen spa baths some do, but the Mountain Hotel does have a ‘fake’ onsen, and a rotenburo, both of which were clean and well maintained. There’s something fantastic about spending the day on the mountain, washing off, then relaxing in pools of hot water for a while. Why more countries don’t have this, I have no idea. This was the first year I could take my son in too, and he loved it.

I’m not sure if we’ll be able to do another snow trip this year, but if this turns out to be the only one, I have to say I really enjoyed it. Kiroro is aging well, and whilst there are some pricing issues there, the place is a good place to spend a few days.

Boundary Conditions

Thu, 16 Jan 2014 12:51:41 +0000

I mentioned in the last post about ‘boundary conditions’ and a quote from the ’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’. Here it is. It’s in the fifth instalment, where Arthur Dent is looking for information from an old man who lives up poles (and can seemingly teleport between them). He points out he only lives up poles in Spring, Summer and Autumn, as he goes south in the winter, to his beach house. He then explains why he bought the beach house:

A beach house doesn’t even have to be on the beach, though the best ones are. We all like to congregate at boundary conditions … where land meets water, where earth meets air, where body meets mind, where space meets time, we like to be on one side and look at the other.

Man up a pole

The boundary condition part just stuck in my mind as another truism from THHGTTG - I think people are attracted to them, myself included. Most of the best places I’ve lived have been near such boundaries, and I only have to go to the beach and see how many people congregate there year round to see that maybe, just maybe, Adams - or rather the man up the pole - was on to something.

If you haven’t listened to Hitchikers’ you really need to do so - it’s a masterpiece of wit and observation.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Complete Radio Series

Arduino and Raspberry Pi

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 13:41:36 +0000

Like many, it seems over the last few years, I’ve been getting more interested in some simple home brew hardware hacking. Thus, I’ve recently taken delivery of an Arduino Starter Kit, and a Raspberry Pi model B. If you’ve somehow missed these, then a quick summary on both.

The Arduino group are an open source team, bringing that philosophy to hardware. The upshot is a collection simple circuit boards, bread boards, and simple electronic components - in the fact the whole thing makes me think of school electronics classes when I was 17. I got the starter kit, which contains all the important things you’ll need to do the 15 projects contained in the guide, from a Spaceship Interface to Touchy Feely Lamp. The book is well put together, and a great introduction to the system, but a brief search around the place shows people are doing some great things with their systems. (Starter Kit costs around 100USD / 9000JPY)

The Raspberry Pi is a little different - it still has an open source basis, but is essentially a basic computer - CPU, memory, the whole thing. You just add USB power, a case, an SD card for storage, and on a simple level, install a special Debian Linux release called Raspbian. From this you have a computer which can run media at 1080p over HMDI, to simple tasks and desktop over the RCA video connector. the base board costs from 20GBP for the Model A, to 26GBP for the Model B, which is the one I bought. So far it:s been a lot of fun, and impressive something so cheap and simple can be used to stream video off my home NAS, and on a different install be a normal desktop for learning a bit of Python on.

Addendum: Note that most of my tech posts are now over at brightblack.net

The Last Day of Movember

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 12:15:40 +0000

Well, all good things as they say, must come to an end, and here we are at the last day of Movember, and I have to say I have grown fond of my moustache, but alas, it will be coming off tomorrow morning. Mine was quite conservative - I was tempted by some of the more liberal styles, but I had a business trip, some important visitors, and a friend’s wedding during the month, so I went for something simple.

Of course, Movember is also about raising money, so I’d like to thank everyone who donated to all the ‘Mo Bros’, and especially to those who donated 420 USD through my page - it really means a lot.

So last year I did NaNoWriMo; this year I did the much easier Movember, so who knows what’ll happen next November - perhaps I’ll do both.

Only a week left in Movember

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 04:36:19 +0000

So we’re over 75% through Movember and that top lip isn’t looking too bad, albeit after a slow start, so that means there’s only a week left!

Check progress over on my Movember page.

It might be surprising, but I’ve never done a moustache before - I’ve always been more of a beard type of person, preferring the full set if I’m going to be unshaven. Whilst I’ve gotten used to it, I think I’ll be shaving it off that first week of December.

Still, that gives everyone more time to donate to the men’s health programmes they support, so the next time you’re getting your prostate checked, throw some thanks to the Movember people.

Some photos - September 2012

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 07:28:41 +0000

It’s been a while since I stuck a small gallery up on here, so I took a few random photos from the library to put up. They’re from a few places, mainly the Shonan coast here in Japan and a recent trip to Guam where I took a few photos from the beaches and from some attractions around the place.

湘南ベルマレ　１−１　東京ヴェルディ

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:43:40 +0000

Last night we went down to the BMW Stadium in Hiratsuka for a family night out to see a live football game between the local team - Shonan Bellmare - and visitors Tokyo Verdy. It was a very decent night out all told - the stadium is in a nice park and there was a lot of stalls almost like a mini-matsuri outside, selling shaved ice with fruit syrup, beer and a decent array of snack foods. The stadium is a nice, if somewhat Soviet-era looking concrete construction which apparently can hold around 18,000, but it felt plenty full with last night’s attendance of 9,370.

Shonan play in J2, the lower of the two Japanese professional leagues, but that’s OK - my local team in the UK isn’t exactly top flight, but that doesn’t stop an entertaining game, and the crowd were treated to some good football for 90minutes, and even two well taken goals in the second half giving the final scoreline of 1-1. Points have to go to the Verdy fans who put up a solid 90minutes of drums and chanting, and at least from where we were sat, drowned out the locals.

It’s been a while sine I’ve been to a J League game actually, though I always watch games when I go back to the UK, and whilst the support style might change around the world, the community feeling on the terraces and the appreciation of the play seems fairly constant. I have to say though, watching an evening game 3Km from the Pacific Ocean in a t-shirt and shorts contrasts oddly to Boxing Day games in the north of England.

Bottom line: if you’re in Japan, and you haven’t checked one out, go and see a J League game, and if you’re visiting, put it on your to do list.

I didn’t take many photos as I was assisting in keeping the kids under control as it was their first ever live football game, and whilst my eldest said she liked it, she was tired after 75mins., and my youngest spent some time with one of us walking about as he was fascinated by the stadium and all the people.

Suddenly, lenses for my D40

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 05:27:41 +0000

Something must be going on, as I now own 3 lenses for my Nikon D40 dSLR, whereas up until six months ago, I only had the one which came with it.

To recap, towards the end of 2006 I bought a Nikon D40, with it’s stock 18-55mm kit lens. I actually bought it a month or so after our first child was born as I’d been playing with a friend’s D40 and frankly, the difference in photo ‘quality’ between that and the Ixy point and shoot camera I had at the time was amazing, and so I talked myself into buying my first digital SLR camera.

Since then, I must have taken thousands of photos with it, and never had a problem, whilst getting some truly memorable images, even with my poor grasp of photography. During that time, I think I’ve gone through three point and shoots by comparison.

However, despite one of the main advantages of dSLRs being the ability to change lenses, I’d never bought another lens. I’m actually hardly unique in that, as the vast majority of entry level SLR buyers never buy anything beyond that kit lens.

That all changed earlier this year when I found a couple of situations where I really wanted a bit more ‘zoom’ to get some photos of the kids, and the 18-55mm just wasn’t quite getting it (to be fair, it’s hardly a real zoom lens) so I spoke to some friends who really know about this, and read some well known blogs on the matter, and consulted the amazing dpreview.com site.

In March, I bought the 55-200mm VR lens from Nikon/Nikkor, and was impressed at the zoom and the great images it gives, which meant I could get pictures of the kids without them being distracted by the camera being so close, and them ‘posing’, which is not what you want sometimes. It’s also allowed me to get photos of the quirky local buildings and landscape features I wanted to take pictures of, which usually gets comments like ‘Why do we have a picture of a rusty pipe?’ now and then from the family. The ‘VR’ part of the name is ’ Vibration Reduction’ which is Nikon’s take on image stabilization and often they achieve this in-lens, rather than in the body. VR is now available on the 18-55mm kit lens now I think, and it really helps image quality on a zoom like this, reducing the need for a tripod in some situations.Note that with these AF-S lenses, their focussing motors are also in the lens, as the D40 body does not have one built-in.

The only downside of the 55-200 VR obviously is that I can’t take quick shots of the kids and things up close with it - it’s not designed for it - so I can swap to the 18-55mm, but that in itself seemed to be a compromise, and increasingly I was reading that a better compliment to the 55-200 VR would be a shorter 35 or 50mm prime lense (i.e. it doesn’t zoom, having a fixed focus). I like to take photos at events, which is where the other end of the need is

After quite a bit of reading (and saving), last week I chose a 35mm lens, again from Nikon - the 35mm f/1.8, essentially over the 50mm, partly on cost, but also on reviews of the lenses themselves, including photo blogger Ken Rockwell seeming to prefer the 35mm, putting it into his lens Dream Team, Steve Huff also liking it, and website Gizmodo having it as a top combination. It’s worth remembering that due to the way the DX works, a 35mm lens is the equivalent of a 53mm lens in ‘film’ photography parlance apparently.

So now I have my 55-200mm and my 35mm lenses in my camera bag, and after 5 months with the extra zoom, I’ve gotten shots I couldn’t have before, so I’m really pleased with it. I’m still learning how to use the 35mm properly, but already I see why Steve Huff says this lens will help make you a better photographer - it really makes you want to move and get the picture you want.

Although this is all at the bottom end of what can easily become a very expensive hobby, I’ve always been impressed at the quality of the photos my D40 gives me, and impressed at how even though I thought the kit lens was great, these two new lenses get even better images, and because of the way the camera designs work, in the future I could buy a newer DX based Nikon like the D3200 - with yet more pixels (6MP on my D40 compared to 24MP on that) and HD video, and still use these same lenses with it.

Although this level of SLR is now being challenged by newer mirrorless cameras, I’m fine to invest a little still in this well built kit, whilst remembering that the best camera, is always the one you have with you.

Enoshima

Sat, 28 Jul 2012 08:04:43 +0000

Depending on how you look at it, Enoshima (江ノ島）is either a very small island or a large rock outcrop, a few hundred metres away from the beachfront near Kamakura in Kanagawa prefecture, to the south west of Tokyo, connected to the mainland by a road causeway.

It’s a popular tourist spot, and quite iconic in the local area. Even though we’ve lived near it for a few years, it was only last month we decided to actually go and take a look around, all the way to the small tower on top, now known as the Sea Candle.

The east of the island is mainly marina, parking and walking areas, with the west being the rising rock, which forms the main climb and attraction of the island. The lower third is a tourist zone, which has some places to eat, and some ‘interesting’ tourist gift shops selling items like puffer fish lamps, flattened grilled octopus and such.

Climb up a bit further, and you can access the escalator which speeds you to the top, or you can walk the steps up. It’s not actually *that* far up, and the walk down is quite leisurely. The middle third is mainly temples, some gardens, ponds and increasingly beautiful view of the coast on one side, and the Pacific Ocean on the other.

The top is actually a lot flatter than I thought, with some beautiful Asian and European gardens, and some nicer (and more expensive) places to eat than you find at the base. We had a late lunch at the Lon Cafe, and I have to say, that was the best French toast I have ever had.

The Sea Candle is only a few floors high, but it still commands impressive views of the whole area, and you really get a sense of Sagami Bay’s size, just being that little bit further out into the ocean.

[googlemaps https://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=35.299786,139.481478&spn=0.022906,0.034461&t=h&z=15&output=embed&w=425&h=350]

It can take a good part of the day to wander around and sit in the gardens, and have a look around the temple areas, and some of the thousands of notes and ema (絵馬), which are commonly found at temples around Japan. You can even stop for some tea, or take in one of the regular events.

After Enoshima, we decided to drive a kilometre down the coastal road to the Moana Makai restaurant for some Hawai’ian / Japanese curry and food. It’s very, very popular so expect a wait, even for parking as it’s rated as one of the best places to eat in Kamakura, and you get that great view over the ocean.

3 Cities in 3 Minutes

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 16:31:26 +0000

On my last busy business trip I decided to take my GoPro with me and just record the world as it flew past via trains, planes and automobiles. The trip was Tokyo > Singapore > Hong Kong > Tokyo - 3 Cities in 3 Minutes - and was actually done in 5 days real time. (And yes, I got really lucky with the hotels).

https://vimeo.com/46233260

This is also a re-visit of an old thing I used to do, which was ‘60 seconds in [insert name of city]’ usually filmed from taxis and trains on the way to airports, but I thought I’d flesh it out a bit for this one.

Some of the edits are a bit rough - my first try at any travel videography like this and I obviously didn’t plan any of it. I was also wondering if a voice-over or such would help and decided to leave as is for now.

Music by Maco.

First Matsuri of 2012

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 13:31:14 +0000

I’ll admit that this post is two weeks late. What can I say, I’ve been busy. In my world, ‘busy’ isn’t just the day job, it also covers drinking tea, drinking beer, and sleeping, and I’ll confess to having done all three of these in the last month. Quite often. So on with the post. On May 19th., we went to our first matsuri of the year. For those few of you who don’t know what a matsuri is, a matsuri（祭り）is a community festival, and many are held in the Summer around Japan. I like these things.

This one was a little atypical, in that it wasn’t really a community one, but one organised by the local council in a nice stretch of family oriented park down by the river. There were a few game stalls, a few food stalls, some free popcorn, free balloon animals (though I got a balloon katana and tried to claim it was for my kids), some ponies to ride, and inflatable castle, a monkey and some vegetable stands. This is typical faire, even for a small one like this, though I admit, the ponies and monkey are a little out of the norm.

Given the beautiful weather and park locale, it was a really relaxing day, starting around 10.30am, and winding down at 3pm, which again is a little unusual as matsuris tend to be afternoon and even affairs.

I enjoyed all of the bits and pieces, and we did ponder getting a house nameplate carved on the spot by a local joinery company who had a stall, but somehow managed not to. I do like kakigoori (かき氷), which is a bowl of shaved ice - not ice chunks, but very thinly sliced ice, which makes it more like snow - with some syrup added. It’s a staple of the hot summers here at these kind of things, and something to look forward to. There was a stall selling what seemed to be edible gelatinous spheres. More than that I can’t say - I didn’t try them, and though they looked nice, at least candyfloss is straight-up honest sugar.

I have to admit to not have been sure about the monkey - part of me balks at that, and kids love it, but that thick rope didn’t make it look too friendly to me. The ponies looked a little happier, and their owner didn’t pan-handle for tips.

One game involves a small paddling pool filled with water with what are referred to here as balloon yoyos - kind of water filled balloons on long elastic bands if you can visualise that. Each person gets a hook on the end of a length of tissue paper, and has to hook the elastic band and retrieve the yoyo from the water before the paper breaks. In reality the kids all get one to prevent riots.

One energetic tyke was bouncing his balloon up and down and then tried a trick at the precise time the elastic band broke, and the balloon flew off and smacked me in the face. For a second I had a mosh pit flashback for some reason, but calmly picked the balloon up as this clueless kid just stood there with his mouth doing that guppy fish thing whilst his poor grandmother had to apologise. I tossed it back to him and asked him to be more careful in the future.

So this was a gentle introduction to the fervour of the matsuri season in Japan, and I look forward to a lot more in the next few months.

New Header Image: Roof Tile

Tue, 01 May 2012 15:40:04 +0000

Apologies if this is a bit of a [stereo]typical image, it’s just one I snapped on a recent trip in the countryside, at a very comfy, if a little run down looking temple - a roof tile end.

I actually only noticed the place due to the long pile of timber running up to the entrance, as I was cycling past in the rain, and semi dismissed it as just yet another temple, but actually, the place seemed to have a certain texture to it, as if it had a more practical purpose, if not now, in the recent past, even if it was a bit overgrown.

I’ll likely post a few more pictures of the site in a later gallery post.

A few photos from April 2012

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 13:31:44 +0000

I’ve been a bit busy of late and so haven’t written any posts, and I think that’s going to be the situation for a while yet due to now being in the middle of a few things. However, I thought I’d update with a few photos from April 2012.

GoPro Hero 2 First Impressions

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 09:41:44 +0000

After thinking about getting one for quite a while, I finally bought myself a GoPro Hero 2 2 is often described as a ‘sports camera’, or a ‘point of view’ camera in that it’s a rugged design, comes with a durable waterproof casing, and is designed to be bolted to things, stuck to helmets, surf boards and such, to get closer to the action. It’s also different from a point n click in so far as it has a wide angle fixed lens (f2.8) thus no zoom, and is designed to be modular, allowing users to add to it as needed.

For example, I invested in the LCD bacpac (add-ons are usually suffixed with ‘~pac’ in the GoPro world) so I could view video as I go, set a shot up, or review the footage. The screen uses battery though, so I set mine to power down after 60 seconds, or you can just detach it after you think you’ve got the shot set up properly, reducing the weight, which is likely a key factor if you’re mounting it to a helmet or some other item where you want the least weight on you can get, and since you can’t see the LCD, there’s not much loss!

The accessories like the LCD also come with their own range of covers to attach to the supplied waterproof casing, so the whole unit profile is kept to a minimum but still waterproof. Some of the covers are also open to allow better airflow and mic sensitivity when you don’t need total waterproofing. My usage scenarios as really for my motorbike trips (on the bike or helmet), my bicycle runs, for the snowboarding and ski trips, and for down by the beach or swimming to get some more footage of the kids where I wouldn’t be able to take the point n click, which not only lacks a waterproof case, but is a bit unwieldy.

First off I tried some of the modes out; I wont go through all of them, but the ones I played with were the 1080p @ 30fps, 720p @ 60 fps, and 848*480 @ 120 fps all at the wide 170deg. field of view setting. The 1080p/30 looked fantastic, though this is the first camera I’ve had which supports it, and has a solid frame rate. The 720p/60 I think is where I’ll spend most time - it gave a smooth, slightly slow motion effect, and a solid picture even when moving. The 848*480@120 (WVGA) is good for when you really want some slow motion, which I tried out by running the shower at putting the GoPro in it’s casing on the floor, and seeing the droplets hit.One note for this is that it requires good lighting.

Overall, I really like the video performance - it’s h.264, and for me slots straight into iMovie, though GoPro do provide a basic editor called CineForm which isn’t bad at all for a free download, and allows you to convert the videos to other formats. Audio isn’t bad from the built in mic, but it’s very much secondary I suspect, though you can plug a mic in if you like.

The Hero2 also does stills at 5 or 11MP, and supports time lapse, and timed photos, which look very decent also. I put in a 32GB SDHC Class 10 which cost me less than 3,000yen, and complies with all of GoPro’s requirements for running 10fps still bursts, which are also useful. I bought the ’ Outdoor kit’ which comes with a lot of ways to attach the GoPro, including to handlebars, but have a look at the motorsports or surf kits if that’s more your thing.

Unlike the original GoPro Hero cameras, this has a more detailed front facing LCD which makes changing modes and settings much easier than its predecessor’s by the sounds of it, and has small LEDs on most sides so you can see it’s still recording. Another nice fringe benefit is that it charges from a mini USB connector, which is something I wish more cameras did!

I actually picked mine up on a business trip to New York, as the JP distributor’s price was 31,500yen after taxes, and I could get it for 25,000yen in the States - I think that’s a fairly generous mark-up given the exchange rate to be honest. Here’s a quick sample of some footage I shot straight off the handlebars of my motorbike. You’ll notice there’s a slight ‘fish eye lens’ look about it, which is due to the lens type. It’s rendered out at 720p/30 though there’s some loss of quality due to Vimeo’s encode and adding the player, here in SD, so it looks even better if you go to Vimeo to see the high definition version: [Update: April 2012 - I paid up for Vimeo Plus so this can be viewed in HD from here - at least until April 2013!]

https://vimeo.com/38397836

Overall then my first impression is that this is a quality product - image and audio is well above what I expected, and the build quality is very decent, so I’m looking for this to take some abuse and still get me some footage I just wouldn’t have been able to get otherwise.

If you want to see what the GoPro cameras are really capable of, search for ‘GoPro’ on Vimeo.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Gen Kanai — 2012-03-18

If you want better audio for your GoPro videos, (and while I’m no expert, I do know that audio quality makes a big, big difference- in my experience it’s more important than the video quality) you might want to consider an external audio recorder like a Zoom H1. You capture the audio separately and then sync it to your video footage with an app like DualEyes or the new Final Cut Pro has this functionality built in. You get much better audio than using the mic on the GoPro.

gurahamu — 2012-03-19

Hello Gen,

I was just looking at that H1 (http://www.samsontech.com/zoom/products/handheld-audio-recorders/h1/) and realised it’s one a friend was talking about a few months back for a project he was doing. I’ll drop him a line and see whether he got it or not. Years ago I used an Aiwa MD recorder at live bars around Kanagawa to record some great gigs, and it’s certainly something I’d like to get back to, so maybe that is the way forward on that. (I’m pretty sure it was more than the 90USD the H1 costs!).

I think you’re right though, for the amount I’d spend on a mic on-site for the GoPro, I may well be better off getting the H1.

Setsubun (節分）

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 03:30:20 +0000

So we just finished celebrating ‘setsubun (節分)’, which is traditionally the day before the first day of a new season, mainly, in modern times, before Spring, by the lunar calendar, and falling on February 2nd or 3rd. That to me sounds a little optimistic for Spring, but that’s how it is.

Perhaps the most popular aspect of this is ’ mamemaki’ (豆まき） is which is essentially the throwing of beans in homes, and at shrines and temples, to welcome good fortune and drive out evil spirits. In a home then, someone will throw beans both in and out of the house/apartment, saying “Fuku wa uchi, oni wa soto” (“Luke is inside, demons are outside”).

We did the version where someone wears a demon mask, and the family pelts them with beans until they leave the house; often this is the returning father, though we actually took turns, since wailing like a banshee and running around with a mask is quite attractive to kids! Interestingly, the Wikipedia article said this home event was not so common anymore, but it seems that most people I know with children do it, and there are plenty of simple masks and beans in the shops.

As usual, there are some variations, with many of them I suspect being regional. When I read it up in my “Dictionary of Japanese Culture” book, by Setsuko Kojima and Gene A. Crane, it also mentioned some homes would hang some Japanese holly, and a sardine head on their doors to keep bad spirits out. I haven’t seen that myself to be honest, but now I’ve read it, I’ll be keeping a closer eye out. Some other people also eat beans to the number of their age, plus one, to guarantee health and luck this year, and this eating of beans largely comes from the Kansai region and the west of Japan.

In all then, it’s a fun event, a reflects the country’s agricultural, religious and historical connections, and is perhaps one of the lesser known festivals outside Japan.

I think I’ll be cleaning up dried beans for a few days to come though.

Out in the Hills

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:42:47 +0000

As it was a national holiday here in Japan ( Coming of Age Day I believe), a few of us headed up into the hills of Izu and Hakone and spent a few hours riding the twisty roads and taking in the sights. I have to say it was quite cold up there, especially on the bike and when out of the sun, but it was a good ride with clear skies, and not many people on the road. A great day out, and I clocked up 187Km door to door, which is not too bad for the first run of the year.

New York

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:29:54 +0000

Towards the end of November I was lucky enough to be in New York again. It was a packed agenda, so there was no sight seeing, but New York, especially Manhattan, is one of those places where the people just about make the place, so it was good to be spending the week with New Yorkers. I was staying in a small local hotel which didn’t serve any food, so every morning I’d go down to the corner and pick up a large coffee for $2 and an almond croissant from EuroPan, and read in the hotel lobby whilst I drank the coffee, which is not my usual way of starting the day, but which proved surprisingly addictive.

Anyway, I didn’t take a camera, so these are from my mobile phone camera, and aren’t of the usual landmarks.

Tokyo Toy Run 2011

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 23:50:47 +0000

Last Sunday - December 11th - I joined in the third annual Tokyo Toy Run 2011 version, where a group of bikers meet up in Tokyo and Ride out in convoy and in groups down into Kanagawa prefecture to deliver toys and other gifts to a couple of children’s homes, and then spend some time with the kids.

This year I thought I’d have some of my own drama the night before when I had to announce my 5.5 year old battery to be dead, and so I headed out to NAPS in the car at 6.30pm to pick up a new one, and give it a test run. The next morning I was up at 5.30am tying on bits of tinsel and such onto the bike, taking care again to make sure nothing was going to sit on the hotter parts of the engine but still look festive. I’d also managed to obtain a Santa suit from Don Quixote which actually fit not just me, but also go over the leather jacket and the Draggin Jeans. It’s still a mystery that many nations see Santa/Father Christmas as a jolly, large fellow, and yet most Santa suits are for people who weigh 60-70Kg. Indeed. I decided to attach the white beard set to my helmet, which worked much better than I expected.

I met up with a couple of riders locally at 6.30, and we were running in towards the meeting space in Odaiba. It’s a beautiful urban ride in, going past the docks and cranes and factories on the expressway as the sun comes up, and see the planes taking off from Haneda airport as we go under much of it, and then over the rivers on the bridges, getting another great view. Once again, the weather was great - we’ve always been so lucky for the weather on these runs.

We all met up with the other riders at the RicoLand Carpark, and it wasn’t a bad turn out with plenty of bikers, bikes, decorations and a couple of vans to fill with gifts. We then went through a quick run through of the plan, including the one stop we’d be making en route, and the groups we’d split into from there to go on to the two children’s homes. The runs are always great, and each year it seems to get smoother getting through the ETC toll booths, the gents in the booths seem that little less freaked out at a group of (largely gaijin) bikers, many dressed as Santa, trying to get on the expressway. It also reminds me how happy I am to have invested the outrageous sum into getting ETC fitted to my bike a few years ago.

On the road as a bike convoy is always fun, we just have to be careful to make sure we’re not stopping people getting on and off the freeway - sometimes not as easy as it sounds. One point of having this many bikes in one place is that the tunnels are deafening - the only way you know your engine is on is to look at your revs. We stopped at Daikokufuto, which is a service area in the centre of doughnut upon doughnut of roads, to meet up with a few more people, get our photos taken with a lot of very curious people who themselves were on trips - including with small dogs with santa coats…

From there we split into two groups, and again I went with the group for the Chigasaki Farm children’s home, and whilst we may have taken a wrong turn, we did get to the venue not too far behind schedule, after a run through historic Kamakura, and along route 134 along the beach which was fantastic - riding along looking at Enoshima to your left, and Mt. Fuji in the distance to your right: fantastic.

The venues, the children’s homes are really where the days start - rolling in as a group, all bikes and vans and filling up the small parking areas, then meeting the kids, playing sports and really getting to know them. As I’d been here twice before (the Toy Run last year, and a BBQ we did this last Summer) it was was great to see some familiar faces and catch up with what was going on - some were even getting jobs and going out into the world, which is great.

For once I missed the sports, but chatted with a lot of the kids, had photos taken with the smaller kids with the rest of the Santas, and once the pizza we ordered for the event arrived, sat around for a while talking, playing Uno and enjoying some of the gifts we’d brought. I should say, Chigasaki Farm made a fantastic soup for us, which, after a few hours on a bike in winter felt so much better than that pizza! A lot of the kids were playing volleyball, and throwing American footballs and just spending a good afternoon outside on a nice day - even if the resident dog did destroy a couple of the balls!

Once people had eaten the food, played a lot of games and energy levels were dropping, we all sat around one of the patio areas and played a couple of rounds of bingo, before having more photos taken with the kids, this time on the bikes (now that they’d cooled), and finally, somewhat reluctantly, got back on the bikes and headed off home as the sun was beginning to set.

It’s amazing how fast the time goes on the toy run, from that early start to getting to the kids over 120Km later for me, to doing some games and sitting and talking, to leaving feels like just a couple of hours - not essentially a whole day.

OK, so what are the benefits? Well for one, the kids get to spend a day with people they don’t usually meet and just talk and have fun - this is what we often hear from the staff and volunteers at the homes - they love the gifts and the toys, but what they like is that these often funny and a bit whacky bunch of bikers are happy to come in dressed as Santa and just talk, throw a frisbee, be chased, have reindeer tails pulled and just relax with them. I know one thing debated on the forums after the event is always that of who got the better deal, us or the kids! In the last three years I haven’t seen a single biker, even the tough military ones, who aren’t putting the smaller three- and four year old kids on their shoulders and running them around the yards, and for those of us with similar aged kids, feeling that concern that these kids will be OK. The truth is, I think most of them will be, they’re fun and smiles, they’re resilient, cheeky and witty and easy to get on with, but the places also need the odd day of distraction.

2011 has obviously been a tough year on Japan, and it’s going to be for a while to come, and it’s fair to say that for some of those outside of the mainstream society who rely on government support and volunteers, things are very tough, and its rewarding to know that it’s actually quite simple even for a relatively small group of people to pick a day, pool some money and really help out some kids who themselves are going through a lot as it is - we should all do it more often.

(NB/ There’s one more Toy Run in Yamanashi next Saturday - Dec. 17th!)

Bird on a Feather

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 15:25:42 +0000

I thought I’d just break up this NaNoWriMo post obsession with something completely different - and no, not that I’ve just put my motorbike battery on charge. An old friend from back home who used to run the karate club I go to whenever I’m back there, has an interesting talent for painting on bird feathers. I can’t say I’ve seen it very often, and I can’t remember where he said he learned it, but here’s a quick sample:

For some reason I find the concept and the execution quite relaxing. Anyone seen much of this before?

NaNoWriMo 2011

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:09:26 +0000

As a bit of a hobby for the last few years I’ve written a few short stories - I even almost finished a full length story (60,000+ words and counting). It’s just mental exercise, a stab at creativity, writing something down. In 2006 I first read about the National Novel Writing Month initiative, where people are invited to write a novel of 50,000 words within the month of November - not to a polished conclusion, but really to get at least that first draft in, and thought that some year I should give it a try.

You can have outlines and such prepared beforehand, but the novel must be something new and original, started on November 1st, and ‘finished’ by November 30th, midnight local time. It’s not deathly serious as you can tell from the site; you become a ‘winner’ simply by uploading your text to their servers in the last week of November to see if you’re over than magical 50,000 word count - it’s largely honour based to get people to actually get something into their PC.

Anyway, after 5 years of watching NaNoWriMo come and go, I decided to give it a go this year, so blog posts to this site might slow or stop next month as the small amount of my personal keyboard time flows into writing some epic work of fiction. How bad can it be? I don’t have anything else on apart from studying for my Japanese test in December, family and work commitments!

All I know so far is that I’ll mostly be writing it on my Mac in Scrivener, and that it’ll most likely be set in some kind of steampunk world, a genre I’ve always kind of liked. More updates on this in a couple of weeks.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Damien Okado-Gough — 2011-10-08

Sounds good chum. I’ve had a fantasy novel swishing around in my head for a few years. Maybe I should follow suit and give this challenge a whirl. Are you doing the JLPT? Which level? Another thing I should be doing!

gurahamu — 2011-10-08

After a long time of not doing JLPT tests, as they’re not very real world, I’ve signed up for N4 (the old 3). I’m hoping I’ll be OK, but over the last 5 years, my Japanese has gotten awful - I speak mainly English at work, and since our first child, I’ve been speaking more English at home with the family for their practice. I really need to work on my grammar - it’s dire. I’m trying to get just back into studying.

The NaNoWriMo thing is probably ill-advised given my schedule, but it is a nice idea to try, so I’m going to give it a go, and again, even if it doesn’t get finished, it’ll have helped me along the road. How bad could it be? :)

(I should point out though that this has spouse approval.)

Damien Okado-Gough — 2011-10-09

I got Level 3 years ago, but I speak hardly any Japanese at all. Now the kids are getting up and I need to sort it out. I can’t have them embarrassed at their dumb-ass foreigner father who needs their mother to read even the labels on food in the kitchen. The truth is though, I hate studying. Let’s ganbare!

A Couple of Days at Ernest House

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 17:29:27 +0000

Every now and then you just want to get away and relax for a while. It’s easy to see ‘getting away’ in Japan as more of a chore if you’ve been through the over-priced ryoukan grinder with drill instructor hours and mediocre foods, or have opted for the very generic Prince Hotel route. However, as many have found, there are some great independent places out there, though finding them seems to be more work than it should be, so I thought I’d pass one on. For us, even with the kids, we want to go somewhere not too far to get to, or at least, not too far and not too uninteresting to travel to, and somewhere where it’s all relaxing. One of the places we like to go to then is to spend a couple of days at Ernest House. [ location]

I heard about this place a couple of years ago on the motorbike forum GaijinRiders, and people raved about it - great location near good beaches, lots of local places to eat and drink, and a calm feeling around the place, and it’s own great restaurant.

We first went down as a family last April, and just got back from a couple of end-of-week days - we tend to go out of season. The area really is beautiful to look it, even for those familiar with some of Japan’s stunning coastline - white sand beach, plenty of waves, some rocks, all in a fairly isolated bay. It’s a surfer place to be sure, the car park housing some of the day boarders, a smattering of seemingly dilapidated shacks pock the tree-lines, perhaps at one time, or in season, places to eat and drink, but out of season, they’re either shut down or weekend only.

Ernest House is a wooden guesthouse, named after the enigmatic writer Ernest Hemingway - though more after his calm writing locales, rather than the rest of his storied life I suspect! The interior has an open lounge, sofas, wooden floors, posters of Hemingway himself, and seems sure of itself - there are bookshelves of real books guests can borrow, in both English and Japanese, and not just Hemingway’s, there’s a selection from a cross section of writers.

In the lounge is a large TV (seldom used as far as we could tell) and guests are invited to borrow DVDs to watch in the lounge, or in their rooms (each now now has a large TV - when we first went it was a small CRT). There are also several acoustic guitars about the place people can strum on. The lounge and each of the rooms also have (old) Mac G4s for guest’s use, and free wifi for those who brought their own machines.

The rooms are again wooden floored and very cleanly designed - simple beds, decent toilets and bathrooms, a TV, the Mac, a fridge and some other basics. The feel of the place is one of simplicity, but they’ve got the touches right there, like the wifi, for what people want. There’s only one vending machine, and it’s tucked away.

The ambiance is excellent; no announcements, people wander in and out, and the whole place just feels as relaxed as an open house. I went down to the lounge at night to reply to some e-mail, do some writing of my own, and do some reading, and it was nice to just sit on the sofa, type away on the laptop and sip a beer, listening to the wind coming in off the sea in the trees.

The guesthouse has an adjoined restaurant for guests, which is open to the public during the day. We booked for both the dinner and the breakfast, and found both to be excellent. For dinner there were salad, fish and steak courses, before dessert and a cup of coffee. Every course was well worth the price, and they even did a smaller, slightly cheaper version of the dinner for our four year old, but it was a very adult oriented meal and she picked a little at it, but still ate enough.

The restaurant also has a pool table, and more books, so after our meal I tried to teach our eldest the basics of pool (and failed), whilst the rest read books. Despite the sound of it, it is fairly child friendly, with some childrens books and games to go at, if you didn’t bring your own. Apparently they also allow some pets.

Breakfast is something a little different at Ernest House - it’s a picnic hamper with fruit juice, cereals, a flask of coffee, some sandwiches and cake slices, with milk and yoghurt. You can choose to eat it in your room, outside at the hotel’s picnic tables, or even down by the beach. We went for the picnic tables, and it’s a very relaxed start to the day, just having a cup of coffee and an excellent sandwich outside watching the surfers go past.

For lunch, we opted for Cafe Marley near the beach, which wasn’t quite what we thought - for some reason I was expecting a ‘Bob Marley’ type feel to the place, and actually it isn’t at all, but the food was very good, if a little expensive. Previously we’d gone to Paradise Cafe, next door to Ernest House, and actually I’d probably recommend that, though there are several guest houses and restaurants down the beach road to choose from, or further inland, there are some good places to eat and drink within walking distance.

Some other things at Ernest House we didn’t do whilst there included the outdoor hot tub, which looked like fun, so maybe next time.

The beach itself is beautiful and clean, split into two by a small bridged river, with a few rocks and outcrops on both sides, which the surfers obviously avoid, but are great places for kids to explore, but take care, the tide and the waves are powerful, which is exactly why the surfers are there. Unlike Shonan and many places in Japan with the darker volcanic sand, Shimoda’s beaches are much whiter.

Each time I’ve gone, it’s been by car or by motorbike, either down the coast road (#134/#135) or the mountain route (#414), both of which offer fantastic scenery as you drive or ride. A note though, they take time, and they’re very twisty, so whilst I like them, I can appreciate some people may not, and may wish to go via some public transport which Ernest House list on their site. There is parking for cars and bikes exclusively for Ernest House guests, so parking shouldn’t be an issue, but in peak season, it’s probably better to check in advance.

The bottom line then is that even if you’ve been in Japan for a while, and even if you’re near the beach, going down Izu to Shimoda is worth the trip, even from Tokyo, so if you are looking for somewhere to get away for a few days, give Ernest house a call.

New Header Photo: Feet In the Ocean

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 00:26:56 +0000

After five months with the excellent Alabaster Heads as my header image, I’ve decided to change it. I have to say though, that my photo of Jaume Plensa’s installation at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park got more hits and searches than any other header by a long way. If you haven’t seen them in real life, then seek them out.

The new header image is far less artistic or ambitious - it’s my feet in the clear waters of the Pacific Ocean at Shimoda on a recent visit to Ernest House. I’m wearing my Keen hiking sandals, and it was toward the end of a couple of great days, and it was nice to just stand in the water and watch the waves. I thought it made a nice ’end of summer’ image, as we go into Autumn 2011.

A Quick Run on the Skyline

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:39:11 +0000

It’s been a few months since I’ve been out on my bike for more than running errands and such, so when I was able to negotiate a whole morning to get out on the road, I had to decide how best to use the opportunity. I was tempted to just do a few hours of ’take random turns’ up in the mountains, which is what I like doing, but it’s unpredictable time wise, especially on the return leg. Instead, I decided to go for a tried and tested - but fun - route.

Getting on the bike at 7am on Sunday morning means less, but not zero traffic, as I went down the 134 coast road, and that Shonan is a surfer place is very apparent, especially at this time of year - lots of people in wetsuits on bicycles, surf-boards strapped in U shaped holders on sides of the bicycles and people in cars just lazily drifting along, checking out the beach.

It was basically a nice, sunny morning, fairly warm, but not too hot, riding in my mesh jacket and Draggin jeans, in good sunshine, a nice clear view. It’s a good road to go down, you have Fuji ahead of you and the beach on the left, and year round there are a smattering of surfers in the water, fishermen (and fisherwomen?) on the beach, and the universal collection of people walking their dogs on the sand.

Some of the faster roads are toll based, but usually only a couple of hundred yen, and I have ETC on my bike, so I just slow down and go through, rather than in the old days when I’d have to stop and fumble for change in my tank bag with my gloves on. That’s always frustrating, and in the winter and in the rain, it’s a real hassle. On the Seisho Bypass there’s a small service station where a lot of bikers stop to meet up, and sometimes I stop off for the cinnamon coffee, made by an energetic vending machine which plays you upbeat, potentially Colombian music whilst you wait for the drink to be reconstituted. Today though I was against the clock a little, so I skipped the coffee and decided to head straight to my first real stop, turning off at Hayakawa, and heading up the Toyo Tyres turnpike (toll again) to the rest stop at the top which houses the Dammtrax Cafe.

As I got closer to the turnpike the road was getting damp and then wet, and at the top of the ‘mountain’ near the Cafe it was even raining a little and once more I was glad I keep my rain gear under the seat, just in case things got worse, but in the event the rain stayed off. The Dammtrax Cafe is in the corner of a food court in the main building, and is a homage to the Ace Cafe near London (where I really would like to go). They do a decent drink and a hot dog too, and the whole place has some great views. Whilst it’s a tourist spot in general, like most of the Hakone area, there’s always bikers and car enthusiasts there - the day I went there was a large BMW meet-up with some of the BMW reps there for what looked like an organized ride. It’s always a place to get into general conversation about bikes, custom work, and pick up some good routes and tips.

When I came back to my bike, I noticed the one next to mine was a Triumph Street Triple, with a great tank decal.

The weather was still wet, but most of the road was OK - no real surface water, but for someone of my skill level, definitely reason to be careful on the corners. Off I went then to the Izu Skyline, another toll road which runs a little over 40Km north to south down the spine of Izu - it’s all hills and twisties, and thus tremendous fun on a bike. For me, on a non sports bike though, I keep an eye out for people coming up fast behind me, and keep an and let them run past - we’re all just out for a good ride. Yes, it’s a fast road.

The route does give great views, and there’s a good selection of roadside stopping points for photographers. There’s also a selection of service stations, including this somewhat derelict one; it always reminds me of some neo-Communist building for some reason, grey concrete surrounded by grass broken car parks, a monument perhaps to Bubble times.

More than anything, it’s a fun route to ride down, slow or fast, beautiful tree lined stretches, which open onto the sides of mountains, with great curves and vistas which make you want to stop and take a photo.

Get to the bottom and there’s really not much there, beyond a sort of derelict cafe which may or may not be open at certain times of year - at least it’s never had any sign of life inside it when I’ve been there, despite the constant white van parked outside.

After reaching the bottom and having a nice cup of tea from my flask, I turned right around and worked north again, retracing my exact route back past the Dammtrax, back down the turnpike, and back down normal straight roads and traffic, back to Shonan having thoroughly enjoyed it.

I usually say that having a motorbike is very liberating in Japan, just taking the next turns at random, but even so, there are good mornings to be had just taking a route you’ve done plenty of time and just enjoying the bike and the road.

Tea is also good.

The Fuji Photo Never Gets Old

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:13:26 +0000

There’s something about Mt. Fuji that makes you want to take a picture. I suppose it’s true especially at sunset. I see people who live around here regularly taking snaps, despite seeing this dominant, and dormant, volcano every day of their lives and yet the Fuji photo never gets old.

Even though it’s not so beautiful up close, it is somewhat relaxing and timeless at sunset I have to admit.

Recipe: Gazpacho Soup

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:58:08 +0000

As it’s probably been noted - it gets pretty hot in most of Japan in the summer, so what could be better than a nice bowl of chilled soup? Over the years I’ve come to quite like gazpacho soup, made famous to my generation in the UK from the comedy ‘Red Dwarf’, where the character Rimmer ruins his career by asking the chef to ‘heat it up’ whilst at the captain’s table. So then here is a recipe for gazpacho soup. The soup itself is Spanish in origin, so you can expect a lot of juicy ripe fruit in there.

Anyway, I’ve digressed already, this soup is prepared chilled from fresh ingredients, and should be chilled in a fridge before serving - it tastes very good after being chilled overnight. To make it, you really just need that fridge, some ingredients, and a blender. One thing I like about Gazpacho soup is that it’s difficult to say it’s wrong since there are so many permutations of it based on local recipes (a bit like Miso Shiru!).

For mine I get the following ingredients and roughly chop them into a bowl - this should make 6+ servings:

500g chopped Italian tomatoes
300g of bell peppers
200g of cucumber
juice of 1 lemon
50g of celery
5 cloves of garlic
100g of red onion
30g parsley
pinch of oregano

That goes into (and essentially fills) my blender! Give it a whirl around a bit until it’s broken down a bit, then add:

100g virgin olive oil

after a bit more time you can add some of the following to taste:

salt
pepper
balsamic vinegar
pepper sauce

You can really blend it as far as you like - I’ve tried leaving some more chunks in there, and I’ve tried taking it all the way down to a thick liquid, and it tastes good most ways, so you can’t really over blend it. You can also add some ingredients at the end just diced if you prefer.

Variations

There’s lots of ways you can do Gazpacho, adding a few things - I quite like adding a few olives, or sometimes a piman (a smaller Japanese non-spicy pepper) from my mini-garden. I’ve done some with several drops of Tabasco and it’s actually ended up really quite good for accompanying a BBQ, with that added spice and a drink. If you want it less spicy, you could add some cold boiled potato which would also thicken it up.

Also, if you don’t think you’ve got enough liquid in there after a minute or so of blending, you can add some tomato puree or juice.

Please post good variations in the comments!

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Kirsty Girl — 2011-07-27

This looks really good. Methinks I will be making this for lunch tomorrow.

gurahamu — 2011-07-28

It’s fairly quick n easy to make (just that principle chopping time) and if you have a small garden, you can make use of veg from there, which can be nice.

Useful Summer Products

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:33:33 +0000

Japan is hot and humid in the Summer, which is something I don’t need to tell anyone who has actually been here for it, but here’s a few things I have found which makes it that little more tolerable, especially if like me you actually like to get outside in it. One thing not explicitly on the list is sunblock which I apply liberally and frequently … and liberally again. Surviving n Japan has a round up on that, but in the meantime, here are some useful summer products.

Taichi Arm(our)ed Mesh Gloves
Just to start with a motorbike oriented one - my old summer gloves somewhat fell apart at the end of last summer, and because I like to ride my bike year round, I decided to pop down to NAPS in May during one of their sales and try on some gloves. I tried on a LOT of gloves. Aside from the four fingers and thumb per hand, I seem to have hands which don’t fit in a lot of gloves very well. The Icon gloves are nice, but the fit and size of the ones at NAPS weren’t quite there. These Taichi ones instantly fitted - like a glove. On the bike they let enough air through but don’t feel ‘drafty’ if you know what I mean, and the straps are well made from rubber and fit well. Importantly, there’s enough space around the thumb to allow easy reach to the indicator (blinker) switch - that’s something not to underestimate.

Frogg Toggs ChillyDana
I often wear some kind of head towel, because, to be honest, I sweat a lot. I also like to get out and do stuff - or indeed stay in and cook, so it works there too. Usually I’ll use a large cotton kerchief or a towel solution, but we found this.

Camelbak
If you like going out on these hot, humid days for any amount of time and distance, but don’t want to keep dipping into the (plentiful) vending machines, taking your own water with you, I’ve found, is a really good move, especially if you’re on two wheels. I decided to invest in one of Camelbak’s most basic products - the classic 2 litre water bag, in a simple backpack mount. It does seem to keep that water a little bit cooler, and the tube dispenser means there’s less mucking about with lids and cumbersome bottles. You can also put the bag itself into most backpacks on the market, so there’s no doubling up on baggage.

Keen sandals
Since where we live has sea, sand, rivers, stone and pavement, I like to have a decent pair of sandals for just walking around with the family - something which can go in and out of water without it being an issue. Previously I’d had a pair of Teva sandals, but since their distribution in Japan seems to have fallen apart at the same time as those long serving sandals, I decided to try Crocs last year to see if the low price was worth it, and frankly they just annoyed me for the whole Summer.

This year then, I’m giving the Keen Newport sandals a go, and so far they’ve been fantastic for all surfaces - very comfortable, and you can even jog in them if you’re so inclined for short distances. They’re not cheap though at 9,500en for my pair, though it looks like they’ll last a significant amount of time, and feel good at the same time.

May Recommendations: 5 Quick Things in the North of England

Sun, 22 May 2011 14:20:38 +0000

Since I’ve been on one of my occasional trips to the northern part of England to see friends and family, I thought I’d use it for one of my even more occasional ‘recommendation’ posts. So then here are five things which have been worthwhile whilst I’ve been back in Blightly.

Live Football Game - despite HD TV and all that, it’s actually worth getting yourself a ticket to a real, live football game in my opinion, even if you aren’t a true fan. My old local team, Grimsby, are now in the Blue Square Bet league (the league below the real leagues if you like) but I went along to see them lose to Altrincham, with a less than impressive performance, but as ever, the atmosphere and the fan commentary is where the real value for money is. The pie and cup of tea were pretty good too.

Rand Farm - If like me you have young children, and you’re looking for a day out, it’s probably worth a trip down to Rand Farm. It’s a working farm which lets the kids get up close to all the usual farmyard animals, as well as handling and feeding some of the smaller ones. Another bonus is the generously sized adventure playground with trampolines, which kept the female side of the clan happy for quite a while. Also, the food isn’t too expensive, and actually tasted pretty good too.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park - If you want something a little more artistic, I can heartily recommend the YSP. It’s a massive open country park, interspersed with various sculptures and seats, along with dedicated indoor gallery spaces, and is well worth a visit if you’re passing on the M1 or M62. The current installation when I was there was by Jaume Plensa, which was well worth the time. For me, it’s perhaps akin to the Hakone Open Air Art Museum, depending on which venue is more obscure to you!

Louth - North Lincolnshire is an area dotted with old market towns. Louth is one on the A16, being in easy reach of Lincoln if you happen to end up there. It’s got all the small streets and buildings, with decent architecture and tea houses that you’d expect of a market town, and of course a worthwhile church to look around. Wednesday is the main market day, so if you do go that day prepare to battle for parking spaces, and good luck with baby cars. We decided to do lunch at Melanie’s, which was recommended by a couple of people and was very good, and sources all of it’s meat and produce locally. I recommend the venison sausages.

On the way back to the car though, we also found the Gobstopper Sweet Shop, which sold all manner of ‘old fashioned’ sweets, which meant I could stock up on hard liquorice, granular sherbet and even liquorice wood!

KLM and City Hopper - For the last few years I’ve returned to the UK via KLM from Tokyo, stopping off in Schiphol (Amsterdam). I do this mainly because it’s easier for me to get to my family’s house more quickly from Humberside Airport even with the stop in Schiphol, than flying in to London and trying the train or even car to the north. KLM is not the best carrier, being somewhat erratic, but prices are OK, and that stop in Amsterdam also gives you the flexibility to use one of their CityHopper flights to most larger cities in Europe, and to a lot of smaller airports (such as Humberside!).

January Recommends: Simple Recipes

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 16:48:32 +0000

In November last year, I had this idea that each month I’d have a post recommending stuff. Different stuff. In November it was free e-books. Then in December… nothing. Yes indeed, a continuous series of one. Well, now, after that December hiatus, here are January’s recommendations: simple recipes. These aren’t high brow items to keep you in the kitchen for hours, just nice, simple, tasty dishes. Spend some time on each website too - good food likes company.

Tomatoes stuffed with guacamole - More of a spring or summer side dish, but I really liked these, perhaps because I love guacamole (though apparently many of my friends don’t - it’s always left over at pot luck gatherings). They make a good addition to a salad or baked potato or such.

High Protein Mashed Potatoes - If you’re looking for something too add to basic mash, or balance those carbs, give this a try - just remember you’ll need fewer potatoes for the whole dish. This was another simple one, using ingredients you likely have around anyway.

Houjicha Cheesecake -I have a real liking for cheesecake, and so when I saw this recipe I thought I’d give it a try. Houjicha is basically roasted green tea leaves, and this recipe uses them to get a nice smooth flavour. I went with a basic, thin pastry.

Chicken Skewers and Cashew Nut Satay - this is on the Hairy Biker’s website, which is one I recommend everyone have a click around on. This made a great BBQ dish as well as on a grill; the satay sauce was particularly nice.

I could also plug a couple of my own simple recipes - miso shiru or tsukune - and why not. Also, take a look at CookingInJapan for some other tasty dishes - all very healthy.

Family road trip to Shiga Kogen

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 23:47:52 +0000

We just got back last week from our first snow trip of 2011. It also marked some other landmarks: at 644Km in 3 days, our longest trip as a family in a car, our first multi-day trip with offspring #2, our first long run with the ETC, and of course, our first with the the (non metal) snowchains! Yup, all part of a family road trip to Shiga Kogen!

For background, we have an old Toyota Vitz (that’s a Yaris in a few other places), which is fine, but we knew we couldn’t get all the snowboards in the car, so we takkyubin’d them a few days before departure. Takkyubin is a wonderful thing - for 2 snowboards and our boots etc. as two bags, it cost 2,500yen all together, and even though I carried them a few hundred yards to the local Family Mart, they would have picked them up for not much more.

A rental car any bigger than the Vitz, for the time would’ve cost ~~¥30,000, and then would cost more in fuel, so we decided to stick with the Vitz as a trial and spend that rental money on an ETC unit for it (~~¥14,500 fitted at Autobacs) and some CarMate Biathlon Athlete ’non-metal’ snowchains (~¥16,500 from 8&7 Wholesale @ Amazon).

The ETC unit would be a bit of a universal benefit - it’s the electronic toll road payment system unit so you don’t have to fiddle with change at toll booths, and gives you some discounts, so this was a nice to have anyway.

We got most of the car ready the night before, and followed some of the tips from flying - made sure the elder offspring had plenty of entertainment on the iPhone, a couple of books, toys, and drawing utensils for the stops. It’s also trips like this where buying that cheap car stereo which takes iPod/USB input pays off - we could have our whole music collection plus podcasts and audio books to listen to en route.

Some other things I like to have in the car anyway, and especially for this trip: jump cables (booster cables here), a tow cable, some bungee cords, a couple of flasks of hot water and a hand crank torch/flashlight and radio. Also, I had the tip of never letting your tank get below half full, which might sound overly paranoid had a lot of people not got stuck in their cars for over 24hours last month in Japan on a major road, and with a 3 month old offspring in the vehicle, I didn’t want to take any chances.

The drive up took a long time - we weren’t pushing hard, but stopped for a couple of lengthy breaks to allow offspring #2 to be fed and changed and relax, though to be fair he, like his elder sibling - is a great traveller it seems. It’s fairly picturesque ride too, at least once you’re out of Tokyo and on the Kanetsu and then Joetsu expressways.

About 20Km before the hotel we got to the tyre/chains changing point. We chose this one because it has a large roofed area where a lot of the buses put their huge metal chains on - it’s impressive to watch. It only took us about 5 minutes per wheel, barely needing the tutorial video (which I’d ripped to my phone), and the only difficulty really being yanking the rubber around the wet wheels, which is to be expected. I’d actually practiced this a couple of times in front of the house a week before we set off, and it was pretty much the same. Just colder. And wetter. And colder, meaning your fingers need some better gloves than the free ones to pull effectively.

This was the first time for me driving on snow in the mountains in an automatic car and with chains, and to be frank it was fine. The rubber chains make the car shake a little bit more, but we made good, safe time using the ‘2’ and ‘L’ settings on the ‘gearbox’ and getting the benefits of their effective engine breaking (which is what was my main concern). After I while I was actually enjoying it, stereo up, no one on the road and hitting crazy the speeds of 35Kmh. Not quite rally speeds, but given the noise in the 998cc car it felt like it at times.

First things, the Prince Hotels were almost empty. Ours had almost empty car parks and as we were to find the place was about a quarter full, and three quarters of those were Australians - a main fixture of most Japanese resorts now - and the rest mainly being Japanese retirees. I wonder how long it is until the operators wake up to this demographic. More things are in English, things are more flexible and food quality has increased, but prices are moving away from what most Japanese families could afford (we only managed to get a deal by booking early). Anyway, that’s a much longer post going back years. I am glad I brought my spade though; I usually do in case there’s ramp building opportunities on the mountain, but on the Friday morning I had to dig the car our from under almost 30cm of powder snow. It was so light it wasn’t an issue, but moving the snow in front of the car the hotel snow plough had moved took a little more time.

The room was fairly large by Prince standards - they claim to be a premium hotel chain but are basically the room stay equivalent of Denny’s. It’s not bad then, and really is ideal for a boarding trip - you’re not in the room most of the time, aside to sleep or relax and read anyway.

The restaurant however did have a more premium approach to it’s pricing which would make some Tokyo places think again. A child’s meal (the only child’s meal) was 2,000yen. The cheapest adult meal was 1,800 yen. My tip: everyone order the children’s meal, you get much more and it tasted better. One odd situation, a waiter wouldn’t bring me my okawari bread, as I hadn’t received my first one. After some pleading the more senior waiter brought me one. [ okawari means you get unlimited replenishment, such as on coffee refills]. There was a single person shabushabu set for 6,800yen. That’s a huge amount of money for what you got. I wonder if it’s to fleece wealthy Aussies.

One bonus - free wifi in the lobby area, and power if you just plug in to hidden wall sockets. Finally the internet comes to the mountains. How long did that take?

Finally getting down to business, the snow was excellent - great powder runs and a good selection of slopes - everything I’ve always liked about Shiga Kogen. We managed to get offspring #1 into a ski school both mornings for about 4,000yen for 2 hours and since she got 1-1 tuition and could work with English and Japanese instructors, I think she got a lot out of it. We hadn’t planned the second session but she was raving about it after the first. The only disappointment with the snow was that there was no nighter in our area except on Saturday nights - just after we left. I only mention this as I asked during booking if there was a nighter and was told there was.

That aside, the slopes were empty pretty much, meaning fast direct runs down some pretty decent slopes, waist deep powder on the fringes of the courses, and no moguls outside of the snow park.

We put offspring #2 into a creche for one morning, and he seemed to like it enough apparently to not wake up, which is usually a good thing. That was the first time in a couple of years to board together, which prior to the children was something we were doing a lot every winter. Still, a worthwhile trade-off.

All in all then the whole trip went much better than we hoped. One situation we weren’t expecting: we put the eco tag out saying we didn’t need towels every day, which should qualify us for a few thousand yen in vouchers. Great. So, we didn’t receive towels or bed making, and when we asked if we could have our vouchers the front desk claimed the was no eco tag, so no, we wouldn’t get vouchers.

After a few exchanges with my wife, they reluctantly gave us them, but it left us wondering what the training was like if they were encouraged to argue with guests in the lobby in front of other guests over a thousand yen. To anyone who’s spent time in ski hotels in Japan, chances are that doesn’t shock you.

On Saturday evening we started heading back, taking it slowly, stopping at some fairly unimpressive rest stops, and just plodding along, with me listening to podcasts whilst the tribe slept away, which is relaxing in itself. The size of the car didn’t seem to be a problem at all, just a question of travelling light, which we generally do, and sparing the space for things the kids ‘might’ need.

We’re thinking of doing another trip next month if we can get a deal on a room, so we’ll be looking to repeat most of the things that worked, and fix some things that didn’t.

On the latter list was the mistake of not having drinks in the car on the way back (they were in the suitcase), which meant some people being thirsty for an hour as we hunted for somewhere to stop. The second was the familiar issue of packing too many nappies, but then, always better to be 10 over than 1 under for those.

The Garden

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 13:34:40 +0000

Firstly, I’m not a horticulturalist. What I know about gardening in general you can probably fit on the back of a postage stamp, and not a large one at that. However, I’m keen to learn – my parents were always good about the garden when I was young(er) – and I’d like to get better at it.

Therefore, I thought I’d do a quick update on our ‘garden’. That’s in quotes as it’s a rectangle of land sandwiched between the house wall and the car parking space, being about 2m by 6m, so it’s not quite a garden by many non-Japanese senses, but here, it is, and I’m very happy about it.

To put in some back story, when we moved in, it had some very sick looking grass in it, two old conifers, and a rapidly aging fir tree which the salesman was oddly proud of. The house had been a model house before we bought it, so the garden was near the end of it’s intended life. I nursed it all along for the first year, keeping it maintained and as green as possible, then at the beginning of 2010 I ripped out the grass and the conifers. I left the fir tree, but I think I’ll need to replace it this year or next – likely for another since it’s nice at Xmas time. I’ve also put down half of a stepping stone path for getting around the house, which the kids can jump along, but was simple to lay, and doesn’t affect the drainage. I’m hoping to get the second half done at the end of the month.

The idea has been to turn the space into a vegetable / herb garden, mainly to provide a bit of education and entertainment for the kids, but also because I hated looking at dead grass, and the idea of being even a tiny producer of my own food interests me.

So the tomatoes and the roses went in around May (2010), and both did well – really well. We tried some asparagus too, and it came through, but never seemed to flourish. Then I was looking at some other items which went in in late September as an Autumn crop. The roses are obviously a more decorative touch on the exterior to hide the small wall.

After that overly successful summer for the tomatoes – I think in all we had well over 100 great tasting ones, not counting the ones which fell or burst on the branch – I hacked those behemoths down as they were threatening to grow in front of the door, and have slightly moved the 2nd. generation, which was from a couple of tomatoes we re-planted nearby, to near the fir tree, though one more has spawned in the old site which the offspring quite likes the idea of. The wind has damaged the one I moved so I’ve tied it up as best I can until after the winter.

For the late / Autumn crops, I decided to go for my first herb – parsley, as well as onions and carrots. I wasn’t really sure how well the parsley would grow or even how big it would get, so I put in quite a few seeds from the garden centre and four plants grew so I’ve had to remove three because that last one consistently is growing well and spreading so no worries there, and it smells and tastes great. I’m even giving some leaves away.

The onions seem to be growing well, and I think I’ll pull one or two out and see how well developed they are over the next week. This is a sign of my ignorance of the growing seasons, or at least spotting readiness for vegetables. I need to read up on that; it’s simple with tomatoes, but not so much with root veg.

Sadly the carrots didn’t seem to go anywhere. I’ll leave them till Spring to see whether they just didn’t feel like it at the time, or whether they failed because of where they are in the garden since the garden is generally south facing, but due to a short wall, one side gets slightly less sunlight time than the other.

So for 2011, the tomatoes, onions and parsley will stay, I’d like to keep or retry the carrots, and I’d actually like to grow some Japanese produce like daikon sometime.

More news when it happens.

Draggin' Jeans

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 21:48:10 +0000

Currently, when I’m out on the motorbike, I have two options for leg wear - either my 5.11 Tacticals with the Alpine Stars solid knee protectors, or my Dainese leathers. I’ve always felt a bit vulnerable in the former, but the truth is, for quick runs and errands (statistically when you’re more likely to have an accident) and especially in the hot weather, the leathers can be a bit cumbersome to get on, sit in traffic with and walk around the shopping centre in. With that in mind, I went looking for some biker oriented jeans or similar, which either had pads, or under which I could use my solid knee pads.I looked at a few places like Aerostich, but after trawling forums, found that Draggin’ Jeans always seemed to get decent reviews. They do a fair sized selection, but in the end, I went for their basic [Classic](http://www.dragginjeans.net/product/classic for men) jean - nothing fancy, a thick weave denim with their standard Kevlar weave at key points inside.

Obviously ordering online is always a bit worrying for clothing, but for better or worse it seems that Draggin’ has some limits which may help - as far as I can tell, they only sell 34" inseam trousers for men. This is a bit longer than my usual 30" but I thought I could get them altered with minimum fuss, and bike jeans do need to be a little longer than usual.

So how are they? They’re really good. Lets cover fit first: the waist is pretty much exactly what I was expecting in terms of size, and similar to jeans I’ve bought in the UK - but not in Japan. The leg didn’t actually seem that long, and of course sat on the bike, with boots on, you want it to cover your ankles, and they did, and despite obviously being a bit long, they didn’t drag, and a simple measurement showed the seam at 33.5" so it is pretty much what it says.

They’re very well made - thick denim material with quality stitching. The yellow kevlar weave inside is particularly striking, but it doesn’t feel rough when you’re riding, and does seem to feel like it’s going to help if you end up sliding on some asphalt in the future. They have the usual jean pockets, but I found them a little difficult to get into, which may be a problem for some, but I tend not to put anything in my trousers on the bike anyway.

On the road with the bike, they’re really comfortable, and blocked a surprising amount of wind, though I haven’t tested them in any rain, but I would expect they’d react like all denim - might become cold and wet quickly, with a long dry time. That said, they’re definitely worth the money and a huge improvement on normal jeans and even the 5.11s. I also received some of the basic Knox kneepads, which seem pretty good - 3D molded solid core with a foam outer; interestingly the way to affix them to the jean is to glue a strip of ‘military grade’ velcro (supplied) to the knee area of kevlar weave, and then affix the pad to the corresponding strip of velcro on the pad. I haven’t done this yet, but these are Draggin’s own guidelines, so I see no reason they shouldn’t.

My only point of note on these is that if you had the velcro in, but for some reason didn’t wear the pad, you’re probably going to get a decent red mark on each knee from the velcro. They’re not cheap though - 249AUD (they’re an Australian company), which is about 175USD or about 20,500yen plus shipping. Are they worth it? Yes, I would say they are - a vast improvement over even tough jeans, and whilst not leathers, they do feel safe, warm and comfortable.

Original Comments

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theDude — 2011-01-29

Neat to run into this….

I’ve found that wearing armor that affixes to your leg works well with Draggin, eg MX style armor or the Forcefield ones. I use both. MX style strapped to the calf seems the better of the two.

In either case I wear some kind of wicking under layer which prevents any of this rubbing annoyingly.

brightblack — 2011-01-30

Thanks for the tip Dude. My Alpine Stars velcro on shin/knee seemed OK. The ones which shipped with the Draggin’s also seemed OK, but I’m not sure I’d want them on the expressway.

Tokyo Toy Run 2010

Sat, 18 Dec 2010 23:50:38 +0000

December 12th. 2010 marked the second Tokyo Toy Run ( check here for last year’s).

Essentially the Tokyo Toy Run was a group of bikers and like minded individuals who got together donations and gifts for two children’s homes and rode down to the venues in an almighty convoy to personally deliver the toys to the kids and staff, and spend the afternoons playing tag, football and whatever else the kids wanted to do until exhaustion kicked in.

It’s based off, and organised by, the Gaijin Riders forum, but pulls in attendees from other forums as well as other bikers we know.

Last year’s event was a huge success, and so I was looking forward to this one. As before, I met up with a few riders I knew from last year’s event and the forum at NAPS Yokohama on Route #1 for those of us coming in from Kanagawa. NAPS must have been following the forum (they’re a sponsor), as they left the chains off the car park this time, so we could get in there to make sure we all knew the run in route and have a chat.

We decided that since ManyBu (sorry, it’s forum handles) had the Garmin Navi, we’d follow him, and since he was on the CB1300, he’d likely be the quickest too; the other rider was SomethingWild, who was also the coordinator for the second children’s home. Unlike last year, I have ETC on my bike this year, so no fiddling around for change at the toll booths, but SomethingWild didn’t, so we’d be waiting for him on the other side of the barriers, which is no problem.

The run in was great - we left NAPS around 6.45am, and essentially ran the Bayshore Route through Yokohama past Haneda to Odaiba, to this year’s meet up point at RICOland. It was a beautiful run-in watching the sun come up, and with minimal traffic and only a single error on the Garmin we made good time, and were already waving at families in cars, and at traffic lights as ManyBu was in a Santa suit, and my bike was pretty well adorned with tinsel and gift boxes.

At RICOland, the car park was already filling up quickly at 7.40, with a lot more santa suits than last year, and honestly, a very healthy demographic across ages, gender and nationality - many more ladies and Japanese for instance, which is a great sign.

The camaraderie at these meet ups is great - there’s just no negativity - and after a period of admiring some of the bikes and their decorations, the core organisers started explaining the plan for the day.

A few things had changed this year - the meet up being in Odaiba was obviously the first, but then it was much like last year in the middle - a ride over to Daikoku Futou service area for a rest stop and meet up with more riders, and then a ride over to NAPS Sachiura where the staff were ready and waiting for us with marked out car park areas and some more gifts for the homes themselves.

This was where a few competitions were judged (Best Dressed Bike and so on), and we divided up for the two homes - Elizabeth Sanders, which was the home we also supported last year, and Chigasaki Farm Home, a smaller place we were supporting for the first time, which is where I’d chosen to go.

Considering we had just under a hundred bikes by this point, it’s quite a feat the group can split into two easily, and quickly organise into sub groups with riders with navigation systems in each, and where possible make sure everyone had the right routes in them (they were available as files from the forum beforehand).

Unlike the ride to that point, which was mainly expressways with large groups of bikes, we were now going out onto normal roads, through Kamakura and down onto route 134 meaning we’d be in traffic and we’d be likely to get split up through traffic lights. In the event, it seemed to work out fairly well, no one seemed to get too lost, and that we were sat in traffic meant that people could take our pictures, children could wave at the Santas and we could even explain what it was we were actually doing, which is great. Mid-way down Kamakura’s main street a KTM blew coolant all over the road and Loco’s leg, but aside from that I don’t think there were many mechanical issues which is good - I’d hate to miss out on this through a bike fault.

Rolling, albeit slowly, down that Route 134 was actually quite nice, watching the ocean I’m quite familiar with, and once past Enoshima we could get a little speed up. We saw a tribe of bosazoku coming the other way on their noisily modded 125cc and 250cc’s - they’re a beach staple making as much noise as they can - and a few actually waved as they went past the other way. A shame we couldn’t get into their revving game (it’s against our own Run rules).

Soon enough we were at our final staging point, making sure we hadn’t lost anyone, and that we were all at the right place we prepped up for the final few hundred metres in to the Chigasaki Farm home, off the main road and into the venue down a narrow road.

Wow! It seemed like the whole place was there to applaud us in, both from the home and from a few people who seemed to have just happened to be walking down the street. That was pretty humbling, I have to say. We all just about managed to get a place to park in the small parking /recreation area, and after a few more minutes and some shuffling of vehicles, we managed to get the toy van in, and SomethingWild and the head of the facility managed to get a quick aisatsu done, before we could get all the presents moved into the chapel hall for the staff to divide up later; and the excitement level was already pretty high.

To me the highlight of these days are the actual games, and within minutes I’d got into a football (soccer) kick-about with some other bikers and some kids, before Loco broke out some goal markers and an (American) football we’d brought, along with some belts with velcro’d tabs on for some touch football. I wont pretend I understood the rules, but on 5-a-side with three kids and two bikers on each side, it didn’t seem to make much difference; the kids on my team picked it up way quicker than me (I was still having flashbacks to playing rugby which is a different beast entirely) and they were pretty much winning the game for us. It’s good to win like that sometimes! I don’t know how long we were playing, maybe about an hour, but I was sweating into my santa hat, and one of my team suggested maybe I was a bit overweight and unfit. Frankly, guilty as charged.

Eventually the game wound down, and as people started departing, and the sun got a bit lower we organised about four of the better riders to give the kids rides in the small car park with the others keeping an eye on everything, with the motorbike and sidecar doing circles in the ‘football’ area. That was probably the highlight for some - the kids loved being on the bikes and just bouncing around the bumpy yard at 10km/h.

Somewhat apologetically I had to head away before the bingo kicked off, but it seemed that everyone had had a pretty good day of it, and if nothing else, that was the point.

I think sometimes being in Japan, foreigners can feel a bit outside of things (yeah, hence the term ‘gaijin’ I know), especially with the charity system being quite different to say Europe and the UK. Events like this though remind us that that’s a bit wrong headed sometimes. Everyone on the run found a way to make it happen irrespective of where they came from, and even though it’s technically the bikers helping these kids, when you see some posts in the forum from after the event, and our faces at the homes, I can’t help thinking that in a major way, they’re helping us too.

A Tokyo Toy Run 2011? Already under discussion.

New Header Photo: Ice

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 03:02:15 +0000

I just swapped theme on this blog from ‘Enterprise’ to ‘Twenty Ten’ which has a banner photo area, so I thought I should at least put one of my own photos up there. After thinking about it for at least thirty seconds as I scrolled through iPhoto, I plumped for a small section of the photo below, which is of a glass of iced water I was served in Tokyo Disneyland. Don’t ask me why - I like photos of iced water, so here is my new header photo: ice. For those who are into these things, it was taken with a cheap Canon IXY 30S.

Instagr.am

Sat, 23 Oct 2010 12:23:12 +0000

Just a quick post here for an iPhone app I’ve been playing with this week. Up front: this isn’t going to change your life. However, it is a bit of fun - instagr.am, but allows you to apply to some filters and such to make them look quite interesting, and then to add an extra feature in comparison to the other apps which do that, it allows you to very simply send them to several social networks from within the apps such as Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. If you set the GPS, you can check in to Foursquare there. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support Wordpress yet.

It is kind of fun. Here’s a couple I’ve done over the last week, and if you do post from your phone regularly, it might add a bit more atmosphere. Of the currently available filters, I quite like the ‘1977’ one, since of late I’ve been scanning some old family pictures from that time, and they do indeed now look pretty like that, so I took a picture of my battered iPod Classic in that format; I quite like it.

Satoyama Koen

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:14:05 +0000

I thought I’d write a few practical posts here when possible of good places and parks for people with children around Kanto to go for a bit of a day out, since I’m kind of in that market at the moment. First up: Satoyama Koen, primarily aimed at children. Even though it’s ‘in Chigasaki’ it’s not too close to the station - more of a car or bike journey. There seems to be ample parking for both.

As you can see from the link, it’s quite spacious. The main attractions are: a huge roller slide, a smaller but still long roller slide for smaller children, a stream and pool for children to paddle, all concreted and quite clean. There’s also the usual jungle gyms and a large bouncy mountain. It’s quite spacious, meaning there’s plenty of walking space, woodland and open grass. Frisbee, ball sports and bicycle practice seem popular. When we went the ages of the children was roughly up to ten years old and everyone was very friendly, so everyone got a go on most things.

As the slides are rollers, many people brought bits of cardboard to slide on, which was a good idea. My well padded posterior was burning halfway down, so we invested 500yen in a plastic tray sold for the purpose at the nearby park centre.

Having a picnic seemed popular in the summer, but the only food on site is ice cream and snacks from vending machines, so it’s a walk to a convenience store if you didn’t bring anything. The same vending machines sell a selection of drinks (including Mountain Dew!), though many may not appeal to children ironically. As with all vending machines, these will be rotated by season.

It’s all free to enter, being a public run park, and no real downside, and the slide really is quite addictive for adults and children alike.

Chigasaki Hanabi 2009

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 07:22:59 +0000

Sometimes you remember why you live where you live. For me, Saturday night was one of those nights. We went as a family to meet up with some friends who live just down the road in Chigasaki (apparently the soul of Southern All Stars) and headed down to South Beach and watch the free hanabi (fireworks).

It was such a fantastic evening. We turned up around 5.30pm and got ourselves a decent spot on the sand. Actually, we benefitted from the insight of a friend of a friend who surfed the beach who warned us how far the tide would come up the beach during the display and made sure we were a few more metres higher up. Needless to say at several times during the evening, people a few places in front of us had to jump up and grab their things as an errant wave lapped high - it really was that close to the water.

The whole thing was very relaxed, almost intimate, as everyone watched an excellent ninety minute display, drank beer and just generally relaxed on towels and mats. The fireworks just seemed so close as you can sort-of see in the picture I shakily took with my camera-phone. I was actually trying to video some of it at the time, so I might try to get something edited up on Vimeo.

Generally it was just a fantastic evening, good people, some witty banter from the MC whilst we were waiting for smoke to clear: “Ladies and gentlemen, whilst we wait, please look at and enjoy the beautiful full moon here in Chigasaki tonight.” I would definitely say it’s worth the trip out, but bear in mind the whole road system is pretty busy most of the summer there, and cars struggled to get anywhere for quite a time afterwards, especially with all the people walking back to the station.

Anyway - awesome night. Roll on next year!

Time for a Tyre Change

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 15:23:34 +0000

I’ve been the fairly proud owner of a basic GT Aggressor 2 ‘mountain’ bike for about seven years, and it’s provided me with plenty of hassle free and cheap transportation. I like two wheels. I also don’t mind getting my hands dirty doing work on it, but surprisingly, I’ve never had need to do any tyre work on it. Until now. Recently, it’s been obvious those seven year old tyres just aren’t what they used to be. They’re by a company called Cheng Shin Rubber and honestly, the tyres and the inner tubes have been great - but normal wear on the tread has left it a bit soft and thin, so it’s well past time for a tyre change.

Although they’ve been great tyres - never succumbing to a puncture even - they were slightly more suitable for off road than on, so in the wet, when cornering on tarmac I was always a little cautious - mainly as I came off once for being a bit overly ambitious on a very smooth cycle track in a typhoon.

I finally decided this week to get some new tyres on the bike, some new inner tubes and move over to slicker, more commuter type tyres. After asking around, I plumped for the Maxxis Detonator. Now, I don’t know who does marketing for Maxxis, but really, a name from the same general area as ’explosion’ for something which is to be filled with air?

Naming aside, it’s a great tyre - simple to fit and in the brief piece of testing I gave it it was a complete change from the rumble of the CSTs - basically because it’s a real road tyre. Cornering, breaking and everything feels much better now, so all in all I’m very happy with them.

For the record, I also picked up some Schwalbe inner tubes.

Word of The Day: Eschatology

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:42:14 +0000

Eschatology |ˌeskəˈtäləjē|
noun
The part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind.

ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from Greek eskhatos ‘last’ + -logy .

I got that from the Apple Dictionary (New Oxford American English). There’s other results from reference.com and so on.

I saw the word whilst reading Microserfs before. Surely there’s a business plan positively dying for this word?

City of Heroes, no more.

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 12:01:47 +0000

Just a short post on this - after three and a half years, I’ve finally unsubscribed to the MMORPG City of Heroes’ a grinding level game. I only made it to level 32 with my top character.

alt=“City of Heroes - Obaka lives (but not soon)” caption=“City of Heroes - Obaka lives (but not soon)”

Don’t misunderstand; I think it’s a great game, and would encourage people to go and try it out, whether or not you’re of the super hero inclination. It looks nice, plays well, and most of the other people online are fairly civil and accommodating, which is an absolute revelation after years of playing Counter Strike. Part of my problem has always been that being here in Japan, the population density in my evening was low, as the roaring lion’s share of players are in North America and to a lesser extent, Europe. That means that picking up teams or even partners for missions wasn’t easy when I was on, except at the weekend, which has increasingly become family time.

I would say I really enjoyed it for the first two and a bit years, then I would only play a bit now and again, and last month I just decided to cut my losses, or at least my subscription fee, and cancel it. I had about six characters I would play with because I was more into trying out all the different powers than advancing much higher. Ultimately, in 42 months, I burned 544 hours on it. For stats freaks, and as an example, I clocked up only 18 hours in the last year. Still, that’s an absurd amount of time when I think about it.

So that’s where I am. I won’t be going to WoW, or EVE or any other pay as you go game per se, I’ll be spending what little gaming time I have on shorter term completion projects like console games, solo or co-op, and the odd DS game.

alt=“City of Heroes brawl” caption=“City of Heroes brawl”

Sea Bus to Kasai Rinkan

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 12:34:40 +0000

Today is a national holiday over here - National Foundation Day if the feeling takes you.

It’s not a cheap jaunt at 1,500 yen per person, one way, but on balance, especially given the sunset run coming back, it was worth it. Kasai Rinkan is quite a decent park, but it seems to be suffering from multiple personalty disorder. On one hand it has some very nice wooded areas, picnic areas and nice walking trails, like a real park, then it has a small aquarium, which we went to which was also a nice touch, but then it has a huge ferris wheel with some other minor ‘attractions’, which, given the fact that it’s a stone’s throw from Disney Land is a bit odd. That said, the park is free to enter and the rides cost, pay per play.

On the whole I really like Kasai Rinkan, with the only real downside being the terrible options for food: McDonalds, a tiny ramen place and back-of-van food, which whilst fine for a snack, wont keep you going a whole day. Our advice: take a bento or a full-on picnic.

We had a good look around the aquarium, which isn’t bad for it’s size, and did have some medium sized tuna in as part of a campaign, and some small penguins as park of another exhibit which was quite good - another 700 yen for entry fee though.

For us it was great to give our daughter space and time to run in some sunshine and fresh air, test her sea legs on her first boat - a test she passed with flying colours - and let he see some real fish for a change. Also a bit of a first - a day out on a national holiday to a park where it wasn’t at all busy. I guess everyone was at Disney or on the slopes.

明けましておめでとうございます 2008

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 05:17:44 +0000

明けましておめでとうございます 2008, or Happy New Year. Another year looms upon us like a great looming thing. Overall, I thought 2007 was pretty good, so I think I’m about ready to kick 2008 around for twelve months, and see how that feels.

See you there.

No Beacon here...

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:41:53 +0000

I maintain a very minimal Facebook page which I check maybe twice a month now, as I hinted at a while ago. I’m just not the social network site kind of person. Facebook is kind of funky, but I still conduct most of my communication via IM and e-mail. Anyway, with Facebook’s [Beacon system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_(Facebook%29), and the fact that you opt out rather than opt in, I decided to go and opt out, though it’s not amazingly clear that you have opted out. No Beacon here…

Personally, as I’m not a zealot, this wont impact me much either, but I wonder if this is the beginning of the decline of Facebook. Or even if I’d notice. But hey, if you want to contact me, give it a try!

Bike trip to Nagano

Fri, 25 May 2007 14:12:15 +0000

Yesterday myself and a couple of friends (who are much more experienced bikers) went from Tokyo up to the mountains of Nagano. To get the stats out of the way, we did about 500Km from between 7am and about 9pm.

We jumped on the Chuo Expressway at Chofu and ran up to Chino City in Nagano Prefecture, biked around the mountains, having stopped at a faux English Garden for some (very tasty) gingerbread biscuits, then relaxing over a real Indian curry for lunch, before taking in some awesome vistas around the mountains, including the Venus Line run and Suwa.

After running up the mountains we then dropped down into the valleys where life is simpler, slower, and three guys coming through on bikes actually turns heads.

What was interesting is that as far as we could tell, the main vehicles in the area are small white Suzuki mini-vans. Anyway, when we got a little confused on the twisting mountain roads between tiny, almost stereotypical rice fields, the men who seemed to be patrolling in these vans were very happy to help us out.

One thing I wont go into details on is the ‘Summer only’ road. Yes. That was interesting.

I managed to take a few photos at stops, and though they don’t capture the fun, they should, I hope hint at some of the beautiful scenery we saw along the way. As before, the weather was fantastic as you can see in a few of those shots; even up high in the mountains it never got cold or wet.

The way back wasn’t too bad either; the Chuo was relatively clear, and the Dangozaka service station was relatively empty meaning the run back was smooth, without any jams.

Bottom line: a great trip, maybe even better than the first one, and a big driver for me to actually organise one or two of my own one day trips over the Summer, in spite of what will be blistering weather!

2026 Trips to Shiga Kogen

Two books to download / purchase

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 12:05:29 +0000

The ever useful and interesting Boing Boing over the holiday season. Both are under Creative Commons, and are ‘free’ downloads, but feel free to pay for a copy if you like them! They are tech-lawyer Lawrence Lessig’s “Code v2”, and Peter Watts’ “Blindsight”.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Mirai the Great! — 2006-12-20

Hey Got Mac OSX.4.6 working on my ThinkPad. Using it right now. :) A bit unstable but kinda nice. Boy Mac has changed since the days. It’ll take me a while to refamilar myself. Need to figure out how to change to a Japanese keyboard. Where is everything!!!! !@#@$#%%$^!

gotta go

Mirai the Great! — 2007-03-09

ahahaa….you’s white people crack me up!

First Bike Tour

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 11:20:14 +0000

Yup, I’m very happy to say that today I got rid of the ‘chalk marks’ on the tyres of my bike on my first real bike tour. Myself and a couple of friends took a day off and did a run through Kanagawa and Shizuoka Prefectures.

We met up near Chofu in western Tokyo at about 8am, and headed off, mainly along the Chuo Expressway as Route 20, until we got to Otsuki, turning to Route 139, stopping for a bite to eat (and the infamous soft cream) before getting off the Chuo, and getting into the real riding - our first destination was Gotemba Gogome on the side of Fuji-san (the 5th and final road access point) via the ‘Subaru Line’ then back down and off to Kawaguchiko town for some lunch, before what turned out to be the best section of the day, running twisties through villages and valleys around Ashigawa (Road 36) before getting back on the Chuo and heading home.

All in all it was a fantastic day, with fantastic weather. In those few moments of being stationary, I also managed to take some pictures! I’m looking forward to another tour out, and yes, I’m very happy I decided to go with a 400cc bike instead of the 250cc I was thinking about!

Kamakura Beach Party '06

Mon, 14 Aug 2006 13:01:11 +0000

Just a reminder that the Kamakura Beach Party ‘06 will be this Saturday (19th). It ’s a great day at the beach with live music, lots of beer and food, and to top it all, it’s all for a good cause - the Christina Noble Foundation. There’s an e-mail version of the flier with a map below, so have a look. Also, the ‘Rocking Buddha’ image was done by old friend Rudolf, so thanks again for that.

Or take a look at the web page of one of the organisers at BrentoLeary.com.

CB400 Super Four

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 00:31:18 +0000

After a couple of years on my old faithful 50cc Zoomer, last Friday I took delivery of a new Honda CB400 Super Four bike, and very nice it is too. It had always been a bit of a goal to have a ‘real’ bike, and this one really doesn’t disappoint at all. Then again, I wont be able to afford a new one any time soon, so I’m hoping it’s as reliable as people say.

In the few days I’ve had it I’ve only notched up 60Km, but it feels like a nice smooth ride, but with enough grunt to be able to get around Tokyo very nicely. I suppose more importantly I feel a bit safer on it in traffic than I did the Zoomer, but that’s certainly no slight against that bike, that’s just the nature of city riding. Then again, being a rather heavy person the 400cc engine seems a bit more sprightly.

Anyway, here’s a quick picture:

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Dylan — 2007-01-18

I’m thinking of buying a Honda 400 Super Four. It is a “grey” import and seems to be in very good condition - almost new. Would you recommend the bike for commuting and the occasional blast into the country? What about spare parts (I live in South Africa)?

graham — 2007-01-27

I’d definitely recommend the bike if it’s in decent condition. I do my short commute (about 10km round trip) as well as a lot of short runs around Tokyo and find it a nice balance between a bit of speed and power, but maneuverable in traffic. I;ve also done a couple of tours (about 250Km in a day, cruising small roads, and expressways at up to 120Km/h, and had no issues. In Japan parts for these are very cheap, so whilst you may pay shipment, there’;s probably lots of places you can get them because the bikes are so popular.

Joe Micallef — 2007-02-09

Hi there About 3 years ago I bought a CB400 super four 1992 model in Malta which is a Japanese Export machine. Recently I wanted to change some parts which I could not find easily in Malta or in Europe. Could you tell me from where in the world I can get spares either original or imitation for my bike. I trust you would help me in this and thank you in advance.

Regards Joe

graham — 2007-02-13

I think the easiest place is Japan ;) . However, I think there are some biker site on the web which sell parts. If a Google search fails to turn some up, you can try Honda directly, or post the part numbers. I can’t promise too much assistance myself right now as I’m a bit pushed for time of late, but if I can help out, I’ll try.

HUS34 — 2008-03-18

Hi there,

I am interested in buying a CB400 SF or a CB500. I’m not able to find anything here in the area. I live in the Caribean and am not able to find anything. not even in the US. I hope you guys can help me out. Do you guys know a website where i can buy a bike online and ship it over. I know a lot o people buying cars from Japan here on the island they might have some space in the container to ship it. Thanx in advance for your help.

Alexander

Mini-Z Cars!

Wed, 03 May 2006 21:33:45 +0000

Basically, when you have a bunch of techies, stick them in the middle of Tokyo, mere minutes from Akihabara, it’s inevitable that they’ll get up to all manner of things. Indeed we have. Frequently. Some of these things actually have to do with technology too. If you a tech-minded funster, then Tokyo is such a great place to live.

It’s not often that I get swept up in the mania in our team at the office for whatever is doing the rounds: for MMORGs, last year it was Guild Wars, recently it’s been EVE Online both of which I missed out of through, well, just not being too bothered.

However, when a co-worker we’ll call “DG” and another we’ll call “SMC” started bringing in their Mini-Z radio controlled cars I was intrigued because I’d always wanted an RC car but thought they were too expensive or too big. Also, I love taking things to pieces. Sometimes, I put them back together.

To cut a long story short, I finally bought a small green Mini Cooper S by Kyosho from RCParadise in Akiba.

The models really are tiny - 4 AAA batteries, a motor, gearing, suspension, RC unit and all that, crammed into a body barely 14cm long. With this coming from a Japanese manufacturer, it comes with everything you need to get it running, but then you can upgrade virtually all of it, from a new body (about 1100yen), to new bearings , tyres, gears and even motors for a few hundred yen.

I’ve been running mine around the apartment a bit, but it’s even better fun in the basement carpark in this building, and since this week is Golden Week, a few friends are coming over with theirs to have a race (or more likely, a demolition derby) down there tomorrow.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

boxeschesser — 2006-05-06

Hello

If you race a lot, you will need lots of upgrades (or spare parts), too. The plastic chassis will break on many spots… But its fun to race with friends

graham — 2006-05-15

Hi B, Actually, just after I read your comment I was in the basement carpark, and after an amazingly poor piece of steering, drove my Mini into a concrete wall, after which it started making an ominous grinding noise. It turned out somehow one of the teeth n the motor gearing had snapped off! I had a spare, but it looks like it more part purchasing time!

Mike — 2006-07-30

herman — 2006-08-04

hey if you’re still in tokyo japan, i suggest going to the ars circuit… here’s their site… mr. fumio san is the guy who runs the place…

http://www17.ocn.ne.jp/~acebrain/

it was lots of fun running with really good drivers… here’s my experience…

http://mini-zracer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21403&highlight=ars+circuit

you may have to register though… but like most things in life, it’s free http://mini-zracer.com

graham — 2006-08-17

Still in Tokyo. I’ll check it out. It should hopefully be better than the race a few friends and I had last month which turned into a demolition derby between about seven Mini-R’s.

Takarazuka

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 14:30:32 +0000

Takarazuka is a theatre group, (though now almost a style of theatre in itself) which takes it’s name from it’s town of origin - Takarazuka - in Hyogo Prefecture. What differentiates Takarazuka, is that all of the roles are played by women. Stylistically, you might say it’s very ‘fairy-tale princess’ driven - lots of big frilly dresses, sequins and generally over-the-top performances. It also commands fanatical following from a mainly female fan base.

The production I went to see was the rather famous “Berusaiyu no Bara” (‘The Rose of Versailles’), allegedly based on some of the life of Marie Antoinette.

When you enter the Takarazuka theatre in Tokyo’s Yurakucho area, it’s all in theme - huge chandeliers, bentos being sold and adverts for every other production and TV show the actresses will be in. The first thing that will strike you is that not only will all the roles be played by women, but 99.9% of the audience are women too. I exchanged nods with the couple of other men in the cafeteria, both of whom were being led by their wives, and who were already making in-roads into some beers.

Since I’m probably only going to do this once, I was really pleased we got seats in the second row, although this is also kind of risky, as you see just how much make-up can be applied to human skin before it cracks.

To me, Takarazuka seems to have become one of those things where you don’t go and see a play/musical for the story-line, you go to see it for what it is - Takarazuka. The story-line was just pointless (really, Marie Antoinette as a nice fluffy person?), the costumes were huge and the general production values were about the same as most amateur dramatics shows; even the dancing was average, but then I must admit, it can’t be easy dancing in huge ballroom dresses which must’ve weighed more than I do. However, the producers know their audience, and they play to them 100%. I suspect that less than 5% of the audience were at their first Takarazuka - I suspect for many it’s a very regular thing.

Though I could follow most of the plot quite easily, I did get one bit wrong - I thought when Marie as a child speaks to her doll ‘Stefan’, I thought she was alluding to another character we were yet to see. Nope, she was indeed just chatting to her doll, though I was correct in my belief that Stefan would get a bigger role, and he makes another triumphant appearance just before Marie’s death. Don’t worry though, the plot really isn’t important here.

What it does well is it’s complete fairy-tale nature and melodramatic over acting. The famous death scene in the second half goes on and on for a few minutes. Poor Andre takes about ten bullets before he (she) finally slumps over a Parisian bridge (which wobbled as he/she did so, though whether that was due to poor construction or just the weight of the over-acting is difficult to say).

At this point I didn’t know whether to laugh or not, it was hilarious, but the woman next to me had her handkerchief out and was crying … Andoooreeeee … Osukaaaaa!

Like many of these kind of things, after you get over the ‘What the hell is going on?’ feeling from the first five minutes, and suspend disbelief a bit, you do actually start liking it, but just when you’re comfortable with the format, something odd happens.

Antoinette is executed, then her ghost ascends to heaven (unlikely but anyway), then, the stage is full of a lit stair case with can-can dancers coming down it… it’s hard to see where the plot goes then as there is a ten minute set of dance numbers featuring flamenco and more contemporary numbers.

In summary then, it is what it is, and it is worth doing just once, as long as you treat it as a musical revue, rather than a serious dramatic or musical production, as it likely isn’t. It is though something that is just as Japanese as Kabuki is (and that being an all male cast), and really should be on any ’to do’ list that has Kabuki on it. It’s probably the biggest piece of ‘cosplay’ (costume play) going.

And yes, I did nod off for a minute or two during one of the slower ‘plot explanation’ scenes, and was woken by women in big dresses spinning around not five metres from me!

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Sharon — 2006-06-24

Hi there. Rose of versailles was also my first takarazuka show back in 2001 and i agree some parts WERE quite boring if you didn’t understand a lot of japanese.

I think at the end of the production, Marie antoinette was just ascending the stairs to get executed. It wasn’t her ghost rising up to heaven.

graham / nanikore admin — 2006-06-25

Thanks for the comment Sharon.

I was actually surprised by the level of the Japanese; I thought it would be much harder than it was, but I think my problem was that I was trying to merge it with my knowledge of the French revolution, and undertandibly that wouldn’t work as Rose of Versailles is more of a fairytale than a historical drama. Also, the occassional sequences in Osaka dialect threw me a bit too!

That ending I admit I lost patience a little bit; it seemed so diconnected from the rest of the play. I suppose the question is whether I’d pay to see another!

Osukaaaaa…..Andoreeeeee!!

A Month Goes By.

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 23:38:47 +0000

It’s hard to believe I haven’t posted on here for a month. A lot of things have happened. I’ve been snowboarding twice - to Kiroro and Shiga Kogen, I’ve been busy at work, and I’ve been out and about a bit with the family. But no posts. To be fair, I just haven’t really had time to sit down and do much else than the above.

Sadly then, there has been no recounting the seven hours SMC and I spent in Shin Chitose airport in Hokkaido, sat in Mos Burger on my birthday playing GTA : Liberty City Stories on the PSP, reading books and generally hanging around, or SMC’s Pocari Sweat bottle failing the ‘dangerous liquid’ test in that weird machine which shines a blue light into a bottle and can somehow detect illegal materials, or how the airport security man then demanded SMC drink some of it.

There was also no report of the amazing meal LH and I had at the Prince Hotel in Shiga Kogen, where for the first time the food was actually good. The steak was real steak, the bread was fresh bread, and the beer was served in real paper cups. It also served as a flashback when we spied an authentic Street Fighter 2 Turbo arcade machine next to the lift on our floor.

Also, I must admit that I’ve bought the PSP version of Katamari, and am now playing it obsessively. I’m also planning to get a DS lite when they come out. Sad. Very sad.

Waxing the Board

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 08:34:06 +0000

I just got in from almost an hour and a half on the balcony tuning and waxing the boards so we can send them to Kiroro tonight, in time for next weekend’s three day trip.

Standing on a chilly balcony may not sound like fun, but it’s worth it, partly because maintaining the boards is important, but also because for some reason I quite like it; I think it’s fairly therapeutic - I get a bit of fresh air, listen to my iPod at loud volumes, and check up on my favourite hardware.

Waxing and ’tuning’ a snowboard isn’t too difficult, although I suggest that doing it well takes a lot more effort and practice than I can contribute. There are lots of guides on the web though.

Today then I spent a lot of time on my board, and more specifically, my edge. The board is six years old now, and has become something of a war-horse. The edges are scratched and burred a little, and despite regular cleaning and drying after use, I’ve noticed little rust pits appearing in a few places. I decided then to break out a fairly small gauge file and get some of the pits out that the little red rubber-and-sand block wont. That took a while, but the edge gleams now, it looks brand new.

Whenever I wax my board, it’s like a trip down memory lane. I can remember where I got pretty much all the marks on it: the gouge I got three days after I bought it in New Zealand, piling down Temple Basin, only to snag a rock barely below the surface of the snow. Fortunately we filled it with plastic quite well and I haven’t had any more issues with it. There’s also the scrape along the top side, where an out of control beginner slashed across behind me and I lunged out of the way, only for her to rip my rear binding strap off, and leave a small hole in my trouser bottoms. It might not sound good, but had the timing been any closer, I think we’d have both ended up in hospital with broken limbs.

So the boards are now done, and I can double-check the binding angles, put them in their bags, and the great people at Seven Eleven will hopefully make sure they get to Yamato/KuroNeko and off to Hokkaido. Roll on Friday.

Southern All Stars Live 3

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 11:15:16 +0000

It seems every other post here is about the Southern All Stars. Well, on December 30th (2005), we went to see them again at the Yokohama Arena, and again, they were absolutely fantastic. So, from having never seen them before, in the the second half of 2005, we saw them three times, each time in different settings: Rock in Japan Festival, the Tokyo Dome, and now at the Yokohama Arena.

Whilst the songs for the latter two were pretty similar, it was great (again) seeing them in a smaller venue, and from a different angle, to really appreciate the live show, and really, there aren’t many bands nowadays who can keep a place moving for three hours solid.

The question then might be why we saw two stadium gigs in a months, and the answer is because we applied for both dates in a kind of raffle, and their tickets sell out within a day usually, and so we were really pleased we actually got allotted two sets of tickets. Also, as I understand it, they often do their live shows at the end of the year.

St. Andrews Society Ball 2005

Sat, 19 Nov 2005 05:43:45 +0000

Last night we attended the 2005 St. Andrews Charity Ball at the Hilton in Shinjuku for the first time, and it was definitely one of the best nights out this year. A blend of Scots, semi-Scots (including me, as I’m a ‘half’ Scot), descendants and just people who like the Scottish culture of having a good time.

The night consisted of the presentation of, and address to, the Haggis, a great meal, some traditional dancing demonstrations, some arranged dancing, and a lot of free form drunken dancing.

Generally I think all of the 150 odd guests had a great time, though for me, the best bit was the several plates of haggis I could consume as it seems a lot of other people were put off by the description.

Dancing in a kilt though is not that easy as I learned at my wedding, but after a fair amount of the very tasty red wine on offer I found it was a little easier, though what it looked like from the side lines I don’t know.

What I do know is that at 2am, a crowd of kilt clad drunks staggering out of the hotel and trying to flag down taxis was definitely something to witness, and certainly cleared the taxi rank.

The night (along with others) is organised by the local St. Andrew Society, so if you fancy a bit of tartan and a few drinks it’s definitely the place to be.

5 on Slashdot

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 13:00:10 +0000

Just a geek note here, earlier this week I scored my first ‘5’ rating for a post on Slashdot. Apparently my post was ‘informative’. Read it here.

Sad, I know, but it’s been the kind of week where this ranks as an achievement!

Elves and X-Files

Sun, 21 Aug 2005 05:40:58 +0000

Friday night saw myself and a couple of friends at the Toho/Virgin cinema at Roppongi Hills for the all-night “Lord of the Rings - Extended Editions” run. Thirteen and a half hours from start to end. I have to say it was worth every minute of it, even though I have those editions on DVD.

I hadn’t seen The Fellowship of the Ring at the cinema though, as I somehow managed to miss it, so that was an added bonus. I did discover a couple of new things though: firstly that Orlando Bloom is as bad as I suspected he was, and secondly that throughout the night, the only time I nodded off was during Liv Tyler’s scenes, which could be some kind of clever subliminal filter.

That theory ties in with most of my Saturday and Sunday, as I’ve managed to damage my big toe rather badly, meaning I can’t walk very far, so I’ve decided to watch the whole of ‘The X-Files’ season two, which I think is beginning to effect my mind. That said, one of the best lines in the many years of the show, is in the episode ’ [Soft Light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_Light_(The_X-Files%29)' when Dr. Banton announces “They’ve been waiting to do the brain suck on me for years!” (that’s paraphrased). Indeed they have, sir, indeed they have.

Domesticity is Window Cleaning

Sun, 05 Jun 2005 13:09:09 +0000

You know when you’ve had a domestic weekend when you cook, clean the windows, re-pot your plants, vacuum and do some DIY in 48 hours. Unbelievable. Not five years ago I was involved in rioting in Central America, and here I am keeping house.

OK, smirking aside, the windows look great and plants have probably got a good twelve months of growing space in there, and seeing as they account for thirty percent of Tokyo’s oxygen producing plant life, it’s best not to mock them. The DIY was a rather tasteful TV stand from Muji, and points indeed to the folk who delivered it - they called in advance at 9am to make sure I was up and was greeted with my ‘is it war?’ voice which I use by default until my first cup of tea on a weekend morning. The 5 blocks of wood, casters and misc. bolts and alan keys turned up exactly sixty minutes later. I hear IKEA is coming to Japan, but who cares with Tokyu Hands, Loft and Muji? Hey, this thing turned up with all its parts, tools to put it together and instructions even I could follow.

Cleaning windows I admit is something of an perverse obsession. Not because I like doing George Formby impressions, or because of a humorous line of 1970’s British soft porn films, but purely because really dirty windows annoy me. It’s one of those things. Anyway, warm water, some soap and a little vinegar, and they look crystal clear now. Now I can enjoy my grey smog skyline with clarity.

It should also be stated that in the same 48 hours I levelled my main character in City of Heroes, earned my cape (yeah!) and got onto some new areas. I just wanted to put that into perspective.

Widescreen time

Tue, 31 May 2005 14:54:57 +0000

After 6 years of looking at my Toshiba 19" 4:3 ratio CRT TV, we finally bought a new TV this week - a Sharp Aquos 32" LCD TV. Certainly not cheap, but thanks to a 20% points discount it made us finally put up and buy a new one - and it was worth every hard earned yen!

It’s a beautiful screen, takes up less space, and is nicer to look at. But forget that - DVDs look fantastic on it - we watched The Matrix on it tonight, but that film isn’t exactly known for it’s colour scheme, so we put on Fellowship of the Ring, and quite frankly it looks like a different film - the picture was just amazing. Normal TV channels looked great too, both from analogue and digital transmissions, with the latter obviously looking much cleaner.

There are hundreds of settings and options to play with on the bilingual menu system, but we found the auto defaults were usually good enough. I also played SSX3 on my Playstation 2, and it looked amazing, but unfortunately, at that size, the PS2 resolution starts to show.

One pleasant and somewhat unexpected result is that the built-in speaker system is easily as good as my cheap Sony mini-system I usually use, maybe even clearer, so I might be able to save some cables there. Another saver is that since the TV has 4 inputs, I wont need the switch box I had before which should simplify everything!

On the whole, expensive, but definitely worth it, especially for me coming from such a low spec. level to this. All I have to do now is re-watch all my DVDs again!

Golden Golden Week

Wed, 04 May 2005 18:34:38 +0000

One thing Japan is blessed with is an insane amount of national holidays, which is great really. Currently, we’re part way through ‘Golden Week’ [GW], a collection of days (almost a week’s worth depending on how they fall) for various and sundry events. It really kicked off last Friday with ’ Midori no Hi’ (Green Day), but this week we have 3 days off: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday though a glance around town on Monday showed many people had headed out for the whole week, and I can’t blame them - the weather is fantastic.

Today we were just relaxing, but I hopped on the scooter, down to Akihabara to pick up a 512MB Memory Stick Duo for the PSP and was quite surprised by how many people were milling around - not buying, just wandering and looking. I suppose the pedestrianized streets (for the day) and an increasing number of new buildings and places to sit and chat make it quite attractive.

It’s a shame so many tech shops in ‘Electric Town’ have gone out of business, or moved, to be replaced by coffee shops, anime and manga shops, and even *normal* shops, and of course, the huge new office/apartment/convention centre which is almost finished. Ho hum.

Still, if you brave the back streets, there are still curiosities and deals to be had - my favourite today was a shop with over 50 Sun Cobalt 1U servers in varying states of functionality going for between 1000yen and 50,000yen. Not bad! Combine some with with the Cisco 4000 they had in the same shop, and it’s almost an office in a box!

Niseko - Feb. '05

Tue, 01 Mar 2005 15:07:09 +0000

As I mentioned before, this was the second trip to Niseko this year, and as usual, the 3 sides of the mountain all proved to be in great condition, and a fair challenge. During the whole trip I made very few runs on prepped slopes, with the lion’s share being on tree runs though high banks full of powder.

The single most abused course for me on this trip was the Super Course at Hirafu. It’s often overlooked, being a fairly steep valley with wooded sides down the back of the main run, and from the top, it doesn’t look very hospitable (it’s rated black diamond which doesn’t help it’s public image for many).

What this means in reality then is that powder just sits there and builds up so boarders can do huge powder runs on the sides, waist deep in fine powdered snow, charge through the trees into the valley proper, then shotgun down a short track to the rest of the resort lifts. There is a picture of the course here. I must have run that course a hundred times (probably more), and every single run has been different.

The weather was pretty good for most of the trip, with it snowing for 3 of the days, and the wind stayed low, which can be an issue on the Hirafu side. We even caught some sunshine! If you’re a fair-weather only kind of boarder or skier, then you might want to give Niseko a miss.

We also spent time on the Annupuri side of the mountain, but once again I never made it to Higashiyama - it’s a good set of courses, but not good enough for me to want to spend time there instead of the other two slopes.

Annupuri has a slightly gentler set of slopes than Hirafu, and they’re often wider, with sparse trees and lots of short chair lifts. I spent a bit of time running the jumps they’ve constructed in the middle of the lower slope and I think I might actually be getting better at them now - certainly I was hitting them with a lot more speed by the end of the day.

That said, Annupuri does have a great steep slope at the end of it’s main run for about 80m which is great for just barrelling down after the snow prep machines have run on it, otherwise it’s a seat-of-the-pants affair, where you might want to take it easy if your legs are a bit tired after the previous run from the snow fields at the top of the mountain which are steep, with fabulous powder, but often with virtually no visibility, which just adds to the fun.

Off the slopes we stayed at the Yamada Onsen Hotel again - they have fairly big warm rooms, and even though the breakfasts aren’t great, it’s pretty cheap and relaxed. It’s also next to the slope, so in the morning you can board virtually away from the door, and at night slide to in front of the same door, which is a real benefit if you’re a bit weary!

Over the last year, various Australian companies have bought into the Niseko area and so we’ve noticed an increase in nightlife (and English language menus), though we spent our evenings at our old favourite Jingis Kan yakinikuya, and the Yurt, just outside of Niseko village which serves all manner of Asian food. Personally, I quite like to see a few more people out there, because the numbers have definitely gone down in the five years I’ve been making the trip up there.

I have to say though that the chap I spoke to on the chair lift who said he’d been skiing for six years in Australia, but was having problems in Niseko as he’d never skied powder before definitely gets my sympathy.

The full set of photos are available here. Movies to follow soon.

2005 Trip to Niseko

R.I.P. Hunter S. Thompson

Mon, 21 Feb 2005 16:49:38 +0000

I think many were saddened today to hear that firebrand journalist and pundit Hunter S. Thompson took his own life on Sunday at his ranch in Colorado.

Thompson came to my attention via the ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ book and film, though in truth his strength lay in what he himself termed ‘gonzo journalism’, where the reporter becomes completely submerged, and a part of whatever he or she is covering.

In Hunter’s case, this was often sports with a side helping of drugs, and he is often referred to as a ‘counter-culture hero’. Check out some of his work at gonzo.org. Love him or hate him, he pushed the envelope, and the world is that little bit more pretentious without him in it.

Fear and loathe no more.

(BBC obituary is here.)

Portable Rollins

Wed, 02 Feb 2005 00:25:35 +0000

I’ve been reading ’ The Portable Henry Rollins’ on and off for a few months now - it’s a compendium of extracts from several of his books, published in one volume. As it’s essentially a series of diary entries, letters and short stories, you can pick it up and put it down easily. Rollins is a heavy writer so there’s weight in this book, it’s not about happiness, it’s about pain and loneliness in a crowd. It’s also strangely compelling. If you’ve never read Rollins, then get this as a primer. If you already have a couple of Rollin’s books, then still get this, it’s a great compilation.

Niseko Update

Sun, 30 Jan 2005 23:27:50 +0000

There’s been a lack of updates here, so sorry for that. it’s been a busy week all told, but let’s just recap those four days in Niseko last weekend: fantastic.

The weather was pretty good the whole time, except for when fog settled in on the Monday morning, yet it was still probably the best Niseko trip so far. Really, the powder was deep and plentiful, if a little heavy, and the great thing about Niseko is that there’s something for everyone, of all styles. I spent hours on unprepped courses at Hirafu, before going over the top to Annupuri and doing some speed runs, and a few tree runs down that side of the mountain. Excellent. It snowed for pretty much the whole time we were there, and despite Niseko’s famous rapid change weather, it was fantastic to spend whole days on the slopes.

Off the slope, we stayed at the Yamada Onsen hotel again, and went to the Mongolian Yurt in the evenings for some great food. It’s moved location, but now offers a free minibus to pick you up from your hotel and drop you back again. We also spent a bit of time in GengisKhan yakiniku, which is just amazing.

We also met quite a few Australians, and it seems that an Oz company has bought a lot of real-estate in the area, bought into the chair lift company, and Australia Airlines now run Cairns to Sapporo direct flights. Apparently Niseko is being heavily pushed down there as the ‘Summer’ ski resort of choice.

Anyhow, pictures and a movie are here.

Niseko a go-go!

Sun, 23 Jan 2005 14:41:09 +0000

We’re here in Niseko where the weather today is ‘character building’. This photo was taken when we got halfway down and could actually see further than our gloves. グラハム :)

ニセコは？

Sun, 23 Jan 2005 14:39:26 +0000

Errant Posts

Mon, 03 Jan 2005 23:26:41 +0000

Actually, just as I was reading this blog, I realised all the things I don’t put on it. Of course, that’s mainly because they’re mundane and dull morsels of info that no-one is interested in.

For example, just before Xmas, we got our new dining table from Harumi Design in ‘Toriton Square’, and it’s great. It feels great to have a dining table back after 5 years of food off a low table in front of the TV. I think in part this is because when I was growing up, our kitchen dinner table was a community focus point for long conversations before, during and after the meal, so it feels good to have that back, and I’m very happy with the solid oak one we chose. It easily makes my ‘Best of 2004’ purchase list, which will be another post, maybe later this week.

Example 2; I went back to work today to have an Amazon package waiting for me! This is great, I now have the last series of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, but more importantly, Series 1 and 3 of ‘Black Books’ a hilarious comedy from the UK’s Channel 4. (If you’re wondering, I got series 2 as a gift, which is what got us into it).

Oh yes, and it snowed very heavily in Tokyo on New Year’s Eve, and I got caught out on my scooter going through 4 inches of snow - not fun on a 50cc! Still, the Zoomer’s chunky tyres were great - I definitely had sympathy for the Udon delivery chap on his old scooter with bald tyres.

OK, pointless post has finished. Please move along. Nothing to read here … for a while.

Shiga Kogen Trip

Tue, 28 Dec 2004 01:01:38 +0000

We’ve just got back from three great days snowboarding at Shiga Kogen in Nagano Prefecture. We were getting a bit concerned that there wouldn’t be enough snow given yet another late starting season, but when we arrived we saw there was easily enough snow over much of the mountain. Not perfect to be sure, a few patches of ice, and the odd twig poking through the snow cover, but generally conditions were fine. I’ve posted a few pics in the misc section of the brightblack gallery for 2004.

It was good to get back on the board, and even though the body ached a little bit at night, it was great to spend some time outside doing some great, fast runs down the mountain. It wasn’t very busy at all, which I suspect was a result of people having pretty much given up on the December ski and snowboard in Honshu. Sad really, but it does have to be said that it seems to be getting later and later.

Now that I’m back in boarding mode, I need to organize more trips!

Currently playing in iTunes: Rain Man by Eminem

Super Freak Out

Mon, 06 Dec 2004 10:55:38 +0000

I’m rather embarrassed that I didn’t post this earlier. Last Friday was FreakOut 3: Super Freak Out. If you haven’t attended one, you really should.

Basically it’s this: a bunch of artists and musicians get together for a night and put on a great show. Simple right! The band Sonica are the anchor act, playing a jam like fusion of funk soul and jazz, and in between sets they encourage open mic jamming, and audience participation drums and percussion. That’s not all though - there was Kazu, the mime artist, and local artist group ‘Gravity Free’ who did some great artwork whilst the band played and Goro came in to do a didjeridu (spelling from website) set, which was just incredible. It was a great atmosphere, with everyone relaxing on the comfy furniture, chatting to new friends and generally relaxing. Hopefully some people were enjoying some of the visuals I was helping get on the to big wall projectors. It’s based at Super Deluxe in Roppongi, and no sooner had we all woken up on Saturday afternoon, than mention was being made of another gig next February, which we’re all hoping will be even better.

Giro snowboarding helmet

Thu, 25 Nov 2004 15:10:51 +0000

As a bit of a gift to myself following our recent move, I’ve purchased for myself a snowboard helmet. In the 5/6 years I’ve been ‘boarding this is the first helmet I’ve ever had, so I’m not sure if I’m tempting fate or not. Either way, it’s a Giro S4 in matte black. Fits well (most important factor in any snowboarding piece of kit), and has a few removable bits to adjust temperature. Looking forward to getting on the slopes!

Son Of Freakout

Thu, 16 Sep 2004 10:26:38 +0000

Last Saturday saw a bit of a new experience when my friend Ryo and myself “VJ’d” the ‘Son of Freakout’ night being held in Super Deluxe near Roppongi. It was a funky night of jam music from Sonica, live art by Ponzi, some performance art and general chilling out.

The visuals were mainly psychedelic video mixing and visualisations pumped out the back of the PC I dragged across Tokyo. I’d never done this kind of thing before, and it was all thrown together in a couple of days, but generally it all went well - with the exception of someone spilling beer all over the video mixer, which meant we only had the computer for a while as it dried out! I even managed to gt all the photos into the mix that I was hoping to.

I have to say that it was a lot of fun, and hopefully we’ll be doing it again in December at ‘Super Freakout". Next time though I’ll be sure to remember to take more equipment, as we were missing a couple of cables we hoped would be there, but weren’t (so next time we can get those snowboard DVDs in the background!).

Typhoon Beach Party

Mon, 30 Aug 2004 14:22:07 +0000

It rained. It really rained.

As I mentioned a while ago, last Saturday was the Kamakura Beach Party. Unfortunately, a typhoon rolled into town and swept the beach. However, if anyone thinks this may have brought the whole thing to a standstill, they’d be wrong. The music played, the lights in the beach huts stayed on and the rum and cokes had just enough coke in them that you couldn’t taste it.

Let’s face it, if people are going to make their way down to the beach in a typhoon, they’re pretty serious about having a party, and that was definitely felt - the rain added to fun, as we dodged the leaks in the roof, and the bands made sure all their gear was dry. Over 150 people turned up, and I for one had a great time. Make-a-Wish Japan also made some money and when you can have a good time, and make some money for children so they can have a good time, then that’s a pretty decent day out in my opinion.

I can’t wait for next year, but maybe then, I’ll move out of that comfy deck chair I was in a little more often…

Hanabi

Sun, 15 Aug 2004 02:16:31 +0000

Well, if there’s one thing Japan does better than any other country I’ve been to, then it would be Hanabi (fireworks). Last night saw an amazing fireworks show over Kachidoki and the bay area, a 90 minute demonstration of state-of-the-art fireworks. It really was amazing. The organisers can go home knowing they did a great job, and I’m sure the thousanbds who watched it had a great time.

We, however, made an error. We decided to go to an organised hanabi party on the 40th floor of Roppongi Hills, paying 3000yen each for the view, and a ‘free’ running buffet and beer. This should have been all we needed.

We knew something was wrong as soon as we arrived. We were too early? Allegedly. The doors didn’t open till 6 and we got there at 5.30. However, given that the only way to know the time was on the internet as the brochure which arrived with the tickets had no time information on it, we weren’t alone - about 20 other people were milling around in the foyer, being told by 8 ‘staff’ to go away and come back later. We didn’t - it was free air conditioning in that foyer.

Anyway, one couple finally got annoyed with watching the staff just chatting, and sending e-mail on their keitai and asked to be let in. Finally we were, and in a cramped lift, we were taken to the 40th floor to a kind of bare room with a few tables. So everyone is looking for the best place to watch the hanabi, until one of the staff says this is the waiting area, and the venue is on the other side of the building…so why were we waiting in the foyer? Anyhow, finally we got in the room proper, which looked like a cross between a very small matsuri (festival) and a hospital. Seats had been laid out for those who could get them, but as there were only about 250, and the organisers said nearly 900 people would come, I expected a squeeze.

As it turned out, this was not the case. I think 300 people at most were there, and the buffet food wasn’t near fresh, but at least the beer was cold. As I mentioned the hanabi looked great - at least it did when the press photographer got out of the way of everyone (I had to complain to the manager in the end). Sadly though the atmosphere was zero, aside from a small child shouting ‘finish now finish now’ after about an hour of looking out the window, which felt more like watching a TV.

Final analysis: we had an OK time due entirely to the hanabi and the drinks, but we both agreed we’d never do another hanabi party inside like that - certainly it was cool, but there was no feeling to it. As for the organisers - Academy Hills - I’d never go to one of their functions again, it was poorly set up, and before the hanabi started, almost everyone was complaining about something.

After a bit of a let down, you need to relax and regroup, so I thought we’d try a small bar I’d seen on my way to the gym, but had never got round to checking out. It’s on the 246 near Sangenjaya - The Second Flow (Cafe and Diner) - 03 5430 2303. It’s got a really relaxing feel to the place, a projector screen of the olympic coverage and a great selection of drinks and food by decent staff. Personally, I recommend the banana milk. The place was also doing a cross promotion with a small t-shirt design company EDiT, which looked very cool too, take a look.

Kamakura Beach Party 2004

Sat, 14 Aug 2004 11:55:51 +0000

Just a quick advanced post to those who are interested in going to the 2004 Kamakura Beach Party on August 28th (Saturday). I’ve been speaking to event organiser Brent o’Leary a lot over the last few days, and the flyers are now ready, and pretty much all the information is on the website.

The Kamakura Beach Party is an annual charity event, with all proceeds going to Make-a-Wish Japan and also just happens to be a great live event down on the beach. So get your t-shirt/bikini/umbrella and get down there.

Tickets are available on the door (men: 3500yen, ladies 2,500yen).

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Rudolf — 2004-08-16

Alright, looks nice, the flyer does. Can you send me a few copies?

Summer Sonic 2004

Sun, 08 Aug 2004 02:00:40 +0000

Yesterday was day 1 of the 2004 Summer Sonic music festival in Chiba. It was a great line up and is similar to an urban Fuji Rock festival, as half of the stages are indoor at the Makuhari Messe the rest outdoor in the Chiba Marine Stadium, or on the beach. In an added twist, the two-days are swapped with a twin venue in Osaka, so Chiba’s Saturday bands play Sunday in Osaka.

We spent a couple of hours checking out some of the smaller bands at the indoor stage, but they weren’t as interesting as the smaller bands from FujiRock. Then we headed out to the sweltering Marine Stadium to watch some of the bigger bands.

Pennywise were on when we arrived, and they did an OK set. I was looking forward to seeing The Darkness, but unfortunately they cancelled earlier that morning so the organisers got another band in to play - old British rockers The Wildhearts, who I haven’t seen live for about a decade, but I have to say that even though they’d only landed at Narita a few hours before, and minus a lot of their own stage gear they actually did a damn good set.

Inaba (one half of the group B’z) did a great set too - the guy is pretty good on stage, and mixed with rock and more blues influenced songs. Next up were Canadian band Sum41 who I’d never heard of, but to their credit they did a pretty good set, with some good festival music. Then the first of the ‘headlines’ came on - Avril Lavigne - but I was a bit disappointed - it all sounded and looked like it was straight off the album to me - I’m not saying it wasn’t good, but it was a bit formulaic, especially for a festival.

Finally the day’s headliner came on - Green Day, and they didn’t disappoint - a rocking 90minutes of fun and good music and stage work. They did many of their top songs, and now just from the last ‘Warning!’ album. They also got a guy out of the crowd to play guitar on one of the songs. All in all, it was a great set, complete with a couple of fun cover versions, ending on Queen’s ‘We are the Champions’.

The venue itself was very good indeed, but suffered from a complete lack of decent signposting and staff who knew where things were, but overall summersonic is a great festival to check out. Is it better than FujiRock? Maybe not - it feels more ‘corporate presentation’ than festival, but it’s proximity to Tokyo (and Osaka) make it a pretty simple way to see quite a few bands over a weekend.

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Tohoku Ben — 2004-08-13

Hey - I checked out the first day of SS as well. Pretty much agree. Avril was a disappointment - Zero crowd interaction; she didn’t seem to have a care of where she was or who she was playing too. Was basically already headed off stage by the last cymbal crash. Who knows, maybe she was having a bad day, but I think fans expected more. The All American Reject who opened on the Marine Stadium were GREAT. Good tunes, good repoire with the crowd; impressive. As was Sivertide. Not sure if you caught these guys or not, as you said you headed to Pennywise; we left Pennywise and headed indoors, and just caught the last tune of ST. REALLY impressed. SAD SAD SAD that I missed their set. Kind of straight ahead, 70’s style rock. What I heard reminded me of the Black Crowes first album (in the sence of classic, olderstyle rock). Solid singer, rock/blues riffed guitarist, and they don’t even have a full length album out. They were almost as excited as the crowd; singer thanked them all afterwards, brought out the previous band and thanked them, then came back onstage 3 times while the crew was taking down just to video tape the audience, toss some EP CD’s to the crowd, then finally to toss his vest into the crowd. Check out silvertidemusic.com - looking foward to their album.

Yes, was also d’pointed that the Darkness in all of their falsetto-hood cancelled as well - they would have been good to see.

Greenday was impressive as well. I’ve liked their hits, but wouldn’t consider myself a CD buying fan. They level-up a few notches for sure though - GREAT interaction with the crowd; smooth set. To hear the whole stadium singing, and then chatting OOOOOOOooooooo for the encore was something else. The guy-out-of-the-crowd-stand-in guitar’s song-ending guitar jump was classic, and finishing with Queen’s WRTChampions, and then fireworks; will see them live again if given the chance.

graham (nanikore) — 2004-08-13

Hi Ben,

Thanks for the posts!

Yeah, the temperature has been pretty hot this summer. I’m hoping for a matching cold winter for the snowboarding, but I’m not sure if it follows. I’ve been using the fan where possible, but the humidity is what seems to get me.

I’m wondering if my electricity bill goes up when they do some more checks on the powerstations and realise they all need rebuilding. I was pleased actually at SummerSonic that I didn’t get any sunburn for being out all day (factor 50 and a good hat!). Can’t wait till the end of the month for the Kamakura Beach Party.

Graham

Bicycle light

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 04:27:22 +0000

Last week I left the front light on my bicycle, and overnight it went ‘missing’ (OK, it was stolen), so as I spend a fait bit of time cycling at night, I decided to get a new one - I stuck with the same manufacturer though, and bought a new 5-LED Cat Eye model. I have to say, it’s like having a searchlight on the front of the bike. Excellent.

Tomorrow I’m also taking my bicycle in for a long overdue service - mainly for the brakes which need recabling. I usually look after my bike myself, making adjustments as required, degreasing/oiling and all that, but after nearly 4 years, I thought I’d get it serviced at the local bike otaku place, called ‘Guava Jelly’. No idea where they got the name, but it’s a pretty good shop. I’m also looking into getting a little computer which calulates speed, distance etc.. More news as I get it!

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neal — 2004-08-03

Somehow I now have two bikes both of which need some urgent care and attention. Will need to sort at least one of them out so I can make the most of the British summer…. ah when it gets here! So much for the regular exercise! Might do the same and treat myself to a service at the bike shop and then I’ll have no excuses.

Disney hospital

Sun, 11 Jul 2004 16:07:50 +0000

As I mentioned in the much longer post above, this is the happy place you can recover in DisneyLand. I should say though that it was well staffed, and very professionally run…it’s just looks depressing.

Back from the past - martial arts

Sat, 08 May 2004 21:48:54 +0000

Well, after over 4 years, and an extra 10 kilos in weight, I went back to karate on a formal basis today. The martial arts are back in my life!

I used to train in the UK in Shotokan karate, under a great instructor called Dave Thomson in Laceby and Aiden Trimble in Nottingham whilst I was in University. That was then. This is now.

I’ve now joined a small, new local club though the difference is that this is Kyokushin karate which has slightly different moves and stances, so it’s going to be an interesting summer!

All I need to do now is get rid of that extra 10Kg.

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Krummy — 2004-05-10

Lay off the Bloomberg junk food and do aerobics 4 times a week…or swallow a tapeworm :-0

graham — 2004-05-10

I tried the tapeworm, but it just died after a night at Barbacoa. They just don’t make parasite’s like they used to. As for the BBG kitchen, the company is doing a good job of keeping me out of there nowadays…

Cycle Bits

Sat, 01 May 2004 02:23:38 +0000

One thing I like to do whenever I get chance is to go out on my mountain bike, pounding the streets and parks of Tokyo. I ride an aging GT Aggressor 2, and this week I’ve replaced a couple of minor bits - I got a new front light - a Cat Eye, and a new lock. The light was simply because my old one (also a CatEye) had pretty much fallen to pieces. The new lock was due to the old key lock getting a bit worn, and I was getting worried about coming back to my bike and not being able to unlock it! All I need to now is to take it into the shops to get my brakes tightened up a bit.

Free Running

Wed, 21 Apr 2004 23:30:24 +0000

It’s not often that I see a documentary on a plane flight which really impresses. However, ‘Jump London’ was definitely one of them - it’s a look at the growing activity of ‘free running’ - urban running fused with skateboard like tricks and angles - but on foot. To see what I mean, have a look at this site - Urban Free Flow. I’d love to be able to do anything like this, it really looks great - check out this movie here.

I can’t help thinking this would be great in the concrete obsessed urban areas of Japan - does anyone know of any Tokyo Free Running groups?

In the UK!

Sat, 17 Apr 2004 02:44:32 +0000

Well, been back in the UK for about a week or so, and it’s been a pretty busy week. We spent a couple of days in London, doing a bit of the tourist thing - went on the London Eye which I have to say was very well organised and run, and does indeed give a great view of London. (For those who have no idea what I’m on about, the London Eye is the world’s largest ferris wheel at 135m).

I’ve been based up here of my home town of Grimsby, enjoying Britain’s best fish and chips and relaxing in some very pleasant sunshine. I even went to have a look at the sandy beach of Cleethorpes - although a jacket to brave the North Sea wind is still required, though the beach is actually very clean now.

We also went down to Nottingham, my old university city, and along with some friends , we ‘killed’ a few hours watching a new British film “Shaun of the Dead” a comedy set during a Zombie attack. It really is hilarious, and if you get chance, go and see it, or rent the DVD.

So, soon back to London and a Sunday flight to Japan…

Sydney Pics

Sun, 04 Apr 2004 02:16:23 +0000

OK, I’ve managed to select a few pics from my trip to Sydney if anyone’s interested. They’re here. For the first time, I’ve lmited the larger size pics to 1280*960 to save a bit of disk space, so if for some reason anyone wants a full size (5Megapixel) version, let me know. I have to say that even cut down the image quality of the new camera is obvious - to me anyway.

2004 Trips to Sydney

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neal — 2004-04-06

Cool! Some nice pics. Glad to hear you got back safe and sound - just in time for the earthquake anyway! Will have to add Australia to the list of places to see…. aahh well in my dreams anyway! ;-)

Cheers

Neal

Out and About in Sydney

Sun, 28 Mar 2004 22:58:34 +0000

Well, I’ve been here in Sydney, Australia for a week now, and in the small amount of time I’ve spent outside of the office, it seems to be a really nice place. The food is excellent with some of the best steaks I’ve had in a long time - my only criticism is that a lot of places seem to close early compared to Tokyo - but maybe that’s unfair as Tokyo has about 10 times the population.

Yesterday though I went for a long walk - I started around the Opera House which is 5 minutes from the hotel. It’s a very impressive structure, though I was surprised that it isn’t actually white, but a series of creamish tiles. However, it really is beautiful, both by day and (I found out later) by night.

After taking a load of photos around it I went for a walk around the botanic gardens, which are more like a huge park, and is free to wander around. As a visitor from Tokyo, it was nice to see so much grass and trees, without concrete and tarmac around them. They have an amazing selection from all over the world, including some bat forests, palms, roses and some trees so rare they’re in a cage.

I also took a look around some museums and a few more parks before checking out some of the shops - it’s not that cheap here for some things, even compared to Tokyo, and the price for consumer electronics would even scare the British. My new digital camera was almost double the price here…

To get a taste of a city though, you need to get out of the tourist areas, and here Sydney seems to do OK too - the financial district (which, OK, is right next to the tourist area) is pretty relaxed, with a few nice bars and such. 24 hour convenience shops do take a bit of searching for, but there’s a 24hr diner right on Circular Quay which does a decent coffee at all hours.

Bridge Climb

Sun, 28 Mar 2004 05:29:26 +0000

One thing I thought I’d do whilst I was here is the bridge climb - literally you climb up one of the arches on the Sydney Bay Bridge, all the way to the top where the flag-poles are - 138 metres above the sea. It’s not cheap - AU$150-250 depending on time - but I actually thought it was worth it - over 3 hours of time spent, with a good hour and a half or more up on the bridge itself.

You set out from one of the towers, then climb up some stairs to the arches and then walk up some steps on them, cross the span at the top, and then come back to the start point, but on the arch on the other side. The weather was great when I did it, and the view of the bay and the city is spectacular. Although you can’t take cameras up, they will take some pictures which you can buy later on - it’s not a cheap thing, but if like me you’re probably on going to be down here once, it’s a good memory to have.

Oddly, the only bit where I checked for structural safety was right at the beginning when you’re on some planks about 50m above the road and then some grating over the water. Once you’re on the arches, it’s like being on a hill. The guides were pretty good, and you’re kitted out with all the equipment and a safety line, so there’s no reason to fear. On the way back, coming down the stairs between the rail and roadways, I got lucky and experienced a commuter train whizzing past about 5 feet from me…and when you look down through the grating you can see the sea about 60m below. Actually, I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone - most of us didn’t want to come down again.

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neal osborne — 2004-03-30

cool. very envious of your travels! will have to save my pennies and travel to that part of the world. saw a programme about the back packers in sydney and it seems that sexual diseases, tattoos and body piercings are the top things to do and experience!! think i will stick to the bridge walking!! glad to hear you are doing ok and will catch up with ya soon.

Dateline: Sydney

Mon, 22 Mar 2004 14:09:56 +0000

Currently, I’m in Sydney Australia on business, and I must say I feel lucky to be here, because it really is a beautiful place, especially as the summer here draws to a close, and I’m fortunate enough to have a hotel room facing the Bay Bridge (which strikes me for some reason as a cleaner version of the Brooklyn Bridge - I’ll have to find a picture of that on-line and see if I’m just imagining that).

So far everyone has been great - good food and drink too, though for some reason I’m struck by how spacious things are, but how ’low intensity’ they feel compared to Tokyo. Maybe the correct word is ‘de-compressed’. Anyway, I’ll be snapping pics as best I can - especially over the weekend, and try to get something in the gallery ASAP.

New Doctorow Novel

Sun, 08 Feb 2004 17:34:41 +0000

Good news from last week is that Cory Doctorow has released a new book - ’ Eastern Standard Tribe’. For those who have never heard of Doctorow, he’s one of the people behind a blog called Boing Boing and also the writer of last year’s " Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom", which was not only a great story, but also the item which introduced me to the Creative Commons license; you see Doctorow makes his works downloadable under license, allowing people to read the whole thing - unimpeded by rights management, and if you like it, you can buy a copy of the book. I applaud this, and yes, I will be buying a copy of the new book too.

Feed the iPod!

Tue, 25 Nov 2003 04:16:40 +0000

Well, it’s been 6 months since I got my 15GB iPod. Like a song on a playlist? Within seconds you’re listening to a random selection of all the songs you own from that artist. Having all the Red Hot Chili Peppers tracks on a continuous random play is cool.

Damn thing needs feeding though, so I got some more CDs sent over, and bought a few to try to quench the appetite.

A good thing about the iPod though it that it gives another chance to those ‘B’ tracks, or tracks I just forgot about over time. I spent the train journey home today listening to Henry Rollins’ “Weight” album - it’s a heavy opus, and not recommended for a crowded train, but it just brought it home to me that I hadn’t listened to that for nearly 5 years. Actually, it’s pretty impressive how many other people have iPods here in Tokyo.

On the techie side, I re-encoded a few CDs at AAC 160kbps instead of my old standard of MP3 (at 160 - VBR). It takes up less space and sounds a lot better IMHO. Give it a try - it depends on the music a bit, but I thought it was a bit more detailed.

If you haven’t got an iPod, I really recommend them - it’ll keep your addresses and calendars there too, and works on Mac or windows (iTunes on Windows is pretty good too).

Checkout the iPod Lounge and see what some people are doing with theirs.

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yo mama — 2003-11-27

yo mama!

neal — 2003-11-29

hmmmmm ipod!!!! If anyone is stumped as to what to get me for christmas….. ;-)

Bits and pieces

Fri, 26 Sep 2003 04:42:34 +0000

Bit of a catch all post this - everything from Linux to Japanese politics :)

Early in the week, I was glad to see that Takenaka-san had held his job in Koizumi-san’s cabinet as the Banking Sacrificial Official. This is the guy whose job it is to try to sort out the Japanese banks. You know he’s doing a good job for 2 reasons: banks are slowly admitting to some of the bad loans they have (trillions of yen - no one seems to know exactly how much) and 2) all the banks *hate* him! Check out stories on Koizumi-san’s re-election within his own party here, and here.

Non-tech freaks miss this bit: This week, I upgraded my windoze box to an Athlon XP2500, and bumped my Linux to XP2000. I need to sort Redhat 9 on there now. I also got some decent sound recording software called Audio Hijack Pro for my Mac for getting sounds out of DVD and so I can get the whole ‘Hichhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ from my tapes into MP3.

I’ve been reading a pretty good concise History of Japan from Tuttle (a very interesting subject), and for some reason I got thinking about another of my pet subjects - Thomas Paine - so I’ve kind of semi-decided to write a much bigger article on him, because there just doesn’t seem to be enough good stuff on the Net. Just thought I’d mention it.

Song of the Day: ‘Guilty’ - John Belushi - “Made in America” Phrase of he day: The Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster - like being smashed in the face by a slice of lemon, wrapped around a gold brick.

Sun and wine

Tue, 29 Apr 2003 14:55:12 +0000

Nice. After a sun splashed weekend, it’s now a national holiday, and yet another beautiful sunny day. Having already spent an hour on the balcony with a book and a glass of red wine, it’s now time to get serious - and head to the park armed with a bigger book, a couple of bottles of water and enough energy to lie down on the grass. Truly a tough life :-)

The throat is now much better.

The Returner

Thu, 20 Mar 2003 01:37:32 +0000

Well, a film I was waiting for finally came out on DVD here, and with English subtitles! “The Returner” is a sci-fi film starring Taiwanese born Kaneshiro Takeshi, but this is very much a Japanese film. It’s sort of ET/Matrix/Terminator but a worthwhile watch.

They went a bit long at 2 hours, but it’s good to see a decent Japanese film which doesn’t involve a lot of sadistic violence - it has some violence, but not the level of say Kitano ‘Beat’ Takeshi films; it also has some very cool action sequences. On the negative side, some bits look like a made-for-TV film, but most of it looks amazing - especially the scenes in Tibet, and (spoiler - sorry) the 747 which turns into a robot spacecraft! The special edition DVD also has a load of printed pictures, a full printed A5 storyboard booklet, and a DVD with a ‘making of’.

Worth a watch for anyone.

A bit of this, that and AvantGo

Mon, 10 Mar 2003 22:32:21 +0000

A few things today… and a bit of this and a bit of that really. As a few people who know me will be aware, for the last 6 months I’ve been going on about running a marathon, but doing very little about it. However, that changed today when I volunteered to do a 10K run in 2 months….I’d better get training!

What else? A friend pointed out to me today (over raging laughter) that if you go to the consumer part of www. avantg o.com, set your location to Japan, language to English, with filters on, BRIGHTBLACK comes up at 10!!! And further, click entertainment and I was no.1!! I’m not sure why this is happening, but thanks to all those people! I’ll put the screenshots on this page ASAP.

Also, I got “Command and Conquer Generals” game today…hope it won’t interfere with my training…

The Avantgo English Channel for entertainment

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CT-125 in the rain ASMR

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A Couple of Days at Ernest House

New Header Photo: Feet In the Ocean

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May Recommendations: 5 Quick Things in the North of England

January Recommends: Simple Recipes

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Tokyo Toy Run 2010

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Time for a Tyre Change

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明けましておめでとうございます 2008

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First Bike Tour

湘南ベルマレ　１−１　東京ヴェルディ